PhD Program in Historical studies
Sulmona and the churches of Santa Chiara and San Gaetano
Even the most inland of the provinces of Abruzzo, the province of L’Aquila, conserves vestiges of Baroque art and sensibility. Aside from the city, the artistic heritage of which was seriously damaged by the earthquake of April 2009, many medium and small sized towns can claim to have buildings and places which exemplify the style of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries but are generally little known nationally and internationally. Sulmona for example, conserves some architectural structures, principally religious buildings, which can be linked to Baroque art. The church of Santa Chiara was built based on the project of the architect from Bergamo Pietro Fantoni, as a part of the reconstruction of the city after the earthquake of 1706. Damaged by another earthquake, that of May 1984 and by a series of reprehensible acts of vandalism, the church underwent a long phase of restoration which gave some of the original splendour to a series of frescoes by artists from the region. Noteworthy among them is the Sposalizio della Vergine (The Wedding of the Virgin) by Alessando Salini. Salini, who was born in Sulmona in 1675 and died in Rome in 1764 was also the author of another painting conserved in the old Diocesan Museum: Madonna col Bambino e devoti (the Madonna and child with the faithful) called L’Avvocata (The lawyer). The church of San Gaetano instead has a longer history. A series of archeological excavations have in fact brought to light the remains of a domus from the imperial period, in the same location as the building and, in the subsequent layers, a frescoed apse of a small church from the eighth and ninth centuries and a series of covered tombs. The decorative compositions from the seventeenth century have recently been brought to light, liberating them from the thick layer of paint under which they had been for centuries.