Santo Spirito, Church and Cloisters, Florence, Italy
| General Attributes |
DOI| 10.34946/D6GW2V | |
| Project Name | Santo Spirito, Church and Cloisters, Florence |
| Country | Italy |
| Status | Restricted |
| Citation |
| George Bent, Dave Pfaff, Florence As It Was 2026: Santo Spirito, Church and Cloisters, Florence - LiDAR - Terrestrial. Distributed by Open Heritage 3D. https://doi.org/10.34946/D6GW2V |
| Data Type |
Size |
Device Name |
Device Type |
| LiDAR - Terrestrial | Not available | Not available | Not available |
| Background |
| Site Description | Like many Florentine churches, this basilica stands on the site of an earlier church (this one from the mid-12th century) that was demolished in the 15th century. Construction of this iteration of S. Spirito began in 1446 and was completed by 1489, thanks to an influx of money from Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici. The plan of this structure was devised by Filippo Brunelleschi but constructed only after his death and with important deviations. The layout of S. Spirito replicates that of S. Lorenzo on the opposite side of town: A lengthy nave flanked by two side aisles and repeating burial chapels moves to a transept divided by a presbytery in the crossing. These spaces adhere to the same systems of ratios and proportions seen in Brunelleschi’s other buildings. However, the architect’s original designs called for the exterior walls of S. Spirito to echo the rounded apsidal forms of the burial chapels on the church’s east side, creating a repetition of undulations all the way down the building. This fanciful decision was vetoed as the church neared completion, and the east wall was smoothed over to present its current flat state.
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| Project Description | Florence As It Was has multiple aims within its broad goal of recreating selected structures in the city as they appeared in the year 1500. The pointclouds and photogrammetric models we build certainly serve their purposes as visual portals into the past, but the translations of early modern descriptions, transcriptions of contemporary documents, and the creation of a database of people, places, and things weaves these images into layers of information that help us interpret what we see. Intended as a study tool (as opposed to a substitution for the real thing), this project provides users with a combination of the type of original source materials that historians of art and architecture in particular typically use when crafting scholarly works. Its multi-variances routinely force us to make choices and adhere to a list of priorities as we go. We have progressed deliberately and with an eye toward posting the most original portions of our work first, and then filling in the gaps later on. We have concentrated much of our attention on the physically and politically challenging work of securing permissions, traveling to Florence, and then using state-of-the-art technology to scan the most important structures in the city before editing and modeling those scans so that they reflect accurately the dimensions and color patterns of those buildings.
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| UNESCO World Heritage Site | Historic Centre of Florence |
| External Project Link | View exhibit |
| Collection Date | 2023-03-20 to 2023-03-25 |
| Publication Date | 2026-03-19 |
| License Type | Restricted |
| Model Information |
| Reuse Score | B - High-Quality Model without Georeferencing |
| Curator Notes | this dataset is restricted, to request access please consult the Florence as It Was Project
https://florenceasitwas.wlu.edu/
florenceasitwas@wlu.edu |
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