pulpits and tombs in renaissance florence

PULPITS AND TOMBS INRENAISSANCE FLORENCE

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby

Luca Landucci in his Florentine Diary tells about a friar who had died inSanta Croce on 12 December 1513 after preaching in this church forseveral days and predicting many tribulations that would befall the city:

This friar was a very abject little man, wearing only a short gown reaching to his knees andin a pitiable state […] anyone who saw him marvelled that he could live like that throughthe cold weather. He was held in great veneration, and was buried in Santa Croce; butafter a few days, his relatives came from Montepulciano and carried his body away.

Jacopo Pitti records a similar story:

Fra Francesco of Montepulciano […] was quite young, and appeared at Santa Croce inFlorence; severely reprehending vice, and affirming that God would punish Italy, andespecially Florence and Rome; his sermons being so terrible that the congregation burstinto cries of Misericordia, amidst floods of tears. He descended from the pulpit breathlessand exhausted, and caught a complaint of the lungs which soon killed him.1

The pulpit became the place of death of the dedicated friar, who was preaching inwinter without warm clothes and died after his flamboyant sermons; yet pulpitsare connected with death on another level: they served also as commemorationmonuments not only for preachers but, more frequently, for rich patrons who haddonated them to the church.

This paper will explore how works of art were used to commemorate individ-uals and families in Renaissance Florence. In particular, it will focus on a specificsculptural type common in Tuscan churches — the pulpit — and will seek to link

Luca Landucci, A Florentine Diary from 1450 to 1516, trans. by Alice de Rosen Jervis (New1

York: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), p. 119.

Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby342

this monument with the culture of memory typical of the mercantile class infifteenth-century Florence. The pulpit, one of the oldest forms of churchfurnishings, has occupied a prominent position in basilicas, cathedrals, andchurches since early Christian times. Following the success of the mendicantpreachers in medieval and Renaissance Italy, the pulpit became an importantitem in the church. Developments in the arts led to a new complexity in thistraditional genre. In addition to simple pulpits made by unknown artisans, thereare highly refined pulpits created by leading Renaissance artists, such as Donatello,Brunelleschi, and Benedetto da Maiano. A central function of these monumentsthat appear in the fifteenth century was as tombs for patrons.

Patronage in the Renaissance has received much attention in recent years, thepatron being an integral part of the creation of a beautiful monument and anindispensable actor in its creation. The significance of economic factors in theproduction and commission of works of art cannot be overemphasized. Pulpits,a particularly costly type of monument, were part of a network of patronage andeconomic exchange typical of the Italian Renaissance art market. Richard A.2

Goldthwaite in his Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy 1300–1600, viewsthe flourishing development of a variety of ecclesiastical furnishings, includingpulpits, as a sign of a new culture of consumption and a changing emphasis inritual practice. The trend towards more costly monuments, replacing temporarystructures that had preceded them, should be seen as reflecting the growing wealthof their patrons and as a sign of the positive perception of wealth invested in thecommission of monuments.3

Piero Morselli’s detailed catalogue of Tuscan pulpits provides important infor-mation on the fees paid by patrons to artists for the creation of pulpits. The cost ofa pulpit was determined by its material — bronze, marble, or wood — and by theamount of work invested in its creation, in particular its decoration. Anotherfactor was the reputation and professional status of the artist commissioned to dothe work. The bronze pulpits made by Donatello for the church of San Lorenzowere the most expensive of all. Marble pulpits were also costly and could require

On patronage in the Renaissance see Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine2

Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshops and Art Market (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1981), originally published in German in 1938; on the economic factors centralto Renaissance patronage see Richard A. Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). See especially the section, ‘TheDemand for Religious Art’, pp. 69–148.

