Orsanmichele

Orsanmichele, Or San Michele or Orsammichele (pronounced [orsammiˈkɛːle]; from the Tuscan contraction of Orto di San Michele, "orchard" or "kitchen garden of Saint Michael") is a communal building and church in the Italian city of Florence.

Toward the end of the 13th century Florence had a period of prosperity and relative peace. The middle class was organised in guilds and in the Parte Guelfa loyal to the papacy won the power struggle against the ruling aristocracy, called the Ghibellines who were alligiant to the emperor.^[1] After decisive events in the 1360s and since 1482 the oligarchy of the most wealthy and powerful guilds of bankers, judges and notaries, cloth manufacturers and merchants (while nobles who weren't members of the guilds were excluded)^[2] ruled the city, that strived and experienced a new building boom in private, public and ecclesiastical buildings, as well as infrastructure: the new Cathedral (1296), the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella (1294) and the Franciscan Santa Croce (1295), the Palazzo dei Priori (1298), the rebuilding of the Badia and the third expansion of the city walls (1294), subsequently comprising Santissima Annunziata and Ognissanti, and the grain market of Orsanmichele, in 1290.^[3][4][5] Besides recurring feuds and battles, the most severe recess by far became the Black Death. Its first appearance in 1340 and the pan-European outbreak of 1348, took the life of about half of the 100,000 inhabitants of Florence.^[6] The plague came back about once every decade since then, and had grave consequences for its economy as well as politics.^[7]

Located on the Via Calzaiuoli, a main road in the historic centre of Florence,^[8] between Palazzo della Signoria and the Cathedral, the city's civic and religious centres, the structure was built on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele which no longer exists. It was originally designed in 1290 as an open loggia for the grain market,^[9] and its construction probably directed by Arnolfo di Cambio, who was not only master of the Opera del Duomo (cathedral works) but also "capomaestro of our commune", as a contemporary source calls him.^[10] A fresco of the Madonna painted on one of the pillars was subsequently venerated due to its supposed miracle-working qualities. In 1304 the building was destroyed by fire, which was not uncommon at the time, because of the many wooden shacks that made up much of the city's housing for a good part of its 100,000 inhabitants until around a hundred years later. According to Giovanni Villani, a chronicler of the city at the time, a fire had previously burnt 1700 buildings to the ground.^[11]

On 25 September 1336 the city counsel decided to rebuild a "representative palazzo",^[12] that combined religious and communal functions and could "show the splendor of the city in its arts and artworks."^[13] Supervision of the project was delegated to the major Arte Por Santa Maria,^[14] and, according to Giorgio Vasari, Taddeo Gaddi, a pupil of Giotto († 1337), and his successor as capomaestro of the Opera del Duomo by then.

After Bernardo Daddi had painted a new Maestà (an image of the enthroned Madonna with the child Jesus) in 1347, which inherited the miraculous powers of the lost fresco, Andrea di Cione, better known as Orcagna, was commissioned to built a precious tabernacle to house the Madonna, funded by increased donations after the plagues of 1340 and 1348. While working on the extraordinary architecture (1349–1359), Orcagna became capomaestro of Orsanmichele from 1355 to 1359.^[15] Since 1349 Francesco Talenti, Neri di Fioravante (who sponsored Orcagna in 1352 becoming a member of the Guild of "masters of stone and wood"), and Benci di Cione are also documented on the site.^[16]

Between 1380 and 1404, the problem of the disharmonious coexistence of the market and the devotion of the Madonna had to be resolved and it was decided to convert the ground floor of Orsanmichele into a church for the guilds, which was dedicated to the Virgin and to her mother, Saint Anne, comemorating the expulsion of the Duke of Athens from Florence on Saint Anne's Day in 1343.^[17] The loggia was walled up in 1387 by Simone Talenti with delicate tracery in the pointed arches. The grain exchange moved to the second floor and became the meeting place for the guilds, while the third housed the municipal granary.^[18]

As early as 1339 the main guilds had each been assigned a space between the arches to make a framed niche, with a statue of their patron saint in it. At this time, only the Arte della Lana (wool manufacturers guild) seems to have done so; this figure was later replaced by Ghiberti's bronze of St. Stephen.^[19] Towards the end of the 14th century, the guilds were again charged by the city to commission statues of their patron saints to embellish the facades of the church.^[18] The majority of the statues date from 1400 to 1428, with two of the earliest from that period later replaced in the 16th century. The sculptures seen in the exterior niches today are copies, the originals having been removed to museums, mostly to the one on the upper floor of the building (see below).

