Santa Maria del Carmine is a church of the Carmelite Order, in the Oltrarno district of

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, in

Tuscany Tuscany ( ; ) is a Regions of Italy, region in central Italy with an area of about and a population of 3,660,834 inhabitants as of 2025. The capital city is Florence. Tuscany is known for its landscapes, history, artistic legacy, and its in ...

, Italy. It is famous as the location of the

Brancacci Chapel The Brancacci Chapel (in Italian language, Italian, "Cappella dei Brancacci") is a chapel in the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine di Firenze, Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence, central Italy. It is sometimes called the "Sistine Chapel of the ...

housing outstanding

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...

es by

Masaccio Masaccio (, ; ; December 21, 1401 – summer 1428), born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great List of Italian painters, Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaiss ...

and

Masolino da Panicale Lordship of Perugia , death_date = , death_place = Florence, Republic of Florence , nationality = Italian , field = Painting, fresco , training = , movement = Italian Renaissance , works = frescoes in ...

, later finished by

Filippino Lippi Filippino Lippi (probably 1457 – 18 April 1504) was an Italian Renaissance painter mostly working in Florence, Italy during the later years of the Early Renaissance and first few years of the High Renaissance. He also worked in Rome for a ...

History

The church, dedicated to the '' Beatae Virginis Mariae de monte Carmelo'', was founded by a group of Carmelite friars from Pisa. Construction of the church commenced in 1268 as part of the

Carmelite The Order of the Brothers of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel (; abbreviated OCarm), known as the Carmelites or sometimes by synecdoche known simply as Carmel, is a mendicant order in the Catholic Church for both men and women. Histo ...

convent, which still exists today. Of the original edifice only some Romanesque- Gothic remains can be seen on the sides. By the 14th century, it was the seat of a number of lay fraternities. The complex was enlarged a first time in 1328 and again in 1464, when the capitular hall and the refectory added, though the church maintained the Latin Cross, one nave plan. Renovated in the

Baroque style The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from the early 17th century until the 1750s. It followed Renaissance art and Mannerism and preceded the Rococo (i ...

in the 16th–17th centuries, it was damaged by a fire in 1771 which destroyed the interior of the church. It was rebuilt internally in the Rococo style in 1782. The

façade A façade or facade (; ) is generally the front part or exterior of a building. It is a loanword from the French language, French (), which means "frontage" or "face". In architecture, the façade of a building is often the most important asp ...

, like in many Florentine churches, remained unfinished. The fire did not touch the

sacristy A sacristy, also known as a vestry or preparation room, is a room in Christianity, Christian churches for the keeping of vestments (such as the alb and chasuble) and other church furnishings, sacred vessels, and parish records. The sacristy is us ...

: therefore have survived the ''Stories of St. Cecilia'' attributed to Lippo d'Andrea (c. 1400) and the marble monument of Pier Soderini by Benedetto da Rovezzano (1511–1513). The vault of the nave has a

trompe-l'œil ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

quadratura Illusionistic ceiling painting, which includes the techniques of perspective di sotto in sù and quadratura, is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which ''trompe-l'œil'', perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other ...

fresco by Domenico Stagi.

Brancacci Chapel

The Brancacci Chapel also survived the fire, and was saved by the subsequent restoration by the intervention of a Florentine noblewoman who was firmly opposed to the covering of the

es. The chapel is home to the famous frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino, considered the first masterwork of the

Italian Renaissance The Italian Renaissance ( ) was a period in History of Italy, Italian history between the 14th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked t ...

's master Masolino, commissioned by a wealthy merchant, Felice Brancacci, began work on the chapel in 1425 and was soon joined in the project by his pupil, Masaccio. The scenes by Masolino are St Peter Healing a Lame Man and Raising Tabitha from the Dead, St Peter Preaching, and Adam and Eve. Those by mostly Masaccio are The Tribute Money, St Peter Healing with his Shadow, The Crucifixion of St Peter, The Baptism of the Neophytes, and The Expulsion from Paradise. Their treatment of figures in believable space made the frescoes among the most important to have come out of the Early Renaissance. The cycle was finished by Filippino Lippi. The elaborated Italian Rococo ceiling is from one of the most important 18th century artists in the city, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti.

Corsini Chapel

The Corsini, one of the richest families in Florence during the 17th–18th centuries, had this chapel built in 1675–1683, to hold the remains of an ancestral member of the family, St Andrea Corsini (1301–1374), who became a

friar and the Bishop of Fiesole, and who was canonized in 1629. The architect Pier Francesco Silvani choose for it the

then popular in Rome. The altar has a marble bas-relief depicting the ''Glory of St Andrea Corsini'', sculpted by Foggini, and above a ''God the Father'' sculpted by Carlo Marcellini. On the sides of the altar are two more Foggini marble bas-reliefs: one depicts ''Sant'Andrea descends girded with sword to lead the Florentines to victory during the Battle of Anghiari'' and the other recalls a ''Miraculous vision of the Virgin by a young Sant'Andrea'' (occurring in the church of the Convent delle Selve). The small dome was frescoed by Giordano in 1682. The frescoes suffered in the great church fire, and were restored by Stefano Fabbrini.

The convent

The cycle of the lunettes in the cloister was frescoed in the 17th and 18th-century with episodes from the Carmelite history painted by the Florentine artists Galeazzo and Giovan Battista Ghidoni, Domenico Bettini, Cosimo Ulivelli and Antonio Nicola Pillori. The convent suffered in its history from numerous disasters, from the 1771 fire to the 1966 River Arno flood. Most of the artworks are therefore fragmentary: these include the ''Bestowal of the Carmelite Rule'' by

Filippo Lippi Filippo Lippi ( – 8 October 1469), also known as Lippo Lippi, was an Italian Renaissance painter of the Quattrocento (fifteenth century) and a Carmelite priest. He was an early Renaissance master of a painting workshop, who taught many paint ...

and the ''Last Supper'' by

Alessandro Allori Alessandro di Cristofano di Lorenzo del Bronzino Allori (Florence, 31 May 153522 September 1607) was an Italian painter of the late Mannerist Florentine school. Biography After the death of his father in 1541, Allori was brought up and trained ...

1582, and remains of works from other chapels by Pietro Nelli and

Gherardo Starnina Gherardo Starnina (c. 1360–1413) was an Italian painter from Florence in the Quattrocento era. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, Starnina initially trained with Antonio Veneziano (painter), Antonio Veneziano, then with Agnolo Gaddi. ...

. The second refectory is decorated with the ''Supper in Simon the Pharisee's house'' by Giovanni Battista Vanni (c. 1645); it also houses fragments of frescoes by Lippo d'Andrea.

Other burials

* Neri Corsini (1614–1678) * Giuliano Dami

References

External links

Holy Places in Tuscany
(Italian and English) {{DEFAULTSORT:Santa Maria Del Carmine, Florence Maria Del Carmine Carmelite monasteries in Italy Monasteries in Tuscany Carmelite churches in Italy Baroque architecture in Florence Rococo architecture in Italy Oltrarno