Oratorio dei SS Andrea e Bernardino (1537)  


The oratory is reached by the doors in the wall behind the altar of the Oratorio di San Bernardino.  It was built on the site of the old Novitiate of San Francesco al Prato as the headquarters of two lay confraternities that merged in 1537.  

  • The older of the two confraternities was the Confraternita di Sant' Andrea della Giustizia, which had been formed in 1374 to give spiritual support to condemned criminals.  Their oratory was located from 1436 in the small church of Santa Mustiola near the Porta Santa Susanna.  

  • The second was the Confraternita di San Bernardino, which had been formed in 1456 and had on oratory near Porta Eburnea.  

The box-vaulted ceiling was carved and gilded in 1588, but most of the paintings that remain in the oratory are from the 18th century.

Works Removed from the Oratory

Triptych of Justice (1475-6)

A document that was discovered relatively recently in the archives of the Confraternita di Sant' Andrea della Giustizia records that the confraternity commissioned this altarpiece from Bartolomeo Caporali and Sante di Apollonio.  (It had previously been attributed to Fiorenzo di Lorenzo.)  The altarpiece was originally on the confraternity's Altare di Sant’ Andrea in the church of Santa Mustiola, and it moved with the brothers in 1537 to the present oratory.  It was given to the Commune before 1872 and entered the Galleria Nazionale (Room 15/16) in 1895.

Gonfalon of the Madonna della Giustizia (1496)

Recently discovered documentation records that the Confraternita di San Bernardino made a payment to Perugino in 1496 for the painting of a processional banner, for which the confraternity received a donation from the Commune.  This banner would have been kept in the Oratorio della Confraternita di San Bernardino near Porta Eburnea until 1537, when the confraternity merged with the Confraternita di Sant’ Andrea and moved here.   The banner was moved to the  Galleria Nazionale (Room 22) in 1879.

The usual name given to the work derives from the fact that it was, for a period, confused with a second banner (now lost) that the Confraternita di Sant’ Andrea (which was also known as the Confraternita della Giustizia) commissioned in 1501.  


Return to Walk III.