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San Pancrazio (Florence)
Encyclopedia
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. It is located in the square with the same name, behind Palazzo Rucellai
Palazzo Rucellai
Palazzo Rucellai is a palatial 15th century townhouse on the Via della Vigna Nuova in Florence, Italy. The Rucellai Palace is believed by most scholars to have been designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino...
. It is today home to the museum dedicated to the sculptor Marino Marini
Marino Marini
Marino Marini was an Italian sculptor. -Biography:He attended the Accademia Di Belle Arti in Florence in 1917. Although he never abandoned painting, Marini devoted himself primarily to sculpture from about 1922. From this time his work was influenced by Etruscan art and the sculpture of Arturo...
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The church was built in the early Christian age, and is documented from 931
931
Year 931 was a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar.- Asia :* Mardavij captured and killed Asfar and in rapid succession conquered Hamadan, Dinavar and Isfahan from the governors of the caliph...
; according to the historian Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani
Giovanni Villani was an Italian banker, official, diplomat and chronicler from Florence who wrote the Nuova Cronica on the history of Florence. He was a leading statesman of Florence but later gained an unsavory reputation and served time in prison as a result of the bankruptcy of a trading and...
, it would have been founded by Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
. The annexed monastery was created in 1157, while the church was restored end enlarged from the 14th century. Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai
Giovanni Rucellai is the name of a father and grandson of the Rucellai family wool-dyers turned bankers.The former, Giovanni di Paolo, or Giovanni I, as the effective head of the Rucellai family commissioned the building of the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti and the father of...
commissioned Leon Battista Alberti to build a chapel on the church's side (the only part still consecrated today), which was finished in 1467. This includes the notable tempietto del Santo Sepolcro (Small temple of the Holy Sepulchre, inspired by the church of the same name in Jerusalem), also by Alberti, covered by polychrome marbles and tarsia
Tarsia
Tarsia is a town and comune in the province of Cosenza in the Calabria region of southern Italy. The ancient town of Caprasia is thought to be the modern Tarsia....
s. The cloister houses a fresco by Neri di Bicci
Neri di Bicci
Neri di Bicci was an Italian painter of the Renaissance. A prolific painter of mainly religious themes, he was active mainly in Florence and in the medium of tempera. His father was Bicci di Lorenzo. His grandfather, Lorenzo di Bicci was also a painter in Florence, a pupil of Spinello...
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The church was modified in the 18th and 19th centuries, and, from 1808, it served the seat of the city's lottery, then as a tribunal and then as a tobacco factory.