San Francesco, Gothic church in Deruta, Italy.
San Francesco is a Gothic-style church in Deruta with a single uninterrupted nave covered by exposed wooden trusses. Its walls and apse hold frescoes from the 14th to the 20th century, including works attributed to Domenico Alfani and the Maestro di Santa Giuliana. The Chapel of the Rosary, added in 1846, opens off the nave.
The building was consecrated in 1388 and has experienced various periods of damage and rebuilding since then, particularly following earthquakes. The architecture reflects multiple periods, with elements from different eras coming together over time.
The Chapel of the Rosary, built in 1846, holds a venerated statue of the Virgin of the Rosary, probably from the 17th or 18th century. Since the 1980s, Deruta majolica panels have been added to its walls, including a panel of the Mysteries of the Rosary with tiles by Cesare Teobaldo Pimpinelli and Cesare Margaritelli. The Compagnia del Rosario, recorded in a 1465 statute, organised Deruta's best-attended procession, held on Easter Monday to Santa Maria di Roncione and accompanied by a fair.
The church stands in central Deruta and is entered from the street through the former convent cloister, of which two sides remain. After the 2016 earthquake it was closed until 21 May 2017, when it reopened for worship. The single nave makes a short visit; the Rosary Chapel on the left and the frescoed right wall are the main stops.
A bell cast to mark the canonisation of Saint Francis in 1228 is kept inside the church, with a plaque added when it was displayed again after seven hundred years. The central stained-glass window, made in the 1950s by the Moretti-Caselli studio of Perugia, copies the windows of the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi; the side windows followed in the 1980s.
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