The story
The front of San Lorenzo is still bare rough stone, and that is the first thing to notice about the Medici family's parish church in Florence. In 1518 Pope Leo X, himself a Medici, gave Michelangelo the contract to clad it in marble, and two years later the project was cancelled. Michelangelo's wooden model survives in the Casa Buonarroti, the museum in his family's house.
The church inside belongs to Filippo Brunelleschi, the architect of the cathedral dome, who began rebuilding it around 1420 with money from Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, founder of the family bank. His Old Sacristy, built in the 1420s, is a white cube under a ribbed dome, with painted stucco roundels and bronze doors by the sculptor Donatello. Giovanni lies there under the central table.
In the nave stand Donatello's two bronze pulpits, his last works, completed by assistants after his death in 1466. In the Martelli chapel in the left transept hangs Filippo Lippi's Annunciation, painted around 1440 for a family of bankers allied to the Medici. The grand family tombs carved by Michelangelo are in the New Sacristy, which belongs to the Medici Chapels museum and has its own entrance at the back of the church. Donatello himself was buried in the crypt, close to his patron Cosimo de' Medici, whose resting place is marked by a slab in front of the high altar inscribed Pater Patriae, father of his country.
