Catholic Reform and Bernardino Poccetti's Chiostro dei Morti at the church of SS Annunziata in Florence

Apollo, Sept, 2003 by Gauvin Alexander Bailey

The four porticoes of the Chiostro dei Morti originally featured twenty-five frescoed lunettes, of which only twenty-one are now in place, most of them illustrating events in the history of the Servite Order (Figs. 2-10, 12). Apart from Andrea del Sarto's Madonna del Sacco (1526), which occupies the north-east lunette closest to the entrance to the church, the lunettes were all executed in the early seventeenth century, first by Poccetti (1604-12) and Ventura Salimbeni (1605-1609), and then by Fra Arsenio Mascagni (1608-14) and Matteo Rosselli (1614-18), who finished the series after Poccetti's death. (30) Poccetti completed fourteen narrative lunettes in the north, west, and east porticoes, in addition to a lunette of Christ the Saviour Flanked by Justice and Mercy over the entrance to the cloister from the passageway to the piazza (Fig. 13). These bustling scenes take us from the foundation of the Servite Order in 1233 to the death of the last of the founders, Alessio Falconieri, at the age of a hundred and ten.

Although documents allow us to date the fresco cycles very precisely, they remain almost entirely unpublished. The lunettes came at the end of a fifteen-year restoration campaign at the Chiostro dei Morti designed to make it more open and symmetrical so that 'the lunettes [are] proportionate and without impediments ... for the greater beauty of the said cloister', and--notably--'so that the spectators can comfortably appreciate its paintings at an appropriate distance' (see Appendix). The plastering of the walls of the cloister and entrance doorway was carried out between October 1589 and January 1590. (31) By September, the Servites had paved the portico on the south side and half the portico on the west side, purchased shullers and a window, and had new plaster laid. (32) Two years later, in July and November of 1592, arriccio, intonaco, and whitewash were applied to the buildings and loggia of the piazza, half of the structures over the cloister loggias were re-roofed, and the stairs were repaved. (33) The roofing was finished early in the first decade of the seventeenth century, along with a new stone pavement in the court, and the low garden wall which originally blocked the bases of some of the columns was replaced by paving stones, with new plinths under each of the columns. (34) Between 22 June and 1 October 1604, workmen began to 'scalcinare, et arriciare lunette' ('remove plaster and apply rough plaster to the lunettes'). (35) After the completion of the new entrance doorway in February of 1605, the cloister was cleaned. (36)

The ricordanze credit the Prior, Lorenzo Picciuoli, with the idea of painting the lunette fresco cycle with 'the origin and progress of our [Servite] Order'--a typical post-Tridentine theme in Tuscany. The same source proudly remarks that 'Mastro Ventura Salimbeni, but before him Mastro Bernardino Poccetti, [who] is esteemed and reputed generally to be one of the most exceptional, and excellent of this city, especially in fresco painting, were elected as painters by the same fathers of the convent'; however, other references show that it was the lay patrons who had the final say over the choice of artists. The fresco series was financed by members of the first families of Florence, who 'held a competition to choose the painter and have him paint the arms of their families', and Poccetti was the winner. (37) According to the ricordanze, these notables included Roberto Pucci, Francesco and Ludovico Capponi, Pandolfo Pandolfini, Monsignor Alessandro Marzi Medici (Archbishop of Florence, and another San Gimignano native), Monsignor Cosimo dell'Antella (Vicar General of Florence), Lorenzo Usimbardi (Secretary to the Grand Duke Ferdinando), Filippo Strozzi, and others, some of whom had already hired Poccetti for other projects. (38)