Complesso museale di San Francesco

Why it matters

The former Franciscan church of Montefalco preserves an important cycle of frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, painted around the apse between 1450 and 1452. The civic museum also includes a Nativity by Perugino, works by local Renaissance painter Francesco Melanzio and collections of archaeological material from the surrounding territory.

What to notice

Gozzoli's frescoes depict episodes from the life of Saint Francis, including the renunciation of worldly goods, the preaching to the birds and the celebration at Greccio. A small vessel of red wine appears in the scene of Francis blessing Montefalco. Pietro Vannucci, known as Perugino, painted a Nativity in 1503. The former convent's art collection includes works associated with Jacopo Vincioli, Giovanni di Corraduccio, Ascensidonio Spacca and Antoniazzo Romano. Archaeological material spans from the first century BC to the sixteenth century AD.

Context and history

The Franciscans established the present church inside Montefalco's walls between 1335 and 1338. After Italian unification, the convent became a civil hospital and the church passed to the municipality in 1863. A civic pinacoteca moved into the complex in 1895; the full museum opened in 1990. The building's former convent spaces preserve traces of its successive religious and civic uses.