Church Santo Spirito - Siena

The Santo Spirito is a Renaissance-style Roman Catholic church in Piazza Santo Spirito.
It was built in the 14th century by the Silvestrines and then passed into the hands of the Vallombrosians. Around the middle of the 15th century, it became the property of the Dominican friars, who largely rebuilt it between 1498 and 1530. The church then took its present form. The monastic order was abolished during the revolution in 1848 and the buildings were transformed into a prison. Afterwards the church was returned to the diocese of Siena and used again as a church.
The church, built in brick, has a gable embellished with a beautiful Renaissance portal attributed to Baldassarre Peruzzi and dated to 1519. The interior, also in Renaissance style, has only one nave with numerous side chapels, four on each side. The transept is slightly wider than the nave and there is a deep choir space closed with an apse. The drum-shaped dome is attributed to Giacomo Cozzarelli (1508).
Numerous works of art have been preserved in the church. Important are the frescoes from 1530 by Giovanni Antonio Bazzi, also known as Il Sodoma, of Saint James of Compostela defeating the Moors. They are located in the Spanish Chapel, the first chapel on the right. In the same chapel is a rare painted terracotta nativity scene by Ambrogio della Robbia (1504), son of the much better known Andrea Della Robbia. In the second chapel on the right is a painted wooden statue of Saint Vincenz Ferrer by Giacomo Cozzarelli. The third chapel housed the Coronation of the Virgin by Domenico Beccafumi, but it has been transferred to the Pinacoteca Nazionale. Today the 17th-century painting by Deifebo Burbarini depicting Saint Bernardo Tolomei in front of the cross hangs there.

In the first chapel on the left is the Assumption of Saint Francis and Catherine of Siena, attributed to Giacomo Pacchiarotti (1509) and in the second chapel is a wooden statue of Catherine of Siena perhaps by Cozzarelli. In the third chapel one can admire the Coronation of the Virgin by Girolamo del Pacchia (1512). The work is flanked by terracotta statues of Mary Magdalene and Jerome of Stridon from the early sixteenth century and attributed to Giacomo Cozzarelli. In the same chapel we find a cross painted by Luca di Tommè (second half of the 14th century).

In the right transept is the altarpiece with the miracle of Hyacinthus of Poland by Francesco Vanni (before 1596). One can also find the vibrant frescoes painted by his half-brother Ventura Salimbeni depicting Hyacinthus healing a blind boy (left) and Hyacinthus walking on the water (right). In the left transept is the seventeenth-century altarpiece by Astolfo Petrazzi with a Madonna with saints.

On the pillars on the sides of the main altar are Saint Dominic, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Siena by Rutilio Manetti and in the apse, the Feast of Pentecost by Giuseppe Nicola Nasini.

In the sacristy, which used to be part of the monastery, is a beautiful fresco from 1516 by Fra Paolino da Pistoia.

Willem Vandenameele