Baroncelli Chapel, Chapel in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, Italy

The Baroncelli Chapel is at the end of the right transept of Santa Croce in Florence. Its walls carry Taddeo Gaddi's fresco cycle of the Stories of the Virgin, painted between 1328 and 1338, with an oblique staircase in the Presentation at the Temple and two painted niches with still lifes on the basement. Gaddi also designed the stained glass with four prophets on the exterior.

Taddeo Gaddi frescoed the chapel's walls with the Stories of the Virgin between 1328 and 1338, working in the manner of his teacher Giotto. The Baroncelli family held the Gothic tomb on the outer wall, carved by Giovanni di Balduccio in 1327, who also made the statuettes of the Archangel Gabriel and the Annunciate on the arcade pillars. The altarpiece, dated to about 1328 and signed Opus Magistri Jocti, was later given a new frame in the 15th century.

The frescoes narrate biblical episodes through innovative techniques, including foreshortened architecture and early examples of nocturnal scenes in Italian art.

The chapel closes the right transept of Santa Croce, so you enter it from the transept rather than from the nave. Look up at the stained-glass window, whose four prophets Gaddi designed for the exterior. The altarpiece cusp is no longer in Florence: it is kept at the San Diego Museum of Art in California.

At the chapel entrance stands a two-sided tomb monument carved with figures representing the Annunciation, a rare placement for such a scene. This sculpted moment acts as a threshold, marking the passage between the main church and the chapel beyond.