Gondi Chapel, Renaissance chapel in Santa Maria Novella Basilica, Florence, Italy

The Gondi Chapel is the first chapel on the left in the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Its back wall is clad in white, black and red porphyry marble with carved geometric patterns and high-relief skulls, designed by Giuliano da Sangallo in 1503. The side walls, finished between the late 16th and early 17th centuries on a design by Benedetto da Rovezzano, differ in style but share the same colour scheme. The chapel holds Filippo Brunelleschi's polychrome wooden Crucifix, his only surviving wood sculpture, made around 1410-1415.

The chapel was dedicated to Saint Luke on his feast day in 1279, when Cardinal Latino Malabranca Orsini laid the first stone of Santa Maria Novella here. In 1503 three Gondi brothers commissioned Giuliano da Sangallo to reface it, but only the back wall was completed. In 1572 the Dominicans gave the friars' wooden crucifix by Filippo Brunelleschi (1410-1415) to the Gondi to prompt them to finish the side walls.

The chapel is still dedicated to Saint Luke because the foundation stone of the whole basilica was laid here on his feast day in 1279, by Cardinal Latino Malabranca Orsini, who had come to Florence to mediate between Guelphs and Ghibellines. The vault keeps badly damaged frescoes of the four Evangelists, attributed to Greek-style Byzantine masters mentioned by Vasari.

The chapel is the first on the left aisle of Santa Maria Novella, so it is reached from the nave rather than a separate entrance. Look for the marble cladding on the back wall and the painted-stone angels in the side niches; the 19th-century stained-glass window is above. The crucifix stands in the chapel itself, moved here in 1572.

The crucifix stayed in Brunelleschi's house or workshop until a year before his death, when he gave it to the Dominican friars of Santa Maria Novella. They hung it on the pillar between the Strozzi and Bardi chapels, where the fixing nails are still visible, and only in 1572 did it move to the Gondi Chapel.