Founded around 1300, the Church of San Francesco, in the suburb of Montone, occupies the hill on which rose the houses of the Olives and the Strong arms. Its typology is that typical of the architectures of the mendicant Orders: simple and linear forms, only aisle with polygonal apse, coverage to trusses. Around 1500 the enlarged part of the convent was added to the north wall of the building.
The church represents the central nucleus of the museum, preserving inside numerous frescoes mainly of votive character. The surviving pieces of the oldest frescoes, datable to the second half of the 14th century, suggest that immediately after the church was built, a large-scale decorative intervention was carried out. The highest results of the decoration of the church, however, belong to the next century, when the building became the family church of Fortebracci who generously contributed to its embellishment, providing altars, furnishings and paintings.
An example the frescoes of the apse, realized between 1423 and 1424 from the ferrarese Antonio Alberti and representing episodes of the Life of San Francesco and scenes of the Universal Judgement, which were commissioned by Braccio da Montone that is remembered from his coat of arms, the ram between two cheetahs and, from those of the cities to him submitted. To Carlo, son of Braccio, is owed the realization in 1476 of the altar of the left wall (right with apse to the shoulders), then made to decorate from the son Bernardino in 1491 with the fresco representing Sant’Antonio of Padua between the Baptist and the Archangel Raffaele with Tobiolo work of Bartolomeo Caporali. To the generous contribution of Margherita Malatesta, Carlo’s wife, we owe perhaps the completion of the corresponding altar on the right wall (left with the apse behind), realized between 1474 and 1482 and destined to host the banner of the Madonna della Misericordia by Bartolomeo Caporali.
In the church there are also valuable wooden works, such as the Bancone dei Magistrati with inlaid motifs inspired by the “grotesques”, the wooden choir and the pulpit.
montone@sistemamuseo.it