Orsanmichele

Stand still for a moment on Via dei Calzaiuoli. Footsteps flow past you, between the cathedral at one end and Piazza della Signoria at the other. In front of you rises a tall, square block of brown stone. It looks almost like a fortress. Then your eye finds the niches cut into its walls, and the figures standing inside them. Bronze and marble saints look down at the street, some calm, some stern. This is Orsanmichele, and it is one of the strangest buildings in Florence.

Start with the name. Orsanmichele is a shortened form of an old phrase that means the kitchen garden of Saint Michael. Long before this stone block existed, a small church and its garden stood on this spot. Over time the garden disappeared under the growing city. The name stayed. So when you say Orsanmichele, you are speaking about a vegetable patch that has not existed for many centuries.

The building in front of you did not begin as a church. It began as a grain market. In 1337, Florence started work on a large open loggia here, a covered hall with wide arches on every side. Merchants sold grain under its roof, and the upper floors held the city's reserves. In a medieval city, grain meant survival. A bad harvest or a siege could bring hunger in weeks. This building was a kind of public safe, and the food inside it was the city's insurance.

Here is the first surprise. Look at the lower walls and you can trace the outlines of those great open arches. In the late fourteenth century, the arches were filled in, and the market became a church. Faith had already been growing here. An image of the Virgin Mary painted on one of the pillars had gained a reputation for miracles. Crowds came to pray among the grain sacks. In the end, worship took over the space completely.

Now turn to the niches. There are fourteen of them around the outside of the building. Each one belonged to a guild. In medieval and Renaissance Florence, the guilds were powerful associations of merchants and craftsmen. Bankers, wool traders, cloth finishers, doctors and spice dealers, stone carvers, blacksmiths — each guild had its own patron saint. The city gave every major guild a niche and asked it to fill that niche with a statue of its saint.

What followed was a competition in public. Every guild wanted its saint to look finer than the one next door. They hired the best artists of the day. The richest guilds paid for bronze, which cost far more than marble. Walking around this building is like walking through a catalogue of early Renaissance sculpture, all made for one street corner. Names you know from museums worked here, side by side — Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Nanni di Banco, and later Andrea del Verrocchio.

Here is the second surprise. Most of the statues you see outside today are copies. The originals were moved indoors to protect them from weather and pollution. Many now stand in the museum on the upper floors of this building. Donatello's Saint George, made for the armourers, is in the Bargello museum nearby. So the street gives you the composition and the setting, as the guilds intended. The rooms upstairs give you the real surfaces, the actual marks of the sculptors' tools.

Look for Ghiberti's Saint John the Baptist, made for the guild of cloth merchants. It is a large bronze, and it was one of the first life-size bronze figures of the Renaissance. Casting metal on this scale was difficult and risky. The guild was making a statement of wealth and ambition. Nearby, Donatello's Saint Mark stands for the linen dealers. Notice how his weight rests on one leg, and how the cloth of his robe falls as if a real body is underneath.

Then find the Four Crowned Saints by Nanni di Banco. They were made for the guild of stone and wood workers. Four figures stand together in a half circle, almost as if they are talking. They were Christian sculptors, and tradition says they were killed for refusing to carve a pagan idol. Below them, a small carved panel shows craftsmen at work — measuring, cutting, carving. For a moment, the guild shows its own members doing the work that built this city.

One niche holds a quiet drama. Verrocchio's bronze group shows Christ and Saint Thomas, the disciple who doubted. Christ lifts his arm and opens his robe. Thomas reaches toward the wound. Thomas stands partly outside the frame of the niche, as if he is stepping into the street. The niche was made earlier for a different statue and a different patron. Verrocchio had to fit two figures into a space designed for one, and he solved the problem with this forward step.

Above many niches, look for round glazed medallions in white and blue. These are terracotta roundels from the della Robbia workshop, a Florentine family famous for this shining ceramic glaze. Each one carries a guild emblem — a lamb, a gate, a lily, tools of a trade. These were the logos of their day. A Florentine walking past could read the street like a directory of the city's economy.

Step inside, and the light changes. The interior is dim and close, with painted vaults and coloured glass windows. In the centre stands a large tabernacle of carved marble, inlaid with coloured stone and glass, by the artist Andrea Orcagna. It frames a painting of the Virgin and Child by Bernardo Daddi. Look at the square pillars too. Some still have openings that once worked as chutes. Grain stored upstairs could pour down through them to the market floor. The old grain store is still built into the walls of the church.

Before you walk on, step back toward the middle of the street and look at the whole building again. It is a grain store, a church, a museum, and a gallery of guild pride. All of it stands inside one stone block. The saints have watched this street for six centuries, through markets, plagues, and floods. Notice how few people around you look up. Then take one last look at the figure nearest you, and carry its face with you toward the river.