Orsanmichele, Or San Michele or Orsammichele (; from the Tuscan contraction of Orto di San Michele, "orchard" or "kitchen garden of Saint Michael") is a communal building and church in the Italian city of Florence. Its uniqueness as an architectural construction lies not only in its multifunctionality as grain market, granary and oratory. The tabernacle by Orcagna, called the high point of Italian Gothic sculpture, and the sculptural program running around all four façades, depicting the patron saints of the major Florentine guilds, are extraordinary. It encompasses several firsts in marble and bronze, and lasting masterpieces of the Early Renaissance by Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello and Nanni di Banco.
Historical background From the mid-13th century, Florence experienced a period of prosperity and relative peace. The late 12th and 13th centuries witnessed the rise of guilds, particularly the arti maggiori among wealthier residents and arti minori among residents of middling wealth. From the early 13th century, leading segments of society also formed two opposing political factions: the Guelphs, who had won power in the struggle against the ruling feudal aristocracy, were loyal to the papacy, while the Ghibellines were allegiant to the Holy Roman emperor.Since the beginning of the 13th century there had been a continuing power struggle between aristocratic families in Florence, who were either loyal to the Welf Otto IV or the Waibling Frederick II, whose family names were adapted into the Tuscan language and transformed to "Guelph" and "Ghibelline".
During the twelfth century, noble and elite families formed a consular government, leading to an essentially self-governing city, known as a commune. By 1250, resistance to noble rule led to the first "popular" government, known as the Primo Popolo. During the 1250s, the Primo Popolo worked to break up the long-held political and physical rule of leading nobles and aristocrats, entailing in part the destruction of their fortified towers. The city meanwhile experienced economic prosperity through the growth of guilds and through commerce and finance on a local, regional, and international basis. By 1282, representatives of the most wealthy and powerful guilds ruled the city. These included bankers, judges and notaries, leaders of cloth manufacturing, and elite merchants. After 1293 and 1295, with the Ordinances of Justice, certain nobles and others who were deemed "magnates" were excluded from government participation. Members of the lower guilds were guaranteed a part in government in 1343. .
From the mid-13th century, Florence also experienced a building boom with the construction of private, public and ecclesiastical buildings, as well as new infrastructure: the new Cathedral (1296), the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella (1294) and the Franciscan Santa Croce (1295), the Palazzo dei Priori (1298), the rebuilding of the Badia from 1284, and the third expansion of the city walls (1284), subsequently comprising Santissima Annunziata and Ognissanti.Under the podestà Rubaconte in the 1230s and of the primo popolo in the 1250s the city grew and made major, mainly infrastructural improvements. . From about the mid-13th century until the later fourteenth century, Florence established its central grain market at Orsanmichele, while other foods were sold at the Mercato Vecchio and markets around the city. Orsanmichele's grain market was accompanied by the Confraternity of Orsanmichele from 1291, which emerged as a leading and notably lay confraternity.
From the 13th century and into the 14th, Florence experienced recurring political feuds and battles, the flood of 1333 which destroyed the city's four bridges and damaged many structures, the crash in 1346 of the two major banking companies (those formed by the Bardi and the Peruzzi families), and the bad harvests of the two following years. The most severe crisis by far was the Black Death. Its first appearance in 1340 and the pan-European outbreak of 1348 took the lives of about half of the 100,000 inhabitants of Florence.An estimate by Giovanni Villani, the chronicler of 14th-century Florence. Cited in . The plague returned about once every decade afterwards, with grave economic, political and religious consequences, yet the population grew again, up to 70,000 by 1380. .
History Located on the Via Calzaiuoli, a main road in the historic centre of Florence,The street was not widened and straightened like it is today until the 1840s. . between Palazzo della Signoria and the Cathedral, the city's civic and religious centres, respectively, the structure was built on a piazza. The location originally contained an oratory and then a small church dedicated Saint Michael with a kitchen garden (orto), which was said to date from Lombard times. In the 12th and 13th centuries, the church was used for ecclesiastical and communal gatherings, until it was attacked during factional fighting in 1239 and then designated for replacement by a grain loggia in 1284. The structure was completed in 1290 as an open loggia for the grain market Its construction was probably directed by Arnolfo di Cambio, who was not only master of the Opera del Duomo (cathedral works) but also "capomaestro of our commune", as a contemporary source calls him. A fresco of the Madonna, painted on one of the pillars, and then painted on a panel set in an oratory, was venerated since 1292, when spontaneous miracles reportedly occurred. The Confraternity of Orsanmichele ("OSM"), a laudesi group which was founded in 1291, sang songs (laudes) in praise of the Virgin, in the evenings, on the Sabbath, and on holidays, after the grain market had closed.
