Onisanti Cathedral

About

The Umiliati order arrives in Florence in 1239 and takes charge of the church, whose construction begins in 1251. When the Umiliati are dissolved in 1571, Franciscan friars take over the building at the wish of Cosimo I. Around 1627 architect Bartolomeo Pettirossi rebuilds the church almost entirely in the Baroque style, and in 1637 a new facade goes up to a design by Matteo Nigetti. Inside the nave, Sandro Botticelli's Saint Augustine in His Study and Domenico Ghirlandaio's Saint Jerome in His Study, both painted in 1480, face each other across the aisle. Ghirlandaio also frescoes a Last Supper in the monastery refectory, a work believed to have influenced Leonardo da Vinci's own Last Supper painted later in Milan. In the Vespucci Chapel, Ghirlandaio's Madonna della Misericordia, painted around 1472-1475, includes a figure thought to depict Amerigo Vespucci as a child. The crucifix hanging in the left transept, made around 1310-1315, was long attributed to a follower of Giotto until recent cleaning led scholars to reassign it to Giotto himself. Botticelli is buried within the church, and a small round stone in a chapel of the right transept still marks his resting place.