Piazza Santa Felicita, 3 (A few steps from Ponte Vecchio on the
left of Via de' Guicciardini)
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info@santafelicita.it
The church of Santa Felìcita is a Catholic place of worship in Florence located in the Oltrarno district, between the Ponte Vecchio and Palazzo Pitti, in Piazza Santa Felicita, along via de' Guicciardini. The parish of the same name insists on it, entrusted to the diocesan clergy of the archdiocese of Florence.
As a foundation, it is one of the oldest churches in the city, dating
back even to Roman times, when it was built on the site of an oratory
with a basilica plan located near the early Christian cemetery. The
remains of his tombs "alla capuchin" are still visible under the floor
of the current church. The low altitude, due to the artificial narrowing
of the Arno riverbed, leads some to say that they are ancient Christian
catacombs. From the same cemetery, the church preserves some tombstones
written, mostly in Greek: already in the 2nd century, in fact, some
Syrian merchants lived in the area who brought Christian worship to the
city.
The first church was probably of considerable size and
dated back to the period between the end of the 4th and the beginning of
the 5th century, dedicated to a saint, martyred in Carthage at the time
of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. At the end of the 1940s a campaign of
excavations by the superintendence in the church and in the square of
Santa Felicita brought out the basilica and the paleo-Christian burials,
with interesting funerary inscriptions attesting the presence of a
Christian community of Greek language and of Syrian origin.
The
only visible traces of that period are found in the cloister and near
the entrance to the rectory, where Roman and early Christian lapidary
materials were arranged in the eighteenth century (alongside other late
medieval ones). With the definitive decline of the Roman Empire,
buildings outside the walls, like this one, were easy victims of the
sieges and devastation of the Goths and Longobards who ended up taking
possession of Florence. The destruction of the early Christian basilica
is most likely due to these events. In the subsoil there are a series of
tunnels, from which it is also possible to see a stretch of the remains
of the Roman Via Cassia, a few meters below today's ground level.
But the Florentine faithful did not intend to remain without their
church for long and immediately rebuilt it next to the first one. In the
midst of the Capuchin tombs, under the floor of Santa Felicita, one can
also see the bases of the columns of that second church, the foundations
of a semicircular wall which must have been its apse and the floor of a
chapel which, even then, it was located under the floor of the church:
perhaps the "crypt". This church was smaller than the previous basilica,
perhaps too much for the ambitions of the Florentines from beyond Amo
who, in the meantime, were becoming ever more numerous and who, perhaps,
no longer lived in that little church.
The construction of the
new church took place in the 11th century and the first documentary
mention of an annexed monastery of Benedictine nuns dates back to 1055
(with the Council of Florence which took place here). On November 7,
1059 Pope Nicholas II consecrated the new church and the new monastery.
The church was located exactly in the place of the courtyard from which
one passes today to enter the rectory: the wall where the entrance door
is located was most likely that of its facade and the other, to the
right, (which under the The plaster reveals beautiful squared stones)
that of the right side.
Of this church, dating back to the
Romanesque period and style, today only a few but notable remains remain
incorporated in the houses and service rooms in Piazza Santa Felicita:
three columns in green marble drums, with well-made Romanesque capitals,
two of which still support a cross vault which rests on the other side
on two corbels. These elements, all together, make us imagine a church
with three naves, of moderate importance.
It remained open for
worship until the thirteenth century and it can be thought that it was
abandoned following the great plague of 1348, the one told by Boccaccio.
Hygienic precautions then led to covering the dead under layers of
quicklime precisely in those churches that had welcomed them as sick
people and under whose floors they had then been buried. Similar
cemetery deposits were also found in the church area during excavations
carried out by the owners of the houses that now stand there.
Following this abandonment, the nuns proceeded to build a new church
in Gothic style which had to be consecrated between 1348 and 1354 (the
episcopal decree confirming the Canigiani's request for the erection of
a altar, advanced already in 1348). Its facade was lower than the
current one, with a large central window, still existing today but not
very visible because it was almost hidden by the gallery that would have
been built by Giorgio Vasari in the sixteenth century. The three coats
of arms of the Guicciardini that have survived testify to the trend of
the ancient gabled roof.
The church had to be completely
plastered with exposed stone only in the corners. The Gothic church
therefore had a single nave (as now), the transept with five apsidal
chapels of which the central one (that of the high altar) slightly
wider, separated by walls, two of which remain, with part of their
frescoes ( now detached) and the ribs of the cross vaults, in two rooms
which can be accessed from the ditch of the church.
Of this
building, only the fourteenth-century chapter house is preserved intact
with fragmentary frescoes from 1387 by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini
(Crucifixion and, on the ceiling, the Redeemer and the Seven Virtues).
