It is the oldest and the main of the churches that were located in the immediate vicinity of Vico, and is the only one to have been built outside the walls, without the canonical orientation with the entrance facing west. In fact, the facade faces one of the castle’s entrance doors, Porta Maccioni, which later became the Rocca door. The church was named for the first time in 934, but it can be understood from this document that it existed for some time.
THE FACADE AND THE EXTERIOR
The current construction is of the XII century. and it is a well-preserved example of a Romanesque-Pisan church characterized by a basilica plan with a single apse. The masonry is made of verrucana stone and the facade is divided into two orders superimposed by a horizontal frame. In the upper part, decorated with hanging arches, a mullioned window opens. The lower part, where three portals open, is enriched by half-columns that support hanging arches: the latter are surmounted by oculi and enclose rhombuses carved with geometric and plant motifs. In evidence, at the top of the left pilaster, a stone bas-relief, datable to the VIII-X century, probably represents an evangelical episode.
The southern side, in which a single door opens, has four narrow single lancet windows at the top, one of which is decorated with a vine-vine motif with leaves. Both the side and the elevation of the central nave have hanging arches that enclose carved stones and rest on corbels decorated with human faces, animal figures and naturalistic motifs in relief. Note a series of medieval inscriptions engraved in the lower part of the masonry which denounce the presence in ancient times of a cemetery around the church. The northern side is instead devoid of decorations as the structures of the cloister and the house of the parish priest had to rest on this. The extensions of the side aisles and the bell tower date back to the 18th century.
THE INTERIOR
The interior is divided into three naves with twelve granite columns with capitals of various shapes: the medieval ones are in pietra serena; the first, third and last on the left are in marble carved with acanthus leaves, the last two resting on fluted marble columns, and come from Roman buildings. Two pillars define the vast presbytery area where the main altar is located, rebuilt at the beginning of the twentieth century reusing ancient reliefs with plant and zoomorphic motifs, probably belonging to the early medieval church.
THE DEPOSITION OF THE CROSS (13th cent.)
In the apse there is the majestic wooden group of the Deposition, dating back to the first two decades of the thirteenth century and with evident assonances with the other Deposition present in the Province of Pisa, that of Volterra. It constitutes one of the rare examples of this type of sacred representation, once very widespread, the only one of which almost all the original figures are preserved: only the heads of the angels are restored, some parts of the San Giovanni and the chalice. There are also traces of the ancient polychrome of the clothes. The characters depicted are (from left to right): the sorrowful Madonna, John of Arimathea who collects the body of Christ, the Nicodemus who takes the nails off his feet and St. John holding the Gospel in his hand. In addition to being one of the few remaining specimens, it is one of the most unique, since the figure of Christ is represented in an unusual, strongly arched and in the act of falling, proof that the artist who created this work had enough autonomy to detach from what were the models
usual, that is, the Christ still nailed to the Cross, approaching more “Gothic” models, with greater attention to the curved and sinuous line, which replaces the straight line and the typical rigidity of Romanesque art.
THE FRESCOES (13th cent.)
The massive warty walls retain fragments of thirteenth-century frescoes, recently restored. They represent scenes from the Gospel, and testify to the custom of illustrating the Sacred Stories, to make them better understood by the most crude and illiterate faithful (Biblia Pauperum) i. The cycle begins on the wall of the right nave, where the scenes of the Annunciation, the Visitation and the Nativity are recognized; probably follows the episode with Herod ordering the massacre of the innocent. Above the narrative scenes there are decorative motifs with scrolls and alternating checkered squares; below, fake drapery decorations. On the counter-façade, two overlapping scenes are represented on the left: the Baptism of Christ is recognizable at the top, below St. George, the dragon and the princess; on the right the traces recovered from the restoration are not legible. On the wall of the right aisle two scenes have been restored: one depicts perhaps the Capture of Christ, the other the Pentecost. The whole cycle ended with the wooden deposition that put an end to the affair
