The Badia di Passignano, also called the Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo a Passignano is a historic Benedictine abbey located atop a scenic hilltop, surrounded by cypresses, east of the town of Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, Province of Florence, Italy. The abbey complex is located about 2 kilometres east of the Siena-Florence autostrada. The settlement is also a frazione of Barberino Tavarnelle. [1]
Documents citing the abbey date to the 890s during the Lombard era. By the year 1049 when a prior hermitage was donated to John Gualbert, the founder of the Vallombrosan Order. The abbey became one of the major sites of the order and itself a wealthy landowner by the mid-14th century. [2] Refurbished and altered over the centuries, in 1866 the monks were expelled and the site was sold to private owners, one of whom created some of the faux crenellations and towers. [3] [4] In the 20th century, the abbey was restored to a small monastic order.
Outside of the cloistered abbey complex is the Romanesque 12th-century church of San Michele Arcangelo; the church has undergone numerous reconstructions. In the attached small hamlet of Passignano is the parish church of San Biagio, built in 1080. The abbey in the 19th-century housed a remarkable collection of over 6000 parchment manuscripts, many brought here by Grand-Duke Leopold. [5]
The abbey is known for a number of frescoes, created by artists over a number of centuries, including works by Filippo di Antonio Filippelli, Benedetto Veli, Alessandro Pieroni, Alessandro Allori, Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli, Giuseppe Nicola Nasini, and Domenico Passignano
The refectory houses frescoes by Domenico Ghirlandaio and his brother Davide. The frescoes have been much restored over the last century. [6]
Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo, also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Bartolommeo di S. Marco, and his original nickname Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He spent all his career in Florence until his mid-forties, when he travelled to work in various cities, as far south as Rome. He trained with Cosimo Roselli and in the 1490s fell under the influence of Savonarola, which led him to become a Dominican friar in 1500, renouncing painting for several years. Typically his paintings are of static groups of figures in subjects such as the Virgin and Child with Saints.
Domenico di Tommaso Curradi di Doffo Bigordi, professionally known as Domenico Ghirlandaio, also spelled as Ghirlandajo, was an Italian Renaissance painter born in Florence. Ghirlandaio was part of the so-called "third generation" of the Florentine Renaissance, along with Verrocchio, the Pollaiolo brothers and Sandro Botticelli. Ghirlandaio led a large and efficient workshop that included his brothers Davide Ghirlandaio and Benedetto Ghirlandaio, his brother-in-law Bastiano Mainardi from San Gimignano, and later his son Ridolfo Ghirlandaio. Many apprentices passed through Ghirlandaio's workshop, including the famous Michelangelo. His particular talent lay in his ability to posit depictions of contemporary life and portraits of contemporary people within the context of religious narratives, bringing him great popularity and many large commissions.
Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated opposite, and lending its name to, the city's main railway station. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church.
The Badìa Fiorentina is an abbey and church now home to the Monastic Communities of Jerusalem situated on the Via del Proconsolo in the centre of Florence, Italy. Dante supposedly grew up across the street in what is now called the 'Casa di Dante', rebuilt in 1910 as a museum to Dante. He would have heard the monks singing the Mass and the Offices here in Latin Gregorian chant, as he famously recounts in his Commedia: "Florence, within her ancient walls embraced, Whence nones and terce still ring to all the town, Abode aforetime, peaceful, temperate, chaste." In 1373, Boccaccio delivered his famous lectures on Dante's Divine Comedy in the subsidiary chapel of Santo Stefano, just next to the north entrance of the Badia's church.
Cosimo Rosselli was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento, active mainly in his birthplace of Florence, but also in Pisa earlier in his career and in 1481–82 in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where he painted some of the large frescoes on the side walls.
Domenico Passignano, born DomenicoCresti or Crespi, was an Italian painter of a late-Renaissance or Counter-Maniera (Counter-Mannerism) style that emerged in Florence towards the end of the 16th century.
Tavarnelle Val di Pesa is a former comune (municipality) and since 2019 a frazione of Barberino Tavarnelle in the Metropolitan City of Florence in the Italian region Tuscany. It is located about 25 kilometres south of Florence.
The church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi is a minor church in the center of Florence, located on Via Martelli corner with Via Gori.
Santa Maria Maddalena dei Pazzi is a Renaissance-style Roman Catholic church and a former convent located in Borgo Pinti in central Florence.
Biagio d’Antonio Tucci was an Italian Renaissance painter active in Florence, Faenza and Rome.
Bastiano di Bartolo Mainardi was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He was born in San Gimignano and was active there and in Florence.
Pistoia Cathedral, or Cathedral of Saint Zeno is the main religious building of Pistoia, Tuscany, central Italy, located in the Piazza del Duomo in the centre of the city. It is the seat of the Bishop of Pistoia and is dedicated to Saint Zeno of Verona.
The Last Supper (1480) is a fresco depicting the Last Supper of Jesus by the Italian Renaissance artist Domenico Ghirlandaio; it is located in the refectory of the Convent of the Ognissanti on Borgo Ognissanti #42 in central Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. It is one of three Last Supper frescoes painted by Ghirlandaio in Florence, the others being for the Badia di Passignano (1476) and for the Cenacolo di San Marco (1486).
Alessandro Pieroni was an Italian architect and painter. He was active mainly in a Mannerist style, working for the courts of Grandukes Francesco I and Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.
Pietro Sorri (1558-1622) was an Italian painter active in Siena.
Monticello Amiata is a village in Tuscany, central Italy, administratively a frazione of the comune of Cinigiano, province of Grosseto. At the time of the 2001 census its population amounted to 425.
Bernardo di Stefano Rosselli was an Italian painter active in his native Florence and the surrounding countryside.
Filippo di Antonio Filippelli (1460–1506) was an Italian Renaissance in Tuscany.
