Collegiate Church
and Museum of San Giuliano

Lamentation over the Dead Christ – Museum of the Parish Church

In the foreground the body of Jesus is resting on the lap of the Madonna in turn supported by another female figure. To the right the Magdalene kneels at the feet of Christ; next to her an elderly man is holding what could be the shroud. San Giovanni turns his eyes to heaven, while a woman wipes her tears. On the left side is a trio of two men and a woman with her hands clasped.

The man without a beard is traditionally considered to be the client who commissioned the fresco. Unfortunately, nothing definite is known of the Lamentation’s original placement inside the church: Leonetto Tintori, who restored it in 1940, assumed that Signorelli had made it for the high altar of the same chapel, while Mancini (1903) says it was moved to the baptistery chapel by Filippo Berrettini in 1629.

Certainly the fresco was cut and repainted. Various hypotheses with regard to its dating have also been put forth over time by scholars. It seems reasonable to accept those who have placed the fresco’s execution between the 1480s-1490s.

Adoration of the Child – Collegiate Church

Date: ca. 1500
Technique and Materials: tempera on a wooden panel
Size: 145 × 130 cm
Author: Lorenzo di Credi (Florence ca. 1460 -1537)
Provenance: Church of Santo Stefano. The painting is set in a 17^th-century stone altar. In the center of the broken entablature above is the Dragomanni coat-of-arms.

All ancient sources, beginning with Vasari, cite this work as having been carried out by Lorenzo di Credi. Considered by critics to be a late and minor work by the painter, the recent restoration instead has highlighted its pictorial quality, thus moving the date of its execution to the early 16^th century, connecting it to the same subject in the Uffizi. The inscription on the frame reads QUEM GENUIT ADORAVIT.

Collegiate Church
Collegiate Church, exterior

San Giuliano Altarpiece – Collegiate Church

Date: 1486
Technique and Materials: tempera and gold on a wooden panel
Size: 350 × 228 cm
Artist: Pietro di Antonio Dei known as Bartolomeo della Gatta (Florence 1448-1502)
Provenance: Parish Church of San Giuliano

Entitled the Madonna Enthroned with Saints, this massive panel painting of great opulence and complexity was painted by Bartolomeo della Gatta in 1486 for the high altar of the old Parish Church of San Giuliano. It remained there until 1576 when it was moved to the Chapel of the Bells (delle Campane). Embedded in the chapel wall, it was plagued by a series of troubles and, as the historian Castiglione Ghizzi noted with bitterness, by ”our neglect of Castiglion Fiorentino’s past”. It was long housed in the now-destroyed Church of Santa Maria Novella where it was placed on the floor, serving as a platform for games. Sawed in two and then put back together again, it was finally placed at the third altar of the right aisle in the collegiate church built in the mid-19^th century, where it may still be seen today.

The composition is dominated by the throne of the Virgin, a figure of Botticellian elegance. The name of the buyer from Castiglion Fiorentino, Cristiano di Piero di Cecco “maniscalcho” (marshal), and the year “1486” are found on the base on a painted plaque. (Inscription: CRISTIANO DI PIERODI CECCHO MANISCALCHO DA CASTIGLION RETINO, MCCCCLXXXVI).

The altarpiece was completed by a predella whose four compartments told of Saint Julian’s earthly life. Two of the compartments were stolen from the sacristy in 1910, while the two remaining, the first and the fourth in the sequence, have recently been returned to the Museum of the Parish Church after having been stored for many years at the Arezzo Superintendency.

Predella of the San Giuliano Altarpiece – Museum of the Parish Church

Date: 1486
Technique and Materials: tempera on a wooden panel
Size: 22 × 58 cm (height)
Artist: Pietro di Antonio Dei known as Bartolomeo della Gatta (Florence 1448-1502)
Provenance: Parish Church of San Giuliano

The Father Tries to Kill His Infant Son: Julian’s father tries to kill the child in swaddling clothes as a wayfarer had prophesied that his son would kill his parents; the mother and the nurse, holding a spindle and distaff, rush to prevent the infanticide. On the right, Julian, now a boy, leaves his parent’s home to avoid fulfilling the prophecy.

Petreto tunicle – Museum of the Parish Church

Dating: last quarter of the 15^th century
Technique and Materials: red silk velvet, polychrome silk lampas and gold thread, metallic yarn and cotton
Production: Florentine production
Size: 145 × 110 cm

The tunicle, or dalmatic, was worn by the deacon and the subdeacon during solemn rites. What is surprising is to find such a precious artifact in this out-of-the-way church. Not knowing how it arrived in Petreto, only assumptions related mainly to the object’s exceptional nature can be made. It is clear that we have before us a rich and sophisticated commission that, due to a proximity of place and history, suggests that it was from Teodora, the daughter of Laurenzia and Paolino Visconti (died 1450), who had arrived as the wife of a Lambardi di Tuoro, whose castle was in the vicinity of Petreto.

Red silk velvet was manufactured not only in Venice but also in Tuscany, in the cities of Lucca and Florence. It has a pomegranate motif that, in the iconography of the Catholic Church, symbolizes at the same time eternal life as well as the Passion of Christ and his Resurrection. The small pomegranate, surrounded by corollas and jagged petals, is set within a polylobate leaf, again of Gothic style.

The figured scene—in silk lampas with horizontally-woven gold thread—depicts the Nativity. It is surmounted by a canopy supported by four angels bearing the words VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST (“And the Word was made flesh”, John 1:14).

Predella of the San Giuliano Altarpiece – Museum of the Parish Church

Date: 1486
Technique and Materials: tempera on a wooden panel
Size: 22 × 58 cm (height)
Artist: Pietro di Antonio Dei known as Bartolomeo della Gatta (Florence 1448-1502)
Provenance: Parish Church of San Giuliano

Saint Julian Kneeling Before a Pilgrim Leper: the predella illustrates the atonement of the former knight who had founded a hospital for pilgrims. There, he takes in a leper, offering him his bed; the leper proves to be Christ who, recognizing Julian’s generosity, grants him eternal salvation.

Museum of the Parish Church
Museum of the Parish Church, exterior.