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Novellla Vs Santa Maria Novella

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Anyone who has been or seen pictures of Italy are aware that the country is known for its beautiful churches and amazing art. While there are many different aspects that make up the glorious style of design that these churches have come to be known for, there are two churches located in Florence, Italy that are unique in a completely different way: Santa Maria del Carmine and Santa Maria Novella. While the two churches are similar in ways, they both have unique structures and art inside them that make them completely different. To understand how much these two churches compare one must look at the structure, history, artists, and art inside them.
The Santa Maria del Carmine church was founded by the Carmelite monastery in 1268. Building the …show more content…

What made the Santa Maria Novella different was that it is built to represent the Florentine Gothic system of architecture instead of older buildings that resembled French gothic architecture (Erdogmus, Boothby, & Smith, 2017). The Ruccellai family hired Alberti to design the Gothic church (Kleiner, Mamiya, Tansey, 2013), during the late Middle Ages (1200-1400) (Erdogmus et al., 2017). Alberti took his cue from Brunelleschi, who was an architect and used a pre-Gothic medieval design of a different church. Following the model, he designed a small temple front and supported it with a broad base of arcades that incorporate the six tombs and three doorways. He had the height of the Santa Maria Novella equal the width so that the entire façade could be a square which was unique in this era (Kleiner et al., 2013). Along with a square method, Alberti designed and built the structure using the Florentine Gothic system. The Santa Maria Novella was one of the first churches to make this change. Louis Grodecki described the Santa Maria Novella as “the most successful and promising achievement of Italian Gothic during the middle and second half of the thirteenth century” and named it the first Florentine Gothic work of architecture (Erdogmus et al., 2017, p. …show more content…

For this project, Masaccio worked with painter Masolino on the fresco decoration in the chapel that was dedicated to St. Peter and his life (Stokstad, 2007). There were two major frescos that Masaccio painted in the chapel. The Expulsion from Paradise and the Tribute. The Expulsion from Paradise is known as the most powerful painted nude since antiquity (Adams, 2011). This scene had been painted by many artists, but Masaccio’s use of light and expression on their faces made it different. (Kleiner et al., 2013). The other fresco that Masaccio was famous for in the chapel would be the Tribute. What made this painting so famous is that Masaccio did not make the people look stiff in the painting, and he used an aerial perspective to paint the picture. Ancient Roman painters have used the aerial perspective, but medieval artists abandoned it, therefore it was lost until Masaccio rediscovered it (Kleiner et al., 2013). This painting represented a tax collector going to Jesus for payment and Jesus telling Peter to go and catch a fish and look in his mouth where he finds the money and pays the tax collector (Stokstad, 2007). It was thought that this painting may have been done because Christ condones taxation, and during this time there was a catasto (state tax) that the Florentines were considering (Adams, 2011). Masaccio left Florence and died later that year before

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