Church of San Filippo Neri or il Suffragio

A very central baroque church

Explaination: This is an extraordinary Baroque church built between 1647 and 1667 by the Carmelite Order, on a design by Fra Pellegrino Donato on the site of the pre-existing San Tomaso church. Only seven years after its inauguration, the Carmelites moved to the Carmine church in Via Bodiolo and their church was purchased by the Ferniani counts who dedicated it to S.Filippo Neri. When the relative order was suppressed in 1777, the building was given to the Congregation of the Purgatory Souls, or the Suffrages.The present façade has a rich but very well balanced surface roughened by empty and full spaces: the niches alternate with the cornices, with the moulding, the pilaster strips creating a chiaroscuro effect with very few similarities in Faenza. Just as pleasant isthe co-existence of bricks and stone: bricks are prevailing, although they take nothing away from the beauty of the base in local calcareous sandstone (spungone), or the side volutes of the high part of the façade (of the same material) and the columns that close in the top two mullioned window in sandstone.It is well-known that for the base the Carmelite Fathers obtained permission to use blocks of the Roman bridge of the Quadrone (over the Lamone, more or less near the current Via Santa Croce), for centuries ruined and impracticable. Notice also the oak door with engraving and sculptured applications in the shape of skulls and other mortuary symbols.The interior encloses several important works of art, starting from the 1500’s table with the Disbelief of San Tomaso, originating from the old church and today uncertainly attributed to Sigismondo Foschi, a rare Faentine painter educated in Florence by Fra Bartolomeo and Andrea del Sarto. Do not miss the canvas with “S.Antonio che rimproveva Ezzelino da Romano” (S. Antonio reprimanding Ezzelino da Romano – on the first altar on the right), dating back to 1770 and signed by the Faentine Giovanni Gottardi, even though several critics deny his paternity of the work, attributing it to Cristoforo Unterberger of the Adige valley, who actually collaborated with Gottardi in Rome. A series of doubts and controversies originated and only recently have been clarified by Anna Tambini in her re-evaluation of Gottardi.