In 1906 Galileo Chini, who just that year had founded the Furnaces, together with his cousin Chino, after leaving “the art of ceramics of Fontebuoni” , participated in an important restoration campaign inside the millennial Romanesque Parish Church of St. Lawrence.
Of his works the most compelling one remains, today, the great painting of the apsidal basin, portraying the Redeemer on the throne between the saints Lawrence and Martin, the ancient patron saints of the Municipality of Borgo San Lorenzo.
Probably one of the first artistic evidence of Galileo in Mugello (at least after the foundation of the Furnaces), but as an evident symbol of the fame which preceded it in the land of origin of his family, the painting highlights some important features of his art.
Having momentarily abandoned the evidently liberty stylistic methods, in this work the painter accomplishes a remarkable adaptation of his production to the sacred, austere character of the building intended to house it permanently. Therefore he carries out a composition in a clearly medieval tone (also in harmony with the taste of the period), in which the numerous cultural experiences of the painter, who, (one must not forget), had also carried out an intense activity as the restorer of ancient pictures in Florence in the churches of Santa Maria Maggiore, Santa Trinità and Santa Croce, converge in a well-balanced synthesis.
The solemn, hieratic solidity of the figures, in an almost Romanesque tone, happily matches the remarkable, perfectly modernist, decorative refinements, which contribute in making this work of Galileo much more than a simple, neo-medieval painting.
One must appreciate the remarkable quality of the incisive deign, which perhaps reaches its culmination in the splendid lower decorative fascia of the basin, in which graphic and chromatic preciousness unite with exquisitely modern stylishness and recollections of the liberty formation of their author.
Other realizations of the Furnaces and Galileo Chini enriched the Parish Church of San Lorenzo in the past, but have disappeared in the course of the decades.
In particular, in 1907 the greater chapel had been fitted with two railings in wrought iron carried out by the craftsman Carlo Torelli from the drawing of Galileo, and Niccolai (1914) mentions the decoration of the chapel of the font, while in 1919 Galileo and Chino had realized a votive altar dedicated to the Madonna of purity.
Itinerario Liberty - Planning and Realization - Stefano Pelosi - www.stefanopelosi.it
