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Medici Funerary Monuments in the Duomo of Florence during the Fourteenth Century: A Prologue to “The Early Medici”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

John T. Paoletti
John T. Paoletti*
Affiliation:
Wesleyan University
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Abstract

Medici patronage of the arts in the fourteenth century has gone largely unstudied. Yet there is a notable paper trail, backed by a small number of sculptural remnants of funerary monuments, indicating that prominent members of the family understood the power of visual imagery for establishing their patrilines as leading families, both within the social hierarchy of Florence and within the Medici consorteria. These sculptural remains give clear precedent for the early activity of Giovanni di Bicci and Cosimo de’ Medici as artistic patrons in the fifteenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 59 , Issue 4 , Winter 2006 , pp. 1117 - 1163
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2006

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank the staff of the Archivio di Stato in Florence, where much of the archival work for this article was pursued. I would also like to thank Dott. Lorenzo Fabbri, Director of the Archivio dell’Opera del Duomo in Florence, who generously put the resources of that archive at my disposal. Margaret Haines was generous as usual in sharing her expertise about the Opera and its activities as well as her enthusiasm for the history of the building site and its artistic projects. This article would have been impossible to write without the incomparable resources of the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence: I am enormously grateful for the hospitality of the Institut during the many years I have worked there. Sharon Strocchia read an earlier version of this paper, offered very helpful observations about several points in the argument, and provided me with new information from her own research; one could not wish for a more helpful or generous critic. I want also to thank Roger Crum, who also critiqued an earlier version of this paper, and the anonymous readers of this journal, who offered helpful suggestions for improving the text. Travel funds for the early research on this paper were provided by the Office of Academic Affairs of Wesleyan University, as was a sabbatical leave for its writing; I both value and appreciate Wesleyan’s continuous support of scholarship. Abbreviations used throughout the notes are as follows: AOSMF: Archivio dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence; ASF: Archivio di Stato, Florence. For the archives of the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore covering the years 1417–36, see http://www.operaduomo.firenze.it/cupola. All translations in the article are the author’s unless otherwise noted.

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