Rising from a base of 32.4 x 22.1 meters to a height of 40 meters, the building has three approximately uniform floors.^[20] Over time it managed to fulfill conflicting functions. It was neither fortified with a crenellated parapet like the Palazzo della Signoria, or provided with a family tower like private palazzi were at the time,^[21] nor flanked by a campanile like the cathedral. Situated between the two centers of religious and secular power, the guild hall also served a symbolic function. The city's economic prosperity was ensured by civic order and religious support, and lack of food supplies caused by unforeseeable crop failures or military sieges could be absorbed by the communal granary.

In the oratory on the ground floor of the building stands the bejeweled marble tabernacle, built between 1349 and 1359 to encase an image of the Madonna venerated as miracle-working.^[22]. The panel painting of the enthroned Virgin Mary was executed in 1347 by the painter Bernardo Daddi. It replaced the Maestà by Ugolino di Nerio frescoed on a pillow, which was destroyed in the fire of 1307. The extremely elaborate Gothic architectural work of the tabernacle was designed and executed by the Florentine artist Andrea Orcagna, who also signed the work on the reverse in the relief depicting the Burial and Assumption of the Virgin. In his Commentari Lorenzo Ghiberti noted that Orcagna allegedly was paid an immense amount of 86,000 florins for the tabernacle.^[23] Mainly due to the plague, which hit the city not only in 1348, the confraternity of Orsanmichele was most likely "showered with bequests" – according to Villani, it had accumulated donations of the unprecedented sum of 350,000 florins.^[24]

At its inauguration in 1359 the tabernacle was praised and called one of the wonders of the world. A commentator said that "it would be more beautiful and worth as much in marble as if it was built in silver," the first time since Classical antiquity that the work of a master (its subtilitas) was valued more highly than precious materials.^[25] In 1366, before it was walled in, a railing was put around the tabernacle because of the influx of large numbers of the devout.^[26] The dome that crowns the tabernacle may be a prototype of the cupola of Florence Cathedral and a reminder of its importance in the public discourse, decades away from its completion, just as in Andrea di Bonaiuto's The Way of Salvation a fresco in the Spanish Chapel of Santa Maria Novella painted at about the same time (1365–1367), which depicts a completed Duomo.^[27]

In the bay to the left of the tabernacle, a marble group on the altar created by Francesco da Sangallo around 1526, shows a reading Mary, the blessed Christ Child on her lap, and Saint Anne sitting next to her daughter (so-called Sant' Anna Metterza). The frescoes that "cover virtually every surface of the interior" were painted after the arcades were closed between 1389 and 1400. Stylistically they are more conservative and less naturalistic and three-dimensional than the Giotto-esque figures of the reliefs on the tabernacle. Just as on the outside walls, the patron saints of the guilds are painted on the piers inside.^[28] The St John the Evangelist for example, formerly frescoed on a pier facing the Maestà (now in the Accademia), painted by Giovanni di Biondo (a pupil of Nardo di Cione) for the Arte della Seta is powerful in a static, iconic way, though adequate for the venue. Probably painted shortly after the Ciompi Revolt around 1380, in which the labourers of the guild members stood up, too, the religious symbolism informs a political subtext of power and stability: under the saints feet allegorical figures of Pride, Avarice and Vanity appear tread down.^[29]

The window lunettes depict scenes from the life of Mary and the miraculous work of the Maestà. After extensive restoration the oratory has been open to the public again since January 2024.^[30][31]

The four façades hold 14 architecturally designed external niches in Gothic style on the pillars between the closed arches, except for the one made by Donatello for his St. Louis of Toulouse, which constitutes the first tabernacle designed again according to the principles of the Classical order, with an architrave on fluted pilasters flanking a conch instead of a ripped vault. As each niche was built for its respective statue, some show an illustrative relief of the guild members' professions and their coat of arms. The three richest guilds opted to make their figures inof the far more expensive bronze, which could amount to ten times the cost of a marble statue. The city counsel had already decided on the decoration of the building's facade in 1339, but the it needed to enact another decree in 1406 to finally get the guilds to commission their patron figures in the course of about the following 25 years.^[9]

Orsanmichele's statuary is a relic of the fierce devotion and pride of Florentine trades, and a reminder that great art often arises out of a competitive climate. Each trade hoped to outdo the other in commissioning original, groundbreaking sculptures for public display on Florence's most important street, and the artists hired and materials used (especially bronze) indicate the importance that was placed on this site.

