Florence as the cradle of the Renaissance

The phrase “the cradle of the Renaissance” is a historian’s shorthand, and a misleading one. There was no single cradle. The recovery of the classical past, the building of the new style, the writing of the new vernacular, the founding of the new humanist school, and the making of the modern princely state were, in the period 1300 to 1500, distributed across Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome, Naples, Padua, and the smaller courts of the peninsula. But the shorthand is not wrong. Florence was, in the long fourteenth and the long fifteenth centuries, the city in which the new learning was most fully articulated, the city in which the new visual style was most fully worked out, and the city in which the new political vocabulary of the Italian rinascita was most carefully formulated. The Arte della Lana, the Arte della Seta, the Arte del Cambio, and the Arte dei Giudici e Notai; the Consiglio Maggiore of the Comune and the Consiglio dei Cento of the Dominante; the Baptistery of San Giovanni and the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore — these were the institutional and physical sites of the new art, the new learning, the new architecture, the new science, and the new political culture of the Italian Renaissance.

The city on the Arno

The Florence of the Trecento and the Quattrocento was a city of perhaps 60,000 souls in 1300 and 80,000 to 100,000 in 1500, on the Arno at the foot of the Mugello and Fiesole hills, in the centre of a long-distance trade that reached from the Cinque Ports to the Mamluk ports of the Levant. The Florentine Arte della Lana and the Arte di Por Santa Maria were, in the long thirteenth century, the largest woollen and silk manufactures in the Mediterranean, and the Arte del Cambio was the largest banking and moneychanging operation in the Latin and Greek East. The Florentine Bardi, Peruzzi, and Acciaiuoli banks were, in the 1320s and 1330s, the financial agents of the English kings, of the Curia at Avignon, and of the Latin princes of the Aegean; their catastrophic collapse in the 1330s and 1340s — the ruin of the Compagnia dei Bardi, the Compagnia dei Peruzzi, and the Compagnia degli Acciaiuoli — was the moment in which the Medici bank was, in the long fifteenth century, to be founded. The catasto of 1427, the most comprehensive tax survey of the comune in the period, lists, for the sesto of San Piero Scheraggio, Santa Croce, San Giovanni, Santa Maria Novella, San Pancrazio, and Oltrarno, the names, occupations, and properties of the 10,000 heads of household who were the citizen body of the Republic. Richard A. Goldthwaite’s The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (1980) and David Herlihy’s and Christian Klapisch-Zuber’s Les Toscans et leurs familles (1978; English ed. 1985) are the basic studies of the catasto and of the Florentine economy of the period.

The physical city of the Trecento and the Quattrocento was a dense, narrow, darkly built city of wooden houses, stone palaces, brick towers, and fortified churches. The Comune of Florence, in the long thirteenth and long fourteenth centuries, was governed by the Consiglio Maggiore of the Comune, the Consiglio dei Cento of the Dominante, the Consiglio degli Ottanta of the Dominante, the Sedici of the Dominante, the Priori delle Arti of the Dominante, the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia of the Dominante, and the Esecutore degli Ordinamenti di Giustizia of the Dominante; the Esecutore was, in the 1290s, the most important of the ordinamenti of the popolo of the comune of Florence, and the ordinamenti of the popolo were the basic legal instruments of the comune of the long Trecento.

The Florentine republic

The political life of the Florentine republic was one of the most intensive in medieval and Renaissance Europe, and the standard treatment — Nicolai Rubinstein’s The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494) (1966), Gene Brucker’s Florentine Politics and Society, 1343–1378 (1963) and The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (1977), Felix Gilbert’s The Florentine Manner (1972), and John M. Najemy’s A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (2006) — has done more than any other body of work in modern historiography to set the Italian city-state in its long historical context. The Florentine repubblica was, in the long fourteenth century, a comune of the popolo in which the popolo grasso — the Arte della Lana, the Arte di Por Santa Maria, the Arte del Cambio, the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, the Arte della Seta, the Arte dei Vaiai e Pellicciai, and the Arte degli Speziali — had a working political majority, and in which the popolo minuto had, in the Tumulto dei Ciompi of 1378, a brief political revolution. The Ciompi revolution was, on any reckoning, the most important popular uprising of the late medieval Italian peninsula, and the Arte dei Ciompi and the Tribuno of the popolo minuto of Michele di Lando were the most ambitious of the repubbliche of the popolo minuto of the period. The Ciompi revolution was, in the end, a brief and disastrous experiment in popolo politics, and the Arte dei Ciompi and the Tribuno of the popolo minuto were, in the 1380s, suppressed by the regime of the popolo grasso of the Comune of Florence.

The Florentine republic of the Quattrocento was, in its most famous form, a regime of the Medici family under the primo cittadino of Cosimo de’ Medici and the Lorenzo de’ Medici of the long fifteenth century. The regime of the Medici was, on any reckoning, the most successful of the reggimenti of the Italian peninsula, and the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, the French Invasion of Italy of 1494, the Bonfire of the Vanities of 1497, and the Sacco di Roma of 1527 were the most important events of the reggimento of the repubblica of the regime of the Medici of the Comune of Florence. The Pazzi Conspiracy of 26 April 1478, in which the Pazzi family attempted to assassinate Lorenzo de’ Medici and his brother Giuliano de’ Medici during the High Mass in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, was the most ambitious of the congiure of the Italian peninsula; the Pazzi conspirators killed Giuliano and wounded Lorenzo, who escaped by leaping into the sacristy of the cathedral. The aftermath, in which the Pazzi family was hunted down and hanged from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria in the Piazza della Signoria, was the moment in which the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was consolidated.

