TheTramezzoin Santa Croce, Florence, Reconstructed

Abstract

In a previous publication I tried to show that the tramezzo (rood screen) and choir were two separate structures in the Florentine church of Santa Croce.1 New evidence now makes it possible to reconstruct the tramezzo in considerable detail and with a surprisingly high degree of certainty. A trecento drawing, often published but not fully interpreted, shows the design for a chapel dedicated to St. Martin belonging to the Baroncelli family (Fig. 1).2 The identification of patron and titular saint is made certain by the presence of the Baroncelli arms on the superstructure and a relief of St. Martin Dividing His Cloak with a Beggar. This stone relief survives, though somewhat cut down, and will be displayed again when the Museo di Santa Croce reopens (Fig. 2).3 A chapel of St. Martin patronized by a branch of the Baroncelli family is documented as having been in Santa Croce. Scholars have failed to connect the drawing with this chapel, or to read the drawing correctly, largely because the eighteenth-century author of the Sepoltuario, Stefano Rosselli, upon whom Paatz and others before him depended, had misinterpreted the documents describing the position of the Baroncelli St. Martin Chapel.4 It was not located on the choir wall, as Rosselli said, but in the nave outside the central door of the rood screen. It must have been oriented in the same direction as the high altar and situated to the right of that cancello.5 In this location the relief shows St. Martin riding inward toward the center of the church, just as one might expect. Having previously established that the cancelli divided the church at the fifth piers, it can now be deduced that the Baroncelli Chapel must have been located in the fourth bay of the nave on the front of the tramezzo.

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