Chiesa di San Francesco

The Franciscan church of San Francesco in Prato brings together the city's religious and mercantile histories. The thirteenth-century brick church preserves a preaching-hall interior, the Migliorati Chapel's frescoes and the tomb of the merchant Francesco Datini.

Why it matters

The church's foundation is dated to 1228, and the present brick structure began to take shape from 1282. The complex reflects the early Franciscan presence in Prato and the growth of the medieval city. Its art-historical importance is especially visible in the Migliorati Chapel, where Niccolò di Pietro Gerini painted a cycle around 1400 for the Migliorati family.

What to notice

The facade combines brick with bands of alberese and serpentino and marble framing. Its sculptural details have been attributed differently, so individual authorship should be treated cautiously. Inside, the single nave and wooden roof trusses preserve the character of a Franciscan preaching hall. A fifteenth-century pietra serena pulpit bears a painted Monogram of Christ, and a fourteenth-century polychrome wooden crucifix is traditionally associated with Francesco Datini. His white-marble tomb slab, by Niccolò di Piero Lamberti, depicts the merchant beneath a Gothic tabernacle; nearby is the memorial to Gemignano Inghirami. In the Migliorati Chapel, Gerini's fresco cycle depicts episodes from the lives of Saint Matthew the Apostle and Saint Anthony Abbot, with a Crucifixion and the four Evangelists.

Context and history

The church developed alongside Prato's medieval cloth trade. Francesco Datini, remembered as the merchant of Prato, was buried here. After his death, his Ceppo charity commissioned the cloister, built between 1438 and 1440 as one of the city's early Renaissance structures. Its quadrangular court has broad arcades supported by slender Ionic columns in pietra serena. Funerary plaques and coats of arms along the cloister record families associated with Prato from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries.