(PDF) The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti

(PDF) The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti
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The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti
Anne Leader
2023, Lost and Found Locating Foundlings in the Early Modern World
April 06, 2026
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Abstract
Reconstructs the tombscape of the church inside the complex of the Florentine foundling hospital known as the Ospedale degli Innocenti. Tombs were installed from 1445 through the middle of the eighteenth century.
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Cassandra M Sciortino
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I Tatti Research Series

LOST AND FOUND:
LOCATING FOUNDLINGS
IN THE EARLY MODERN
WORLD
edited by
Nicholas Terpstra

I Tatti – The Harvard University Center
for Italian Renaissance Studies
Via di Vincigliata, 26
50135 Florence – Italy
itatti.harvard.edu
Project coordinator: Thomas Gruber
Cover design: Juliet Strachan
Published and distributed in Italy by

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Copyediting: Wendy Keebler
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Printed and bound by Esperia, Lavis (Trento)
Publication of this volume has been made possible by
The Myron and Sheila Gilmore Publication Fund at I Tatti
The Robert Lehman Endowment Fund
The Jean-François Malle Scholarly Programs and Publications Fund
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Scholarly Programs
and Publications
The Barbara and Craig Smyth Fund for Scholarly Programs
and Publications
The Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Endowment Fund
The Malcolm Wiener Fund for Scholarly Programs and Publications
Worldwide distribution by Harvard University Press
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
or in any information storage and retrieval system, without permission
in writing from the publishers.
ISBN 978-06-###-###-# (Harvard University Press)
ISBN 978-88-3367-220-5 (Officina Libraria)

I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian
Renaissance Studies, Florence

CONTENTS

Introduction: Locating Foundling Care in the Early Modern and Modern World
Nicholas Terpstra

PART I Legal and Cultural Contexts for Infant Abandonment
Alberti on Orphans and the Care of Young Children
Martin McLaughlin

19

Orphanage and Order: Alberti and the Origins of Renaissance Architecture
Caspar Pearson

37

Illegitimacy, Legitimacy, and Trovatelli: The Confused Legal Status of the Children
of Foundling Hospitals
Thomas Kuehn

53

PART II Recreating the Spaces and Settings of the Ospedale degli Innocenti
A False Start: The Dysfunctional Splendor of Brunelleschi’s Innocenti Design
Marvin Trachtenberg
Research-Based 3D Modeling of Santa Maria degli Innocenti: Recovering a Context
for the Quattrocento Altarpieces
Fabrizio Nevola, Donal Cooper, Chiara Capulli, and Luca Brunke
The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti
Anne Leader
Neighborhood Demographics at the Foundation of the Innocenti:
A Test Case in Mapping the Florentine Catasto of 1427
Niall Atkinson and Carmen Jaramillo Caswell
Innocenti Investments: Spatial Histories of Institutional Property Ownership
Colin Rose and Daniel Jamison

77

109
135

165
199

PART III Care, Governance, and Identity in Early Modern Foundling Homes
Signs of Belonging: Identifying Female Foundlings and Orphans
in Early Modern Europe
Diana Bullen Presciutti
The Hand That Feeds: Alimentary Charity and Discipline in Tuscan Foundling Homes
Spirit-Rose Waite

215
249

Child Circulation and the Nuremberg Findel: An Alternative to the Narrative
of Pre-modern Abandonment
Joel F. Harrington

275

PART IV Race, Abandonment, and Foundling Care in the Early Modern World
Hidden in Plain Sight: The Innocenti and Enslavement in Fifteenth-Century Florence
Angela Zhang
Found and Lost: Race, Demography, and Reason of State
in Early Modern Foundling Care
Nicholas Terpstra
Foundlings in the Portuguese World: The Culture of Child Abandonment
Isabel dos Guimarães Sá

295

315
339

Dimensions of Abandonment in Spain and the Indies:
The Casas de Expósitos and Beyond
Ann Twinam

359

Contributors

375

Photo Credits

379

Index of Names

380

The Family Tombs of Santa Maria degli Innocenti
Anne Leader

Although the initial donor to the Ospedale degli Innocenti intended to establish a secular institution,1 the foundling hospital soon came to have its own
church, consecrated in 1451, which included sponsored altars and tombs in
the manner found across Florence. Prior to its late-eighteenth-century renovation, the pavement of Santa Maria degli Innocenti held nine floor tombs, all
but one dedicated to individual men between the years 1445 and 1766 (fig. 1).
One slab marked a burial site reserved for priests of the hospital. The remaining eight, plus three wall monuments erected between 1747 and 1760, honored ten individuals by name (Alessandro Gianfigliazzi had two markers in the
chancel, one in the floor and another against its north wall).2 By requesting
burial in the hospital church, rather than join kinfolk in established family
sepulchres, these men entrusted their memories to the residents and priests of
the Innocenti. They chose not to use one of the Innocenti’s communal graves
but instead opted to create personalized tombs ex novo. These bespoke monuments provide sharp contrast to how resident children and most hospital staff
were buried. The men memorialized in the hospital church received specific,
personal, and direct intercessory prayers for their salvation and the preservation of their names; whereas foundlings and staffers buried anonymously,
usually in communal graves, faded quickly into obscurity. Examination of the
Innocenti’s sepulchral landscape enriches our understanding of the hospital’s
social hierarchies and its corporate identity as a family.3
In Book III of his Libri della famiglia, Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) puts
forth an ideal of the happy household, where all relations can “live under
one roof, warm themselves at one hearth, and seat themselves at one table.”4
Although aspirational, Florentine notions of a unified family, in both the narrowest and the widest senses of the term, are borne out not only in treatises and
other literature but also through private diaries, letters, tax declarations, and
testaments, which reveal how the family was seen as the protector of patrimony
and the keeper of memory. The broader the branches of a family tree, the more

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Fig. 1. Pasquale Cecchi, Pianta dell’antica chiesa del nostro spedale, con la descrizione dei monumenti
in marmo, che ivi esistevano (Plan of the old church of our hospital [of the Innocents], with a
description of the marble monuments that existed there), 1786. Source: AOIF 3843, fol. 32

likely the diffusion of households, sometimes far from the original ancestral
street. As with hearths for the living, Florentine lineages frequently established
commemorative burial sites around their city, installing family tombs not only
in parish churches but also in friaries, monasteries, convents, and the cathedral. Although for different lines, and in large clans often quite distant cousins,
family tombs carried the surname and coat of arms shared by the entire lineage, bringing attention and recognition to all entitled to use them.5
For example, the Ricci clan established tombs in five churches over several
generations: first in the cathedral cemetery, then at the Dominican friary of

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Santa Maria Novella and the Franciscan Santa Croce, followed by newer memorials in the Benedictine monastery of the Badia and the Observant Dominican
San Marco. Their neighbors the Strozzi also placed tombs in the two mendicant friaries on opposite sides of town, plus their parish churches of Santa
Maria degli Ughi, San Miniato tra le Torri, and Santa Trinita. The smaller
Covoni family shared burial space with these grander lineages in the cathedral, the Badia, and Santa Croce, and they installed memorials in their parish
church of San Procolo, while the larger and higher-ranking Albizzi lineage,
in addition to extensive sepulchral patronage at their parish of San Pier Maggiore, interred kinfolk at the two large friaries and with the Servites at Santissima Annunziata. They also earned visibility in the Oltrarno parish church
of San Niccolò sopr’Arno through the tomb of an Albizzi daughter that carried
their arms and those of her husband.6 Also in the Oltrarno, the Corsini made
their presence known not only in their parish of Santo Spirito but also in Santa
Maria del Carmine and San Gaggio, and, like their peers, they made their mark
north of the river through burials with the Franciscans and the Dominicans,
as well as at the cathedral. The Medici, in keeping with their widespread use
of church patronage to demonstrate both piety and power,7 established their
sepulchral profile broadly. In addition to their parish church of San Lorenzo,
Medici-emblazoned memorials were in the friaries of Santissima Annunziata,
Santa Croce, San Francesco al Monte, and Santa Maria Novella; the convent
of Le Murate; the cathedral; and the parishes of San Michele Visdomini, San
Frediano, San Romolo, and San Tommaso.8
This pattern of families with burials in more than one tomb, often in more
than one church, repeats itself across the city from the thirteenth through the
eighteenth centuries. Several of the surnames carved on the Innocenti markers
were well known in Florence. Moved in 1786 to the small area behind the high
altar, the personalized tomb markers that once decorated the floor and walls of
Santa Maria degli Innocenti belonged almost exclusively to childless men. By
choosing burial not with their fathers or grandfathers in ancestral gravesites
but rather under new monuments at the Innocenti, these men were able to
achieve what they otherwise lacked: the foundlings and staff of the hospital
filled the role of family in both life and death, and the Innocenti church served
as a veritable family chapel.
It is not surprising that a hospital would reserve space to bury those who
died while in their care. Ferdinando del Migliore (d. 1696) and Giuseppe Richa
(d. 1761) recount how families visited the Santa Maria Nuova cemetery to teach
youngsters about the transience of life. According to Richa:

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Fig. 2. Pianta terrena di tutto il contenuto del regio spedale di S. Maria Nuova (Ground plan
of the hospital of Santa Maria Nuova), 1780, detail. The Chiostro delle Osse (old cemetery)
was to the left of the church and sacristy of San Egidio (A). The cemetery was closed for the
construction of the women’s ward (S) and replaced by a new cemetery, the Campo Santo (G).
Source: ASF, Ospedale di S. Maria Nuova 24, fol. 2

all the walls were covered with piled-up bones and well accompanied by whole
skeletons which were fitted into niches in such a way that nowhere else could
one see such a plentiful display. . . . The custom was for many Florentines to
take their children to see these bones and to say to them: “Children, remember
that this is our end and that our flesh is weak.”9

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Fig. 3. Pianta terrena di tutto il contenuto dello spedale degl’Innocenti (Ground plan of the hospital
of the Innocents), 1780, detail. The church of Santa Maria degli Innocenti is labeled “chiesa,”
while the so-called Church of the Women is marked Y. The Campo Santo is at the top of the
plan, labeled Q. Source: ASF, Ospedale di S. Maria Nuova 24, fol. 13

This burial site interred about 360,000 bodies before its closure in the mid-seventeenth century to build a new women’s ward. A new cemetery farther west
within the compound held 460 tombs (fig. 2, S and G). Each could be opened
for daily burials as needed and then closed for at least one year. This rotation
of tombs was to mitigate the stench of decomposing corpses that, as described
vividly by Migliore, “always created an emanation that tormented the neighborhood, especially when the winter winds were strong, and in the summer . . .
was unbearable.”10 A plan of the Innocenti dated 1780 shows a cemetery at the
southeast edge of the complex (fig. 3, Q). It remains unclear when these graves,
morphologically like those built at Santa Maria Nuova in the seventeenth century, were first used.

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Fig. 4. Santa Maria degli Innocenti crypt, looking east at first pier from entrance (see fig. 5a)

Fifteenth-century Innocenti records contain references to a cimitero and to
burials under the church, though it is not clear whether these refer to the same
site. A plan of the church made in 1786 prior to renovation confirms that there
were grave markers placed along its central axis, the earliest of which bear the
dates 1444 and 1450, but it makes no reference to the crypt below (fig. 1). Of
course, record keepers at the Innocenti knew exactly where and how burials took
place and thus did not describe this activity with either precision or consistency.
The earliest interments, like the first abandonments, happened before the hospital complex was fully built. They include the wet nurse Nastasia, who “carried
herself very well with these infants” but died of plague on November 3, 1449,
and was buried “under the church opposite the three graves there because they
were not completed.”11 On May 16, 1451, soon after the church was consecrated,
the toddler Nanna, like seven-month-old Giovanna on February 23, 1464,12 was
buried “under the church where the other children are.”13 Infant Potenziano was

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Fig. 5. Santa Maria degli
Innocenti crypt (Sala delle
Compagnia). Source: After Carlo
Terpolilli, Pianta del livello
ipogeo, ipostudio architetti srl
(2012–2016); see Mulazzani,
L’Ospedale degli Innocenti, 94
Key
a. First pier showing (w)
standing skeleton, (s)
kneeling flagellant with “Agite
PenitenziAm ” scroll, (e) vase of
lilies, and (n) kneeling flagellant
with “(e)rvb(eScentiA)” scroll
b. Second pier showing (w)
standing skeleton, (s) kneeling
flagellant with “ diLigite viAm
domini” scroll, (e) vase of lilies,
and (n) kneeling flagellant with
“vbidi dienziA” scroll
c. Third pier
d. Fourth pier
1, 3. Crown with three martyr’s
palms
2, 4. Grill of Saint Lawrence
n. Underside of communal
tombs in front loggia,
before 1458
o. Crypt entrance and stair to
men’s cloister, before 1449

“buried here in house” on July 26, 1451,14 and Giovanni was “buried with the
others in our church” on August 2, 1456.15 An unnamed infant girl, dead for lack
of milk, was “buried with the others” on October 1, 1462, and little Gino was
“buried with the other children in our cemetery” on June 11, 1467.16
An annotation to the record of the church’s consecration on April 11, 1451,
relates how Archbishop Antoninus returned to the hospital on November
25, 1458, to “bless the cemetery below [the church], next to the confraternity, where the graves are.”17 Thus, the initial Innocenti “cemetery” was the
church crypt where the Compagnia di San Lorenzo in Piano was meeting by
1456, joined by the Compagnia della Nunziata in the 1470s.18 Documentary
and physical evidence sheds some light on the multipurpose crypt, but its
dramatic changes over the centuries make it difficult to understand the space
clearly (figs. 4 and 5). Four ashlar piers traverse the crypt’s longitudinal axis,
supporting the vaults that carry the church floor above. Fragmentary frescoes

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Fig. 6. Drawing of original Via della Colonna portal and the last arch of the hospital loggia, ca.
1557–1599. Source: AOIF 3869 (s. 138, n. 3), fol. 79

survive on the two westernmost piers, depicting standing skeletons on their
west faces, kneeling flagellants on their north and south faces, and vases of
lilies, symbol of the Annunciation, on their eastern faces (fig. 5, a and b). Additional fresco fragments decorate the lateral walls of the crypt opposite the two
easternmost piers, showing fire-filled grates and martyr’s crowns with palms,
symbols of Saint Lawrence (fig. 5, c and d, 1–4). The intrusion of the vaults over
these wall paintings, surely made for the Compagnia di San Lorenzo, raises
questions about when the crypt vaults took their present form. The frescoes
on the piers, however, do not seem truncated, suggesting that they are at the
same height as they were in the fifteenth century. The only communication
between the church and the crypt is a stair that connects the north corner bay
of the men’s cloister with the entrance to the crypt. If other stairs or holes for
lowering bodies after funeral services in the church were once present, neither

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Fig. 7. Detail of fig. 6. Inscriptions read, from left to right, top to bottom: (1) archo ultimo in testa
alla detta loggia a dove sono gli havelli comuni dello spedale (last arch at the head of the loggia
where the communal graves of the hospital are); (2) in questo secondo archo della loggia vi viene
la porta della chiesa grande dello spedale (in this second arch of the loggia you come to the door
of the large church of the hospital); (3) loggia delli innocenti (loggia of the Innocenti)

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archaeological nor documentary evidence of them has yet been found.19
The relationship between the confraternities that used the crypt as their
meeting hall and the Innocenti family also remains vague. The painted skeletons would have served as markers for the cemetery and memento mori
(reminders of death) for all who entered the crypt. The kneeling flagellants,
applicable to both confraternities, hold scrolls emphasizing the necessity of
penance for forgiveness and the salvation desired by all buried at the Innocenti. Upon entering the crypt from the cloister, visitors are urged to “Do penance” and “Make straight the way of the Lord.” On the northern side of the
hall, viewers are reminded that “Obedience” and “Shamefacedness” are necessary steps to repentance. Prayers for the dead, one of the seven spiritual works
of mercy, would have been expected of all who entered the crypt.20
Another burial location for the Innocenti’s dead, first put to use at the same
time as the crypt, was under the portico facing Piazza Santissima Annunziata.21 A drawing made in conjunction with hospital director Vincenzo Borghini’s project to build a passageway over Via della Colonna indicates that the
loggia’s left-most arch contained four havelli comuni, or communal graves
(figs. 6 and 7).22 A fascinating record of these tombs comes from late 1551, as
Philip Gavitt first noted, when the church tomb of Lapo Pacini was opened, his
bones removed and reburied “in the grave of the loggia,” so that his personal
sepulchre could be reused for the burial of Mona Gostanza di Landozzo degli
Albizzi, a beloved foundling who grew up to be prioress of the Innocenti. She
requested burial at the hospital next to her predecessor prioress Mona Agata
rather than with any Albizzi kin.
Mona Gostanza died on the feast of the Holy Innocents, December 28, at
age seventy-one. Desiring to fulfill Gostanza’s last wish, hospital staff had difficulty locating Agata’s body, but find her they did, her corpse undisturbed
and still fresh in its burial clothes after four decades in the grave. The hospital’s prior, Luca di Tommaso di Andrea Alamanni, ordered that Gostanza
receive a lavish funeral officiated by the parish priest of San Michele Visdomini. With floods of tears from the Innocenti famiglia, pounds of candles in
their hands and on the church’s altars, and churchmen from across the city,
an extensive procession carried Gostanza’s body, “dressed in her clothes for
going out,” from the hospital, southwest through the Piazza dei Servi to the
Canto del Tribolo (the intersection of Via dei Servi and Via degli Alfani), where
the cortege turned northwest onto Via del Ciliegio (Alfani) to head toward the
Canto di Bernadetto, where it turned northeast onto Via Larga (Cavour) to proceed to Piazza San Marco, from where they returned to the Innocenti by Via

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Fig. 8. Route of Mona Gostanza’s 1551 funeral procession overlaid on a 1731 map of Florence by
Ferdinando Ruggieri

della Sapienza (fig. 8). Despite this grand celebration and outpouring of grief,
Gostanza was interred not under a tomb slab dedicated to her but rather under
the one commemorating Lapo Pacini (d. 1452). His bones, and likely those of
his wife, Dianora (d. 1463), were removed to one of the communal graves in the
loggia, and the body of Agata was reburied in Pacini’s former tomb alongside
Gostanza, “their spirits resting in eternal peace.”23
Considering that the community had forgotten the location of Agata’s initial burial rather quickly, one wonders how long it was remembered that she
and her successor were put together under the stone memorializing Lapo
Pacini, the hospital’s first commesso—an oblate who served as hospital staff,
committing time, talent, and treasure in exchange for room, board, and spiritual care. Equally interesting to ponder is how Pacini would have felt about the
reuse of his grave. Given his commitment to the Innocenti as a member of the
famiglia, as well as benefactor, treasurer, and hospital director, he likely would

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have been pleased that, following Florentine custom of successive burials in an
ancestral sepulchre, his “descendants” Agata and Gostanza were laid to rest
in his tomb.
Most staff members were buried without personalized grave markers, like
the wet nurse Nastasia, interred in the crypt. While prioresses such as Agata
and Gostanza had the honor of elaborate funerals, they were nevertheless
entombed within unmarked graves or those that carried the names of men
related to them only through shared service to the hospital.24 Unrecognized
burial in an ancestral or communal tomb was typical for Florentine women, as
daughters were often buried with their fathers, wives with their husbands, and
other women in communal parish graves. A relatively small number of Florentine tombs did honor women by name or by role in inscriptions that identify
the burial rights of wives (uxorum) or women (mulierum) who were otherwise
known only through the name of a spouse or paterfamilias.25 Similarly, prioresses Agata and Gostanza were buried in what can be called an ancestral tomb,
for Lapo Pacini can certainly be seen as a hospital patriarch.
The Innocenti was first granted rights to bury the dead in 1439, when a papal
bull officially named it a locus ecclesiasticus. In exchange for exemption from
civic and ecclesiastical taxes, priests appointed by the Silk Guild were required
to perform masses and other divine offices at the hospital. In addition to ministering to the hospital community through communion, confession, penance,
and absolution, these priests offered last rites and saw that the dead were
properly and solemnly buried under the hospital’s church. In fact, the edict
stipulated that even without a consecrated church, hospital priests should perform funerals and bury the dead.26 The first residents would not arrive until
January 1445, but the staff was ready to take care of whatever spiritual needs
they required; little Filippo Innocente was “buried in the hospital” on June 28,
1445, only six months after the hospital opened its doors and six years before
its church was consecrated, let alone the cemetery’s blessing in 1458. Pope
Eugenius granted an indulgence absolving those who visited the church on
the feast of the Annunciation from seven years and forty days of penance. Presumably, these pilgrims would pray for the souls of those buried within, just as
Florentines asked the Holy Innocents, and by extension the resident innocent
foundlings, orate pro nobis (pray for us) (fig. 9).27
According to its 1374 statutes, Santa Maria Nuova forbade burial in either
the hospital’s church of Sant’Egidio or its cemetery, except for patients, staff
members, and patrons. This pattern of restricting burial to members of the
famiglia seems to have been followed at the Innocenti. However, most oblates

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Fig. 9. Bas-de-page detail showing Dianora Doffi and Lapo Pacini kneeling before a Holy
Innocent with the plea: om(n)es s(an)c(t)i in(n)ocentes orate pro nobis (All Holy Innocents pray for
us). Source: AOIF 21 (s. 9, n. 1), fol. 125v, January 27, 1445

and directors did not pursue individual burial rights or altar patronage
within the hospital complex. Of the forty-three men who served as spedalingo
(hospital director) between 1420 and 1766, only eight were given sepulchral
honors in Santa Maria degli Innocenti. Many hospital directors were clergy
and likely buried in the churches where they held their last position, such as
Filippo di Paolo Ricasoli, who served the Innocenti for six years before being
appointed spedalingo at Santa Maria Nuova in 1648, where he dedicated a
personalized tomb in 1650. Others chose to return to their families, such as
the aforementioned spedalingo Luca Alamanni, who died less than a year after
he presided over Gostanza Albizzi’s funeral. He was buried in an ancestral
tomb in Santa Croce instead of at the hospital church where he had served for
twenty-one years.28
Most donors and benefactors did not have a visible presence in the church.
For example, Bernardo di Bartolomeo del Benino served as operaio in 1439, as

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his father had before him, but when he drew up his will in 1468 naming the
Innocenti as an heir, he requested burial in his ancestors’ tomb in Santo Spirito
rather than in the church whose construction he helped oversee.29 Mariotto
di Dinozzo di Stefano Lippi was hospital operaio five times between 1439 and
1461, after which he held the post for life. His will of 1473 stipulated that the
Innocenti should receive one-third of his estate but that he would be laid to
rest in the tomb he had established at his parish church of San Felice in Piazza.30 Like these men, Andrea di Francesco Banchi had an extensive record of
service to both the Silk Guild and the hospital under its care, serving the former as consul and the latter as operaio. Like his predecessor Lapo Pacini, Banchi had no male heirs and left two-thirds of his estate to the hospital he served
until his death on October 12, 1462. Pacini and Banchi were among the many
silk merchants who made bequests to the hospital built and supported by their
guild. Unlike Pacini, who had no other kin in Florence, Banchi chose to be buried in the church of San Niccolò oltr’Arno, where he had sponsored a chapel.
There Banchi’s executors staged an eight-hundred-florin funeral with more
than two hundred fifty pounds of torches and nearly five hundred pounds of
wax candles. His Bencini and Ginori grandchildren, as well as his Banchi cousins, could thus honor Andrea’s memory in the presence of his ancestors and
the Banchi coat of arms. His famiglia at the foundling hospital also remembered him during the anniversary services he requested, during which twenty
priests, and presumably the children, lit twenty-five pounds of wax candles
and prayed for the souls of Andrea and his dear son Piero, who had died childless in 1453 only one year into his marriage and the same year in which his
father, despondent over the loss of his son and heir, took vows as an Innocenti
commesso and became operaio for life.31
The first permanent memorial to be installed in the Innocenti may have been
that of Lapo di Piero Pacini da Castelfiorentino. He and his third wife, Dianora
di Bernardo di ser Lodovico Doffi, joined the Innocenti as its first oblates after
eleven years of childless marriage.32 Their pious dedication is captured in a
marvelous double portrait drawn on their donation document, which confirms
their promise to support the hospital and obey the superintendent (fig. 9).
Lapo’s large marble floor slab was installed in line with the high altar, just
to the west of the church’s side doors (figs. 1 and 10, K). His tomb carried his
coat of arms rendered with colored stone and bronze revetment, as well as an
inscription in Italian that recognized his status as first oblate and his appointment as the hospital’s first treasurer: “S(epolcro) di Lapo di Piero Pacini da
Castelo fiorentino citadino e merchatante fiorentino (c)he fu il primo conmeso

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e camarlingo di questo ispedale a di XI di genaio MCCCCXLIIII” (old style). It
is possible that Lapo commissioned his tombstone as part of his commitment
to the hospital, for his appointment as spedalingo several months later, on May
20, 1445, was not noted on his tomb. It is interesting to note the use of Italian
on his slab, the only one to do so in the church. Perhaps this choice stemmed
from a desire for all literate members of the Innocenti famiglia to be able to
read his commemorative inscription, even those not schooled in Latin.
Lapo died almost eight years later at the age of seventy-three, and he was
buried in Santa Maria degli Innocenti on October 24, 1452, about a year and
a half after its consecration by Archbishop Antoninus.33 Pacini had given
great thought to his final resting place, for he had paid more than two hundred florins to build and decorate a funeral chapel in his hometown church
of San Francesco di Castelfiorentino. He kept meticulous records of its furnishings, most of which were adorned with the Pacini coat of arms, including a stone slab (avello) carved before February 5, 1411, by Andrea di Fede for
ten florins. Though Lapo’s father died in November 1403 before this tomb was
installed, Lapo clearly intended the chapel, with its multimedia display of “our
arms,” to be for his family. As the only surviving Pacini son, Lapo bore the
responsibility of continuing the lineage. He may have buried his first wife, Giovanna, whom he married in 1397, in the chapel. Still childless, Lapo married
the Florentine Filippa “Pippa” di Jacopo di ser Michele Dotti, twelve years his
junior, at the end of 1411, almost a year after completing the family chapel. On
September 4, 1414, Lapo’s mother, Agnola, was buried “with great honor for
her body and her family” in the Florentine church of San Felice in Piazza, the
parish where Lapo was then renting a house. Lapo and Pippa took in a foundling in June 1415, but the little boy either died or returned to his birth parents
less than two years later.34
Lapo moved to Florence permanently in 1421, when he enrolled in the Silk
Guild, and after renting near Santa Croce as late as 1427, he purchased a house
in the parish of San Benedetto in 1431. Pippa died from complications after
the birth of a little girl, who herself had died. Lapo purchased two candles
for two lire from the apothecary Giovanni di Luti in Via Porta Rossa to honor
the fanciullina, and he spent even more on her mother’s funeral on April 16,
1434. Their burial places are presently unknown but may well have been in
the parish church of San Benedetto rather than the Pacini family chapel in
Castelfiorentino. Only three months later, the fifty-five-year-old Lapo, surely
still hoping for children, married Dianora, the nineteen-year-old daughter of a
Florentine wool merchant.35

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Lapo supported celebrations at the family chapel in Castelfiorentino at least
through 1437, and he continued to donate goods to it through 1446, by which
time he had spent more than two hundred florins on its construction and decoration. When he professed as an Innocenti oblate in January 1445, Lapo, “an
old man and clearly having attained old age without sons or daughters and
without any hope of begetting other progeny,” stipulated that the guild could
not cede his chapel’s patronage to others, and he remembered the church in his
will, leaving three properties and a small house for its support, even though he
would not be buried there.36 Lapo’s identity and interests thus changed from
those of sole Pacini heir and prominent citizen of the Florentine contado to
those of a respected Florentine merchant, almsgiver, protector, and father of
abandoned children. Having no children of his own to honor him or to use and
maintain the grave he built in Castelfiorentino, Lapo chose instead to be buried with his new family at the Innocenti.
The other early tomb in the Innocenti church belonged to Antonio di
Ugolino di Francesco Rucellai, whose marble slab carried the eminent family’s
recognizable coat of arms and a more traditional Latin inscription naming both
his father and his grandfather and the date 1450: “S(epulcrum) Antonii Ugolini
Francisci de Oricellariis MCCCCL” (figs. 1 and 10, J). Rucellai’s tomb was placed
in the church floor in line with that of Pacini but closer to the high altar, and
it remains unclear which of the two was installed first. The lack of a month or
day on Rucellai’s stone suggests that Antonio was still alive when it was carved.
A Libro della muraglia records a 1451 payment for the installation of the tomb
slab. The stonecutter Salvi di Lorenzo Marochi, who did several works for the
hospital, was paid ninety-five lire to place Rucellai’s slab in the church floor, but,
as was common with the settling of accounts in fifteenth-century Florence, this
payment only provides a terminus ante quem.37 Unlike Lapo Pacini, Antonio
Rucellai was not an administrator of the Innocenti. Although Attilio Piccini
referred to Rucellai as a “benefactor” of the hospital, he provided no details.38
Antonio appears in the 1427 Catasto as a twenty-one-year-old living with
his grandparents, father, and stepmother in the Red Lion district of the Santa
Maria Novella quarter. His mother, Bartolomea di Niccolò di Matteo del Formica, seems to have died in 1408, as had his first stepmother, Piccarda d’Andrea Banchi, in 1411. By 1427, Antonio’s second stepmother, Nanna di Pierozzo
di Giovanni linaiolo, was thirty-four years old and had no children by her husband, Ugolino, though she does seem to have had at least one son by a previous
marriage, Piero, who helped her file her 1457 Catasto declaration. Antonio is
known to have remained in his father’s house through the Catasto of 1446, and

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he seems to have been his father’s only son, if not his only child, but he predeceased him. Ugolino thus left his estate to male cousins, and he chose burial in
his ancestral tomb at Santa Maria Novella.39
On December 22, 1449, for the redemption of his soul (pro remedio animae
suae), Antonio Rucellai bequeathed several properties and the income they
produced to the Innocenti. The document, drawn up by the Arte della Seta’s
notary, Ser Silvano di Giovanni di Frosino da San Donato in Poggio, makes clear
that Antonio still had the expectation of much living ahead of him and held
out hope for legitimate sons and heirs despite the loss of his wife in August
1448. However, within six months, Antonio became gravely ill, and he was dead
by July 7, 1450, as attested by entries in hospital account books related to his
bequest and to the account of his estate. We can thus surmise with confidence
that Antonio died in early July 1450, confirmation of which is provided by a
mid-July payment record of 108 lire and four soldi “for expenses made in his
infirmity and death.”40 The settlement of a property sale by his father on July 2,
1451, to fulfill promised obligations to the Innocenti may have coincided with
the anniversary of Antonio’s premature death at the age of forty-four, a widower without issue who left his father and stepmother to tend to his estate.41
Antonio Rucellai’s stone was set along the central axis of the church, like
Pacini’s, which ensured visibility, foot traffic, and, it was hoped, prayers for his
salvation. Antonio descended from Nardo di Giunta di Alamanno di Monte di
Ferro Rucellai and was part of the ninth generation descended from the stump
of the Rucellai family tree. Nardo, the first family member to hold the priorate in 1302 and standard-bearer of justice in 1308, installed a tomb in his
family’s parish church of San Pancrazio, so old that the coat of arms did not
carry the lion that was later added to the family crest. Its inscription stated
that all his sons could be buried there, filiorum eius.42 But with fifteen sons by
two wives, it is not surprising that many of Nardo’s descendants established
separate gravesites, including his son and Antonio’s great-grandfather Ugolino di Nardo, who did not find his final rest in his father’s parish grave at San
Pancrazio but rather at the Dominican friary of Santa Maria Novella, where
his grandson, Antonio’s father, Ugolino di Francesco, would join him in 1457.
City burial registers show that Antonio’s wife, Ginevra, who died on August 27,
1448, at age thirty-one, also requested extra-parochial burial at Santa Maria
Novella, presumably in her in-laws’ grave.43
Though he had rights to tombs in his parish and with nearer relatives in Santa
Maria Novella (and likely knew his father’s wish to be buried with the Dominicans), Antonio, descendant of the family’s first prior and first standard-bearer

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of justice with a tomb in San Pancrazio and great-grandson of the founder of
another family monument at the highly popular burial grounds of the Dominican friary, chose instead to be remembered at the Innocenti, where he had
made a donation on December 22, 1449, a little more than six months before his
death. How he secured a prestigious tomb location in the center of the church
along its central axis and why he had chosen this spiritual path are not well
understood. Though not listed among its matriculants, Antonio still seems
to have been connected to the Silk Guild, for the guild’s notary Ser Silvano
handled his donation, though this could stem from the notary’s connection
to the guild and the hospital rather than indicating anything about Antonio’s
status.44 A widower without any children of his own, perhaps, like Lapo Pacini,
Antonio Rucellai thought of the Innocenti foundlings as his descendants and
took comfort in the hope that they would keep his memory alive and pray for
his soul whenever they saw his tombstone.
Almost three centuries later, another Rucellai descendant, again childless,
was honored with a memorial in the church after his death at age thirty-seven
in 1747. He was the Florentine canon Francesco di Paolo Benedetto Rucellai,
who descended from Antonio Rucellai’s third cousin, the well-known banker
Giovanni di Paolo (1403–1481). Unlike Antonio, however, Francesco did serve
as prior of the Innocenti, and so his burial at the church is not as surprising
(figs. 1 and 10, F). His wall tomb was to the right of the high altar, and its Latin
inscription not only referred to his illustrious family, to his learning, and to
his care for abandoned children but also named his successor and kinsman
Giovanni di Michele Pierucci, who had commissioned the monument in honor
of his brother-in-law.45 Pierucci himself would be laid to rest between the
two altars on the right side of the church under a marble plaque that reads,
“the bones of Giovanni Michele, Count of the Pierucci.” Its corresponding
wall monument, installed by his brothers, carried a long, laudatory Latin
inscription and the date 1760, giving him additional recognition among
the small number of monuments in Santa Maria degli Innocenti,46 once as a
Rucellai in-law and tomb patron, again as a Pierucci son and brother (figs. 1
and 10, H). However, these Rucellai-connected tombs would not arrive until
the middle of the eighteenth century. Indeed, for the first half century of its
use, Santa Maria degli Innocenti seems to have contained only two tombs, one
commemorating Antonio Rucellai without reference to any aspects of his life
and the other celebrating Lapo Pacini’s birthplace and Florentine citizenship,
his career as a merchant, and his devotion to the hospital.
In 1498, an even more splendid monument was installed for Francesco di

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Giovanni Tesori, who had died on June 27, 1497, while holding the office of
hospital prior. Tesori had left money to pay a teacher for the hospital’s children
and to celebrate important feast days such as the Assumption of the Virgin,
but it was the consuls of the Silk Guild who installed his tomb ten months later
at a cost of forty-five florins. Framed with an inlaid border of floral motifs, the
marble slab carried not only a laudatory Latin inscription but also a carved
portrait of the deceased prior as if lying on his funeral bier, his hands crossed
over a book, his head resting on a fat pillow that was once decorated with gold
(figs. 1 and 10, M). Effigy portraits were relatively rare on Florentine floor
tombs and were typically reserved for ecclesiastical elites, including church
founders and special patrons, and men celebrated for their public service, a
fitting description for Tesori. In elegant Roman letters, a contrast to the Gothic
majuscules on the Pacini and Rucellai tombs, Tesori’s inscription praises the
prior as a man of virtue and the “glorious guild” that paid for the slab in gratitude for Tesori’s service to the hospital, “whose children mourn.” Not much
is known of the Tesori family, and if the family had a coat of arms, it was not
included on the tomb.47 Interestingly, neither is his patronym, perhaps because
the guild members did not know that he was the son of Giovanni Tesori. The
lack of heraldry or mention of ancestors and the focus on Francesco’s role as
a famous and virtuous prior of the hospital whose children lament his loss
emphasize his role as head of the Innocenti famiglia.
The next spedalingo to receive an independent monument was the Benedictine monk and scholar Don Vincenzo Borghini, whose memorial could not
have been more different from Tesori’s. Borghini was responsible for installing
two new altars in the church (fig. 10, altars 2 and 3), and he made a special
request to be interred without a casket, directly in the earth, with a marker
that included only his name, no coat of arms, and certainly no portrait. The
marker’s Latin inscription, framed elegantly with scrolls and two crosses, simply reads, “The bones of Vincenzo Borghini. He died in the year 1580 on the
15th day of August. He lived 63 years, 9 months, and 20 days.” Despite the lack
of reference to his father, his famed career, his character, or the coat of arms
used by his elite lineage, the memorial still signaled importance, for Borghini
received pride of place with his tomb installed at the foot of the high altar, the
first to be laid in the chancel (figs. 1 and 10, D).48
Another half century would pass before a new tomb was installed in the
church, that belonging to Niccolò Pieri Scodellari, prior of the hospital for thirteen years. Like those of his predecessors, his memorial was placed along the
axis of the church, raised on the presbytery just west of Borghini’s marker and

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Fig. 10. Santa Maria degli
Innocenti prior to renovations of
1786. Source: After ASF, Ospedale
di S. Maria Nuova 24, fol. 13,
1780 (fig. 3); Pasquale Cecchi,
1786 (fig. 1); and Carlo Terpolilli,
Pianta del livello principale,
ipostudio architetti srl (2012–2016);
see Mulazzani L’Ospedale degli
Innocenti, 95
Key
Altars
1. High Altar, extant, 1451
2. Altar of the Annunciation,
ca. 1556–1580
3. Altar of San Gallo and
San Martino, ca. 1556–1580
4. Del Pugliese Altar, extant,
1451, 1491–1493
5. Cappella di Santa Caterina,
extant, 1451; Lenzi Family, 1460;
Arte della Seta, 1489
Tombs
A. Alessandro Gianfigliazzi, 1742
B. Alessandro Gianfigliazzi, 1742
C. Ricovero Uguccioni, 1766
D. Vincenzo Borghini, 1580
E. Paolo Donato Squarcialupi, 1677
F. Francesco Rucellai, 1747
G. Niccolò Pieri Scodellari, 1641
H. Giovanni Michele Pierucci, 1760
J. Antonio Rucellai, 1450
K. Lapo Pacini, before 1452
L. Priests, after 1657
M. Francesco Tesori, 1498
N. Communal tombs, before 1458
O. Stair to crypt, before 1449

above Tesori’s tomb in the nave floor below, and, like theirs, without any reference to his father, Luigi di Tommaso (figs. 1 and 10, G). The grave was marked
with a rectangular tassello of marble that carried a small, incised coat of arms
and a lengthy Latin inscription set in a scrollwork frame:
Niccolò Pieri in vigilant prudence, a one hundred-eyed Argus, in arduous government, a heaven-bearing Atlas, here at last by the inescapable fate of nature,
and the corrosive weapons of death, the Prior and Archpresbyter came to rest.
In the year of our Lord 1641, at age 55.49

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Like Pacini, Rucellai, and Borghini before him, Niccolò was the last of his patrilineal line, and the Pieri Scodellari lineage died with him.50 Could this have
inspired him to opt for burial at the Innocenti, where his adoptive “children”
would remember him and pray for his soul? He had rights to the family tomb
in the parish church of San Niccolò sopr’Arno, which had received his kin since
the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. In the later sixteenth century,
his family installed a pulpit and an altar there, further enhancing their presence in the church and showing them to be protectors of the parish, helping as
they did to rebuild after the devastating flood of 1557. These furnishings were
emblazoned not only with the Pieri Scodellari arms but also with those of the
Medici, to honor Niccolò’s father, Luigi di Tommaso Pieri, and his wife, Faustina di Alamanno de’ Medici.51 Rather than install a new tomb in the church
of his onomastic saint or take his place among the bones of his ancestors, Prior
Niccolò opted for a marker between those of Borghini and Tesori. Like them,
he chose not to celebrate his ancestors through a patronym but rather to commemorate his achievements as a dutiful and dedicated leader of the Innocenti
as they had been in the centuries before him.
After Pieri Scodellari, five more spedalinghi would be remembered with
individual monuments, but none of them was placed along the central axis
of the church. In addition to the aforementioned wall tombs of Francesco di
Paolo Benedetto Rucellai (1747) and his successor and brother-in-law Giovanni
di Michele Pierucci (1760), the priors Paolo Donato di Giovanni Squarcialupi
(1677) and Alessandro di Lodovico Gianfigliazzi (1742) and commissario Ricovero Maria Giuseppe di Piero Uguccioni (1766) were honored with memorials,
though Gianfigliazzi followed Tesori, Borghini, Pieri Scodellari, and Pierucci
in the omission of his father’s name (figs. 1 and 10, F, A, B, and C).
The 1786 monuments plan includes a tomb just to the east of Pacini’s slab,
identified as set aside for the hospital’s priests (fig. 1, L). Its absence in the
sepoltuario completed by Stefano Rosselli in 1657 suggests that it was installed
only after this date.52 However, he did not record the other communal graves
known to have existed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. A note in Borghini’s records dated 1556 mentions a tomb in front of the high altar (“sepoltura
esistente dinanzi all’altar maggiore”) for the burial of hospital administrators
(“spedalinghi e di altri ministri”). In that year, remains were moved from an
aboveground casket to this burial spot, raising additional questions about
the disposition of corpses inside the church.53 After Borghini’s death in 1580,
the grave in front of the altar was set aside for him with a personalized tomb
marker, which may have been the impetus to install a new communal tomb for

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priests (fig. 1, D and L), cared for in death like the morticini (dead children) and
staffers who also constituted the famiglia degli Innocenti. The first burials in
the Campo Santo in the western portion likely date to the eighteenth century,
part of a broader effort in Florence to move burials out from under church
floors and into cemeteries with better ventilation and fresh air.54 The burials
at the Innocenti, whether in a communal grave or a specially marked tomb,
allowed those without offspring and those without parents to share in the ritual of commemoration, creating a multigenerational family that honored its
dead as did the great lineages of Florence and turning the Innocenti church
into a veritable family chapel per tutti gli Innocenti.

Notes
This essay is dedicated to the memory of Eve Borsook (1929–2022), teacher, mentor, friend. I would
like to thank the archivists at the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, especially Francesca Fiori, and at the
Archivio dell’Istituto degli Innocenti di Firenze for answering queries and sending photographs when
I could not be in Florence due to Covid restrictions. Sincere gratitude is also owed to Luca Boschetto
and Robert Fredona for their assistance with notarial records and other Latin puzzles, Angela Zhang
for helping to decipher Lapo Pacini’s dreadful handwriting, and Fabrizio Nevola and Donal Cooper for
sharing photographs of the Innocenti tombs, as continued closure of Santa Maria degli Innocenti has
prevented me from seeing them myself. Any errors are mine alone.
1. On Francesco Datini’s foundation and staunch desire to see the foundling hospital run by laypeople, see Gavitt, Charity and Children, 34–36, 45–47, 52–56. For its receipt of ecclesiastical status, see
61–73. For history of the church and its decorations, see Cherici, Guida artistica; Cherici, Guida storico-artistica; Cavazzini, “Dipinti e sculture”; Filipponi, Mazzocchi, and Sebregondi, The Museo degli
Innocenti, 69–71, 94–95; Presciutti, Visual Cultures of Foundling Care, 80, 151–186.
2. The church is oriented toward the southeast, so the left wall when facing the altar is, in fact, at
the northeast. This discussion will use the liturgical compass points, with the altar, as is customary,
at the east.
3. On how the Innocenti aimed to replicate family life from its inception, see Gavitt, Charity and
Children, 25, 141–179. For the continued use of familial metaphors to describe the activities of and life
in the Innocenti, see Presciutti, “Carità e Potere,” 234–259; Sparnacci, Ordine et governo.
4. “Vorrei tutti i miei albergassero sotto uno medesimo tetto, a uno medesimo fuoco si scaldassono,
a una medesima mensa sedessono” (Alberti, I libri della famiglia, 231, line 22; 232, lines 2–3, 19–21;
Alberti, The Family, 185).
5. For the challenges of defining famiglia, casa, and other terms of kinship, see Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate,” 371–393; Kent, Household and Lineage, 3–17, 24–48, 254–263.
6. ASF Man. 624, 229. In 1583, Eleonora di Niccolò di Clemente degli Albizzi married Vincenzio di
Gherardo Bombardini Martelli. Litta, “Albizzi,” pl. VI.
7. Ames-Lewis, “Art in the Service of the Medici”; Paoletti, “Medici Funerary Monuments.”
8. The commemorative profiles of these six families were the subject of Leader, “Family, Faction,
and Florentine Burial Practice.” See Rosselli’s index of family names for relevant page numbers in the
sepoltuario. Rosselli autograph and ASF Man. 624. For more on the approximately 2,100 tomb-owning
families in Florence, see Leader, “Digital Sepoltuario.”

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9. “In questo Cimitero adunque erano tutte le muraglie coperte di ossa accatastate, e di scheletri
interi ben compaginati, i quali adattati in certe Nicchie non si poteva vedere in quel genere apparato
più copioso . . . l’uso era in molti Fiorentini di condurvi i loro Figliuoli a vedere quelle ossa, e dir loro:
Figliuoli, tenete a mente, che questo è il nostro fine, e la miseria di nostra carne” (Richa, Notizie istoriche,
193–194; Henderson, The Renaissance Hospital, 145–146; see also del Migliore, Firenze città nobilissima,
351–354).
10. “un’esalo che tormentana il vicinato, massime quando il soffio nel Verno era gagliardo, e nella
State . . . era insopportabile” (Migliore, Fiorenze città nobilissima, 354).
11. “s’è portata chon questi fanciulli molto bene . . . la quale feci sotterare sotto la Chiesa dirimpetto
a 3 avelli vi sono e questo perche non erano chompiuti” (AOIF 485, fol. 215). Gavitt, Charity and Children, 166, cites the correct date for this event, with a different translation, but at 183n133 provides the
wrong folio number and date.
12. “She was buried under the church with the other children” (ibid., 236, though 267n160 gives the
date as February 20, 1463 [o.s.]).
13. Ibid., 221, 265n107.
14. Ibid., 221, 265n105.
15. AOIF 487, fol. 90r.
16. Gavitt, Charity and Children, 233, 267n151 and 256, 271n252, citing AOIF 486, fols. 3r, 21v; 488,
fol. 31r; 489, fols. 50v, 135v. See also Sandri, “L’assistenza,” 67 and 75.
17. “Richordo che questo di xi d’aprile 1451 . . . dignissimo arcivescovo della citta di Firenze Messere
Antonio [Antonino Pierozzi] . . . si chonsacro la chiesa del nostro spedale di sancta Maria degli Innocenti posto in sulla piaza di Sancta Maria de Servi. . . . E adi 25 di novembre 1458 el detto monsignore
benedisse el cimitero di sotto alato ala compagnia dove sono le sepulture” (AOIF 5377, fol. 12).
18. According to Sebregondi, a 1454 document refers to both confraternities as “nelli Innocenti,”
though without specific indication of where they met within the compound. A note dated April 13,
1456, gave rights to the Compagnia di San Lorenzo to use the crypt, where remnants of their symbols
were discovered and restored in the 1960s and are visible today (fig. 4). AOIF 5377, fol. 97v. Rights to
meet in the crypt were given to the Nunziata in 1471. AOIF 5547, fol. 29. Piccini, “Ricordi documentari,”
11–12; Sebregondi, “La ‘Compagnia della Nunziata,’” 43–48; Artusi and Patruno, Deo Gratias, 32–36.
For documents, a plan, photographs, and discussion of the crypt, see Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro,
34–38, 52.
19. Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro, 34–38, 52; Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi, 33–81; Romby, “Le vicende architettoniche”; Canali, “L’Ospedale,” 361; Mulazzani, “Gli Innocenti.”
20. The penitent portrayed on the south face of the first pier (figs. 4 and 5, a) holds a scroll that reads
“Agite penitenziam” (Matthew 3:2). He is followed on the second pier by a brother exhorting, “Diligite
[sic] viam domini” (John 1:23). The disciplinato on the opposite side of the second pier carries a scroll
announcing a key virtue of confraternal life “(V)bidi.dienzia.” While fragmentary, the scroll on the
north side of the first pier most likely read “(E)rvb(escentia),” the virtuous shame required for true
penance as explained in the late-eleventh-century Pseudo-Augustinian De vera et falsa poenitentia:
“Erubescentia enim ipsa partem habet remissionis” (For shame holds a part of forgiveness) (Wagner,
“De vera et falsa penitentia,” 16–17, 247, which corrects spelling in Migne’s edition, 40, col. 1122). Dante’s son Pietro discusses erubescentia in his comments on Purgatorio 9:100–102; Benvenuto da Imola,
on 26:81, both citing Pseudo-Augustine, as did Domenico Cavalca when he said the penitent had to
have shame: “come dice S. Agostino . . . la vergogna è la grande parte della sodisfazione, grande cagione della remissione.” For more on the theme of honorable or positive shame, see also Armour, “The
Door of Purgatory,” 22–23, 39–41; Fanale, “God’s Ear,” 13–19; Jansen, “Mary Magdalen,” 233; Boquet,
“Christus dilexit verecundiam”; and Larson, “Gratian’s Tractatus de Penitentia,” 86, 454–458.
21. Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro, 36. A notice dated March 23, 1458, describes the burial of the
priest and Innocenti oblate Ser Piero di Niccolò d’Arezzo “allato alla porta della chiesa dallato di fuori.”
AOIF 5377, fol. 193v (figs. 5, n, and 10, n).
22. Prior Borghini petitioned the Capitani di Parte in 1557 for permission to connect properties to
the north of Via del Rosaio (now della Colonna) with the main compound of the hospital. Morozzi and
Piccini, Il restauro, 44. See also AOIF 3869.
23. “uno bancho con suo tappeto vi si puose il corpo di detta Mona Ghostanza vestito di sue veste

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come andava fuori. . . . Si puose il detto corpo [di Mona Ghostanza] nella detta sepultura come di sopra
si dica accio ordinate insieme con detta Mona Agata. Li spiriti della quali requiescino in sempiternal
pace” (AOIF 5391, fol. 172v, first discussed by Gavitt, Gender, Honor, and Charity, 168–170). Innocenti
records make clear that Gostanza was the “legitima et naturale” daughter of Landozzo degli Albizzi,
but they do not identify her grandfather or other ancestors. If her father was Landozzo di Luigi di
Landozzo di Niccolò degli Albizzi, the most likely candidate, then she had claim to burial in the ancestral tomb and burial chapel established in 1300 by Lando d’Albizo Albizzi in San Pier Maggiore. ASF
Man. 624, 503. For the modern equivalents of the street names used in Giornale K (AOIF 5391), see
Nardella, “Stradario storico.”
24. For the funeral of Mona Maria, praised by Borghini for her nineteen years of service, see Gavitt,
“Charity and State Building,” 256-258.
25. Leader, “The Sepulchralization,” 78–84. Note that this article overstated the relative rarity of
female honorees in Florentine tomb inscriptions. While we do often find women elided, erased, or subsumed in both burial records and literally when joining husbands or fathers under their tomb slabs,
in a sample of 321 women who have been connected with some degree of confidence to a tomb, only
95, or 29%, are mentioned, whether generically or by name, while the remainder are buried in tombs
that honored their father, grandfather, or other ancestor or their husband, son, or other male relative
brought to them through marriage. Leader, “Rarely a Tomb of Her Own.”
26. ASF Dip., Spedale degli Innocenti, April 6, 1439, cited in Gavitt, Charity and Children, 73, 93–94,
105n123. Passerini (Notizie storiche, 8) gives the date as April 3. See also AOIF 1, fols. 56v–57, for copies
of two 1439 bulls made in 1453, both dated April 6.
27. Filippo Innocente’s burial date: AOIF 485, fol. 16v; Gavitt, Charity and Children, 220, 265n102.
28. For a list of spedalinghi, see Manni, Osservazioni istoriche, 77–80. For Filippo Ricasoli’s tomb, see
ASF Man. 625, 1336–1337. For Luca Alamanni’s death on October 21, 1552, see AOIF 5391, fol. 178v;
ASF Arte Medici e Speziali 251, fol. 106v. For the tomb of his great-grandfather, where he was most
likely laid to rest, see ASF Man. 624, 405, no. 67; Chelli, Le lapidi terragne, 618–619; and Leader, “Digital
Sepoltuario,” memorial 10476.
29. Gavitt, Charity and Children, 111. For Bernardo’s burial choice, see AOIF 21, fol. 169r. For the tomb
in Santo Spirito, see ASF Man. 624, 36, no. 157.
30. On October 19, 1473, “fu seppellito il chorpo suo nella chiesa di San Filicie in Piazza.” AOIF 5373,
fol. 138r; Gavitt, Charity and Children, 112, 135n27.
31. For Andrea’s line, which ended with Piero’s premature death, see ASF Man. 374, ins. 6; BNCF
Passerini 185, no. 31. For Banchi’s service to the Innocenti, see Gavitt, Charity and Children, 111. For his
funeral and estate, see Elder De Roover, “Andrea Banchi,” 276–278.
32. Lapo received his habit—a black robe with un bambino on the chest—as the last act of the hospital’s opening ceremonies on January 24, 1445. AOIF 1, fol. 49. Note the different, and incorrect, dates
cited by Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro, 29; Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 10.
33. AOIF 5543, fol. 211; Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro, 34.
34. For biographical references, see Pinto, La toscana, 218-221; Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 4, 6–10,
16. Lapo was the fourth child of Piero di Pacino di Lapo and Agnola, born around 1379 as suggested by
his 1427 and 1431 tax declarations. The fact that Lapo did not declare his date of birth to the Conservatori di Legge in 1429 or thereafter indicates that he had indeed been born before 1381. Herlihy et al.,
“Florentine Renaissance Resources.” For more on the Castelfiorentino chapel and the “avello fe Andrea
di Fede choll’arme nostra alla pietra,” see AOIF 12592 (s. 144, n. 576), fol. 52v; Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 4, 8–10; Mori, “Comunità francescana”; Bartalucci, “La Chiesa di San Francesco,” 42–46. Only
Lapo and his sister Caterina seem to have survived into adulthood. There is little trace of his first wife,
Giovanna, beyond a note of January 1398 regarding her dowry of 125 florins. Lapo recorded that his
father was a prior of Castelfiorentino at his death and thus was buried with great honor. AOIF 12592,
fol. 58v. See fol. 60r for the death and funeral of his mother, fols. 39v–40v for the adoption of the abandoned child. See also Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 4.
35. Lapo’s 1427 Catasto puts him in the parish of San Romolo, renting a house from Antonio di Scarlatto di Nutto, a Silk Guild colleague, and living with his wife Pippa, age thirty-six. ASF Cat. 69 (1427),
fol. 150. For more on his residences and the deaths of his wife Pippa and their infant daughter, see
Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 18; Senesi, “Fede e denaro.”

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36. “Considerans se fuisse et ess(e) adeo senem et in senili etate constitut(um) sine filijs et filiab(us)
et sine aliq(u)a spe alicui(s) sobolis p(ro)creand(a)e.” (AOIF 21, fol. 123r.) Oddly, the notary used the
abbreviation esß, which shortens the Italian essere but here is expanded as the Latin infinitive esse. For
more on Pacini’s commission document, see Senesi, “Un uomo d’affari,” 8–10, 25.
37. AOIF 3644, fol. 209; Morozzi and Piccini, Il restauro, 34; Piccini, “Ricordi documentari,” 11. For
an extreme case of late payments to stoneworkers, see those to Attaviano d’Antonio in 1438 for work
completed at least eight years earlier. Leader, “Architectural Collaboration,” 230n60.
38. Piccini, “Ricordi documentari,” 11.
39. ASF Cat. 76 (1427), fols. 68–69; 671 (1446), fol. 688. According to Tratte birth registrations compiled in 1429, Antonio was born on June 11, 1405. ASF Tratte 79, fol. 82. Passerini, Genealogia e storia, pl. 3. For more on Ugolino’s estate, see Kent, “The Rucellai Family”; Kent, Household and Lineage,
145–146, 242–243, 261, 292; Preyer, “The Rucellai Loggia,” doc. 1.
40. “Alla Redita d’Antonio d’Ugholino Rucelai lb. cento otto s. iiii per piu spesa fatta nela sua infermita e mortoro” (AOIF 4783, fol. 228v).
41. For Antonio’s gift to the Innocenti, dated December 22, 1448, see ASF NA 19073, fols. 424–426.
For the earliest-known references to the bequest and Antonio’s estate in Innocenti documents, dated
July 7, 1450, and thereafter, see AOIF 4783, fol. 227v and 5543, fols. 143v–144.
42. According to Rosselli, the tomb’s inscription read: “+ S(epulcrum) Nardi Junct(a)e et Filiorum
eius” (the tomb of Nardo di Giunta and of his sons). Rosselli autograph, 1137, no. 158; ASF Man. 625,
975, no. 158.
43. Ginevra appears in the Catasto filed by her father-in-law, Ugolino di Francesco Rucellai, in 1446,
with, as was typical, no indication of her patronym or surname. He gave her age as twenty-nine, suggesting a birth year of 1417, or 1416 if she had not yet had her birthday. ASF Cat. 671 (1446), fol. 688. She
is listed in official death records as “la moglie di Antonio di Francesco Rucellai,” buried in Santa Maria
Novella. ASF Grascia 189, fol. 104. A Rucellai family tree among the Carte Pucci indicates that Antonio had married her one year earlier but gives her name as Giovanna Ciacchi. ASF Man. 601, ins. 18. A
Rucellai family tree compiled by Luigi Passerini confirms the marriage in 1445 but names her Ginevra
di Bernardo di Jacopo Ciacchi. BNCF Passerini 156, ins. 23, tav. III. A Ginevra age eleven, who would
have been twenty-nine at some point in 1446, is listed among Bernardo Ciacchi’s children in his 1427
Catasto declaration. ASF Cat. 73 (1427), fol. 204v. However, a Ciacchi family tree found among other
Pucci papers indicates that Ginevra married a Jacopo di Piero Firenzi in 1436. It is not impossible that
he died, allowing her to remarry Antonio, but it is odd that the Ciacchi papers do not mention a marriage to a Rucellai, as it did for Ginevra’s niece Fiametta di Jacopo di Bernardo Ciacchi, who married Antonio di Giovanni di Antonio Rucellai in 1487. ASF Man. 595, ins. 51; BNCF Passerini 156, ins. 23, tav. X.
44. Ugolino Rucellai’s 1451 Catasto declaration, dated August 13, notes his son’s death and his bequest of property to the Innocenti, an act notarized by the Silk Guild’s notary Ser Silvano di Giovanni
di Frosino da San Donato in Poggio in July of that year. ASF Cat. 707 (1451), fol. 119.
45. The inscription is now installed in the wall behind the church high altar, and its last line, known
from the 1786 plan (fig. 1), is currently obscured: “Francisco Oricellario Pauli Benedicti filio canonico
Florentino qui claris ortus maioribus et multarum artium doctrina excultus publicae huius domus, qua
infantes expositi aluntur quinque annos praeses rem et commoda mira diligentia et integritate curavit
et auxit annosque natus XXXVII m(enses) IIII d(ies) XXII. Obiit die XXI decembris anno MDCCXLVII.
Comes Ioannes Michael Pieruccius affini et decessori suo optime merito (monumentum posuit).” Conte
Cavaliere Giovanni Michele del Conte Luzio Pierucci married Francesco Rucellai’s sister Maria Isabella
on January 7, 1729. She died six years later, on May 22, 1735. BNCF Passerini 156, ins. 23, tav. XVII
46. “D.O.M. Io. Michaeli Pierucci Comiti ac Brolazzi in Mantuana Ditione Baroni accedente S. R. J.
Nobilitate quam maiores olim a Caesaribus ob merita retulere qui cum res publicas a principibus viris
sibi demandatas tum privatas amicorum solerter explicuit feliciter administravit prudential comitate
beneficentia urbem universam sibi mirifice conciliavit praecipue vero huic brephotrophio per decem
annos cum dimidio ea vigilantia ac intergritate praefuit ut bonis omnibus ac muneri cumulate satisfecerit nec mediocriter loci commodis consuluerit tandem natus annos LXX et menses circiter sex
praebitis sincerae pietatis quam semper excoluit documentis e vita migravit. An. Rep. Sal. MDCCLIX
IX Kal. mart. patri optimo atque amantiss. Petrus et Laurentius fratres moestissimi PP. An. MDCCLX.”
47. Tesori’s tomb was moved first to the presbytery and then to the museum. In the 1786 plan,

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Pasquale Cecchi recorded its full inscription: “Thesauro tumulum Franci(sc)o. Ars inclita serum
sumptibus hoc merito gratia suis posuit. Om(n)iq(ue) virtute decorato priori hospitalis huius (qua rectitudine fama volat et pueri lugent.) Vix(it) an(nos) LIIII di(es) XV MCCCCIIC” (The glorious guild,
being thankful, rightly at its own expense, placed a tomb for Francesco Tesori, who was graced with
every virtue, prior of this hospital, whose fame flies with righteousness, and whose children mourn. He
lived 54 years, 15 days. 1498). For the installation payment, see AOIF 5376, fol. 12. For its removal to
the museum, see Istituto degli Innocenti, Museo dell’Ospedale; Chiarelli and Piccini, Spedale e Museo,
36. For more on effigies, see Butterfield, “Social Structure,” 50–55.
48. “Vincentij Borghini ossa. Obiit an(no) MDLXXX die XV Aug. Vix(it) an(nos) LXIII men(ses) IX
dies XX.” Note the erroneous date of death on the plan of 1786, which mistakenly says August 25 instead of 15 (fig. 1). For more on discrepancy of life dates, see Folena, “Borghini, Vincenzio Maria.”
49. “D(eo) O(ptimo) M(aximo) Nicolaus Pierius in vigili prudentia centoculus Argus, in arduo regimine coalifer Atlas, hic demum naturae ineluctabili fato, ac mortis tabificis armis, Prior et Archipresbiter occubuit A. Aet. LV D. MDCXXXXI.”
50. ASF Man. 253, fol. 1296.
51. ASF Man. 624, 224.
52. Rosselli autograph, 1561–1565; ASF Man. 625, 1359–1369. For more on the ASF copy and its relationship to Rosselli’s autograph manuscript, see Stasi, Stefano di Francesco Rosselli, 83–87.
53. Piccini, “Ricordi documentari,” 14. Unfortunately, Piccini did not provide the archival source
for this tantalizing quotation, though it most likely comes from the manuscript cited elsewhere in the
same discussion, AOIF 5392.
54. On the emptying of tombs and the creation of exurban cemeteries, see Tomasi, Per salvare i viventi, 220–231.

