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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.