Episode 36: Florence: Santa Maria Novella – The Spanish Chapel – Part I

– Buongiono! I’m Dr. Rocky Ruggiero. Join me in Rebuilding the Renaissance and making art and history come to life.

– Welcome to the “Rebuilding The Renaissance” podcast, your guide to the art and history of Italy, from the glory of Rome, to the magnificence of the Renaissance. And now, here’s your host, Dr. Rocky Ruggiero.

– Buongiorno, everyone. Our podcast today is a continuation of our discussion concerning the art that was produced after the Black Death. You may remember that in my last podcast we were in San Gimignano talking about those rather gruesome frescoes in the Collegiate or in the Duomo, of that particular Tuscan town.

–  Today, we’re back in Florence. In fact, we’re in one of Florence’s most important churches, which is the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella. And if any of you have ever taken a train to Florence, you have gotten off at a train station with the same name because it’s located just behind the church. In fact, when you walk out of the train station of Santa Maria Novella, you can pretty much see the backside, or the apse, of this particular church. And Santa Maria Novella is one of the four quarter churches of the city. You may remember my discussion about the medieval urbanism of Florence and how it was divided up into four urban sections, each of which was represented by a church. And Santa Maria Novella is the headquarter church of the northwestern section of the city. Built just like all the other major monuments around the year 1300, although a little bit earlier. In fact, the date of construction of Santa Maria Novella is 1279. And the only reason I bring this up is because it’s pretty much the only major medieval structure in Florence not associated with the architect Arnolfo di Cambio. You may remember from my discussion about the Basilica of Santa Croce, how I actually nicknamed Arnolfo, “Super Arnolfo” Di Cambio because we seem to blanket-attribute everything built in Florence at the turn of the 13th and 14th centuries to Arnolfo. Santa Maria Novella could not have been built by Arnolfo because it’s simply too early. 1279 versus 1294 at Santa Croce, 1299 at Palazzo Vecchio, 1296, so it predates by about two decades or so, but again we’re in that last phase of the 13th century. And Santa Maria Novella is one of the major mendicant churches in Florence. You may remember, again, from our discussion of Santa Croce, mendicant Catholic orders are orders that take vows of poverty. Mendicant, from mendicante, which is the Italian word for beggar, technically speaking. And we were talking about the Franciscans over at Santa Croce. Instead, at Santa Maria Novella, the major mendicant order of this house, or resides there, is the Dominican Order. And if the Franciscans were followers of Saint Francis, the Dominicans were instead followers of a Spanish saint by the name of Dominic, better known to posterity as Saint Dominic de Guzman. He was an exact contemporary of Saint Francis of Assisi. He was born a bit earlier, in fact, his year of birth is 1170. He died a bit earlier as well. He died in the year 1221, but revolutionized the Catholic world at exactly the same time as Saint Francis of Assisi. And, like his contemporaries the Franciscans, the Dominicans were a preaching order. So their mission was to go out and to spread the good news of Christ. But, different from the Franciscans, whereas when we were over at Santa Croce, we were talking about Francis’ love of nature, of the sense of peace and harmony amongst religions and peoples. That granola-eating, you know, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing philosophy does not hold place in the Dominican Order. In fact, the Dominicans from their very inception were about one thing, and that one thing was to fight against heresy. The mission of the Dominican Order was to fight against anything that the Catholic Church considered to be heretical. Now, when most people define “heresy,” they imagine that it is a belief or a practice that goes against beliefs and/or practices of the Catholic Church. When in reality, what heresy is, is anything that the church does not condone, anything that the Catholic Church does not approve. And the punishment for heresy in the middle ages was to be burned alive. So it was a very dangerous accusation. In fact, the Dominican Order came into being when Dominic, not then a saint at the beginning of the 13th century, and a group of other Spanish priests, went into the southwestern part of France, one that is very dear to me because my wife is from this particular area, and fought against a sect of Christians, known as Cathars. C-A-T-H-A-R. Now, the whole Cathar movement is one that I would need to save for a separate podcast. It’s a very complicated thing and, depending on who you talk to, some describe Cathars as unjustly persecuted by the Catholic Church, others, instead, describing them as the greatest threat to Christianity, perhaps, in its history. Well, regardless of who the Cathars were they didn’t get very far because Dominic and his fun-loving followers came along and pretty much burned them all alive at the stake. In fact, if any of you were to visit the area around Toulouse, France, today, you will see quite a number of monuments celebrating the Cathars, which is kind of an odd thing. But in a post-French Revolution atmosphere, of course, those Cathars were seen to be simply one of the many victims of the rather unjust practices of the Catholic Church in the middle ages. The point of all this being that when you walk into a Dominican church, the art and the architecture has a