Former Hospital and Michelacci Gallery

Former Hospital and Church – Luigi Michelacci Gallery

The building was designed in 1604 by Giambattista Aleotti known as l’Argenta, commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini. The construction incorporated a pre-existing hospital structure of medieval origin and the annexed chapel (Cappella del Santissimo Crocifisso), popularly known as the Chiesina dell’Ospedale.

Inside the chapel, a valuable cycle of frescoes by anonymous painters from Romagna, datable between the end of the 15th century and 1508, can be seen in the presbytery.

The cycle is as follows: Volta – Evangelists and Fathers of the Latin Church (c. 1495/1500). Back wall – Crucifixion (c. 1500/1505). Left wall – Oration in the Garden (lunette); Flagellation and Judgement of Anne (c. 1500/1505); attr. to Pier Paolo Menzocchi, Crowning with Thorns. Right wall – Communion of the Apostles (lunette); Ascent of Calvary (1508).

From the fragmentary inscriptions on the two side walls, it can be deduced that the pictorial cycle was allocated by the Società dei Battuti Neri or Confraternita del Santissimo Crocefisso, which had its headquarters in this church and also ran the adjoining hospital.

The building site of the Chiesina dell’Ospedale (small church of the hospital) took on a role of considerable importance among the generations of painters working in Meldola, before Pandolfo Malatesta placed the feud under the protectorate of Venice (1493), during the brief interlude of the Borgia family, and the subsequent Venetian rule (1503-1509). The heavy economic situation and the difficulties in adapting to these unfortunate events caused, perhaps, a brief pause in the building site, which would explain why the five scenes of the Passion of Christ, although responding to a precise iconographic programme, were executed by different masters who alternated in the execution of the cycle.

Inside the church, it is also possible to admire two valuable 18th-century papier-mâché statues depicting St. Sebastian and St. Rocco, some paintings and a terracotta that are part of the Meldola collection of the “Museo diffuso dell’Ausl della Romagna” at the link