Santa Maria Novella. 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 church, the adjoining cloister, and chapter house contain a multiplicity of art treasures and funerary monuments. Especially famous are frescoes by masters of Gothic and early Renaissance. They were financed by the most important Florentine families, who ensured themselves funerary chapels on consecrated ground. This church was called S. Maria Novella because it was built on the site of the 9th-century oratory of Santa Maria delle Vigne. When the site was assigned to the Dominican Order in 1221, they decided to build a new church and adjoining cloister. The church was designed by two Dominican friars, Fra Sisto Fiorentino and Fra Ristoro da Campi. Building began in the mid-13th century, and lasted 80 years, ending under the supervision of Friar Iacopo Talenti with the completion of the Romanesque-Gothic bell tower and sacristy. In 1360, a series of Gothic arcades were added to the facade; these were intended to contain sarcophagi. The church was consecrated in 1420. On a commission from Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, a local textile merchant, Leon Battista Alberti designed the upper part of the inlaid green marble of Prato, also called serpentino, and white marble facade of the church. He was already famous as the architect of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini, but even more for his seminal treatise on architecture De re aedificatoria. Alberti had also designed the facade for the Rucellai Palace in Florence. Alberti attempted to bring the ideals of humanist architecture, proportion and classically inspired detailing to bear on the design, while also creating harmony with the already existing medieval part of the facade. The combined facade can be inscribed by a square; many other repetitions of squares can be found in the design. His contribution consists of a broad frieze decorated with squares, and the full upper part, including the four white-green pilasters and a round window, crowned by a pediment with the Dominican solar emblem, and flanked on both sides by enormous S-curved volutes.The four columns with Corinthian capitals on the lower part of the facade were also added. The pediment and the frieze are clearly inspired by antiquity, but the S-curved scrolls in the upper part are new and without precedent in antiquity. Solving a longstanding architectural problem of how to transfer from wide to narrow storeys, the scrolls, found in churches all over Italy, all draw their origins from the design of this church. The frieze below the pediment carries the name of the patron: IOHANES ORICELLARIUS PAU F AN SAL MCCCCLXX. The vast interior is based on a basilica plan, designed as an Egyptian cross and is divided into a nave, two aisles set with windows and a short transept. The large nave is 100 metres long and gives an impression of austerity. The piers are of compound form and have Corinthian columns supporting pointed Gothic arches above which is a clerestory of ocular windows above which rises a ribbed, pointed quadrupartite vault. The ribs and arches are all black and white polychrome. There is a trompe l'oeil effect by which towards the apse the nave seems longer than its actual length because the piers between the nave and the aisles are progressively closer, nearer to the chancel. Many of the windows have stained glass dating from the 14th and 15th century, such as 15th century Madonna and Child and St. John and St. Philip, both in the Filippo Strozzi Chapel. Some stained glass windows have been damaged in the course of centuries and have been replaced. The one at the west end, a depiction of the Coronation of Mary, dates from the 14th century, and is based on a design of Andrea di Bonaiuto da Firenze. The pulpit, commissioned by the Rucellai family in 1443, was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and executed by his adopted son Andrea Calvalcanti. This pulpit has a particular historical significance, since it was from this pulpit that the first verbal attack was made on Galileo Galilei, leading eventually to his indictment. The Holy Trinity, situated almost halfway along the left aisle, is a pioneering early Renaissance work of Masaccio, showing his new ideas about perspective and mathematical proportions. Its meaning for the art of painting can easily be compared to the importance of Brunelleschi for architecture and Donatello for sculpture.