The church of San Martino is in Pontorme, a district of Empoli, outside the walls of the old castle. It was probably founded before the turn of the first millennium, as some early medieval finds suggest; the first documents are a bull of Pope Lucius III of 1183, which records it as dependent on the abbey of Spugna, and one of Celestine III of 1192, which places it under the pieve of Sant'Andrea in Empoli. In 1197 a peace treaty was signed inside the church. From the fourteenth century the patronage belonged to the Frescobaldi, whose coat of arms is on the façade.
What to see
The building, a single hall with an apse, shows two phases: an older one in pietra serena and a later one in brick. The gabled façade is topped by sawtooth brickwork and has a sandstone base with marble inserts; the doorway has a terracotta lunette and an arch band with zigzag decoration. On the right slope of the roof is the brick bell gable with two openings, and at its base a brick with a rare zigzag pattern with a lozenge inside a circle.
Inside are two small panels by Giovanni Toscani, dated to around 1410–1415, with male and female saints: they were part of a triptych commissioned by the Frescobaldi, as the coat of arms carved on the back shows. The centre of the triptych probably held the painted terracotta Madonna and Child, still in the church, whose attribution is debated: in the past to Michele da Firenze or Brunelleschi, more recently to Donatello. There is also a fifteenth-century fresco of Saints Sebastian and Roch attributed to Pier Francesco Fiorentino.
Visiting
Being close to the Arno, the church often flooded: in 1771 the foundations were rebuilt and in 1880 the floor had to be raised. In 1927 the architect Ezio Cerpi brought the church back to a strict Romanesque style. Opening and Mass times should be checked beforehand.
Our editors' tip
On the north side, in the base, a fragment of marble carved with interlace is set into the wall; a similar one is near the altar. Both belonged to church furnishings now lost.
