Chiesa di Santa Maria Novella
Masaccio—The Trinity (1425-1427)
Orcagna Brothers—Frescoes of the Last Judgment (1340-1357)
Filippo Brunelleschi—Crucifixion
Domenico Ghirlandaio—Fresco Cycles of Mary and John the Baptist (1485-1490)
Giorgio Vasari—Madonna of the Rosary
The Church of Santa Maria Novella, chock-full of groundbreaking paintings and statues, is a reminder that the Renaissance was not simply a secular phenomenon. Many wealthy families paid for chapels inside this church that today are appreciated for their fine art.
Masaccio’s fresco The Trinity (1427), the first painting of modern times to portray three-dimensional space, blew a “hole in the wall” of this church. From then on, a painting wasn’t just a decorated panel, but a window into the spacious 3-D world of light and color. With Masaccio’s Trinity as the centerpiece, the church traces Florentine art from the medieval era to the Quattrocento (1400s) to the onset of Baroque.
(See “Heart of Florence” map, here.)
Cost: €5 covers church and museum (in the adjoining cloister), covered by Firenze Card.
Hours: Mon-Thu 9:00-17:30, Fri 11:00-17:30, Sat 9:00-17:00, Sun 12:00-17:00 July-Sept (from 13:00 Oct-June), last entry 45 minutes before closing.
Dress Code: No bare shoulders, short skirts, or short shorts for adults. Clothing must cover the knees. Free poncho-like coverings are available.
Getting There: It’s on Piazza Santa Maria Novella, a block south of the train station.
Getting In: To buy tickets, enter the courtyard to the right of the church’s main door. Inconveniently, Firenze Card holders must walk behind the church and enter through the doorway at Piazza della Stazione 4 (near the TI).
Information: Tel. 055-219-257, www.museicivicifiorentini.it or www.chiesasantamarianovella.it.
Audioguide: €5 (€8/2 people).
Length of This Tour: Allow 45 minutes. Masaccio’s Trinity and Ghirlandaio’s Mary and John the Baptist fresco cycles are a must.
Services: Free WCs are inside the museum. Pay WCs (€1) are to the left of the church facade.
Photography: Prohibited.
Eating: For recommended restaurants in the area, see here.
Nearby: A block away from the church is a fancy perfumery (Farmacia di Santa Maria Novella). This store, which feels like a small museum, is free and fun to visit (see listing on here).
Starring: The early Renaissance—Masaccio, Giotto, Brunelleschi, and Ghirlandaio.
(See “Santa Maria Novella” map, here.)
Exterior FacadeThe green-and-white marble facade (1456-1470) by Leon Battista Alberti contains elements of Florence’s whole history: Romanesque (horizontal stripes, like the Baptistery), Gothic (pointed arches on the bottom level), and Renaissance (geometric squares and circles on the upper level).
The church itself is cross-shaped, with a high central nave and low-ceilinged side aisles. The scrolls on the facade help bridge the two levels.
Before stepping inside, turn around and survey Piazza Santa Maria Novella. This marked the Dominican Quarter, just outside the city walls, while the Franciscans flanked the city on the opposite side of town at Santa Croce. The monks here built a hospice (the fine arcade opposite the church), ran a pharmacy (around the corner), and for centuries provided a kind of neighborhood clinic (which still functions as an emergency room—notice the ambulances parked on the right).
The obelisks at either end of the square were commissioned by Cosimo I (a 16th-century Medici duke—don’t confuse him with Cosimo the Elder). His symbol was the turtle, and turtles seem to be holding up the obelisks, which served as end posts for a racetrack. Imagine high-energy horse races in this square as jockeys rode bareback, to the delight of Florentine spectators.
• Enter the courtyard to the right of the main door, passing through the cemetery, where you’ll pay to enter. As you go inside the church, Masaccio’s Trinity is on the opposite wall from the entrance. But we’ll start our tour at the central doorway in the facade, looking down the long nave to the altar. (Inconveniently, Firenze Card holders must enter from the back of the church, pass through the museum/cloisters, and enter the basilica from the opposite side—see the map.)
Interior View down the NaveFrom the wall facing the altar, the long, 330-foot nave looks even longer, thanks to a 14th-century perspective illusion. The columns converge as you approach the altar, the space between them gets smaller, the arches get lower, and the floor gets higher, creating the illusion that the nave stretches farther into the distance than it actually does. Gothic architects were aware of the rules of perspective, just not how to render them on a two-dimensional canvas.
• Hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the nave is a painting by...
Giotto—CrucifixionThe altarpiece by Giotto (c. 1266-1337) originally stood on the main altar. Stately and understated, it avoids the gruesome excesses of many medieval crucifixes. The tragic tilt of Christ’s head, the parted lips, and the stretched rib cage tell more about human suffering than an excess of spurting blood.
On either side of the crossbar, Mary and John sit in a golden, iconic heaven, but they are fully human, turned at a three-quarter angle, with knowing, sympathetic expressions. Giotto, the proto-Renaissance experimenter in perspective, creates the illusion that Christ’s hands are actually turned out, palms down, and not hammered flat against the cross. Still, it would be another century before painters could fully make 3-D realism a reality.
• Masaccio’s Trinity is on the left wall, about midway along the nave (opposite the entrance). For the best perspective, stand about 20 feet from it, then take four steps to your left, standing on the shield with a crown. Masaccio positioned it to be seen by the faithful as they dipped fingers into a (missing) font and crossed themselves—“Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”
Masaccio—The Trinity (1425-1427)In his short but influential five-year career, Masaccio (1401-1428) was the first painter since ancient times to portray Man in Nature—real humans with real emotions, in a spacious three-dimensional world. (Unfortunately for tourists, his best portrayal of 3-D space is here, but his best portrayal of humans is in the Brancacci Chapel across the river.)
With simple pinks and blues (now faded), Masaccio creates the illusion that we’re looking into a raised, cube-shaped chapel (about nine feet tall) topped with an arched ceiling and framed at the entrance with classical columns. Inside the chapel, God the Father stands on an altar, holding up the cross of Christ. (Where’s the dove of the Holy Spirit? Why is God’s “white collar” crooked?) John looks up at Christ while Mary looks down at us. Two donors (husband and wife, most likely) kneel on the front step outside the chapel, their cloaks spilling out of the niche. Below this fake chapel sits a fake tomb with the skeleton of Adam; compare it with the real tomb and niche to the right.
The checkerboard-coffered ceiling creates a 3-D tunnel effect, with rows of panels that appear to converge at the back, the panels getting smaller, lower, and closer together. Earlier painters had played with tricks like this, but Masaccio went further. He gave such thought to the proper perspective that we, as viewers, know right where we stand in relation to this virtual chapel.
He knew that, in real life, the rows of coffers would, if extended, stretch to the distant horizon. Lay a mental ruler along them, and you’ll find the “vanishing point”—where all the lines intersect—all the way down below the foot of the cross. Masaccio places us there, looking “up” into the chapel.
Having fixed where the distant horizon is and where the viewer is, Masaccio draws a checkerboard grid in between, then places the figures on it (actually underneath it) like chess pieces. What’s truly amazing is that young Masaccio seemed to grasp this stuff intuitively—as a “natural”—eyeballing it and sketching freehand what later artists would have to work out with a pencil and paper.
What Masaccio learned intuitively, Brunelleschi analyzed mathematically, and Alberti (who did the facade) codified in his famous 1435 treatise, On Painting. Soon, artists everywhere were drawing Alberti checkerboards on the ground, creating spacious, perfectly lit, 3-D scenes filled with chess-piece humans.
• The Orcagna Chapel is at the far end of the left transept. As you approach, view the chapel from a distance. This is the illusion that Masaccio tried to create—of a raised chapel set in a wall with people inside—using only paint on a flat surface. Climb the steps to see...
Orcagna Brothers—Frescoes of the Last Judgment (1340-1357)In 1347-1348, Florence was hit with the terrible Black Death (bubonic plague) that killed half the population. Here, in the Orcagna Chapel, the fading frescoes from that grim time show hundreds of figures, and not a single smile.
It’s the Day of Judgment (center wall), and God (above the stained-glass window) spreads his hands to divide the good from the evil. God has selected Dante as the interior decorator for heaven and hell. (Find Dante all in white, with his ear-flap cap, among the crowd to the left of the window, about a third of the way up.) Notice that God is bigger than the angels, who dwarf the hallowed saints, who are bigger than ordinary souls such as Dante, mirroring the feudal hierarchy of king, nobles, knights, and serfs.
