Monastero degli Olivetani

di Montemorcino Nuovo (1740)

Cardinal Nicolò Capocci established a community of Olivetan monks at Montemorcino (to the west of the city) in 1366.  They moved here, together with another Olivetan community from Sant' Antonio Abate, in 1740, and built a church (to a design by Carlo Murena) and a huge new monastery.  The neo-Classical façade of this church dominates what is now Piazza dell’ Università.  The community was suppressed in 1809.

The complex was transferred to the University of Perugia in 1811, because the Palazzo dell’ Università Vecchia had become too small.  Giuseppe Ermini, the rector of the University, commissioned the restoration of the main building and re-opened the church (which is dedicated to Santa Maria Annunziata) as the university church.

Works Removed from the Church

Panels by Pierre Subleyras (ca. 1745)

Two preparatory designs for altarpieces commissioned from Pierre Subleyras are exhibited in the Galleria Nazionale (Room 40):

• St Benedict (dressed in the Olivetan habit) revives a dead child; and

• St Ambrose absolves the excommunicated Emperor Theodosius after the massacre of the citizens of Thessalonica.

Both altarpieces were executed in ca. 1745.  When Monte Morcino Nuovo passed to the University in 1822:

• the altarpiece of St Benedict reviving a dead child was sent to tthe altarpiece was sent to the Olivetans’ mother house, Santa Francesca Romana, Rome; and

• the altarpiece of St Ambrose absolving the Emperor Thoedosius and the two prearatoy designs were transferred  to the gallery. 

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