Outside, the Column of Santa Felicita recalls a legendary battle that
took place between the militiamen of San Pietro Martire and the Patarine
heretics.
In fact, its current appearance dates back to the 18th century when
the architect Ferdinando Ruggieri completely restructured it. Following
a modernization project initiated by the Counter-Reformation, in 1735
the nuns who owned the church began the reconstruction which spared only
the two symmetrical Barbadori-Capponi and Canigiani chapels, on the
counter-façade, and the seventeenth-century choir. Ruggieri was inspired
by late sixteenth-century models, in the search for a clear classical
rhythm in the single nave.
A first suppression in 1793 by the
Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo did not cause major changes to monastic life,
since the nuns remained in Santa Felicita, while the Napoleonic
suppression of 1808 definitively put an end to the Benedictine
monastery.
The outside of the church is characterized by the gabled façade,
which is leaned against by the Vasari Corridor; this passes above a
three-bay portico which opens outwards with round arches resting on
quadrangular pillars. The interior is accessed through a single central
portal, flanked by single lancet windows that give light to the chapels
flanked internally. Under the portico there are various burials of
personalities, including that of Cardinal Luigi de' Rossi, a family
member of Pope Leo X, and of the artist Arcangela Paladini. In the upper
part of the façade there are two segmental arched windows.
In a
back position there is the bell tower, made up of the ancient Fifanti
tower. It has a quadrangular plan and with exposed stone walls; has a
pair of single lancet windows in the upper part of each wall which open
internally onto the belfry. The cover consists of a low pyramidal roof.
Classroom
The interior of the church has a Latin cross plan. The
hall consists of a single nave covered with a barrel vault with lunettes
and illuminated by large segmental arched windows, along which there are
three chapels on each side. The counter-façade has the Canigiani (left)
and Barbadori-Capponi (right) chapels on either side of the portal, and
above them a platform communicating with the Vasari Corridor behind
them: the church acquired great importance in the city when the Medici
exploited the its position for the passage of the latter, in 1565. From
the corridor it was possible to exit to go down on the stage (known as
the Grand Duke's), modified in the 18th century. From this location,
first the Medici and then the Lorraine grand dukes could attend
religious functions without having to go down to the hall. The
officiant, to bring them communion, reached them by climbing a staircase
(first a spiral and then a ramp) which leads to a large corridor that
passes above the side chapels.
The nave communicates with the
transept through a slightly narrower span, which has on each side wall a
choir loft with a pipe organ and a chapel below: the one on the left
houses a Crucifix by Andrea Ferrucci (late 15th-early 16th century),
formerly in the homonymous chapel; the one on the right, instead, the
funeral monuments of Francesco di Thurn (d. 1766) and Silvio Albergati
(d. 1695, on the right).
Among the burials present in the church,
there is that of the Guicciardini family (the historian Francesco was
buried at the foot of the high altar); there is also the cenotaph of
Senator Ferrante di Niccolò Capponi, adviser to Cosimo III de' Medici,
who died on 14 January 1688.
Canigiani Chapel
The Canigiani
chapel is located close to the counter-façade wall, to the left of the
entrance door. The desire to create a pendant with the symmetrical
Barbadori chapel led, at the end of the 16th century, to the decoration
of the opposite chapel, sponsored by the Canigiani family, by the hand
of Bernardino Poccetti who created the Miracle of Santa Maria della Neve
in 1589-90 . The dome was frescoed by Tommaso Gherardini with the Holy
Trinity in about 1770.
Despite the many renovations, some important masterpieces of the Renaissance period are still present, including the beautiful altarpiece of the Deposition by Pontormo, which appears in the original gilded frame in the Capponi chapel on the right near the entrance. This small space, originally designed by Filippo Brunelleschi in the fifteenth century for the Barbadori family, was purchased by Lodovico Capponi seniore in 1525 and had Pontormo redecorate, with the help in part of his pupil and friend Agnolo Bronzino. On the south wall the aforementioned Deposition or more exactly the Transport of Christ to the sepulcher stands out, a true masterpiece of Mannerism, executed between 1525 and 1528, which presents all the most recognizable characteristics of this style: bright and unnatural colours, elongation of the figures, composition of poses in a complex way. The characters are suspended on the canvas and express different emotions, from the Madonna's desperation to resignation. The weight of Christ seems to vanish in the luminous and rarefied atmosphere.[6] This scene appears as a tableau vivant in Pier Paolo Pasolini's Ricotta.[7] Next to it is another important work, the Annunciation. The medallions with the Evangelists on the spandrels of the cupola are also by Pontormo and his pupil Agnolo Bronzino. Once the vault was also frescoed (with a God the Father), but it was lost in the eighteenth century. The stained glass window with Transport to the Sepulcher is a copy of the one made by Guillaume de Marcillat in 1526, perhaps the most important author of polychrome stained glass windows who brought the mastery from beyond the Alps to the service of the creative flair of the late Tuscan Renaissance.