See Goldthwaite, pp. 70–148.3

PULPITS AND TOMBS IN RENAISSANCE FLORENCE 343

an investment of several hundreds florins if they were richly decorated — as wasthe case with Donatello’s pulpit on the facade of the Cathedral of Prato andMatteo Civitali’s richly adorned pulpit in the Cathedral of Lucca. Simple marblepulpits devoid of decoration cost less. Cheapest of all were the modest andunadorned wooden and stone pulpits.4

The role of patrons in commissioning pulpits is especially noteworthy, sincethese monuments were much more costly than, say, the donation of an altarpiece orthe pictorial decoration of a chapel. The patronage of specific pulpits sometimes ledto disputes and arguments among donating families or to confrontations betweenthe donor and the religious community. Through a close scrutiny of patronagerecords it is often possible to single out the wealthiest and most powerful families inthe area: the Rucellai family, patrons of the pulpit in Santa Maria Novella; theMellini family, patrons of the pulpit in Santa Croce; the Medici family, patrons ofthe pulpit in the refectory in Fiesole and of the double ambones in San Lorenzo. Ingeneral, since the cost of marble sculptures was relatively high, their patronage wasrestricted to the upper levels of society. 5

In his catalogue, Morselli laments that much of the information on thepatronage of pulpits has been lost; nevertheless, he concludes that ‘the pulpit was,at least in Tuscany, a popular sculptural form which was favoured by middle-classpatrons from the middle of the Quattrocento’. The clearest evidence regardingpatronage is the family coat of arms displayed on a pulpit. Reliable informationregarding such facts as the identity of the donor and the costs, materials, andduration of work on the monument are usually hard to come by. Much of thedocumentation is fragmentary or has been completely lost. An almost archaeologicaltype of investigation is needed to establish the historical facts relating to a particularmonument. Sometimes a pulpit’s commission can be established through paymentsthat appear in church account books or through church registers, notarial or otherlegal documents, or family documents and letters. Especially useful are the churchrecords of the conventi soppressi on monasteries and religious establishments inTuscany, which often contain information on the architectural history of achurch and on its individual monuments. 6

For more information on the cost of pulpits see Piero Morselli, ‘Corpus of Tuscan Pulpits’4

(unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1978), pp. 11–12.

On the patronage of various types of sculpture see the essays in Looking at Italian Renaissance5

Sculpture, ed. by Sarah Blake-McHam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

See Morselli, pp. 28–30.6


In Renaissance Florence, the pulpit was often used to commemorate individualsand families, a phenomenon linked to the culture of memory typical of themercantile class in that city in the fifteenth century. Individuals would provideprecise instructions in their wills as to where they should be buried, and aprosperous merchant might in his lifetime create his own tomb and plan a lavishmonument. Sharon Strocchia, in Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence, hasthis to say:

In the mid-Quattrocento wealthy men from great families increasingly directed energiesand resources to tomb monuments, which made more lasting statements about powerand memory. These decades saw the arena of competition and interest within the eliteshift from the ephemeral displays of funerals to permanent innovative tomb monumentsdone in a new classicising Renaissance style.7

Strocchia sees this shift as reflecting either an increasingly positive attitude to wealth,as indicated also by Goldthwaite, or a desire to privatize ecclesiastical space, asposited by Cohn. Brucker, Martines, and Garin point to a situation of politicalcompetition among families, especially between supporters and opponents ofthe Medici. According to F. W. Kent, for example, the patronage activities ofGiovanni Rucellai can be seen as an attempt to defend his reputation against hisbeing suspected as a Medici rival. Overall, the change in emphasis from lavish8

funerals to investment in sumptuous monuments can be attributed to the desireof individuals to commemorate themselves and their families in a more perma-nent way, resulting in the development of the pulpit tomb characteristic of theRenaissance.

Pulpits serving as tombs played a significant role in family commemorationand immortalization. Andrea Rucellai, for example, is buried beneath the pulpitin Santa Maria Novella (fig. 11), and Pietro Mellini under the pulpit in SantaCroce (fig. 12).

See Sharon T. Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns7

Hopkins University Press, 1992), pp. 161–62.

See Strocchia, p. 163.8


In addition, it has been claimed that one of the San Lorenzo ambones was intendedto serve as the tomb of Cosimo de Medici. Samuel Cohn has argued that the ‘cult ofremembrance’ — the desire to create a lasting memorial on earth for oneself andone’s family — developed early in Florence and formed an important part of thecity’s culture, profoundly influencing structures of piety, charity, and art patronage.9

The pulpit serving as tomb was a particularly effective means of celebrating thatcould highlight the importance of the deceased. For a pulpit could serve not onlyas a platform for preaching but as a monument to the donor, especially when thepatron was able to display the family coat of arms on the pulpit. Accordingly, theRucellai coat of arms appears on the Santa Maria Novella pulpit (fig. 13), the

Figure 12. Benedetto da Maiano, The Pulpitin Santa Croce, 1472–75. Reproduced with

the permission of Alinari.

