Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
and hoarded wealth. Masaccio's image of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the
Garden of Eden proved especially prophetic: the Brancacci were allied with the Strozzi
family, and were similarly exiled by the Medici before they could see the work completed.
But the patrons with the greatest impact on the course of art history were, of course, the
Medicis. Patriarch Cosimo the Elder was exiled in 1433 by a consortium of Florentine
families who considered him a triple threat: powerful banker, ambassador of the Church,
and consummate politician with the savvy to sway emperors and popes. But the flight of
capital from Florence after his departure created such a fiscal panic that the banishment
was hastily rescinded and within a year the Medicis were well and truly back in town. To
announce his return in grand style, Cosimo funded the 1437 rebuilding of the Convento di
San Marco (now Museo di San Marco) by Michelozzo, and commissioned Fra' Angelico
to fresco the monks' quarters with scenes from the life of Christ. Another artist pleased to
see Cosimo return was Donatello, who had completed his lithe bronze statue of
David
(now in the city's Museo del Bargello) with his patronage.
Through such commissions, early Renaissance innovations in perspective, closely ob-
served realism and chiaroscuro (the play of light and dark) began to catch on throughout
the region. In Sansepolcro, a painter named Piero della Francesca earned a reputation for
figures who were glowing with otherworldly light, and who were caught in personal pre-
dicaments that people could relate to: Roman soldiers snoozing on the job, crowds left
goggle-eyed by miracles, bystanders distressed to witness cruel persecution. His fresco
series
Legend of the True Cross,
commissioned by the Bacci family for a chapel in
Arezzo's Chiesa di San Francesco, was one of the supreme artistic achievements of the
time.
Filippo Lippi (1406-69), one of the greatest Tuscan painters of his era, entered the Carmelite
order as a monk aged only 14 but renounced his vows after meeting (and subsequently elop-
ing with) a novice who was sitting for the figure of the Madonna in a fresco he was painting
for the
duomo
in Prato.