The first chapel on the right of the nave is dedicated to the martyr
Santa Felicita; on the altar, there is the painting Santa Felicita
exhorting her children to martyrdom by Giorgio Berti (after 1824),
placed in place of the table by Neri di Bicci Santa Felicita and her
seven children, currently in the sacristy. The next chapel, dedicated to
Saint Gregory the Great, houses the altarpiece Saint Gregory the Great
Performs a Miracle by Francesco Vellani (1747). The third chapel is
dedicated to the Crucifix and, on the altar, there is the painting Santa
Felicita and the martyrdom of the Maccabees by Antonio Ciseri (1863).
The first chapel on the left of the nave is dedicated to San
Sebastiano and its altar is surmounted by the canvas Martyrdom of San
Sebastiano by Fabrizio Boschi (1617), coming from the side chapel of the
same name destroyed during the eighteenth-century restorations and
placed between that of San Gregory and the Crucifix. The second is
entitled St. Raphael the Archangel and the Most Holy Name of Jesus; the
altarpiece is the work of Ignazio Hughford and depicts Tobit visiting
his father (1741). The next chapel, dedicated to St. Luke the Evangelist
and to St. Louis IX of France, houses the panel St. Louis of France
invites the poor to a banquet by Simone Pignoni (1682).
In the church of Santa Felicita there are two pipe organs, placed on
the two opposite choir stalls of the last span of the nave.
The
oldest instrument is the one on the right: it was built before 1572 by
Onofrio Zeffirini for the church of San Giorgio alla Costa and, on the
occasion of its transfer to its current location, in 1771 it was
modified and enlarged by the brothers Antonio and Filippo I Tronci . Its
primary peculiarity is the placement of the console, which opens as a
window in the back wall of the case (and not in the front one), a
characteristic element of monastic organs (in fact, it was built for the
church of a monastery) which allowed do not show the organist nun. The
façade is divided into three main cane cusps, with horizontally aligned
miter mouths, inserted within as many fields delimited by gilded wooden
reliefs. The instrument has a fully mechanical transmission and has 6
registers, with a single manual and pedal without its own registers.
The organ on the left choir was built in 1582 by Giovanni Battista
Contini for the ancient church of Santa Felicita, and was modified and
enlarged by Filippo II Tronci in 1826; it has 16 registers. The case is
characterized, on the front wall, by a facade in several fields, richly
decorated in bas-relief: the central three are flanked by two with dead
barrel organs; the exhibition is made up of main pipes with miter
mouths. The console, with a window, opens into the front wall of the
case; it has a single keyboard and pedalboard, with the stops operated
by side-scrolling handcuffs in two rows, to the right of the manual.
Transept
The transept is covered by a dome without a lantern or
drum. The two arms of the transept are also covered with a barrel vault;
in each of them, along the eastern wall, there are two side chapels. The
main chapel is introduced by a large arch in pietra serena supported by
two Corinthian columns and surmounted by a broken triangular tympanum
supported by two corbels, in the center of which there is the coat of
arms of the Guicciardini family.
In the left arm of the transept,
close to the back wall, there is an altar in polychrome marble, with a
tabernacle richly decorated with inlays; it is surmounted by the
painting Assumption of the Virgin with Saints Catherine of Siena and
Margherita of Cortona (1677), attributed to Volterrano. On the opposite
wall, there is the altarpiece attributed to Michele di Ridolfo del
Ghirlandaio Meeting of Sant'Anna and San Gioacchino (16th century).
The first chapel of the transept starting from the right is
dedicated to Saints Sebastiano and Bartolomeo, owned by the Pitti
family; on the altar there is the Adoration of the Magi by Nicola
Cianfanelli (about 1830), placed in place of the Pietà attributed to
Domenico di Zanobi (about 1470), currently on display in the sacristy.
The second chapel is dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist, depicted in
the altarpiece painted in 1786 by Leonardo Cambi; on the left wall, the
canvas Beata Berta receiving the keys of the Cavriglia Monastery, by
Vincenzo Dandini (1671), coming from the chapel under the left choir
loft. Beyond the apse, there is the chapel of the Madonna, formerly of
Saint Catherine of Alexandria, with the Marriage of the Virgin on the
altar, by Gasparo Martellini (19th century). The chapel of San Frediano
follows, with Trinità by Carlo Portelli (1540, enlarged at the bottom by
Ignazio Hugford in the 18th century).
