Description
The Church of Santa Maria delle Grazie is a small Renaissance church in Pistoia, next to the old Ospedale del Ceppo, born of a miracle in a hospital ward. Locals call it the “Madonna del Letto”, the Madonna of the Bed, because the bed of the miracle really is kept inside.
Outside it is plain: a simple portal with candelabra carved on the jambs and a large lunette with the city's coat of arms. Inside, the single nave has a coffered ceiling and ends in a choir so spacious it seems a building of its own, inspired by Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel in Florence.
On the high altar is the 14th-century fresco of the Madonna and Child, painted just after the miracle and moved here when the church was finished. In a chapel is the bed of the miracle, a 14th-century hospital bed. At the side altars hang a Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Giovan Battista Naldini and an Assumption by Alessandro Fei.
The story begins in 1336, in the hospital of Santi Donnino e Lorenzo. A girl who was a patient there was healed, people said, through the Virgin's intervention; the room was turned into an oratory and a painter, known ever since as the Master of 1336, painted the Madonna there as she had appeared to the sick girl.
The bed tells another story too. It was the gift of a benefactor, Giovanni di Matteo Gualdimari, who in 1330 had provided the hospital with single beds, instead of the usual benches where many patients slept together. On the headboards you can still read prayers for two deceased people, with the dates 1336 and 1337.
In 1469 the Council of the People allocated a large sum and the church rose in place of the oratory. The architect was probably Ventura Vitoni of Pistoia rather than the Florentine Michelozzo, to whom it was long attributed.
Next to it a convent of Augustinian nuns was founded. At the end of the 18th century Bishop Scipione de' Ricci suppressed the complex, which passed to the Ospedale del Ceppo; the church became a parish again around the middle of the 20th century. Inside plays an organ from 1755 by Filippo and Antonio Tronci of Pistoia.
Outside it is plain: a simple portal with candelabra carved on the jambs and a large lunette with the city's coat of arms. Inside, the single nave has a coffered ceiling and ends in a choir so spacious it seems a building of its own, inspired by Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel in Florence.
On the high altar is the 14th-century fresco of the Madonna and Child, painted just after the miracle and moved here when the church was finished. In a chapel is the bed of the miracle, a 14th-century hospital bed. At the side altars hang a Saint Catherine of Alexandria by Giovan Battista Naldini and an Assumption by Alessandro Fei.
The story begins in 1336, in the hospital of Santi Donnino e Lorenzo. A girl who was a patient there was healed, people said, through the Virgin's intervention; the room was turned into an oratory and a painter, known ever since as the Master of 1336, painted the Madonna there as she had appeared to the sick girl.
The bed tells another story too. It was the gift of a benefactor, Giovanni di Matteo Gualdimari, who in 1330 had provided the hospital with single beds, instead of the usual benches where many patients slept together. On the headboards you can still read prayers for two deceased people, with the dates 1336 and 1337.
In 1469 the Council of the People allocated a large sum and the church rose in place of the oratory. The architect was probably Ventura Vitoni of Pistoia rather than the Florentine Michelozzo, to whom it was long attributed.
Next to it a convent of Augustinian nuns was founded. At the end of the 18th century Bishop Scipione de' Ricci suppressed the complex, which passed to the Ospedale del Ceppo; the church became a parish again around the middle of the 20th century. Inside plays an organ from 1755 by Filippo and Antonio Tronci of Pistoia.