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Farmacia del Moro, Florence

Defunct pharmaciesMonuments and memorials in Florence
Lapide farmacia del saracino o del moro
Lapide farmacia del saracino o del moro

The Farmacia del Moro, also called Farmacia del Saraceno (referencing Moor and Saracen) was a pharmacy located facing Piazza San Giovanni and the San Giovanni Battista Baptistry in Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. The locale originally faced Via Cerretani, facing Canto alla Paglia. The pharmacy dates to before the 1500s, and was so named because Arabic pharmaceutical skills were considered pre-eminent at the time. By the 16th century, under the humanist and pharmacist Anton Francesco Grazzini, it became a meeting place for like-minded scholars. In prior centuries, the pharmacy had a collection of 18th-century white ceramic jars with gilded letters, now lost. The 1966 flood further destroyed much of the contents. Today, only the shop windows (from 1905), depicting a turbaned moor's head, and a memorial plaque recall the history. The plaque reads:In this office, formerly "del Saracino" or "del Moro", until 1521 the pharmacist A.F. Grazzini of Borgo Staggia, elegant poet, author of dramatic comedies, and novelist, who here patronized Machiavelli, Mazzuoli da Strada and lo Zanchino; and with other learned men in convened the Accademia degli Umidi, later called Fiorentina, whose members then formed the celebrated Crusca, in which they took their title for the enterprise as a fish darts from the wave to seize a heedless butterfly.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Farmacia del Moro, Florence (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Farmacia del Moro, Florence
Borgo San Lorenzo, Florence Quartiere 1

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Latitude Longitude
N 43.773527777778 ° E 11.254611111111 °
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Address

All'Insegna del Moro

Borgo San Lorenzo 20 R
50123 Florence, Quartiere 1
Tuscany, Italy
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Lapide farmacia del saracino o del moro
Lapide farmacia del saracino o del moro
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Florence Baptistery
Florence Baptistery

The Florence Baptistery, also known as the Baptistery of Saint John (Italian: Battistero di San Giovanni), is a religious building in Florence, Italy, and has the status of a minor basilica. The octagonal baptistery stands in both the Piazza del Duomo and the Piazza San Giovanni, across from Florence Cathedral and the Campanile di Giotto. The Baptistery is one of the oldest buildings in the city, constructed between 1059 and 1128 in the Florentine Romanesque style. Although the Florentine style did not spread across Italy as widely as the Pisan Romanesque or Lombard styles, its influence was decisive for the subsequent development of architecture, as it formed the basis from which Francesco Talenti, Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, and other master architects of their time created Renaissance architecture. In the case of the Florentine Romanesque, one can speak of "proto-renaissance", but at the same time an extreme survival of the late antique architectural tradition in Italy, as in the cases of the Basilica of San Salvatore, Spoleto, the Temple of Clitumnus, and the church of Sant'Alessandro in Lucca. The Baptistery is renowned for its three sets of artistically important bronze doors with relief sculptures. The south doors were created by Andrea Pisano and the north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. Michelangelo dubbed the east doors the Gates of Paradise. The Italian poet Dante Alighieri and many other notable Renaissance figures, including members of the Medici family, were baptized in this baptistery.The building contains the monumental tomb of Antipope John XXIII, by Donatello.

Tomb of Antipope John XXIII
Tomb of Antipope John XXIII

The Tomb of Antipope John XXIII is the marble-and-bronze tomb monument of Antipope John XXIII (Baldassare Cossa, c. 1360–1419), created by Donatello and Michelozzo for the Florence Baptistry adjacent to the Duomo. It was commissioned by the executors of Cossa's will after his death on December 22, 1419 and completed during the 1420s, establishing it as one of the early landmarks of Renaissance Florence. According to Ferdinand Gregorovius, the tomb is "at once the sepulchre of the Great Schism in the church and the last papal tomb which is outside Rome itself".Cossa had a long history of cooperation with Florence, which had viewed him as the legitimate pontiff for a time during the Western Schism. The tomb monument is often interpreted as an attempt to strengthen the legitimacy of Cossa's pontificate by linking him to the spiritually powerful site of the Baptistry. The evocation of papal symbolism on the tomb and the linkage between Cossa and Florence have been interpreted as a snub to Cossa's successor Pope Martin V or vicarious "Medici self-promotion", as such a tomb would have been deemed unacceptable for a Florentine citizen.The tomb monument's design included figures of the three Virtues in niches, Cossa's family arms, a gilded bronze recumbent effigy laid out above an inscription-bearing sarcophagus supported on corbel brackets, and above it a Madonna and Child in a half-lunette, with a canopy over all. At the time of its completion, the monument was the tallest sculpture in Florence, and one of very few tombs within the Baptistry or the neighboring Duomo. The tomb monument was the first of several collaborations between Donatello and Michelozzo, and the attribution of its various elements to each of them has been debated by art historians, as have the interpretations of its design and iconography.