Convent of Bosco ai Frati

The Convent of Bosco ai Frati is located in the comune (municipality) of Scarperia e San Piero, in the midst of Turkey oak woods.

At some point it came to be occupied by a group of hermits, until 1206, when it was donated with a large part of the wood, to Saint Francis di Assisi.

In 1349 the convent was almost completely abandoned on account of the Black Death plague and only came to flourish again in 1420 when Cosimo de' Medici (the Elder) bought it, rebuilt it, enlarged the refectory, built the bell tower (campanile), the cloister, the sacristy, the cistern and the loggia, the latter following a project of Michelozzo, who altered the church of St Bonaventure, situated within the convent, giving it a portico fitted with columns on the outer rather than the inner side, embellishing it with a single nave with vaulting in the form of rib vaulting and enlarged the polygonal choir.

The Bosco ai Frati altarpiece executed by Fra Angelico in tempera on wood (174x174 cm) and dating to 1450–1452, is nowadays conserved in the Museo nazionale di San Marco in Florence.

The church contains a painting by Jacopo Ligozzi, signed and dated 1579, depicting The Establishment of the Franciscan Third Order and a highly decorated sixteenth-century altar.