Santo Spirito Church of Agrigento
The Church of Santo Spirito di Agrigento is located on the left side of the homonymous Monastery, founded by the Chiaramonte family on 27 August 1299.
The church and the adjoining monastery they were built in the 13th century by the noble Chiaramonte family, with local materials, ie with limestone, sandstone and bastard mortar. Inside the monumental complex, there are two coats of arms of the Chiaramonte family, one painted in the chain of a truss of the church and a relief of the same coat of arms is found in the keystone of an arch of the monastery dormitory.
The church it has a rectangular plan and the current façade still retains two original elements: the rose window and the medieval portal. The portal has strong protruding shapes, supported by slender columns located in the splay, which produce an admirable play of light and shadow. The upper floor, which forms the complex of bell towers, dates back to the late seventeenth century. The bell tower of the Church stands majestically in the historic center of old Agrigento.
The single nave interior maintains the medieval architectural structure, with a coffered ceiling. On the left wall there is a marble statue of the Madonna and Child by the Gagini school. At the base there is a bas-relief depicting the Annunciation and the Nativity.
Inside the church there are the stuccos of Giacomo Serpotta, executed between 1704 and 1708, a masterpiece unique of its kind for the majesty and grandeur of the stuccoes, for the beauty of the faces, and the mystical charm of the representations. Within four high-relief broad bricks are represented scenes from the childhood of Christ such as: the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation in the Temple and the Flight into Egypt. An admirable work is the cherubs of Serpotta: all different from each other, they have their own vitality and seem alive and throbbing. Equally interesting are also the capitals, an evocative work in their decorative magnificence. In the Cappellone, then, the so-called Gloria is represented where the Eternal Father and the Holy Spirit dominate, above St. Bernard and St. Benedict, below, all surrounded by an admirable halo of lights and angels.
