San Giovanni, Romanesque church in Campiglia Marittima, Italy
San Giovanni is a Romanesque church inside the cemetery of Campiglia Marittima. It has a Latin cross plan with a wooden trussed roof, following the model of Pisan Romanesque architecture. The facade portal has a carved architrave with scroll motifs and a pierced lunette under a two-coloured arch. The left portal's architrave, attributed to Maestro Matteo, shows a boar hunt.
The building first appears in a Papal document from 1075, though the current structure dates to the 12th century. This suggests that an earlier religious structure stood on the site before being rebuilt.
The architrave of the left portal, attributed to Maestro Matteo, who built the whole church, shows a boar hunt, perhaps Meleager hunting the Calydonian boar; it stands for Christ's victory over the devil. The main portal has a lintel with scroll motifs and a pierced lunette under a two-coloured arch.
The pieve stands inside the cemetery of Campiglia Marittima, so access follows the cemetery's opening times rather than a separate church schedule. The Sator square is on the upper left of the exterior wall, under the roof, and the carved architrave is on the left side portal; both are outside, so they can be examined without entering the building.
High on the left under the roof, the outer wall carries the Sator palindrome, its letters repeating SPOR EANT. The oldest known example of this square was buried by Vesuvius on 24 August 79 and unearthed in 1936 at Pompeii, on a column of the Palestra Grande.
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