Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Bambino ferito, dettaglio dalla pala dell’Adorazione dei Magidel Ghirlandaio

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Stemma_arte_della_seta (from spedale degli innocenti) in Florence, Italy

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Spedale degli Innocenti detail, outside view in Florence, Italy

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Masaccio, trinità

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Maria, dettaglio

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Luca della Robbia, Madonna col Bambino che mostra un cartiglio, 1446-1449

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Botticelli Madonna

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Spedale degli Innocenti detail, the baby hatch ruota outside view in Florence, Italy

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Benozzo Gozzoli, Esequie di Sant’Agostino (1464-1465), Sant’Agostino, San Gimignano

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

Santa maria degli innocenti, interno

Giacobbe Giusti, Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence

 

Ospedale degli Innocenti, Florence.

Detail with one of the tondi.

Men’s cloister; there was a different one for women.

Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

The Ospedale degli Innocenti (Italian pronunciation: [ospeˈdaːle deʎʎ innoˈtʃɛnti]; ‘Hospital of the Innocents’, also known in old Tuscan dialect as the Spedale degli Innocenti) is a historic building in Florence, Italy. It was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi,^[1][2] who received the commission in 1419 from the Arte della Seta. It was originally a children’s orphanage. It is regarded as a notable example of early Italian Renaissance architecture. The hospital, which features a nine bay loggia facing the Piazza SS. Annunziata, was built and managed by the « Arte della Seta » or Silk Guild of Florence.^[3] That guild was one of the wealthiest in the city and, like most guilds, took upon itself philanthropic duties.

The façade is made up of nine semicircular arches springing from columns of the Composite order. The semicircular windows bring the building down, earthbound and is a revival of the classical style, no longer a pointed arch. In the spandrels of the arches there are glazed blue terracotta roundels with reliefs of babies designed by Andrea della Robbiasuggesting the function of the building. There is an emphasis on the horizontal because the building is longer than it is tall. Above each semicircular arch is a tabernacle window (a rectangular window with a triangular pediment on the top).

The building reveals a clean and clear sense of proportion. The height of the columns is the same as the width of the intercolumniation and the width of the arcade, making each bay a cube. The building’s simple proportions reflect a new age, one of secular education, and a sense of great order and clarity. Similarly, the height of the entablature is half the column height, as is appropriate for a clear-minded society.

Children were sometimes abandoned in a basin which was located at the front portico. However, this basin was removed in 1660 and replaced by a wheel for secret refuge.^[3] There was a door with a special rotating horizontal wheel that brought the baby into the building without the parent being seen. This allowed people to leave their babies, anonymously, to be cared for by the orphanage. This system was in operation until the hospital’s closure in 1875.^[3] Today the building houses a small museum of Renaissance art with works by Luca della Robbia, Sandro Botticelli, Piero di Cosimo and Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio.

Building History

The Foundling Hospital was constructed in several phases and only the first phase (1419–1427) was under Brunelleschi’s direct supervision.^[3] Under Brunelleschi’s supervision he managed to lay the foundations, raise the main walls, finish off the basement with a cryptoporticus beneath the cloister walks, and the lower part of the front facing loggia. Later phases added the attic story (1439), but omitted the pilasters that Brunelleschi seems to have envisioned, and expanded the building by one bay to the south (1430). Colored terracotta medallions by Andrea della Robbia can be seen in the spandrels of the arches, the so-called « Infants », which were put up in 1485. Despite the popularity today of these medallions, they were not the original intentions of Brunelleschi. If it had been up to Brunelleschi, the medallions would have remained empty. The vaulted passageway in the bay to the left of the loggia was also added later. Since the loggia was started before the hospital was begun, the hospital was not formally opened until 1445.^[4]

Design

Brunelleschi’s design was based on Classical Roman, Italian Romanesque and late Gothic architecture.^[2] The loggia was a well known building type, such as the Loggia dei Lanzi. But the use of round columns with classically correct capitals, in this case of the Composite Order, in conjunction with a dosserets (or impost blocks) was novel. So too, the circular arches and the segmented spherical domes behind them.^[5] The architectural elements were also all articulated in grey stone and set off against the white of the walls. This motif came to be known as pietra serena (Italian: serene stone). Also novel was the proportional logic. The heights of the columns, for example, was not arbitrary. If a horizontal line is drawn along the tops of the columns, a square is created out of the height of the column and the distance from one column to the next. This desire for regularity and geometric order was to become an important element in Renaissance architecture.^[6]

