SAN GIOVANNI BATTISTA [SAINT JOHN THE BAPTIST]

The church, of Byzantine origin, overlooks the town’s main square. It houses two images of the patron saint: a marble statue of the Gagini school representing the adult Baptist, in a niche above the altar, the other of him as a child, which, on the 29th of August every year, is carried in procession through the streets of the town.

Saint John is venerated by all the Christian churches and is the gospels’ saint par excellence being the person who baptised Jesus in the River Jordan.

He is celebrated and venerated in Gallicianò annually on the 29th of August.

Principal works of art

The church has a single nave and what strikes the visitor immediately is the beauty of the apse behind the altar where, in a southern-Italian, Baroque-style wooden construction, placed inside a niche surmounted by an arch of triumph, stands a very valuable white marble statue of the patron saint.

This work goes back to the time when the bishop was Giovanni Camerota (1590-1620) as testified by his coat of arms on the sides of the base. The carvings on the sides depict two scenes from the life of the saint: the baptism of Christ and the saint’s decapitation. The author of the statue is unknown although the work suggests the Gagini school, due to its resemblance to a statue of the Baptist in Erice, in the province of Trapani, Sicily, sculpted by Antonello Gagini.

The baptismal font in the church of San Giovanni Battista, Gallicanò, is in marble and decorated with floral and leafy motifs from which a putto peeps out.

Frangipane holds that this font is the work of Rinaldo Bonanno’s workshop. However, its resemblance to that of the church of Madonna dei Poveri [Our Lady of the Poor] in Seminara suggests that this too is attributable to the sculptor Domenico Gagini.

Description of this work by Pasquale Faenza.