The small parish church of St. Mary in Pulicciano rises on the summit of a panoramic hill which also gave hospitality to a fortified castle of the Municipality of Florence. The present building goes back to the end of the XIX century, and in 1908 it had been re-opened to worship, after it had been decorated on the inside by the Chini brothers. On the 24th. July 1927, the lunette of the facade, realized by the San Lorenzo Furnaces from drawings by Galilleo Chini, was solemnly inaugurated.
The lunette, in polychromatic majolica, portrays our Lady of Assumption, whilst in the background, in a spacious, luminous panorama, one can see the representations of the antique castle of Pulicciano and of the one of that period. Besides this, two coats of arms in relief are held by the same number of lion-like busts, again in relief. This relief represents one of the best products of the Furnaces for public and religious purposes, both from a stylistic, and a technical point of view, considering the good state of preservation of the artefact, which has passed numerous years in the open, in a climate with generally quite severe winters. The lunette, a real painting on majolica, reveals itself participant of the Liberty refinement and elegance, very well combined with the customary citations of the Italian artistic culture of the past.
The extraordinary pictorial and graphic qualities of the work, which inevitably take us back to Galileo’s hand, probably in one of his last collaborations with the artefact, and the remarkable technical level reached through the great experience and genius of Chini, assisted by the activities of all the employees, make this lunette one of the most valuable testimonies of the refined and eclectic art of the Chinis in the municipal territory of Borgo San Lorenzo.
Next to the entrance door to the presbytery, an example of the celebrative plaque of the Franciscan centenary (1926) is set into the wall, which is emphasized by the remarkable quality of the varnishing.
Near the church of St. Mary in Pulicciano, there is a small street tabernacle inside of which a plaque in low relief in ceramic , painted and gilded, figuring the Annunciation, is preserved. It is a relief of quite ordinary and common production, but always good quality, in which the Furnaces are directly recalled by the small geometrical golden decorations.
Itinerario Liberty - Planning and Realization - Stefano Pelosi - www.stefanopelosi.it
