Sacred art museum
The Museum of Sacred Art was originally an Augustinian convent of the fifteenth century. Carefully restored and used as a museum, it was inaugurated in June 2001. It is one of the various vicarial museums that have sprung up in the Florentine area with the aim of aggregating religious cultural assets scattered throughout the territory that, for security and custodial reasons, cannot be preserved in their original locations.
The Museum preserves the historical-artistic patrimony of the Vicariate of Certaldo, the current religious demarcation that replaces the ancient parish of San Lazzaro a Lucardo, located along the Via Francigena, a little outside the town. The works come from the churches of the Vicariate of Certaldo, and have been collected since 1963, after the exhibition "Art in Valdelsa". This important exhibition event served to highlight the impossibility of bringing back, for safety reasons, some of the works exhibited to their original churches, and the necessity of providing for an adequate museum conservation. The Museum's patrimony, extremely rich and varied, includes various types of objects: paintings, sculptures, goldsmithery and vestments, arranged in sections and in chronological order. The visit path proposes to let people know a new, but not less important, aspect of the cultural reality of Certaldo.
Company of the Santissima Annunziata Hall
We find ourselves in the ancient headquarters of the Company of the Santissima Annunziata, then of the Precious Blood of Jesus, built in 1620, as attested by the inscription that runs on the stone lintel outside the door.
The hall has a sober and elegant architecture. On the altar hangs the canvas, from the rare iconography, representing the Madonna of Loreto among the Augustinian saints. Recently attributed to Gabriele di Luca Grassi, it seems that this painting can be identified with the one remembered and described at the beginning of the 20th century on this altar. On the sides there are two angels carrying candles and votive lamps, while along the walls there are 17th century paintings and sculptures.
In addition to the paintings, including the Annunciation, one of the many copies of the venerated fresco of the Florentine church of Santissima Annunziata, you can see the two life-size polychrome wooden statues depicting the Augustinian Saints St. Nicola da Tolentino and St. Giovanni da San Facondo, which originally adorned their altars in the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo.
Main work: Our Lady of the Rosary and Saints by Bernardino Monaldi of 1619
The canvas with the Madonna of the Rosary and Saints bears on the back the signature of its author Bernardino Monaldi, and the date of execution, 1611. It was commissioned by the Company of the Holy Rosary established in 1579, which was based in the church of Santa Maria a Bagnano, where the work comes from. The reference to the Company is made explicit in the subject of the canvas: in the center is depicted the Madonna and Child, in the act of offering the rosary to a timid San Domenico. Above the head of the Virgin, two winged angels offer a crown, while two others, with adolescent features, hold a garland made of fifteen beads, in allusion to the fifteen mysteries of the rosary. On the left, at the bottom, you can recognize, in addition to St. Dominic, St. Michael the Archangel and a deacon saint; on the right, in the female group, appear in the foreground St. Catherine of Siena and the very elegant St. Catherine of Alexandria, unfailingly flanked by a fragment of the cogwheel, the well-known instrument of her martyrdom.
The painting was displayed at the exhibition in the United States of America , titled Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, which was held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington from December 5, 2014 to April 12, 2015.
Vestments Hall
This room was originally the old sacristy of the company of the Precious Blood of Jesus: here are preserved several sacred vestments. Of particular value are two chasubles coming from the church of Santa Maria a Bagnano: one of the 17th century with an ivory background, with yellow and salmon pink decorations, and a chasuble of the 18th century, with multicolored embroideries of oriental inspiration, which was restored during the 20th century.
Also on display are an humeral veil and a chalice veil, in an iridescent marbled fabric, with splendid metallic applications, and a beautiful Florentine manufacture from the 16th century, which represents the vestment in quarter, in chiseled silk velvet with a single body on silver cloth, on a white background laminated with silver and red work. The typology, with ogival meshes and two types of thistle flower, is widely diffused in Tuscany, especially in the area of strict Florentine influence. Perhaps it originates from Spanish examples, which spread to Florence probably after the arrival of Eleonora di Toledo, who came to the city to marry Cosimo I dei Medici in 1539.
The large number of examples still preserved in the churches of the territory testifies the success of this typology. In fact, it seems that the motif of the thistle flower and the pomegranate, as a symbol of fertility and immortality, was perfectly suited to every context, both profane and religious.
