Fonte di Piazza del Grano

The fountain was built in the XV century. It is a work by Antonio di Paolo Chini, master of stone, who came from Lucca but preferred to be called “from Siena” (“Opus Antonii Ghini de Senis-MCCCCLX) as we read in the inscription of the column made in the shape of a jug, over the Asciano’s coat of arms. The artist knew Domenico di Bartolo, if in the shapes of the graffito on the floor of the Cathedral of Lucca, he imitated the plastic sense of the painter of Asciano. He will also work in Grosseto, where, in the Cathedral it is kept one of his tabernacles of 1474. For the execution of the fountain in Piazza del Grano, Antonio Ghini was charged by Vieri di Nanni and Pietro di Fabiano Palmieri, who were podesta of Asciano, respectively in 1471 and 1472: their coat of arms in the near palace reports the dates; on the base of the jug there are engraved their coat of arms, which represents the three dress swords of Vieri and the wild boar of that of Palmieri (in the tondo of a panel of the cup there is, on the contrary, the image of a woman, maybe in memory of the benefactress Bartolomea de’ Tolomei). So the date MCCCCLX...which is incomplete because of the chipping of the corner, we can read as 1471 or 1472. With the figures engraved in the panels of the basin, the sienese purchaser podestas, wanted to remember to Asciano the proof and the promises of faithfulness made to “mother” Siena; but the author went beyond the politic warnings to create an admirable work of art. Today, it is particularly important to admire the fountain, which has been restored in 1986 by the Monuments and Fine Arts service.