Basilica of Our Lady of Humility: Renaissance Sanctuary in Pistoia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Republic of Florence
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page12 sections
History
The Basilica of Our Lady of Humility is a Roman Catholic basilica in Pistoia, Italy, and the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Humility, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Built in the Renaissance, it was consecrated in 1582 and developed around a revered image associated with a reported miracle during a period of violent civic conflict.
Santa Maria Forisportae
The basilica occupies the site of Santa Maria Forisportae, an earlier church dedicated to the Assumption of Mary. It stood outside Pistoia’s first medieval circuit of walls, just beyond the Porta Vecchia. The church is recorded from the thirteenth century and is generally thought to have originated sometime between the eighth and twelfth centuries.
In 1382, Bishop Andrea Franchi commissioned a fresco of the Madonna of Humility on what was believed to be an altar on the left wall of the earlier church’s vestibule. The Madonna of Humility is a Marian image showing the Virgin without a throne, an iconographic type that became widespread in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The painter has not been securely identified and has been associated with Paolo Serafini, Giovanni di Bartolomeo Cristiani, Fra Paolo, and Barnaba da Modena.
The reported miracle and the new sanctuary
According to tradition, on July 17, 1490, the fresco appeared to shine during the violent struggle between Pistoia’s Panciatichi and Cancellieri families. Three narrow streams of liquid were said to emerge from the Virgin’s forehead. They were interpreted as blood and as a sign of her sorrow over the local fratricidal violence. The podestà, the city’s chief civic magistrate, the captain of the people, a communal political and judicial official, the gonfaloniere, a senior civic officeholder, the city priors, and Bishop Niccolò Pandolfini confirmed the event.
Devotion to the image encouraged Pistoia’s leading families to establish a Renaissance sanctuary commemorating the reported miracle. Several designs were considered, and the project by Giuliano da Sangallo was selected, possibly through the commission of Lorenzo de’ Medici, the leading Medici ruler of Florence in the late fifteenth century. Construction began in 1495. After Sangallo left Tuscany in 1494, Ventura Vitoni directed the works until his death in 1522.
Vasari’s completion and later history
In 1563, Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici entrusted the unfinished building to Giorgio Vasari, a major sixteenth-century Italian architect, painter, and art historian. Vasari modified Sangallo’s design and created the great dome. Its lantern, the structure crowning a dome, was finished in 1568, the dome in 1569, and the building works in 1579. The medieval fresco was then moved above the new main altar, designed by Pietro Tacca. The church was consecrated three years later, in 1582.
Cracks developed in the dome soon after its completion. Vasari added chains for reinforcement, and Bartolomeo Ammanati, a prominent Renaissance architect and sculptor, was later brought in because of concerns about the weight of the lantern. Structural difficulties continued over the following centuries, prompting repeated refurbishments that extended into the twenty-first century.
The church also developed strong connections with the Tolomei and Rospigliosi families. In 1630, Fabio Tolomei gave a silver ciborium in thanksgiving for surviving the plague. Camillo Rospigliosi donated a silver step in 1643 to commemorate Pistoia’s resistance to the siege by Barberini troops. In 1669, Giulio Rospigliosi, who became Pope Clement IX, presented a gold rose branch topped with a sapphire through his family.
Cardinal Carlo Agostino Fabroni commissioned large fresco panels for the vestibule in 1716, in preparation for the solemn coronation of the Madonna of Humility’s image in 1717 at the request of the chapter of Saint Peter. Giovanni Domenico Ferretti produced further frescoes in the basilica during his stay in Pistoia from 1720 to 1725. In October 1931, Pope Pius XI raised the church to the status of a minor basilica.
Remains
The basilica is organized around an octagonal central space in the Renaissance manner. A vestibule occupies the area of the medieval chapel, while the central octagon rises beneath Vasari’s dome. The building has an incomplete facade, and its interior combines colored marble, richly framed altars, painted decoration, sculpture, and devotional objects accumulated over several centuries.
Vestibule and central octagon
Vestibule
The vestibule, or atrium, has barrel vaults decorated with rosettes and a small dome at its center. Its large fresco panels were begun in 1716. Four canvases show the Construction of the Temple by Giovanni Domenico Piastrini. Other paintings include Cain Damned by God by Niccola Monti, together with further atrium canvases by Vincenzo Meucci and Giuseppe Gricci.
Central octagon and dome
The central octagon has a floor of marbles in different colors and a tambour, the drum-like structure supporting the dome, articulated in three architectural orders. Above it rises Vasari’s dome, approximately 25 meters in diameter and 59 meters high. Its exterior is covered with vertical red tiles, and its form has been compared to a smaller version of Brunelleschi’s dome on Florence Cathedral. The presbytery, the part of the church reserved for the high altar and clergy, was conceived by the Pistoian architect Jacopo Lafri.
Chapels, altars, and presbytery
Lateral altars and chapels
Six lateral altars line the walls of the central space. Each is introduced by a richly ornamented round arch framing a large painting. Florentine painters produced the altars and their associated works between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. At the chapel to the left of the main altar, Alessandro Fei, known as Il Barbiere, painted the Stories of the Virgin. The chapel also contains an Annunciation altarpiece from the early 1580s.
Giovanni Battista Naldini decorated the chapel to the right of the main altar with frescoes in the early 1580s. He probably completed its Assumption with Saints altarpiece during the latter part of that decade. Other altar paintings include Adoration of the Magi by Francesco Vanni and Adoration of the Shepherds by Pietro Sorri at the Panciatichi altar, an Assumption of the Virgin attributed to Francesco Morandini, known as Il Poppi, at the Rospigliosi altar, and a Nativity attributed either to Domenico Passignano or Pietro Sorri at the Chiarenzi altar.
Presbytery and apse
The presbytery is enclosed by a bronze-column balustrade made in 1597. Jacopo Lafri and Giovanni Battista Cennini designed it, and Leonardo Marcacci made its putti. Within it stands a marble dossal, an ornamental panel or backdrop behind an altar, constructed in 1612 by Pietro Tacca and Jacopo Lafri. The Madonna of Humility fresco was placed at its center after being transferred from the earlier church.
The apse contains a 1493 panel by Bernardino del Signoraccio, Madonna and Child with Saints Mercuriale and Benedict, brought from the monastery of San Mercuriale. The main altar area also includes Angels and a Pelican by Pietro Tacca, donated by a member of the Sozzifanti family, and a wreath with silver decoration given by Maddalena Morelli Fernandez, known as Corilla Olimpica.
Other artworks and devotional collections
The basilica contains a tomb for Bishop Giuseppe Ippoliti by Francesco Carradori and a Saint James attributed to Gerino da Pistoia. At the Alluminati altar is Lazzaro Baldi’s Rest in Egypt, while Giovanni Domenico Ferretti painted the Passion of Christ. Giovanni Bilivert’s Saint Zanobi is located on the sacristy altar. Alessandro Fei’s Virgin of the Annunciation and surrounding frescoes are associated with the Rospigliosi altar, where additional frescoes are attributed to Giovanni Battista Naldini.
The basilica’s treasure of the Madonna includes sacred furnishings owned by the church, including the silver ciborium made in 1630 by the Florentine goldsmith Giovan Battista Mariani and the silver step added in 1643. Its textiles include a seventeenth-century needle-lace tablecloth of Venetian type. A substantial group of votive offerings is also associated with the sanctuary. These include silver representations of body parts believed to have been affected by the Madonna’s miraculous action, as well as jewelry and personally treasured objects given by worshippers.
