High above the interior of the Church of San Francesco in Cortona, a tiny face carved into a capital seems to have gone unnoticed for centuries.

Its position, however, may be far from accidental. The face looks directly towards a door behind which the friars once kept some of the church’s most precious relics.

Could it represent Brother Elias of Cortona, one of St Francis’s earliest companions?

Loved and blessed by Francis but strongly opposed by the Pope, Brother Elias was one of the most controversial figures in the early Franciscan movement. He was also a visionary architect. After designing and initiating the construction of the Basilica of St Francis in Assisi, he wanted to build a church dedicated to the saint in his own city.

Construction began in 1245. Cortona’s church was the second after Assisi to be dedicated to St Francis and later became a model for other Franciscan churches.

In this episode of Cortona: City of Hidden Treasures, Silvia Vecchini meets art and architecture scholar Rita Adreani to uncover the story of Brother Elias, the relics preserved inside the church and the mysterious face that may have watched over them for almost eight centuries.