25 - ORSANMICHELE

Florence - Orsanmichele

Between the Dome and Palazzo Vecchio since VIII the century existed a feminine monastero with goes lands to you cultivates to you to "garden" called "Saint Michele in Garden". From the name that "Orsanmichele" originates them drift just puts into effect them.

Around 1240 the church was demolished to make room for a loggia for the grain market probably designed by Arnolfo di Cambio around 1290. In 1304 the loggia was destroyed by fire and was rebuilt again between 1227 and 1350 by Talenti, Neri di Fioravante and Benci di Cione, larger and rectangular. On the pillars outside the city corporations of Arts and Trades in 1339 did provide 14 tabernacles in which stayed many statues of patron saints carved by the best artists of the period.

Between 1380 and 1404 the building was elevated to two plans to host reserves of wheat, and were thenclosed the arches of the lower floor by Simone Talenti to host a building of worship, again dedicated to St. Michael. The building was headquarters of the powerful brotherhood of Our Lady of San Michele in Orto. In 1569 the Grand Duke Cosimo I settled on the upper floors Notarial Archives (now moved), handing salons adaptation of the Buontalenti.

The Orsanmichele has undergone major renovations since mid-nineteenth century until today. In 1996 he became host namesake museum statues original removed from external niches and refurbished. Top floor is collected inevce the forty small sculptures that decorated the columns of triple external, although now already very damaged by weather and almost illegible. In the northwest, within the pillar, there is a small and steep staircase that leads to chioccola to the upper floors. Being insecure for modern royalties accessed from the opposite, that of '' Art of Wool 'passing through the bow that connects the two buildings..

The hall houses the lower church dedicated to Saint Anne, who has a rare structure with two aisles, inheritance of the market structure of wheat, and is covered by six times to cruise to support the various halls higher. Inside is the tabernacle built by Andrea Orcagna between 1349 and 1359 to host the Virgin with Child and Angels (painting by Bernardo Daddi, 1347), which replaced a miracle, the Madonna of Orsanmichele (Ugolino from Siena) time placed on the pillars of the first loggia and probably burned in the fire of 1304.

'Frescoes of the fifteenth century (covered with a plastering in the eighteenth century and rediscovered during the restoration of the nineteenth century) adorn the pillars, walls and some of the segments of the time. The pictorial cycle of the time, executed in 1398-1399 represents characters of the Old and New Testaments, according to a programme designed by Franco iconographic bags. On lunettes of triple-glass windows are the fourteenth century, the work of Nicholas of Peter German with stories of Miracles of Mary and of the miracle of Our Lady of Orsanmichele. On the Sant'Anna is the group of sculptures in marble with the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, works of Francis of Giuliano da Sangallo (1526); This replaces painted an image commissioned by Signoria in thanksgiving for the expulsion by Florence Gualtieri of Brienne, known as the Duke of Athens, which began with a popular uprising on the day of Saint Anne, July 26, 1343. '