The Tondi

Above each column is a ceramic tondo. These were originally meant by Brunelleschi to be blank concavities, but around 1490 Andrea della Robbia was commissioned to fill them in.^[7] The design features a baby in swaddling clothes. A few of the tondi are still the original ones, but some are nineteenth century copies.

The insignia of the American Academy of Pediatrics is based on one of the tondi.^[3]

Piazza Santissima Annunziata

The Foundling Hospital defines the eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, the other two principal facades of which were built later to imitate Brunelleschi’s loggia. The piazza was not designed by Brunelleschi, as is sometimes reported in guide books. The west façade, the Loggia dei Servi di Maria, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder in the 1520s. It was built for the mendicant order, the Servi di Maria, but is today a hotel. The north side of the piazza is defined by the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, the Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation. Though the building is much older, the facade was added in 1601 by the architect Giovanni Battista Caccini. The equestrian statue of Ferdinand I of Tuscany was made by the noted sculptor, Giambologna (pseudonym for Jean de Boulogne) and placed there in 1608. The fountain was added in 1640.

History of the hospital

The Ospedale degli Innocenti was a charity institution that was responsible for the welfare of abandoned children. It represented social and humanistic views of Florence during the early Renaissance. It can also explain how investors used Florence’s charitable institutions as savings banks: A relationship between charity and Italian city-states can be depicted by using the Innocenti as a case study. Furthermore, the hospital remains as a significant place with a statement of compassion and care besides its unpleasant downfalls.

The Innocenti was responsible for the care of abandoned children and provided them with the ability to rejoin society. The first infant abandoned was on February 5, 1445, ten days after opening.^[3] Babies were received, wet nursed and weaned. Masters were hired to teach reading and writing to boys. Boys were taught skills according to their abilities. Girls were considered to be the weaker sex, fragile and most vulnerable. They were sent to mistresses who taught them how to sew, cook and other occupations expected for women. The hospital provided dowries for the girls, and they had the option of getting married or become nuns. In the late 1520s, an extension was built to the south along the Via de’ Fibbiai. This was intentionally for women who did not marry or become a nun.^[8]

In 1552, Don Vincenzio Borghini was appointed spedalingo (superintendent) of the Innocenti. He was employed by Cosimo de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Borghini’s education as a Benedictinemonk molded the lives of children in the hospital. Borghini, after five months of becoming superintendent, wanted to get hold of the hospital’s operai to eliminate wet nurses who defrauded the hospital.^[8]One of the main issues was that wet nursing increased the number of pregnancy.^{[citation needed]} Some would resort to feeding the infants with cow or goat’s milk. Mothers would sometimes abandon their own children to feed a child from the hospital. Others would even abandon their own children at the Innocenti, get hired as a wet nurse, and end up feeding their own child with pay. There was also continuation of salary from the hospital after the death of an infant.

There were three major years of great famine, 1556–57, 1567 and 1569-70.^[8] This was due to an imbalance between population and agricultural capacity. It was very difficult to reduce cost while balancing high admissions. During the sixteenth century, an increase in population impacted the Innocenti as well as high wheat prices. In 1557, there were also problems with maintaining supplies of grain since flooding occurred in the Innocenti’s storehouse.^[8]

The hospital suffered from financial debt. The main problem was trying to balance expenses and revenues. Cosimo and Francesco had an unstable organization between private charity and finance and constantly over withdrew money. They had used the Innocenti as their personal charitable institution savings banks. The hospital’s debt increased from 300,000 to 700,000 lire, however, its annual operating expenses were minimal (100,000 lire).^[8] Seventy-five percent of the hospital’s debts were amounts owed to investors.^[8]

