San Lorenzo: Façade

Brunelleschi built two large basilical church in Florence, both completed after his death but showing the development of his style in his later years, and both of them became patterns of the Latin cross type church. The two churches were the San Lorenzo and the Santo Spirito.

In 1516, a public competition for the marble fa�ade of San Lorenzo was set up by the Medici pope Leo X. Jacopo Sansovino, Raphael, and Michelangelo designed three-dimensional models of the fa�ade. However, Leo X changed his mind and, in a papal bull of 1520 canceled his 1518 contract for the erection of the fa�ade.

View the section and ground plan of San Lorenzo.