Grifoni Palace was built according to  the project of Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo. The construction was entrusted to Ugolino Grifoni, who was the first man who brought Florentine artists to San Miniato. The palace was built on an already constructed area in the  Middle Ages, but still belonging to this lineage. According to a historical research on the wall structures, it was demolished and rebuilt on the ruins.

The construction of Grifoni Palace represents a revolution for San Miniato because it interrupts the circuit of the Frederician walls.

Another important feature of the building is its entrance which is created to provide the building with a prospective vision and a monumental aspect. Baccio d’Agnolo used exposed bricks, a typical tradition of the buildings in San Miniato. The palace was finished at the end of 1563.

It took so long because of the very high costs that often caused the suspension of the work. They still managed to continue thanks to Cosimo I ‘s permission to use the materials of the old walls. Around 1573, Ugolino abandoned his task and Bartolomeo Ammannati completed the building. A first study for the central part of the façade and the palace was also attributed to him.

In the seventeenth century Grifoni Palace became the residence of the Grand Duchess Maria Maddalena of Austria. The building is now the headquarters of the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di San Miniato. 

On 21 July 1944 the Cassa di Risparmio and half of the Grifoni  Palace were damaged during the Second World War, but they were restored afterwards, at the end of the ‘90s.

The Grifoni Palace is a landmark of San Miniato. It was built between 1551 and 1573 by Giuliano di Baccio d’Agnolo, an architect and a sculptor from Florence and whose works may have been inspired by some drawings by Michelangelo Buonarroti. The Grifoni Palace is dedicated to Ugolino Grifoni, member of an influential family from San Miniato. He decided to rebuild his palace during the 16th century which saw the reconstruction of the aristocratic dwellings of the town. To do so, he even modified the layout of San Miniato and introduced a square opposite the palace in place of the walls of the door of Ser Ridolfo. The outcome was so impressive that even Vasari mentions it in his essay about well-known painters, sculptors and architects. 

The palace featured walls of rough bricks and Florentine pietra serena. The central door, which allowed the passage of carriages, is surrounded by bluish-grey rusticated Ashlar stones. The emblem of the family stands out above and two grated gable windows are at the sides. The facade also has two other rectangular windows on both sides. 

The first floor has seven round arched windows. The upper floor has an open Loggia with columns of Tuscan order which one can enjoy a pleasant view of the valley and originally served as a location for drying fruits and vegetables. Inside the palace, a large Michelangelo-style wall with stone columns leads to the courtyard, which divides the two wings of the palace and through which rooms on both sides can receive sunlight. On the ground floor is the Maria Maddalena d’Austria’s hall, with a coffered ceiling and a large pietra serena fireplace. The surfaces are in cotto. There was also a chapel, which was destroyed during the war in 1944.

A stone staircase with low steps leads to the first floor, where there are rooms with coffered ceilings and stone floors. Underground, there are cellars, storerooms and an olive oil mill, which were built for the working life of the palace.

The oil painting on canvas represents the Spanish noblewoman Lucretia Borgia, daughter of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia). She was one of the most controversial women of the Italian Renaissance and is here shown in the act of extracting poison from a handbag and planning to pour it into a golden vase on the table.

Lucretia was born in 1480 in Subiaco and died in Ferrara in 1519. Here she was granted the duchess status, thanks to the third marriage with the duke Ercole d’Este. She was endowed with both an extraordinary beauty and vivid intelligence so she played a crucial political and patron role. At the age of 39, birth giving complications led her to death.

Lucretia has been long considered a sort of  femme fatale, mostly during the ‘800s: unscrupulous in political strategies, a fascinating charmer, a serial poisoner and even an incestuous lover. In fact, Giovanni Sforza, her first husband, accused Lucretia, his young wife (she was only 13 by then), of having a love affair with her brother, Cesare. Probably this accusation was moved as a retaliation against the disgraceful offences Giovanni Sforza had received from the Borgia family, in order to convince him to divorce Lucretia. Her own family demanded that marriage to end and use Lucretia as a bargaining chip in a new and more advantageous dynastic marriage.

