Discover Chiesa di San Salvatore, Castellina in Chianti

The chiesa di San Salvatore stands at Castellina in Chianti, at the end of Via Ferruccio, the street along which the old aura of the town is still felt.

The building was of medieval age, but it was destroyed during the last world war and subsequently rebuilt in neo-Romanesque style by the Sienese architect Menotti Lucattelli.

Inside is a detached fresco of the Madonna with Child by the painter of the early Quattrocento known as the Maestro di Signa, and a fine polychrome wooden statue of San Barnaba by a sculptor, perhaps Florentine, of the mid-fifteenth century.

The church also holds, inside a case, the body of San Fausto martire, given to it by a wealthy Sienese family. From that moment San Fausto became protector of the Chianti, and the devout invoked his help in moments of drought or during the grape harvest. He is the patron of Castellina in Chianti, whose feast falls on 18 September.

The style is neo-Romanesque, and the date is the twentieth century. The medieval building having been destroyed, the reconstruction was carried out in the Romanesque revival manner by Menotti Lucattelli, an architect from Siena.

What that means in practice. The Romanesque revival reaches for round arches, plain wall surfaces and a severe, unornamented front — the language of the twelfth-century Tuscan parish church, applied by a modern architect to a modern structure. It is a deliberate choice to look continuous with what was lost.

There is no claim of surviving medieval fabric. The record says the building was of medieval age and was destroyed and rebuilt; it does not say which parts, if any, were kept. This page does not fill that gap. For comparison, in the pieve di Sant'Agnese, also rebuilt after war damage in this comune, the source is explicit that only the base of the bell tower survives.

The furnishings are the older architecture. A detached fresco carries its own ground; a polychrome wooden statue and a reliquary case are objects designed for a church interior. In a rebuilt church they are the only elements that pre-date the walls.

This is a reconstruction, and the question is what reconstruction meant here. After the destruction of the medieval church in the Second World War, the rebuilding was given to the Sienese architect Menotti Lucattelli, who worked in neo-Romanesque style.

Neo-Romanesque was the respectful default. Rebuilding a bombed Tuscan parish church in the Romanesque revival rather than in a contemporary idiom was a way of restoring a silhouette the town recognised, at the cost of making the age of the fabric unreadable from outside.

Compare the Rocca, two hundred metres away. The fortress was given its merlons, wall-walk and bell-gable by Egisto Bellini in the 1920s, in the fashion for restauri imitativi. Castellina therefore has two of its principal buildings wearing twentieth-century versions of their medieval selves, for two different reasons — fashion in one case, war damage in the other.

The contents were moved, not rebuilt. The staccato in affresco staccato is a technique: the painted surface is lifted from the wall onto a new support. That is how a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century painting comes to hang in a building raised in the twentieth.

Is the church medieval?

Its origin was, but the building is not. It was destroyed in the Second World War and rebuilt in neo-Romanesque style by the Sienese architect Menotti Lucattelli.

Who is San Fausto?

A martyr whose body was given to the church by a wealthy Sienese family and lies here in a case. From that moment he became protector of the Chianti, invoked in drought and at the grape harvest. He is Castellina's patron; his feast is 18 September.

Who painted the Madonna?

The Maestro di Signa, an anonymous painter of the early fifteenth century. The fresco is detached — lifted from its original wall.

I have read it is by Bicci di Lorenzo. Which is right?

Both, about different pictures. The Bicci di Lorenzo Madonna and Child with Saints connected to Castellina belongs to the pieve di Sant'Agnese in Chianti, and the Fondazione Musei Senesi's own exhibition record says so. The painting in San Salvatore is the Maestro di Signa's.

What else is inside?

A fine polychrome wooden San Barnaba by a sculptor of the mid-Quattrocento, perhaps Florentine.

When is it open?

No operator publishes hours for this church, so no hours are stated here. It is a working parish church at the end of Via Ferruccio.

Is this the church on the town's coat of arms?

Yes. The arms show a church flanked by a tower with a cockerel above it, and the cock is described as crowing from the ruined tower beside the ancient church of San Salvatore.