Front porch or Loggia

Central dome with 2 flanking vaults

Front porch or Loggia

Ground plan

Lateral profile

Central dome with 2 flanking vaults

Frontal profile

Ground plan

3D drawing of similar chapel, the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo, by the same architect, Filippo Brunelleschi

• Nicholas Pevsner’s discussion
• The walls appear active, enlivened by the decorative elements which in their sizes and arrangement follow laws of human reasoning. [] Arcades are airier and more open than they had been. The graceful columns have the beauty of animate beings. They keep to a human scale too, and as they lead from part to part, even when a building is very large, one is never overwhelmed by its sheer size.
• Kenneth Clark’s discussion
• People sometimes feel disappointed the first time they see the famous beginnings of Renaissance architecture -the Pazzi Chapel and the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo - because they seem so small. Well, so they are, after the great monuments of Romanesque and Gothic architecture. They don't try to impress us or crush us by size and weight, as all God-directed architecture does. Everything is adjusted to the scale of reasonable human necessity. They are intended to make each individual more conscious of his powers, as a complete moral and intellectual being. They are an assertion of the dignity of man