Main work: The Paliotto of Beata Giulia.
The frontal, of Florentine manufacture, is in silver cloth with precious embroideries in silver with traces of gold. In the center there is a painted image of the Blessed Giulia of Certaldo.
The term " paliotto" derives from the Latin "pallium altaris" and during the Middle Ages took the name of "antependium", a term that then spread throughout Europe. It could be made with the most varied and valuable materials such as marble, gold, silver, polychrome enamels, precious and semi-precious stones, carved wood, fine fabrics such as lampas, velvet and brocade, damask silk brocade in gold or silver, with rich and unusual embroidery. The cartoons were usually requested from prominent painters and sculptors. The antependium was at the center of liturgical celebrations, together with the vestments of the celebrants and often combined with the latter.
The valuable artifact, about 62 cm high, is distinguished by the precious embroidered decoration. On a white silk gros de Tours background, embellished with drawn silver wefts, you can observe the vegetable and floral motifs conducted in the application technique. The embroideries are in high relief alternating with pleasant effects of bas-relief with applications of small flat sequins, thin foils of various shapes and sizes that make up twisted vines, flower petals, domed studs that punctuate floral elements and fruits of exotic taste.
The embroidery design has been conceived in a specular way around the central medallion in painted white silk taffeta, with the image of the Blessed Julia supported in flight by two winged putti among clouds and rays. The balanced decoration is completed by lance-shaped leaves, crumpled and frayed, and pearls with a notched profile that are arranged harmoniously towards the central medallion.
An incautious intervention carried out in past years has caused irreversible damage to the embroidered frontal, erasing many traces that could be useful to identify the time of realization of this frail artifact.
Goldsmith Hall
In this room are preserved a series of processional crosses ranging from the thirteenth century, such as the Cross of the ancient church Santa Maria Assunta in Casale, until the fifteenth century.
Among the oldest furnishings you can also observe the thirteenth-century bronze thurible of San Gaudenzio in Ruballa, whose decorations in relief and perforation recall German examples; the fifteenth-century chalice ciborium and monstrance of San Lazzaro in Lucardo.
The baroque goldsmiths of the same church were commissioned by the Gianfigliazzi. In the group of furnishings of the church of San Tommaso observe also the chalice and the missal, neo-gothic objects made specifically for the new church inaugurated in the lower part of Certaldo in 1885.
Main work: Bronze thurible, San Gaudenzio in Ruballa
Reliquaries Hall
In the Hall of Reliquaries you can admire the bust of the Blessed Julia, commissioned by Friar Domenico Conti, an Augustinian friar of Santo Spirito in Florence, and made in 1652-1653 by the Florentine goldsmith Paolo Laurentini. The work comes from the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo and is made of embossed, chiseled and engraved silver.
The bust is set on a stepped decagonal base, decorated with rectangular folders; on the front, inside one of these, is inserted the relic visible from the outside. The Saint is depicted with a slightly wavy monastic veil, while the face marked by age emerges from a wimple thickly pleated.
On the head is applied a crown with palmettes, fake precious stones and acanthus leaves, of a later period. The reliquary, as told by the canon Malenotti author of the biography of the Blessed (1819), was made to host the head of Giulia, stolen in 1479, by the Neapolitan soldiers who had sacked the castle of Certaldo and returned to the people of Certaldo only seven years later. The head, however, perhaps for fear of further thefts, was reunited with the body only after 1633, the year in which the altar of the Saint in the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo was embellished.
Main work: Bust of the Blessed Julia
The Art Gallery
We are in the ancient refectory of the convent, with windows overlooking the walls of Certaldo; here today is set up the Art Gallery, which boasts important paintings dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century. Arranged in chronological order, you can admire the paintings that once furnished the churches of the surrounding countryside.
From Santa Maria a Bagnano, in particular, come the oldest and most precious gold backgrounds: from the majestic and solemn Madonnas of the Master of Bigallo and Meliore, both masterpieces of the thirteenth century, to the graceful triptych attributed to the workshop of Ugolino di Nerio.
There is an alternation of Florentine and Sienese paintings that is well justified in a land like Certaldo, on the border between the artistic capitals of the 14th century, Siena and Florence.
