Santa Maria Novella

As in Venice and so many other Italian cities, the two churches of the great medieval preaching orders – the Dominicans’ Santa Maria Novella and the Franciscans’ Santa Croce – became the largest and most prestigious in the city, where wealthy families vied to create the most beautiful chapels and tombs. Santa Maria Novella has the prettier face – the stupendous black and white marble façade is the finest in Florence.

The lower section, with its looping arcades, is Romanesque work in the typical Tuscan mode, finished before 1360. In 1456 Giovanni Rucellai commissioned Alberti to complete it, a remarkably fortunate choice. Alberti’s upper half not only perfectly harmonizes with the original, but perfects it with geometrical harmonies to create a kind of Renaissance sun temple.

To Alberti it seemed a logical progression: the original builders had oriented Santa Maria to the south instead of the usual west, so that at noon the sun streams through the 14th-century rose window.