Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second EditionHutton, Edward
History
Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa: With Sixteen Illustrations in Colour by William Parkinson and Sixteen Other Illustrations, Second Edition
Hutton, Edward
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Genoa (Italy) -- History; Tuscany (Italy) -- Description and travel
The Benedictine Church and Convent at end of Via Pietrapiana is
dedicated to S. Ambrogio. It was the first convent of nuns built in
Florence, and dates certainly from the eleventh century. Like the rest,
it has been suppressed, and indeed destroyed. To-day it is nothing,
having suffered restoration, beside the other violations. Within,
Verrocchio was buried, and in the Cappella del Miracolo, where in the
thirteenth century a priest found the chalice stained with Christ's
blood, is the beautiful altar by Mino da Fiesole. The church is full of
old frescoes by Cosimo Rosselli, Raffaellino del Garbo, and such, and is
worth a visit, if only for the work of Mino and the S. Sebastian of
Leonardo del Tasso.
It is to another desecrated Benedictine convent you come when, passing
through Via dei Pilastrati and turning into Via Farina, you come at last
in Via della Colonna to S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. This too is now a
barracks and a school. It was not, however, the nuns who commissioned
Perugino to paint for them his masterpiece, the Crucifixion, in the
refectory, but some Cistercian monks who had acquired the convent in the
thirteenth century. Perugino was painting there in 1496. More than a
hundred years later, Pope Urban VIII, who had some nieces in the
Carmelite Convent on the other side Arno, persuaded the monks to
exchange their home for the Carmine. S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, who
was born Lucrezia, had died in 1607, and later been canonised, so that
when the nuns moved here they renamed the place after her. The body of
S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi, however, no longer lies in this desecrated
convent, for the little nuns have carried it away to their new home in
Piazza Savonarola. There in that place, always so full of children,
certain Florentine ladies have nobly built a little church and quiet
house, where those who but for them might have been in the street may
still innocently pray to God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account