The main chapel was owned by the Guicciardinis, who had their palace in the adjacent street which takes its name from this family; it was designed by Cigoli and the construction works continued until the ceiling was decorated by Michelangelo Cinganelli (about 1620). Here in 1540 the great historian Francesco Guicciardini was buried. The environment has a square plan and is covered with a ribbed vault; the fresco decoration is divided into various panels: in the spandrels there are the Virtues; at the four cardinal points, Santa Felicita and sons martyrs (east), San Benedetto (north), Archangel Raphael and Tobias (west) and Santa Maria Maddalena (south); in the centre, the Coronation of the Virgin. The walls are punctuated by architectural elements in sandstone, such as a high cornice that runs at the base of the vault impost, and Corinthian pilasters; in the center of the back wall there is the altarpiece with the Adoration of the Shepherds, attributed to Francesco Brina (1587). The main altar, located under the arch of the apse, is in polychrome marble and is surmounted by a wooden crucifix.
In ancient times the church had a small sacristy, narrow and with an
awkward entrance, located behind the current choir of the main chapel.
It was then moved to the current site but in very small dimensions,
until the knight Giovanni di Antonio Canigiani left the testamentary
disposition to finance a new sacristy, in 1473: inspired in a small
scale by Brunelleschi's model of the Pazzi Chapel, it was built as a
cube surmounted by dome and plastered in white with the outlines of the
load-bearing structures profiled in sandstone; on the east side there is
the apse with a square base one third of the total length of the main
wall (one ninth if we consider the surface of the base) and surmounted
by a small dome decorated with stone shells at the four corners. During
the 19th century some modifications were made (the door moved, the floor
lowered, the furnishings replaced) and a stone lavatory was created
(1840); the altar and stained glass windows in the oculi date from 1889.
Following the 2006 restorations, a collection of works of art was
set up in the sacristy. The exhibited works are:
Madonna with
Child known as the Nerli Madonna from the workshop of Filippino Lippi
near the entrance (early 16th century)
Crucifix by Pacino di
Buonaguida (c. 1310), above the altar.
Annunciation and Nativity,
pair of detached frescoes attributed to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini (about
1390), on the walls of the apse.
Santa Felicita with her seven
children by Neri di Bicci (1464), with the predella by the same author
depicting the Martyrdom of the seven Maccabean brothers, formerly
located in the first chapel on the right of the nave.
Madonna and
Child Enthroned attributed to Giovanni del Biondo (c. 1360), with
predella depicting Imago pietatis, Saint Anthony the Abbot and Saint
Catherine of Alexandria, perhaps not contemporary with the panel.
Madonna and Child Enthroned with Four Angels and Saints James Major,
John the Baptist, Luke and Philip and cymatium with Prophets by Taddeo
Gaddi (about 1365): the large polyptych is the most important work in
the sacristy, an obligatory stop in studying the most important a pupil
of Giotto, exhibited at the end of a restoration completed in 2006.
Madonna with Child in glazed polychrome terracotta from the school of
Luca della Robbia (1470), from a tabernacle in the area.
Pietà by
Master of the Johnson Nativity (attribution), dated 1470, formerly in a
Pitti family chapel in the church.
Adoration of the Magi attributed
to Mariotto di Cristofano (first half of the 15th century)
Mystical
Marriage of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, attributed to Bicci di
Lorenzo (first half of the 15th century), fresco detached from the
ancient nuns' choir.
The chapter house is the only place left of the medieval church:
built between 1383 and 1387, the nuns used to meet here. It is located
close to the western wall of the sacristy and has a rectangular plan.
The wall decoration was entrusted to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini, who
painted the whole room, even if today only the Crucifixion remains,
saved from the seventeenth-century restorations due to the particular
devotion of the nuns, the ceiling with the blessing Christ and the
Cardinal and Theological Virtues, together with other fragments present
as detached frescoes here and in the sacristy. From his school is the
detached fresco Angels with monstrance.
In 1665 the walls were
almost completely re-frescoed by Cosimo Ulivelli, who made use of the
collaboration of Agnolo Gori for the painting of illusionistic
architectures. The scenes depicted are: Santa Felicita, her seven
children and the Archangel Raphael (north wall), "greengrocer" Christ
appears to the Magdalene and Lamentation over the dead Christ (east
wall, around the Crucifixion by Gerini), San Lorenzo and San Giovanni
Gualberto and Blessed Gualdo Galli da Fiesole gives the keys of the
convent to Blessed Berta (a blessed former nun in the convent, south
wall).