The church and the convent of the Virgin were built at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the place called ”alle Cinque Vie”, at the intersection of important communication roads (today Piazza La Vergine).
A small oratory had existed here for some time, where the “Compagnia della carità”, a brotherhood devoted to the Virgin and her image, was established. In the wake of a general devotion also favored by the Medici themselves, the latter succeeded in obtaining the consent from the Grand Duke to erect a convent for the Franciscan Fathers and to rebuild and enlarge the church.
By 1631 the building was now completed, although the works continued with the construction of the bell tower (1632), the cloister (1638-1660) and the cells for the friars. On the façade, preceded by a four-light portico, the Medici coat of arms is visible above the large window and the lobed windows. Under the portico there are three lunettes and four niches with the Via Crucis, the latter frescoed by Alberico Carlini, also author of the paintings in the cloister.
The interior has a single nave with stone side altars from the 17th century. On the walls of the presbytery there are two paintings from the second half of the nineteenth century depicting the miracles attributed to St. Theophilus, whose relics are kept inside the church itself. The organ built in 1825 by Benedetto Tronci of Pistoia was transferred to the choir with double-tiered stalls from 1691. The large cloister, decorated with twenty-four lunettes with stories of St. Francis executed in the first half of the 1700s by Father Alberico Carlini, has undergone a careful restoration that has brought it back to its original appearance. On the wall to the right of the entrance is the tomb of Giuseppe Montanelli, a Tuscan triumvir and protagonist of the Risorgimento (1813-1862).