tendency to be rather severe. It is art and/or architecture that is meant to reinforce the teachings and the beliefs of the Catholic Church. Far from that sort of fun-loving, naturalistic style that we discussed with Giotto over at Santa Croce. Instead the art of Dominican churches is dogmatic, is didactic. In fact, we’ll be visiting Santa Maria Novella for several podcasts, the first of which is today, but we’ll be coming back later on to discuss what is my absolute favorite painting in the city of Florence, and that is Masaccio’s Trinity, a Renaissance work that sort of embodies, but at the same time, displays several of the Catholic Church’s most important dogmas and/or doctrines. But today, we’re actually not going to deal so much with the church. Let me give you a little background on the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella before we move out. As I mentioned, from the end of the 13th century, it is a Gothic-style church, as its date would suggest. But like the other major Gothic churches in Florence, it underwent a “Renaissancing.” So in the 16th century, the walls of the church were, in fact, whitewashed and Renaissance altars and altar pieces were inserted. And, just like in Santa Croce, its most important modification was the removal of the rood screen. And if any of you are standing in Santa Maria Novella as you’re listening to this podcast, you can place the position of that rood screen very easily because you’ll see a large wooden crucifix painting suspended from the ceiling as you’re looking towards the altar. And that large suspended crucifix, which, by the way, was painted by Giotto in the year 1320, is not on a medieval suspension system. In fact, that suspension system was introduced into the church in the early 2000 to 2001 to celebrate the restoration of that painting and to recreate its original location on top of the rood screen. So if you look at the base of that cross, it gives you an idea of just how tall the dividing wall was inside of Santa Maria Novella because you can see how high up above the ground that crucifix painting is located. So we’re talking about 17, maybe 18 feet up. And you also know that that area of the church is the most important because we have couple of stairs leading up and the most simple and effective form of hierarchy, of course, is height. What is higher is more important. And when you walk up towards that crucifix, if you look to your left-hand side, you will see a door. And that door leads out into the convent area of Santa Maria Novella. Now today, when we talk about convents, most of us imagine nunneries, right? Places were nuns or sisters live, but consider that a convent in the middle ages, and even today, can imply a place for either men and/or women. A convent is a place where brothers and/or sisters live, where they live together. Convent, from the Latin convivium, which literally means “cohabitation,” people living in together in a brotherhood or sisterhood type of community. The distinction that needs to be made is between a convent and a monastery. So, a convent is where a friar lives. A monastery is where a monk lives instead, and monasteries are usually rural in setting and isolated. And monks usually taking a vow of place. They will remain in isolation away from society, where instead, the Franciscans, the Dominicans, these preaching orders that we’ll be discussing more and more as these podcasts progress, because their mission was to preach, went to build their churches and convents amongst these populated urban centers. In other words, you need an audience if you’re going to preach and obviously these cities were the best place for audiences. And so Santa Croce, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Maria del Carmine, where the Carmelite Order’s located, Santo Spirito, which is where the Augustinians are, the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence, which is where the Servite Order, or Servants of Mary Order, as well. They’re all located such so that they can preach to their immediate audience. So, you walk into the convent of Santa Maria Novella, which is a massive structure. Occupies acres of land in Florence. In fact, a large portion of it today is occupied as a military base in the city, large portion of it is off limits. But when you walk down those stairs immediately into the convent area, first and foremost, you’re going to notice a whole bunch of detached frescoes around you. Santa Maria Novella was quite damaged during the flood, the last major flood in Florence, which took place on November 4, 1966, where the floodwater was about eight and a half feet above the ground. In fact, if you look to your immediate right, you’ll see one of these typical Florentine marble plaques with a black horizontal line indicating the height of the floodwaters with the date. You’ll see November 4, 1966. And so, what we’ve done is to detach those frescoes to then reattach them later on on masonite backdrops, on masonite backings. We’ll talk more about this in another podcast of how so much of what conservation and restoration technology is today coming from Florence. And much of it developed because of the flood of 1966. Well, you walk a little bit further down and you’ll come across this large door. And if you look through it, you’ll walk into this room which is simply breathtaking. It is a large space whose walls are entirely covered with fresco decoration. And what you have just walked into is the so-called “Spanish Chapel.” It is one of the most underrated gems in the city of Florence. In fact, up until recently when the church and the convent were open as a single museum complex, the Spanish