Florence: 1434–50

A new chapter in the history of Florence opens in 1434 with the arrival of Pope Eugenius IV (1383–1447) in June and the return of Cosimo de'Medici (1389–1464) from political exile in Venice in September. Eugenius had fled a popular uprising in Rome fomented by the Colonna family, and his temporary residence in Florence meant that for the next nine years the city was the center of Christendom—albeit a Christendom sorely torn apart by contesting parties (in 1439 a rebellious council elected an antipope, Felix V). Eugenius was a man with reforming tendencies and an ascetic character, and his presence in Florence was a matter of considerable prestige. He was given spacious quarters in the Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella, where his predecessor, Martin V, had also stayed, and he took an active part in the religious and political life of the city. The bookseller and biographer Vespasiano da Bisticci records how Florentines gathered in the piazza below the pontiff's apartments to observe him, "and the reverence felt by them was so great that they stood astonished at the sight of him, silent and turning toward the spot where he stood. . . ." It was partly through Eugenius's mediation that Cosimo was allowed to return from exile—an event that marks the political ascendancy of the Medici and their prominence as patrons of the arts. The Church was the Medici bank's largest client—Eugenius was, indeed, dependent upon its financial backing—and the religious and political ambitions of the pope and his banker intersected in ways that had a profound impact on the city.

Vespasiano da Bisticci enumerates at length the religious establishments in Florence reformed by the pope, emphasizing that it was at Eugenius's urging that Cosimo decided to personally fund the rebuilding of the convent of San Marco for the Dominicans of the Observant movement. For his part, Cosimo lobbied to have the council for the union of the Greek and Latin Churches that Eugenius convened in Ferrara in April 1438 moved to Florence. (The council was financed by Florence and the Greek delegation conveyed by Venetian ships.) The transfer added luster to the city, created commercial opportunities, and brought a contingent of Greek scholars—a potential boost to those humanist studies Cosimo promoted. (The lectures on Plato delivered by the aged George Gemistus Plethon inspired Cosimo, years later, to found the Platonic Academy.) The richly attired Greeks, with their elaborate hats and gold-threaded damasks, left an enduring impression on artists. Vespasiano records the belief that "for the last fifteen hundred years and more [the Greeks] have not altered the style of their dress," and from this time forward Byzantine costumes were introduced into Renaissance paintings, most memorably in Piero della Francesca's fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross in San Francesco, Arezzo (Piero, as we shall see, arrived in Florence the year of the council).8 The pomp and splendor of the council certainly confirmed a tendency toward courtly display in the arts—or magnificenza—that was openly embraced by Cosimo and his sons Piero and Giovanni, both of whom emerged as important patrons in the 1440s. For Eugenius IV, Ghiberti created a spectacular miter incorporating fifteen pounds of gold and an array of jewels—including "six pearls as large as filberts"—estimated to be worth the astonishing sum of thirty-eight thousand florins.9 The articles of union between the Greek and Latin Churches, short-lived though it proved to be, were signed amid great ceremony on July 5, 1439, beneath the recently completed dome of the cathedral.

Both in technological and symbolic terms the completion of Brunelleschi's dome, "vast enough to cover the entire Tuscan population with its shadow, and done without the aid of beams or elaborate wooden supports,"10 was the great artistic achievement of its time. For the consecration a raised walkway had been built to connect Santa Maria Novella to the cathedral so that the pope's procession could be seen by all. When Eugenius IV consecrated the cathedral on March 25, 1436—the feast day of the Annunciation and the first day of the Florentine new year—it still lacked the lantern, but the choir lofts (cantorie) of Luca della Robbia and Donatello were already in place. The next decade saw the decoration of the north sacristy with inlaid wood panels adorned with perspectival scenes (1436–45); Della Robbia's great enameled terracotta lunette of the Resurrection (1442–45); and the installation of six enormous circular windows in the drum of the dome (1443–44) designed by Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, and Donatello. Uccello's celebrated painted equestrian monument to Sir John Hawkwood was redone following the ceremonies attending the union of the Greek and Latin Churches; he painted the clockface on the interior façade in 1443.

