Ospedale degli Innocenti

File:Adriano Marinazzo - Progetto Brunelleschi - Ospedale Innocenti.jpg

The central façade is made up of nine bays of semicircular arches springing from columns of the Composite order, in an arcade or loggia several steps above the square. The round arches are a revival of the style of classical architecture, no longer using pointed arches. In the spandrels of the arches there are glazed blue terracotta roundels with reliefs of babies designed by Andrea della Robbia suggesting the function of the building. There is a further bay at each end, with no steps and fluted pilasters.

File:Benozzo gozzoli, funerali di sant'Agostino, san gimignano.jpg, Burial of Saint Augustine (1464–1465)'', Sant'Agostino, San Gimignano]]

The upper floor is later; it was not in place in the 1460s, when the building is shown in the background of a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli of the Burial of Saint Augustine (1464–1465) in the church of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano. Above each semicircular arch, on the upper floor is a tabernacle window, with a triangular pediment on the top.

The building reveals a clean and clear sense of proportion. The height of the columns is the same as the width of the intercolumniation and the width of the arcade, making each bay a cube. The building's simple proportions reflect a new age, one of secular education, and a sense of great order and clarity. Similarly, the height of the entablature is half the column height, as is appropriate for a clear-minded society.

File:Fresco at Ospedale delgi Innocenti in Florence, Italy.jpg

Children were sometimes abandoned in a basin which was located at the front portico. However, this basin was removed in 1660 and replaced by a wheel for secret refuge. There was a door with a special rotating horizontal wheel that brought the baby into the building without the parent being seen. This allowed people to leave their babies, anonymously, to be cared for by the orphanage. This system was in operation until the hospital's closure in 1875.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

File:Domenico e david ghirlandaio, bartolomeo di giovanni, adorazione dei magi, 1488-89, 01.jpg by Domenico Ghirlandaio.]]

The Foundling Hospital was constructed in several phases and only the first phase (1419–1427) was under Brunelleschi's direct supervision. He managed the laying of foundations, raising of main walls, completion of the basement with a cryptoporticus beneath the cloister walks, and the lower part of the front facing loggia. Later phases added the attic story (1439), but omitted the pilasters that Brunelleschi seems to have envisioned, and expanded the building by one bay to the south (1430). The vaulted passageway in the bay to the left of the loggia was also added later. Since the loggia was started before the hospital was begun, the hospital was not formally opened until 1445.Eugenio Battisti. Filippo Brunelleschi. (New York: Rizzoli, 1981). *See also: Howard Saalman. Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings. (London: Zwemmer, 1993).

Brunelleschi's design was based on Classical Roman, Italian Romanesque and late Gothic architecture. The loggia was a well known building type, such as the Loggia dei Lanzi. But the use of round columns with classically correct capitals, in this case of the composite order, in conjunction with dosserets (or impost blocks) was novel. So too, the circular arches and the segmented spherical domes behind them.{{cite book |year=2007 |title=Western architecture – Early Renaissance, Italy, 1401–95 |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica}} The architectural elements were also all articulated in grey stone (pietra serena) and set off against the white of the walls. Also novel was the proportional logic. The heights of the columns, for example, was not arbitrary. If a horizontal line is drawn along the tops of the columns, a square is created out of the height of the column and the distance from one column to the next. This desire for regularity and geometric order was to become an important element in Renaissance architecture.Michele Furnari. Formal Design in Renaissance Architecture: from Brunelleschi to Palladio. New York: Rizzoli, 1995.

File:Andrea della robbia, putti in fasce della facciata dello spedale degli innocenti, 1487, B 01.jpg

Above each column is a ceramic tondo. These were originally meant by Brunelleschi to be blank concavities, but around 1490 Andrea della Robbia was commissioned to fill them in.{{cite book|year=2007 |title=Della Robbia, Andrea |publisher=Encyclopædia Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Andrea-della-Robbia}} The design features a baby in swaddling clothes. A few of the tondi are still the original ones, but, like the capitals, most of them are 19th century copies, the originals are shown in the museum.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

The insignia of the American Academy of Pediatrics is based on one of the tondi.

