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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
About half an hour's drive south of Florence lies the commune of Impruneta, a quiet town that barely rates a mention in tourist guidebooks. Since Impruneta has a long history of providing the clay used in Renaissance ceramic sculpture, the local authorities are doing their best to publicize their town by employing modern technology. The town's bilingual Web site offers links to nearby agriturismo farms and olive oil producers, a report on “the traceability of Impruneta terra-cotta,” advertisements for nearby hotels and B&Bs, videos on the use of terra cotta, a map of the commune, and a seven-hundred-year timeline of the terra cotta industry.
The Web site also includes a history of the cult of Our Lady of Impruneta, a miraculous image venerated from the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries. The painting, heavily retouched in the 1750s, resides in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell' Impruneta, known as the Collegiata, and the museum attached to the church houses an unexpectedly fine collection of illuminated manuscripts, embroidered vestments, ex votos, and reliquaries donated by grateful pilgrims.
Despite these riches, the average tourist might feel justified in giving Impruneta a miss. It is somewhat surprising to learn that the museum is home to an artifact rarer and more notable than anything featured on the Web site: the funerary cushion of Bishop Antonio di Bellincione degli Agli.
Bishop Agli, parish priest of Impruneta from 1439 to his death in 477, was buried in the Collegiata at his own request.
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