Cestello Church and Convent

Biography

The church and convent at Cestello was founded around 1257 as a convent for penitent women, then called Santa Maria Maddalena la Penitente. Under a new reform, it passed to Cistercian nuns in 1321. Shortly thereafter these nuns came under the jurisdiction of an abbey of Settimo, and the convent's name was changed to Santa Maria Maddalena di Cestello. Luchs [cited below], p. 127, n. 1, explains: "The name Cestello comes from Cistellum, the Latinization of the French Cîteaux, the mother abbey of the order, whence Cistercian. The later name Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi, that of a sixteenth-century Florentine Carmelite saint, was given to the convent after her canonization in 1669. The convent had passed to the Carmelite nuns of Santa Maria degli Angeli in 1628 (Paatz [also cited below], 1940-54, IV, p. 91 and p. 108, n. 12)." The abbot of Settimo, Timoteo di Giannino, acquired a papal bull in 1442 to move the nuns of Cestello to a monastery outside the city, then make Cestello a monastery for the monks of Settimo. These monks gradually recovered the financial resources for which they had been lacking before undergoing certain reforms, and in 1480 a much-needed renovation of the church, now over 200 years old, was instigated. Cestello was transformed from a small Gothic building to a Renaissance church with an Ionic forecourt, the last nave chapel being completed in 1526. At the same time, both church and convent were filled with paintings by late Quattrocento Florentine masters. The church also acquired numerous liturgical and decorative objects of fine craftsmanship over the years. After centuries of war, floods, and renovation, most of the treasures of Cestello that survive have been dispersed across the globe.

Bibliography

1880

Medici, U. "Dell'anticha chiesa dei Cisterciensi oggi S. Maria Maddalena de' Pazzi." Revista Europea 21 ( 1880).

1906

Fabriczy, Cornelius von. "Memorie sulla chiesa di S. Maria Maddalena de Pazzi a Firenze e sulla Badia di S. Salvatore a Settimo." L'Arte 9 (1906): 255 ff. and 10 (1907): 225-226.

1940

Paatz, Walter and Elisabeth. Die Kirchen von Florenz. Frankfurt am Main, 1940-1954: part 4, 90-121.

1975

Luchs, Allison. Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance. Ph.D. diss., John Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1975-76; New York and London, 1977.

Related Content