Building the new city

The architectural transformation of Florence in the long fourteenth and the long fifteenth centuries is one of the most thoroughly studied in the history of Western art, and the basic monograph studies — Richard Goldthwaite’s Building of Renaissance Florence, Howard Saalman’s Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings (1993), and Giovanni Fanelli’s Brunelleschi (1980) — make the economic, technical, and biographical setting of the new architecture clear. The Florentine Opera del Duomo, the Arte della Lana, the Arte della Seta, and the Arte del Cambio were the working patrons of the new architecture.

The Brunelleschian dome of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (1420–1436) was the most ambitious of the opere of the Comune of Florence. The Brunelleschian dome was, on any reckoning, the most consequential of the architectural achievements of the Italian Renaissance, and the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Baptistery of San Giovanni with the bronze doors of Lorenzo Ghiberti (the Gates of Paradise, 1425–1452), and the Campanile of Giotto (the Campanile di Giotto, begun 1334) were the working monuments of the popolo of the comune of Florence. The Brunelleschian dome, the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the Campanile of Giotto, the Cappella dei Pazzi (the Pazzi Chapel, c. 1429), the Sagrestia Vecchia of San Lorenzo (the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo, 1419–1428), the Ospedale degli Innocenti (the Hospital of the Innocents, begun 1419), the Basilica di San Lorenzo (begun 1419), the Basilica di Santo Spirito (begun 1436), the Basilica di Santa Croce (rebuilt from 1421), the Basilica di San Marco (rebuilt 1437–1452 for the Dominicans), and the Cappella di Santa Maria Novella (the Cappella Tornabuoni, frescoed 1485–1490) were the working monuments of the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. The Pazzi Chapel and the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo together constitute, in Brunelleschi’s own hand, the two most completely surviving examples of the new classical style in the period. Paolo Uccello’s Battle of San Romano (c. 1435–1460), the Primavera of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1480), the Birth of Venus of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1485), the David of Michelangelo (1501–1504), and the Mona Lisa of Leonardo da Vinci (begun c. 1503) are the most famous of the pitture of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The new visual culture

The visual culture of the Florentine comune of the long Quattrocento was the most ambitious in the Italian peninsula, and the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was, in the long fifteenth century, the working patron of the new art. The Uffizi of the Medici family (the Galleria degli Uffizi, founded by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1581 as the offices of the Medici administration and converted into a gallery in 1769), the Pitti of the Pitti family (the Palazzo Pitti, acquired by the Medici family in 1549), the Bargello of the Comune of Florence (the Museo Nazionale del Bargello), the Academy of the regime of the Medici (the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, founded by Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1563), and the Laurentian Library of the Medici family (the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, founded by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1524 and built by Michelangelo from 1524) were the working collections of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The Florentine artists of the long Quattrocento were the working artists of the regime of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. The Giotto of the Scrovegni Chapel of Padua (c. 1305), the Brunelleschi of the Dome of Santa Maria del Fiore (1420–1436), the Donatello of the David of the Bargello (c. 1440s) and the Judith and Holofernes of the Palazzo della Signoria (c. 1457–1464), the Fra Angelico of the San Marco of Florence (c. 1440), the Masaccio of the Brancacci Chapel of the Carmine of Florence (c. 1425), the Lorenzo Ghiberti of the Gates of Paradise of the Baptistery of San Giovanni of Florence (1425–1452), the Paolo Uccello of the Battle of San Romano of the Uffizi of Florence (c. 1435–1460), the Fra Filippo Lippi of the Prato Cathedral of Prato (1452–1466), the Sandro Botticelli of the Primavera of the Uffizi of Florence (c. 1480) and the Birth of Venus of the Uffizi of Florence (c. 1485), the Domenico Ghirlandaio of the Tornabuoni Chapel of Santa Maria Novella of Florence (1485–1490), the Andrea del Verrocchio of the Baptism of Christ of the Uffizi of Florence (c. 1475), the Leonardo da Vinci of the Adoration of the Magi of the Uffizi of Florence (1481) and the Last Supper of the Santa Maria delle Grazie of Milan (1495–1498), the Michelangelo of the David of the Piazza della Signoria of Florence (1501–1504) and the Sistine Chapel ceiling of the Palazzo Apostolico of Rome (1508–1512), and the Raphael of the School of Athens of the Stanza della Segnatura of the Palazzo Apostolico of Rome (1509–1511) and the Madonna del Cardellino of the Uffizi of Florence (c. 1506) were the working artists of the reggimento of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The Bonfire and the invasion

The two events that ended the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence were the Bonfire of the Vanities of 1497 and the French Invasion of Italy of 1494. The Bonfire of the Vanities of 7 February 1497 was the autodafé of the Piazza della Signoria in which the followers of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) burned, in a tall pyramid of oil-soaked kindling, the vanitates of the comune of Florence — carnival songs, masks, books of the poeti of the regime of the Medici, paintings by the artisti of the regime of the Medici, and fine clothes of the cittadini of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. The French Invasion of Italy of 1494, in which the Charles VIII of France (1470–1498) led the Armée française of the Royaume de France through the Alps into the Pianura Padana and through the Pianura Padana into the Regno di Napoli, was the moment in which the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was overthrown and Piero de’ Medici (1472–1503) was expelled from the comune of Florence. The Piazza della Signoria of the comune of Florence was, in the 1490s, the working place of the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence, and the Piazza della Signoria of the comune of Florence was, in the 1490s, the working place of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.