Florence

Florence emerged in the medieval era as an important banking center and the home of a bustling textile industry. Florentine banks established branches in London, Geneva, and other European cities, and the city's gold coin, the florin, circulated widely throughout the continent. By the fifteenth century, the city had a population of more than fifty thousand and was an independent city-state, governing itself through councils of the wealthiest citizens.

This oligarchy based its power on control of the city's guilds, which were associations of civic leaders, merchants, industrial workers, artists, and artisans. Members of the guilds had the vote, making the rulers somewhat answerable to the public will; the oligarchy in turn ruled the city with a view to protecting trade, and increasing the city's prosperity and influence. Florence had a keen spirit of competition among its leaders and industries that extended to the commissions of public artwork. In 1401, a contest decided the best design for the doors of the Baptistery among Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, and Donatello. Spurred on by the desire to provide the most striking and innovative design, these artists made important innovations in the presentation of traditional biblical scenes.

The patronage of the leading Florentine family, the Medici, was a spur to Renaissance art and scholarship. The Medici ruled the city from their fortified palace in the center of Florence, controlling affairs and dispensing favors through ownership of one of the largest banks in Europe. They sponsored artists and writers, commissioning works of art for their private homes and for display in the city's churches, to serve as an example of their power and benevolence. Despite the wealth and the sure hand of the Medici at governance, the city remained turbulent, always riven by social and political factions and contending with the other powerful city-states of Italy, such as Milan and Venice, for territory in northern Italy. The Medici were expelled during a revolt in 1494, after which a Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola, ruled the city in a fanatical reaction to what he saw as the city's vain luxuries. Books and art work were publicly burned, and the city lived in fear of Savonarola until he was overthrown and publicly executed in 1498.

At the prompting of brilliant writers, including Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio, Florentine scholars were rediscovering classical authors and adopted the principles of humanism, a view of the world that ignored religious doctrines and medieval metaphysics, and advocated a scientific and realistic investigation of the world. Cosimo de' Medici provided a gathering place for humanists who held discussions and debate in the Medici palaces and country villas, often subjecting their patron to criticism of his antidemocratic methods of rule. Florence was home to Poggio Bracciolini, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the leading humanist scholars of the fifteenth century. The city also established itself as a leader in public education, with schooling available to most of the city's families and literacy reaching a high rate.

Florentine painters and sculptors, including Fra Angelico, Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Alessandro Botticelli, Fra Filippo Lippi, and Masaccio, developed a new style that more realistically depicted human form and emotion, while its architects adapted classical motifs in the design of churches, palaces, and civic buildings. The most important monument to this new era was the Duomo, the city's cathedral, which was surmounted by the largest dome raised since antiquity. The dome was designed by Brunelleschi and endures to this day as a symbol of the capabilities of Renaissance science and art. Other important architectural landmarks, including the Medici palace, the Pitti palace, the church of San Lorenzo, the Strozzi palace, and the baptistry, were raised as monuments to the city's wealth and culture.

The Medici returned to Florence in 1512, were exiled again in 1527, and finally returned in 1530 after a long siege of the city. In 1532 they named themselves as the dukes of the city. Under the rule of Cosimo de' Medici Florence regained its position as the wealthiest and most influential city-state of northern Italy. In 1557 the Florentine army conquered the rival town of Siena and in 1569, Cosimo de' Medici named himself the Grand Duke of Tuscany. By the late sixteenth century, patronage of major artists had passed to Rome and the popes, who engaged Michelangelo and other former Florentines to work in their city and create works of art that would reinforce the ongoing Catholic Counter-Reformation.

See Also: Brunelleschi, Filippo; Ghiberti, Lorenzo; Masaccio; Medici, Cosimo de'; Michelangelo Buonarroti; Pazzi Conspiracy