Santa Giovanna Antida Thouret delle Suore della Carità is a 20th century convent church at Circonvallazione Clodia 3, in the Della Vittoria quarter north of Vatican City. Pictures of the church at Wikimedia Commons are here.
The dedication is to St Jeanne Antide Thouret.
History[]
The church was designed by Guglielmo Palombi, and was built in 1940. It serves the headquarters of the Italian province of the “Sisters of Charity of Jeanne Antide Thouret”. She was their foundress.
The headquarters of the entire congregation is at San Vincenzo de’ Paoli all'Aventino.
Exterior[]
Layout and fabric[]
The church is in a neo-Baroque style, in pink brick with architectural details in limestone. It has a single nave and a lower rectangular apse, with the nave being high in proportion to its width. There is a little campanile or bellcote perched over the far right hand corner of the nave, with three round-headed openings arranged in a triangle.
This is a large church for a mid-20th century convent.
Façade[]
There is a monumental façade in pink brick, with two pairs of gigantic Composite pilasters in stone. Each pair shares a high pedestal, and each capital has a winged putto's head. They support an entablature and triangular pediment, which are stepped forward slightly over the capitals.
There is a single molded Baroque doorway with a segmental pediment, which is accessed via a pair of balustraded longitudinal stairways. In the centre of the façade is an almost square window in a Baroque frame, over which is a heraldic shield in relief inserted into the two halves of a broken arc cornice.
Interior[]
Layout[]
The nave has four and a half bays, and then comes an apse. Off the third bay on the left hand side is a side chapel. The interior is richly decorated, and well worth seeing.
[]
The bays are separated by gigantic Composite pilasters done up to imitate yellow marble, and these support an entablature on which the flat wooden coffered ceiling rests. The latter is brightly painted.
Each bay has a lunette archivolt below a cornice, the latter running round the interior and behind the pilasters. The exception is the left hand wall of the third bay, which is a full archway leading into a chapel dedicated to Our Lady. The archivolt here is supported on oversized imposts supported by Ionic columns in red and white marble.
Over the cornice in each bay wall is another lunette archivolt enclosing a large window. (The first window on the left hand side is false).
Sanctuary[]
The far wall of the nave, over the triumphal arch, has two large frescoes depicting Christ the Good Shepherd on the left, and Christ with the Children on the right.
The apse is barrel-vaulted, and the far lunette contains a fresco of the Trinity. There is a painting of the foundress over the high altar, with the wall around it being treated to imitate alabaster revetting..