Chiesa di Santa Croce

Beside the castle in the centre of Vinci, the parish church of Santa Croce preserves the stone font where Leonardo da Vinci was baptised in 1452. His grandfather recorded the baptism in a notarial book. The present neo-Renaissance church was rebuilt in the 1930s around this history.

Why it matters

The font is displayed in a baptistery chapel created for the fifth centenary of Leonardo’s birth in 1952. The church’s history reaches back to the castle settlement: a chapel known as the “cappella del Vincio” appears in records from 1132. The Guidi counts’ mid-thirteenth-century surrender to Florence describes the castle parish as standing within the walls.

What to notice

Near the entrance, the baptistery chapel surrounds the font with Cecco Bonanotte’s bronze and marble sculptural cycle, Il Battesimo di Leonardo, completed in 2010. A plaque reproduces the note by Leonardo’s grandfather, Ser Antonio, recording Leonardo’s birth at Anchiano on 15 April 1452 and baptism in this church the following day. The three-aisled nave has Corinthian columns and side chapels, including the Cappella della Santa Croce with a fifteenth-century wooden crucifix and relics of the Holy Cross. Paintings include Francesco Brina’s Nativity of the Virgin (1562), Matteo Rosselli’s Virgin of the Rosary, a Miracle of Saint Blaise attributed to Gaetano Piattoli, and an Adoration of the Magi by Pier Dandini.

Context and history

Medieval records mention the “cappella de Vincio” in 1132 and the “ecclesia S. Crucis de Vinci” in thirteenth-century tax lists under the pieve of Greti. The church also retains an older dedication to Saint Andrew, Vinci’s patron. It was elevated to a propositura in 1852. The present building resulted from a complete reconstruction between 1929 and 1935 under provost Bonfanti, to designs by architect Gullino. Its bell tower had been inaugurated in 1855. The 1952 baptistery and Bonanotte’s 2010 cycle are later additions centred on Leonardo’s baptism.