Piazza del Carmine 14, ☎ +39 055 2382195.
Full price €6/7,
reduced price €4.5/5.0 (18-25 and university students), free under
18 (June 2017).
Mon, Wed-Sat 10am-5pm; Sun and religious
holidays 1pm-5pm
The church of Santa Maria del Carmine is a Catholic place of worship in Florence which dominates the square of the same name in the Oltrarno district. It is famous for hosting the cycle of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, a fundamental work of Renaissance art, decorated by Masaccio and Masolino (and later completed by Filippino Lippi).
The church of Santa Maria del Carmine is a Catholic place of worship in Florence which dominates the square of the same name in the Oltrarno district. It is famous for hosting the cycle of frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel, a fundamental work of Renaissance art, decorated by Masaccio and Masolino (and later completed by Filippino Lippi).
The church dedicated to the Beata Vergine del Carmine was built in
1268 as part of a Carmelite convent that still exists today; only a few
Romanesque-Gothic remains on the sides remain visible from that period.
The complex was enlarged for the first time in 1328, when the
Municipality granted the friars the use of the land adjacent to the
fifth circle of walls, and then in 1464, with the addition of the
chapter hall and refectory. The works ended in 1476.
Like many
other Florentine churches it underwent renovations between the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries but it was above all the devastating fire of
1771 which, after having almost completely destroyed the interior,
required a complete makeover, which was commissioned by the architects
Giuseppe Ruggieri, author of the project , and Giulio Mannaioni, site
manager. It was completed, apart from the facade, between 1775 and 1782.
The fire had not hit the ancient sacristy, nor the Corsini chapel,
nor, fortunately, the Brancacci chapel.
In July 1954, Pope Pius
XII elevated it to the dignity of a minor basilica.
The facade of the church is unfinished (like other great Florentine basilicas) and has a high and rough stone and brick mass.
The interior of the church has, from the outset, a single nave with a
Latin cross plan (82x15 m, for a dome height of 35). The nave has five
side chapels with altars on each side, decorated with stuccos and
painted altarpieces. Among these chapels are the confessionals and the
walnut doors that give access to the cloister and to the other chapels
and rooms of the convent.
The paintings on the ceiling date back
to the eighteenth-century renovation: the quadratures with illusionistic
architectures are by Domenico Stagi, while the frescoed scenes of the
nave (Ascension of Christ) and the dome (The Trinity and the Virgin in
glory among the saints of the Ancient and New Testament) are the work of
Giuseppe Romei.
In the chapels on the right side, the paintings
of the Crucifixion by Giorgio Vasari (1560, third altar), the Visitation
by Aurelio Lomi (about 1595) and the Funeral of Saint Alexius by
Bernardino Monaldi stand out. In those on the left side are found (from
the counter-façade): Adoration of the Magi by Gregorio Pagani (signed
and dated 1603), Annunciation by Bernardino Poccetti (signed and dated
1601), Nativity by Francesco Gambaccini (about 1782), Centurion of
Capernaum begging from Christ the healing of the son of Giovanni Maria
Butteri and Saint Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi covered by the veil of the
Madonna by Giuseppe Fabbrini (about 1782).
The Brancacci Chapel is located at the end of the right transept. It
was miraculously saved from the fire and was spared from the
restructuring thanks to the active intervention of a Florentine
noblewoman who strenuously opposed the covering of the frescoes. It
preserves the cycle of frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino, indicated as
the starting point of the new Renaissance style in painting. Completed
by Filippino Lippi, it was studied and admired by generations of major
Florentine artists: Michelangelo, for example, made some copies of the
parts painted by Masaccio.
There is also the thirteenth-century
Madonna del Popolo.
The Cappella Maggiore houses the monumental altar in colored marble,
bronze and semi-precious stones. Under the table are the remains of
Blessed Angiolo Mazzinghi. Inside the choir is the marble funeral
monument to Pier Soderini, the work of Benedetto da Rovezzano (carried
out in 1512-1513, before Soderini's death in 1522), among the rare
surviving examples of the sixteenth-century church.
