Every morning, at dawn, Sidival Fila makes his way down the perilously steep ladder that links his secluded sleeping quarters to the monastery’s main staircase. From there he joins other members of this Franciscan community for the morning lauds, followed by mass. After this they’ll gather at various times throughout the day, for meetings, meals and more prayers, culminating with vespers and mass again in the evening. Within the pleats of time between those daily rituals, Frà Sidival, as he is affectionately known, has been quietly weaving another identity for himself, one that has added a new dimension to his role as a Franciscan friar: that of a textile artist whose reputation emanates far beyond the hushed confines of this convent.
Perched on the highest spot of the Palatine Hill, a stone’s throw from the Colosseum, this tranquil oasis – built on the remains of an ancient Roman cistern and surrounded by lush gardens – has barely changed since its foundation in 1675. Sidival greets us at the entrance, wearing jeans and a grey-blue sweater over a chequered shirt; the only concession to traditional Franciscan attire is his double-strap sandals. After showing us the garden, which he tends himself, the friar leads the way to the top of the convent’s main building. ‘This studio, and everything it looks onto, are my inspiration,’ he says, gesturing to the panoramic view of the vestiges of imperial Rome. Hanging on the walls are dozens of artworks. The starting point for each is a piece of worn-out cloth or antique embroidery, which Sidival transforms into his minimalistic creations. He describes them as ‘ontological’ – more like poems, or meditations on time and redemption.
Sidival has just returned from his native Brazil, where he mounted a solo show at São Paulo’s Luisa Strina gallery. While in the city, he was given access to a studio, but the experience of making art there, he confesses, felt soulless: ‘Rome’s beauty, its history, fill me with the emotions I need to create.’ The workspace he’s used to is a whitewashed room with soaring ceilings and a concrete floor. His tools are a chaotic array of scissors, thread, needles and pots of glue strewn across the table, rolls of hemp and linen lining the shelves below.
‘I don’t find these textiles, they find me!’ Sidival says, grateful for the gifts he receives. What sparks his creativity, aside from Rome itself, is fabric marked by the wear and tear of time. An example is the 19th-century cloak lining he is now working on, donated by another Franciscan monastery. Having stained it pink, he is now pasting the material on to cloth with a tool he devised himself: a piece of rounded agate attached to a stick. ‘This stone, traditionally used by shoemakers to smooth leather, flattens every inch of fabric, preventing bubbles,’ Sidival explains.
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He describes such linings, made threadbare by generations of ecclesiastics, as shrouds. They fill him with tenderness, he says. One wonders whether this desire to save and ennoble textiles that echo with untold stories is an extension of his work with people in prisons, hospitals and on the streets. Sidival was born 64 years ago in the state of Paranà. His father, a builder, and his mother, a seamstress, were both of Italian origin. An early passion for painting led him away from his hometown to São Paulo, and then on to Rome, where he landed in 1982 at 20. He worked as a bartender, spent his days exploring museums, had a girlfriend and was happy, until he was not: a sudden bout of depression caused him to leave it all behind, including art, to embark on his ascetic journey.
Sidival rekindled his creativity in the 2000s while teaching novice friars to restore old furniture. The transition from painting to textiles, which he transforms with an eye for colour and composition via tinting, cutting, folding and embroidery, felt natural. His practice has since given new life to some extraordinary fabrics – like the one that lined the largest surviving Renaissance drawing: Raphael’s cartoon for The School of Athens, housed in Milan’s Ambrosiana library. Applied when Napoleon took the piece to the Louvre, the lining bears the traces of its journey to Paris and, ultimately, back to Italy. Toiled over for months in Sidival’s studio, it too is now on display in Milan, facing Raphael’s original. Its title: Memoriae Cartoni Raphaelis.
All proceeds from Sidival Fila’s work go to his foundation supporting children around the world. Visit fondazionesidivalfila.org
A version of this article appears in the June 2026 issue of ‘The World of Interiors’. Learn about our subscription offers. Sign up for our bi-weekly newsletter, and be the first to receive exclusive stories like this one, direct to your inbox
