The Robbiane of Badia Tedalda

The inhabited center of Badia Tedalda has developed around the church of San Michele Arcangelo, an ancient abbey with a gabled façade preceded by a singular forepart, a small loggia with three arches on the front and two arches on the short sides. In the church that dominates the Valmarecchia from the hill, there are 5 splendid glazed terracottas of Santi and Benedetto Buglioni, students in the Della Robbia workshop, commissioned by the bishop Leonardo Bonafede: three large altarpieces, a refined ciborium, with white angels and cherubs highlighted in yellow and silhouetted on slender blue backgrounds, and two bas-relief figures, depicting the announced Virgin and the Archangel Gabriel. The most important is certainly the central altarpiece, depicting the Madonna and Child among the saints Leonardo, Michele, Arcangelo and Benedetto. The double panel in the lower frame of the altarpiece of the main altar, with its rampant bull surmounted by a bishop's miter, recalls its commission. The heraldic panels laterally close the predella, which also includes the Pietà, in the center, and a story of the life of saints Leonardo and Girolamo. These appear in the central compartment of the altarpiece, where the Virgin, seated on a throne with the Child, is also flanked by the Archangel Michael and St. Benedict. On the right altar there is an altarpiece with the Annunciation and Saints Sebastian, Julian and Antonio Abate. On the left altar, instead, is depicted the Madonna who gives the girdle to St. Thomas. Inside the church there are also the Tabernacle for the Eucharist and two figures of Angels, of which the original location is unknown. Other Della Robbia works can be found in the church of San Tommaso in Monte Botolino (Incredulity of Saint Thomas) and in that of Saints Peter and Paul in Fresciano (Jesus who hands over the keys to Paradise in Saint Peter's).