Santa Maria Novella

This important Dominican church, begun in 1246, seems to stand apart from the rest of Florence, just as it did at the time of its construction when it was outside the city walls. Its interior is Italian Gothic, an ample space for instructing the congregation. The austere ambience may reflect the Dominican orthodoxy as much as the dreadful period after the 1348 Black Death, when most of the chapels were dedicated. The Strozzi Chapel captures this period with its severe altarpiece and, behind it, the Last Judgment murals by Nardo di Cione. Painted just a few years after the Black Death killed half of Florence's population, the murals show a wrathful Christ tormenting the wicked in a hell ghastly in its details. Behind the main altar, the chancel is covered with frescoes, ostensibly on the life of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin, but really showing Florentine life in 1485 when Domenico Ghirlandaio painted them. Up the nave, on the right, is Masaccio's Holy Trinity (1425), the first large-scale painting to use the then new principles of perspective.

To the left of the church you enter the "Green Cloister,'' named after the monochromatic frescoes based on Genesis by Paolo Uccello. At the rear of the courtyard is the Spanish Chapel, used by the Spanish court in the 16th century and elaborately covered with frescoes (1365) expounding the glory of the Dominican Order by Andrea da Firenze.

Address:
Piazza di Santa Maria Novella
Florence
Italy

Telephone: +39 (55) 21-01-13