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montemerano-chiesaSt George’s Church

The original nucleus of the church of San Giorgio was built in an area immediately outside the city walls probably still in the fourteenth century.

In fact, the owners of the Pieve di San Giorgio with the rectory of San Lorenzo are mentioned in the document dated 23 February 1382 with which Ranieri dei Baschi sold his fiefdom of Montemerano to the Republic of Siena. On the other hand in the Rationes
Decimarum, from 1296, where all the churches of the diocese of Sovana are mentioned, only the church of San Lorenzo is present, suggesting that San Giorgio had not yet arisen.
The apse and the transept must have been added by 1430, the date on which the church was reconsecrated by the bishop of Sovana, Antonio del Fede, as indicated by the inscription walled up on the facade. In the following decades the circuit of the walls was enlarged, in order to insert it inside them, works that ended around 1487.
The numerous frescoes that adorn the walls date back to the 15th and 16th centuries, while it is possible to hypothesize that starting from the end of the 16th century and then during the 17th century the church took on its current appearance, with the creation of the first altars along the side walls.
In 1711, in the report of the visit of Bishop Domenico della Ciaia we read that on the walls are still visible “very ancient and completely discolored paintings” and believing that they excessively darken the church, he orders that they be covered with a whitewash.
Between 1734 and 1763 the internal decoration of the sacred building was renewed with the creation of numerous stuccoes, including the heavy drapery with angels that covered the frescoes depicting the Last Judgment on the triumphal arch.
In 1763 the chapel of the Madonna del Buonconsiglio was built, adjacent to the left nave of the church, at the expense of the archpriest Giovan Battista Donati, then renovated in 1794.
In the same 1794 the choir was also built, where the organ was placed. To place the instrument in the center of the space, the primitive rose window was closed and two side windows were opened. The construction of the Chapel of the Immaculate Conception dates back to the 19th century, along the right side of the church, whose altar was dedicated in 1870 to celebrate the First Vatican Council.
In the 1960s the church was in very poor condition. A series of repair, restoration and consolidation works then began which would continue for many years. Among other works, the two windows opened at the end of the 18th century were closed and the original central opening reopened and all the frescoes covered by the eighteenth-century whitewashing were brought to light.

TO BE SEEN :

The church of San Giorgio is a real treasure chest for a collection of works of art among the most precious in the entire province of Grosseto. The most important is certainly the polyptych signed by Sano di Pietro, dated 1458, depicting the Madonna and Child between Saints Peter, George, Lorenzo and Antonio da Padova, certainly created specifically for this church and placed on the main altar until beginning of the 18th century, a position which it has only recently recovered.
Equally valuable is the panel known as the Madonna della Gattaiola, so called due to the hole at the bottom, which local tradition has it made by a parish priest, in the work of art reused as a door, to allow his cat to enter; it is possible that it was originally the right door of an organ or a wardrobe which must have had an announcing angel in the left door; the work, datable to the mid-fifteenth century, can be attributed to the hand of an anonymous master
to whom three other paintings depicting the Madonna are attributed and which critics have named “Maestro di Montemerano”.
Lorenzo di Pietro, known as Vecchietta, or his school, are instead responsible for two wooden works of considerable interest: a St. Peter in the round (1463-1470), coming from a sacred building dedicated to the saint in the Montemerano countryside, but in San Giorgio at least from 1711, and the relief depicting the Assumption of the Virgin (1455-1465), coming from the chapel of the oratory of the same name, once located next to the church of San Lorenzo, from which also comes a processional panel with the Madonna Assunta attributed to the painter Sienese Pilgrim by Mariano Rossini (1450ca).
Equally important are the numerous frescoes that cover the walls, painted at different times between the 15th and 16th centuries. Of note: the stories of Christ’s childhood present in the presbytery, to be attributed to painters from the Umbrian-Sienese environment of the early 16th century; the Last Judgment, damaged by the construction of eighteenth-century stuccoes, the work of an anonymous Tuscan painter from the second half of the fifteenth century, placed on the sides of the entrance arch to the presbytery. Of a certain narrative interest, although the work of a modest local artist, is the legend of Saint George, which is narrated in the upper band of the right wall, dated 1491: in the first scene we see the fully armed Saint wounding the dragon in front of of the princess, with a lagoon landscape in the background; then the wounded dragon is carried inside the city walls by princess che
it almost seems like he’s wearing it on a leash; the following scene is incomplete, but San Giorgio is seen being helped to don a black robe inside the city, which turns out to be Montemerano, with its church and walls in the background, while some inhabitants are pulling down an idol on top of a column (according to the Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine, George promises to give the coup de grace to the dragon only if the inhabitants convert to Christianity); finally, in the last scene we see the decapitated dragon being dragged out of the city by teams of oxen.

HOW TO REACH IT :

The church is located immediately inside the walls of Montemerano

IN THE SAME AREA YOU CAN ALSO VISIT:

Historic center of Montemerano

IF YOU ENJOYED THE CHURCH OF SAN GIORGIO YOU CAN ALSO VISIT:

churches of San Giovanni, San Martino and SS.ma Annunziata in Magliano (33 km); church of San Nicola in Capalbio (34 km); church of San Flaviano in Montefiascone (60 km).