Discover Pieve di San Leolino, Panzano in Chianti

The pieve di San Leolino is a Catholic place of worship at Panzano in Chianti, a frazione of Greve in Chianti in the province of Florence, in the diocese of Fiesole.

It is recorded from 982, under the name San Leolino a Flacciano, in a parchment of the abbey of Passignano — though two sculptural fragments kept inside suggest the church has an origin older still. The present building goes back to the twelfth century, as its structural and stylistic characteristics show.

In the Middle Ages it was the head of a piviere. The church had great importance and fourteen suffragan churches depended on it, among them the one inside the castle of Panzano. In 1508 its patronage passed to the Florentine hospital of Santa Maria Nuova, and from the sixteenth century began the works of restoration and transformation that gave the church the external appearance still visible.

Since 1997 it has been lived in. The Comunità di San Leolino, born in Florence in 1986, occupies the pieve; it runs the Edizioni Feeria imprint and, since December 2017, also oversees the Certosa di Firenze. The address is Via S. Leolino 1, 50022 Panzano in Chianti.

The type is a Romanesque pieve on the basilican plan. Three naves, quadrangular piers built in bozze — rough blocks — of alberese, a scarsella closing the east end, and a covering of wooden trusses rather than vaults.

The east end is not original and the record says so plainly. The semicircular apse was demolished in the sixteenth century and replaced with the quadrangular scarsella standing now; the two minor apses are of more recent date and are an invention. Anyone reading the church from outside should know that before starting.

The portico is Cinquecento and so is the doorway. Built across the facade in the sixteenth century, with sandstone columns; the portal is pietra serena. Arenaria and pietra serena for the worked elements, alberese for the walls — the standard Chianti division of labour between stones.

The cloister is modest and legible. Reached by a door in the right wall, its portico roofed in wood on columns of brick, with the canonica rooms opening off the sides; their portals and windows place them in the sixteenth century.

The oratory beside it is a separate, later composition. The Compagnia del Santissimo Sacramento's small church, with a simple and dignified eighteenth-century facade: a portal with a broken pediment, the window above it, and the angles and the slopes of the roof all framed in pietra serena.

Alberese in rough blocks is the structural material. The piers dividing the three naves are pilastri quadrangolari in bozze di alberese — square piers of the local limestone, roughly squared rather than finely dressed. That is a parish church's budget, not a cathedral's.

Wooden trusses, not vaults. A trussed roof spans a wide nave cheaply and needs no buttressing; it is also why the interior reads as tall and plain.

The dressed stone is imported from a different quarry habit. Sandstone for the portico columns and pietra serena for the doorway — both carve where alberese will not.

The sixteenth century rebuilt the east end by demolition. Taking down a semicircular apse and squaring it off into a scarsella is a simplification, not an enlargement; the two minor apses added later are, in the record's own word, invented.

The cloister's columns are brick. Cheaper and faster than cut stone, carrying a timber roof — the same logic as the trusses next door.

And the 1942 restoration was a removal. The eighteenth-century plaster and the side altars came out; nothing Romanesque was added back, because what was wanted was already underneath. The early-1980s campaign relaid the floor, which is the one surface that could not simply be uncovered.

Who is the Maestro di Panzano?

Nobody knows, and that is the point. Bernard Berenson attributed a triptych here to an unidentified painter close to Barna da Siena and Bartolo di Fredi, datable to the end of the fourteenth century. With no name available, the hand was called after this village.

How old is the church?

It is recorded from 982 in a parchment of the abbey of Passignano, as San Leolino a Flacciano. The building standing now is twelfth-century on structural and stylistic grounds, and the slab under its altar is dated to the eighth or ninth century.

Can I go in?

No opening hours, Mass times or admission are published by anyone — the Comunità di San Leolino lives in the building and publishes only an address, an email and an events calendar. The dependable way in is one of its events.

Why is it on Panzano's page and not Greve's?

Because it is at Panzano. The encyclopaedia files it under Greve because Greve is the comune; Greve's page on this site points here.

Is the apse original?

No. The semicircular apse was demolished in the sixteenth century and replaced with a square scarsella, and the two minor apses are later and, in the record's own word, an invention.

What happened in 1942?

A restoration removed the eighteenth-century Baroque interior — the plastered walls and the side altars — and returned the church to its primitive Romanesque aspect. The floor was relaid in the early 1980s.

What else is inside?

A thirteenth-century dossale by Meliore di Jacopo, a triptych by Mariotto di Nardo at the high altar, a Baptism of Christ referred to Raffaellino del Garbo, a fifteenth-century Florentine panel, two glazed terracotta tabernacles from the workshop of Giovanni della Robbia commissioned by Leonardo Buonafede, and an eighteenth-century reliquary bust of Sant'Eufrosino.