The badalone
behind the altar is by Domenico Atticciati (about 1594) and comes from
the Certosa del Galluzzo. Close to the back wall, above the choir loft,
is the Contucci pipe organ, characterized by a monumental decorated
Baroque wooden case.
In 1675 the Corsini family had a chapel built in the left transept of the Carmine church dedicated to the family saint Sant'Andrea Corsini, bishop of Fiesole in the 14th century and just canonized in 1629. The architect Pier Francesco Silvani was called in and chose a baroque then all the rage in Rome, inaugurating this style in Florence. It was frescoed in the dome by Luca Giordano in 1682 with the Glory of Sant'Andrea Corsini and decorated with stuccoes by Giovan Battista Foggini (Sant'Andrea Corsini and the Battle of Anghiari, the Mass of Sant'Andrea and the Apotheosis of Sant' Andrea Corsini of 1676-83). This structure too was miraculously spared from the fire a century later. The elaborate rococo ceiling was frescoed by Giovanni Domenico Ferretti.
In the left arm of the transept there is also the Cappella del
Crocifisso della Provvidenza, decorated between 1771 and 1782 with
stuccos by Domenico and Girolamo Ruschi and with frescoes by Agostino
Rosi. On the altar, in Giuseppe Piamontini's tabernacle from 1740, there
is a Crucifix painted on paper considered miraculous. The work is
composed together with a Byzantine-style Madonna and an Eternal Father
within a frame with twelve adoring angels, painted in the style of
Botticelli.
The walls are decorated with altarpieces on the theme
of the Holy Cross, alluding precisely to the miraculous crucifix. On the
right is the Discovery of the Cross, a copy of Gregorio Pagani's panel
destroyed in the fire, while on the left is the Exaltation of the True
Cross by Gesualdo Ferri.
The other chapel in the left transept, in front of the Crucifix
Chapel and next to the Corsini Chapel, has an altarpiece by Gian
Domenico Ferretti with the Deposition (about 1758). The frescoes on the
cupola are a contemporary work by Giuseppe Romei, with the Melchidesh
King offering bread and wine to Abraham. Here, on the lateral splays of
the wall, the lost frescoes of Masaccio's San Paolo and of Masolino's
San Pietro (around 1424) were once found, which apparently earned the
two painters the commission for the Brancacci chapel.
In the
right transept, in addition to the Brancacci Chapel, there is the Nerli
Chapel, with stuccos from 1780 and the altarpiece of Sant'Anna, the
Virgin and Child from the school of Andrea del Sarto, and another chapel
which unified three ancient Gothic chapels , where today there is an
altar with stucco decoration by Domenico and Giuliano Ruschi and
frescoes by a certain Cipriano Lensi, as well as the canvas with the
Blessed Bonagiunta Manetti dell'Antella by Francesco Gambacciani.
The sacristy is another of the rooms that survived the fire, with the
ancient Gothic architectural structure, dating back to 1394. The
frescoes on the walls with Stories of Saint Cecilia, attributed to Lippo
d'Andrea (about 1400). The lunettes on the two doors are frescoed with a
Pietà and a Madonna with Child close to the style of Agnolo Gaddi. Even
the stained glass windows are original and are decorated with the coats
of arms of the Serragli and Corsini families.
The altarpiece is a
Crucifixion in the manner of Jacopo del Sellaio, with a predella
depicting the Stories of Saint Andrew. Above a piece of furniture on the
right wall is a bust of Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi by Dante Sodini
(1908). The hanging paintings are the polyptych with the Madonna and
Child with saints attributed to Andrea Bonaiuti, the Martyrdom of San
Jacopo by Lorenzo Lippi (1641) and, to the side, Andrea Corsini healing
a blind man by Bernardino Poccetti (around 1600).
The walnut
counter in the center of the room is from 1660, while the bishop's chair
of Sant'Andrea Corsini, next to the door, was done around 1629 when he
was canonised.
