The recent architectural intervention carried out in the area of the former Policlinico of Monteluce saw the construction of the new complex into which the historic Porta Sole nursing home has moved, a home originally located on the Monte di Porta Sole, the highest point of the city of Perugia. Founded in 1938 as a private facility specialising in ophthalmology and otorhinolaryngology by Prof. Alberto Cucchia, an ophthalmologist, and Prof. Angelo Barola, an otorhinolaryngologist, it had moved to premises in Piazza Biordo Michelotti in the post-war years.
The new Monteluce site is part of the general programme of architectural regeneration, but what stands out as significant is the restoration and incorporation of the historic Cappella Salus Infirmorum, a delicate building on a central plan, raised during the difficult years of the war and housing within it a most important mural cycle by the Futurist Gerardo Dottori. The date of completion is still recorded today on the lintel of the entrance door: 15 May 1942.
It was to Maria José, Princess of Piedmont, the future “May Queen,” that the completion of the works of what was in fact to be the Chapel of the Policlinico was owed. The consort of the heir to the throne, a native of the royal house of Belgium, arrived in Perugia in January 1942 to inaugurate the new “Obstetric-Gynaecological Clinic” of the Policlinico of Monteluce, an official visit prompted by her role as Inspector of the Corps of Voluntary Nurses of the Red Cross. The site lay right in the vicinity of the aforementioned chapel, under construction for years but still unfinished for want of funds.

The occasion was therefore ideal for the bishop, Monsignor Giovanni Battista Rosa, in the course of the inauguration of the Great Hall of the obstetric clinic, to lay before Maria José the difficulties standing in the way of completing the little church that would bring such comfort to the sick. “The August Lady” took His Excellency’s petition to heart, and indeed had the graciousness to send him, within a short time, the following communication through the gentleman of the Court on duty: “Her Royal Highness the Princess of Piedmont has been pleased to give particular consideration to what you set out to Her in your letter of 15 January concerning the need to bring to completion the construction of the new chapel annexed to the Civic Hospital of Perugia. I am glad to add that, in accordance with the August orders, I have on this same date referred the matter to the competent authorities so that it may, if possible, be resolved in the shortest time.”
The Prefectural Commissioner of the Consortium for the construction of the new Policlinico, Mario Biavati, in the Great Hall of the clinic then being inaugurated, had thanked Maria José (who, given the circumstance, appeared in the uniform of a Red Cross nurse) for the help already received towards completing the ward, without making mention of anything else. But already on 13 February 1942 the Royal Prefecture conveyed to His Most Excellent Monsignor Rosa the news that his wish had been granted, Mussolini himself having ordered the allocation of 300,000 lire for the completion of the new chapel. A matter settled in less than a month and without the intervention of the Fascist party or the civil authorities, but thanks to direct contact between the religious power and the Royal House.
An extraordinary contribution thanks to which the Chapel could be completed with the “spiritual benefits” foretold by Bishop Rosa. The works for the construction of the building and those for its completion suffered various interruptions and, being carried out in wartime, were certainly not executed to the highest standard. As for the dome, not least because of the fine lantern at its summit, it was of bold and difficult construction, so much so that over time water infiltrations have occurred, causing repeated damage to the mural paintings.
The sum, a particularly significant one (more than 330 million of the old lire when converted to the recent value of the lira), went towards the joinery, the marble flooring, the electrical and heating systems, and the decorations, entrusted to Gerardo Dottori by resolution of 21 June. It took the artist more than six months to complete the decorations of the Chapel of the Policlinico of Perugia, from July 1942 to January 1943. Between the great figure of the Madonna on the end wall, above the altar, and the entire cap of the dome, some three hundred square metres are covered by the paintings, most of them executed in a decidedly uncomfortable position, and Dottori was nearly sixty years old. Even so, he would go on working as a muralist for at least another decade. In these demanding undertakings the Perugian Futurist was helped by Adelmo Maribelli, his assistant at the Academy of Fine Arts, and by his brother Umberto, a house-painter by trade. It was wartime, yet the artistic activity of the Futurists carried on in full: in 1942 the XXIII Biennale di Venezia was held, in which Dottori took part as he had in every previous edition since 1924. Above all, that year the Perugian artist published his declaration of poetics, La mia pittura futurista umbra, better known as the “Umbrian Manifesto of Aeropainting”, in his first monograph, prefaced by Marinetti.