Figure 11. Brunellschi and AndreaCavalcanti, The Pulpit in Santa Maria

Novella, 1443–45. Reproduced with thepermission of Alinari.

See Samuel K. Cohn, The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Studies9

in Central Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992); Andrew Butterfield,‘Monument and Memory in Early Renaissance Florence’, in Art, Memory, and Family inRenaissance Florence, ed. by Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000), pp. 135–62.


Mellini coat of arms on the Santa Croce pulpit (fig. 14), and the Medici coat ofarms on the pulpit in the Fiesole Badia.

In addition, the pulpit in the Collegiata church in San Gimignano displays thecoat of arms of the Vannelli family, and the pulpit in the pieve of San Giovanniin Sugana, Val di Pesa, that of the Giandonati family. In the case of a civiccommission, the coat of arms of the committee would appear on the monument,as in Prato’s internal pulpit, which is shaped like an ecclesiastical chalice with theemblem of the opera in a central position.

The importance of self-advertisement and the desire to manifest the prestigeof the family is evident in the testament of Caterina Poschi, a member of awealthy and powerful family who in her will left forty florins to the church of SanAgostino in San Gimignano for the construction of a marble pulpit after herdeath. Caterina stated categorically that even if the pulpit was built before herdeath, the friars had the obligation to display the Poschi coat of arms on it; if not,the money should go to any other church listed in her will that would agree tofulfil her conditions.

Figure 14. Benedetto da Maiano, The Pulpit in Santa Croce, 1472–75: base of the

Mellini. Reproduced with the permission of Alinari.

Figure 13. Brunellschi and AndreaCavalcanti, The Pulpit in Santa Maria

Novella, 1443–45: base of the Rucellai.Reproduced with the permission of Alinari.


Pulpits, of course, were not the only liturgical items bearing the coats of armsof families. The Rucellai coat of arms, for example, appeared in Santa MariaNovella also on a baptismal font. Nevertheless, a family’s coat of arms appearingon a pulpit was particularly useful in advertising the name of that family. Itsprominent location on the pulpit, directly below the preacher himself, ensuredthat this exceptional tomb would be clearly identified. When a preacher delivereda sermon, all eyes in the church were directed towards him and the pulpit; andthere, at its centre, would be the coat of arms — a constant reminder of thelargesse of the donating family.

A marked feature of church life, beginning in the thirteenth century, was theprivatization of ecclesiastical space; a pervasive sense of death and purgatoryenabled the appropriation of liturgical space as personal property. After themendicants won burial rights for the laity in their churches in the thirteenthcentury, burial in churches became a source of income for them. Families beganpurchasing tombs or altarpieces or building entire commemorative chapels. Aprocess of secularization of the liturgical apparatus was evident in the commissionof tombs, altars, and chapels bearing family emblems. A further aspect of this cultwas the commemorative masses performed in mendicant churches in memory ofdeceased family members.10

Different patterns of patronage were practiced by the Dominicans and theFranciscans in their respective centres. According to Cohn, the Dominicanswere more receptive to the commemoration of individuals through religiousmonuments versus a more reserved attitude on the part of the Franciscans. Atelling example of the more cautious approach of the Franciscans was the caseof the Florentine patrician Castello di Pietro Quaratesi, who in the mid-1440soffered to provide a much-needed marble façade for the Franciscan basilica ofSanta Croce. His money was rejected when he insisted on being able to display hisfamily arms on the building. (Undeterred, Castello Quaratesi went on to settle hiscapital of twenty-five thousand florins on an entirely new church and convent foranother, more compliant group of Franciscans, those of San Francesco al Monteat San Salvatore.) The Dominicans, in contrast, had no problem accepting theRucellai donation to their facade and agreeing to the centrality of that familyemblem.11

See Goldthwaite, pp. 108–10.10

See Cohn, ‘Collective Amnesia: Family, Memory, and the Mendicants’, in Art, Memory,11

and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. by Ciappelli and Lee Rubin, pp. 275–83; Francis W. Kent,‘Individuals and Families as Patrons of Culture in Quattrocento Florence’, in Language and


The Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella had begun to assume its presentform by the thirteenth century, with the great families of Florence participating inits decoration. Most prominent among them were the Rucellai and Minerbettifamilies. The Rucellai constructed the first private chapel in the church, theCappella Rucellai, in 1355–56. In 1464 the family’s rights to the cappella were re-established through the intervention of Fra Andrea Rucellai. He was also involvedin the construction of the pulpit. The marble pulpit in Santa Maria Novella12

includes a splendidly carved base enriched by a variety of ornamental motifs,prominently displayed among them being the Rucellai coat of arms (fig. 11 andfig. 12).13

According to a document first found by Vincenzo Borghini and reported inhis chronicles, the Rucellai in 1443 commissioned Brunelleschi to make a modelin wood for the pulpit in Santa Maria Novella. Additional documents establishthat execution of the model was assigned to Brunelleschi’s adopted son, Andreadi Lazzaro Cavalcanti, nicknamed Buggiano. The agreement was signed throughthe mediation of Fra Andrea Rucellai; he is buried beneath the pulpit. In addition,many Rucellai family members were buried inside Santa Maria Novella. In 1448

the work was completed and ready to be placed in its present location, as is clearby a dispute recorded between the Rucellai family, who had commissioned thepulpit, and the Minerbetti, who claimed rights of patronage over the pier to whichthe structure was to be attached. Antoninus, the Dominican Archbishop ofFlorence, who headed the arbitration committee, decreed that if the Minerbettiwere able to prove their claim, they would have to replace the Rucellai pulpitwith one of equal or greater beauty. The Rucellai won out and the marble14

pulpit was finally installed in 1458. The Santa Maria Novella pulpit, then, wasa manifestation of the competition between these two families. 15

Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. by Alison Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 183.

On patterns of patronage in mendicant churches, particularly Santa Maria Novella, see12

Richard A. Turner, Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art (New York: Prentice Hall,1997), pp. 79–82.

On the pulpit in Santa Maria Novella see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Patrons, Artists,13

Preachers: The Pulpit of Santa Maria Novella (1443–1448)’, Arte Cristiana, 811 (2002), 261–72.

On Antoninus see Carlo Calzolai, Frate Antonino Pierozzi dei Domenicani, Arcivescovo di14

Firenze (Rome: Laterza, 1960); Peter F. Howard, Beyond the Written Word: Preaching andTheology in the Florence of Archbishop Antoninus 1427–1459 (Florence: Olschki, 1995).

See Giovanni Poggi, ‘Andrea di Lazzaro Cavalcanti e il pulpito di S. Maria Novella’, Rivista15

d’Arte, 3 (1905), 77–85.


In their desire and intention to construct the pulpit, the Rucellai family wasinvading an area traditionally under the patronage of the Minerbetti family,which had been the principal contributor to the lower nave of the church. Thisentire episode, and the involvement of so prominent a figure as ArchbishopAntoninus in the dispute, illustrates the importance assigned to the project bothby its patron and by the religious community. The Rucellai family considered thepulpit important for numerous reasons. For one thing, it served as an impressivemonument and underlined the significance of the family. Not only was their tombexceptional but, given the prominent location of the family stemma on the pulpit,directly below the preacher himself, it could not be missed. A prime intention ofthe pulpit, then, was to emphasize and enhance the importance and prestige of theRucellai family. In fact, the construction of the pulpit was merely one stage in theRucellai family’s campaign to enlarge their role in the church. They followed it bypatronizing the church’s facade, designed by Alberti (1470), which included theirname and coat of arms in a central position.16

In mediaeval churches and especially in those belonging to mendicant orders,such as Santa Maria Novella, a ponte, a full-sized rood screen, separated thetransept from the nave, blocking the laity’s access to chapels in the rear of thechurch as well as to the high altar. According to Marcia Hall, the distinct areasof the medieval church had a symbolic meaning parallel to the perception thatsociety was divided into three levels. The highest level, the cappella maggiore,was reserved for the clergy; the second level was for the friars; the third level,beyond the tramezzo, was for the church’s laymen. Earlier, the Rucellai family17

monuments had been located in the transept, near the altar, an area not accessibleto the laity. By moving the pulpit forward, towards the nave, the family waspublicizing itself in the area accessible to the laity. To sum up, then, several stagesmarked the Ruccellai family’s attempts to spread their dominance in Santa Maria

On Rucellai family patronage in Santa Maria Novella see Francis W. Kent, Household and16

Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1977).