This painting represents Lucretia in a femme fatale version, as outlined in 1833 by Victor Hugo in the homonymous tragedy, next set to music by Gaetano Donizetti.

The painting, undated (1858), was shown at the First National Exposition in Florence (Stazione Leopolda), which was inaugurated by King Vittorio Emanuele II in 1861, on September 15th, six months right after the Reign of Italy unification. 

The oil painting on canvas was painted by Giovan Battista Naldini, a Florentine painter who was a student of Pontormo and collaborated with Giorgio Vasari, around the mid- 16th Century.

Some of his important works are exhibited in Florence, in Palazzo Vecchio, besides some winged altarpieces exhibited in the Basilica of Santa Croce and in Santa Maria Novella. Naldini tied his style to the dictations of the counter-reformation which caused strong limitations to art of the Renaissance and embraced virtuous and controlled subjects and expressive forms of art.

The canvas depicts Saint Benedict from Norcia. He lived between the end of the 5th century and the beginning of the 6° century A.D. : the saint is old, with a long beard, his face is hollowed by a strict ascetic life. He wears a heavy white dress with a cowl and holds a book probably containing the monastic rule, a bundle of branches as a symbol of strictness and penitence.

Saint Benedict from Norcia is one of the European patrons. He founded the Benedictine monastic order and established the famous Monastic rule and the motto “Ora et Labora”, which regulated every moment of the monastery life.

He encouraged the foundation of numerous abbeys such as the Montecassino abbey and Subiaco abbey. The dress of Benedictine monks is black although originally it was white, as represented in the painting. It actually changed colour only in the 20th century to distinguish this order from the Cistercians, whose monastic rule was established in France, in the Citeaux abbey in 1098.

Rinaldo and Armida is an oil on canvas painting created by Annibale Gatti, a painter who was originally from the northern Italian town of Forli but lived and worked in Tuscany. He was one of the greatest painters in post-unification Italy and painted several historical-religious frescoes in important buildings of the upper middle classes in Tuscany between the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, namely those in Palazzo Pitti and Villa Stibbert in Florence, Villa Mimbelli in Leghorn, the Cathedral in San Miniato and in the Theatre Verdi in Pisa.

Annibale Gatti attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He was a student of the Italian Neoclassical painter Giuseppe Bezzuoli and a fellow student of one of the most important members of the group of painters known as the Macchiaoli, Giovanni Fattori.

The scene of Rinaldo and Armida shown in this painting is inspired by the poem The Liberation of Jerusalem published in 1581 by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso.

The Liberation of Jerusalem tells a version of the exploits of the Christian crusaders who had left their lands to free the holy sepulchre in Jerusalem, during the first crusade in 1099.

The sorceress Armida, engaged by the forces of evil, reached the crusade camp with the pretext of asking for help. In fact, she wanted to distract the warriors from the battle.

However, during the preparation of the magic something went wrong, and Armida became a victim of her own magic spell. Both her and Rinaldo fell in love. The two lovers navigated past the Columns of Hercules to the Islands of the Blessed in the middle of the ocean, where Rinaldo and Armida stopped to live in a castle surrounded by a garden of eternal delights.

The tranquillity between the two lovers vanished with the arrival of two crusaders who convinced Rinaldo to look at himself in a sparkling mirror where the Christian hero saw himself as weak. The image of his degradation and the harsh reproaches of his fellows woke him up from his dream and the hero came back to himself and decided to leave the magical garden and his love Armida. She

implored him to stay there, but all her efforts were vain. The young girl remained alone and desperate on the beach of the island.

