The house on the corner of Via Pecori Giraldi is a building in bricks and presents a series of pictorial decorations which simulate ceramic panels, due to the paintbrush of Dino Chini, Galileo’s cousin, who was submerged among so many decorators in the family. On the ground floor the signs of a Dairy and a Shoe shop are still legible, written in characters of Art Déco taste on a background with geometric motifs, whilst in the centre, between the two shops, the frame of an entrance to a private home is adorned with vegetable motifs and ears of grain, according to the more floral taste of the author himself, and bears the date 1923.
At the top the building is crowned by a continuous pictorial frieze with stylized floral and geometrical motifs, very probably realized from drawings of Galileo Chini, who first showed his predilection for the derivations of Klimt, in bright colours which go from yellow to green, to red, to the oranges and to electric blue. Unfortunately, the precarious state of conservation today does not allow us to fully appreciate the freshness of this paintings, which will soon be the object of restoration on the part of Augusto Romagnoli, already collaborator of Dino and Tito Chini. He, too, intervened in the nearby Mazzocchi home, bringing to light a “scratched” decoration of antiqued taste, also originally due to Dino Chini.
On another façade of the same Largo Lino Chini one may admire a small balcony in wrought iron in Liberty style, which completes the retro effect of this corner of the village. Not far away, in Via Giovanni della Casa, there is another beautiful example of the facade of a private home decorated with polychromatic diamond-shaped tiles, gilded ceramic plaits, and more minute ceramic inserts around the windows, in yellow and black, which stand out against the background of bricks and stone. The construction and decoration are chronologically placeable in the 1920’s, also for the comparison with Villino Chini, fitted out with the same materials and dating back to 1923, situated not far away. Here, though, the choice of decorative particulars exclusively geometrical in few pure colours, confer a strong linear emphasis to the facade which is a sign of the Art Déco style.
Itinerario Liberty - Planning and Realization - Stefano Pelosi - www.stefanopelosi.it
