Description
The Basilica of Santo Spirito is one of Florence's main churches and dominates the square of the same name, in the Oltrarno, the district south of the Arno. Outside it looks almost bare, but inside it hides one of the most harmonious spaces of the Renaissance.
It was the last great work of Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed it and saw the building site open in 1444. He died two years later, and his successors did not always understand what he had in mind.
The beauty is the interior: the pietra serena columns, lined up along the nave and all around the church, give a sense of order and calm. Along the perimeter open forty chapels, full of works of art.
Among the paintings, Filippino Lippi's Nerli Altarpiece also shows a view of fifteenth-century Florence. In the sacristy, on the other hand, is kept Michelangelo's wooden crucifix, carved when he was still a boy.
In 1492 Michelangelo, at seventeen, spent his nights in this convent studying corpses. To thank the friars he left them that wooden Christ, which is still here today.
The plan is a Latin cross with three aisles, and the central nave is twice as wide as the side ones. The arches rest on columns with Corinthian capitals, and light enters little by little, all the way to the altar, under the dome, which remains the brightest spot.
Brunelleschi would have wanted the facade facing the Arno, with a square on the river, and four doors instead of one. The most radical ideas were set aside, and the facade stayed plain, only plastered in the 1700s.
From the sacristy you descend to the Cloister of the Dead, so called for the many tombstones on its walls, and from there to Bartolomeo Ammannati's Great Cloister, built between 1564 and 1569, with Doric columns, in a regular design that has no equal in Florence.
The Augustinian convent was also a center of study. In 1450 its library counted 577 manuscripts: Petrarch studied rare texts there, and Boccaccio left the friars his collection of books. The square came about from 1292 to hold the crowds who came for the sermons.
It was the last great work of Filippo Brunelleschi, who designed it and saw the building site open in 1444. He died two years later, and his successors did not always understand what he had in mind.
The beauty is the interior: the pietra serena columns, lined up along the nave and all around the church, give a sense of order and calm. Along the perimeter open forty chapels, full of works of art.
Among the paintings, Filippino Lippi's Nerli Altarpiece also shows a view of fifteenth-century Florence. In the sacristy, on the other hand, is kept Michelangelo's wooden crucifix, carved when he was still a boy.
In 1492 Michelangelo, at seventeen, spent his nights in this convent studying corpses. To thank the friars he left them that wooden Christ, which is still here today.
The plan is a Latin cross with three aisles, and the central nave is twice as wide as the side ones. The arches rest on columns with Corinthian capitals, and light enters little by little, all the way to the altar, under the dome, which remains the brightest spot.
Brunelleschi would have wanted the facade facing the Arno, with a square on the river, and four doors instead of one. The most radical ideas were set aside, and the facade stayed plain, only plastered in the 1700s.
From the sacristy you descend to the Cloister of the Dead, so called for the many tombstones on its walls, and from there to Bartolomeo Ammannati's Great Cloister, built between 1564 and 1569, with Doric columns, in a regular design that has no equal in Florence.
The Augustinian convent was also a center of study. In 1450 its library counted 577 manuscripts: Petrarch studied rare texts there, and Boccaccio left the friars his collection of books. The square came about from 1292 to hold the crowds who came for the sermons.