Chiesa di San Francesco (Deruta)

Facing Deruta's town hall on Piazza dei Consoli, the church of San Francesco has served as the town's principal place of worship for more than six centuries. Within its Gothic structure, a bell associated with Saint Francis's canonization, medieval frescoes and a maiolica altar connect religious and ceramic histories.

Why it matters

San Francesco is Deruta's parish church and has long played a central civic role. Its bronze bell, cast in 1228, the year of Saint Francis's canonization, is described by the parish as the oldest in the diocese of Perugia. The nave preserves frescoes from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The adjoining former convent now houses the Regional Museum of Ceramics, while paintings removed from the church are in the Pinacoteca Comunale across the square.

What to notice

In a niche on the left wall, a fresco of the Virgin enthroned between Saints Francis and Bernardino, with Saints Jerome and Anthony of Padua below, is dated to about 1525 and attributed to Domenico Alfani. The chapel of the Madonna del Rosario, built in 1846, contains a maiolica altar with angels by Deruta ceramist Angelo Micheletti. Nearby, a two-scene fresco shows Saint Catherine of Alexandria presenting the donor to the Virgin and undergoing martyrdom; the donor is identified as Tommaso di Orlando. The 1228 bell hangs below this painting. On the right wall are a Madonna and Child attributed to the Maestro di Santa Giuliana, the restored Christ in the House of Martha and Mary from the first half of the fourteenth century, and a fifteenth-century niche with scenes from the life of Saint Anthony of Padua. Outside, the church has two bell towers: a fourteenth-century tower by the apse and a polygonal tower designed by engineer Fiorenzo Cherubini in 1842.

Context and history

A Franciscan house is documented in Deruta in the early fourteenth century. According to the parish account, an earthquake in 1303 collapsed the church's timber-truss vault; the rebuilt church was consecrated in 1388. Pope Urban IV died in the adjoining convent in 1264 while travelling from Orvieto to Perugia. Paintings once in the church include Perugino's Eterno tra i Santi Rocco e Romano of 1476 and Niccolò Alunno's Madonna dei Consoli, now in the town gallery. A 2018 canvas of Saint Catherine by Lorenzo Fonda continues the church's association with the patron saint of ceramists.