The present article illustrates the discovery, made by the author in 2011,
of the two marble pieces that Lorenzo Ghiberti made in 1428 to bear part of
the epigraphs accompanying the decoration of the bronze chest, or urn, of
the martyred saints Protus, Hyacinth and Nemesius. The chest was
commissioned to Ghiberti by Cosimo and Lorenzo di Giovanni de' Medici for
the church of the Camaldolensian monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli in
Florence. When the monument was dismantled at the end of the 16th century,
the two pieces were reused, again in Santa Maria degli Angeli, for new
inscriptions on the opposite sides to those carved by Ghiberti, and they
were thus concealed definitively from the eyes of the public. While one of
Ghiberti's inscriptions has survived almost intact in its hidden position,
the other must have been cancelled at the time of reusing the marble on
which it was written. The publication of the discovery allows the author to
add certain considerations on the original cult function of the so-called
'Women's Oratory' of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which housed the rear side
of the monument to the three martyrs (whereas the front face gave onto the
church of the Camaldolese fathers). The Oratory was in fact the second
stage of a Marian pilgrimage that led the devoted from the Santissima
Annunziata of Florence towards Loreto; this is explained mainly by the
relic of Saint Joseph's staff, preserved in the sacristy of Santa Maria
degli Angeli.