Firenze, Basilica of Santa Croce | De Pazzi Kapel

Mary McCarthy:

«The Pazzi Chapel, which was built for the Pazzi family as a kind of private oratory just outside the Franciscan church of Santa Croce, has not been tampered with, however, since the fifteenth century, and here you find the quintessential Brunelleschi. It is a small, square, yellowish, discreet temple, with projecting eaves, almost like a little mausoleum, from the outside, or like one of those little brown Etruscan funeral urns in the shape of a house, one of which can be seen in the Archaeological Museum – the ‘aedes tuscanica’. It has an atrium or pronaos supported by slender Corinthian columns, above which runs a frieze of cherubs’ heads in little medallions, done by Desiderio.»[4]

 

«Under the eaves is an attic and above them a cupola with a very delicate tall lantern. A tondo in glazed terracotta by Luca della Robbia of Saint Andrew (the chapel was done for Andrea de’ Pazzi) stands over the door.
The interior is a simple rectangle with four high narrow windows and bare white walls and at the end a small apse. In the four corners tall closed arches are drawn in dark-grey pietra serena on the white walls, like the memory of windows. Fluted pilasters with Corinthian capitals, also in pietra, are spaced along the walls, marking the points of support, and in the same way, the lunettes and supporting arches of the chapel are outlined in dark ribbons of stone against the white plaster, and the binding arches have stone rosettes enclosed in rectangles drawn on the white background. Arch repeats arch; curve repeats curve; rosette repeats rosette. The rectangles of the lower section are topped by the semi-circles of the lunettes and arches, which, in turn, are topped by the hemisphere of the cupola. The continual play of these basic forms and their variations – of square against round, deep against flat – is like the greatest music: the music of the universe heard in a small space.»[4]