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Santa Maria delle Carceri

Santa Maria delle Carceri

Giuliano da Sangallo

Photo: Sailko · CC BY 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Location
Prato, Italy
Client / Owner
Lorenzo de' Medici
Year
Completed 1486
Access
Public
Typology
Spiritual

Santa Maria delle Carceri is a Roman Catholic basilica in Prato, Tuscany. According to tradition, on July 6, 1484 a painted Madonna and Child on a wall of Prato's public jail seemed to come alive in a local child's eyes, and a basilica was built on the site to commemorate the event. Giuliano da Sangallo designed it, and the article says Lorenzo de' Medici imposed him on the project. The interior was completed between 1486 and 1495.

It is a Renaissance church on a Greek cross plan, one of the earliest complete churches of this type. Four equal arms are topped by a small dome that draws on Brunelleschi's work, and its drum has twelve circular windows. The exterior uses white and green marble in a bichrome pattern.

Domenico Ghirlandaio designed four stained-glass windows in 1491, and the Della Robbia workshop made majolica tondos of the Evangelists.

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