Diocesan Museum in Caltagirone
Basilica of San Giorgio in Caltagirone is located outside the town, it is the oldest in the city, after that of the former Matrice, and was born as a Fortress Church.
It was founded by the Genoese around the year one thousand who contributed to the liberation of Saracens and built a Ligurian colony in the city. It was severely damaged by the earthquake of 1542 that knocked down the bell tower, which was promptly rebuilt by the municipality, but which was then completely destroyed by the terrible earthquake of the Val di Noto in 1693.
Its reconstruction, started in 1699, was completed and finished with stuccoes and frescoes in 1762 on the vault depicting St. George, his martyrdom closely connected to the sacrifice of Christ updated by the Eucharist, the work of the Palermo painter Bernardino Bongiovanni.
In 1830 they began to reconstruct the façade of the Church designed by the brothers Vaccaro, but the sudden death of the parish priest Domenico Mingrino meant that the work remained unfinished.
The Church preserves a real pictorial treasure, "The Throne of Grace
", a Flemish school panel attributed to Roger Van Der Weyden (1400-1464) depicting the mystery of the redemption, donated in 1783 to the church of San Giorgio by the baroness of Favarotta Donna Agata Interlandi and today exhibited in the chapel she to the left of the altar in a marble shrine built in 1907. The panel takes up a typology widespread in the Flemish context from the fifteenth century: the Father supports the lifeless body of his son, according to an iconographic scheme that refers to that of the Pietà. In fact, in the painting the Father seated on a canopied throne and with his feet resting on the globe, supports the body of the dead Son while the dove of the Holy Spirit hovers between the two extremely serene faces, representing the Love that unites them. At the feet of Christ is the Virgin Mary, supported by the disciple John, and next to Mary Magdalene.
