Ospedale degli Innocenti
"[4] Today the building houses a small museum of Renaissance art with works by Luca della Robbia, Sandro Botticelli, and Piero di Cosimo, as well as an Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Ghirlandaio.
[citation needed] The building currently serves as the base of operations for the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre.
[5] The central façade is made up of nine bays of semicircular arches springing from columns of the Composite order, in an arcade or loggia several steps above the square.
In the spandrels of the arches there are glazed blue terracotta roundels with reliefs of babies designed by Andrea della Robbia suggesting the function of the building.
The upper floor is later; it was not in place in the 1460s, when the building is shown in the background of a fresco by Benozzo Gozzoli of the Burial of Saint Augustine (1464–1465) in the church of Sant'Agostino in San Gimignano.
The building's simple proportions reflect a new age, one of secular education, and a sense of great order and clarity.
[3] He managed the laying of foundations, raising of main walls, completion of the basement with a cryptoporticus beneath the cloister walks, and the lower part of the front facing loggia.
Later phases added the attic story (1439), but omitted the pilasters that Brunelleschi seems to have envisioned, and expanded the building by one bay to the south (1430).
[7] Brunelleschi's design was based on Classical Roman, Italian Romanesque and late Gothic architecture.
But the use of round columns with classically correct capitals, in this case of the composite order, in conjunction with dosserets (or impost blocks) was novel.
[8] The architectural elements were also all articulated in grey stone (pietra serena) and set off against the white of the walls.
[3] The Foundling Hospital defines the eastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata, the other two principal facades of which were built later to imitate Brunelleschi's loggia.
The west façade, the Loggia dei Servi di Maria, was designed by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder in the 1520s.
[citation needed] The Ospedale degli Innocenti was a charity institution that was responsible for the welfare of abandoned children.
It can also explain how investors used Florence's charitable institutions as savings banks: A relationship between charity and Italian city-states can be depicted by using the Innocenti as a case study.
[citation needed] The Ospedale degli Innocenti's care was comprehensive and provided the children with the ability to rejoin society.
Others would even abandon their own children at the Innocenti, get hired as a wet nurse, and end up feeding their own child with pay.
Cosimo and Francesco had an unstable organization between private charity and finance and constantly over withdrew money.
