The Chapel that originally housed Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes (which can now be visited in the new Be.Go. Museum) has recently been living a ‘second life’ as an artist thanks to the painter Josep Minguell.
The catalan artist, a specialist in frescoing large architectural spaces and capable of executing fantastic pictorial cycles in many parts of the world, has in fact created a new work inside the Chapel (located in the street that not by chance bears the name of the famous florentine painter), again based on the fresco technique, which will be open to the public in its entirety starting Wednesday 18 June, thanks to the availability of the ‘Sveliamo La Marca’ Association.
Josep Minguell’s artistic project, which also offered the public the opportunity to follow some of the stages of his work ‘live’, is part of an overall programme called “BeCOME – Affrescare il tabernacolo. Benozzo Gozzoli 1491 – Josep Minguell 2025” that also involved the Be.Go. Museum and was made possible thanks to a collaboration with the Fondazione Teatro del Popolo, which manages the Museum, and the Municipality of Castelfiorentino.
These are the opening dates of the Chapel (Wednesdays and Thursdays, 5-7 p.m., free admission): 18-19 June 25-26 June; 2-3 July, 9-10 July, 16-17 July, 23-24 July, 30-31 July. More openings are planned in September and October.
‘Be.Go. back,’ observes the Councillor for Culture, Franco Spina, “stems from the idea of a culture within reach, based on experientiality, discovery and encounter, a device capable of re-establishing ties with the territory, of regaining an identity space, of building collective meaning. It is re-territorialisation, to quote Deleuze, of a space that once again becomes an inhabited place thanks to the reconstruction of a bond with the community, the recipient and co-protagonist of this story.
A few weeks after the start of this journey, the Chapel of the Visitation has once again become a place lived in by us Castellans: faces, memories, new ideas, proposals, nostalgias that are composing, with Minguell, a larger fresco, also in the making. Thanks to the Fondazione Teatro del Popolo, which made this project possible, and to the “Sveliamo La Marca” Association, for its willingness to open the Chapel twice a week in June and July”.
As you may recall, Josep Minguell has painted frescoes in the United States, Japan, and Italy, while in Catalonia his works can be found in churches, universities and many palaces, but his most grandiose and valuable work was in the small town of Tàrrega, capital of the Urgell region and his birthplace, in the Church of Santa Maria dell’Alba.
