The rather picturesque bit of ruin in the Via degli Alfani, at the corner of the Via del Castellaccio, is merely a part of an oratory in connection with Santa Maria degli Angioli, which Brunelleschi commenced for Filippo Scolari, but which was abandoned. _Santa Maria degli Angioli_ itself, a suppressed Camaldolese house, was of old one of the most important convents in Florence. The famous poet, Fra Guittone d'Arezzo, of whom Dante speaks disparagingly in the _Commedia_ and in the _De Vulgari Eloquentia_, was instrumental in its foundation in 1293. It was sacked in 1378 during the rising of the Ciompi. This convent in the earlier portion of the fifteenth century was a centre of Hellenic studies and humanistic culture, under Father Ambrogio Traversari, who died at the close of the Council of Florence. In the cloister there is still a powerful fresco by Andrea del Castagno representing Christ on the Cross, with Madonna and the Magdalene, the Baptist, St. Benedict and St. Romuald. The Romuald especially, the founder of the order, is a fine life-like figure. The _Spedale di Santa Maria Nuova_ was originally founded by Messer Folco Portinari, the father of the girl who may have been Dante's "Giver of Blessing," in 1287. Folco died in 1289, and is buried within the church, which contains one of Andrea della Robbia's Madonnas. Over the portal is a terracotta Coronation of the Madonna by Bicci di Lorenzo, erected in 1424. The two frescoes, representing scenes in the history of the hospital, are of the early part of the fifteenth century; the one on the right was painted in 1424 by Bicci di Lorenzo. In the Via Bufalini, Ghiberti had his workshop; in what was once his house is now the picture gallery of the hospital. Here is the fresco of the Last Judgment, commenced by Fra Bartolommeo in 1499, before he abandoned the world, and finished by Mariotto Albertinelli. Among its contents are an Annunciation by Albertinelli, Madonnas by Cosimo Rosselli and Rosso Fiorentino, and a terracotta Madonna by Verrocchio. The two pictures ascribed to Angelico and Botticelli are not authentic. But in some respects more interesting than these Florentine works is the triptych by the Fleming, Hugo Van der Goes, painted between 1470 and 1475 for Tommaso Portinari, Messer Folco's descendant; in the centre is the "Adoration of the Shepherds," with deliciously quaint little Angels; in the side wings, Tommaso Portinari with his two boys, his wife and their little girl, are guarded by their patron saints. Tommaso Portinari was agent for the Medici in Bruges; and, on the occasion of the wedding of Charles the Bold of Burgundy with Margaret of York in 1468, he made a fine show riding in the procession at the head of the Florentines. [Illustration: THE CLOISTER OF THE INNOCENTI]