The consequences of the debt led to the dismissal of girls and boys. Borghini requested that the children be given to high status people of good reputation. Boys were dismissed at the age of eighteen. Girls were tried to be placed in noble families with increased dowries for those who wanted to marry. Women who did not become nuns nor married were trained for trade and manual labor.^{[citation needed]}

References

1. Jump up^ arcade. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
2. ^ Jump up to:^a b Brunelleschi, Filippo. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
3. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f} Kahn, Lawrence, MD; Frohna, J. G.; Wald, E. R. (July 2002). « The « Ospedale degli Innocenti » and the « Bambino » of the American Academy of Pediatrics ». Pediatrics. 110 (1): 175–180. doi:10.1542/peds.110.1.192. PMID 12093967. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
4. Jump up^ Eugenio Battisti. Filippo Brunelleschi. (New York: Rizzoli, 1981). *See also: Howard Saalman. Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings. (London: Zwemmer, 1993).
5. Jump up^ architecture, Western:Early Renaissance in Italy (1401–95). Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
6. Jump up^ Michele Furnari. Formal Design in Renaissance Architecture: from Brunelleschi to Palladio. (New York: Rizzoli, 1995).
7. Jump up^ Della Robbia, Andrea. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
8. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f} Gavitt, Philip (June 1997). « Charity and State Building in Cinquecento Florence: Vincenzio Borghini as administrator of the Ospedale Degli Innocenti ». The Journal of Modern History. 69 (2): 230–270. doi:10.1086/245487.

• Five centuries of foundling history in Florence: changing patterns of abandonment, care and mortality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ospedale_degli_Innocenti

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

La cupola neoclassica della tribuna d’Elci

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Vetrata disegnata da Giorgio Vasari

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Il pavimento intarsiato

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Folio 5r from the Codex Amiatinus (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, MS Amiatinus 1), Ezra the scribe. « When the sacred books had been consumed in the fires of war, Ezra repaired the damage.

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Michelangelo, biblioteca medicea laurenziana, dettaglio

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Aerial view. The Laurentian Library can be identified in the long row of windows above the cloister extending to the left of the picture. The taller structure with two rows of windows immediately to its right is the vestibule.

The Laurentian Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana) is a historic library in Florence, Italy, containing more than 11,000 manuscripts and 4,500 early printed books.^[1] Built in a cloister of the Medicean Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze under the patronage of the Medicipope Clement VII, the library was built to emphasize that the Medici were no longer merchants but members of intelligent and ecclesiastical society. It contains the manuscripts and books belonging to the private library of the Medici family. The library is renowned for its architecture, designed by Michelangelo, and is an example of Mannerism.^[1][2][3]

A Codex Laurentianus identifies any of the book-bound manuscripts in the library.

Architecture

The Laurentian Library was commissioned in 1523 and construction began in 1525; however, when Michelangelo left Florence in 1534, only the walls of the reading room were complete. It was then continued by Tribolo, Vasari, and Ammannati based on plans and verbal instructions from Michelangelo. The library opened by 1571. In this way, the library integrates parts executed by Michelangelo with others built much later in an interpretation of his instructions. The Laurentian Library is one of Michelangelo’s most important architectural achievements. Even Michelangelo’s contemporaries realized that the innovations and use of space in the Laurentian Library were revolutionary.^[3]

The admirable distribution of the windows, the construction of the ceiling, and the fine entrance of the Vestibule can never be sufficiently extolled. Boldness and grace are equally conspicuous in the work as a whole, and in every part; in the cornices, corbels, the niches for statues, the commodious staircase, and its fanciful division-in all the building, as a word, which is so unlike the common fashion of treatment, that every one stands amazed at the sight thereof. – Giorgio Vasari.^[4]

The two-story Quattrocento cloister remained unchanged by the addition of the library. Because of this, certain features of Michelangelo’s plan, such as length and width, were already determined. Therefore, new walls were built on pre-existing walls and cloisters. Because the walls were built on pre-existing walls, recessing the columns into the walls was a structural necessity. This led to a unique style and pattern that Michelangelo took advantage of.^[2]

