Full text: Volume (1)

456 
SANTA MARIA NOVELLA. 
incomparable beauty, and attributes the design to Andrea 
Orcagna, or to one of the best artists of that period of art. 
Beside the door to the left is a large marble slab, the 
monument of one of the Vecchietti family, whose mansions 
were near the Mercato Vecchio. The first altar proceeding up 
the church has a picture of the Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, 
by Girolamo Macchietti, a pupil of Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. The 
modern monuments on either side to the Senator Ippolito 
Venturi and his wife, are by the sculptor Stefano Ricci. The 
four altars which follow contain pictures by Giovanni Battista 
Naldini (1537-1592), who was a pupil of Pontormo and of 
Angiolo Bronzino. The subjects are — the Nativity, the 
Presentation at the Temple, the Deposition from the Cross, 
and St. Francis preaching, with our Saviour in the clouds 
above. Both these last are highly praised by Borghini for 
composition and design. The chapel containing the Deposi¬ 
tion from the Cross is dedicated to St. Thomas à Becket, and 
near it are two old monuments transferred here from the former 
screen, and which were erected to the memory of Tommaso 
and Ruggieri Minerbetti, liberal benefactors to the church, and 
whose family claimed kindred with the celebrated archbishop 
of Canterbury. The archbishop’s family is supposed to have 
been so cruelly persecuted in England that they had to fly 
their country, and about the end of the twelfth century to have 
established themselves in Lucca, from whence they removed to 
Florence. The name of Minerbetti is supposed to be a corrup- 
tion of that of Becket. Messer Ruggero Minerbetti fought on 
the Guelphic side in the battle of Montaperti (1260), and thirty 
members of the family filled the office of Priors of the Republic 
between the years 1283 and 1531. These mohuments were 
made by Silvio da Fiesole, a pupil of Andrea da Fiesole, who 
lived towards the end of the fifteenth century : they are 
sarcophagi of white marble, beneath an architrave resting on 
Corinthian pilasters, and decorated with the arms of the family— 
three daggers on a shield—with very lovely cherubs’ heads.
	        
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