Basilica della Santissima Annunziata
Leaving Piazza San Marco behind we move via the Via Cesare Battisti to the east until we come across the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata and the homonym Piazza. Jean Boulogne was a Flemish sculptor who moved to Italy in 1550 to study the works of classical antiquity. He spent his most productive years in Florence and is mostly famous for his amazing sculpture The Rape of the Sabine Women standing today in the Loggia dei Lanzi.
He is the artist who created the equestrian statue in the center of the square, depicting Ferdinando I de Medici. Jean Boulogne’s or in the Italian version of his name that stuck with him, Giambologna‘s student Pietro Tacca is the one who created the two bronze fountains decorated with the two otherworldly sea creatures that also stand in the square.
The story of the site starts in 1081 when Matilda of Canossa built a small chapel dedicated to Our Lady as a token of gratitude for the end of Henry IV‘s siege, in what was still then a woodland outside the city walls. The Order of the Servants of Mary (Servites) built the first church around 1230.
Around 1250 a legend of a miraculous Annunciation painting created a wave of pilgrimages and processions, hence the need for the expansion of the church and the surrounding square. In 1419, Filippo Brunelleschi, who had just taken place in the competition for Santa Maria del Fiore’s dome and would soon be occupied with the monumental task, started the construction of the first European orphanage.
The Ospedale degli Innocenti took over the east side of the square and was built after the commission of the Arte of Silk. His front portico became the norm for the rest of the buildings around the square, including the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata which got its own around 1450.
Inside, the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata is a treasure trove of baroque art, magnificent decoration, frescoes, paintings, and sculptures, constantly refurbished, modified, and enriched from 1250 to 1852 when the last piece of the puzzle, the great walnut leg in the center of the Choir was added.
