These are sculpture.

And everywhere in the older streets you may see shrines built into the wall: there is even one in the prison, in the Via dell' Agnolo, once the convent of the Murate, where Catherine de' Medici was imprisoned as a girl; but many of them are covered with glass which has been allowed to become black.
A word or two on S.Egidio, the church of the great hospital of S.Maria Nuova, might round off this chapter, since it was Folco Portinari, Beatrice's father, who founded it.

The hospital stands in a rather forlorn square a few steps from the Duomo, down the Via dell' Orivolo and then the first to the left; and it extends right through to the Via degli Alfani in cloisters and ramifications.

The facade is in a state of decay, old frescoes peeling off it, but one picture has been enclosed for protection--a gay and busy scene of the consecration of the church by Pope Martin V.Within, it is a church of the poor, notable for its general florid comfort (comparatively) and Folco's gothic tomb.

In the chancel is a pretty little tabernacle by Mino, which used to have a bronze door by Ghiberti, but has it no longer, and a very fine della Robbia Madonna and Child, probably by Andrea.