Public Painting and Visual Culture in Early Republican Florence

This book examines the way common people saw and interpreted paintings produced for - and placed in - public settings in fourteenth-century Florence.

George Bent (Author)

9781107139763, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 January 2017

352 pages, 112 b/w illus. 68 colour illus.
26.2 x 18.5 x 2.6 cm, 1.24 kg

'We learn, here, not only of works of art, but of the people of the Florentine Republic - of condemned criminals, prostitutes, merchants, government officials, guild members from the Arte della Lana and the Arte dei Giudici e Notai, laudesi, plague victims, the bishop and his entourage, the families of the newly baptized, and the would-be tyrant - and of how these and others lived lives shaped by images in an urban environment before the era of art.' Jonathan Kline, Renaissance Quarterly

Street corners, guild halls, government offices, and confraternity centers contained paintings that made the city of Florence a visual jewel at precisely the time of its emergence as an international cultural leader. This book considers the paintings that were made specifically for consideration by lay viewers, as well as the way they could have been interpreted by audiences who approached them with specific perspectives. Their belief in the power of images, their understanding of the persuasiveness of pictures, and their acceptance of the utterly vital role that art could play as a propagator of civic, corporate, and individual identity made lay viewers keenly aware of the paintings in their midst. Those pictures affirmed the piety of the people for whom they were made in an age of social and political upheaval, as the city experimented with an imperfect form of republicanism that often failed to adhere to its declared aspirations.

Introduction: public painting for common people in early republican Florence, 1282–1434
1. Paintings in the streets: tabernacles, public devotion, and control
2. Images of charity: confraternities, hospitals, and pictures for the destitute
3. Art and the commune: politics, propaganda, and the bureaucratic state
4. Pictures for merchants: the guilds, their paintings, and the struggle for power
5. Public painting in sacred spaces: piers and pilasters in Florentine churches
6. Murals for the masses: paintings on nave walls
7. Masaccio's Trinity and the triumph of public painting for common people in early republican Florence.

Subject Areas: Medieval history [HBLC1], European history [HBJD], Painting & paintings [AFC], History of art: Byzantine & Medieval art c 500 CE to c 1400 [ACK], History of art / art & design styles [AC]