The study of urban history has increasingly focused on the reconstruction of ties of kinship, neighbourhood and the issue of social patronage generally. Although the conclusions reached have often differed, the result of such study has been the emergence of an image of Renaissance man bound into a multitude of social network systems that fundamentally conditioned both the practice and conceptualisation of daily life. More recently, patronage studies have moved beyond the walls of Florence itself to consider the city's territorial state, paying particular attention to the complex interrelations between the Florentines and the inhabitants of the subject communities. With the territorial expansion of the Florentine dominio, the numbers of Florentines in the cities and rural communities of Tuscany increased with respect to the recent past. Significantly, many Florentines occupied positions as resident judicial officials in the subject towns for a period of several months, whilst merchants and rich bankers invested capital in the fertile Arno valley and along the coast, or built their country retreats in the areas from which their families originated. Many of these Florentines demonstrated their growing interest in the territories by establishing private networks with the indigenous populations and they were often in a position to exercise influence over the political and administrative life of the subject towns themselves.

The Florentine state of the Quattrocento was a recent phenomenon.