Chiesa di San Francesco

Facing Sansepolcro’s cathedral across Piazza San Francesco, this church was among the city’s first Gothic buildings. Its high altar once held Sassetta’s double-sided polyptych, now dispersed among museum collections; the medieval stone altar associated with the blessed Ranieri remains in the church.

Why it matters

Franciscan friars arrived in Sansepolcro in the mid-thirteenth century, and the church and convent built for them between 1258 and 1321 introduced Gothic architecture to the city. In 1437 the community commissioned Stefano di Giovanni, known as Sassetta, to paint a double-sided altarpiece for the high altar. The National Gallery in London records that it was completed by 1444 and made for this church. Its almost sixty panels made it one of the major altarpieces of the early Renaissance. The convent is also associated with Luca Pacioli, the mathematician born in Sansepolcro.

What to notice

The stone façade has a deep portal with a trilobed arch and a large oculus above it; the campanile ends in a spire modelled on the cathedral’s. Inside, the single nave retains its simple plan, although an eighteenth-century remodelling added the vault and semicircular choir. The surviving works include Giovanni de’ Vecchi’s Stigmata of St Francis, canvases by Francesco Curradi and Raffaello Schiaminossi, and a fifteenth-century polychrome terracotta of St Anthony of Padua. The sarcophagus-shaped stone high altar, given by the commune in 1304 for the blessed Ranieri, is linked to his remains in the crypt below.

Context and history

The commune granted the site to the friar Tommaso da Spello, and construction ran from 1258 to 1321. Sassetta’s polyptych remained on the high altar until the early nineteenth century, when it was dismantled and dispersed among museums and private collections. After the Franciscan order divided in 1517, the convent passed to the Conventual Franciscans, who served the church until 1987. Between 1760 and 1783 the interior acquired its present vaulted form. The 1948 earthquake damaged the church and required structural work on the campanile.