The vestibule

Vestibule

The vestibule, also known as the ricetto, is 10.50 m long, 10.50 m wide, and 14.6 m tall (34.5 by 34.5 by 48 feet).^[3] It was built above existing monastic quarters on the east range of the cloister, with an entrance from the upper level of the cloisters. Originally, Michelangelo planned for a skylight, but Clement VII believed that it would cause the roof to leak, so clerestory windows were incorporated into the west wall. Blank tapering windows––framed in pietra serena, surmounted by either triangular or segmental pediments, and separated by paired columns set into the wall––circumscribe the interior of the vestibule.^[2]

Lit by windows in bays that are articulated by pilasters corresponding to the beams of the ceiling, with a tall constricted vestibule (executed to Michelangelo’s design in 1559 by Bartolomeo Ammannati^[1]) that is filled with a stair that flows up to (and down from) the entrance to the reading room, the library is often mentioned as a prototype of Mannerism in architecture.^[5]

Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Staircase

Vestibule plan, after Banister Fletcher

Staircase

The plan of the stairs changed dramatically in the design phase. Originally in the first design in 1524, two flights of stairs were placed against the side walls and formed a bridge in front of the reading room door. A year later the stairway was moved to the middle of the vestibule. Tribolo attempted to carry out this plan in 1550 but nothing was built. Ammannati took on the challenge of interpreting Michelangelo’s ideas to the best of his abilities using a small clay model, scanty material, and Michelangelo’s instructions.^[3]

The staircase leads up to the reading room and takes up half of the floor of the vestibule. The treads of the center flights are convex and vary in width, while the outer flights are straight. The three lowest steps of the central flight are wider and higher than the others, almost like concentric oval slabs. As the stairway descends, it divides into three flights.^[2][3]

The reading room

Reading room

The reading room is 46.20 m. long, 10.50 m. wide, and 8.4 m. high (152 by 35 by 28 feet). There are two blocks of seats separated by a center aisle with the backs of each serving as desks for the benches behind them. The desks are lit by the evenly spaced windows along the wall. The windows are framed by pilasters, forming a system of bays which articulate the layout of the ceiling and floor.^[3]

Because the reading room was built upon an existing story, Michelangelo had to reduce the weight of the reading-room walls. The system of frames and layers in the walls’ articulation reduced the volume and weight of the bays between the pilasters.^[3]

Beneath the current wooden floor of the library in the Reading Room is a series of 15 rectangular red and white terra cotta floor panels. These panels, measuring 8-foot-6-inch (2.59 m) on a side, when viewed in sequence demonstrate basic principles of geometry. It is believed that these tiles were arranged so as to be visible under the original furniture; but this furniture was later changed to increase the number of reading desks in the room.^[6][7]

Interpretation

The Bibliotheca Medicea is also a fully modern scholarly library

In the ricetto, critics have noted that the recessed columns in the vestibule make the walls look like taut skin stretched between vertical supports. This caused the room to appear as if it mimics the human body, which at the time of the Italian Renaissance was believed to be the ideal form. The columns of the building also appear to be supported on corbels so that the weight seems to be carried on weak elements. Because of the seemingly instability of the structure, the viewer cannot discern whether the roof is supported by the columns or the walls. This sense of ambiguity is heightened by the unorthodox forms of the windows and, especially, by the compressed quality of all architectural elements, which creates a sense of tension and constrained energy.^[2]

The use of the classical orders in the space is particularly significant. The recessed columns superficially appear to be of the austere and undecorated Doric order, typically considered to have a more masculine character. The Doric order would be placed at the base in an hierarchy of orders such as found in Roman buildings like the Colosseum, with the Ionic, Composite and Corinthian being progressively lighter and more decorative and feminine. However, closer examination establishes that the Composite order is used, but with the characteristic decorative acanthus leaves and diagonal volutes of the capitals stripped off, leaving the top of the column denuded. In architectural terms, it is an act of violence that is unprecedented in mannerism, and a sophistication that would not have escaped contemporary observers.

