Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pjpqr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-30T04:06:14.339Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Founding the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299: The Corso Donati Parado

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Marvin Trachtenberg
Marvin Trachtenberg*
Affiliation:
Institute of Fine Arts
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The usual origin-story of the Palazzo Vecchio as a security measure for the city's executives taken in response to civic unrest does not hold up under a close analysis of the historical record and the architectural evidence. The original project of 1299, as distinguished from the building as modified 1306-1310, was not heavily fortified; and by contemporary standards the late 1290s was a comparatively peaceful interval. It is proposed that rather than fear, the immediate motivation for the decision to build was a crisis in civic honor. If so, the palace would have been initially an expression less of the core values of the mercantile class, officially at the helm of the republic, than of the excluded nobility, as represented by the arch-enemy of the regime, Corso Donati.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 52 , Issue 4 , Winter 1999 , pp. 966 - 993
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1999

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ackerman, James S. The Architecture of Michelangelo. New York, 1961.Google Scholar
Alberti, Battista. The Family in Renaissance Florence. Trans. R. N., Watkins. Columbia, SC, 1969.Google Scholar
Becker, Marvin B. “A Study in Political Failure: The Florentine Magnates, 1280-1343.” Medieval Studie. 27 (1965): 246–308.Google Scholar
Brandi, Cesare, ed. Palazzo Puhblico di Siena: Vicende costruttive e decorazione. Milan, 1983.Google Scholar
Brucker, Gene. Florentine Politics and Society, 1343-78. Princeton, 1962 Google Scholar
Brucker, Gene. Renaissance Florence. New York, 1969.Google Scholar
Compagni, Dino. La Cronica. ed. I., Del Lungo. In L. A., Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores. Città di Castello, 1904-1916, ix.pt. 2.Google Scholar
Le Consulte della Repuhblica Fiorentina dall'anno MCCLXXX al MCCXCVIII. 2 vols. Ed. A., Gherardi. Florence, 1896-1898.Google Scholar
Davidsohn, Robert. Forschungen zur alteren Geschichte von Florenz. 4 vols. Berlin, 1896-1908.Google Scholar
Davidsohn, Robert. Storia di Firenze. 8 vols. Florence, 1972.Google Scholar
Davis, Charles. “Topographical and Historical Propaganda in Early Florentine Chronicles and in Villani.” Medioevo e Rinascimento. (1988): 33–51.Google Scholar
Del Lungo, Isidoro I Bianchi e i Neri. Milan, 1921.Google Scholar
della Tosa, Simone. Annali. ed. D. M., Manni. In Cronichette antiche di vari scrittori del buon secolo della lingua toscana. Florence, 1733, 124-71.Google Scholar
Edgerton, Samuel Y. Jr. Pictures and Punishment: Art and Criminal Prosecution during the Florentine Renaissance. Ithaca, 1985.Google Scholar
Frey, Carl. Die Loggia dei Lanzi zu Florence. Berlin, 1885.Google Scholar
Guasti, Cesare. Santa Maria del Fiore. Florence, 1887.Google Scholar
Kent, F. William. Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Ruccellai. Princeton, 1977.Google Scholar
Kuehn, Thomas. “Honor and conflict in a Fifteenth-Century Florentine Family.” Richerche Storich. 10 (1980): 289–310.Google Scholar
Lansing, Carol. The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune. Princeton, 1991.Google Scholar
Machiavelli, Niccolò. Istorie Florentine. Ed. Plinio, Carli. Florence, 1927.Google Scholar
Masi, Gino. “Sull'origine dei Bianchi e dei Neri,” Il Giornale Dantesc. 30 (1927): 124-32.Google Scholar
Masi, Gino. “La struttura sociale delle fazioni politiche fiorentine ai tempi di Dante.” Il Giornale Dantesc. 31, n.s. 1 (1930): 3–28.Google Scholar
Neuschel, Kristen. B. Word of Honor: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth- Century France. Ithaca and London, 1989.Google Scholar
Ottokar, Nicola. Il comune di Firenze alia fine del Dugento. Turin, 1962.Google Scholar
Paul, Juergen. Der Palazzo Vecchio in Florenz. Florence, 1969.Google Scholar
Peristrany, John G. Honor and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society. London, 1965.Google Scholar
Preyer, Brenda. “Two Cerchi Palaces in Florence.” In Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Smyth. ed. Andrew, Morrogh, Fiorella Superbi, Gioffredi, Piero, Morselli, and Eve, Borsook, 58–75. Florence, 1985.Google Scholar
Prowisioni. Archivio di Stato, Florence.Google Scholar
Raveggi, Sergio. “Corso Donati.” In Dizionario biografico delgi Italiani. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 1992, vol. 41, 18–24.Google Scholar
Raveggi, Sergio and Massimo, Tarassi, Daniela, Medici, Patrizia, Parenti. Ghibellini, Guelfi e Popolo Grasso, I detentori delpotere politico a Firenze nella seconda meta del dugento. Florence, 1978.Google Scholar
Rubinstein, Nicolai. The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532. Oxford, 1995.Google Scholar
Salvemini, Gaetano. Magnati epopolani in Firenze dal 1280 al 1295. Florence, 1899.Google Scholar
Satkowski, Leon. Giorgio Vasari, Architect and Courtier. Princeton, 1993.Google Scholar
Spilner, Paula. “Ut civitas amplietur: Studies in Florentine Urban Development, 1282-1400. “ Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 1987.Google Scholar
Tabacco, Giovanni. The Struggle for Power in Medieval Italy: Structures of Political Rule. Trans. R. B., Jensen. Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. The Campanile of Florence Cathedral, “Giotto's Tower.”. New York, 1971.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. Review of Howard Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. London, 1980. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historian. 42 (1983): 292- 97.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. “What Brunelleschi Saw: Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historian. 47 (1988): 14–44.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. “Archaeology, Merriment, and Murder: The First Cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio and its Transformations in the Renaissance.” Art Bulletin. 71 (1989): 565–609.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin; “Scénographie urbaine et identity civique: reflexion sur la Florence du Trecento.” Revue de I'ar. 102 (1993): 11–31.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. Dominion of the Eye: Urbanism, Art, and Power in Early Modern Florence. Cambridge, 1997a.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marvin. Review of Rubinstein, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historian. 56 (1997b): 220-23.Google Scholar
Trexler, Richard. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. New York, 1980.Google Scholar
Villani, Giovanni. Nuova Cronica. Ed. G., Porta. Parma, 1990.Google Scholar