Chapel was nearly impossible to get in. For a while, it was only open on weekends, then it was only open on Mondays and Fridays. In fact, it was very difficult for me to work into my syllabi, simply because I couldn’t get my students in on Fridays. We usually don’t have classes on Fridays because most study abroad programs leave that as a sort of travel day. Occasionally, we were able to get in there for whatever special reason, and it really is one of the most extraordinary works of art, I think, in the entire city. So, I’m quite happy that for the past several years now, the Spanish Chapel has been open during the same times as the church itself. Now, what this chapel is, technically, is the chapter house of the convent of Santa Maria Novella. Consider that convents were rather standardized in terms of the type of structures that you would find inside. You’d have cloisters, right, and cloisters are simply religious courtyards. You would have dormitories, where the friars and the sisters would sleep. You would have refectories, and a refectory is simply a fancy word for a cafeteria or a dining hall. You normally have a library. At Santa Maria Novella you have one of the more famous pharmacies in the world. The Pharmacy of Santa Maria Novella is the oldest extant pharmacy on the planet. And you’d always a room in any of these convents for a chapter house. And the chapter house was a space that was reserved exclusively for use by the religious chapter that occupied the church and convent, hence the name “chapter house.” In other words, while most of the convent would’ve been semi-public, the chapter house was essentially the boardroom where only Dominican friars who, by the way, are easily identifiable in the works of art because their habit consists of a white robe, covered with a black cape. And you’ll see the Dominicans depicted all over the place inside of Santa Maria Novella and also inside of the Spanish Chapel itself. The members of this order, the Dominicans, would gather inside of their chapter house, they would shut the doors and they would discuss internal affairs. “We have to fix the plumbing in cell number 13.” “What will we serve at the upcoming Christmas dinner? “Will it be goose or will it be duck?” They would have collective confessions inside of chapter houses where all of the members would step up and publicly proclaim their sins, and then the prior of the particular chapter would stand and give collective absolution, forgiving all of the members of those iniquities. But the most important and famous thing that took place inside of the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella, inside of the so-called Spanish Chapel, was the trial of a very important Catholic saint named Catherine of Siena, better known to the world today as Saint Catherine of Siena, who was a Dominican nun from the 14th century, who was credited, in large part, for the return of the papacy from the French city of Avignon to the city of Rome. Again, from a former podcast, you may remember how the papacy up and moved around the year 1300 from Rome to the French city of Avignon, where it remained for the better part of the entire 14th century. Well, it was Saint Catherine of Siena who was publicly and quite verbosely outspoken against this movement, would write letters to the pope saying, “God is beseeching me to beseech you “to get this papacy to move back.” And eventually, it actually did. Now, because this woman, number one, was claiming to have direct contact with the divine, she was put on trial as a heretic. Now, consider that in the middle ages, if you were accused of heresy, you were pretty much guilty of heresy. But curiously, Saint Catherine of Siena was absolved. She was found innocent and, in fact, they believed that her divine communication was authentic. Now, I’m fairly certain that the fact that she was being tried by Dominican peers helped her cause, but she was, in fact, found innocent of these divine visions and set free afterwards, which is why she continued to live and eventually died of natural causes. In fact, you may remember Saint Catherine who died of natural causes in Rome, and the Sienese so adamant about getting her back to her hometown of Siena, the pope not having it because she was such a celebrity saint. And so the Sienese deciding instead to simply take her head home. In fact, they cut off her head and smuggled it out of the city of Rome, where you can see it today on display, I’m not kidding by the way, inside of the Basilica of San Domenico, the Basilica of Saint Dominic, in the great medieval Tuscan city of Siena. It’s in the chapel dedicated to her of the same name, and she’s wearing her Dominican habit inside. So, if you’re interested in these gruesome relics, the head of Saint Catherine is something you don’t want to miss. And in fact, inside of the Spanish Chapel, Saint Catherine is depicted. We’ll get to this a little bit later on now as we get into these frescoes, but in one of the frescoes, in fact, the superstar, this 14th century celebrity by the name of Saint Catherine is depicted in her Dominican habit. So the chapter house, and this chapter house was paid for entirely by a single patron who has one of the greatest names in history. His first name was Buonamico and his last name was Guidalotti. Buonamico Guidalotti, which, if translated into English, would translate as “Good friend” Guidalotti. I implore my students not to write that on their exams. Buonamico Guidalotti was a very wealthy patron from the neighborhood of Santa Maria Novella, and in his will, left a rather substantial amount of money for the construction and for the decoration of the chapter house