Remaining on the theme of religious painting, in that same year, 1942, he also published a text on Futurist art in churches. Dottori’s activity as a muralist is highly significant within his output, so much so that he ironically declared more than once: “To make a living I work as a painter; when I have the time, I am an artist as well.” His work as a painter was what he had learned at the much-opposed Academy of Fine Arts. As for the languages used in his mural work, the figurative prevails in the churches, obviously so as to accommodate the ecclesiastical patrons, who would ill have accepted Futurism; yet there is no lack of decorative work in avant-garde idioms, as in the case of the interior of the Altro Mondo restaurant in Perugia of 1923 or, after the aeropainting developments of Futurism in the mid-1920s, the decorations of the Idroscalo, the seaplane base at Ostia.
An aeropainterly language that he in fact used widely in his decorations for churches as well, albeit always combined with figuration of a traditional stamp, as in the case of the Chapel of the Policlinico, where we find fish-eye renderings in the dilated visions of the landscapes, against which the figures of the saints stand out. More generally, Dottori, the first among the Futurists, applied Futurism to Sacred Art as well from the early 1920s. The anticlerical Marinetti took many years to digest Futurist painting of the sacred genre, until in 1932, together with Fillia, he signed the Manifesto dell’Arte Sacra Futurista, praising works by Dottori such as the revolutionary Crocifissione of 1927, which was followed by numerous exhibitions specifically devoted to this Futurist declension.
In the Cappella Salus Infirmorum, Gerardo Dottori painted a pictorial cycle in a traditional language, as befitted a place of prayer in suffering, yet combined with decidedly bold aeropainting visions. Specifically, he followed the particular vocation of the place with the iconographic strand of the saints who console the sick and the poor, setting the figures within lyrical and mystical scenes, with views from above, distorted and dilated, of the Umbrian landscape.
On the end wall, above the altar, there is a great image of the Madonna holding the Child in her arms, at whose feet two large angels support a little church, into which Friars Minor enter, accompanying the sick.
The figures are immersed in the landscape, that Dottorian Umbrian landscape of hills with soft contours, of rosy and luxuriant fruit trees, while the lakeside scene is in fish-eye, with a dynamic conformation of the waves. The sky is woven with Divisionist technique. The result is an image of complete serenity. On the inner surface of the dome Dottori has painted four figures of saints famous for their heroism towards the poor: Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Anthony of Padua, and Saint Anne with the Virgin as a child. The background of the four narratives is a bare and desolate landscape, lit only by the rays of light that in beams illuminate the figures, punctuated by equally large crosses built of glass tesserae that light up the interior. Francis was the saint most beloved of the artist, the very one he reproduced or drew a thousand times, including on the façade of his little house in Via Pellini. The saint of Assisi is portrayed with the tamed wolf in the act of welcoming a sick man: his expression is gentle and brotherly. Saint Vincent de Paul holds a child in his arms, and at his feet the poor and the needy come to rest. His figure is intense and reassuring. Saint Anthony of Padua holds in one hand a lily, symbol of purity and of the struggle against evil, while in the other he holds a book, symbol of wisdom and doctrine. Finally, Saint Anne, with the Virgin as a child beside her, whose hand she holds in a most tender attitude, with trees in the background.

For these large mural paintings Dottori made use of sketches and of full-scale cartoons that he drew himself. He also produced a scale plaster model of the half-cap of the dome, in order to study the proportions of the figures in relation to the total surface.
Taken as a whole, then, this is a work of high value, one that today, in the regeneration of the New Monteluce, is being preserved and subjected to important restoration. And even more than in the past, this little casket of contemporary art, brought to completion thanks to the intervention of Maria José of Belgium, is now clearly visible, ideally enfolded within the ultra-modern building of the new Porta Sole clinic, as though embracing it. And thanks to the new restoration works it is about to become visible once again on the inside as well, and open to use, as the then bishop Rosa had wished, for the clinic’s patients and for the whole community.

Andrea Baffoni graduated in the Humanities, with a specialisation in art history, and obtained his research doctorate at the University of Perugia. A curator of exhibitions and a journalist, he has published numerous essays and articles on Futurism and on the avant-gardes of the later twentieth century.