Birth, Death, and Justice.

First the baby went on the "rota," a stone lazy-Susan, then the anonymous mother rang the bell and the baby was rotated into the Spedale degli Innocenti, Europe's first orphanage.

The window where the baby rota was located.

It's fitting that Spedale degli Innocenti was housed in the building that gave birth to renaissance architecture. This was Brunelleschi's first masterpiece (he was soon to design the great dome of Florence) and a stunning inauguration of an architecture based on Roman antiquity and a new Humanism.

Andrea Della Robia designed the round medallions between the arches, on each is a slightly different porcelain infant wrapped in swaddling clothes (the current symbol for the American Academy of Pediatrics). The Spedale has continued to care for children for over 400 years, and today, in addition to child care, is a site of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's fund.

As I was leaving, a woman with a happy little girl, maybe three or four years old, came out of the Spedale to be greeted by two also happy adults (you can't see the man who is holding the kid in the photo). A scene repeated countless times over four centuries on the steps of the Spedale degli Innocenti.

The Spedale, joined by two other similarly arcaded loggias, becomes the perimeter of Florence's most beautiful piazza, the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. It's a lovely place to stroll or sit on a warm spring day (it's featured in the movie "A Room With A View"). Only a handful of tourists and tour groups wander about, and it is thankfully free of market stalls, ristorantes, and shops.

On the same day, I went to see the Andrea del Sarto frescoes at the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a lovely small cloister that was (is?) run by the "Confraternity of St John the Baptist" who were known for walking barefoot (Scalzo) when carrying the cross in processions.

A colleague told me that this confraternity prayed for those who were sentenced to death. I can't verifying this, but it could help explain the crossbones and skulls at the bottom of each column. It may also help explain why the frescoes are monotone.

Speaking of sentencing, on my way home I happened across a monkey looming over the main entrance, and grotesques lurking under the windows of Florence's Court of Appeals. Maybe Italy's criminal justice system has its own lazy-Susan rota.