| 9. The Fifteenth Century and the Florence Renaissance |
|
 When
power returned to the popolo grasso at the end of the 14th
century, an oligarchic regime was established in Florence and a
small restricted number of the merchant middle class governed the
city for about 40 years and fostered an extremely active foreign
policy, costly as far as the continuous wars were concerned, but
nevertheless capable of halting the expansionism of the Visconti
and of considerably enlarging the territory of the city-state by
conquering Arezzo, Cortona, Prate, Pistoia and Pisa. The fact
that Florence had Pisa and its ports (Porto Pisano and then
Livorno) at its complete disposition made her a sea power and the
uncontested "most complete and most perfect economic power
of the West" (Y. Renouard).  One of the
consequences, internally, of the considerable costs of financing
the wars was a reform of the tax system which led to the
institution of the Catasto or Land Register (1427), a device by
which it was theoretically possible to tax everyone according to
their means, taking into account the conspicuous wealth in real
estate which had previously been practically exempt. These same
years witnessed a growing opposition to the oligarchy which was
to ably exploit the malcontent of the populace. That part of the
middle class which had been excluded from power joined arms with
the people and found a leader in Giovanni de' Medici, head of the
richest and most powerful company of Calimala. After the death of
Giovanni (1429) the contrast was accentuated while the current of
opinion favorable to the Medici continued to grow. The
oligarchists headed by Rinaldo degli Albizi tried to eliminate
Cosimo, Giovanni's firstborn, with defamatory accusations, but
they only succeeded in sending him into exile (1433) from which
he was recalled only a year later by a new Signoria that was
favorable to him. From this moment
on Cosimo was lord of the city, although he attempted to conceal
the fact, leaving the old republican institutions intact, but
emptied of any effective power. The last of the great city-states
in central Italy, Florence, too, fell under the power of a single
man, and it was the beginning of the principality which however
did not formally take the place of the republic until about a
hundred years later, in 1530. Cosimo, who died in 1464, was
followed by the mediochre Piero the Gouty (14641469) whose son,
Lorenzo the Magnificent, was to continue his ancestor's
dissimulating policy up almost to the end of the century,
maintaining the traditional offices, but with no doubts as to
what he was to all effects: the true lord of Florence.
 During the years
in which the merchant oligarchy governed Florence and in the
early period of Medici rule, the increasingly frequent contacts
with examples of Greek and Roman antiquity gave rise to a new
spirit and the city became the center in which Humanism was
forged. Man considered himself the ultimate end, eager for
rational knowledge and bent on affirming his dominion over the
nature which surrounded him and the history which preceded him.
Literary culture, the sciences, arts and human activities in
their entirety attain a complete spiritual fusion, in a unique
equilibrium which forgathers artists, craftsmen and scientists in
a single platonic ideal of eternal truth and beauty. Filippo Brunelleschi activity
falls at the dawn of this golden priod in European intellect and
culture.  Between 1420 and
1446 he created a group of works which were to represent one of
the most important moments in the history of Florentine
architecture and town-planning. Brunelleschi's works take their
place in the urban framework which can be traced to Arnolfo di
Cambio and which the city had inherited from the late Middle
Ages. Synthetically they might be considered a
"modernization" of medieval buildings. But the
inventive power and newness of vision inherent in the work of the
great Florentine architect were such as to lead to the
affirmation in medieval Florence of a new rational order which
transforms any pre-existing meaning. It is then thanks first of
all to Brunelleschi and secondly to the other exponents of the
architectural culture of the early 15th century that Florence,
while maintaining its urban layout of the late Middle Ages
practically intact, was to present itself from then on as the
"Renaissance city" par excellence, idealized by the
humanists.
 An incredible
number of artistic personalities determinates the image of the
city at this particular moment: Leon Battista Alberti and
Michelozzo for architecture beside Filippo Brunelleschi. For
sculpture we can mention, Donatello, Andrea Verrocchio, Lorenzo
Ghiberti, Benedetto and Antonio da Maiano, Benedetto da Rovezzano
and so on. Among the great number of painters of the florentine
Renaissance we want to remember some of then: Masaccio, Paolo
Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Filippo Lippi, Domenico
Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Beato Angelico and a lot more....
Just to mention some of the most outstanding examples of
Renaissance architecture in Florence: the Palazzo Medici by Michelozzo, the
Palazzo Gondi by Giuliano da Sangallo, the Palazzo Strozzi by
Benedetto da Maiano, the Palazzo Antinori attribued to Giuliano
da Maiano, the Palazzo Rucellai by Leon Battista Alberti, the
Loggia for Ospedale degli
Innocenti (Orphanage of Florence), the Old Sacresty in the
church of San Lorenzo, San
Lorenzo church itself, the church of Santo Spirito, the Pazzi Chapel,
the Convent of San Marco, the
church of San Salvatore al Monte etc...
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