Pietrasanta Cathedral
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The Cathedral of Pietrasanta (Italian: Duomo di Pietrasanta or Collegiata di San Martino) is a church in Pietrasanta, Tuscany, central Italy. It is first mentioned in 1223, and was enlarged in 1330.
[edit] Exterior
The façade is covered with white marble. Over the three portals are lunettes with scenes of the Life of Christ. On the right transept is another portal with St. John the Baptist, a 14th century work by Bonuccio Pardini. The coat of arms on the main façade are memories of the Genoese and Florentine dominations, but there is also one of Pope Leo X. The marble rose window is attributed to Riccomanno Riccomanni (14th century).
The 36 m-tall bell tower has a simple brickwork appearance, but was originally also to be covered with marble plates. It was finished in the late 15th-early 16th centuries by the Florentine architect Donato Benti. In the interior has a curious helicoidal staircase.
The baptistery (1786) was originally a 17th century oratory dedicated to St. Hyacinth. It contains two baptismal fonts from 1385 and 1612.
[edit] Interior
The church is on the Latin cross plan with a nave, two aisles and a transept. Much of the decoration dates from the reign of Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, who in 1627 commissioned the restoration of the Collegiata to Florentine artists, who provided large devotional altarpieces and sculptures. Artists include painters Matteo Rosselli, Francesco Curradi, Jacopo Vignali, Pietro Dandini, Bastiano Bitozzi, Jacopo Chiavistelli, and Alessandro Cominotti, and the sculptors Giovan Battista Stagi, Stagio Stagi and Ferdinando Tacca.
The marble pulpit is instead from 1508, by Benti and Lorenzo Stagi, while the walls and the ceiling were painted by Luigi Ademollo in 1823-1825. The dome was originally octagonal (1453), but was rebuilt on circular plan in 1820.
In the right transept chapel is the venerated relic of the Madonna del Sole ("Madonna of the Sun"), a painting from an anonymous Late Gothic artist, dated 1424.
