Francesco Botticini’s 'Assumption of the Virgin', now in the collection of the National Gallery
and the focus of the current 'Visions of Paradise' exhibition,
was painted in the 1470s for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence,
the city portrayed in the distance at the bottom of the picture.
Visitors to Florence today, however, will not find San Pier Maggiore in any guidebook.
While the famous dome of Florence Cathedral still dominates the city,
many other historic buildings have been lost or hidden behind later façades.
San Pier Maggiore, one of Florence’s oldest and most important churches,
was demolished in the 18th century and converted into a marketplace.
Its site is now occupied by shops, restaurants, and apartments.
Its existence is all but forgotten,
even by many people that live and work within its former walls.
Given the unusual horizontal format and large scale of Botticini’s altarpiece,
it is important to understand the setting for which it was painted.
A team of researchers from the National Gallery and the University of Cambridge
recently travelled to Florence to search for remains of the church.
This film documents the team’s process of creating a digital reconstruction.
We combined conventional site surveys and the latest photogrammetric techniques
that stitch together digital photographs to create 3D models.
Today, San Pier Maggiore is only known from historic plans and old city views.
As this late 16th-century map of Florence shows,
San Pier Maggiore was located around 500 metres to the east of the cathedral.
The most visible remnant of the church is the elegant portico
that was added to the façade in the 17th century.
The portico establishes the location of the church
and confirms that the street that currently runs through the central arch,
the via San Pier Maggiore,
once formed the church’s main nave or central aisle.
When we first arrived it was difficult to see how we might reconstruct the rest of the church.
Gradually, a number of clues emerged that revealed how the present buildings
reused the walls and foundations of the former church.
Rising above these shops and cafés are piers
that originally supported the northern side of the church.
Apartment windows now pierce the thick stone walls,
but the lion-faced gargoyles for draining water are still intact.
These visible remains encouraged us to look for more remnants of the church
within the surrounding buildings.
At this point, the local community of shop owners and residents
became active participants in our research,
alerting us to fragments of stonework and inviting us into their homes and businesses.
Pieces of the church emerged in the most unexpected places.
A visit to the local café revealed a finely carved Renaissance pilaster in the bathroom.
In a neighbour’s kitchen, we discovered the sides of a stone arch
from the early 14th century decorated with coats of arms, unfortunately now effaced,
which would have formed the entrance to a side chapel.
The most exciting discovery was a section of the church’s medieval bell tower, or campanile,
and its spiral staircase, preserved in a private apartment.
The truncated tower today forms a small terrace with spectacular views of the city.
By coordinating these fragments with historic documents and plans,
we were able to digitally reconstruct the architecture of San Pier Maggiore.
Our research also uncovered how the display of Botticini’s 'Assumption'
was interwoven with the history of another altarpiece from San Pier Maggiore
that is also now in the collection of the National Gallery;
the 'Coronation of the Virgin' by Jacopo di Cione and his workshop.
Jacopo’s large polyptych or multi-tiered altarpiece
was completed over a century before Botticini painted his 'Assumption of the Virgin'.
San Pier Maggiore was dedicated to Saint Peter,
and Jacopo depicted the apostle holding a miniature model of the church
as well as his traditional attributes of the keys to heaven and hell.
Jacopo’s altarpiece was initially installed over the high altar of San Pier Maggiore,
the site of which is now the middle of a street.
The reconstruction reveals that Botticini’s 'Assumption of the Virgin'
was originally located within the south transept;
the right arm of this cruciform church.
Further fragments of San Pier Maggiore are surely waiting to be found,
but what we have discovered provides a much richer understanding of the National Gallery’s altarpieces
and the sacred architecture they were meant to adorn.
We can also appreciate how the urban fabric of Florence
still bears the imprint of the long-demolished church
in ways that are not always obvious to either casual visitors or long-time residents.
If you know where to look, subtle signs still remain
in local street names
or the keys of Saint Peter that mark many of the surrounding buildings;
reminders of one of Florence’s finest churches,
lost to the city but living on through the artworks that graced its altars.