Church of San Giuseppe
The Church of San Giuseppe
We are on Corso Umberto I, the main road of the town, at the corner with Via Orfanotrofio. Here, in 1661, the Confraternity of Carpenters built the Church of San Giuseppe, an example of "Sambucese Baroque". From this church, every year on March 19th, the procession for the Feast of San Giuseppe begins.
Sicilian gothic and neogothic of the exterior architecture
The seventeenth-century church is accessed via a staircase that connects the entrance portal to the lower level of the main street. Built with load-bearing masonry of mixed local sandstone, the church features a rectangular plan and is covered externally by a double-pitched roof clad in Sicilian tiles, which conceals the vaulted interior roof of the church's single nave. The façade, with its pointed ("a capanna") neo-Gothic style, dates back to the 1930s. Its pointed stucco lines harmonize with the pointed arch portal of Chiaramontano style, typical of 13th-century Sicily: this portal, originally from another church destroyed in the Sambuca countryside, has been reconfigured here. On the façade, a rose window separates the pointed arch niche—where the stone statue of the patron saint of the church is placed—from the sharp angle of the pediment.
The Church and the attached orphanage
Once, the church was connected to the Orphanage of Saint Joseph, initially located next to the Church of the Rosary, in the residence of Giovanni Battista Cacioppo and his wife Giovanna Pampilona. In 1655, they had bequeathed the house to 12 young orphaned girls, their relatives, through their will. Due to its location, which was considered "remote and unsafe outside the town," the orphanage was later moved to the residence of Priest Don Antonio Di Majo, which was suitably adapted for this purpose, on the main street, in this central area of the town, next to the Church of Saint Joseph.
Among wooden statues, stucco, marble, paintings and frescoes
The interior of the church, with its single nave, houses a wooden statue of Saint Joseph from 1812 (crafted by a Palermo artisan and a gift from the Marchese della Sambuca), extraordinary frescoes from the Palermo school, and notable delicate stuccos. These elements converge towards the remarkable fresco on the vaulted ceiling, framed with polylobate decoration: "The Marriage of the Virgin," a work by Fra' Felice, a highly regarded Sambucese painter from the 18th century who was active throughout Sicily and beyond. On the side altars, there are two paintings by the same artist: "The Death of Saint Joseph" on the right and "Saint Blaise" on the left. In the presbytery, separated from the nave by two stucco columns, the interesting scenic apparatus connects the baroque high altar (in polychrome marble with a double order of Corinthian columns) with the stucco sculpture of the Eternal Father on the apse wall. The stucco work is part of the exuberant multi-order scenic structure created in the mid-18th century—possibly in 1724, when the church was blessed after restoration work. This was carried out by the Messina brothers, Sambucese stucco craftsmen trained in the Serpotta school and active in western Sicily for three centuries. The entire space is characterized by stuccos and frames finished in gold. In 1990, a wooden altar with a decorated front and a metal ambo were added.
An artwork homage to the "nun of miracles"
The church houses a painting by Francesco Bondì dedicated to the Sambucese nun Vincenza Maria Amorelli, who lived from 1737 to 1824. Commissioned by a generous patron from Sambuca, the painting was inaugurated in 2014. In the iconographic project of the monument to the nun, known as "la collegina di Sambuca" and "the nun of miracles," the artist—also the creator of the impressive 40-square-meter altar piece in the Chiesa Madre of Menfi (2012)—sought to highlight Sister Vincenza's vision of three stars on her pillow at the time of her death (representing the three theological virtues). The architectural composition of the trompe-l'oeil painting evokes the architectural style of the Fercolo of Maria SS. dell'Udienza, to which Sister Vincenza was devoted. The analogy between the two architectures underscores the dynamism of the “Church in motion” invoked by Pope Francis: the Church that reaches out to its people in the Madonna dell'Udienza procession, and the Church that progresses through the centuries, represented by the monument to Sister Vincenza. The theatrical style of the 18th-century illusionistic painting follows the stylistic lines of the church's presbytery and provides a symbolic and architectural continuity for the entire liturgical space.