The large complex adjacent to the church was also subject over the
centuries to numerous destructions and reconstructions, fires, bombings,
up to the flood of 1966, so much so that it is now difficult to
reconstruct its original contours. However, it seems that the Carmine
complex was born as a convent to which a small church was annexed and
only later did the second prevail over the first. Many secular and
religious confraternities settled in the convent premises, in particular
we remember the company of Sant'Agnese, made up of widows who took care
of the preparation of periodic theatrical representations of sacred
subjects which attracted many spectators from all over the city.
The convent is accessed from the door on the right of the church facade.
In the entrance hall covered by a barrel vault, hanging above the arch
of the cloister, is a tondo painted with the Virgin in the act of giving
the scapular to Saint Simon Stock by Giuseppe Romei.
The cloister
dates back to 1597-1612 and has a square plan, with round arches resting
on stone columns, while on the first floor there is an architraved
loggia. The lunettes are decorated with 17th-18th century frescoes by
various authors (Galeazzo and Giovan Battista Ghidoni, Domenico Bettini,
Cosimo Ulivelli, Antonio Nicola Pillori and others), although today only
a few have been preserved. Some, restored, are exhibited in the
thirteenth-century chapter house, where today the ticket office and shop
of the Brancacci Chapel are located. In ancient times, on one of these
lunettes there was the lost fresco of the Sagra by Masaccio (about
1423-1424). In the cloister there are various coats of arms of Oltrarno
families, funerary monuments and a bust of the Carmelite mathematician
Giuliano Ristori da Prato.
The Sala del Cenacolo owes its name to
the monumental Last Supper by Alessandro Allori, dated 1582, where the
self-portrait of Allori (on the left) and the portrait of the patron,
Father Luca da Venezia (on the right) also appear at the two ends. ).
Some detached fresco fragments with Stories of the Passion, Annunciation
and Saints in monochrome have also been placed here, by an unknown
Florentine artist from the end of the fourteenth century, which come
from the Compagnia di San Niccolò.
The Sala della Colonna has a
fresco from the workshop of Paolo Schiavo with a Crucifix and
Carmelites, as well as a collection of detached fragmentary frescoes
from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, coming from the cloister
and from the ancient church, among which the Stories of the life of San
Girolamo di Gherardo Starnina (fragments from the Del Pugliese chapel,
1401-1404), a Madonna enthroned with saints attributed to Pietro Nelli
(about 1385) and the Conferring of the Rule of Carmel, an early work by
Filippo Lippi prior to 1431.
The second refectory, also called
Sala Vanni (used for concerts) is frescoed with the Supper in the house
of Simone Fariseo by Giovan Battista Vanni (about 1645) and here are
also collected some detached frescoes from the Nerli chapel depicting
Stories of the Passion of Christ attributed to Lippo d'Andrea (1402): a
Crucifixion with sinopia, a fragmentary Flagellation and an incomplete
Last Supper with Saints. There are also a San Vivaldo by an anonymous
painter of the late fourteenth century and a San Cirillo attributed to
Spinello Aretino.
To visit the Brancacci Chapel, you go through a
couple of small rooms that connect the chapter to the transept of the
church. In one of these, a vestibule, there is a lunette with two
frescoed angels (about 1420-1430) and in the center a marble Madonna and
child attributed to the young Michelozzo.
Over time, many brotherhoods met in the great basilica and its
annexes. Among the most important were:
Company of Saints Anthony
and Richard of the Coachmen
Company of Bombardiers of Santa Barbara
(also brought together arquebusiers and goldbeaters)
Company of Ten
Thousand Martyrs
Company of Santa Maria delle Laudi and Sant'Agnese
Company of San Niccolo di Bari al Carmine
Company of Sant'Alberto
Bianco
Company of the Pietà of the Nail
Company of San Sebastiano
del Poponcino
Filippo Lippi, Madonna Trivulzio, today in the Pinacoteca of the Castello Sforzesco