Pazzi Chapel: An Early Renaissance Chapter House and Family Chapel in Florence
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Republic of Florence
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Chapel
On this page12 sections
History
The Pazzi Chapel is a Roman Catholic chapel in Florence, Italy, built in the fifteenth-century Early Renaissance tradition. It stands in the first cloister on the southern side of the Basilica of Santa Croce and served officially as Santa Croce’s new chapter house, a room where the governing members of a religious community met for administrative and disciplinary business. It also functioned as a private commemorative chapel and burial place funded by the wealthy Pazzi family.
Rebuilding Santa Croce
A major fire in 1423 destroyed the convent’s dormitory area and part of its library. The municipality and prominent Florentine families, including the Medici, Spinelli, and Pazzi, supported the rebuilding campaign. Andrea Pazzi, head of his family, had gathered funds for a new chapter house by 1429. The project gave him the opportunity to establish a family chapel and burial place within the convent, while also presenting the Pazzi family’s wealth and political importance in Florence.
Filippo Brunelleschi’s involvement is generally placed in 1429, although construction did not begin until about 1442. A property declaration made by Andrea Pazzi in 1433 records his commitment to rebuilding the chapter house, apparently on the site of the earlier structure. The surviving evidence makes the building’s chronology difficult to establish, and financial problems probably slowed the work.
Construction and interrupted patronage
Pope Eugene IV, head of the Roman Catholic Church from 1431 to 1447, dined in the chapter house in 1443. At that point, the building had been completed only as far as the entablature, the horizontal architectural band above the columns and walls. Andrea Pazzi’s will of 1445 assigned a substantial sum for completing the chapel. After his death that year, his son Jacopo took charge of the project.
Brunelleschi died in 1446, and the construction campaign stopped again. Giuliano da Maiano, Luca della Robbia, Salvi d’Andrea, and Michelozzo subsequently continued the work. The dome was completed around 1459 or 1460, while the portico was completed or substantially completed in 1461. Further construction continued, however, and the chapel remained unfinished in 1469 and 1473, when additional funds were allocated. Cardinal Pietro Riario provided particular support for the contribution made in 1473. Work on the portico was still in progress in 1478 and concluded in the years immediately afterward.
The Pazzi family and the question of authorship
The Pazzi family’s political downfall changed the building’s history. In 1478, the family was destroyed politically and dispossessed after the Pazzi Conspiracy, an attempted attack on Medici rule. Plans for further additions ended, leaving the chapel incomplete in important respects, and it subsequently remained empty. Its formal Catholic titular dedication is the Assumption of Mary, while the family chapel was dedicated to Saint Andrew, Andrea Pazzi’s patron saint.
Brunelleschi is traditionally credited with the chapel, and many scholars attribute its essential interior and exterior design to him. Other interpretations assign the execution and detailing, especially those of the portico, to Giuliano da Maiano or Michelozzo. The written attribution to Brunelleschi is late, so the question of authorship remains unresolved. Whatever the precise division of responsibility, the chapel is regarded as a major Early Renaissance work and an important early example in the development of centralized religious plans.
Architectural influence
The chapel’s design pursued architectural harmony through geometric proportion, columns, pilasters, arches, and vaults. It drew on the medieval chapter house of the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria Novella in Florence while incorporating elements associated with Roman architecture and Florentine Romanesque architecture. Its centralized conception was later echoed in Renaissance buildings including Santa Maria delle Carceri at Prato, San Biagio at Montepulciano, and Santa Maria Nuova at Cortona. The interior also served as a model for Michelangelo’s design of the New Sacristy at the Basilica of San Lorenzo.
Remains
Plan and central interior
The Pazzi Chapel is a small Renaissance building measuring approximately 17.9 meters in length and 10.5 meters in width. Its restricted dimensions were determined by pre-existing walls and neighboring buildings, including the Medici, Baroncelli, and Castellani chapels. Within this limited space, a rectangular, transept-like plan is carefully balanced to create the visual effect of a centralized square. The central area, two side wings, altar recess, and exterior portico are coordinated through a strict proportional system.
Geometric central space
The central interior is based on a module of 20 Florentine braccia, a historical unit of length measuring approximately 11.66 meters in this case. The same dimension corresponds to the width of the central area, the height of the interior walls, and the dome’s diameter. Together, these measurements create the conception of a cube surmounted by a hemisphere. Two short lateral wings extend from the central space. Each measures one-fifth of the central square’s width and is covered by a coffered barrel vault with a single row of coffers and rosettes.