On the internal division of ecclesiastical space in churches, and the function and usage of17

the ponte/tramezzo in Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce see the following studies: MarciaB. Hall, ‘The “Ponte” in Santa Maria Novella: The Problem of the Rood Screen in Italy’, Journalof the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 37 (1974), 157–73; Marcia B. Hall, ‘The Tramezzo inSanta Croce, Florence, Reconstructed’, Art Bulletin, 56 (1974), 325–41; Marcia B. Hall,Renovation and Counter-Reformation: Vasari and Duke Cosimo in Santa Maria Novella andSanta Croce 1565–1577 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979).


Novella. First came the Cappella Rucellai, then the pulpit and a baptismal font,each with the family coat of arms, and finally the facade.18

The Franciscan Santa Croce church’s marble pulpit, which marks the tombof the donor, Pietro Mellini, includes a base with ornamental motifs, and theemblem of the donor completes the structure. A wooden octagonal canopyshowing the emblem of San Bernardino set on a blue background is situatedabove the head of the preacher; the entrance to the pulpit is behind the pier,where a small wooden door decorated with the emblems of Pietro Mellini andBernardino da Siena leads to a narrow staircase within the pulpit itself (fig. 13 andfig. 14). Scholars disagree about the dates of the commission and construction ofthe pulpit. The most recent interpretation, proposed by Carl, argues for datingthe pulpit around 1485, on the basis of contracts regarding the tombs of theMellinis in the church of Santa Croce and in other churches.19

The patron of the Santa Croce pulpit was the rich and influential Florentinemerchant and man of state Pietro di Francesco Mellini (1411–85). He owneda good deal of property, including estates, houses, and farms in Florence andenvirons, such as the Palazzo in Via de’ Neri and a country villa in Ripoli, and wasalso a patron of artworks: a portrait bust, the pulpit, and a marble tabernacle. A20

marble bust of Pietro Mellini was created by Benedetto da Maiano in 1474, andsome have suggested that this could indicate the date of the pulpit’s creation.According to Vasari, a dispute arose between the patron and the friars at SantaCroce, the latter fearing that the pulpit’s internal staircase might cause thecollapse of the church. But the influential Mellini finally prevailed and the pulpitwas installed. A more pertinent reason for the friars’ objection could have beentheir disapproval of having the Mellini coat of arms appear at its centre; given theimportance of the pulpit as a sacred item of church furniture, the friars might haveobjected to its secularization by this placing of a family coat of arms at its centre.The pulpit of Santa Croce functioned as Pietro Francesco’s tomb and as a com-memorative monument for the entire Mellini family. Indeed, the church servedas the most important burial site in Florence. The richest and most important

On the facade of Santa Maria Novella see Turner, pp. 78–82.18

See See Doris Carl, ‘Il pergamo di Benedetto da Maiano in Santa Croce a Firenze’, in19

Giuliano e la bottega dei da Maiano: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Fiesole 13–15giugno 1991, ed. by Daniela Lamberini, Marcello Lotti, and Roberto Lunardi (Florence: FrancoCantini Editore, 1994), pp. 158–67; Doris Carl, ‘Franziskanischer Martyrerkult AlsKreuzzugspropaganda an der Kanzel von Benedetto da Maiano in Santa Croce in Florenz’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 39 (1995), 69–91.

On Pietro Francesco Mellini, see Carl, ‘Il Pergamo’.20


families of the Santa Croce quarter — Alberti, Spinelli, Strozzi, Saliviati, Mellini,and Bardi — were buried there, each family’s relative importance being reflectedin the location of its tombs. The preferred location was near the altar, and someof the Mellini tombs were located in the transept. 21

Most tombs in Santa Croce were floor tombs, and this was the type of tombcommon to most Florentines, the size of the tomb slab and its material reflectingthe status of the deceased. These small, flat stone markers were generally decoratedwith a coat of arms and each bore a brief inscription noting the name and death dateof the head of the family. A more expensive and imposing floor tomb consisted of alarge white marble slab, usually bearing a commemorative inscription as well as thefamily’s coat of arms. Such tombs, often inlaid with black and red marble in elaboratedesigns, were nearly always for families and preserved the remains of several membersof the same clan, as the inscriptions on the tombs state. The most powerful familiessometimes covered the floor of an entire section of a church with their floor tombs.The Alberti family tombs in the floor area of the Santa Croce choir are a notableexample. Rarer are floor tombs with portrait effigies, the bas-relief effigy showingthe deceased stretched out on his bier, dressed according to his profession or order— knight or friar, for example — with a laudatory inscription alongside.

