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The Corsini Chapel (1675–1701) in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine is a little-studied cult center of a significant local bishop-saint that stands as an important example of the Roman Baroque style in Florence. The chapel, which was consecrated in 1683, is dedicated to Saint Andrea Corsini (1301–74), a Florentine, Carmelite friar, and bishop of Fiesole (1349–74) who was canonized in 1629. This dissertation constitutes the first study to trace the history of the relic cult of Andrea Corsini from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries and demonstrates that, although the chapel is an exemplar of Italian Baroque design, the treatment and artistic framing of Andrea Corsini's relics was informed by centuries-old traditions associated with the promotion and veneration of saints and their relics.The six chapters in this dissertation chronologically trace the history of the relic cult of Andrea Corsini and its attendant imagery, from his death in 1374 to the completion of the Corsini Chapel in 1701. The first chapter establishes the hagiography of Andrea Corsini through a close examination of three of the vitae of Andrea Corsini and demonstrates that the essential components of Andrea Corsini's hagiography were established in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Anghiari in 1440 and were adapted with minimal changes in subsequent hagiographical texts. This chapter also provides a foundation for those that follow in that it presents evidence and themes that played an essential role in securing Andrea Corsini's canonization and established his iconography.The second chapter examines the formation of the relic cult of Andrea Corsini in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which was centered at the locus sanctus, or holy place, of his burial monument at Santa Maria del Carmine. The Carmelites and the Corsini family commissioned a series of enhancements to the burial place of the saintly bishop that encouraged his continued veneration: a late medieval elevated stone wall tomb, a wooden cassa (casket) painted by Fra Filippo Lippi, and an altarpiece predella that rested on the altar table below Andrea's sarcophagus. These objects established Santa Maria del Carmine as the primary location of veneration for his developing cult.The third chapter analyzes the canonization process for Andrea Corsini. When Pope Urban VIII (1568–1644, r. 1623–44) canonized Andrea Corsini in 1629, the ceremony and its subsequent celebration were documented with drawings of canonization apparati by Agostino Ciampelli (1565–1630), literary descriptions in a chronicle by the Roman historian Giacinto Gigli (1594–1671) and a vita of Andrea Corsini by Federigo Christofani (n.d.), as well as a papal canonization medal designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680). For the first time, this chapter brings together these rich textual and visual sources to trace Andrea Corsini's canonization from the early attempts to recognize his sanctity in the fifteenth century to the canonization ceremony itself and its Roman celebrations in 1629.In addition to the celebrations in Rome, the Corsini family paid for lavish canonization festivities in Florence. These celebrations and the book that records them, Benedetto Buonmattei's (1581–1648) Descrizion delle feste fatte in Firenze per la canonizazzione di S.to Andrea Corsini (1632), are the focus of the fourth chapter. The book includes twenty-one etchings by the Florentine printmaker Stefano della Bella (1610–64). This chapter examines how the celebrative text not only recorded the contemporary commemoration of Andrea Corsini, but also promoted the existence of an established and continuous cult of Andrea Corsini in Florence.The fifth and sixth chapters address the Corsini Chapel. Chapter Five examines the historiography, patronage, plans, construction, and architecture of the chapel. It provides a detailed architectural analysis that situates the chapel within the oeuvre of the architect Pier Francesco Silvani. Chapter Six analyzes the chapel's sculpted and painted decorations, and in doing so complements the discussion of its architecture in the previous chapter. In contrast to previous scholarship, which has focused on the architectural form and stylistic precedents of the Corsini Chapel, this chapter considers its pictorial and sculptural decorations as they relate to the promotion of the saint's body within the chapel.This study sets the Corsini Chapel in its Florentine and chronological contexts, addressing it methodologically through the critical criteria of iconography, hagiography, relic studies, religious practices, patronage, style, and reception. It consists of a series of case studies that not only situate the chapel within the larger discourse of the familial patronage of saints' relics and chapels, but also cultivate a link between Baroque religious practices and the traditional veneration of saints and relics. This dissertation illuminates a significant Florentine saint and multivalent visual tradition that, because of the local nature of his cult and the period in which it was produced, have long been neglected.