The Mother Church of Sant'Ignazio is a
Baroque
The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...
-style,
Roman Catholic
The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...
church in the town of
Scicli
Scicli is a town and municipality in the Province of Ragusa in the south east of Sicily, southern Italy. It is from Ragusa, and from Palermo, and has a population (2017) of 27,051. Alongside seven other cities in the Val di Noto, it has been l ...
, province of Ragusa,
Sicily
Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...
, Italy.
History
A church at the site was present here by the late 17th century, but destroyed by the
earthquake of 1693. The adjacent
Jesuit
The Society of Jesus (; abbreviation: S.J. or SJ), also known as the Jesuit Order or the Jesuits ( ; ), is a religious order (Catholic), religious order of clerics regular of pontifical right for men in the Catholic Church headquartered in Rom ...
college was also destroyed, and both were completely rebuilt by 1751.
The undulating façade has four statues in niches, and contains a town clock. Inside the church has a large central nave, and two aisles, with separating pilasters. It has three chapels, two dedicated to the town patrons, while the third honored the ''Madonna delle Milizie'', depicted in a canvas (1780) by
Francesco Pascucci
Francesco Pascucci (1748 - after 1804) was an Italian painter, active in a neoclassical style.
Biography
He was born in Rome. Few details are known of his life. He trained in Rome, and earned a living painting portraits for foreign visitors incl ...
as draped with a blue mantle, astride a bucking white horse, and holding a sword. The horse tramples and scatters two Saracens. The canvas is found between the second and third chapel, it originated from the ''Eremo delle Milizie''. The derivation of this militant Marian iconography is attributed to the 11th century, when the Normans battled the occupying Saracens.
Other canvases also derive from suppressed churches, including the ''Madonna del Carmine with Carmelite Saints'' (1731) by
Pietro Azzarelli
Pietro is an Italian masculine given name. Notable people with the name include:
People
* Pietro I Candiano (c. 842–887), briefly the 16th Doge of Venice
* Pietro Tribuno (died 912), 17th Doge of Venice, from 887 to his death
* Pietro II C ...
and a canvas depicting a Conversation of Saints. The third chapel, dedicated to San Guglielmo: has a reliquary ark from the 17th-18th century with a bust of St William. A panel on the urn depicts Scicli in those centuries. A tomb marker (1565) derives from the church of San Matteo. On the left of the nave is the Chapel of the Holiest Sacrament. In the right nave is canvas depicting ''St William before Scicli'' (1721) by
Antonio Manoli
Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language–speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular m ...
.
This church became the main church of the town in 1874 with the closure of San Matteo, in 1986, it was rededicated to ''San Guglielmo Eremita''. The adjacent Jesuit monastery was razed in 1961 to build a new school.
Comune of Scicli
entry on church.
References
18th-century Roman Catholic church buildings in Italy
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