Orsanmichele

Orsanmichele combines a former grain market with a church and museum of Renaissance sculpture. Its ground-floor church preserves Orcagna's marble tabernacle, while the sculptures originally made for the building's exterior niches are displayed in the museum above.

Why it matters

Orsanmichele reflects Florence's civic and religious life in the fourteenth century. The building developed from an oratory beside the city's open-air grain market; the enclosure of the loggia turned the market structure into a church while the upper floors served as grain stores. The city's guilds commissioned sculptures of their patron saints for the exterior niches, creating a public display of devotion and civic identity.

What to notice

The marble tabernacle by Andrea di Cione, known as Orcagna, dates to 1359 and shelters Bernardo Daddi's Madonna and Child, painted in 1347. Frescoes on the pillars depict the guilds' patron saints, and the vaults preserve late-fourteenth-century paintings. The museum brings together sculptures originally made for the exterior niches, including Donatello's Saint Mark, Verrocchio's group of The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, works by Ghiberti and Nanni di Banco, and Giambologna's sculpture. Donatello's original Saint George is now at the Bargello; a copy occupies its former niche.

Context and history

The first oratory on the site was dedicated to San Michele in Orto, or Saint Michael in the garden. In the fourteenth century the structure was rebuilt to serve the grain market, storage and worship. The guilds supplied statues for the exterior niches over several decades. Conservation later moved the original sculptures indoors and replaced them outside with copies, preserving the relationship between the artworks and the building for which they were made.