[Florence] Basilica Santa Maria del Carmine.
Brancacci Chapel
The chapel is home to the famous frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino, considered the first masterwork of the Italian Renaissance.
The scenes by Masolino are St Peter Healing a Lame Man and Raising Tabitha from the Dead, St Peter Preaching, and Adam and Eve. Those by mostly Masaccio are The Tribute Money, St Peter Healing with his Shadow, The Crucifixion of St Peter, The Baptism of the Neophytes, and The Expulsion from Paradise. Their treatment of figures in believable space made the frescoes among the most important to have come out of the Early Renaissance.
Corsini Chapel
The Corsini, one of the richest families in Florence during the 17th–18th centuries, had this chapel built in 1675–1683, to hold the remains of an ancestral member of the family, St Andrea Corsini (1301–1374), who became a Carmelite friar and the Bishop of Fiesole, and who was canonized in 1629.
The architect Pier Francesco Silvani choose for it the Baroque style then popular in Rome. The altar has a marble bas-relief depicting the Glory of St Andrea Corsini, sculpted by Foggini, and above a God the Father sculpted by Carlo Marcellini. On the sides of the altar are two more Foggini marble bas-reliefs: one depicts Sant’Andrea descends girded with sword to lead the Florentines to victory during the Battle of Anghiari and the other recalls a Miraculous vision of the Virgin by a young Sant’Andrea (occurring in the church of the Convent delle Selve).
The small dome was frescoed by Giordano in 1682. The frescoes suffered in the great church fire, and were restored by Stefano Fabbrini.
Day 24 (Wednesday) - Pienza, Montepulciano, and Montalcino: