In the year 1617 the
Capuchins delegated Fra' Michele, member of the church's Board
of trustees, to go to Albano to built according to the
request of the lord Paolo Savelli a new Church in an appropriate
place:”il più sicuro in quanto a l’aria
et anche il più ameno di vi-sta sopra il Collesio al
quale anco concorreva il signor principe Savelli..., fu stabilito
di piantare la croce e gettare la prima pietra....'
And therefore, according to the tradition the convent was built
in one of the most suggestive place of the town, on the ridge
dominating the lake, at the beginning of the gallerie di
sopra, towering over Albano. Two years later, on the 14th
July 1619, the construction was ended. As it is remembered in
a memorial stone within the church, the Capuchin’s convent
was dedicated to San Bonaventura according to the wish of Flaminia
Colonna Gonzaga.
On the 30th August 1625 the high altar was consecrated to San
Francesco and San Bonaventura. The form of the structure is
mostly unchanged except for the front of the church, where there
is evidence of restoration probably made during the 19th century.
The convent and the church are expression of simplicity and
linearity typical of the convent’s architecture and in
particular of that of Capuchins’ order.
The interior of the church is a rectangular space with two
side chapels. Above the presbytery there is a longitudinal vault
and above the altar there is a Gerrit van Honthorst’s
painting representing Flaminia Colonna Gonzaga and San Bonaventura
in prayer. In the right side chapel there is a marble and travertine
group of statues representing the Virgin, San Giuseppe, the
Bambino, the ox and the donkey, work of two artists of Berninian
school: Andrea Bolgi and Stefano Speranza.
Leaving the church, on the left, there is the entrance to the
Capuchins’ wood, which the Italian writer Francesco Giorni
in his work Storia di Albano in 1842 described as: <<...meravigliosamente
ameno, copioso d’acqua, delizioso e divoto, eccitando
non poca divozione alcuni piccoli oratori sparsi per il giardino
ed il bosco, fattivi costruire.. .dal Papa Urbano VIII che molto
si dilettava di intrattenervisi nelle sue villeggiature a Castel
Gandolfo e l’ultimo più elevato dal cardinale Antonio
Barberini, cappuccino, nipote del pontefice; e dal quale oratorio
nonché dal più attiguo, forniti di loggia nel
sopra, si scopre una bellissima pro-spettiva ad oriente ed a
mezzogiorno; scoprendosene altra simile a settentrione e occidente
del viale del bosco...>>”.
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