Mirandola - San Francesco Church
The earthquakes in Emilia on the 20th and 29th of May have displaced more than residents and industries--entire cathedrals throughout the area have been reduced to rubble.
Mirandola, the hometown of Pico della Mirandola, an Italian philosopher known for penning the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", has sustained some of the most striking concentrated damage, losing its cathedral and the della Mirandola family church, San Francesco.
The 15th-century cathedral, which survived the four-year span of major earthquakes that hit in the area in 1570, made it through the earthquake on the 20th of May intact, but the subsequent tremor caused the cathedral's roof to collapse completely. The top of the façade all the way to the the cathedral's rose window also collapsed inward.
In Finale Emilia, the town closest to the epicentre of the earthquake of the 20th of May, the clocktower split in half before collapsing completely, and the town lost the towers on its 15th-century castle and a section of the San Carlo church that housed a painting by Il Guercino. In San Felice sul Panaro, the three principal churches and a 12-century castle all lie in ruins.
Carla Di Francesco, the supervisor for cultural heritage in this part of northern Italy, told the New York Times that “it’s like receiving a daily list of war casualties”, especially after the second quake.
Teams of firefighters, restoration experts, and historians have been cataloguing the damage and pulling off daring art rescue missions, saving the Guercino painting in Finale Emilia and four 300-kilogram Murano glass chandeliers in Sant'Agostino. Recovered works of art are being temporarily kept in the Ducal Palace in Sassuolo.
With the Italian Government, particularly the Ministry of Culture, strapped for funds due to the financial crisis, restoration work will be slow and most likely funded by private sources, either local companies or donations from residents and concerned citizens around Italy and the world.
