Chiesa di San Salvatore, Castellina in Chianti site features

It reads as a Romanesque church and is not one. The neo-Romanesque rebuilding gives the expected vocabulary — the round-arched, austere manner of the twelfth century — executed in the twentieth by Menotti Lucattelli, a Sienese architect working after the destruction of the medieval building.

Three things inside repay the visit. The first is a detached fresco: a Madonna with Child by the painter of the early Quattrocento known as the Maestro di Signa. A detached fresco is itself evidence of rescue — it was lifted from its wall to survive.

The second is sculpture. A fine polychrome wooden statue of San Barnaba, by a sculptor of the middle of the fifteenth century, perhaps Florentine.

The third is a body. In a case in the building lies San Fausto martire, the gift of a wealthy Sienese family — the object that made this church matter to the whole district rather than to one village.

The church is also on the town's coat of arms. Castellina's arms, recognised by decree on 17 October 1932, show a church flanked by an open and windowed tower with a cockerel above it; the cock crowing from the nearly ruined tower is described as standing beside the ancient church of San Salvatore, and is the emblem of the Lega del Chianti.

A picture that is not here. Guidebooks sometimes place a Madonna and Child with Saints by Bicci di Lorenzo in this church. That panel belongs to the pieve di Sant'Agnese in Chianti, elsewhere in the comune, and the Fondazione Musei Senesi's own exhibition record lists it as coming from there.

The body of San Fausto, and what it did for the Chianti

Inside a case lies San Fausto martire, given to the church 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 vendemmia. He is Castellina's patron, and his feast is 18 September — just before the harvest he was asked to protect.

A Madonna lifted off a wall

The detached fresco of the Madonna with Child is given to the Maestro di Signa, an anonymous master of the early fifteenth century known by the place-name of his principal work. That it is detached — staccato — means it was cut from its original plaster and remounted, which is how a fresco survives the loss of the wall it was painted on.

San Barnaba in painted wood

A fine polychrome wooden statue of Saint Barnabas by a sculptor of the middle of the Quattrocento, perhaps Florentine.

The cockerel is crowing next door

On Castellina's arms, a cock stands on a half-ruined tower beside the ancient church of San Salvatore. It is the emblem of the Lega del Chianti — the military and administrative league of the terzieri of Castellina, Gaiole and Radda — and a reminder of the truce between Florence and Siena. The black cockerel of Chianti Classico has the same ancestor.

A rebuilding, honestly dated

The medieval church was destroyed in the last world war; what stands is Menotti Lucattelli's neo-Romanesque reconstruction. Knowing that makes the interior legible: the fabric is modern, the contents are what was saved.

Not the Bicci di Lorenzo

The Madonna and Child with Saints by Bicci di Lorenzo associated with Castellina is in the pieve di Sant'Agnese in Chianti, out in the comune's nature reserve — not in this church, whatever some guides say.