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Florence has over a thousand tabernacles, more than any other city in Europe. Of course, locating them all is a daunting task. To get you started, we have put together this (very) short list of major tabernacles in Florence's historic center. If organized tours are not your thing, meander

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Thu 24 Feb 2011 1:00 AM

Florence has over a thousand tabernacles, more than any other city in Europe. Of course, locating them all is a daunting task. To get you started, we have put together this (very) short list of major tabernacles in Florence’s historic center. If organized tours are not your thing, meander through the streets and look up: you are bound to find an interesting street shrine to admire.

 

 

Orsanmichele/Tabernacolo di Santa Maria della Tromba

 

Florence’s most important (and expensive!) tabernacle can be found inside Orsanmichele. The elaborate marble structure by Andrea Orcagna (1350s) that houses an image of the Madonna has been described as ‘the most perfect work of its kind in Italian Gothic.’ The Madonna was painted by Bernardo Daddi (commissioned in 1346) after the original, which is said to have performed miracles, burned in a fire. The earlier painting was previously located outside the church and was later promoted to the interior of Orsanmichele, which was renovated for the occasion.

A particularly impressive tabernacle near the church on via Orsanmichele, at the corner of Palazzo dell’Arte della Lana, comprises two gothic masterpieces. In one section, an extremely elegant fourteenth-century Madonna sits on her throne, surrounded by angels and saints; this section, by Jacopo del Casentino, was completed around 1347. Above is a coronation of the Virgin Mary, by Niccolò di Pietro Gerini. Flanking these are the insignia of the most important Florentine families of the era, as well as the guilds, municipality and historic neighborhoods (everyone wanted his name on this one). Above it all, tucked beneath its loggia, is a starry night sky. This tabernacle was dismantled and moved several times and even made a visit to piazza della Repubblica (before its expansion in the 1800s), after which it was finally installed in its current location.

 

 

Tabernacolo delle Fonticine

 

Situated on via Nazionale, just steps from the central market, this spectacular tabernacle has been attributed to Girolamo or Giovanni della Robbia. Completed circa 1522, its name derives from the cherub heads, the ‘little fountains,’ that once spewed (now drool) water into the white marble basin below. The tabernacle is modeled of the Della Robbia’s typical blue and white maiolica (glazed terracotta) and depicts an elegant Madonna and Child with saints Barbara, Luke, Jacob and Catherine, and the Eternal Father, Holy Spirit and adoring angels hovering above.

 

 

Tabernacles for the condemned

 

A breathtaking tabernacle adorned by with a fresco by a student of Niccolò Gerini overlooks via de’ Malcontenti, once the road that led prisoners on their final walk from the Stinche prison to the gallows. This brightly colored tabernacle was one of the last places prisoners could beg forgiveness to a gentle Madonna and Child with saints Peter and John and two angels. The prisoners would have seen a series of tabernacles along their death march, including the famed Tabernacolo delle Stinche by Giovanni da San Giovanni, painter for the grand dukes, on the corner of via Ghibellina and via Isola delle Stinche. It depicts Senator Serristori, the tabernacle’s commissioner, paying a prisoner’s bail in the presence of Jesus Christ and two magistrates. The tabernacle is particularly interesting because it depicts a cell of the Stinche prison, now long gone.

 

 

Tabernacolo delle Cinque Lampade

 

This shrine on via degli Alfani houses two frescoes from different eras, one from the fourteenth century and the other by Cosimo Rosselli, a very matronly Madonna and Child with two angels, completed sometime in the sixteenth century. In the 1800s, the arch that housed the works was decorated with five wrought-iron lamps, which gave it its name. However, it is not so much the artwork that intrigues here as much as the location: writer Tommaso Bonaventura was murdered on this corner by the bargello, the chief of police, which at the time had its headquarters in the Bargello, ordered to do so by Grand Duke Gian Gastone de’ Medici. The grand duke ordered the murder because Bonaventura was about to report all the salacious and dirty doings of the court at the Pitti Palace to the court of Vienna.

 

 

Tabernacolo di San Sisto papa

 

At the meeting of via delle Belle Donne and via del Sole is a time-worn fresco from the 1300s, attributed to Niccolò di Tommaso, depicting the city’s patron saint, John the Baptist, and Catherine of Alexandria. Note that on one side of the tabernacle there remains a small receptacle with a door for the devoted to leave offerings. Florentines would have seen this tabernacle on their way to mass at the Santa Maria Novella church.

 

 

Piazza Santa Maria Novella

 

At the corner of via della Scala, Francesco Fiorentini painted a Madonna and child with saints in 1420 in the style of his master, the more famous Lorenzo Monaco. This is an important work because it was mentioned by Vasari in his Lives of the Artists. The original fresco was removed in 1958 and replaced by a copy, which today gives us a sense of the condition to which it had been reduced. Earlier descriptions mention the fresco’s spectacular colors and delicate rendering of flesh and hands. The housing, with its foliate-topped pilasters, is original.

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