Every city has its ideal Pantheon. A physical place that has passed through the ages, that has survived nature and man, that has overcome earthquakes and dictatorships. For Ferrara, this Pantheon – and not only because it hosts the illustrious tombs of Ferrara culture – is the church of San Paolo, returned to the citizens yesterday, which, pending the end of the restoration of the altarpieces, was able to return to the church for the Eucharistic celebration. A very popular celebration – the church overflowing with people, sitting or standing on the sides of the naves – and presided over by Bishop Gian Carlo Perego, in the presence of the religious and civil authorities, but above all of many and many townspeople, often struggling with your mobile phone to film the most exciting moments of the function, but also the human miracle that art and architecture exhibit, in San Paolo as in few other Ferrara monuments. The building had been closed since the mid-2000s, well before the earthquake. His situation was then worsened by the injuries caused by the earthquakes of 2012. In February of this year, the end of the complex of works which affected the church located in Piazzetta Alberto Schiatti was declared. Exactly, Alberto Schiatti, that is, the architect to whom the Carmelites of San Paolo, after the earthquake of 1570, entrusted the reconstruction of the complex, which however can be considered among the oldest in Ferrara, already present in the 10th century.
The complete rebirth of the building, after the destruction caused by the earthquake, occurred in 1611, by which time the Este family had left the city. Yet, the church of San Paolo was among the most dear to the Este family, since the fifteenth century, since the times of a figure like Giovanni Battista Panetti, perhaps the only one not mentioned yesterday among the greats who marked the history of San Paolo. In addition to being dean of the theology faculty of the Carmelites six times, Panetti was elected prior of the convent on several occasions between 1468 and 1497 (the date of his death). Not only. Giovanni Battista Panetti loved to hang out with the great intellectuals of the court, among whom he can also be counted, and was an eminent connoisseur and translator of ancient Greek. He was very close to Duke Ercole I d’Este, of whom he was also a secret advisor. Not the last of the charges. For Hercules, then, he translated Josephus’s Jewish Antiquities into the vernacular. His relationship with books was strong: like Caesar Augustus, who they say boasted of having found a Rome in bricks and having left it in marble, John the Baptist too, we can imagine, boasted of having found a sparse library, in San Paolo, and to have left it enriched with more than 700 volumes. Volumes by some of the greatest humanists of the time, including Guarino Veronese himself, buried – coincidentally – in San Paolo. The comparison with Augustan antiquity is not accidental: we have been talking about the Pantheon from the beginning. And the comparison is even more evident if you look at the apse basin of the church: decorated by Scarsellino at the end of the 16th century, that Saint Elias kidnapped from the sky, on a chariot pulled by 4 horses, could very well be the god Apollo, ready to drag the sun along the celestial vault.
The fresco, “which presents the novelty of an almost completely landscaped apse decoration” (Maria Angela Novelli), was not liked at the time for the same reason why today it arouses a unique feeling: because the predominance of the landscape has the effect of make us, who observe it, feel like the pivot of that landscape. At the center of the church, therefore, there is strictly the man, in the size of the faithful who came yesterday, accompanied by the figures of the San Paolo district, dressed in ancient costume. “The church of the Conversion of Saint Paul today returns to its splendor – said the archbishop in his homily – and gives us a heritage of faith that illuminates our history. An artistic treasure particularly loved by the house of Este”.
