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RENAISSANCE CHAPELS in Florence
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The renaissance chapels of Florence
are among the noblest witnesses to the city's great civic, religious
and artistic history. Today they offer their visitors a kind
of didacticism which is especially characteristic of Tuscan
and Florentine art. Although many of them have suffered alterations
and ill-judged interventions over the centuries, at least ten
have survived in good condition, and may easily be visited in
the churches or cloisters where the rich Florentine merchants
and bankers had them built. Their decoration, carried out by
the foremost artists of the period, allows us to glimpse that
interweaving of devotion, power, business, culture and art which
made 15th-century Florence one of the great centres of Christendom.
We begin with the church of Santa Maria del Carmine,
where the Brancacci Chapel, frescoed by Masolino and Masaccio
with scenes from the Life of St Peter (1424-27), marks the transition
from gothic to renaissance, and the beginning of the modern
figurative style in Florence and in Italy.
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The Brancacci Chapel
in Santa Maria del
Carmine
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If the Brancacci Chapel was the great school
for artists of the 15th century, it was in the
Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo that Brunelleschi
and Donatello developed an ideal of perfection later given expression
in the Pazzi Chapel in Santa Croce (c. 1443-78), by Brunelleschi
himself and by Luca della Robbia. Inside the chapel, white plaster,
grey stonework and blue-and-white glazed terracotta create a spatial
and perspective harmony of rare beauty. Moving on to Palazzo Medici-Riccardi,
we find the richest and most magical interior of any 15th-century
palazzo: the Chapel of the Magi, built by Michelozzo and frescoed
by Benozzo Gozzoli with the Procession of the Magi
(1459-62).
We leave the city centre and head for San Miniato al Monte,
with its beguiling Chapel of the Cardinal of Portugal (1459-62),
one of the noblest artistic achievements of the Florentine Quattrocento,
where architecture, sculpture and painting attain perfect equilibrium.
The Strozzi Chapel
in Santa Maria Novella
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The chapel of the Magi
in Palazzo Medici Riccardi |
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Descending the hill and crossing the
river we come to Sant'Ambrogio,
near the old Porta alla Croce, where the Chapel
of the Miracle preserves a relic from a miraculous
event that took place in 1230. There is a beautiful marble tabernacle by
Mino da Fiesole, and a fresco by Cosimo Rosselli
showing the Miracle of the Eucharist.
In the church of Santa Trinita we
find two of the finest 15th-century chapels: the Bartolini
Salimbeni Chapel, frescoed by Lorenzo Monaco with scenes
from
the Life of the Virgin (1420-25),
and the Sassetti Chapel, built by Giuliano da Sangallo
and marvellously frescoed with scenes from the Life of St Francis by
Domenico Ghirlandaio, who also painted the magnificent
altarpiece (1483-85).
The itinerary ends in the church of Santa
Maria Novella, where the apse (known as the Tornabuoni
Chapel) has frescoes of the Life of the Virgin and
the
Life of St John the Baptist (1485-90)
by Domenico Ghirlandaio; in the nearby Strozzi
Chapel, the tomb of the patron is by Benedetto
da Maiano, and the frescoes of Scenes from the
Lives of St John the Baptist and St Philip
(1487-1502) are by Filippino Lippi. |
The Chapel of the
miracle in Santa Croce
The Sassetti Chapel
in Santa Trinita
The Chapel of the
Cardinal
of Portugal, in San Miniato
al Monte |
| The Renaissance Chapels in
Florence: |
- Brancacci Chapel,
church of Santa Maria del Carmine, piazza del Carmine.
- Pazzi Chapel,
cloister of Santa Croce, Piazza Santa Croce, 16.
- The Chapel of the Magi,
Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, via Cavour, 1.
- Chapel of the Cardinal
of Portugal, church of San Miniato al Monte, via
del Monte alle Croci.
- Chapel of the "Miracle",
church of Sant'Ambrogio, piazza Sant'Ambrogio.
- Bartolini-Salimbeni Chapel,
church of Santa Trinita, piazza Santa Trinita.
- Sassetti Chapel,
church of Santa Trinita, piazza Santa Trinita.
- Tornabuoni Chapel,
church of Santa Maria Novella, piazza Santa Maria Novella.
- Strozzi Chapel,
church of Santa Maria Novella, piazza Santa Maria Novella.
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