Commenda di Sant'Eufrosino, Volpaia site features

It stands apart, and deliberately. The church rises isolated on sloping ground facing the castle's ancient gate, and looks onto a picturesque little square.

The facade is simple and ends in a pediment. That pediment recalls the one Michelozzo made for the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie at Pistoia. The broken-line tympanum over the portal, though, is an eighteenth-century intervention. The facade masonry is a sasso accapezzato, roughly trimmed stone, which suggests it was originally meant to be plastered. At the rear the building is notably developed in height.

A plaque of 1906 is set on the outside, reading: RICORDO DEGLI SPIRITUALI ESERCIZI DOPO IL RESTAURO DI QUESTA CHIESA 20 MAGGIO 1906.

Inside it is a single hall in two bays. The plan is a single aula divided into two square bays by a transverse arch and closed by a square scarsella — a shallow chancel — which is not visible from outside, being surrounded by the volume of the sacristy and by a flight of stairs leading to an upper room, reached through two little doors placed symmetrically beside the arch. Both bays and the choir chapel are covered with sail vaults.

The architectural dressing is pietra serena. Carved ornaments of lumachelle on the central arch, garlands on the chapel arch, carried on fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals, with floral motifs repeated in the springing corbels of the vaults. The windows have moulded surrounds of simple workmanship, and the two doors flanking the choir have pietra serena frames surmounted by a corbel decorated with an egg-and-dart motif.

What is no longer here. A great altarpiece — the Madonna and Child between Saints Eufrosino and John the Baptist, dated 1480 and attributed to Cosimo Rosselli, with a carved and painted architectural frame — stood in the church until 1932, when it was deconsecrated. It is now in Florence, at the national centre for Renaissance studies, housed in Palazzo Strozzi.

A national monument in a hamlet

Declared so in 1982. Volpaia has forty-nine residents, which makes the Commenda one of the most disproportionate monuments in Tuscany relative to its setting.

The best Renaissance building in the Chianti

Not a judgement invented here: the record states plainly that the commenda di Sant'Eufrosino is the most important episode of Renaissance architecture in the Chianti. Its plan goes back to the chapels of the early Florentine Renaissance, and especially to the sacristy and the Cappella Pucci of the Santissima Annunziata in Florence.

Michelozzo at one remove

The structure is typically Michelozzian in inspiration, but the derivations from Michelozzo are interpreted in a style close to that of Giuliano da Maiano; the facade's pediment recalls the one Michelozzo made at Santa Maria delle Grazie in Pistoia.

A hidden chancel

The square scarsella that closes the hall cannot be seen from outside: the sacristy's volume and a stair to an upper room wrap around it, and that upper room is reached by two small doors set symmetrically either side of the transverse arch.

Pietra serena, carved

Lumachelle on the central arch, garlands on the chapel arch, fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals, floral motifs in the vault corbels, and egg-and-dart over the choir doors.

The Rosselli that left

The Madonna and Child between Saints Eufrosino and John the Baptist of 1480, attributed to Cosimo Rosselli — one of his most important works — hung here until the church was deconsecrated in 1932. It probably replaced an earlier altarpiece stolen in the sack of 1478, when Ferdinand of Aragon's troops took the castle.

A facade you have probably seen

It is reproduced on the label of Volpaia's Chianti Classico.