Description
The Church of Santa Maria dei Servi is the large Gothic church on Via Roma in Padua, easy to spot by its long portico along the street. Inside it keeps an unexpected treasure: a wooden crucifix attributed to Donatello.
The Donatello Crucifix, in poplar wood and almost two meters tall, returned to its chapel in 2015, after a restoration that removed the 19th-century bronze-colored patina. In the nave, about 57 meters long, is also the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows by Giovanni Bonazza.
The portico of 1511 rests on ten octagonal columns of red marble, salvaged from the Chapel of the Arca in the Basilica of Saint Anthony.
The church was commissioned in 1372 by Fina Buzzaccarini, wife of the lord of Padua Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara, where the razed palace of a rebel Carrara had stood. The story goes that in February 1512 the crucifix oozed a blood-like liquid for about fifteen days.
The Donatello Crucifix, in poplar wood and almost two meters tall, returned to its chapel in 2015, after a restoration that removed the 19th-century bronze-colored patina. In the nave, about 57 meters long, is also the altar of Our Lady of Sorrows by Giovanni Bonazza.
The portico of 1511 rests on ten octagonal columns of red marble, salvaged from the Chapel of the Arca in the Basilica of Saint Anthony.
The church was commissioned in 1372 by Fina Buzzaccarini, wife of the lord of Padua Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara, where the razed palace of a rebel Carrara had stood. The story goes that in February 1512 the crucifix oozed a blood-like liquid for about fifteen days.