Author: RedFilo Cultura

In 1926, it was celebrated the seventh centenary of the death of St. Francis of Assisi, a very important anniversary in Mugello, a land where the Franciscan Third Order had a deep-rooted presence. This monumental shrine was built as part of the numerous initiatives taken in Borgo San Lorenzo for that occasion, and erected in the religious heart of the town, between the parish church of San Lorenzo and the sixteenth-century Dominican monastery of Santa Caterina. It was inaugurated on 4 October 1926 and its construction is entirely due to the Chini Manufacture and its collaborators.It consists of a niche…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – At the side walls of the church there are eight carved stone altars, characterized by decorations of classic and Renaissance taste of remarkable quality and variety. Most likely these were made at the beginning of the sixteenth century by the wish of Pius Damiano Manti from Imola, a religious and humanist who directed the Pieve for almost forty years, from 1503 to 1543. He was the promotor of an impressive series of works to the church, which he found in precarious conditions.© Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – This lunette-shaped fresco comes from the adjacent Dominican monastery of Saint Catherine from Siena and represents a “sacred conversation” to which three saints of the Dominican Order and the protector of Borgo San Lorenzo are participating. The painting is signed by Sebastiano Misuri, a modest painter of the late sixteenth century, known only for this work, in which he expresses himself with an archaic language recalling the early 16th century taste, perhaps to comply with the possible demands of the monastic commission.© Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – The canvas depicts two of the most popular and beloved saints in the adoration of the Child standing on an open book (the Gospel?). The painting can be interpreted as a devotional work that can be traced back to the seventeenth century due to the soft shadows and intense attention to lights. Certain elegant traits seem to foresee the advent of the eighteenth century’s technique. Its unidentified author seems capable of a non-trivial language that appears to move within the soft atmosphere, combined with other cultural suggestions dating back to the late…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – Dating back to 1615 when, according to sources, the altar in which it was placed was founded by the Borgo S. Lorenzo citizen Vittorio Grossi, perhaps in memory of some pestilence (or other negative event) and attributed to Matteo Rosselli, one of the most influential Florentine painters of the first half of the seventeenth century. Indeed, despite its intensely devotional character (in fact, he depicts the two saints Domenico and Francis who, along with the Virgin, implore Christ not to punish men for their sins), in the spirit of the Counter-Reform which…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – This table painting is one of the most relevant masterpieces preserved within the pieve in Borgo S. Lorenzo. It represents the main figure, stationary and languidly in a slightly spiral motion, accompanied by an old bearded saint, lined with a white monastic sail, traditionally identified with San Macario but who could instead be identified with Romualdo from Camaldoli, with a stick in one hand and a book (perhaps the rule?) in the other. On the opposite side stands the sweet and melancholic figure of St. Vincent Ferrer, of Spanish origin, in the…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – The canvas depicts Saint John the Evangelist who, sitting on the lower left side, appears in the act of writing on a book, with the back of three saints identifiable in Saint Antonino, Bishop of Florence and dominican, St. Catherine of Siena, also belonging to the order of San Domenico and Santa Margherita. On the top right, above a cloud being held up by angels, the Virgin is present, depicted in a very particular view. The scene is clearly identifiable with the episode recounted in the Apocalypse, concerning John’s vision of the…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – The mural painting, a dry tempera type, placed in the apse area of the pieve represents, in the center, the Pantocrator (i.e. omnipotent) Christ, sitting on a throne of clouds and embedded within a golden almond. His right hand shows the three fingers, a symbol for the Trinity, and the left one holds a small case. The left foot rests on a golden globe, symbol of the whole creation. At its side, on a blue background, the ancient protectors of Borgo San Lorenzo, San Martino (on the right) and San Lorenzo (on…

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – The large polychrome wooden Crucifix that stands at the centre of the presbytery comes from the closed-down church of St Francis, from which it probably arrived here after the Napoleonic suppression of 1808 and, according to recent studies is comparable to the elegant and powerful Michelangelo’s style by Jacopo Sansovino, in the early decades of the sixteenth century.© Il Filo – Idee e Notizie dal Mugello

BORGO SAN LORENZO (pieve di San Lorenzo) – The small door made from carved stone, open in the apse space of the Pieve, originally led to adjacent rooms and on the architrave it is visible the coat of arms of Jacopo by Giovanni Ugolini, who was the holder of the pieve from 1432 to 1447, a period to which this artifact can possibly be dated. It is also to be remembered that the very same Ugolini had erected a large sacristy on the left side of the church, demolished during the restorations of the twentieth century.© Il Filo – Idee…