Some of the spacious rooms in the central and noble Torriani Palace in Marradi are beautifully decorated on the ceilings and walls with paintings. Their refined graphic and chromatic elegance, combined with the vivid imagination in the subjects and botanical elements, points to the hand of Galileo Chini, who likely worked on them at the beginning of the 20th century. Scheda di Marco Pinelli © Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello Progetto Itinerario Liberty Mugello – Unione montana dei Comuni del Mugello
Author: Andrea Pelosi
The Church of Salecchio houses, still well-preserved, stained glass windows, each bordered by a narrow frame with a classicizing stylized lotus flower motif. Within circular panels, figures of saints are depicted in half-figure with a strong realistic and sculptural approach, suggesting a reference to the work of Tito Chini during the 1930s. This period, characterized by a broader “return to order” movement, saw the Manufacture adopting a more traditional language to remain competitive in the market and to align with the religious context of many commissions, all while maintaining high technical and artistic quality. Of particular interest and excellent quality…
The parish church of the Bibbiana district still preserves a series of stained-glass windows in which some distinctive elements of the Chini workshop are clearly recognizable, such as frames with zigzag motifs or patterns of small diamonds and squares, features that date back to Galileo Chini’s style. However, the solid design of the saints’ heads (whose identities are suggested by vaguely Gothic characters), defined by a strongly pictorial monochrome, prominently displayed in each window, points to the hand of Tito Chini, who may have designed them in the second half of the 1920s. This is an interesting example of a…
The Church of Visignano contains a series of polychrome stained-glass windows that illuminate the space. Some are characterized by panels decorated with geometric or symbolic shapes (stars, crosses, lilies, etc.), while others feature images of saints within circular frames. Their connection to the Chini family’s Fornaci San Lorenzo workshop is confirmed by the inscription found on some of the windows. The creation of these windows is believed to date to the second half of the 1920s. Scheda di Marco Pinelli, foto di Marta Magherini © Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello Progetto Itinerario Liberty Mugello – Unione montana…
The cemetery of San Piero a Sieve preserves significant interventions by the San Lorenzo Furnaces, recognizable in the remarkable tombstone of Giulia Cavicchi, a woman who died at the age of 23 in 1910. The beautiful slab, certainly made according to the design of Galileo Chini, reproduces a traditional type of earthy tomb, of late medieval origin, which envisaged the depiction of the deceased in full figure in the sleep of death, often surrounded by an inscription. In this case, however, the image is not that of the girl but of Saint Giulia, the martyr after whom she was named.…
On the wall of the rectory on Alighieri Street is a splendid polychrome majolica ogival lunette depicting the Madonna and Child. The coat of arms visible below alludes to the work’s commissioning parish priest Don Giuseppe Focacci and allows it to be dated to around the mid-1920s. Derived from the same cartoon as the lunette preserved in the Florentine cemetery of the Porte Sante, from which it differs practically only in the Virgin’s astonishing dress, the Barberino version, a true ceramic painting, can be traced to the hand of Galileo himself. It is to be admired for the refinement of…
The interior of the church of Cavallina features a series of architectural decorations, characterized by an elegant simplicity that highlights the articulation of the internal structure and the various architectural components with panels, frames, arches, and cartouches. The work is the creation of Leto Chini, who here demonstrates not only his eclecticism but also that of all the members of the family spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Scheda di Marco Pinelli Foto di Marta Magherini © Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello Progetto Itinerario Liberty Mugello – Unione montana dei Comuni del Mugello
The cemetery of Scarperia houses the earthy tomb of Leto Chini, executed by the San Lorenzo Furnaces in the same year as his death, in 1910 or shortly thereafter. The burial consists of a plaque with an inscription placed on the wall facing the tomb, a series of six sandstone pillars decorated with tiles featuring geometric designs, while the large slab bears the full figure of the dead Christ, dressed in priestly garments and lying on a stretcher of ropes, reproduced in flat form with the profiles drawn by grooves in the sandstone surface. A long inscription surrounds the slab.…
A beautiful Chini-style baptismal font is preserved inside the church of San Bartolomeo in Molezzano. The ceramic baptismal basin coated with a noble dark glaze is made from one of the flower pots designed by Galileo Chini for the Berzieri baths in Salsomaggiore in the early twenties; it follows the practice of the furnaces to convert the various furnishings in the production catalog to different uses. As is known, this is an example of the production mold of the factory, a method that became necessary to complete the challenging thermal commission. The panel placed on the wall of the small…
The dazzling and precious ogival lunette placed above the portal of the parish church façade dates back to 1926 and was produced by the San Lorenzo Furnaces and commissioned by the then parish priest Pietro Tesi. The composition of the subject is due to Tito Chini, who also draws on the rich decorative repertoire introduced by Galileo, such as the zigzag bands, small squares, polychrome lozenges, etc. However, at the center of the lunette stands the powerful and solid figure of Saint Martin of Tours, depicted in perfect frontal position and sumptuously dressed in episcopal vestments. To enrich the richness…
