What is the function or purpose of the building?

The purpose of this church is to worship and pray to Saint Marry.  In 1484, a child had claimed that a painting of the Virgin on the wall of the town prison had come to life,

and plans were soon made to remove the image and preserve it in a votive church (a church built as a special offering to a saint)

Although the need to accommodate processions and the gathering of congregations made the long nave of a basilica almost a necessity for local churches, the votive church became a natural subject for Renaissance experimentation with the central plan.

The existing tradition of central-plan churches extended back to the Early Christian martyrium (a round shrine to a martyred saint) and perhaps ultimately to the Classical tholos, or round temple.

Alberti in his treatise on architecture had spoken of the central plan as an ideal, derived from the humanist belief that the circle was a symbol of divine perfection and that both the circle inscribed in a square and the cross inscribed in a circle were symbols of the cosmos.

Thus, Giuliano's Church of Santa Maria delle Carceri, built on a Greek-cross plan, is one of the finest early Renaissance examples of humanist symbolism in architectural design. It is also the first Renaissance church with a true central plan.

Drawing on his knowledge of Brunelleschi's works, Giuliano created a square, dome-covered central space extended in each direction by arms whose length was one-half the width of the central space. The arms are covered by barrel vaults extended from the round arches supporting the dome.

Giuliano raised his dome on a short, round drum that increased the amount of natural light entering the church.

He also articulated the interior walls and the twelve-ribbed dome and drum with pietra serena. The exterior of the dome is capped with a conical roof and a tall lantern in Brunelleschian fashion

The exterior of the church is a marvel of Renaissance clarity and order. The ground-floor system of slim Doric pilasters clustered at the corners is repeated in the Ionic order on the shorter upper level, as if the entablature of a small temple had been surmounted with a second smaller one.

The church was entirely finished in 1494 except for installation of the fine green-and white-marble veneer above the first story. In the 1880s, one section of the upper level was veneered; however, the philosophy of twentieth-century conservation requires that the rest of the building be left in rough stone, as it is today.

 

The Basilica of Santa Maria delle Carceri

 

 

The painting of Virgin Mary with the Holy Child