Lost in the pleasant countryside between Ponte a Ema and Bagno a Ripoli, on the right bank of the Rimezzano gully, is the Oratorio di Santa Caterina d’Alessandria, an example of a Gothic church with great artistic value.
It was built in 1354 by Giovanni Jacopo Alberti and by the Nerozzo children, who belonged to one of the wealthiest families of the time with houses, towers and a street named after them in the center of Florence.
“But – a poet wrote – what is more important is to remember / that inside the small jewel / there are very rare works of art: / they are frescoes by Aretin Spinello.”
In fact, the inside of the oratory is a real treasure trove adorned with pearls and gems right up to the ceiling. They are frescoes illustrating the life of Santa Caterina, the patron saint of the Alberti family, who, for refusing to deny her faith, was martyred on the sprocket in 1305. The first cycle of frescoes that cover the tasset have been attributed to the Maestro da Barberino – Orcagna’s collaborator – flanked by the young pupil Pietro Nelli. The creation, however, of the triumphal arch and the aisle had been entrusted to Spinello Aretino by Messer Benedetto, son of Nerozzo, in 1387.
Aretino, an artist of outstanding quality whose masterpieces can be admired in San Miniato al Monte in Florence, in the Palazzo Pubblico di Siena and in the Camposanto di Pisa, managed to embellish the oratory with frescoes of stunning elegance and liveliness of colors which, after long and careful restorations completed in 1998, finally returned to their original splendor.
Most of the frescoes that had been whitewashed with lime in the seventeenth century were later recovered. Unfortunately, however, the lower part of the paintings is lost forever because for a long time the small church served as a barn and chicken coop for the farmer who lived in the adjoining house.
The triptych by Agnolo Gaddi with the Madonna col bambino e i santi Andrea e Lorenzo (Madonna and Child and the Saints Andrea and Lorenzo) painted in 1390 which was on the altar and is now preserved in the Uffizi was recently replaced with a copy of the same size.
Massimo Casprini
Nella foto: Santa Caterina in carcere di Spinello Aretino (foto M. Casprini)