Main work: Madonna on the throne with Child and two angels
The painting by Meliore di Jacopo, called Meliore, can be dated between 1270 and 1275 and comes from the nearby church of Santa Maria a Bagnano. The panel is characterized by vivid and intense enameled colors on a gold background: the Madonna on the throne presents the Child, who blesses with his right hand, while in his left hand he holds a scroll.
The Virgin, covered by a dark blue mantle, bears on her head a crown carved and decorated with three circles in relief, painted in different colors; at her feet she has very original shoes with designs of oriental taste. The throne has a geometric decoration in red and blue tones, very elaborate and different in the cushion, where it rests its feet and in the backrest. Above, on the sides of the throne, two angels are facing the Virgin.
The work is in an excellent state of preservation: it has benefited from conservative restorations only in the years 1935-1936 and then in 1972. On the occasion of the exhibition “L'arte a Firenze nell'età di Dante” (Art in Florence in the Age of Dante), held at the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence in 2004, the ugly and anonymous frame was removed: now, in its place, you can see some traces of the original painting without it ever having undergone any restoration work. Moreover, in the upper part of the panel you can guess the original shape of the panel itself, equipped with a cusp, now lost.
Polyptych of Puccio di Simone
The itinerary continues with examples of "primitive" painting, such as the interesting polyptych by Giotto's Puccio di Simone, probably created in 1357, when the artist returned to Florence from the Marche region. Puccio di Simone was one of the major artists of the second generation of the fourteenth century, capable of transmitting new elements to Florentine painting. Examples of more modern paintings are also on display, such as the Crucifixion by Cenni di Francesco or the Madonna with Child and Saints probably by Raffaello Piccinelli, with a classical character.
Linari's Collection
In this room are the works of the Linari’s Collection, which mainly includes paintings, engravings and a wooden crucifix from the 17th century.
The Collection comes from Villa Bardi di Linari, an ancient village located in the municipality of Barberino Val d'Elsa, in the province of Florence, which flourished in the Middle Ages, but in recent years has been in a state of abandonment. The specimens of the Collection belonged in the past to the noble Mancini family, originally from Cortona and Lucignano, in the province of Arezzo.
Count Girolamo Mancini, historian, man of letters, expert of antiquities and erudite, had inherited the Linari property in the second half of the 19th century. The same property was later acquired by the Dino Bardi-Manola Grassini family, who resided in Linari from 1971 to 1986. In 2010 the collection passed to the heir Aloma Bardi who, together with her husband, Gabriele Boccaccini, donated it in 2011 to the Museum of Sacred Art of Certaldo. The exhibition was set up in the years 2011-2012. Of particular importance is the painting Moses with the Tablets of the Law, an oil on canvas by Ciro Ferri, as attested by the signature on the back, where there is also the indication of the date, interpreted as "1653".
Ciro Ferri was a significant Roman Baroque artist, an illustrious disciple and then successor of Pietro Berrettini da Cortona. Under the direction of his master, Ferri created paintings at the Quirinale and in the Pitti Palace in Florence, where he completed the Hall of Apollo and painted the Hall of Saturn using his drawings. He frescoed the dome of S. Agnese in Piazza Navona and worked in other important Roman churches. If the interpretation of the date as 1653 were correct, this Moses would date from the painter's early years.
Main work: Moses with the Tablets of the Law, Ciro Ferri.
The cloister
Between the museum and the church is the cloister. Very little is known about its origin: De Poveda, in 1827, speaking of Boccaccio's tomb, tells us that there was a claustrum contiguous to the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo.
The structure seems referable to the late Romanesque, in a phase subsequent to the realization of the church, at the end of the fourteenth century. The portico was restored in 1966 following the demolition of a chapel dedicated to the cult of Beata Giulia, built in 1856, which cut it in two. The cloister, of extraordinary effect and solemnity, exploits its irregularity in the shape of a trapezium to increase the perspective effect.
Built on two floors is supported by brick columns with elegant stone capitals of considerable workmanship. On the narrowest side there is the access door to the bell tower whose base is built in tuff stone. The cloister gives access to the basement of the convent and to Beata Giulia's cell where, according to her will, she was walled up alive until her death.
The underground of the Museum of Sacred Art
The underground of the Museum of Sacred Art, recently brought back to life, represents a fundamental contribution to understand the development of the village of Certaldo.