During the final battle of the poem in which Rinaldo killed the leader of the Saracens the two former lovers met again: Armida was greedy for revenge and wanted to kill him, but love is stronger than resentment. She felt she was forced to escape and commit suicide. Rinaldo sympathized with the pains of Armida. He discouraged her from using violence against herself, and reconciled with her, convincing her to become Christian, which brought her peace.

The painting is a tondo with an elegant and original frame, dating from the second half of the 15th century. Here, the virgin Mary is holding Jesus and the infant Saint John the Baptist in her arms. The three holy figures stand in front of a golden background which is a symbol of the spiritual dimension of the scene. Jesus is holding an orb and cross (Globus Cruciger) in his left hand. The orb and cross has been a Christian symbol of supremacy over the world since as early as the fifth century. Saint John is holding a long and thin rod, with an elegant three-foiled cross.

The shape and the subject recall typical Florentine birth trays, called desco da parto. They were rounded thick paintings on both sides which were offered as a gift to the new mothers of wealthy families during the Renaissance. 

The painted tray is an evolution of the tray in metal or ceramic which was used to take food to the mother in order that she could eat comfortably without getting out of bed.

In line with its purpose, the Renaissance dining table often represents the Madonna with child and the infant cousin Saint John in the celestial atmosphere of their childhood. There are important examples of dining tables by great painters of the 15th century. There was even an example of a tray which was given during a wedding to wish the birth of a child, called desco da nozze.

The Banquet of Herod is an oil on canvas painting by Pier Dandini, one of the most active Florentine painters of the Baroque period during the second half of the 17th century. Dandini completed other important works of art in Florence and in Tuscany, such as the frescoes in Palazzo Corsini and in the Villa La Petraia in Florence, those for the church of Santa Caterina of Alessandria in Pisa. Another series of canvases by Pier Dandini called Four Seasons is in the building of the lower house of the Italian Parliament Palazzo Montecitorio in Rome.

The Banquet of Herod is based on the sad story of Saint John the Baptist from the Gospel of Mark. The episode of Saint John the Baptist’s murder is also narrated by the historian Giuseppe Flavio in his book Jewish Antiquities, written a few years later.

On the day of his birthday, Herod Antipas, king of Galilea, organized a big feast, and Herodias (who he had fallen in love with) and his daughter Salome were there.

Herodias was the wife of Herod’s brother. A beautiful girl was born from their union. Herod and Herodias were in a relationship, but the biblical law was clear: “If a man marries his brother his wife, it is an act of impurity”. John the Baptist condemned the scandalous behaviour of Herodias and was imprisoned by Herod, who didn’t mean to kill him because he was afraid of an insurrection.

During the banquet, the young and seductive daughter of Herodias, Salome performed a dance called “Dance of the Seven Veils” that so pleased Herod that he offered to grant any wish she desired. Prompted by her mother, Salome asked for John’s head, which was delivered on a plate, as the painting shows.

Cristiano Banti is the author of the oil painting on canvas "Interior of Church". It was painted  around 1860. 

We don’t have exact information on its meaning but according to its setting and the costumes of the characters it evokes the Renaissance. 

Cristiano Banti was born in a humble family in Santa Croce sull’Arno in 1842. He was last born of the seven children. Once he became an adult, he was one of the most influential Italian painters of his time and he belonged to the Tuscan Macchiaioli artistic movement. 

Nonetheless he rarely exhibited his paintings, probably because of his demanding self-discipline. Despite this, he spent the last twenty years of his life in a villa in Montemurlo, where he hosted several artist friends in financial difficulties and bought their works of art to support them. Besides, he often travelled to France and England.

This was made possible thanks to the inheritance he received from marquise Maria Ottavia Vettori, a noblewoman 18 years older than him, owner of lands and villas. She owned Palazzo Vettori (the library of Santa Croce sull’Arno nowadays) and Villa of Poggio Adorno in Castelfranco di Sotto district.

It is thought that the marquise was Cristiano Banti's mother, which would explain the reason he received a significant part of the inheritance.

