Chiesa di San Francesco (ex convento)

Città di Castello's Church of San Francesco preserves the altar made for Raphael's Sposalizio della Vergine, a Vitelli burial chapel designed by Giorgio Vasari and an eighteenth-century organ within its Gothic structure, consecrated in 1291.

Why it matters

The Franciscans established their church here in the thirteenth century. In 1504 Raphael painted the Sposalizio della Vergine for the Albizzini altar. The Vitelli family later commissioned Giorgio Vasari to design their burial chapel. The original paintings are now in collections in Milan and London; the church preserves their altars and copies, along with an inscription on the facade recalling Raphael's work here.

What to notice

The three polygonal apses and the right flank, with blocked bifora windows and an ogival portal, preserve parts of the medieval fabric. The bell tower was rebuilt after the 1452 earthquake. The Baroque remodelling of 1707–1727 added stuccoes by Antonio Milli and ceiling medallions by Lucantonio Angiolucci. At the end of the left aisle, the Vitelli chapel, designed by Vasari in the mid-sixteenth century, contains his 1563 Incoronazione della Vergine, painted for Gentilina Della Staffa Vitelli. Nicolò Vitelli and his sons Paolo and Chiappino are buried beneath it. A wrought-iron gate by Pietro Ercolani dates to 1567. The San Giuseppe altar holds a copy of Raphael's Sposalizio. Other works include a glazed terracotta of Saint Francis receiving the stigmata from the Della Robbia school, a fifteenth-century German-school Pietà and inlaid choir stalls.

Context and history

Raphael painted the Sposalizio in 1504 for the Albizzini altar. French troops removed it in 1798; it reached Milan's Pinacoteca di Brera in 1805. Luca Signorelli's Adorazione dei Pastori, painted around 1496 and probably made for this church, was acquired by the National Gallery in 1882; a copy replaces it in the church. The main altar is attributed to Beato Giacomo, a sculptor friar of the early fourteenth century. The church's former convent buildings later served civic uses.