The arrangement of the underground aims not only at keeping intact the symbolic atmosphere of the place, but also at deepening some themes linked to the medieval tradition and culture. Over the centuries this place has undergone many changes, but the base of the wall dates back to the construction of the convent, in the 13th century, and the structure of the room, with a vaulted ceiling and a large central room completely made of stone, well represents the type of medieval construction.
Always in the ancient part of the wall you can observe a particular engraving that seems to represent a chalice whose shape seems to be similar to Longobard furnishings dating back to the Longobard period.The basement of the convent had a particular function: it contained the coffins of the monks of the convent and for this reason the structure was darkly known with the name of "Le Bare".
The Apothecary
In the corridor are exhibited objects concerning the art of apothecary. Every convent had a herb garden or Hortus Conclusus, in which herbs and medicinal plants were cultivated, used to cure the sick but also for the art of dyeing.
Here you can see some examples of containers used to store herbs with the names of the most commonly used ones; a still, thanks to which herbal distillates were created and administered to the sick; a mortar, a commonly used tool, which was used to grind the substances used to create medicines and a cauldron, used for cooking food or boiling herbs and preparing ointments and mixtures. Also on display are surgical tools (pincers, scalpels, hacksaw, irons for drilling into the skull).
Church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo
The church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo is one of the most ancient buildings in the village; in 1966 it underwent a radical restoration that brought it back to its ancient medieval aspect.
It is in Romanesque style: the church and the convent complex were probably built towards the end of the 12th century, at the same time as the development of the fortified nucleus of the town of Certaldo. Its ancient dedication was to the saints Michele and Jacopo. Built in brick resting on a sandstone base, it presents a single wide nave, concluded by a semicircular apse.
The exterior shows some decorations in terracotta, such as the archivolts of the single lancet windows and the crowning of the apse with bricks arranged in a saw-tooth pattern. Above the cover of the apse there is a small cruciform window flanked by two small sloping rhombuses of Pisan derivation. The access door that today is used is the result of an intervention of 1633: before this date the whole area of the square was used as a cemetery and therefore the access doors to the church were those placed on the side of the church itself, which overlook today's via Boccaccio.
The bell tower, in line with the façade, has a pyramidal cover, the result of a restoration work carried out by the Superintendence of Florence in the sixties of the twentieth century: the original cover had been demolished in the nineteenth century in order to raise the bell tower, as can be seen in some old pictures.
Inside, besides numerous works of art, there are the mortal remains of the great fourteenth-century writer Giovanni Boccaccio and of the Blessed Giulia Della Rena, his contemporary and patroness of Certaldo.
In seguito ai radicali restauri promossi dalla Soprintendenza di Firenze nel corso degli anni sessanta, l’interno oggi si presenta assai spoglio, con la cortina di mattoni a vista. Durante i restauri si provvide alla demolizione della cappella dedicata alla Beata realizzata nella metà del XIX secolo situata sul lato sinistro (che ingombrava il chiostro attiguo), con il relativo tamponamento della parete; furono rimosse tutte le decorazioni neo medioevali, compreso il dipinto rappresentate il Cristo realizzato nel catino absidale forse dalla bottega di Galileo Chini, dei primi anni del Novecento; infine gran parte degli arredi subirono un riposizionamento. Il soffitto è sorretto da enormi capriate di legno.
Following the radical restorations promoted by the Superintendence of Florence during the sixties, the interior is now very bare, with the curtain of exposed bricks. During the restorations, the chapel dedicated to the Beata was demolished in the middle of the 19th century and located on the left side (it was obstructing the adjoining cloister), with the relative plugging of the wall; all the neo-medieval decorations were removed, including the painting representing Christ realized in the apsidal basin, perhaps by the workshop of Galileo Chini, at the beginning of the 20th century; finally, most of the furniture was repositioned. The ceiling is supported by enormous wooden trusses. Under an altar, into a niche, rest in an urn made in 1689, the mortal remains of the Blessed Julia: on the table of this altar was placed in 2001, on the occasion of the opening of the Museum of Sacred Art, a predella of the fifteenth century in which are told the miracles of the Blessed. Undoubtedly the best known "tenant" is Giovanni Boccaccio, whose tomb is marked by a large marble slab in the middle of the nave, created in 1949 by the sculptor Mario Moschi, replicating with some variations the famous fresco by Andrea del Castagno, part of the famous series of illustrious men, now in the Uffizi. The first sketch of this tombstone is exposed on the ground floor of the Boccaccio House. In reality, Boccaccio's remains are not under the mentioned slab, but probably under a small white tile in the immediate surroundings.
