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The church of S. Maria Novella, Florence, built on the ruins of a ninth-century oratory, is the city’s principal Dominican church. Construction work began in the mid-13th century and the building was consecrated in 1420. It is a spacious two-aisled basilica with short transept and an adjoining cloister. Alberti designed the inlaid black and white marble façade of the monument. Masterpieces by Filippino Lippi, Filippo Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Donatello – to mention only a few of the artists who worked on the church - decorate the interior. The fourteenth-century Spanish chapel, the former chapterhouse of the monastery, is located at the north of the so-called green cloister. Originally commissioned as the funerary monument of Mico Guidalotti, it was later assigned to Eleonora of Toledo by Cosimo I. The chapel is decorated with frescoes by Andrea Bonaiuti. |
