Historical information

The buildings architect was Filippo Brunelleschi. The Ospedale degli Innocenti was a charity institution that was responsible for the welfare of abandoned children. It represented social and humanistic views of Florence during the early Renaissance. Above each column is a ceramic tondo. These were originally meant by Brunelleschi to be blank concavities, but around 1490 Andrea della Robbia was commissioned to fill them in.[7] The design features a baby in swaddling clothes. A few of the tondi are still the original ones, but some are nineteenth century copies.

The Ospedale Degli Innocenti, Firenze museum holds a number of part tokens that a mother would leave with a child - keeping the other part in the hope they would be reunited,

Physical description

A number of photographs of the Ospedale Degli Innocenti in Florence, Italy.