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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 75*21,175 deCHABY, Darrel Eugene, 1930* FLORENCE IN TOE QUATTROCENTO. Hie American University, Ph.D., 1975 Literature, general Xerox University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan48ioe Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. FLORENCE IN THE QUATTROCENTO by Darrel E. deChaby Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of The American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Literature Chairmant, iftm Dean of the College Dates 3.3 1975 The American University Washington, D. C. THE AMERICAN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY SO$Z Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Table of Contents Florence xn the Quattrocento Page 1 Footnotes Paget 65 Bibliography Page 68 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Florence in the Quattrocento This is Florence. Giotto's belltower (des. 1334), and Brunelleschi's Duomo (des. 1419), the dome of the Cathedral of Florence, have stood for more than 500 years as symbols of the optimism, the vitality, the creativity of the Renais­ sance and of this Italian city. Man in this time thought his potentialities to have no limit. (Duomo, doseup) Whatever seeds each man cultivates will grow to maturity and bear him their own fruit. If they be vegetative, he will be like a plant. If sensitive, he will become brutish. If rationale he will grow into a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God. (Michelangelo, "Creation of Adam," detail) We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul's judgment, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine. ("Creation of Adam," detail) Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. O supreme generosity of God the Father, o highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills. Beasts as soon as they are born . bring with them from their mother’s womb all they will ever possess. Spiritual beings, either from the beginning or soon thereafter, become what they are to be for ever and ever. On man when he came into life the Father conferred the seeds of all kinds and the germs of every way of life. 1 (^Creation of Adam," full view) So wrote the great humanist Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in his famous oration "On the Dignity of Man," composed in i486. (Botticelli, "Portrait of Man with a Medal") Man could be whatever he willed himself to be. He could free himself from a confining life like a statue? emerg­ ing from marble. So said Florentine humanists during the Renaissance. (Michelangelo, "The Slave") Wallace K. Ferguson has written that the "cultural vitality of the Renaissance • • • drew its positive in­ spiration from the intellectual excitement caused by the challenge of new conditions of life, of new potentialities in every field of culture, and in general, of a sense of Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 3 . 2 breaking new ground and of scanning ever-widening horizons.” This describes the spirit of the Renaissance in Florence. (Sano di Pietro, "Merchants**) Renaissance. The word means rebirth. But rebirth of what? What was the Renaissance? What made it possible? The nineteenth century French critic and historian H.A. Taine pro­ pounded the theory that great cultural creativity could be explained by three factors* race, milieu, and moment. Let us modify Taine*s theory and say that the Renaissance was possible because of a combination of men, milieu and moment. (Gozzoli, "Procession of the Magi") The Renaissance men who built, painted, sculpted, wrote some of the supreme artistic masterpieces of their age, or of any other, manifested a spirit of creativity which is always present in man but is not always released in him. If man could be what he willed himself to be, these men willed that cultural rebirth which was the Renaissance. (Carpaccio, "Portrait of a Man with a Red Hat") Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. The milieu* the place* must be right for rebirth ~ and the place often found to be the matrix of the Italian Renaissance was Florence* a medium-sized Tuscan town some­ times called "Athens on the Arno" for the river on whose banxs it was built and for the cultural florescence which it came to represent! Florence* whose very name means "city of flowers." (Anon.* "Map of the Chain") The moment* the time* must be right for rebirth. Near the end of the fourteenth century in Florence events occurred which some scholars suggest caused the moment of the Renaissance in Italy to be. These were dramatic events* a time of crisis for Florence. (Leonardo* "Study of Five Heads") It has been said that the Renaissance was a period of "Political* economic* social* moral* intellectual* religious* and aesthetic crises."3 Florence experienced all these during her history. (Raphael* "Fire in the Borgo") But there was a form of crisis which* about the year 1400* according to Renaissance historian Hans Baron* set Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. in motion a chain reaction which gave rise to the full flowering of the Renaissance. That crisis was political — the threat of invasion and subjugation of Florence by Milan in northern Italy. (Anon., "Armato") When that crisis was successfully met by the Florentines and comparative political stability established and main­ tained for a period of more than ninety years, the moment was right for cultural rebirth. (Masaccio, "Firenze, Carmine") For with that political stability came economic and social stability. These in their turn made it possible for the great geniuses of the time, men who were born in or who came to Florence, to create, to apply themselves to intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. (Anon., "Diploma Awarded to Honophrius de Honophriis") After nearly a century of intense creativity, Flor­ ence again faced a political crisis, this time not merely the threat of invasion but actual invasion by the great armies of Louis VIII of France in 1494. This time the Florentines did not, could not resist these foreign in- Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. vasions because they were not politically united and the invasions of the French armies precipitated a series of foreign invasions which were to plague Italy for nearly 400 years. (Anon., "Battle Scene") The effect of this second political crisis was to neutral­ ize the Renaissance in Florence — but the impulse of the Renaissance was now so strong that it spread throughout Europe in the ensuing decades. We may say that a political crisis was one of the primary elements that caused the Ren­ aissance in Florence and that another political crisis nearly 100 years later caused that Renaissance optimism, vitality and creativity of which we spoke to dwindle in Florence. (Masaccio, "Firenze, Carmine") This, then, is the story of one of the most brilliant and productive periods in the history of man — an age rivaled in creative output, in architectural, sculptured, painted, and literary masterpieces by few other cultures. This is the period of 1400 to 1500, the fifteenth century in Florence — a time called the Quattrocento.

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