A little more to the east are the church and suppressed convent of
Santa Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi. In the church, which has a fine court
designed by Giuliano da San Gallo, is a Coronation of the Madonna by
Cosimo Rosselli; in the chapter-house of the convent is a Crucifixion
by Perugino, painted in the closing years of the Quattrocento, perhaps
the grandest of all his frescoes. In Ruskin's chapter on the
_Superhuman Ideal_, in the second volume of _Modern Painters_, he
cites the background of this fresco (together with Benozzo Gozzoli's
in the Palazzo Riccardi) as one of the most perfect examples of those
ideal landscapes of the religious painters, in which Perugino is
supreme: "In the landscape of the fresco in Sta. Maria Maddalena at
Florence there is more variety than is usual with him: a gentle river
winds round the bases of rocky hills, a river like our own Wye or Tees
in their loveliest reaches; level meadows stretch away on its opposite
side; mounds set with slender-stemmed foliage occupy the nearer
ground, and a small village with its simple spire peeps from the
forest at the bend of the valley."
Beyond is the church of Sant' Ambrogio, once belonging to the convent
of Benedictine nuns for whom Fra Lippo Lippi painted his great
Coronation of Madonna. The church is hardly interesting at present,
but contains an Assumption by Cosimo Rosselli, and, in the chapel of
the Blessed Sacrament, a marble tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole and a
fresco by Cosimo Rosselli painted in 1486, representing the legend of
a miraculous chalice with some fine Florentine portrait heads,
altogether above the usual level of Cosimo's work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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