In 1304 the building was destroyed by fire, when a renegade prior, Neri Abati, was prompted by Corso Donati's Neri faction of nobles to set fire to the businesses and houses of their enemies, the Bianchi, a faction of leading merchants and members of the major commercial guilds, headed by the Cerchi family. Many people were killed, and the whole neighborhood burnt down, along with family palaces which hosted judicial proceedings and meetings of the communal government. Fires were not uncommon at the time, because of the many wooden shacks that made up much of the city's housing for a good part of its 100,000 inhabitants (1338) until around a hundred years later. According to Giovanni Villani, a chronicler of the city at the time, a fire had previously burnt 1700 buildings to the ground. The destruction was usually followed by a building boom.
On 25 September 1336 the city counsel decided to rebuild a "representative palazzo""...in the midst of the body of the city" (the original Latin formulation: ). . that combined religious and communal functions and could "show the splendor of the city in its arts and artworks."Braunfels stresses the simultaneous religious and secular function in the counsel's formulation, since they would both provide evenly for the prosperity of the city. . Supervision of the project was delegated to the major Arte Por Santa Maria,The silk merchants guild also comprised the goldsmiths, because the guild was initially founded not by trade, but by its neighborhood around Via Por Santa Maria, the projection of Via Calimala a block west of Orsanmichele, leading straight to the Ponte Vecchio, where goldsmiths today reside. and, according to Giorgio Vasari, Taddeo Gaddi, a pupil of Giotto († 1337), and his successor as capomaestro of the Opera del Duomo by then.
After Bernardo Daddi had painted a new Maestà (an image of the enthroned Madonna with the child Jesus) in 1347, which inherited the miraculous powers of the lost fresco, Andrea di Cione, better known as Orcagna, was commissioned to built a precious tabernacle to house the Madonna, funded by increased donations after the plagues of 1340 and 1348. While working on the extraordinary architecture (1352–1359), Orcagna became capomaestro of Orsanmichele from 1355 to 1359.Orcagna then went to Orvieto, to become head of the cathedral works there. . Francesco Talenti, Neri di Fioravante, and Benci di Cione are also documented on the site from 1349. Neri had sponsored Orcagna in 1352 becoming a member of the Guild of "masters of stone and wood".
Between 1380 and 1404, the problem of the disharmonious coexistence of the market and the devotion of the Madonna had to be resolved and it was decided to convert the ground floor of Orsanmichele into a church for the guilds, which was dedicated to the Virgin and to her mother, Saint Anne, commemorating the expulsion of the Duke of Athens from Florence on Saint Anne's Day in 1343.The same year Orcagna also painted a fresco in the coutyard of the Stinche Prison (see reproduction there) with Saint Anne protecting the city of Florence and the Duke fleeing (now detached and displayed in the Palazzo Vecchio). The loggia was walled up in 1367 with delicate tracery in the pointed arches. The two upper floors housed the municipal granary.
As early as 1339 the main guilds had each been assigned a space between the arches to make a framed niche, with a statue of their patron saint in it. At this time, only the Arte della Lana (wool manufacturers guild) seems to have done so (this figure was later replaced by Ghiberti's bronze of St. Stephen).Seymour 1966, 58. Towards the end of the 14th century, the guilds were again charged by the city with the same task. The majority of the statues date from 1399 to 1428, with two of the earliest from that period later replaced in the 16th century. The sculptures seen in the exterior niches today are copies, the originals having been removed to museums, mostly to the one on the upper floor of the building (see below).
Rising from a base of 32.4 × 22.1 meters to a height of 40 meters, the building has three approximately uniform floors. Over time it managed to fulfill conflicting functions. It was neither fortified with a crenellated parapet like the Palazzo della Signoria, or provided with a family tower like private palazzi were at the time,150 family towers up to 70 meters high (120 braccia of 58.36 cm) dominated the skyline of Florence until at least the end of the 14th century. According to Lapo da Castiglionchio the Elder cited in , with a map showing about 150 sites, predominantly in the oldest parts of the city, south and southwest of the carhedral down to the Arno river, and several sites on the south bank (Oltrarno). Although the height of such towers was limited to 50 bracchia since the mid-1250s, and even before that the imperial Ghibellines destroyed some of the towers belonging to the Guelphs favoring the papacy. nor flanked by a campanile like churches. Situated between the two centers of religious and secular power, the guild hall also served a symbolic function. The city's economic prosperity was ensured by civic order and religious support, and lack of food supplies caused by unforeseeable crop failures or military sieges could be absorbed by the communal granary.
The oratory The Maestà and its tabernacle by Orcagna In the oratory on the ground floor of the building stands the marble tabernacle, created in 1359 to encase an image of the Madonna venerated as miracle-working. The panel painting of the enthroned Virgin Mary was executed in 1347 by the painter Bernardo Daddi. The extremely elaborate Gothic architectural work of the tabernacle was designed and executed by the Florentine artist Andrea Orcagna, who also created "the most distinguished painting of the time" (after Giotto's death), the Strozzi Altarpiece in Santa Maria Novella. The buttresses, spiral columns, pinnacles and the rich figural decoration in white marble is contrasted with inlays of blue, red, and gilded glass tesserae. The sculptural program of the tabernacle varies and renders the theme of the Madonna it encases.