Ospedale degli Innocenti

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The Ospedale degli Innocenti ('Hospital of the Innocents') was a children's orphanage in Florence, designed by Filippo Brunelleschi^[1][2], who received the commission in 1419. 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.

There was a door with a special rotating horizontal wheel that brought the baby into the building without that the parent was 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]

Contents 1 Design 2 The Tondi 3 Piazza Santissima Annunziata 4 References 5 External link

[edit] Design

Brunelleschi's design was based on both 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.^[4] 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: dark 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.^[5]

[edit] The Tondi

Above each column is a ceramic tondo. These were originally meant by Brunelleschi to be blank concavities, but ca. 1490, Andrea della Robbia was commissioned to fill them in.^[6] The design features a baby in swaddling clothes on a blue wheel, indicative of the horizontal wheel in the wall where babies could be rotated into the interior. 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]

[edit] Piazza Santissima Annunziata

The Foundling Hospital defines the eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, the other two principle facades of which were built later to imitate the 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.

[edit] References

[edit] External link

• Florence Art Guide