Opera magazine
2024-04-02
The stained glass windows of Santa Maria del Fiore
the book that illuminates the Cathedral of Florence
The silence of the bare walls of the Florentine cathedral is contrasted by the set of forty-four stained glass windows arranged along the naves and the presbytery area of the building. A concert of light and color which depicts Prophets and Patriarchs, Christ, Mary and Saints, as John the Baptist, Lawrence, Reparata, Zenobius, Anne, among many others, who represent the particularities of the Florentine Church and the singularity of the local cult. Light is a symbol of God and is associated with the faith of believers, conceived as "enlightenment". Light takes on a central role in European Gothic cathedrals thanks to glass art.
The Cathedral of Florence boasts the greatest concentration of ancient stained glass windows south of the Alps with masterpieces designed by some of the greatest artists of Florence between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Fortunately, our Historical Archive preserves extensive documentation relating to the project, allowing the reconstruction of this important creative and iconographic event: Agnolo Gaddi, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Donatello, Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno created the preparatory cartoons, which were translated onto glass by at least twenty masters including Antonio da Pisa, Niccolò di Pietro Tedesco and Leonardo di Simone at the end of the fourteenth century, succeeded in the fifteenth century by Bernardo di Francesco, Angelo Lippi, Domenico di Piero da Pisa and Guido di Niccolò Guidi.
The operation which actually lasted half a century (from 1394 to 1444 approximately) is witness to a unique season for the embellishment of the Cathedral, constituting a stand-alone chapter itogether with other iconographic programs, such as that of the sculptures of the ancient façade, among fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (then restarted in the nineteenth century), and that of the choir and the paintings of the dome in the sixteenth century. It is important to remember that while the stained glass windows were being created, some artists who draw the cartoons were simultaneously involved in the creation of important works in the Complex: Ghiberti in the bronze north and east doors of the Baptistery (1403-52), Donatello in the sculptures of prophets for the Giotto’s bell tower (1416-36) and Paolo Uccello in the important fresco paintings of the funerary monument to Giovanni Acuto (1436) and the clock on the counter-façade (1443).
Despite their importance, the value of the windows of Santa Maria del Fiore escapes most today, perhaps because they are not understood in their uniqueness and meaning or because they are considered furnishings at the service of the grandiose architecture and not as autonomous and speaking elements within a program larger, well thought out and configured, capable of explaining the very title of the Cathedral with remarkable clarity: “Santa Maria del Fiore”.
The iconographic program
The design of the windows of the third and fourth bays of the naves, the oldest one, dates back to 1394-1395. They were created based on cartoon designs by the Florentine painter Gaddo Gaddi, and were executed by various masters including Antonio da Pisa and Leonardo di Simone (the latter left traces of his work by signing one of the glasses). The program includes the presence of both saints who boast extensive devotional fortune in the Universal Church such as Sebastian, Michael, Paul, Lucia or John the Baptist, and other more rare ones, such as Zanobi, Reparata, Eugenio, Crescenzio, Miniato or Anna, popular in Florence because they were co-patrons of the Florentine Church or because they exercised their intercession in key moments of the city's history: political events, such as the expulsion of the Duke of Athens (1343) and battles such as that of Cascina (1364) or against the barbarian troops of Radagaiso (405/406) linked the names of Saint Anna, Saint Victor and the Palestinian martyr Saint Reparata to the city of the lily.
But the program does not stop here and in the fifteenth century the stained glass windows of the tribunes were created, representing prophets and Ancestors of Christ (according to the biblical story) while the lower ones in the chapels of the presbytery depict Apostles and Saints following the Gospels and the hagiographies of the Golden Legend by Jacopo da Varazze (1265), constituting a story that goes from Genesis to the configuration of the Christian Church. The continuity between the Old and New Testament is therefore fully expressed in the windows of the counter-façade, of the radial chapels, of the tribunes and of the drum of the Dome in a Christological and Marian key: numerous windows enhance the figure of Mary as mother of Christ, both in the presbytery (lives of Jesus and Mary are narrated in the eyes of the drums of the dome by Ghiberti - the main author of the Cathedral's stained glass windows -, Donatello, Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno, to whom we have already dedicated a specific in-depth study), than even earlier in the large rose window of the Assumption on the counter-façade, the first of the fifteenth century cycle (1404-1405). The Virgin Mary in addition to being the mother and image of the Universal Church, she is also the titular of the Cathedral of "Santa Maria del Fiore" (“Saint Mary of the Flower”): Christ is the flower of Mary that blossomed in her womb, and the extreme bud of the Tree of Jesse.
And the figure of Mary should have been iconographically dominant: the original project aimed to also endow the circular windows of the central nave with a cycle of stories, never realized, from the life of the Madonna, which found fulfillment in the aforementioned Assumption by Ghiberti on the counter-façade. In this way the windows would have become fifty-three. However, the project was never realized and those oculi remained without decorations.
In 1828, lightning destroyed the stained glass window designed by Paolo Uccello with the Annunciation, located on one of the eight eyes of the drum. The artist Ulisse Forni prepared the cardboard for a replacement stained glass window that was never executed, thus going from forty-five to a total of forty-four stained glass windows. Also in the nineteenth century, on the occasion of the restorations carried out by the architect Baccani, the false windows of the first two bays were painted in tempera on foil, reiterating the figure of some saints present in the older windows. The reason why the rooms in this area were blinded with masonry is due to the change in architectural design from that of Arnolfo di Cambio to that of Francesco Talenti, which envisaged the presence of a smaller number of windows spaced further apart. Despite the various gaps or unfortunate events that have occurred over the centuries, the cycle of stained glass windows in the Florence Cathedral remains the most complex and complete in all of central Italy.
For decades the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore has been working on the conservation and restoration of these masterpieces, allowing their scientific study and dissemination. This is an operation started in the past centuries, and which has seen major interventions (with important renovations) such as that of Ulisse De Matteis with the Bruschi glassworks at the beginning of the twentieth century and that of the Tolleri glassworks between 1946 and 1957, which took place in occasion of the dismantling of the windows during the Second World War.