San Miniato Over Time is one of the most recent paintings in this building and one of the most  important works of Dilvo Lotti, who was born in 1914 in San Miniato, where he lived and worked most of his life and his career as a painter. Dilvo Lotti was an exponent of European Expressionism in the 20th century, and he didn’t abandon this style even in his religious paintings.

San Miniato Over Time was painted for the homonymous exhibition organized by Dilvo Lotti himself in 1985. The painting is full of autobiographical symbols: five characters, three on the left (the painter is between two girls, one is the painter’s wife Giuseppina) and two on the right (with wine and cards).

In the centre, there is a richly laid table in the background of San Miniato. The atmosphere is joyful, and the colours are bright, although contrasting. On the table there is an hourglass, which is a symbol of the passage of time, a moneybox and work tools. There is also some fruit, some grapes, a pomegranate, and some apples. The painting also shows some other symbolic objects, such as a white dove and a kite.

Dilvo Lotti is remembered for other contributions. He started a museum of religious art in San Miniato called Museo di Arte Sacra, and contributed to the development of the foundation which organises theatrical plays Istituto del Dramma Popolare. He also invented the annual Festival of Kites and wrote some important books on the history of San Miniato. He is considered one of the major 20th-century intellectuals from San Miniato.

After his death in 2009 and the death of his wife in 2015, their house in Via Maioli became a museum which contains artworks and a lot of the painter’s belongings.

Ludovico Cardi, so called Il Cigoli, was born in a small district in San Miniato, called Cigoli. He was one of the main exponents of Italian religious art. 

In this painting we can admire a large canvas depicting the biblical episode in which the Canaanites army was destroyed by the Israelites. 

Sisara was the only survivor and took refuge in the young Giaele’s tent. He drank and fell asleep. Giaele took a long nail and a hammer and nailed his head down to earth. He thus passed away from sleeping to death.

When the Israelites commander, Barak, arrived at the tent, the woman showed him the dead body of the enemy.

Giaele’s face appears calm, as if doing a usual everyday activity and no effort is perceived in the attempt to strike a decisive blow and violence. Besides, the commander Sisara lays down in a quite unnatural position.

The painting shows a rich setting which includes clothes and scattered objects recalling late ‘500 Venetian pictorial settings.

Il Cigoli was a fellow student and the best Galileo Galilei’ s friend. They exchanged many letters during their studies in Florence, in which they discussed art and science issues.

During this correspondence Il Cigoli shows his passion for geometry, science and maths. In a letter of the hot summer of 1610 the painter finds himself in Rome, decorating one of the domes of Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica. He wrote to Galileo, that he had already used twenty six times the model of the telescope and sent him back detailed drawings of his observations. The prototype of the telescope will be later perfected by Galileo. 

In the background, we can admire a rural landscape enriched by a classical style building.

In the foreground, there are two female figures: Saint Martina on the left and the Virgin Mary showing the Infant Jesus to the young saint.

The Infant Jesus holds a crown of leaves and small flowers in His right hand and He is offering them to Saint Martina . 

The Catholic Church notes Saint Martina as a Christian martyr who lived in Rome in the 3rd century, during the persecution of the Christian people in the Roman Empire. 

Saint Martina went through a series of tortures after confessing her faith. She was led in front of three pagan temples, and asked to worship the Gods those temples were dedicated to. As soon as she passed by, the buildings collapsed. She was, then, led in front of a fierce lion which became docile and sat at her feet. Therefore, her torture led to no pain, her tormentors was left nothing else but to decapitate her.

The Tuscan painter must have loved this topic very much as he painted it many times.

The reason why Pietro da Cortona venerated the Saint so much must be sought in the history of  the  church dedicated to Saint Martina, which is located  in the heart of the Roman Forum, in front of Settimio Severo Arch in Rome.

