Saint Andrea

Via Sant'Andrea, 16 55100 Lucca LU

The first document referable to the church of Sant'Andrea, located along one of the main routes of the medieval city, dates back to 1077. In the late 12^th century the building was completely rebuilt with a single nave using gray sandstone as building material, with inserts in white limestone on the façade - where traces of an incomplete list and a crowning of arches remain - and in the two portals, the façade and the one, now walled up, of the northern side. The most important artistic intervention of the medieval phase of the church is in the facade portal: the lions with prey jutting out of the corbels placed next to the archivolt, but also the decorative system of the same archivolt, the architrave and the capitals of sitipite, is clearly attributable to the work of Guidetto's masters, the Lombard sculptor active in the facade of the Cathedral of Lucca in 1204, and in particular to the work of the artist responsible also for the pulpit of the parish church of San Giorgio di Brancoli and the decorative system of the central portal of the town church of Santi Giovanni e Reparata. This intervention can therefore be dated to the early years of the 13^th century, but it is not possible to attach with certainty to this date the construction of the building, which could be earlier: very often, in fact, Guidetto's workshop found itself operating by preparing decorative elements for structures already existing. The upper part of the façade is the result of a subsequent intervention - during which the blind loggia of which traces remain visible on the solid wall - which can be traced back to the end of the seventeenth century, when the whole building was raised, creating a roof with barrel vault lunette. On that occasion, in 1686, a majestic high altar was made, one of the few works preserved in Lucca, by Domenico Martinelli.