Chiostrino dei Voti, Porticoed courtyard at Santissima Annunziata, Florence, Italy

The Chiostrino dei Voti is a porticoed forecourt in front of the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, not a true cloister: four arcaded sides with round arches on Corinthian columns and cross vaults create sixteen lunettes, twelve of them frescoed. A marble Madonna and Child is attributed to Michelozzo, and the door on that side is the lateral entrance of the Oratory of San Sebastiano.

Michelozzo designed this courtyard space in 1447, beginning a decoration project that extended into the early 16th century. Multiple Renaissance artists added their work to the frescoes over this long period.

The frescoed lunettes pair the Stories of Mary, patron of the church, with the Stories of Saint Philip Benizi, the Servite friar canonized after his death in 1285. The absence of an Annunciation is deliberate: that episode belonged to the miraculous image that gave the shrine its name. The name "dei Voti" recalls the ex-votos once piled here, removed and destroyed in 1785.

The courtyard opens off Piazza della Santissima Annunziata and is entered from the square; the bronze holy-water stoups on the columns before the church entrance are by Francesco Susini (1615). The lunettes are numbered from left to right for those entering from the piazza, counting only the painted ones. A glass and iron roof added in the second half of the 19th century shelters the frescoes.

The ex-votos once filled every available space: painted panels, wooden and plaster statues, even wax figures. They were removed and destroyed in 1785, reportedly on the advice of Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo of Lorraine. Between 1656 and 1687 the empty lunette on the right wall housed the doors of Beato Angelico's silver cupboard, now in the Museo di San Marco.