Santa Maria Novella is a Dominican church in Florence. It is considered the most important Romano-Gothic church in Tuscany and is a World Heritage Site. Its construction started in 1290 and it took almost 200 years to be completed. It was consecreated in 1420.
Its distinctive façade has geometric patterns made from white and green marble. The Florentine Renaissance architect Leon Battista, designed the upper part of the façade, finished in 1470.
Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo (c. 1308 – 25 August 1368), better known as Orcagna, was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect active in Florence. He worked as a consultant at the Florence Cathedral and supervised the construction of the façade at the Orvieto Cathedral. His monumental marble tabernacle (1352–1359), commissioned by the confraternity of Orsanmichele to protect the Maestà by Bernardo Daddi (1347) at Orsanmichele, was immediately praised. The tabernacle, executed according to his design with the assistance of a team of selected sculptors and masons, included 117 figural sculptures or reliefs as part of a domed structure.
His Strozzi Altarpiece (1354–1357) is noted as defining a new role for Christ as a source of Catholic doctrine and papal authority, as central figure enthroned actively handing out the (Dominican, or generally the Mendicant theology to Thomas Aquinas, and the keys of the church to St. Peter.
The Florentine Renaissance in art is the new approach to art and culture in Florence during the period from approximately the beginning of the 15th century to the end of the 16th. This new figurative language was linked to a new way of thinking about humankind and the world around it, based on the local culture and humanism already highlighted in the 14th century by Petrarch and Coluccio Salutati, among others. Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio's innovations in the figurative arts at the very beginning of the 15th century were not immediately accepted by the community, and for some twenty years remained misunderstood and in the minority compared to International Gothic.
Thereafter, the figurative language of the Renaissance gradually became the most popular and was transmitted to other Italian courts, including the papal court, as well as to European courts, thanks to the movement of artists from one court to another. Contact with these travellers gave rise to local disciples.
The Villa Medici is a patrician villa in Fiesole, Tuscany, Italy, the fourth oldest of the villas built for the Medici family. It was built between 1451 and 1457. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site inscribed as Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany.
Cristoforo Landino (Latin: Christophorus Landinus; 1424 in Florence, Florence – 24 September 1498 in Borgo alla Collina, Casentino) was an Italian humanist and an important figure of the Florentine Renaissance.