Santa Maria Novella, 2013

We visited Santa Maria Novella in 2011. Our post from then is http://roadeveron.blogspot.it/2011/06/santa-maria-novella.html. It remains one of our favorites, primarily for its Spanish Chapel (next post and 2011), its great Ghirlandaio frescoes, and the Masaccio Trinity.

Santa Maria Novella from the Duomo

Facade; and here perhaps is the place to observe that Italians,
we have read, and seen, do not consider the exterior of their
buildings to be a part of the building, per se, but rather of the
urban environment; hence, so many cases where outside
there is nothing but faded plaster falling off the walls, but
inside, perhaps a courtyard, simply exquisite beauty...the
churches are pretty much all like that

The great altar and a peek at the Ghirlandaio-
frescoed main chapel

Pisano Madonna and Child; next generation
after Donatello

One of the big Ghirlandaio walls; life of St. Mary

Other side, life of St. John the Baptist; both picture Florentine
high society as it was in the 1480s, with numerous personages
identified by historians

And there's the artist himself

He also designed the stained glass windows in the chapel

View from bridge to stern...huge Dominican preaching
church

Della Robbia basin

In the sacristy, closets by California Closets...

"Traditionally" attributed to Michaelangelo 

View from stern

Detail, painted vaulting

And, finally, too important not to post again:
Masaccio's Trinity, the beginning, some
would say, of the Renaissance in art