of Santa Maria Novella. And in fact, it was after he died that the walls of the chapter house were constructed, and that a painter by the name of Andrea di Bonaiuto, better known to the world as Andrea da Firenze, was hired to come in and to paint the walls of the chapel. In fact, Andrea di Bonaiuto was so famous outside of Florence, that even in Florence he became known as Andrea da Firenze. And all of the paintings in this room were done between the years 1365 and 1368. Now, what does all of this have to do with “Spanish,” right, I told you that the name of the chapel was the Spanish Chapel. Well, the reason it’s called the Spanish Chapel is because if we fast-forward a couple of hundred years into the middle of the 16th century, when the second Duke of Florence, whose name was Cosimo de’Medici, married a Spanish princess by the name of Eleonora of Toledo, as in Toledo, Spain. And when Eleonora moved to Florence, she brought a rather large court, members of the Spanish royal family, which, at this time considered, was intermarried with the Habsburg dynasty as well. And because of Dominic’s Spanish background, because Santa Maria Novella was a Dominican church and Dominic himself was Spanish, as was the duchess, the duchess decided to, essentially, make this chapter house the official chapel of the Spanish court that she brought with her, hence the name the Spanish Chapel. Although, technically it wasn’t called the Cappellone degli Spagnoli until the middle of the 16th century. Before that, it was very simply the chapter house. And the decorations that we’ll be discussing in our next podcast, have nothing to do with 16th century Florence. What the frescoes are, or what they represent in this particular room, are instead one of the prime examples, yet again, of post-Black Death-style painting. In fact, that’s why we’re in this chapel, well, we’re in this chapel because the paintings are absolutely spectacular, but we’re also here to again, throughout this idea, you know, was there this distinct style after the Black Death, was there not this distinct style? Well, that’s what we’re going to discuss and we’ll pull apart these paintings in our next podcast. Before we do, another important part, we’ve already discussed this when talking about the funerary chapels inside of Santa Croce and how much of the financing for these churches came from private patrons buying a burial space. And if you’re in the Spanish Chapel, if you’re planning on going to the Spanish Chapel, if you look at the pavement, the tomb closest to the altar, just there at the base of the stairs with medieval writing, if you read the inscription, you’ll actually see, and it’s fairly legible, I think, for anyone trained or untrained, to read the tomb of Buonamico Guidalotti. So he left money in his will for the construction and the decoration, but obviously the flip side of this was that he and his descendants would be entombed inside of this particular chapel. Consider, by the way, that that small space, the apse, behind the altar, was also the Chapel of the Holy Sacrament. So this is where consecrated hosts were kept inside. So the idea of, yes, this majestic and large decorative space reflecting the power and the wealth of the patron who paid for it and was buried inside, but also, again, of burying oneself in close proximity of something holy. Which was, in fact, the consecrated hosts that were then used for mass inside the nearby church. And if you’re standing inside, the look of the chapel is fairly similar to what it once was. Those wooden benches that you see arranged around the perimeter are not the original 14th century benches, but that’s essentially what you would’ve found. And as the Dominicans sat there receiving absolution, as they sat there and discussed theological issues, as they sat there and they put Dominican nuns on trial, essentially all of this artwork around them was meant to interact. It was meant to literally influence and play into what it was that was being discussed. It’s not just arbitrary decoration, but it was decoration that was put there, again as I mentioned in the beginning of this podcast, to reinforce the ideas of the Catholic Church, of Catholic doctrine, and of Catholic dogma. But at the same time because it was painted just two decades after the Black Death, perhaps some of that pessimism and violence seeping into the overall style of the frescoes as well. So the walls covered with fresco decoration, in fact, one of my favorite ways to illustrate the difference between Gothic and Renaissance architecture is to put the Spanish Chapel up against a structure that we’re going to talk about in a later podcast called Brunelleschi, Old Sacristy, and essentially the architecture being the same. What changes are that the walls of the Gothic space are completely covered in fresco decoration, whereas in the Renaissance they simply wiped away, they’ve just deleted all of the imagery and let the walls stand as decoration. But the forms, being very similar, nonetheless. Okay, again, one last thing. If you’re in the chapel, those paintings that you see behind the altar, behind that crucifix, which by the way is contemporary with the paintings behind it, is all 16th century decoration. It’s nothing to do with the original medieval decor. And it is the medieval decor that we are concerned with and that we shall address in our next podcast, talking about how these paintings reflect or do not reflect this philosophy of a post-Black Death-style. So stay tuned for more.

– For more information on lectures and programs in the United States, art history tours in Italy, and for online video lectures, visit RockyRuggiero.com.