Crucifix of Petrognano
Entering the church, raising our eyes in the direction of the altar, our eyes meet the wide open ones, as if alive, of the "Christ of Petrognano", an extraordinary sculpture carved in wood that represents, life-size, the crucified Christ on the cross, a simple cross painted with a dark tones.
Let our gaze run over the figure, from the hair gathered in soft locks, to the half-open mouth, up to the chest modeled with great attention to anatomical data: with surprise we realize that Christ, anything but stuck in the wood in which it was carved, is as animated by a breath of life, a motion of life accentuated by the strokes of the brush with which a skilled painter has made the details of the figure, from eyes to hair to thin hair of beard and mustache, the latter cut to the "saracina".
Christ has a fixed gaze and his eyes wide open in his triumph over death and his feet are not superimposed, but separated, each pierced by a nail and resting on the soppedaneum, in the Byzantine custom, before the Franciscan reform. It is an extraordinarily human Christ, as shown by the naturalism with which his body has been rendered. The beauty and fascination of this figure are equal to the mystery that surrounds the origins of the sculpture: the Crucifix was found at the end of the nineteenth century in the small church of San Pietro a Petrognano, on the hill where the city of Semifonte once stood, even if that was not the original location of the work. The cross was sawn at the ends to fit the small building in which it was housed, but certainly, given its imposing size, the origin is from an abbey in the area or from an important church in a town. Critics have assigned the crucifix to the second half of the 13th century.
Blessed Julia's cell
Giulia, that a late tradition writes to the descendants of the Della Rena, exiles in Certaldo after the destruction of the castle of Semifonte from the Florentines in 1202, was born around 1319 in Certaldo. Her family, of noble origin, was however decadent. Orphaned at a young age, she entered the service of the Tinolfi family in nearby Florence where, having come into contact with the Augustinians of Santo Spirito and their spirituality, she was the protagonist of a singular conversion. Feeling brought to a more radical and austere life choice, in the full flower of her existence, she decides to abandon the city and to take refuge in a solitary place. Therefore, she returns to Certaldo, taking lodging in the smallest room adjacent to the one where we are now.
Here she was completely walled up except for two small windows: one corresponding to the church in order to attend the sacred functions and receive the Sacraments, the other outside in order to receive the food that popular piety would have sent her and that the recluse reciprocated, prodigiously, with fragrant fresh flowers in any season of the year. She never left her little "hermitage" until the end of her earthly days. Like the recluses, she lived segregated from the world for a period of about thirty years, walking the long path of asceticism to the end. Penance and prayer were her daily occupations.
The peasants of Certaldo and its surroundings thought to keep her alive. Popular tradition tells that even children ran to her aid, bringing her something to eat. Nothing more is known about her, if not the veneration of her fellow citizens for the life of piety she lived under their eyes. She died about thirty years later, as tradition indicates on January 9, 1367. Immediately after her death in Certaldo and in the whole Val d' Elsa her cult developed. The town of Certaldo has always contributed to honour the Blessed, for whose intercession the town was freed several times from the plague and from the contagion. Her cult was confirmed by Pius VII in 1819, five hundred years after her earthly birth. The Augustinian Giuseppe Bartolomeo Menochio, confessor of the Pope and prefect of the Pontifical Sacrarium, who was interested in the cases of ancient popular devotion, sponsored the official approval of her cult.
The mortal remains of the Blessed Giulia are venerated in the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo, in the very same church in which one of her great fellow citizen and contemporary, Giovanni Boccaccio, chose to be buried. Every year, on the first Sunday of September, the town celebrates the feast of the Blessed Virgin with a procession that winds its way from the medieval village to the lower part of the town and ends at the Propositura di San Tommaso; the following Wednesday a procession accompanies the urn with the mortal remains of the Blessed Virgin from the Propositura to the church of Saints Jacopo and Filippo. Originally the feast was celebrated on January 9, the dies natalis as it happens for all the saints, but because of the rigors of winter, in 1674 the feast was moved to the first Sunday in September, to have a greater number of people and be able to celebrate more worthily the patron saint.
