Oratorio di San Giacinto

The Oratory of San Giacinto or Baptistery is a place of Catholic worship located in Pietrasanta, in the province of Lucca, in via Garibaldi, to the right of the collegiate church of San Martino. Built between 1604 and 1615, the building is commonly referred to as the Baptistery because there are two imposing baptismal fonts there, but until the 19th century it was the headquarters of the Company of the Blessed Sacrament. From 1777 to 1782 the oratory was totally renovated. With the suppression of the brotherhoods in 1786, ordered by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, the oratory passed to the Opera del Duomo which transferred the two baptismal fonts there. The oldest font (1389) has a hexagonal basin with allegorical depictions of six Virtues and is attributed to Bonuccio Pardini. The other font, a tabernacle, was entrusted to Donato Benti and Nicola Civitali in 1509 but remained unfinished; the cup with the elegant marine frieze was reused a century later by Fabrizio Pelliccia and Orazio Bergamini who created the foot and the temple roof (1612) completed with small bronze sculptures and the Redeemer by Felice Palma (1615). The only work remaining from the original seventeenth-century structure is the altarpiece by Filippo Martelli which represents a Eucharist and adoring angels (1636). In the 18th century, Giuseppe Maria Casstepoggi from Carrara sculpted a new altar, the balustrade and the stoups. The vault and walls are decorated with episodes from the Life of Christ and Mary by the Cremonese painter Pietro Cavatorta, restored in 1988. You can observe the central scene with the Glory of the Virgin, the remaining part of the architectural ruin, frescoed medallions with biblical scenes , fragments of the Triumph of the Blessed Sacrament in the apse basin and figures on the side walls and in the choir.