Santa Maria Novella
Santa
Maria Novella was built as the city’s most important Dominican church and is
largely Gothic in style. The facade was completed by Leon Battista Alberti in
1470 and was paid for by some of the most affluent families of Florence at the
time. The name translates to the ‘new’ St. Mary; this is because the Dominican
order who took hold of the church in the 13th century wanted to
build over the earlier 9th century oratory, Santa Maria delle Vigne.
The
layout of the church is a Dominican tau shaped cross. As with Santa Croce,
there are 16th century altars that were an addition from Vasari,
although they are far less imposing than those at Santa Croce. An example of
this is the fact that Vasari deliberately avoided covering an earlier fresco on
the wall. Instead, he built an altar structure around the painting (this has
now been removed and only the fresco remains).
There
are also notable features that suggest an influence from the Northern
Renaissance. Firstly, the kneeling figures is something thought to be derived
for a Dutch school but more importantly from the Netherlands came the idea of playing
with death. At the bottom of the image, there is a skeleton, (a Memento Mori
(reminder of death)) with an inscription that translates ‘I was that what you
are and you will be that what I am now’.
A
similar example of a painting that warns us that we will be ‘how they are’ is an
early 16th century painting by Giorgione, with an elderly, toothless
woman pointing inwards to herself. This was based on a poem by the late Lorenzo
the Great (died 1492) about a young beautiful girl and the race to get married
before she was too old.
Returning
to the painting by Masaccio, there are four spectators in the scene. Two remain
outside, likely to be the commissioners, and the two people either side of
Christ are Mary and St John the Evangelist. Mary is seemingly detached from
Christ’s death as she shows no sorrow and points us towards her son on the
cross. This is usually interpreted to mean that Mary is already aware of the
fact that he will resurrect and is therefore not upset.
This
painting is largely in one point perspective. Note how the people in front of
Christ are not bigger, and that everything behind him gives a sense that they
are receding. However, there is one exception: God the father. He is too large;
by the rules of one point perspective he should be receding into the background
as are the people in the foreground in order to make Christ the centre of
attention. This bending of the rules is testament to how important God the
father was – he must always be represented as the most important.
Another
important piece of art that the church has is Giotto’s crucifix that has just
been restored. The crucifix bears the innovative depiction of Christ’s belly
(usually painted in three unnatural sections in the byzantine manner. See Right),
that portrays the genuine effects of crucifixion on the belly. When someone is
crucified, the lower abdomen appears hollow because the stomach rises up higher
in the body and crushes the lungs.
Giotto’s
crucifix (above) is on top of a rock formation at the bottom. Christ is
painted as bleeding from his Stigmata; the blood is shown to be covering the
rock underneath. If looked at closely, the very bottom of the rock has a slight
niche where you can see a tiny skull. This represents Adam from the story of
Genesis and follows the legend that Christ was killed on top of Adam’s burial
ground in Golgotha and that Christ is dying to repent the sins that are
seminally present in everyone because of the fall of Adam and Eve.
As
mentioned earlier, rich families helped fund the build of the church and
therefore have their own respective chapels. One of the families who helped
fund the church was the Strozzi. Their chapel is to the left of the Capella
Maggiore and it is decorated with frescoes with an altar piece in the middle.
The subject matter of the chapel is the Last Judgement. The right wall depicts
paradise, the middle wall purgatory whilst the last wall is a depiction of
hell. There are a number of inscriptions that are derived from Dante’s Divine
Comedy. The frescoes were completed by Andrea and Nardo di Cione and Niccolo Di
Tommaso in 1360. The altar piece is slightly regressive in sophistication for
its time because tt was made shortly after the Black Death. Therefore a handful
of artists who knew the new techniques were gone whilst the ones who remained
believed that the Black Death was caused by the less holy depictions of saints
in art work. Finally, as with many altarpieces, this needs to remain in the
chapel for the iconography to make sense. For example, the Predella of the altar
piece where the devil and angels fight for the souls of the dead would not make
contextual sense if sat in a museum.
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