Description

His design was based on spatial grandiosity, with the structural elements carried out with rational clarity and sobriety. It is built on the plan of an Egyptian cross (in the shape of a T), with the interior divided into three naves (114,45 metres), a chancel and a transept full of chapels whose patronage was reserved for the most illustrious families in this quarter of the city: the Bardi and Peruzzi families were the foremost.
The walls of these chapels and the entire church were immediately covered in frescoes by Giotto and his school, who turned the basilica into a museum of Florentine Trecento painting. The same artists also designed the wonderful luminous stained glass windows.
The church has many works of art, including an octagonal Renaissance marble pulpit by Benedetto da Maiano, Rosselino's tomb of Leonardo Bruni, which is the prototype of Florentine 15th century tombs, and two works by Donatello, an Annunciation and a wooden Crucifix.
The Museo dell'Opera di Santa Croce boasts some of Florence's major treasures, with works by Cimabue, Orcagna, Donatello, Domenico Veneziano and others; alas, some were badly damaged by the 1966 flood. At the end of the cloisters a colonnade leads to a beautiful 15th century doorway by Giuliano da Maiano, which in turn leads to the Cappella de'Pazzi, one of Brunelleschi's masterpieces.
Brunelleschi also designed the second Cloister of the Convent, or Greater Cloister, continued after his death by Bernardo Rossellino.