Church of Santa Maria Novella

Introduction

• Located in –Florence• First great basilica in Florence, and is the

city's principal Dominican church.• The church, the adjoining cloister, and

chapterhouse contain a store of art treasures and funerary monuments. Especially famous are frescoes by masters of Gothic and Early Renaissance

History

• Called Novella (New) because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne.

• The site was assigned to Dominican Order in 1221, they decided to build a new church and an adjoining cloister. The church was designed by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi , with the completion of the Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and sacristy.

• Rucellai, a local textile merchant commisioned, Leone Battista Alberti who designed the upper part of the inlaid black and white marble facade of the church .

• Alberti attempted to bring the ideals of humanist architecture, proportion and classically-inspired detailing, to bear on the design while also creating harmony with the already existing medieval part of the facade.

• Alberti added - Broad frieze decorated with squares. - Including the four white-green pilasters - A round window, crowned by a pediment with the Dominican solar emblem, and flanked on both sides by enormous

S-curved volutes - The four columns with Corinthian capitals on the lower part of the facade were also

added. The pediment and the frieze are clearly inspired by the antiquity, but the S- curved scrolls in the upper part are new and without precedent in antiquity. The

scrolls (or variations of them), found in churches all over Italy, all find their origin here in the design of this church.

Interior Space

• The vast interior is based on a basilica plan – - Designed as a Latin cross - Divided into a nave - Two aisles with stained-glass windows - A short transept

• The large nave is 100 metres long and gives an impression of austerity.

• There is a trompe l'oeil-effect by which this nave towards the apse seems longer than its actual length.

• The ceiling in the vault consists pointed arches with the four diagonal buttresses in black and white.

• The interior also contains corinthian columns that were inspired by the Classical era of Greek and Roman times.

• The Pulpit, commissioned by the Rucellai family in 1443, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and executed by his adopted child Andrea Calvalcanti. This pulpit has a particular historical significance, because from this pulpit the first attack came on Galileo Galilei, leading eventually to his indictment.

: Plan :Interior Space

:Facade of Santa Maria Novella: Plan

Various Chapels

• Filippo Strozzi Chapel – The Filippo Strozzi Chapel is situated on the right side of the main altar. The Strozzi Chapel

was the place where the first tale of the Decamerone by Giovanni Boccaccio began, when seven ladies decided to leave the town, and flee from the Black Plague to the countryside. The series of frescoes from Filippino Lippi depict the lives of Philip the Apostle and James the Apostle, and also paintings depicting the commission being given to him by them.

Gondi Chapel

• This chapel, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo, is situated on the left side of the main altar and dates from the end of the 13th century.

•The back wall, has the famous wooden Crucifix by Brunelleschi, one of his very few sculptures.

: Stained glass window

:Interior : St Philip Driving the Dragon from the Temple of Hieropolis

:Crucifixion of St Philip

Crucifix by Brunelleschi

Cappella Strozzi di Mantova

• The Cappella Strozzi di Mantova is situated at the end of the left transept. The frescoes were commissioned by Tommaso Strozzi, an ancestor of Filippo Strozzi, to Nardo di Cione(1350–1357). The frescoes are inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy: Last Judgment (on the back wall; including a portrait of Dante), Hell (on the right wall) and paradise (on the left wall). The main altarpiece of The Redeemer with the Madonna and Saints was done by his brother Andrea di Cione, better kwown as Orcagna. The large stained-glass window on the back was made from a cartoon by the brothers Andrea and Nardo di Cione.

:The Redeemer with the Madonna and Saints

Other Chapels -

• Della Pura Chapel• Rucellai Chapel• Bardi Chapel

: Madonna and child-Duccio di Buoninsegna- Della Pura Chapel

Architectural Intervention• In designing this church, Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) takes his cue from a pre-

Gothic medieval design - that of San Miniato al Monte. Following his Romanesque model, he designs a small, pseudo-Classical, pediment-capped temple front for the upper part of the facade and supports it with a broad base of pilaster-enframed arcades that incorporate the six tombs and three doorways of the extant Gothic building.

• In the organization of these elements, Alberti takes a long step beyond the Romanesque planners. The height of Santa Maria Novella (to the tip of the pediment) equals its width, so that the entire facade can be inscribed in a square.

• Throughout the facade, Alberti defines areas and relates them to each other in terms of proportions that can be expressed in simple numerical ratios (1:1, 1:2, 1:3, 2:3, and so on).

•In his treatise, Alberti uses considerable space to propound the necessity of such harmonic relationships for the design of beautiful buildings. Alberti shares this conviction with Brunelleschi, and it is basically this dependence on mathematics - a belief in the eternal and universal validity of numerical ratios as the source of beauty - that distinguishes the work of these two architects from that of their medieval predecessors.

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