In addition to this great communal monument there was an astonishing array of projects closely associated with the Medici. In 1443—the year the pope returned to Rome—Eugenius attended the consecration of the newly finished convent of San Marco, which had been entirely financed by Cosimo de'Medici. The church, designed by Cosimo's favorite architect, Michelozzo, was furnished with an altarpiece by Fra Angelico that created a new standard for showing the Madonna and Child with saints (see fig. 3); the artist and his assistants had already completed a number of the celebrated frescoes in the chapter house, cloister, and cells of the convent. Eugenius spent the night in the cell that had been built for Cosimo's private use and was decorated with a fresco of the Adoration of the Magi (usually ascribed to Benozzo Gozzoli, after Fra Angelico's design). That same year the medieval Franciscan basilica of Santa Croce, begun in 1295, was also consecrated by Eugenius. Donatello's tabernacle of the Annunciation—evidently commissioned by a relation of the Medici—was in place and two dependent buildings had been added: Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel (begun by a Medici supporter, Andrea de'Pazzi, but still unfinished when the pope visited it) and a new chapel for the novices that was funded by Cosimo de'Medici and furnished with an altarpiece by Filippo Lippi (fig. 4). Eugenius was no less active in promoting the reformed Augustinians, transferring the Badia Fiesolana—later rebuilt by Cosimo—from the Benedictines to the Augustinian congregation of Santa Maria di Fregionaia. (Two—or possibly three—altarpieces for Augustinian establishments were painted by Lippi between 1437 and 1440/42—one of them for the archbishop of Florence appointed by Eugenius.)11 For the general manager of the Medici bank, Giovanni d'Amerigo Benci, Lippi provided two altarpieces for the newly completed Benedictine convent of Le Murate (fig. 5). Eugenius had paved the way by granting the nuns independence from the neighboring Benedictine establishment of Sant'Ambrogio, for the high altar of which Lippi also painted an altarpiece (fig. 2).12 It was probably another manager of the Medici bank, Pigello Portinari, who was responsible for hiring Domenico Veneziano to paint a cycle of frescoes of the Life of the Virgin for the church of Sant'Egidio (1439–45; left incomplete by the artist). These same years saw the decoration of Brunelleschi's Old Sacristy at San Lorenzo—yet another Medici project—with Donatello's innovative stucco decorations and two sets of bronze doors (see fig. 6). In 1444 work began on the construction of the Medici palace, again under the guidance of Michelozzo. These various undertakings cannot help but have attracted Fra Carnevale's attention: indeed, as a member of Lippi's workshop he was to be involved in more than one of them. Yet, they represented only a part of the enormous artistic activity in the city, which encompassed Ghiberti's work on the Gates of Paradise for the Florence Baptistery (commissioned in 1425 and installed in 1452) and such important private commissions as Uccello's three panels depicting the Battle of San Romano for the Florentine palace of Lionardo di Bartolomeo Bartolini Salimbeni.13

Of signal importance for the arts was the presence, among the more than one hundred abbreviators of the papal chancery who accompanied Eugenius IV to Florence, of Leon Battista Alberti; the buildings, sculptures, and paintings that he saw inspired him to write his groundbreaking treatise on painting. Composed in Latin in 1435 and translated into Italian in 1436, with a dedication to Brunelleschi, Alberti's De pictura (or Della pittura) was to provide the theoretical backbone for Renaissance art and, together with his treatise on architecture—the De re aedificatoria (the first draft of which was completed about 1450)—established him as its leading intellectual authority. Alberti's two treatises had a particular significance for the artists in this exhibition, for these erudite works shaped the attitudes and critical language of the rulers of Northern Italy, creating a well-articulated yardstick by which to measure artistic success—one deeply rooted in classical culture, above all in Pliny, Cicero, and Quintillian, but also in Horace and Aristotle. While the Italian edition of the De pictura was dedicated to Brunelleschi and lauded the achievements of Donatello, Ghiberti, Luca della Robbia, and Masaccio, a copy of the Latin version was sent with a dedicatory letter to the ruler of Mantua, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, on the occasion of the Church Council in Ferrara in 1438. In 1423 Gianfrancesco had invited the gifted scholar Vittorino da Feltre to his court at Mantua to set up what soon became the preeminent humanist school in Italy, attended by Ludovico Gonzaga—the patron of Mantegna—and by Federigo da Montefeltro, among many others. Alberti clearly saw the audience for his ideas as well as the possibility of future employment at these North Italian courts: the De re aedificatoria was reputedly undertaken at the instigation of Lionello d'Este, the brilliant young Marquis of Ferrara for whom Alberti had made his first essays in architecture; Alberti was to be a frequent visitor to Urbino, and he designed buildings for the Malatesta court at Rimini and the Gonzaga court at Mantua. The effect of these treatises was far greater than the number of surviving copies might suggest, for not only did they provide North Italian rulers with the critical vocabulary necessary to appreciate the new art as well as the antiquarian erudition required to sponsor building projects in the revived classical style, but they also put the rudiments of that style within the reach of artists. There is much in Fra Carnevale's paintings that attests to his familiarity with the treatises: certainly, the architectural settings of the Birth of the Virgin and the Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple(?) (cat. 45a, b) would be inconceivable without the De re aedificatoria.