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Marian Politics in Quattrocento Florence: The Renewed Dedication of Santa Maria del Fiore in 1412*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Mary Bergstein
Mary Bergstein*
Affiliation:
Rhode Island School of Design
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Extract

On the Feastday of the Nativity of the Virgin, September 8, 1296, the papal legate of Boniface VIII, Pietro Valeriano di Piperno, blessed the rebuilding of the church of S. Reparata in Florence. In the ceremonial presence of the podestà, the Standard-Bearer of Justice, and the priors of the Signoria, he named the new cathedral “Santa Maria del Fiore.” Arnolfo di Cambio was made chief architect in charge of the renewal; and it was he who began a program of monumental sculpture devoted to the life of the Virgin (fig. 1). Giovanni Villani, who recorded the benediction ceremony in his chronicle, admitted that notwithstanding the rededication of the church to the Virgin and the invention of the poetic name “Santa Maria del Fiore,” most Florentines continued to call the cathedral S. Reparata.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , Winter 1991 , pp. 673 - 719
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1991

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Footnotes

*

This article was prepared and published with the kind help of grants from the University Research Committee and the Spears Fund at Princeton University. I am grateful to Patricia Fortini Brown, Margaret Haines, Debra Pincus, David Rosand, and James Beck for having offered various criticisms and suggestions. I would also like to thank two anonymous readers for Renaissance Quarterly for their helpful comments. The following abbreviations are used in the notes: AS, Acta Sanctorum; ASF, Archivio di Stato, Florence; BNF, Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence.

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