The dynamic sculpture of the staircase appears to pour forth like lava from the upper level and reduces the floor space of the vestibule in a highly unusual way. In the central flight, the convex treads vary in width which makes the entire arrangement disquieting.^[2]

In sharp contrast to the vestibule and staircase, the reading room’s evenly spaced windows set between pilasters in the side walls let in copious amounts of natural light and create a serene, quiet, and restful appearance.^[2]

Mark Rothko stated that the vestibule and the walls in the staircase of the library influenced his 1959 Seagram Murals.^[8]

External video
Giacobbe Giusti, Laurentian Library, Florence

Michelangelo, Laurentian Library, Smarthistory[9]

Collection

In 1571, Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, opened the still-incomplete library to scholars.^[1] Notable additions to the collection were made by its most famous librarian, Angelo Maria Bandini, who was appointed in 1757 and oversaw its printed catalogues.

The Laurentian Library houses about 11,000 manuscripts, 2,500 papyri, 43 ostraca, 566 incunabula, 1,681 16th-century prints, and 126,527 prints of the 17th to 20th centuries.^[10]The core collection consists of about 3,000 manuscripts, indexed by Giovanni Rondinelli and Baccio Valori in 1589, which were placed on parapets (plutei) at the library’s opening in 1571. These manuscripts have the signature Pluteus or Pluteo (Plut.). These manuscripts include the library Medici family collected during the 15th century and re-acquired by Giovanni di Medici (Pope Leo X) in 1508, and moved to Florence in the 1520s by Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici (Pope Clement VII). The Medici library was joined by collections by Francesco Sassetti and Francesco Filelfo and manuscripts acquired by Leo X and by the library of the Dominican convent of San Marco.

The library conserves the Nahuatl Florentine Codex, the major source of pre-Conquest Aztec life. Among other well-known manuscripts in the Laurentian Library are the sixth-century Syriac Rabula Gospels; the Codex Amiatinus, which contains the earliest surviving manuscript of the Latin Vulgate Bible; the Squarcialupi Codex, an important early musical manuscript; and the fragmentary Erinna papyrus containing poems of the friend of Sappho.

• Papyrus 35
• Papyrus 36
• Papyrus 89
• Uncial 0171
• Uncial 0174
• Minuscule 458
• Minuscule 619
• Minuscule 836 (Gregory-Aland)

References

1. ^ Jump up to:^a b c d Medicean-Laurentian Library. Encyclopædia Britannica. 2007.
2. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g} Fazio, Michael; Moffett, Marian; Wodehouse, Lawrence, Buildings across Time (London: Lawrence King Publishing Ltd, 2009), pp 308–310
3. ^ Jump up to:^{a b c d e f g} Lotz, Wolfgang; Howard, Deborah, Architecture in Italy, 1500–1600 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp 91–94
4. Jump up^ Vasari, Giorgio; Blashfield, Edwin Howland; Blashfield, Evangeline Wilbour; Hopkins, Albert Allis, Lives of Seventy of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1909), pp. 115–116
5. Jump up^ « Vestibule of the Laurentian Library ». Olga’s Gallery. Retrieved February 14, 2007.
6. Jump up^ Ben Nicholson, Jay Kappraff, and Saori Hisano, « The Hidden Pavement Designs of the Laurentian Library », pp. 87–98 in Nexus II: Architecture and Mathematics, ed. Kim Williams, Fucecchio (Florence): Edizioni dell’Erba, 1998.
7. Jump up^ Rosin, Paul L.; Martin, Ralph R. (2003). « Hidden Inscriptions in the Laurentian Library » (PDF). Proceedings of Int. Soc. Arts, Mathematics, and Architecture (ISAMA): 37–44. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2006-09-24. Retrieved 2007-02-16.
8. Jump up^ Jonathan Jones (6 December 2002). « Feeding fury ». The Guardian.
9. Jump up^ « Michelangelo, Laurentian Library ». Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Retrieved March 18, 2013.
10. Jump up^ Fondi principali (bml.firenze.sbn.it)

• Pierre Petitmengin – Laetitia Ciccolini, Jean Matal et la bibliothèque de Saint Marc de Florence (1545), « Italia medioevale e umanistica », 46, 2005, pp. 207–238.

Laurentian Library.

• Official website (in English)
• Photos of the library and vestibule, with Giorgio Vasari’s remarks
•  Texts on Wikisource:
  • Clark, J. W. On the Vatican Library of Sixtus IV

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentian_Library

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com