The domestic setting of the arts in Renaissance Florence

This dissertation uses archival sources to describe fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Florentine patrician homes as contexts for the visual arts. The introduction reviews the importance of Florentine palaces as an architectural phenomenon, notes the lack of attention scholars have given to the interiors of these buildings, and sets out the archival methodology used in this study.;The fourth chapter carries the discussion well into the sixteenth century by looking at the behavior of later generations of Renaissance Florentines. The final chapter discusses the importance of collections of painting and sculpture; its subject is the formation of a heretofore unknown collection, that formed by Piero d'Agnolo Guicciardini. The conclusion speculates on the broader cultural importance of the domestic setting of the arts in Renaissance Florence.;The first two chapters are descriptive. Based on Florentine household inventories preserved in the archives of the Office of Wards (Ufficio deqli pupilli), chapter one describes the organization and contents of Florentine Renaissance houses and discusses the physical locations of art in those houses. Chapter two outlines the behavior in the marketplace for art and domestic furnishings of six patricians who lived between 1450 and 1530; this chapter is drawn from these men's personal records. The third chapter analyzes the broader patterns of their actions, stressing the importance of marriage as an occasion for the establishment of a household and focusing on the central place of the chamber (camera) in the earlier Renaissance concept of a house. This chapter also considers the function of religious art in houses.