Santa Maria dei Servi, Bologna

Santa Maria dei Servi is a Roman Catholic basilica in Bologna, Italy, founded in 1346 as the church of the Servite Community of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was designed by Andrea da Faenza, a head friar and architect who also assisted Antonio di Vincenzo on the monumental Basilica of San Petronio, and in the twentieth century Pope Pius XII granted it the status of basilica. The building is about 100 metres long and 20 metres wide, laid out as a Latin cross whose transepts do not project beyond the aisles, with a shallow apse of five segments of an octagon, as is common in Italian Gothic churches. The design is entirely Gothic in appearance, with pointed arches throughout, round columns with floriate capitals dividing the nave from the aisles, and a simple quadripartite brick-ribbed vault. Work was unfinished when Andrea died in 1396, but the fifteenth-century completion changed the design little. Outside, the church is plain undecorated brick and its facade, built in several phases, was never decorated. Its most remarkable feature is a wide arcaded atrium or portico, an unusual sixteenth-century example of a form that has almost always vanished, apparently modelled on Brunelleschi's arcade at the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence. The church also houses a Holy Virgin Enthroned traditionally attributed to Cimabue but thought to be a product of his workshop, fresco remains by Vitale da Bologna and Lippo di Dalmasio, and a 1558 marble Annunciation altarpiece by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli.