First published in the journal of the University of Limerick History Society, History Studies, vol.6 (2005), pp.2-17. The small fourteenth-century Florentine panel in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, shows an image of the Crucifixion. Beside the cross the Virgin falls in a swoon, supported by one of the holy women and St John the Evangelist. At […]
Introduction I record that on July 31, 1383, there died the ill-famed Letta, daughter of Federigo di Pierozzo Sassetti, in the house of Giovanni di Noldo Porcellini, in the Borgo Ogni Santi. She was buried by the friars of the church of Ogni Santi at the hour of vespers. May the devil take her soul, […]
It is fitting to start this account with this image, as in many ways, it shows the start of the Christmas story. It was painted by Fra Angelico (c.1390-1455) a Dominican friar, probably for the Dominican house of San Domenico in Fiesole, near Florence. It was bought in 1612 for the Duke of Lerma’s chapel […]
Within the confined space of the walled city of Medicean Florence was a web formed of overlapping identities and loyalties: family and kin, parish, neighbourhood, gonfalone and quarter, confraternity, guild, and, of course, the city itself. Mediating these identities were the cults of saints, who were patrons of institutions and people. The relationship between patron […]