The other major category of funerary monument found in mendicant churcheswas the wall tomb, or avello. Avelli might be constructed along the exterior walls ofchurches and inside family chapels. The cloisters and exterior walls of the Dominicanconvent of Santa Maria Novella are the sites of the greatest concentration of avelliin Florence. A far rarer type was the wall tomb with sculpted effigy, which wasalways constructed in honour of an individual rather than a family. Uniformlythey show the deceased lying on his bier and dressed in the ceremonial clothingof his office. While in the fourteenth century wall tombs were dedicated to high-ranking ecclesiastics, in the fifteenth century two important humanists, LeonardoBruni and Carlo Marsuppini, were honoured in exclusive wall tombs. Interest-ingly, most tombs were made for men and their families; tombs to commemoratewomen are exceedingly rare.22

On the tombs in Santa Croce see Pines Doralynn Schlossman, ‘The Tomb Slabs of Santa21

Croce: A New Sepoltario’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Columbia University, 1985);Stefano Rosselli, Sepoltario Fiorentino: Santa Croce 1657, MS 62; Massimiliano G. Rosito, TreCapitoli per Santa Croce (Florence: Città di Vita, 2000).

For a presentation of the typology of tombs see Andrew Butterfield, ‘Monument and22

Memory in Early Renaissance Florence’, in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed.by Ciappelli and Lee Rubin, pp. 135–62.


In Santa Croce, families gradually began searching for greater originality in theforms of liturgical monuments, such as altars, pulpits, and holy water fonts, setnear the entrance. When the patron died, he was buried, in accordance with hiswishes, at the foot of the monument, his name and coat of arms displayed on it.Francesco Nori’s burial monument at Santa Croce, created by Antonio Rossellinoin 1478, is a highly unusual work: a slab on the ground, a holy water font and arelief of the Virgin and Child in a mandorla. However, the most prestigious andout of the ordinary Florentine burial monument was the pulpit functioning as atomb.

In Santa Croce, the Mellini coatof arms was situated at the centre ofBenedetto da Maiano’s pulpit — pos-sibly inspired by Andrea Rucellai’spulpit tomb in Santa Maria Novella.Of interest are the ideas of death andresurrection appearing also in thepulpit iconography, where the sceneof St Francis’s funeral and ascent toheaven might imply hope and salva-tion for the dead patron (fig. 15).The church depicted in the relief‘The Funeral of St Francis’ mighteven have been meant to representSanta Croce, reminding the viewerof the funeral of the patron. In thisfuneral scene, traditional detailsassociated with the death of Francis— such as Thomas checking thestigmata wounds of Francis or themandorla showing Francis’s ascent toheaven — are mixed with details

alluding to a fifteenth-century Florentine funeral: the depiction of the deceased,who lies fully dressed in his friar’s gown on a richly decorated piece of cloth, thefuneral banners carried by attendants, the wax candles lit in memory of thedeceased, and the priest chanting a commemorative prayer — all are characteristicof contemporaneous funerals.23

Figure 15. Benedetto de Maiano, The Pulpitin Santa Croce, 1472–75: The Funeral and

Assumption. Reproduced with thepermission of Alinari.

On funeral customs see Strocchia, pp. 1–37.23


An additional artistic allusion to members of the Mellini family might bepresent in the narrative scenes. It was common in Florentine art to includeportraits in sacred scenes. In Giotto’s fresco, The Confirmation of the FranciscanOrder in the Bardi Chapel, some of the friars appear as individuals. Likewise, inGhirlandaio’s frescoes of the life of St Francis in the Sassetti Chapel in Florence’sSanta Trinità, many portraits are of important Florentine figures. In the pulpit24

tradition as well, patrons were sometimes included in the narrative scenes of thepulpit. For example, a hypothesis has been raised that in Donatello’s doubleambones for the church of San Lorenzo, members of the Medici family wererepresented. Thus at the centre of the Lamentation panel on the western frontof the southern pulpit, a portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici and his wife, Contessinade’ Bardi, appear. Similarly, in Prato Cathedral’s internal pulpit, in Rossellino’s25

relief depicting ‘The Funeral and Assumption’, two of the mourning figures havehighly individual heads that suggest they are portraits.26

