Church of San Francesco, Bozzolo (Mantova)

The Church of San Francesco is dedicated to Giulio Cesare Gonzaga who was the first Prince of Bozzolo and conceived to his glory a Palatine Chapel which was at the same time its own mausoleum. It was for this that he entrusted the construction of the church of San Francesco to the architect Zilio de 'Zilli, which was erected between 1604 and 1606. The building was joined to the court building. The facade follows the style of the church of Santa Maria della Visitazione (called the Zitelle) in Venice; it is divided into two overlapping orders decorated with architectural elements of classical taste, all surmounted by a triangular tympanum finished by five obelisks that recall the sepulchral destination, while the entrance portal has a round tympanum. The church does not have an apse, but a wall on which stands an architectonic architecture of great grandeur, with columns in black marble and an altarpiece by Gaspare Celio in the center, Crucifixion with San Francesco and Giulio Cesare, work of 1605. At the foot of the apparatus the sepulcher of the Prince is preserved. The perspective architecture of the vault contributes to giving the optical illusion of increasing the size of the building, which on the side walls presents frescoes of modest caliber, probably the work of the last five years of the eighteenth century, when the oratory was closed to the public and was seat of a constitutional circle.