ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the decoration of the first of Del Riccio's chapels in the Florentine church of Santo Spirito. In charge for its project was Bastiano Botticelli, one of Vasari's future helpers in the woodworking of the ceiling in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio. Unfortunately, a radical restoration during the nineteenth century dramatically transformed the chapel, even changing the height where a copy from Michelangelo's Vatican Pietà was once placed. Such sculpture by Nanni di Baccio Bigio was sent from Rome to Florence around 1549, thanks to Antonio di Giovan Battista's interest, as a consequence of his brother Luigi's death in 1546. Some letters stored in the Florence State Archive attest that Antonio tried to sell to Cosimo I de’ Medici a pair of porphyry columns – once owned by Luigi in Palazzo Strozzi in Rome – in an attempt to repair the questionable relationship that his older brother had with the duke of Florence.
