Battistero di San Giovanni

Volterra's Baptistery of San Giovanni is an octagonal building facing the cathedral on Piazza San Giovanni. Its striped facade and successive baptismal fonts join medieval architecture with later sculptural commissions.

Why it matters

The baptistery gives a separate architectural setting to entry into the Christian community. The older and newer fonts show how liturgical furnishings changed within a building whose institutional history reaches back before the surviving exterior.

What to notice

White and dark stone bands articulate the facade. Carved heads and the inscription dated 1283 mark the portal area. Inside, Sansovino's marble font of 1505 includes the Baptism of Christ and figures of virtues. Giovanni Vaccà's later basin contrasts with it, while the altar and Niccolò Cercignani's Ascension add other periods to the interior.

Context and history

A baptismal church of San Giovanni is documented in 989. The present form developed through thirteenth-century work and subsequent alteration. Eighteenth-century patronage included the basin commissioned in 1757 by Francesco Salvatico Guidi and the altar of 1760 associated with Francesco Gaetano Incontri. Cercignani's painting, dated 1591, was brought here in 1764, adding an earlier artwork to that later setting.