Lecture 1 - Florence and the Creation of the Renaissance

Even at this distance it seems remarkable that a single city, Florence, could in the space of a few decades change the course of Europe’s visual arts. A handful of individuals – Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, but above all, Donatello, precipitated this revolution. This first lecture will look at the circumstances surrounding the innovations which led away from medieval modes of expression to a new way of ‘seeing’, indeed presenting the known world via the development of single point vanishing perspective. Major projects such as the three famous sets of bronze doors commissioned for the city’s Baptistry, the unprecedented completion of the dome of the adjacent Duomo, and a completely new way of presenting sacred narrative developed by Donatello will be analysed against the economic and political life of this vibrant city. The system of patronage, divided between the commune which governed Florence, the church which looked after its spiritual welfare and the major families (such as the Medici) whose personal wealth was vital in providing the finance necessary, was the other agent of change without which none of this could have happened.