Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence
Florence's principal Franciscan church is the city's foremost religious centre for both art and Renaissance relics. The Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze (Church of the Holy Cross of Florence), to give it its full name, is best known for its compendium of funerary monuments to the great and good of Italian history, post 14th century. The most apparent of these is the opulent tomb of Michelangelo, designed by Vasari, which is on your immediate right as you enter. The Florentine master reportedly chose the site himself, explaining that the first thing he wanted to see come Judgement Day was the dome of the Duomo through Santa Croce's doors.
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Standing opposite is the final resting place of Galileo Galilei, who, due to his numerous revolutionary ideas - literally, when it came to the one about Earth's rotation around the Sun - wasn't granted a Christian burial until 1737, nearly 100 years after his death. Other notable sepulchres include those of Lorenzo Ghiberti, sculptor of the Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery; composer Gioacchino Rossini; and Niccolo Machiavelli. Near Michelangelo, on the right wall, stands a 19th-century cenotaph to Dante Alighieri, Italy's greatest poet, who was exiled from Florence in 1301. By the 19th century, the Florentines began, rather belatedly, to regret their decision, and built this tomb for his remains; the hint was not taken by Ravenna (the site of his actual interment), however, and he continues to rest there today. |
The basilica itself was begun in 1294 by Arnolfo di Cambio, supposedly on the site of a previous church founded by St Francis himself. This huge new building, measuring 115 metres in length by up to 195 metres across its nave, was, unsurprisingly, a long time in the making, and wasn't completed and consecrated until 1442. Even after that it remained faceless, with its intricate green, white and black marble neo-Gothic facade only arriving in the 1850s.
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Evidently, much of the church's labour time was consumed by its 16 chapels, many of which were decorated with epic frescoes. Two in particular, those directly to the right of the high altar, are worthy of special attention. Painted by Giotto, they depict scenes from the lives of St John the Evangelist, St John the Baptist and, the resident order's founder, Francis of Assisi. Their emphasis on humanism, rather than on the greatness of God, signalled a shift in 14th-century European art, and heralded the first wave of the Renaissance.
Other artistic highlights include Deposition by Bronzio, commissioned as a large altarpiece by Cosimo I de' Medici; and frescoes by both Agnolo Gaddi, and his father, Taddeo, whose Last Supper in the refectory is considered his greatest work. However, the artist best represented, in quantity at least, is Donatello, whose featured pieces include a relief of the Annunciation on the south wall; the gilded bronze statue of St Louis; and the notorious Crucifix, which his "friend" Brunelleschi bemoaned for portraying Christ as a peasant. Brunelleschi's own Christ, his riposte to Donatello's, can be seen across town in the Santa Maria Novella.. |
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