Chiesa di Sant'Antonio Abate (Deruta)

Deruta's Church of Sant'Antonio Abate preserves frescoes by Bartolomeo and Giovanni Battista Caporali, an eighteenth-century painted wooden cantoria and a glazed terracotta statue of its patron saint. The simple church, built between 1361 and 1439, stands on Piazza Benincasa.

Why it matters

The confraternity of Sant'Antonio Abate commissioned artworks that still fill the church's interior. Bartolomeo Caporali painted the Madonna della Misericordia in 1480, showing the Virgin spreading her mantle over the people and town of Deruta. Giovanni Battista Caporali painted scenes from the life of Saint Anthony on the rear wall. The church is also linked to the two-sided gonfalone of Sant'Antonio Abate by Niccolò di Liberatore, called l'Alunno, now in the municipal gallery.

What to notice

In Bartolomeo Caporali's Madonna della Misericordia, the Virgin's mantle shelters the people of Deruta; beneath it the painter included a view of the town. On the rear wall, the stucco retable frames Giovanni Battista Caporali's scenes of Saint Anthony with Saints Roch and Sebastian. A glazed terracotta statue of Saint Anthony stands in the central niche; its attribution is uncertain, with municipal and parish sources proposing different workshops. Above the door is an eighteenth-century organ and painted wooden cantoria. An Etruscan funerary urn with inscriptions serves as a holy-water stoup, and a late-sixteenth-century canvas of Saint Isidore hangs on the right wall.

Context and history

The church was built between 1361 and 1439 on the edge of Deruta's medieval centre. Its plain, single hall has a timber-truss roof divided by diaphragm arches. The confraternity of Saint Anthony oversaw the church and financed its frescoes and furnishings in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The gonfalone by l'Alunno, once carried in procession from this church, is now in the Pinacoteca Comunale. A seventeenth-century canvas of Christ in Glory with Franciscan saints and souls in Purgatory came here from San Francesco.