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Father
LEANDRO MONTINI
monk and artist
The monastic Community and the population of Finalpia has a big debt of gratitude toward Fr. Leandro Montini (1885-
Native of Osimo (An), Father Leandro becomes monk of the abbey of Finalpia in 1907, two years after the reopening of the Benedictine community, that ended the long period of absence of the monks due to the expropriations of the nineteenth century. Father Leandro can be considered therefore to belong to the small but generous team of monks that at the start of the twentieth century, between thousand uncertainties and difficulties, they did reestablish Finalpia’s monastery. And Fr. Leandro was founder in the fuller sense of the term, he did everything possible, counting on his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, to complete the construction of the monastery, interrupted by unfavorable circumstances, at the end of the sixteenth century. Of the two cloisters programmed at the beginning, in fact, only three sides (two for the first and one for the second one) had been built until then.
Since the first postwar period Fr. Leandro started the job, and finished after the Second World War, he was able to overcome every obstacle of technical nature harmonizing wisely the new parts with those already existing. The visitor can therefore admire the nice and airy arcades of the cloisters that contribute to give to the monastery his unmistakable features. During the second World War Fr. Leandro painted the inner chapel of the monastery that contains an original and suggestive representation of the liturgical year in his principal components from Advent to Pentecost, and the cycle of saints, with the representation of some saints, especially those ones whose names the monks had at that time.
Here, however, we want to pause particularly on one of his artistic genre, between many practiced by Fr. Leandro (painting, sculpture, miniature, incision) and that is the "inlay" also because his work has been kept aside for long time and only recently has been displayed in a dedicated room. The recent upgrade of the chapter house give occasion to show twenty-
During the last four centuries this choir, made by sturdy stalls in walnut-
The twenty-
Probably in these work of inlay, to which we should add, the lectern and the inner chapel’s door, Fr. Leandro has given the best of himself in the artistic field and has revive with honour the commitment, that in that genre, four centuries ago, the monks had displayed in Finalpia, in first place the work of Brother Anthony from Venice, some of his works are still kept in Finalpia Abbey in spite of past difficult circumstances. New and old things, as admonishes the Gospel and as well the Rule of S. Benedict repeats, they are placed side by side and together contribute to the elevation of the soul in his incessant search for God.
Freely translated from an article of Dom Gregorio Penco