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Abstract
The relationship between trecento and quattrocento architecture is usually seen as a simplistic paragone of stylistic antithesis generally derogatory to the former period. A reconstruction of the original cortile wing of the Palazzo Vecchio, which was remodeled in the Renaissance, permits the deconstruction of this view, at least with respect to key aspects of one major building. New archaeological evidence, together with historical data and the analysis of two picaresque literary texts, yields a detailed picture of the complex early project. The builders' remarkably precise and imaginative planning procedure is rediscovered, along with the exceptionally high functionalism of the original fabric. Life in the palace, real and symbolic, is reviewed, and the changing form of the cortile in the Renaissance is found to have been motivated principally not by aesthetics, but by Medicean politics.
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Notes on contributors
Marvin Trachtenberg
Marvin Trachtenberg's publications include books on Giotto's Campanile (1971) and the Statue of Liberty (1976), and he is co-author with Isabelle Hyman of the survey Architecture from Prehistory to Postmodernism (1986). He was the author of the review of the recent literature in architectural history that appeared in the Art Bulletin (LXX, 1988). He is currently working on Brunelleschi, trecento urbanism, and a book on the Palazzo Vecchio. [Institute of Fine Arts, 1 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10021]