In 1419 work was begun on the
Ospedale
degli Innocenti (Foundling Hospital) in Piazza della SS.
Annunziata for the Arte della Seta (Silk Guild). The
configuration has precedent in medieval Florentine hospitals such
as S. Matteo (now the Accademia di Belle Arti).
The idea of the portico can be related to the porticoes of Roman
forums, to the fourteenth-century Florentine loggias, both the
private and public loggias of the Signoria and
Orsanmichele, with round arches,
or the loggias of the hospitals themselves. Here, however, the
loggia is not an element apart, an episode in the building or in
the urban context, but asserts itself as the determining element
in lending order to the context, the relationships of the
individual parts and their proportions, and assumes the role of
plan for the 'walls' of the area occupied, which it defines and
which can be considered the first Florentine piazza conceived of
as a coherent world, 'planned' by a single mind and no longer, as
in medieval squares, the result of a simple widening or a series
of decisions (to be noted is how the realization of a single side
determines the coherence of all the subsequent interventions on
the piazza: the loggia by Sangallo and Baccio d'Agnolo, Tacca's
fountain, Giambolognals statue). A new design made of lines and
decisive clear surfaces, with a calculated breadth (note that the
piazza is not very large but the design gives it a feeling of
spaciousness), to which the use of classical elements confers
noble dignity. This conception is invested with form in the urban
area in front of the old Servite church at the end of Via dei
Servi, a 'new' street installed in the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries, and which Brunelleschi qualified with his intervention
as an important urban axis running from Piazza del Duomo to the
new symmetrical square, on which, not much later, the
classicizing cupola of SS. Annunziata was to rise. The flight of
steps on which the loggia of the Innocenti is set (here also
recalling the stylobate) was inspired by classic temples and also
appears in other examples of Brunelleschi's religious
architecture. The internal organization of the Ospedale is also
extremely rational and calculated. The axis which serves as
reference for the porticoed courtyard, the large flanking halls
and the symmetrically placed and modular service rooms,
corresponds to the axis of the central bay of the portico. In
their organization many fifteenth-century Florentine structures,
by architects such as Michelozzo and Giuliano da Sangallo,
clearly depend on the configuration of the Innocenti.
