Losing perspective - Let me just back up a bit

Orsanmichele Church

 This structure has intrigued me since I first spotted it in 1995, down a narrow street off the Palazzo della Republica, as we rushed past. I glimpsed it again from afar on a walking tour in 2023. What a curious thing.

During my solo week in Florence in 2024, I booked to spend hours in the astonishing church and museum housed upstairs here and ponder the structure's origins and history. I walked all around it, photographing the magnificent sculptures (replicas of the magnificent originals housed inside for their protection) in niches round about, as well as countless other architectural details. 

But I still left mildly frustrated as what I wanted to do most was not possible. I wanted to walk back several yards to get an unimpeded look, to "take it all in." Alas, with narrow lanes heading off in all directions and pedestrian, bicycle and trade vehicle traffic, there just isn't a vantage point from which to properly appreciate the multi-layered historical styles

Arte della Lana 

To me the even more intriguing building sharing the corner, on the other side of the small street is the Arte della Lana building; appreciating its detail demands the long view even more. 

I've added a Streetview link here, to share my quandary with you.

So I'm spending time visiting blogs and tourism sites, and revisiting my photos to try to get myself oriented.  

The  Arte della Lana building  is joined to Orsanmichele church by a bridge on the second floor. In fact, the only way to enter the museum on the second floor of the Orsanmichele church is by entering this building first at a side door and climbing the stone stairs. The walls are adorned with hints of the frescoes housed inside the former wool guild headquarters.

The fascinating Arte della Lana building with its magnificent Gothic doorway was by 1308 the headquarters for the Wool Guild, at that time the most wealthy of the seven Medieval trade guilds in Florence. The Italian Dante Society now owns the building; you can see a coloured relief of Dante presenting his Divine Comedy above the peaked Venetian gothic entrance.

Inside the Arte della Lana palagio (tower/palazzo hybrid)  are splendid frescoes and decorated ceilings worthy of the authorities in charge of the serious business of wool. I didn't get to visit. But I fully appreciated, head tilted to the sky, its medieval castellated tower and the later Renaissance detail. 

The photo above right shows the 'back stairs' used to access the church's second floor - a taste of the splendours inside Arte della Lana. 

Now, back to the top and the strangely proportioned Orsanmichele Church. Let me take you into the splendours inside, and then we'll talk.

The Church's not very elegant boxy shape reveals its c.1290 origins as a municipal grain storage under open loggia. As it evolved, the arches of the original loggia housing the open-air market (similar to the Mercato Nuovo, or straw market) were closed in and fitted with magnificent late Gothic mullioned windows and two extra stories were added. 

The transformation from market to church took place over time, starting with an image painted on a pillar of the Virgin Mary, to whom miracles were attributed. Fire. Rebuilding. The humble Virgin painted on a market pillar evolved to the massive painting of the Madonna by Bernardo Daddi in 1347 housed in a magnificent Gothic marble altar carved by Andrea Orcagna. The church as we see it was completed in 1404. Here's a link to a post about Mary's miracles, to help explain what I cannot about the origin of this church. 

The interior of Orsanmichele Church is breathtaking There is so much devotional art here - frescoes, sculpture, paintings and stained glass, so much of it by the most celebrated artists of the era. I was mesmerized by the late Gothic/early Renaissance ceiling frescoes. You can feel the arcane mystery that faith must have been to simple people of the 14th century.   

Museums in Florence provides the full story here.

 Here's another great site, with great photos and information I've not included.

So, that's the first floor of Orsanmichele. I mentioned at the top of this post the somewhat circuitous route the art pilgrim makes to the second, up stairs in the adjoining guild building and back across a footbridge. Here, under soaring brick groin vaulted ceilings which once housed civic grain storage are displayed the sculptures that originally adorned the niches on the street-level exterior of Orsanmichele. 

Four Crowned Saints (Nanni di Banco 1412-15)

I appreciated seeing the sculptural detail at eye level, and reading all the information, but the replicas outside (over the past decades the originals have been gradually moved inside and restored) have such power, standing as they have done since the early Renaissance in ornate niches, overlooking the daily human drama unfolding below. Something lost in translation here.

I'm obliged to a couple of writers for helping me know this corner better.

This post from the entertaining From a Tuscan Hillside is really good, this link to Leslie's The Geographical Cure says all I really needed to say about Orsanmichele. And then there are my favourite architecture history presenters on Smarthistory.

The day ended on the third floor of Orsanmichele. Here a massive open space offered misty views of the city. 

Research projects like this post highlight for me the reality of impermanence in medieval cities - it didn't always look like this, folks. Fire, war, changing tastes, growth and decline change everything. What we see when we visit; it's just a snapshot. Even the oldest places are still in transition. As are we all.