Description
The Scoletta del Santo, or Scuola del Santo, is the historic seat of the confraternity of Saint Anthony, on the square in front of the basilica in Padua, next to the Oratory of St George. Upstairs it keeps an unexpected treasure: the first great frescoes of the young Titian.
The building, in brick like the churches around the Santo, has two floors. Downstairs is the confraternity's small 15th-century church; upstairs, added in 1504, the Sala Priorale, where the brothers met. You go up by an 18th-century grand staircase.
The hall has a carved and painted coffered ceiling and walls divided into panels by gilded wooden frames. Eighteen scenes tell the life and miracles of Saint Anthony, painted in the early 16th century by various Venetian painters, among them Bartolomeo Montagna and Domenico Campagnola.
The most famous are the three frescoes by Titian, painted between April and December 1511: the saint making a newborn baby speak to defend his mother's honour, the foot reattached to a young man and the Miracle of the Jealous Husband. It was the painter's first truly great independent work.
The Jealous Husband holds a surprising detail. The raised arm of the wife, in the middle of the scene, is not only painted: Titian modelled it in low relief in the plaster, and you can see it clearly in a photograph taken in raking light. In the background, the repentant husband kneels at the saint's feet.
On the ground floor, in the church, is the stele of Gasparo Gozzi, buried here in 1786, and a wooden statue of the Immaculate Conception carried in procession, the work of a pupil of Canova. On the landing of the staircase, a 15th-century panel shows Saint Anthony writing while sitting in a walnut tree.
From the loggia overlooking the square, popes visiting Padua have blessed the crowd: Pius VI in 1782, Pius VII in 1800, as two plaques recall, and John Paul II in 1982.
The building, in brick like the churches around the Santo, has two floors. Downstairs is the confraternity's small 15th-century church; upstairs, added in 1504, the Sala Priorale, where the brothers met. You go up by an 18th-century grand staircase.
The hall has a carved and painted coffered ceiling and walls divided into panels by gilded wooden frames. Eighteen scenes tell the life and miracles of Saint Anthony, painted in the early 16th century by various Venetian painters, among them Bartolomeo Montagna and Domenico Campagnola.
The most famous are the three frescoes by Titian, painted between April and December 1511: the saint making a newborn baby speak to defend his mother's honour, the foot reattached to a young man and the Miracle of the Jealous Husband. It was the painter's first truly great independent work.
The Jealous Husband holds a surprising detail. The raised arm of the wife, in the middle of the scene, is not only painted: Titian modelled it in low relief in the plaster, and you can see it clearly in a photograph taken in raking light. In the background, the repentant husband kneels at the saint's feet.
On the ground floor, in the church, is the stele of Gasparo Gozzi, buried here in 1786, and a wooden statue of the Immaculate Conception carried in procession, the work of a pupil of Canova. On the landing of the staircase, a 15th-century panel shows Saint Anthony writing while sitting in a walnut tree.
From the loggia overlooking the square, popes visiting Padua have blessed the crowd: Pius VI in 1782, Pius VII in 1800, as two plaques recall, and John Paul II in 1982.