Santissima Annunziata
For centuries Florence welcomed each new year, not on the first of January, but on March 25, the feast of the Annunciation. This holy day celebrates the Angel Gabriel’s descent from heaven to announce to a teenage girl in Nazareth that God had chosen her to be the mother of His son. With Mary’s acceptance of divine will, the Holy Spirit “moved in her womb,” and nine months later Jesus Christ was born.
On this Spring day, jubilant Florentines swarmed into the piazza of La Nunziata, the nickname of the Basilica of Santissima Annunziata (Most Holy Annunciation), built by the Servites (the “Servants of Mary”) in the thirteenth century. In the Spring of 1500, the friars offered hospitality to a distinguished guest: Leonardo da Vinci, who had fled from Milan after the French invaded and captured his patron.
With no job and no place to stay, the artist returned to Florence with only enough money in his account to support his household for about a year. In return for the friars’ hospitality, the acclaimed artist agreed to paint an altarpiece, a Madonna with Saint Anne.
Yet even Leonardo could not hope to surpass the painting that the Servites considered their most precious possession: a “miraculous” portrait of the Virgin Mary. I heard its story from a chatty friar I met years ago when I was studying the history of Italian at the Società Dante Alighieri, a language school tucked around the corner in a former cloister.
A thirteenth-century artist began the work, I learned, but, despite one botched attempt after another, could not depict the Madonna’s incomparable face. Collapsing in exhaustion, he awoke to discover that someone—an angel, he had no doubt—had completed the painting with a skill beyond any human hand.
Shrouded behind an elaborate bronze grill strung with ex-votos (wax or metal symbols of gratitude for answered prayers), the breathtaking work attracted pilgrims from all of Christendom. When unveiled and carried in procession through Florence’s streets for special celebrations, the painting inspired such awe that the faithful would fall to their knees before it.
Finding it hard to imagine Leonardo, the Milanese dandy, taking up residence in a monastery, I returned to Santissima Annunziata. A gaunt, tonsured friar approached me with an assortment of postcards, calendars, and medallions. I bought the lot for ten euro and asked about Leonardo’s long-ago stay. Walking fast and talking faster, he swept me past an array of impressive art works to an inner courtyard, a green oasis of calm and quiet.
Catching his breath, the friar pointed vaguely in the direction of an adjacent structure now occupied by the Military Geographical Institute of Florence. There, he told me in rapid-fire Italian, is the studio where Leonardo worked on the cartone, the actual-size preliminary drawing for the altarpiece that the Servites had commissioned.
Just a few years ago workers demolishing a wall for an Institute renovation had come across a secret stairwell and some small rooms that have been linked with Leonardo and his assistants. On the walls, the friar asked with a rhetorical flourish, guess what they found?
“Uccelli!” (Birds!) he exclaimed, drawings—perhaps by Leonardo himself (doubtful)—of the very same sort of little birds flitting about the courtyard where we stood.
As we strolled under a graceful loggia, I noticed the friar’s crude sandals, mere slabs of wood fastened with leather straps, and thought of the hand-sewn buckled velvet shoes that Leonardo fancied. What had they made of each other –- the ardent Servites in rough robes tied with rope and the worldly courtier whose wardrobe included a dark purple cape with big collar and velvet hood, crimson satin overcoat and two pink caps? How had the Milan cosmopolitan adjusted to the friars’ simple life of bells and blessings?
As Giorgio Vasari, the father of art history, saw Leonardo, the self-taught, clear-eyed dispassionate scientist who relied on observation and reason could not “be content with any kind of religion.” But perhaps to Leonardo—as it did to me on that visit—the tranquil monastery at Santissima Annunziata seemed a heavenly haven, a quiet oasis where he could await the next chapter in his unpredictable life.
To visit the church:
Piazza SS. Annunziata, Firenze - Tel. 055 266181
Weekdays: 7.30 am - 12.30 pm; 4:00 pm - 6.30 pm
Holidays: 7.30 am - 12.30 pm; 4:00 pm - 6.30 pm
Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.
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