In Heaven (left wall), Hotel Paradiso is completo, stacked with gold-haloed saints. Hell (faded right wall) is a series of layers, the descending rings of Dante’s Inferno. A river of fire runs through it, dividing Purgatory (above) and Hell (below). At the bottom of the pit, where dogs and winged demons run wild, naked souls in caves beg for mercy and get none.
• In a chapel to the left of the church’s main altar, you’ll find...
Filippo Brunelleschi—CrucifixionFilippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446)—architect, painter, sculptor—used his skills as an analyst of nature to carve (in wood) a perfectly realistic Crucifixion, neither prettified nor with the grotesque exaggeration of medieval religious objects. His Christ is buck naked, not particularly muscular or handsome, with bulging veins, armpit hair, tensed leg muscles, and bent feet. The tilt of Christ’s head frees a tendril of hair that directs our eye down to the wound and the dripping blood, dropping straight from his side to his thigh to his calf—a strong vertical line that sets off the curve of Christ’s body. Brunelleschi carved this to outdo a crucifix his friend Donatello had done elsewhere. He thought Donatello’s Christ looked like an agonized peasant; Brunelleschi’s was a dignified noble. (BTW, Donatello was impressed.)
• In the choir area behind the main altar are Ghirlandaio’s 21 frescoes, stacked seven to a wall. We’ll concentrate on just the six panels on the bottom.
Domenico Ghirlandaio—Fresco Cycles of Mary and John the Baptist (1485-1490)At the peak of Florence’s power, wealth, and confidence, Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) painted portraits of his fellow Florentines in their Sunday best, inhabiting video-game landscapes of mixed classical and contemporary buildings, rubbing shoulders with saints and angels. The religious subjects get lost in the colorful scenes of everyday life—perhaps a metaphor for how Renaissance humanism was marginalizing religion.
• Start with the left wall and work clockwise along the bottom. The first scene shows the...
Proud, young Florentine men (the group at left) seem oblivious to bearded, robed saints rushing from the arcade. There’s Ghirlandaio himself (in the group on the right) looking out at us, with one hand proudly on his hip and the other gesturing, “I did this.” The scene is perfectly lit, almost shadow-free, allowing us to look deep into the receding arches.
• The next scene, on the right, is the...
Five beautiful young women, led by the pregnant daughter of Ghirlandaio’s patron, parade up to newborn Mary. The pregnant girl’s brocade dress is a microcosm of the room’s decorations. Dancing babies in the room’s classical frieze celebrate Mary’s birth, obviously echoing Donatello’s beloved cantoria in Florence’s Duomo Museum.
True, Ghirlandaio’s works are “busy”—each scene crammed with portraits, designs, fantasy architecture, and great costumes—but if you mentally frame off small sections, you discover a collection of mini-masterpieces.
• On the lowest part of the center wall, flanking the stained-glass window, are two matching panels.
Giovanni Tornabuoni, who paid for these frescoes, was a successful executive in the Medici Company (and Lorenzo the Magnificent’s uncle). However, by the time these frescoes were being finished, the Medici bank was slipping seriously into the red, and soon the family had to flee Florence, creditors on their heels.
• On the right wall...
In a spacious, airy landscape (with the pointed steeple of Santa Maria Novella in the distance), Mary and Elizabeth embrace, uniting their respective entourages. The parade of ladies in contemporary dress echoes the one on the opposite wall. This panel celebrates youth, beauty, the city, trees, rocks, and life.
A generation after Brunelleschi and Alberti, all artists—including the near-genius Ghirlandaio—had mastered perspective tricks. Here, Alberti’s famed checkerboard is laid on its side, making a sharply receding wall to create the illusion of great distance.
Ghirlandaio employed many assistants in his productive workshop: “Johnson, you do the ladies’ dresses. Anderson, you’re great at birds and trees. And Michelangelo...you do young men’s butts.” The three small figures leaning over the wall (above Mary and Elizabeth) were likely done by 13-year-old Michelangelo, an apprentice here before being “discovered” by Lorenzo the Magnificent. Relaxed and natural, they cast real shadows, as true to life as anyone in Ghirlandaio’s perfect-posture, face-the-camera world.
Ghirlandaio was reportedly jealous of talented Michelangelo (who was contemptuous of Ghirlandaio), but, before they parted ways, Michelangelo learned how to lay fresco from the man who did it as well as anyone in Florence.
• On the far right, find the...
