The
fourteenth century building of Orsanmichele, built
on the spot where the oratory of San Michele in
Orto once stood as wheat warehouse, soon became
a representative and religious building thanks
to the generosity of the Guilds, which decorated
it between the 14th and 16th century with extraordinary
sculptures and paintings. Today, the whole building
is a museum on its own. The two rooms above the
church, on the first and second floors, were reopened
to the public in 1996 with the aim of exhibiting
and preserving works that could no longer be left
on the building's façade and of additionally
displaying all the works that had been explicitly
commissioned for Orsanmichele and had been disseminated
due to various reasons.
The first floor currently exhibits eight of the
fourteen statues or groups of statues, in bronze
or marble, which once adorned the niches dedicated
to the Guilds on the outside of the building.
The second floor displays the forty small stone
sculptures representing the Saints and Prophets
originally installed on the top of the columns
that divide the windows with three lights and
the doors.
A great visual impact, inside the typically Gothic
setting, is offered by the exhibition of the large
statues on a platform. These were originally located
in the external niches and have now been restored.
The statues include extraordinary Renaissance
masterpieces, commissioned by the Florentine Guilds,
like St. Mark of Donatello, The Disbelief of St.
Thomas of Verrocchio, together with St. John the
Baptist of Ghiberti, Sant’Eligio and St.
Philip of Nanni di Banco. The group also comprises
the statues of St. Jacob, St. Peter and the Madonna
of the rose respectively attributed to Niccolò
di Pietro Lamberti, Bernardo Ciuffagni and Pietro
di Giovanni Tedesco.
The museum has yet to be completed. The statues
that are still located on the outside of the building
are still waiting to be restored and replaced
with copies, like the others already displayed
inside the museum.
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