The Foundling Hospital defines the eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, the other two principal facades of which were built later to imitate Brunelleschi's loggia. The piazza was not designed by Brunelleschi, as is sometimes reported in guide books. The west façade, the Loggia dei Servi di Maria, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder in the 1520s. It was built for the mendicant order, the Servi di Maria, but is today a hotel. The north side of the piazza is defined by the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, the Basilica of the Most Holy Annunciation. Though the building is much older, the facade was added in 1601 by the architect Giovanni Battista Caccini. The equestrian statue of Ferdinand I of Tuscany was made by the noted sculptor Giambologna and placed there in 1608. The fountain was added in 1640.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

File:Claustre dels Homes de l'Hospital dels Innocents de Florència.JPG

The {{lang|it|Ospedale degli Innocenti|italic=no}} was a charity institution that was responsible for the welfare of abandoned children. It represented social and humanistic views of Florence during the early Renaissance. It can also explain how investors used Florence's charitable institutions as savings banks: A relationship between charity and Italian city-states can be depicted by using the Innocenti as a case study. Furthermore, the hospital remains as a significant place with a statement of compassion and care besides its unpleasant downfalls.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

The Ospedale degli Innocenti's care was comprehensive and provided the children with the ability to rejoin society. The first infant abandoned was on February 5, 1445, ten days after opening. Babies were received, wet nursed and weaned. Masters were hired to teach reading and writing to boys. Boys were taught skills according to their abilities while girls were sent to mistresses who taught them how to sew, cook and other such occupations. The hospital provided dowries for the girls, and they had the option of getting married or becoming nuns. In the late 1520s, an extension was built to the south along the Via de' Fibbiai. This was intentionally for women who did not marry or become a nun.{{cite journal|first=Philip |last=Gavitt |date=June 1997 |title=Charity and State Building in Cinquecento Florence: Vincenzio Borghini as Administrator of the Ospedale degli Innocenti |journal=The Journal of Modern History |volume=69 |issue=2 |pages=230–270 |doi=10.1086/245487 |s2cid=144616730}}

File:Ospedale degli innocenti, chiostro delle donne 02.JPG

In 1552, Vincenzo Borghini was appointed spedalingo (superintendent) of the Innocenti. He was employed by Cosimo de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Borghini's education as a Benedictine monk molded the lives of children in the hospital. Borghini, after five months of becoming superintendent, wanted to get hold of the hospital's operai to eliminate wet nurses who defrauded the hospital. One of the main issues was that wet nursing increased the number of pregnancy.{{citation needed|date=July 2012}} Some would resort to feeding the infants with cow or goat's milk. Mothers would sometimes abandon their own children to feed a child from the hospital. Others would even abandon their own children at the Innocenti, get hired as a wet nurse, and end up feeding their own child with pay. There was also continuation of salary from the hospital after the death of an infant.{{citation needed|date=August 2021}}

There were three major years of great famine, 1556–57, 1567 and 1569–70. This was due to an imbalance between population and agricultural capacity. It was very difficult to reduce cost while balancing high admissions. During the sixteenth century, an increase in population impacted the Innocenti as well as high wheat prices. In 1557, there were also problems with maintaining supplies of grain since flooding occurred in the Innocenti's storehouse.

The hospital suffered from financial debt. The main problem was trying to balance expenses and revenues. Cosimo and Francesco had an unstable organization between private charity and finance and constantly over withdrew money. They had used the Innocenti as their personal charitable institution savings banks. The hospital's debt increased from 300,000 to 700,000 lire, however, its annual operating expenses were minimal (100,000 lire). Seventy-five percent of the hospital's debts were amounts owed to investors.

The consequences of the debt led to the dismissal of girls and boys. Borghini requested that the children be given to high status people of good reputation. Boys were dismissed at the age of eighteen. Girls were tried to be placed in noble families with increased dowries for those who wanted to marry. Women who did not become nuns nor married were trained for trade and manual labor.{{citation needed|date=July 2012}}

• In E. M. Forster's 1908 novel A Room with a View, Lucy expresses her preference for "the Della Robbia babies" over Giotto in Chapter 2, and she later purchases several photographs of "some Della Robbia Babies" in Chapter Four.{{Cite web|last=Forster|first=E. M.|date=October 14, 2016|title=A Room With a View|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2641/2641-h/2641-h.htm|access-date=2020-08-19|website=Project Gutenberg}}
• The United States Post Office (Berkeley, California), built in 1914–15, has been described as a "free adaptation" of Brunelleschi's hospital."The Berkeley Post Office – an Example of the New Public Building Policy" Architect and engineer, San Francisco, CA. October 1915, quoted in "National Register of Historic Places Inventory – Nomination Form"

• Ospedale Niguarda Ca' Granda

{{reflist}}

{{commons category|Spedale degli Innocenti|Ospedale degli Innocenti}}

• [https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=AckBxc3OhSYC&oi=fnd&pg=PA70&dq= Five centuries of foundling history in Florence: changing patterns of abandonment, care and mortality]

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{{Florence landmarks}}

{{Filippo Brunelleschi}}

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Category:Buildings and structures completed in 1427

Category:Filippo Brunelleschi buildings

Category:Hospital buildings completed in the 15th century

Category:Renaissance architecture in Florence

Category:Hospitals in Florence

Innocenti

Category:1419 establishments in Europe

Category:15th-century establishments in the Republic of Florence

Category:1875 disestablishments in Italy

Category:Art museums and galleries in Florence

Category:Orphanages in Italy

Category:Loggias in Italy