Oratory of Santa Lucia

A visit of extreme interest is that to Corfecciano-Urbana estate , which, in addition to including a visit to the cellars, is of particular interest for the beautiful Oratory that surmounts a hill dense with cypresses and flanks the villa, where we rely on the art historian Antonio Paolucci for the description of the frescoes.

“The value of the oratory of Urbana… relies on the internal pictorial decoration, consisting of a series of frescoes that occupy the entire apse area and part of the walls of the presbytery. On the back wall, divided into three parts by arched frames, the frescoes depict in the center the Virgin enthroned between San Nicola and a martyr saint who seems to be able to identify in San Miniato; on the sides San Bartolomeo and Santa Lucia. On the two short walls of the presbytery, within similar rounded cornices, the opposing images of the thaumaturgical saints Rocco and Sebastiano appear. Of the paintings, the archaic simplicity of the composition strikes at first sight, openly modulated on the ancient triptych score. Which, together with the iconic presentation of the sacred characters, severely dislocated in their niches, provided with all their iconographic attributes exhibited with meticulous diligence, does not fail to surprise since they are works that even the less trained eye would not hesitate to place on the expiration of the XVI century. Yet he is not, as one might think, a late artist, far from the centers of culture, who continues to paint in the style of 50 or 80 years before, mythical and solemn thaumaturgic saints for the devotion of the peasants. Or, at least, if it is archaism, it certainly does not depend on cultural disinformation or artisan conservatism, based, if anything, on very sophisticated ideal motivations. Because these frescoes are of a qualitative level far from mediocrity and, above all, they are the sure work of Gregorio Pagani, a painter so little of a rearguard that he is defined as nothing less than the “pioneer of the Florentine Baroque”.