Church Santa Maria del Carmine - Pistoia - Tuscany

The church, along with the adjacent Carmelite Monastery, was founded in 1291 by Carmelite friars.
In 1741, the Pistoiese architect Raffaello Ulivi carried out a new restoration in late Baroque style, covering the roof with a large vault and enriching the interior, which had been completely redecorated, with appropriate decorative inlays. The quality of the uniqueness of the stucco decorations and frescoes in the vaults, by the Florentine artists Vincenzo Meucci and Tommaso Gherardini, made it one of the most valuable rooms of the time.
Church and monastery were subjected to Napoleon's oppression in 1803.

The church, which was in use until 1927, underwent a careful restoration in 2003.
Vincenzo Meucci is responsible for the stucco cornices in the nave and the works: the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, the Nativity, the Annunciation and the Nativity in the apse. The motifs in the apse borrowed from the Old Testament are due to Tommaso Gherardini.

In addition to the altarpieces, the church houses in the high altar the canvas attributed to Francesco Lupicini, the Fall of the Manna painted in 1625, the panel of the Holy Conversation made around 1530 and attributed to the Pistoian artist Leonardo Malatesta.

The preserved furniture dates back to the 18th century.

In the choir loft on the opposite facade is the pipe organ, placed in the case of the lost instrument from 1746 (possibly the work of Giovanni Paolo Micheli) and built in 2007-2008 by Glauco Ghilardi using part of the surviving pipes from the demolished Tronci organ of the parish church of Sant'Andrea (1840). With fully mechanical transmission, it has 18 registers on a single manual with first octave scavezza, and the pedalboard has no registers of its own.

Willem Vandenameele