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The Church of San Francesco

Skirt around the Cathedral to the left on the side of Piazza Calandrini, follow Via Castruccio Castracani passing the old San Bartolomeo Hospital until you reach the church coartyard of the Church of San Francesco (Saint Francis of Assisi)

On the wall of the left side wing there is the sumptuous sepulchral monument of Guarnerio degli Antelminelli, a work by the Pisan artist Giovanni di Balduccio from 1328, of whom we present an image preceding the theft of the Madonna with Child above it and a detail for you to appreciate the sweetness of the Angels watching over the child. In this way the captain of Lucca, Castruccio Castracani, lord of Lunigiana in the first half of the 1300's honoured the memory of his small son who died at a tender age.

In front of the monument of the small Guarnerio you can find the tomb of Bishop Bernabò Malaspina (1338 ). In the period when this tomb was made Castracani had been dead for 10 years; but his spirit must have cried for vengeance for the choice of the eternal enemy, Marquis Spinetta Malaspina (suceeding that lord of Lunigiana), to place a member of the family there. It was this same Bernabò, who had aided Spinetta to take the position that Castruccio could only yearn for from high up in his fortress: Sarzana!

Seeing as how they had already dared a lot, the Malaspinas overdid things by commissioning a somewhat garish monument in its decoration; diverse were the hands, all anonymous, which contributed to the execution of the work: the modest ones of the assistants which carved the symbols of the evangelists, the more capable ones of the master mason who, with abundant use of the drill, worked the figure of the bishop, and the estimable hands of the artist, probably French, who completed the sides of the sarcophagus.

To the side of the child's monument there is a lunette fresco attributed to Priamo della Quercia, the brother of the better known Jacopo: it is the Vir Dolurum between Saint Claire and Saint Francis, dating back to the early years of the 1400's and therefore the oldest still-surviving fresco in Sarzana. In the church there is also a "Caravaggio-style" Fiasella dating from the 1620's, the "Adoration of the shepherds", probably presented by the artist to his city during his stay in Rome.

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