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Anne Leader
University of Virginia, Post-Doc
Anne Leader is Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (IATH) at UVA. She received her Ph.D. in the History of Art and Archaeology, with a specialization in Italian Renaissance Art, from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University in 2000. She was Rush H. Kress Fellow at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence from 2008 to 2009. She has held teaching positions at the University of New Hampshire, Kean University, The City College of New York, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (Atlanta).

Her research and publications explore a range of topics in Italian Renaissance art, architecture, urbanism, and religious tradition, including: Michelangelo’s final project for the Sistine chapel, Benedictine monasticism and artistic patronage, Renaissance workshop practices and artistic authorship, and, most recently, burial practices and tomb monuments including articles on the tomb of Leonardo da Vinci's father. She is especially interested in sacred art and architecture, specifically in how images and buildings were used by individuals and institutions for devotional practice, doctrinal instruction, and propaganda.

She has published articles and reviews in The Burlington Magazine, caa.reviews, Human Evolution, The Journal for the Society of Architectural Historians, The Renaissance Quarterly, Renaissance Studies, Speculum, Studies in Iconography, and the Visual Resources Association Bulletin. Her monograph was published by Indiana University Press in 2012. MQUP and MIP published her edited volumes in 2018. She inaugurated the Italian Art Society's IASblog in 2013 and served as editor until 2016. As an IATH Visiting Fellow, she is preparing her database of Florentine tombs (ca. 1250-1650) for publication online as an interactive website (http://sepoltuario.iath.virginia.edu/).

If you would like PDFs of any publications listed here, please contact Anne Leader via messages or email.
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The Founders' New Tombs (1526) in the Convent of Santa Clara, Vila do Conde
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'Inscrições Medievais e Modernas de Vila do Conde (séculos XV a XVII)' , Portvgalia, (. &), pp. &-&Q.. Diogo Pires the Younger, monument to Teresa Martins de Meneses, c. Q. Ançã limestone with traces of polychromy, Capela dos Fundadores, church of the convent of Santa Clara,
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MATER SERENISSIMI PRINCIPIS. The Tomb of Queen Mary of Hungary, in: Art, Iconography and Patronage in Fourteenth-Century Naples. The Church of Santa Maria Donnaregina, hg. v. Janis Elliott u. Cordelia Warr, London 2004, S. 61-77
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Modern double burial in Central Italy: funerary chamber of the Buondelmonti family in the Basilica of Santa Maria dell'Impruneta (Florence)
Antonio Fornaciari
Matteo Bini
Medicina Historica, Vol. 5, N.2, 2021
This work aims to analyze the particular burial of the Buondelmonti, one of the most important aristocratic Florentine families of the late Middles Ages and Modern Age, who had great power not only in the city, but also in the Florentine countryside. Their history has always been linked to the parish church of Santa Maria dell'Impruneta, not far from Florence, where the family built their own burial chamber. Both written and material sources state that the aristocratic Buondelmonti family was buried in this hypogeum, according to the standard double burial rite, with the corpse initially positioned on seats with a central hole and successively placed in an ossuary. This practice, which consisted in using an architectural structure, called sitting colatoio, was adopted to favour the skeletonization of the bodies. This structure was used by members of lay brotherhoods and convents especially in southern Italy, with sporadic cases in other areas of the country. The Buondelmonti tomb appears to be the first example of this kind of burial in Tuscany and, more importantly, the oldest discovered to date in Italy (1591). In light of the data that have emerged from this study, the authors will try to establish the reasons why the members of the family decided to be buried in this anomalous way, and above all how this Florentine family came into contact with this practice around the end of the 1500s.
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The rector of the hospital and his wife: two artificial mummies of the late 15th century from Siena (central Italy)
Gino Fornaciari
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Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari: Architecture and Community, pp. IX-XVIII
Carlo Corsato
in Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari. Devotional Spaces, Images of Piety, 2015
È vietata la riproduzione, anche parziale, effettuata con qualsiasi mezzo, compresa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico, non autorizzata. The photocopying of any pages of this publication is illegal. 2 The Franciscan order seems to have initiated the tradition of the presepio or Christmas crib. See ROSALIND BROOKE, The Image of St Francis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2006, pp. 309-310. 3 The Archivio di Stato was installed in the former friary on 13 December 1815. 4 The relationship between architecture, music and devotional life is explored in DEBORAH HOWARD -LAURA MORETTI, Sound and Space in Renaissance Venice: Architecture, Music, Acoustics, Yale University Press, New Haven and London 2009, pp. 79-94. 5 UMBERTO FRANZOI -DINA DI STEFANO, Le chiese di Venezia, Alfieri, Venice 1976, p. 46; see also CARLO CORSATO -RENATA MARZI in this volume.
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The Emiliani Chapel in the Frari: Background and Questions
Margaret Bent
Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari: Immagini di Devozione, Spazi della Fede (Devotional Spaces, Images of Piety), ed. by Carlo Corsato and Deborah Howard (Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani), 2015
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Child burials and ad enchytrismos tombs. Some examples from late antique Calabria
Franca Papparella
Studi sull'Oriente Cristiano, 2025
In this paper, the issue of late antique burials of infants in the Bruzio region (Calab-ria) is analysed. A number of written sources, such as Pliny, Juvenal and Fulgentius, will be analysed, giving us indications on the particular type of burial reserved for infants. Material evidence underline the particularity of tomb types, such as that ad enchytrismos.
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Marta Serrano, Gerardo Boto, "The tombs of Tarragona's archbishops in the Middle Ages: locations, layouts and settings", in Hortus Artius Medievalium. Journal of the International Research Center for the Late Antiquity and Middle Ages, 25/2, 2019
Gerardo Boto
2019
Every institution has a culture of commemoration made up of the customs, knowledge and expressive acts shared by the members of the institution over successive generations. Since the 13th century, the cathedral of Tarragona has possessed funerary monuments that form a key part of what we regard as “archiepiscopal or episcopal memory” and which are distributed throughout the cathedral in more or less complex funerary spaces: the north transept, Santa Tecla la Vella chapel, the central apse and the choir, the chapel of Saint Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, or Santa Maria de los Sastres chapel among others. The sequence of those archiepiscopal tombs shows that various areas within the church were used for burials, whether this was close to the patron saint of the Augustinians, in the chancel or in the choir or whether it was in spaces built into the perimeter of the cathedral precinct (separate chapels, open chapels built into the external walls or in the chapterhouse), and that only much later did burials occur at the entrance to the building. As it will be explained, the tombs of Tarragona’s archbishops, with their locations, layouts and settings, generate a unique organisational culture regarding the use of commemorative information which combined images with epigraphs, heraldry and, sometimes, relics.
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Tracing the Da Vinci Tomb in the Badia Fiorentina
Anne Leader
2016
In the late fifteenth century, the father of Leonardo da Vinci, whose origins have fascinated scholars for well over a century, installed a tomb for himself and his descendants in the Florentine monastery known today as the Badia Fiorentina. Leonardo’s complex family included four stepmothers and twenty-three half brothers and half sisters and their offspring, many of whom were buried at the Badia. This article traces the history of the Da Vinci tomb from its first burial in 1474 to its last in 1614 to recount which family members were buried therein and when. Since the church was radically renovated in the mid-seventeenth century, this paper also provides evidence for where the tomb chamber was originally located and where its remnants might be found through archeological excavation.
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The Sacristy of Santa Maria Novella in Florence: the History of its Functions and Furnishings
Margaret Haines
Memorie Domenicane, n.s.11, 1980, pp. 575-626; and ibid., n.s.12, 1981, pp. 269-286., 1980
mendicanti, in « II gotico a Pistoia nei suoi rapporti con l'arte gotica italiana », Atti del 2° convegno internazionale di studi, Pistoia, 24-30 aprile 1966, published Pistoia, 1972 a stimulating discussion of the historical and institutional motives for the swelling proportions of these churches and provides a summary plan of the superimposition of successive churches on the site of S. Maria Novella (fig. 1, tav. III). : I bid., p. 68. 3 S. ORLANDI O.P., « Necrologio » di. S. Maria Novella, I, Florence, 1955, p. 549, for the priority and patronage of the room. The relationship of the first church and successive sacristies is clearly described oy the Dominican chronicler, Fr. Modesto BrLIOTTI: « Latitudo [ veteris ecclesiae] erat quanta est hodie sacrarii longitudo, et iuxta maius illud altare ianua erat, per quam et breviusculam quandam scalam, in antiquum ascendebatur in sacrarium, quod erexerant et processu temporis instauraverant Cavalcantes ». (Chronica pulcherrimae aedis magnique coenobii S. Mariae cognomento Novellae fiorentinae civitatis, ms. written 1583-86 still conserved in the convent library and published through chapter L VIII in « Analecta sacris ordinis fratrum praedicatorum », VII (I of ser.
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