Description
The Oratory of San Desiderio is the old church of a Benedictine monastery on Via dei Laudesi, in the center of Pistoia: a small, now deconsecrated hall that is worth a stop for a single, great 16th-century fresco.
The whole back wall is taken up by the Martyrdom of Saint Desiderius and the Ten Thousand Martyrs, painted in the early 1570s by Sebastiano Vini, known as il Veronese, for the Amati family.
The church already appears in documents in 1084. In 1450 the monastery passed to the Compagnia dei Disciplinati and then to a Franciscan community; suppressed in 1786, it was bought by none other than the Amati.
High above there was once a wooden ceiling with eight canvases by 17th-century Florentine painters, among them Passignano, Francesco Curradi and Matteo Rosselli: it no longer exists. Today the oratory is a state monument, in the care of the museums of the Ministry of Culture.
The whole back wall is taken up by the Martyrdom of Saint Desiderius and the Ten Thousand Martyrs, painted in the early 1570s by Sebastiano Vini, known as il Veronese, for the Amati family.
The church already appears in documents in 1084. In 1450 the monastery passed to the Compagnia dei Disciplinati and then to a Franciscan community; suppressed in 1786, it was bought by none other than the Amati.
High above there was once a wooden ceiling with eight canvases by 17th-century Florentine painters, among them Passignano, Francesco Curradi and Matteo Rosselli: it no longer exists. Today the oratory is a state monument, in the care of the museums of the Ministry of Culture.