Recently completed restorations at the parish church of San Silvestro in Barberino also allowed the recovery of paintings executed inside the church’s nave, commissioned by Tito Chini in 1931 by then-priest Don Giuseppe Focacci. In summary, these included the complete painted decoration of the church walls, the large choir, the two large side chapels, the other four minor chapels, as well as the ceiling beams, the sacristy, and the external facade with its loggia. Moreover, the furnaces San Lorenzo had made the large polychrome stained-glass windows, while, apparently, others had been extensively restored and integrated, such as the Stations of the Cross tiles, to conclude with the consecration crosses, some flower vases, and the side altars.
The centerpiece of the Chini works is undoubtedly represented by the paintings of the three apse domes that conclude the main chapel and the two side ones. The heart of the entire decoration is recognizable in the scene of the Ascension of Christ accompanied by the apostles and the Tetramorph (the symbols of the four evangelists), represented, as mentioned, in the apse drum overlooking the main altar. A work of complex layout, it showcases Tito’s figurative language in these years, the same period in which the artist was engaged, for example, in the decoration of the town hall of Borgo San Lorenzo: a certain fixed and hieratic front-facingness of the figure of Christ (which finds a parallel in Borgo San Lorenzo) is accompanied, on the contrary, by the plasticity of the surrounding figures, some represented in profile, in which there are also some aspects of true perspective virtuosity.
The left side chapel features the apse dome decorated with the scene of the Last Supper. The painting is arranged according to the traditional iconography of Florentine Last Supper from the fourteenth to the fifteenth centuries: this was a sign of Tito’s remarkable figurative culture, which was mainly nourished by the great “classical” painting, especially in the case of sacred subjects and destinations. In this case, the figures are characterized by a solemn monumentality with the use of a rather articulated chromatic range.
The name of the author, Tito Chini (1898-1947), is confirmed by the legible signature on the scene painted in the central apse dome, together with the date 1931, to which the entire decorative cycle refers..
The right-side chapel has an apse dome in which the representation of the Crucifixion is seen (on the right), painted with a simple iconographic setting: against the background of an intensely blue sky, the dramatic image of the crucified Christ stands out, at whose feet are the simple figures of Saint John, and Mary Magdalene to the right, the Madonna and Mary of Cleophas to the left. In this case as well, Tito’s style predominantly moves within the Tuscan tradition, but some graphic and linear elegances, the taste for emphasizing the outlines of the figures, particularly noticeable in the female characters, appear as a subtle and refined reminiscence of the Liberty style, characteristic of the Chini family.
The refined ceramic tiles of the side altar steps, accompanied by the classic columns with water leaf capitals, typical products of the San Lorenzo furnaces, are also due to the Borghigian manufacture, as are the splendid and refined stained glass windows, some with the busts of the evangelists and signed by the manufacture, while in others, according to documentation, the intervention would have been limited to a restoration with integrations, which, in this last case, must have been quite extensive.
The intervention of the “Fornaci San Lorenzo” manufacture must also be recognized in the decoration of the small chapel that opens at the beginning of the left wall of the church, intended to house the baptismal font. The readable inscription on the font (probably the only non-Chini work in the environment and attributable to the activity of Father Edoardo Rossi) informs us that this was commissioned by parish priest Don Giuseppe Focacci in 1924, but it is plausible that the Chini intervention is subsequent, perhaps not far from the rest of Tito’s work in the Barberino parish (1931). In the ceiling, adorned with simple painted decoration, geometric and spiral, four splendid circular tiles in polychrome majolica (white, blue, and yellow) depicting the symbols of the Evangelists are set, among which stand out for quality and inventiveness the dazzling image of the lion of St. Mark and the powerful and plastic one of the ox of St. Luke.
Scheda di Marco Pinelli
