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For Art
Florence has always embraced art and culture. Few artistic works remain from
its days as a Roman colony, but plenty date from the Middle Ages, when the city
first hit its artistic stride. Funded by medieval bankers, merchants and guilds,
artists adorned the city's churches, palazzi (palaces) and public buildings with
frescoes, sculptures and paintings of a quality never before encountered. This
continued through the period now known as the Renaissance, bequeathing
Florentines a truly extraordinary artistic heritage.
Medieval Art
The Middle Ages get a bad rap in the history books. This period may have been blighted
by famines, plagues and wars, but it also saw the rise of civic culture in the Italian city-
states, a phenomenon that led to an extraordinary flowering of painting and sculpture.
When the Gothic style was imported from Northern Europe, local artists reworked it into a
uniquely Tuscan form, creating works that were both sophisticated and elegant and that
highlighted attention to detail, a luminous palette and increasingly refined techniques.
Renaissance Art
During the 15th century, painting overtook its fellow disciplines of sculpture and architec-
ture and became the pre-eminent art form for the first time in the history of Western art.
Painters experimented with perspective and proportion and took a new interest in realistic
portraiture. Supported by wealthy patrons such as the Medicis, Florentine painters includ-
ing Giotto di Bondone, Sandro Botticelli, Tommaso di Simone (Masaccio), Piero della
Francesca, Fra' Angelico and Domenico Ghirlandaio were among many artistic innovat-
ors.
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