Description
The church of Orsanmichele is a building in the center of Florence, near Via de' Calzaiuoli, that looks like a palace: it was a grain store, then the church of the guilds, and on its pillars stand the statues of the patron saints of Florentine trades.
Among the statues are the greatest names of the 1400s: Ghiberti, Donatello, Nanni di Banco, Verrocchio. They show the passage from Gothic to Renaissance. Today some of those outside are copies: the originals are in the museum on the upper floor.
The outside is best seen up close: large Gothic three-light windows with the finest tracery, marble two-light windows with the coats of arms of the Republic and the Guilds, and above each niche a medallion with the emblem of the Guild that commissioned it, sometimes in glazed terracotta by Luca della Robbia.
Inside, the space has two aisles. The Orcagna Tabernacle stands out, a lavish canopy of colored marble and gilding built between 1349 and 1359 for an image of the Madonna.
At the left altar is the marble group of Saint Anne, the Madonna and Child by Francesco da Sangallo, from around 1526. On July 26, 1343, Saint Anne's day, the Florentines drove out the tyrant Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens, and the Guilds, the protagonists of the revolt, wanted to honor the saint with an altar.
On the vaults are frescoes from 1398-1399 with figures from the Old and New Testaments, and the stained-glass windows tell the stories of the Virgin: the second phase, from 1429-1432, to a design by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Outside, the arch linking the first floor to the palace of the Wool Guild across the way offers one of the most-photographed views of Florence in nineteenth-century prints.
On the pillars you can still see the chutes through which grain came down from the upper floors, and on the northwest door is the staio, the old measure for grain. Up above, the floors of the old granary house the museum.
The name is a memory: here there was a vegetable garden with a little church dedicated to Saint Michael, "San Michele in Orto." In the 1200s a loggia for the grain market rose in its place, burned in 1304 along with the miraculous image of the Madonna that was on one pillar.
In 1337 a new loggia was rebuilt. Later it was decided to close the arcades, move the market and turn it into a church: the church of the Guilds, Florence's powerful trade corporations.
In 1404 the Commune determined which Guilds had the right to one of the fourteen outer niches: each had to fill it with the statue of its own patron saint within ten years, or lose the right.
Don't miss
• The Orcagna Tabernacle.
• The original statues in the museum on the upper floor.
• Luca della Robbia's medallions above the niches.
Did you know?
• Only three of the original statues are in bronze: those of the richest Guilds, because bronze cost at least ten times as much as marble.
• Donatello's Saint George, which came out of one of these niches, has been in the Bargello Museum since 1891.
• On the four corners of the left portal on Via dell'Arte della Lana, plant motifs symbolize the four seasons.
Among the statues are the greatest names of the 1400s: Ghiberti, Donatello, Nanni di Banco, Verrocchio. They show the passage from Gothic to Renaissance. Today some of those outside are copies: the originals are in the museum on the upper floor.
The outside is best seen up close: large Gothic three-light windows with the finest tracery, marble two-light windows with the coats of arms of the Republic and the Guilds, and above each niche a medallion with the emblem of the Guild that commissioned it, sometimes in glazed terracotta by Luca della Robbia.
Inside, the space has two aisles. The Orcagna Tabernacle stands out, a lavish canopy of colored marble and gilding built between 1349 and 1359 for an image of the Madonna.
At the left altar is the marble group of Saint Anne, the Madonna and Child by Francesco da Sangallo, from around 1526. On July 26, 1343, Saint Anne's day, the Florentines drove out the tyrant Walter of Brienne, Duke of Athens, and the Guilds, the protagonists of the revolt, wanted to honor the saint with an altar.
On the vaults are frescoes from 1398-1399 with figures from the Old and New Testaments, and the stained-glass windows tell the stories of the Virgin: the second phase, from 1429-1432, to a design by Lorenzo Ghiberti.
Outside, the arch linking the first floor to the palace of the Wool Guild across the way offers one of the most-photographed views of Florence in nineteenth-century prints.
On the pillars you can still see the chutes through which grain came down from the upper floors, and on the northwest door is the staio, the old measure for grain. Up above, the floors of the old granary house the museum.
The name is a memory: here there was a vegetable garden with a little church dedicated to Saint Michael, "San Michele in Orto." In the 1200s a loggia for the grain market rose in its place, burned in 1304 along with the miraculous image of the Madonna that was on one pillar.
In 1337 a new loggia was rebuilt. Later it was decided to close the arcades, move the market and turn it into a church: the church of the Guilds, Florence's powerful trade corporations.
In 1404 the Commune determined which Guilds had the right to one of the fourteen outer niches: each had to fill it with the statue of its own patron saint within ten years, or lose the right.
Don't miss
• The Orcagna Tabernacle.
• The original statues in the museum on the upper floor.
• Luca della Robbia's medallions above the niches.
Did you know?
• Only three of the original statues are in bronze: those of the richest Guilds, because bronze cost at least ten times as much as marble.
• Donatello's Saint George, which came out of one of these niches, has been in the Bargello Museum since 1891.
• On the four corners of the left portal on Via dell'Arte della Lana, plant motifs symbolize the four seasons.