San Clemente is the parish church of Bellinzago and one of the Antonellian works in the Novara area. A church here dedicated to Saint Clement the pope is recorded as early as 1347; the building was rebuilt in the sixteenth century and consecrated on 20 September 1595 by bishop Carlo Bascapè. That church had a single nave, four small windows on the south side and only one on the north. The bell tower came in 1724 and was raised in 1827.
What to see
By the start of the nineteenth century the church was too small, and the parish priest don Serafino Bellini began pressing for a rebuild: his marble bust by Giuseppe Argenti is still inside, with its commemorative epigraph. The design was entrusted to Alessandro Antonelli and the first stone laid on 12 April 1837. During the works the project was scaled back as too expensive: the bell tower, the transept with its two side chapels and the external crowning porticoes were all dropped. Consecration came on 17 November 1844, but the church was never completed; after Antonelli's death his son Costanzo, an engineer, added the crypt chapel of the martyrs Pacifico and Cristina, off centre.
Visiting
The facade you see is not the one intended. The last project, of 1888, called for it to be demolished so the nave could be lengthened and a hexastyle Corinthian pronaos added; nothing came of it, and in the nineteen-thirties the architect Giovanni Lazanio reworked it in baroque style. Today it carries nine statues: Saints Cristina and Teresa, Saints Adolfo, Gratus of Aosta, Clement the pope, Francis of Assisi, John Bosco and Pacifico, and Mary Help of Christians.
Our editors' tip
Look up at the vault. It is a coffered barrel vault, decorated with floral motifs and with a cycle of Old and New Testament scenes painted by Rodolfo Gambini. Among the works, the side altar holds a Supper at Emmaus by Michele Cusa and a canvas of the Virgin with Saint Dominic by Angelo Capisani. And it helps to know in advance that what you see of Antonelli here is the plan, not the whole idea: the real project stayed on paper.