SAN GALGANO, Abbey of. - Galgano Guidotti, a noble knight of Chiusdino, who became a hermit, withdrew in prayer to the hill of Montesiepi, a deserted place on the river Merse, more than twenty miles from Siena, and there he died in 1181.
Shortly after his canonization (1185) a small church arose over his tomb, with a circular plan, covered by a dome, with a small apse and a portico in front. To the church was joined a small monastery inhabited by Cistercian monks who came from the abbey of Casamari. In the fourteenth century a sacristy was added, which was frescoed by Ambrogio Lorenzetti. In 1224 the monks began, at the foot of the hill of Montesiepi, the construction of a large church and a monastery, in the forms of that early Gothic, originating in Burgundy, which is called Cistercian. The construction of the buildings lasted throughout the century, under the direction of monk architects, probably French, but with the participation of Sienese craftsmen, whose manners are noticeable in those parts of the walls that are built in alternating bands of stone and brick and in other details, as, for example, in the windows of the chapter hall. These are double-arched: one of them has the upper arch and the two little arches of falcate form according to Pisan examples that reached Siena through the Valdelsa. The church has a Latin cross plan with three naves, divided by cruciform piers. The choir and the chapels of rectangular plan open onto the transept. The building was originally covered with ribbed cross vaults, which for the most part collapsed together with the bell tower toward the end of the eighteenth century, because of the neglect of the building on the part of the commendatory abbot of that time.
Even in the state of partial ruin in which it finds itself, the monument presents itself with a majestic and evocative appearance. Its architecture was of great importance for the development of Gothic forms in the Sienese territory in the thirteenth century, also because the monks of S. G. received from the Commune of Siena the task of superintending the continuation of the works of the Cathedral and of the hospital of S. Maria della Scala.
Of the monastery there remain, in their original forms, the chapter hall, the refectory, other rooms, some reassembled remains of the cloister, plus the small chapel of the cemetery.
Bibliography7 works
Raffaello Niccoli