San Zio

San Zio is a deformation of the saint’s name San Sentio. This is the name with which the small church located near Cerreto was mentioned for the first time, in the year 780. In 1014, a small settlement had already formed around the church, the villa of S. Sensio. The small community depended on the parish of Cellere, the ancient parish church of Cerreto. From the end of the 11th century, the presence of the Counts Guidi in this area became the cornerstone of the system of power: in 1086 Count Guido IV was in Cerreto, in his castle, with his wife Ermellina. The small village of S. Sentio with its church certainly became part of the dependencies of the great noble family. There was some proof of this at the time of the sale of the Valdarno properties of the Counts Guidi to the city of Florence. In the deed of sale, it was noted that the eccelsia di Sentio—so we read—was sold together with the shares of the castle of Cerreto. The church and the community of Sentio belonged, therefore, to the castle district of Cerreto. Subsequently, since the end of the 13th century, the church has been mentioned with the twofold title of San Senzio and Sant'Andrea.

This is the name of the place where the da Vinci family owned some assets around Cerreto: in the registry for the year 1498, Ser Piero, Leonardo's father, claimed to own a Sanzio, in the municipality of Vinci, a house and several plots of land in the localities called a Riminutoli and in Creti. In the late 16th century, the area around the church of San Zio appeared as the typical sharecropping landscape, a countryside dotted with villas, farmhouses, and service outbuildings. This is the rural landscape of the surroundings of Cerreto Guidi evoked when we observe the map of the Capitani di Parte Guelfa showing the territory of the community of San Zio. Near the church there are at least two rustic complexes indicated as being property of the Medici. From 1564, in fact, Cosimo I and his son Francesco began a series of purchases in the territory of Cerreto and in the castle, where the Medici villa of Cerreto Guidi would be built. In 1567, various purchases of land were documented in the community of San Zio, where between 1570 and 1574 new rustic buildings were constructed by the Grand Duke. The three houses with dovecotes we can see on the map of the Capitani di Parte Guelfa (1580-95), marked with the names Monte aguto de Medici, Callaiole de Medici, and La confessione de Medici, correspond to the buildings desired by the Grand Duke in his newly acquired farms at Cerreto.

In the 16th century map, the church of San Zio appears as a single room with a gabled roof. The facade is pierced by a circular window, an oculus, and on the top of the tympanum a cross has been placed. A bell gable rises from the right side of the roof, positioned toward the back. The church is depicted in an elevated position on a circular-shaped balcony surrounded by trees. This is how Leonardo da Vinci must have seen it, very similar to the current appearance of the church of San Bartolomeo a Streda. The present church of San Zio, on the other hand, appears in late architectural forms, pressed between the buildings rising on both sides, leaving visible only the circular-shaped apse portion and the façade. While the volume of the building could have belonged to the church as seen by Leonardo, the façade showing today is the result of a later reconstruction, after which the bell gable must also have been moved, positioned on the façade. The church, nonetheless, overlooks the picturesque landscape of the Arno valley, the same view that Leonardo must have seen when his family frequented the countryside around the church of San Zio.