All of the statues suffered considerably in the 20th century through air pollution and acid rain. The comparison of photographs of a marble figure from the 1920s, where it was "still nearly intact", with pictures taken in the 1970s showed the scale of the damage. Following the nomination of Florence's historic centre as a World Heritage Site in 1982, the Opificio delle pietre dure responsible for the cultural heritage of Florence begun in 1984 to examine and restore all marble and bronze figures. Under the deposits on the marble they found "artificial patinating treatment of linseed oil pigmented with mineral soils, applied sometime around the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries." A laser technique was used to clean them by removing the patina and grime, a process which revealed remnants of gold leaf decoration on the hair and the borders of the vestments. The bronze statues as well showed signs of gilding. Ghiberti's St. Matthew was the last of the figures to be restored: his eyes had silver leaf inlays, which were mounted again.^[32] After over 20 years the restoration program ended with three of the statues to be shown in the National Gallery of Art in Washington before all figures were displayed again in the redesigned Museum of Orsanmichele on its first floor in 2006.^[33] Two works by Donatello are in other Florentine museums: St. George and its niche are installed in a wall of the main hall in the Bargello, and the St. Louis of Toulouse is displayed in the museum of the Basilica di Santa Croce.

The determining factor for the primal order of the sortable table are the dates of completion and installment of each work (always regained by refreshing ["f5"] the page).

Niche	Statue	Sculptor	Guild	Year	Notes
	Madonna of the Rose	Pietro di Giovanni Tedesco	Medici e Speziali (doctors and apothecaries)	1399
	Four Crowned Martyrs (Quattro Santi Coronati)	Nanni di Banco	Maestri di Pietra e Legname (wood and stone workers)	1408	[34][35]
	St James	Niccolò di Piero Lamberti, probably with his son Piero di Niccolò Lamberti.[36]	Arte dei Pellicciai (furriers)	1410[37]
	St Mark	Donatello	Arte dei Linaiuoli e Rigattieri (linen-weavers and peddlers)	1411–1413	[38]
	St Philip	Nanni di Banco	Arte dei Calzaiuoli (shoemakers)	1412–1414	[39]
	St Eligius	Nanni di Banco	Arte dei Maniscalchi (farriers)	1411–1415
	St Peter	Donatello (or Filippo Brunelleschi)	Arte dei Beccai (butchers)	1415
	St John the Baptist	Lorenzo Ghiberti	Arte di Calimala (merchants, finishers and dyers of foreign cloth)	1414–1416	[40]
	St George	Donatello	Arte dei Corazzai (armourers)	1415–1417	[41]
	St Matthew	Lorenzo Ghiberti	Arte del Cambio (bankers)	1419–1420	[42]
	St Louis of Toulouse replaced by Christ and St Thomas	Donatello Andrea del Verrocchio	Tribunale di Mercanzia (judiciary and arbitration)	1418–1422 1467–1483	[43][44]
	St Stephen	Lorenzo Ghiberti	Arte della Lana (wool manufacturers)	1428
	St John the Evangelist	Baccio da Montelupo	Arte della Seta (silk merchants)	1513–1515
	St Luke	Giambologna	Giudici e Notai (magistrates and notaries)	1601	[45]

• Millard Meiss (1978) [1951]. Painting in Florence and Siena after the Black Death. The Arts, Religion, and Society in the Mid-Fourteenth Century (4 ed.). Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-00312-2.
• Wolfgang Braunfels (1966) [1953]. Mittelalterliche Stadtbaukunst in der Toskana (in German) (3 ed.). Berlin: Gebrüder Mann.
• Gene Brucker (1969). Renaissance Florence. New Dimensions in History: Historical Cities, edited by Norman F. Cantor. New York: John Wiley & Sons. SBN 471-11370-0.
• Charles Seymour Jr. Sculpture in Italy, 1400–1500 (= Pelican History of Art). Penguin, London 1966.
• Gene Brucker (1984) [1983]. Florence, the Golden Age, 1138–1737. New York: Abbeville. ISBN 0-89659-457-2.
• John T. Paoletti; Gary M. Radke (2011) [1997]. "Or San Michele". Art in Renaissance Italy (4 ed.). London: Lawrence King. pp. 166–168. ISBN 978-1-85669-797-2.
• Sullivan, Mary Ann (July 10, 2005). "Orsanmichele". Digital Imaging Project: Art historical images of European and North American architecture and sculpture from classical Greek to Post-modern (1997–2018). Bluffton University, OH. Retrieved July 14, 2006.
• "Monumental Sculpture from Renaissance Florence" (Exhibition brochure). The National Gallery of Art, Washington. 2005. Archived from the original on July 13, 2006. Retrieved July 14, 2006.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Orsanmichele.

External videos
"Orsanmichele". Smarthistory. Khan Academy.

• See the 3D model of Orsanmichele from Florence As It Was, a project by George Bent since 2006 at Washington and Lee University.
• The Orsanmichele Museum, short description on the official tourism website for Tuscany.
• Orsanmichele as part of the associated Musei del Bargello.

43°46′14.73″N 11°15′18.61″E / 43.7707583°N 11.2551694°E / 43.7707583; 11.2551694