Basilica of San Lorenzo
— — the church the Medici never quite finished.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the largest churches in Florence, raised on a 4th-century foundation and rebuilt by Brunelleschi from 1419 for Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici. The façade was never clad; the rough brown stone still shows where Michelangelo's marble plan was abandoned in 1520. Inside, the nave runs cool and grey under a flat coffered ceiling, the proportions reading like a diagram of the early Renaissance. Donatello is buried in the Old Sacristy. Behind the church the Medici Chapels hold the family tombs Michelangelo carved between 1520 and 1534. — from the studio
Basilica of San Lorenzo, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Basilica di San Lorenzo stands in central Florence on Piazza San Lorenzo, about 200 metres northwest of the Duomo. It is one of the oldest churches in the city, consecrated by St Ambrose in 393 on the site of an earlier 4th-century building, and served as the cathedral of Florence for nearly three centuries before that role passed to Santa Reparata. The present basilica was begun in 1419 by Filippo Brunelleschi at the commission of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici and completed in stages through the 1460s. It functioned as the parish church of the Medici family throughout their rule of Florence.
The exterior is the most striking unfinished façade in Italy. In 1518 Pope Leo X commissioned Michelangelo to design a marble cladding; he produced a wooden model, still in the Casa Buonarroti, but the project was abandoned in 1520 and the rough brown pietra forte was never covered. The Old Sacristy, built by Brunelleschi between 1421 and 1428 with sculpture by Donatello, is one of the foundational interiors of the early Renaissance. The New Sacristy and the adjoining Medici Chapels, designed by Michelangelo from 1520, hold his tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici with the allegorical figures Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk.
The basilica itself is open Monday through Saturday, generally 10:00 to 17:30, with a separate ticket for the church and the Old Sacristy. The Cappelle Medicee, including the Chapel of the Princes and Michelangelo's New Sacristy, are entered around the back from Piazza Madonna degli Aldobrandini and run as a separate state museum under the Bargello, open daily except some Mondays. The Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, with Michelangelo's celebrated vestibule staircase, is reached from the cloister and keeps shorter hours. All three sites are within five minutes' walk of the Duomo and the Mercato Centrale.