In a crowded temple, old Zechariah is going about his business, when an angel strolls up. “Uh, excuse me...” The event is supposedly miraculous, but there’s nothing supernatural about this scene: no clouds of fire or rays of light. The crowd doesn’t even notice the angel. Ghirlandaio presents the holy in a completely secular way.
• In the chapel to the right of the altar, Filippino Lippi did the frescoes on the left and right walls. Look first at the right wall, lower level...
Filippino LippiIn an elaborate shrine, a statue of the angry god Mars waves his broken lance menacingly. The Christian Philip points back up at him and says, “I’m not afraid of him—that’s a false god.” To prove it, he opens a hole in the base of the altar, letting out a little dragon, who promptly farts (believe it when you see it), causing the pagan king’s son to swoon and die. The overcome spectators clutch their foreheads and noses.
If Ghirlandaio was “busy,” Lippi is downright hyperactive, filling every square inch with something frilly—rumpled hair, folds in clothes, dramatic gestures, twisting friezes, windblown flags, and flatulent dragons.
• On the left wall, lower level, is...
The miracle takes place in a spacious 3-D architectural setting, but Lippi has all his actors in a chorus line across the front of the stage. Filippino Lippi (1457-1504, the son of the more famous Fra Filippo Lippi) was apprenticed to Botticelli and exaggerated his bright colors, shadowless lighting, and elegant curves.
The sober, dignified realism of Florence’s Quattrocento was ending. Michelangelo would extend it, building on Masaccio’s spacious, solemn, dimly lit scenes. But Lippi championed a style (later called Mannerism, which led to Baroque) that loved color, dramatic excitement, and the exotic.
• In the next chapel to the right of the altar, on the central wall, find...
Giorgio Vasari—Madonna of the RosaryThe picture-plane is saturated with images from top to bottom. Saints and angels twist and squirm around Mary (the red patch in the center), but their body language is gibberish, just an excuse for Vasari to exhibit his technique.
Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) was a prolific artist. As a Mannerist, he copied the “manner” of, say, a twisting Michelangelo statue, but violated the sober spirit, multiplying by 100 and cramming the canvas. I’ve tried to defend Vasari from the art critics who unanimously call his art superficial and garish...but doggone it, they’re right.
With Vasari, who immortalized the Florentine Renaissance with his writing, the Renaissance ended.
• Exit the church out the left side, descending stairs into the museo part of the visit. Pause at the bottom of the steps and take in the peaceful Green Cloister.
The church was part of a Dominican monastery. Imagine monks circling this shaded courtyard (cloister), as well as several adjoining ones.
At the bottom of the steps, find a small plaque on the wall that marks the 1966 flood height (“Il 4 Novembre 1966...”). The horrendous flood of the Arno inundated the church and monastery with eight feet of water, destroying the precious frescoes that once lined the Green Cloister. The greatest losses (on the east wall) were frescoes by Paolo Uccello depicting, ironically, the Great Flood. Nearby, check out the gravestones of the Cloister of the Dead.
The highlight of the museum is its breathtaking Spanish Chapel (a.k.a. the Sala Capitular). Once the former chapter house of the monastery, the sheer size of the vault put this place on the map when it was built in the 1320s (it became known as the Spanish Chapel after Cosimo I gave it to his bride Eleonora of Toledo). Covering the chapel’s walls is Andrea di Bonaiuto’s 14th-century fresco series, Allegory of the Active and Triumphant Church and of the Dominican Order (c. 1365). The fresco is a visual Sunday-school class—complete with Peter’s fishing boat. Follow the long and tricky road to salvation, ending high above, where the saved are finally greeted by Peter at his gate.
On the left wall, find the 13th-century Dominican theologian Thomas Aquinas (dark robe) seated in glory amid virtues, authors of books of the Bible, and angels. The central wall tells the Passion story: Christ carries his cross (lower left), is crucified between two thieves (center), then rises triumphant (right) to trample and spook the demons of death. On the right wall, the pinkish church was inspired by designs for the Duomo, which was then under construction. Using the museum’s chart, find medieval celebrities in the fresco, including Dante and Beatrice, and artists Giotto and Cimabue. Along the bottom of the fresco, dogs fight off the wolves of heresy. They’re led by St. Dominic, whose fiercely loyal Dominicans (Dominicanus in Latin) rightly earned their medieval play-on-words nickname of “Domini canes”—God’s dogs.