Sant'Onofrio, Rome
Sant'Onofrio al Gianicolo is a titular church in Trastevere, Rome. It is the official church of the papal order of knighthood Order of the Holy Sepulchre. A side chapel is dedicated to the Order and a former grand master, Nicola Canali is entombed there. It is dedicated to Saint Onuphrius and located on the Janiculum.
It was built in 1439 on the site of an ancient hermitage, as part of a cloistered monastery of the Hieronymites that existed here from the 15th-16th century. The attached cloister was added in the mid-15th century.
A member of the College of Cardinals is sometimes given title to the church, that is, designated cardinal deacon or cardinal priest of Sanr'Onofrio. The last to hold the title was Cardinal Carlo Furno from 1994 to 2015.
Works of art
Behind the Renaissance portico are three lunettes by Domenichino, painted in 1605, commemorating the hermits who lived here and depicting scenes from the life of St Jerome. The church also contains The Madonna of Loreto by Agostino Carracci (his only work in a church in Rome) and frescoes of Scenes from the Life of Mary, attributed to Baldassare Peruzzi.
The first chapel to the right has an Annunciation by Antoniazzo Romano and an Eternal Father attributed to Baldassarre Peruzzi. The second chapel has frescoes and stuccoes (1605) by Giovanni Battista Ricci with an altarpiece of the Madonna di Loreto by pupils of Annibale Carracci. Next to the main altar is a Monument to Giovanni Sacco attributed to the school of Andrea Bregno with frescoes of St. Anne Teaching the Virgin to Read by a painter of the Umbrian school. The sacristy ceiling has frescoes by Girolamo Pesci, while the walls have a Peter of Pisa by Francesco Trevisani. The apse has frescoes of the Stories of Mary attributed to Peruzzi by Vasari. In the third chapel on the left, is a monument of the Cardinal Filippo Sega with a portrait by Domenichino. In the second chapel is a Trinity fresco on the ceiling by Francesco Trevisani. In the first chapel to the left, is a monument to Torquato Tasso (1857) by Giuseppe De Fabris.
The cloister has frescoes by the Cavaliere d'Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari) and others depicting scenes from the life of Saint Onuphrius.
Tasso
Torquato Tasso, the author of Gerusalemme Liberata, the epic poem that retells the deeds of the crusaders who fought to regain possession of the Holy Sepulchre, requested and obtained shelter at the monastery of Sant'Onofrio after wandering all over Italy. He spent the last years of his life there, dying in the cloister on 25 April 1595, the evening before he was to be crowned with laurels on the Capitoline Hill. The monastery houses a collection of manuscripts and editions of his work, as well as his death mask, in the Musro Tassiano.
Since the 1950s, the church has been under the care of the American congregation of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. It is their only community in continental Europe.
References
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- Death mask of Torquato Tasso