Ospedale degli Innocenti
The Ospedale degli Innocenti ( English: Hospital of the Innocent Children ) is a Renaissance building in Florence by Filippo Brunelleschi . It's a foundling house . Partly in the history of art the beginning of the Renaissance with this building of 1419 was set, which was carried out on behalf of the guild of the Florentine cloth and fur traders. The foundling center is Brunelleschi's first significant work and the first orphanage of its kind at all, but foundling homes as such are older, they are attested in Florence in 1316, in 1362 in Paris, 1376 in Freiburg i.Br. and 1380 in Ulm. Until 1875, you could leave unwanted children here undetected through a small revolving door that was still preserved. An orphanage still exists in the rear of the complex.
The building is now a small Renaissance museum with works by Luca della Robbia , Sandro Botticelli , Piero di Cosimo and the Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio .
architecture
The basic principle of Brunelleschi's architecture, and thus that of the early Renaissance in general, can be seen here right from the start: a clear, tight organization of the components, strict geometric shapes in perspective. This is why Brunelleschi also speaks of a “physique” in art history. The individual forms such as the columns and windows are not lost in the overall concept, but are highlighted as independent elements. They determine the tectonic framework of the building - and they had to do so in order to enable the linear perspective that develops along such elements. In this hospital, too, the gusset areas between the arches are filled with clay , in which Andrea della Robbia has placed terracotta figures of small children. The collaboration between the two artists here at the orphanage was repeated later in the Pazzi Chapel . For the first time since antiquity, the “pillar as an architectural parable of man” appears here, and from this home a new pillar architecture spread across Europe.
literature
- Gerd Althoff, Hans-Werner Goetz, Ernst Schubert: People in the shadow of the cathedral. Darmstadt 1998.
- Harald Keller: The Art Landscapes of Italy [1960]. Frankfurt a. M. 1983.
- Rolf Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance. Architecture - sculpture - painting - drawing. Cologne 1994.
- Klaus Zimmermann's Florence . Cologne [1984] 6th edition 1990. (DuMont art travel guide)
Web links
Coordinates: 43 ° 46 '34.4 " N , 11 ° 15' 39.9" E