A continuous bench of pietra serena, a fine-grained gray sandstone widely used in Florentine Renaissance architecture, runs around the interior perimeter. It allowed the building to serve as a monastic chapter house. Corinthian pilasters rise from the bench and connect visually with the upper entablature. The walls carry the structural loads of the arches and domes, while the pilasters primarily organize the interior architecturally. Dark gray stone contrasts with the white plastered walls, and repeated round-headed arches, circular window profiles, pilasters, and geometric panels establish a regular visual rhythm.
Altar recess and interior decoration
The altar recess, or scarsella, is a small projecting space at the end of the chapel. Raised by several steps, it has a width equal to one-fifth of the central module and to the entrance arch. A small dome on curved triangular supports called pendentives covers the recess. Its painted starry vault represents the constellations visible over Florence on July 4, 1442. This date has been associated with the arrival in Florence of René of Anjou, who was then regarded as a possible leader of a new crusade to recover the Holy Land and defeat the Ottomans.
The astronomical decoration was probably produced by Giuliano d’Arrigo, known as Il Pesello, with technical assistance from the astronomer and mathematician Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli. Both were also associated with comparable astronomical decoration in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo. The altar belongs to the Donatello school. Two stained-glass windows designed by Alesso Baldovinetti depict Saint Andrew in the rectangular window and the Eternal Father in the circular opening above it.
Twelve large glazed-terra-cotta roundels depicting the Apostles occupy the interior walls. They are among Luca della Robbia’s finest works. A frieze above them shows cherubs and includes the Lamb, which symbolizes Redemption and was also associated with Florence’s wool guild. Four polychrome glazed-terra-cotta roundels in the pendentives depict the Four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They are attributed either to Luca della Robbia or to Brunelleschi as designer, with execution by the Della Robbia workshop. Their scale and viewpoint were calculated for a viewer standing at the chapel’s center, while the figures’ rays and books use carefully foreshortened perspective. Pazzi heraldic emblems also occupy the pendentives.
A small room reached through the right-hand wall of the altar recess served as the Pazzi family’s burial place and private worship space. The interior decoration remains subordinate to the building’s geometry and spatial clarity. White plaster, gray pietra serena, glazed terracotta, and stained glass create a restrained polychrome scheme.
Portico and exterior
Classical facade
The front facade opens onto the first cloister of Santa Croce and acts as a screen that filters light into the chapel. Its open portico evokes Roman triumphal arches. Six Corinthian columns support a lightened attic divided into square panels by paired pilasters and interrupted at the center by a semicircular arch. The facade combines an architraved Corinthian colonnade, a high attic, a central arch, and a dome with a lantern, bringing together classical, Romanesque, medieval, and Renaissance elements.
The central arch and the four outer lintelled bays combine Greek-style architrave construction with a Roman arch. This arrangement became an important precedent for the later Serliana, a three-part opening with a central semicircular arch between two lower openings capped by horizontal lintels. The portico is covered by a coffered barrel vault. A small dome occupies the section corresponding to the central arch, and both the vault and dome are decorated with glazed-terra-cotta rosettes and Pazzi heraldic emblems.
Sculpture, inscriptions, and doors
The dome rises externally above a low cylindrical drum with a conical roof and a light lantern. Its drum bears a red sinopia, a reddish preparatory drawing or pigment layer used in wall painting and related decoration, with the inscription “a d’ 11 ottobre 1459 si fornì,” recording a completion date associated with the dome. The portico dome bears another date, “1461 A. DI 10 Giugno.”
The portico’s upper termination is unfinished and protected by an exposed canopy. Giorgio Vasari stated that the original design included a pedimental crown. Above the architrave, small roundels with cherub heads are attributed to Desiderio da Settignano and artists of Donatello’s school. Luca della Robbia created the brightly polychrome glazed-terra-cotta decoration of the portico dome and the roundel of Saint Andrew above the entrance. The small dome also contains relief shells, a Pazzi coat of arms with dolphins, and a wreath of leaves and fruit.
Above the architrave, two angels hold a roundel containing two dolphins and five crossed crosses, identified as the modern arms of the Pazzi family. A relief of Saint Andrew between two angels occupies the pediment. Giuliano da Maiano made the wooden entrance doors in 1472, carving them with floral and geometric forms. Their central rosettes contain the arms of the Florentine People and Commune.
Two tall arched windows flank the entrance, framed by pilasters aligned with the height of the portico columns. Four glazed windows in the portico’s inner wall correspond to the spaces between its columns. The chapel’s surviving materials include limestone, marble, pietra serena, plaster, wood, glazed terracotta, and glass. Together, they reinforce the building’s emphasis on geometric proportion, centralized space, controlled natural light, and the visual relationship between its portico and dome.
