The church was part of a monastery going back to the XI century and was restored several times, in particular between 1897 and 1904, when Leto Chini collaborated with the works of the engineer Niccolò Niccolai, taking care of the pictorial restoration of the inside. He personally took part in the squaring off of the apsidal basin, which hosts a Redeemer between two Angels, painted though by professor Bastianini from Siena, and in the mural decorations of the chapel of the Rosary, to the left of the major one. Both the fascia with vegetable motifs of the ape and the starry sky of the web of the chapel, the polygons with children’s faces on the groins, the base of imitation marble and the mock white bracket which runs around it, are elements which contribute in creating that “Gothic” taste, chosen to be adapted to the style of the churches in which they participated, which were in reality prevalently of Romanesque origin.
Beside these, the neo-medieval style, already fruit of a commission of motifs derived from various periods of the Italian figurative tradition, also accepted very modern ideas, geometrized, strong and dark instead of the antique pastel shades. This composite style, recognizable in various other parish churches of the area, was also particularly fond of the use of heraldic citations which, besides giving an “antique” aspect, celebrated the families, not necessarily noble, but all worthy of note, of those among the parishioners who had contributed to the work of restoration and renovation. In the Chapel of the Rosary, for example, the Amerighi family, which held the patronage, is remembered, with a coat of arms applied on the key stone by don Gaetano Bettini, the parish priest who promoted the restoration, with a painting on the right wall and eventually on the left one, of Pope Pio X, under whose pontificate the church was restored.
The windows of the central nave are closed by stained-glass windows portraying other polychromatic aristocratic coats of arms, which also took their place in 1904. For this reason, too, it is possible that Leto Chini had supplied the drawings, while it is doubtful which manufacturing realized them, since the San Lorenzo Furnaces had been founded only in 1906, whilst the companies previously directed by the Chinis, seem not to have produced glass.
Itinerario Liberty - Planning and Realization - Stefano Pelosi - www.stefanopelosi.it