The narrative scenes of the Santa Croce pulpit include characters who take noactive role in the story and appear merely as spectators. Examples are: in ‘TheConfirmation’ scene the corner figure on the right, standing at the door behindthe curtain and watching the encounter between Francis and the pope; in ‘TheFuneral and Assumption’ scene, the fifth figure in the right corner standingbehind the banner; and in ‘The Trial of the Sultan’, the two figures standing onbalconies. In some cases, these figures make eye contact with the beholder,implying that they are not part of the narrative and perhaps represent the figuresof Pietro Mellini, members of his family, or the friars of Santa Croce. Pulpitsserving to manifest the family’s prestige then might function not only as tombsbut also include portraits as designated by the patron.

A survey of the patronage of pulpits reveals a variable picture. Perhaps asurprising aspect of pulpits, unique to the Renaissance period, was their functionas tombs for donors. The pulpit was not only a preaching platform used for sacredoratory but a commemorative monument for the patron and his family and waspart of a general process of secularization of ecclesiastical space.

On portraits in these paintings see Eve Borsook and Johannes Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti24

and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1981), pp. 36–37.

For the Donatello’s pulpits with their portraits of the Medici see Howard Saalman, ‘The25

San Lorenzo Pulpits: A Cosimo Portrait?’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorchen Institutes in Florenz,30 (2002), 587–89.

See Lois Munemitsu Eliason, ‘The Virgin’s Sacred Belt and the Fifteenth-Century Artistic26

Commissions at Santo Stefano, Prato’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Rutgers, 2004).


Finally, although the depiction of coats of arms and other family emblemswas particularly common on tombs in mendicant churches in Florence, fiercecriticism of these customs was expressed by the mendicant preachers active inthese liturgical spaces. The Observant Dominican Fra Girolamo Savonarola, ina sermon in 1496, complained:

Look at all the convents. You will find them all filled with the coat of arms of those whohave built them. I lift my head to look above that door, I think there is a crucifix, but thereis a coat of arms; further on, lift your head, another coat of arms […]27

Savonarola’s indignation might well have been sparked by the facade of SantaMaria Novella bearing the Rucellai coat of arms and the bold inscription:‘Giovanni Rucellai has made me.’

Bernardino da Siena, who preached in Santa Croce and whose school offollowers continued preaching there in the fifteenth century, condemned thecustom of carving a family coat of arms on sepulchral monuments as a major sin.Emphasis on the family emblem, the preacher argued, would bring conflict andpartiality to the city. He was equally scathing about the practice of includingportraits of patrons in sacred scenes. Instead of bringing him closer to God, thesehabits would destroy the patron, the preacher declared. Worst of all was when onthe patron’s tomb was inscribed in marble: ‘Here lies the body of so and so, mayhe rest in peace.’ If one changes the ‘peace’ (pace) to ‘sin’ (pecce-peccato), saidBernardino, the deceased would be in Hell, where he belongs, governed by a legionof demons. 28

Conclusion

The criticism of Savonarola and Bernardino, which was directed against thepatronage habits popular in the churches of their own orders, might reflect thetension between the Observants — the stricter members of the orders representedby Savonarola and Bernardino — and the Conventuals, whose centres were inSanta Maria Novella and Santa Croce; thus the criticism of the friars was directed

See Italian Art, 1400–1500: Sources and Documents, selected and trans. by Creighton E.27

Gilbert (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1980), pp. 145–59; for the Italian see GirolamoSavonarola, Sermoni, ed. by Roberto Ridolfi, 2 vols (Rome: Belardetti, 1971), I, 149, 309.

Bernardino da Siena, Prediche volgari sul Campo di Siena 1427, ed. by Carlo Delcorno, 228

vols (Milan: Rusconi, 1989), I, 342.


towards home. These preachers were criticizing pulpits, the very church furniturethat they themselves used! The drive of the powerful towards commemorationand their thirst for fame and honour had overruled the objections of the preachereven regarding his home base, the pulpit.