Basilica of Santa Maria Novella

History

In 1221, the Florence Diocese assigned to John of Salerno (Dominican) the oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne ("by the vineyards"), which at the time was surrounded by agricultural fields and outside the city walls. The Dominicans decided to build a new church, which was named Santa Maria Novella ('New'), as well as an adjoining cloister. The church was consecrated in 1420 by Pope Pope Eugene IV. In October 1919, Pope Benedict XV elevated it to the rank of a minor basilica.

Construction began around 1276 and took close to 200 years, when the upper part of the façade, designed by the renaissance architect Leon Battista Alberti, was completed in 1470, although the right scroll was covered in marble only in 1920.

The initial architects may have been the Dominican friars Sisto de Florencia, Jacopo Pasavanti and Ristoro de Campi. The Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and the sacristy were completed under the supervision of Friar Iacopo Talenti in 1360. A series of gothic arcades were added to the façade, which were intended to contain sarcophagi. The Renaissance Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio is buried in one of them.

Façade

Santa Maria Novella's Romano-Gothic facade is considered one of the most important architectural works of the Florentine Renaissance, even though the lower section was started in 1350 and was finally completed in 1920.

In 1350, the lower front section was covered in white marble and what is commonly called green "marble" from Prato, which is really the green rock serpentinite and is therefore called 'serpentino' marble. The work is believed to have been financed by Turino del Baldese. Its design was certainly influenced by the façade of the Baptistery of Saint John; believed by scholars to have been built in the 11th or 12th century.

Progress was interrupted for over one hundred years until the Florentine architect Leon Battista Alberti was commissioned by the wool merchant Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai to design the upper part of the façade as well as other additions in the lower section, a work that was completed in 1470.

Alberti wanted to bring the ideals of classically inspired proportion and detailing to bear on the design, while also creating harmony with the existing lower part of the façade.

In ascending vertical order, Alberti's contributions include:

Four columns with Corinthian capitals on the lower part of the façade.

A broad frieze decorated with squares, inscribed with the name of the patron: Iohan(n)es Oricellarius Pau(li) f(ilius) An(no) Sal(utis) MCCCCLXX ('Giovanni Rucellai son of Paolo in the year of salvation 1470').

A pediment with a round window, with the emblem of the Dominican order. The pediment has four striped pilasters.

Large, S-shaped scrolls on the corners of each pediment, innovative elements which had no precedent in arquitecture. They solved a longstanding architectural problem of how to elegantly integrate a wide base to a narrower upper section. Variations inspired by Alberti's scrolls can be found in churches all over Italy.

The church interiors were conditioned to host the Council of Florence (1439–1441), as the church was were all the sessions where held.

Commissioned in 1567 by Grand Duke Cosimo I, Giorgio Vasari conducted the first remodeling of the church, which included removing its original choir screen and adding six chapels between the columns, which required shortening the Gothic windows. …

Interior

The vast interior is based on a basilica plan, designed as a T-shaped Egyptian cross and is divided into a nave, two aisles set with windows and a short transept. The large nave is 100 metres long and gives an impression of austerity. The piers are of compound form and have Corinthian columns supporting pointed Gothic arches above which is a clerestory of ocular windows above which rises a ribbed, pointed quadrupartite vault. The ribs and arches are all black and white polychrome.

There is a trompe-l'œil effect by which towards the apse the nave seems longer than its actual length because the piers between the nave and the aisles are progressively closer, nearer to the chancel.

Many of the windows have stained glass dating from the 14th and 15th century, such as 15th century Madonna and Child and St. John and St. Philip (designed by Filippino Lippi), both in the Strozzi Chapel. Some stained glass windows have been damaged in the course of centuries and have been replaced. The one at the west end, a depiction of the Coronation of Mary, dates from the 14th century, and is based on a design of Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze.

The pulpit, commissioned by the Rucellai family in 1443, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and executed by his adopted son Andrea Cavalcanti. This pulpit has a particular historical significance, since it was the pulpit from which Father Tommaso Caccini denounced Galileo Galilei's defense of Copernican heliocentrism.

The Holy Trinity, situated almost halfway along the left aisle, is a pioneering early Renaissance work of Masaccio, showing his new ideas about perspective and mathematical proportions. Its meaning for the art of painting can easily be compared to the importance of Brunelleschi for architecture and Donatello for sculpture. The patrons were the judge and his wife, members of the Lenzi family, here depicted kneeling. The cadaver tomb below carries in Italian the epigram: "I was once what you are, and what I am you will become".

Of particular note in the right aisle is the Tomba della Beata Villana, a monument by Bernardo Rossellino executed in 1451. In the same aisle, are located tombs of bishops of Fiesole, one by Tino di Camaino and another by Nino Pisano. …

List of artworks

Andrea Cavalcanti (called Il Buggiano) – marble reliefs of the chancel, with Scenes of the Life of the Virgin (15th ct.)

Nardo di Cione – frescoes of The Divine Judgment, design for the window by both brothers, Strozzi Chapel (1350s)

Giovanni della Robbia – lavabo in the Sacristy, and Noli me tangere in the Chiostro dei Morti

Duccio – Rucellai Madonna, now in the Uffizi

Lorenzo Ghiberti – tomb slab of Leonardo Dati (1423)

Domenico Ghirlandaio – frescoes in the Tornabuoni Chapel, design of the stained-glass window (late 15th century)

Giotto – crucifix (1290)

Filippino Lippi – frescoes in the Strozzi Chapel, depicting scenes of the life of Philip the Apostle; stained glass window

Girolamo Macchietti – Martyrdom of Saint Laurence

Benedetto da Maiano – tomb of Filippo Strozzi (1491) at the backside of the Strozzi Chapel

Paolo Uccello – Story of Noah, frescoes formerly in the Chiostro Verde, now in the refectory