Description
The Ospedale degli Innocenti is the building with Brunelleschi's portico on Piazza Santissima Annunziata, in the center of Florence: the first foundling hospital in Europe and one of the first works of Renaissance architecture, today with a museum that tells the story of abandoned children.
It was born from a bequest of a thousand florins from the merchant Francesco Datini of Prato, to take in abandoned children. Work began in 1419, and the design was by Brunelleschi. His portico is 71 meters long, with nine bays and columns of pietra serena: a regular rhythm of round arches, simple and harmonious.
Look closely and between one arch and the next you will notice the swaddled babies in white and blue glazed terracotta: Andrea della Robbia added them in 1487, and they have become the symbol of the Ospedale.
The museum, renovated in 2016, has three itineraries: history, architecture, art. Among the works are Botticelli's Madonna and Child with an Angel, a Madonna by Luca della Robbia and, above all, Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1485 for the altar of the institution's church.
The most moving part is something else: the tokens the children were left with. A coin broken in half, a little medal, a button, a piece of cloth: whoever left a newborn kept the other half of the token, hoping to be able to recognize the child one day. The museum holds a hundred and forty of them.
The babies were left in a basin under the portico, then in a "barred window": a little bell was rung and the baby went in without anyone seeing who had brought it. The wheel was closed in 1875.
In Florence you can still find traces of this today in surnames: Innocenti, Degl'Innocenti, Nocentini were the surnames given to foundlings, like Diolaiuti, a reminder of the condition of being "nobody's children."
From the 1800s, by contrast, foundlings were given made-up surnames, and as a first name that of the saint celebrated that day. The institution has never stopped its mission: today it houses nurseries, a preschool and family homes for children in foster care and mothers in difficulty.
It was born from a bequest of a thousand florins from the merchant Francesco Datini of Prato, to take in abandoned children. Work began in 1419, and the design was by Brunelleschi. His portico is 71 meters long, with nine bays and columns of pietra serena: a regular rhythm of round arches, simple and harmonious.
Look closely and between one arch and the next you will notice the swaddled babies in white and blue glazed terracotta: Andrea della Robbia added them in 1487, and they have become the symbol of the Ospedale.
The museum, renovated in 2016, has three itineraries: history, architecture, art. Among the works are Botticelli's Madonna and Child with an Angel, a Madonna by Luca della Robbia and, above all, Ghirlandaio's Adoration of the Magi, painted in 1485 for the altar of the institution's church.
The most moving part is something else: the tokens the children were left with. A coin broken in half, a little medal, a button, a piece of cloth: whoever left a newborn kept the other half of the token, hoping to be able to recognize the child one day. The museum holds a hundred and forty of them.
The babies were left in a basin under the portico, then in a "barred window": a little bell was rung and the baby went in without anyone seeing who had brought it. The wheel was closed in 1875.
In Florence you can still find traces of this today in surnames: Innocenti, Degl'Innocenti, Nocentini were the surnames given to foundlings, like Diolaiuti, a reminder of the condition of being "nobody's children."
From the 1800s, by contrast, foundlings were given made-up surnames, and as a first name that of the saint celebrated that day. The institution has never stopped its mission: today it houses nurseries, a preschool and family homes for children in foster care and mothers in difficulty.