Santa Maria della Scala

Museum paths

The church of the Santissima Annunziata was built on an older nucleus, at the end of the Thirteenth century, when Santa Maria was speeding up its expansion and the complex began to split up into various units that were assigned to the various activities carried out inside.
The church was completely renovated in the second half of the Fifteenth century by various artists, among whom Francesco di Giorgio Martini, with the decoration of the apse and the coffered ceiling.
In the second half of the Seventeenth century the high altar was rebuilt and two side altars were added, with works by Giuseppe Mazzuoli, two paintings on canvas by Pietro Locatelli (Assumption) and Giovanni Maria Morandi’s Annunciation.
The other two altars of the same period house a painting on canvas by Ciro Ferri depicting the Vision of Saint Theresa and a fine 14th-century Crucifix that replaced a Santa Francesca Romana painted by Antonio Nasini, unfortunately lost. The altar conserves inside an 18th-century urn, the corpse of a friar of the Hospital, traditionally believed to be that of the mythical founder Sorore.
At the centre of the high altar one can admire a bronze work of outstanding artistic interest, Lorenzo Vecchietta’s Risen Christ, dated and signed by the artist in 1476. It is a veritable masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture, frequently related by the critics to Donatello’s Sienese works.
Moreover, above the high altar, placed on both sides of the Christ, there are two bronze, candelabrum-bearing angels by the 16th-century goldsmith and sculptor Accursio Baldi, two adoring angels and two additional marble, candelabrum-bearing angels, to be referred to the Mazzuolis workshop, like the beautiful Deposed Christ on the front, probably made by Giuseppe himself.
In 1730 Sebastiano Conca, a painter of consolidated fame, decorated the church’s grand apse. His fresco with the Provative Pool accurately illustrates a passage of John’s Gospel in which the sick gather near the pool hoping for a miraculous healing. This fresco, which represents Santa Maria della Scala’s last artistic commission, has been recently restored.
The large organ from the early 16th century is characterised by an elegant carving and a refined and complex decoration by the celebrated Giovanni di maestro Antonio piffaro.
Opposite to the organ is the carved, polished, gilt wood ‘Music Chapel’ that was reserved for the singers. The church also preserves a mid-14th-century holy-water font by Urbano and Bartolomeo da Cortona, and inside stone niches, the figures of an Announcing Angel and the Virgin Announciated.
A crypt located below the floor of the church conserves three perfectly mummified human bodies that were dug out during restoration in 1999. This extraordinary find aroused great interest in the scientific world. The well-preserved clothes, along with jewels and various objects found inside the tomb are being studied at this time.