Santa Maria dei Ricci, Baroque church in central Florence, Italy

Santa Maria dei Ricci is a Baroque church in Florence with a single nave and four side chapels. The walls display frescoes depicting scenes from the Life of the Virgin Mary, while the ceiling features a large painting of the Assumption.

The church was founded in 1508 under the patronage of the Ricci family to shelter the Annunciation image that Antonio Rinaldeschi had insulted in 1501, an offence for which he was hanged from the Bargello. Gherardo Silvani rebuilt it in the 17th century, adding the portico in 1610 when it passed to the Crociferi. Zanobi del Rosso gave the interior its late Baroque form in 1769-1772.

The church is also called della Madonna dei Ricci after the 15th-century Annunciation fresco that Antonio Rinaldeschi insulted in 1501; it now stands on the high altar in a carved Baroque frame. In the first chapel on the right, a 14th-century panel of Saint Margaret of Antioch gives the church its name, set within a canvas by Cosimo Gamberucci depicting the Healing of a Lame Man, moved here in 1831.

The single nave opens into two side chapels per side and ends in a square apse under a dome vault, so the whole interior can be seen from the entrance. The pipe organ by Chichi Rosario & Figli, opus 168, built in 1989, sits in two bodies on the counter-facade flanking the large window, with consoles both in the presbytery and on the choir gallery.

The church was founded in 1508 to shelter a 15th-century fresco of the Annunciation that Antonio Rinaldeschi had insulted in 1501 by throwing horse dung at the Virgin; he was hanged for it from a window of the Bargello. The insulted fresco now sits on the high altar, and a painted panel of nine scenes telling the story is kept in the Museo Stibbert.