Description
The Church of San Clemente is the small medieval church set among the houses of Piazza dei Signori in Padua, right opposite the Clock Tower. From outside you only see the façade, but inside it tells centuries of the life of the square and its merchants.
The façade is divided by tall pilasters with Corinthian capitals and rich festoons, beneath a pediment bearing statues of Saint Clement, Saint Justina and Saint Daniel. Above the portal opens a large rose window framed by twelfth- and thirteenth-century terracotta decoration.
Lower down is a small fourteenth-century roundel with Saint Clement in high relief. In the niches, the statues of Saint Eligius and Saint John the Baptist, from 1696, carry the emblems of the fraglie, the craft guilds. To one side rises a Neo-Baroque bell gable.
Inside, a hall with a ship's-keel vault ends in a small square apse. On the high altar, from 1782, is the altarpiece of Saint Clement among the angels by Luca Ferrari da Reggio. Near the entrance there is a fresco attributed to Jacopo Bellini.
The most charming detail is the altar of Saint Anthony, paid for by the "fratelea casolinorum", the guild of the delicatessen sellers: in the bas-relief the Baptist appears with the tools of their trade. Among the other works is a Giving of the Keys to Peter by Pietro Damini.
It was the guilds of the nearby markets that made the church grow, commissioning altars and restorations. In the sixteenth century, when the square was rearranged, the medieval building was heavily transformed, and again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Its origins are lost in legend: according to an old tradition, the church was given to Padua in the fifth century by the communities of Rivoalto and Dorsoduro, the first settlements of Venice, founded by people from Padua, as a token of thanks. The first document mentioning it dates from 1190.
The Paduan sculptor Tiziano Minio is buried here, and from 1386 the church commemorated Francesco da Carrara's victory over Antonio della Scala.
The façade is divided by tall pilasters with Corinthian capitals and rich festoons, beneath a pediment bearing statues of Saint Clement, Saint Justina and Saint Daniel. Above the portal opens a large rose window framed by twelfth- and thirteenth-century terracotta decoration.
Lower down is a small fourteenth-century roundel with Saint Clement in high relief. In the niches, the statues of Saint Eligius and Saint John the Baptist, from 1696, carry the emblems of the fraglie, the craft guilds. To one side rises a Neo-Baroque bell gable.
Inside, a hall with a ship's-keel vault ends in a small square apse. On the high altar, from 1782, is the altarpiece of Saint Clement among the angels by Luca Ferrari da Reggio. Near the entrance there is a fresco attributed to Jacopo Bellini.
The most charming detail is the altar of Saint Anthony, paid for by the "fratelea casolinorum", the guild of the delicatessen sellers: in the bas-relief the Baptist appears with the tools of their trade. Among the other works is a Giving of the Keys to Peter by Pietro Damini.
It was the guilds of the nearby markets that made the church grow, commissioning altars and restorations. In the sixteenth century, when the square was rearranged, the medieval building was heavily transformed, and again in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Its origins are lost in legend: according to an old tradition, the church was given to Padua in the fifth century by the communities of Rivoalto and Dorsoduro, the first settlements of Venice, founded by people from Padua, as a token of thanks. The first document mentioning it dates from 1190.
The Paduan sculptor Tiziano Minio is buried here, and from 1386 the church commemorated Francesco da Carrara's victory over Antonio della Scala.