The church of San Giovanni Battista (Saint John the Baptist) is one of the greatest masterpieces of the eighteenth century neo-Baroque in Viterbo for the pictorial cycle of the frescoes.
It is called ‘Gonfalone’ (Banner) from the name of the confraternity that keeps it and that welcomes visitors to discover the artworks and their history.
The brotherhood was born to free the Christian prisoners captured by the Turks and to guard the Gonfalone of the city.
In 1675 the Confraternity began the construction of this church to move its headquarters to a more prestigious place and made the exterior and the sinuous baroque facade of concave shape and characterized by an interesting play of colours between plaster and dark peperino stone.
Then the work stopped due to lack of funds.
Between the highs and the lows, in 1746 the architect Nicola Salvi intervened. He had already designed the Trevi Fountain in Rome.
A single internal space was thus created with four side altars and divided into an initial area and an oratory separated by a central altar.
The two spaces have been decorated and frescoed with different styles at different times.
The oratory was entrusted to two artists, Pietro Piazza of Parma origin and the emerging talented Giuseppe Rosi of Roman origin and the task was formalized in 1747. Pietro Piazza had worked on the Duomo of Perugia and on the Palazzo Reale in Turin and was the scenographer of the Tor di Nona Theatre in Rome.
For this reason, he was entrusted with the division of the spaces with the ceiling painting, the ornamentation and the geometric perspective while Giuseppe Rosi was entrusted with the figurative phase.
The Roman artist represented a valuable fresco of the birth of John the Baptist and his sermon. His last works were the monochromatic representations of the life of the saint.
In 1755 a competition was announced for the frescoes in the area of the church and three painters from Viterbo were chosen: Anton Angelo Falaschi, Vincenzo Stringelli and Domenico Corvi.The part relating to the construction of the frames and the geometric subdivision with ornaments was entrusted to Giuseppe Merzetti.
Vincenzo Stringelli was commissioned to supervise the works but something went wrong: in fact Marzetti was not sticking to the sketches and was creating on his own initiative. The dispute was resolved in favour of Stringelli but the painter did not seem to be a simple person and there was a new dispute.
The question this time directly concerned the Brotherhood, which challenged him that he had created fewer figures than the initial sketch (the painters were paid by the number of figures) and it was settled in favour of the artist and with an expenditure of 26 scudi and 95 bajocchi considered by the Brotherhood in its budgets as "completely capricious and superfluous expenses".
In any case, the final effect is that of a masterpiece and Mazzetti's perspectives and the figures of Stringelli, Falaschi and Corvi create an optical and artistic illusion that one never tires of observing.
In the church you can also admire the banner by Giovan Francesco Romanelli and painted on both sides. In fact, on the front is the baptism of Christ while on the back we can admire Mary Most Holy of redemption (called Madonna del Gonfalone) with Saint Bonaventura.
The banner is placed so that in the foreground we can admire the Baptism of Jesus from November 1 (all the Saints) until August 14, while the remaining days the Madonna appears as the main image.
Given the delicacy of the work, the Brotherhood then commissioned a copy of this work to carry in the procession.
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