That small Mediaeval church was donated by the Pope to the famous Academy of Saint Luke, which was composed of great Roman artists. The church was in poor condition but no artist in Rome could renovate it because they did not have enough money. 

Pietro da Cortona was the Prince of the Academy of Saint Luke during those years and he asked the Pope to place his family tomb inside that church. During the excavations he discovered the tomb of the ancient martyr Martina, whose name was engraved on a terracotta slab, under the altar. 

In order to guarantee the Saint a worthy burial, Pope Urban VIII was forced to finance the entire reconstruction of the church. From that moment on, the church became the Church of the Saints Martina and Luke and was designed by Pietro da Cortona himself. Throughout his life, Pietro da Cortona considered the Church of the Saints Martina and Luke to be his "own" church and managed that after his death the church of the Roman artists could receive a constant income for the future reconstruction.

The author of these two paintings was Giuseppe Melani, a painter from Pisa, who worked on them probably between 1741 and 1746. These oil paintings on canvas were commissioned by Orazio Sansedoni, the owner of the most remarkable private buildings which overlooked Piazza del Campo, in Siena. Palazzo Sansedoni actually presents a bricky curvilinear facade which drives along the square’s shape and sets right in front of Palazzo Pubblico.

The painter, Giuseppe Melani and his brother Francesco had already frescoed many rooms of the noble floor of the Palazzo and were still in touch with the powerful and rich owner of the building: Orazio Sansedoni was actually one of the most important officials of Granducato of Tuscany under the regency of Francesco Stefano di Lorena, a few years after the extinction of the Medicean dynasty and the sequent government of the imperial family of Habsburg.

The paintings were commissioned to Melani in 1739 to decorate the entrance doors of the reception hall of the Palazzo. Sansedoni wanted them to look more noble and underline the triumphal position of the new grand dukes of Tuscany. As a matter of fact, some imperial senior officials were about to be guests of the Palazzo. The hall was thus decorated with the most precious paintings in possession and the ones of Melani were the last of this collection, in 1746.

The first painting represents Bacchus and Ariadne on the left, sitting under a tree whose fronds are covered by a large red drape. Ariadne, the daughter of the king of Crete, was abandoned by Theseus in a small Greek island, despite helping him flee from the labyrinth after facing Minotaur. 

Bacchus heard her weeping, he fell in love with her and asked her to marry him. In this painting the two witness a sacrifice in honour of the goddess Venus and ask for her favours to their union. The statue of Venus stands right in the middle of the painting. She holds the bone of contention received from Paris as an attribute to her insurmountable beauty. 

The second painting as well represents the scene of a sacrifice: Iphigenia, the daughter of king Agamemnon, leader of the Greek fleet in the war of Troy, is offered as a sacrifice on the altar of the goddess Artemi to guarantee the success of the long lasting challenge.

Agamemnon is sitting in the foreground, Ulisses overlooks him with compassion. The king regrets his offences to the vindictive goddess, he feels powerless in front of his daughter’s destiny and hides his face behind a blue drape to avoid assisting to his daughter’s death.

The painting is a portrait of a lyric singer, as we can grasp from the score that she is holding in her hands. The portrait was made by Antonio Puccinelli whose other painting with Lucrezia Borgia can be seen in the entrance hall of the building.

The young woman is sitting in front of us, with her junoesque presence. Her head is posed in a three quarters view and her gaze is elsewhere. Her pose strikes the viewer as dignified and elegant.

The red and the white roses which decorate her head in her hair on the right ear along with the green leaves are a symbolic allusion of the Italian flag, and clear references to the period leading to the unification of Italy and its values.

An oval-brooch cameo closes the neckline of the dress on the woman’s chest. It shows The Allegory of Wedding, a sculpture by Antonio Canova (1757-1822), that the Neoclassical sculptor made in 1817 for the wedding of Francis I Emperor of Austria.

This work was allegedly painted in an intermediate phase of Puccinelli’s portraiture around 1860 just before the unification of Italy.