Founding the Palazzo Vecchio in 1299: The Corso Donati Paradox.

The usual origin-story of the Palazzo Vecchio as a security measure for the city's executives taken in response to civic unrest does not hold up under a close analysis of the historical record and the architectural evidence. The original project of 1299, as distinguished from the building as modified 1306-1310, was not heavily fortified; and by contemporary standards the late 1290s was a comparatively peaceful interval. It is proposed that rather than fear, the immediate motivation for the decision to build was a crisis in civic honor. If so, the palace would have been initially an expression less of the core values of the mercantile class, officially at the helm of the republic, than of the excluded nobility, as represented by the arch-enemy of the regime, Corso Donati.

Everyone familiar with Florentine history is probably aware of the connection between the great town-hall of the Republic (fig. 1) and a long list of important political figures. Among them are the Duke of Athens, who in 1342-1343 tried to make the Palazzo Vecchio into a veritable citadel; Cosimo il Vecchio, who was briefly imprisoned there before the coup of 1434, thereafter virtually its de facto master; and Cosimo I, who openly appropriated the building to his rule. In general the association of the monument and those who desired its physical and representational power is amply related in historical narratives. [1] In the case of one such figure, however, the full story has not been told. Virtually every text relating or even touching on the early history of the building, from Dino Compagni's chronicle to Nicolai Rubinstein's recent monograph, mentions the attack on the still incomplete palace by Corso Donati and his followers in 1304 ("And armed on horseback he came into the piazza, and fiercely attacked the Palazzo dei Signori with crossbow and fire"), a detail intended to illustrate the "Dantesque" civic violence of the period that gave birth to the palace. [2] But never is it mentioned that when the palace was founded five years previously in 1298/99, the Florentine political scene was under the sway of the same implacable enemy of the guild republic, Corso Donati himself, leader of the Black Guelf faction. This singular, seemingly paradoxical fact becomes even more puzzling when seen against the well-known but poorly explained series of delays, spread over more than a decade, in the founding of the palace. Why, I would like to know, did the delays end at the very moment when Florentine politics came so strongly under the influence of the Donateschi? Was this synchronicity a mere coincidence, or was there more to it? In other words, might the founding of the palace in 1298/99 have had something positive to do with Corso Donati and the forces he represented? Seven centuries after the event I take the opportunity to ask if it is possible that the arch-enemy of the guild republic should be considered the founder of its most important civic monument?

A CIVIC BUILDING FOR PEACEFUL TIMES

One of the recurring themes in the literature on the palace is that it was created primarily for the safety of the recently formed democratic government of the priori, whose previous headquarters had been merely rented or converted ordinary private houses. [3] This notion, that the founding of the palace amounted essentially to a security measure for the regime, owes largely to two misconceptions. One concerns the reading of the monument, the other the interpretation of the political climate during the years of its founding.

From the beginning the building has been called a "palace" (first "Palazzo dei Priori" or "del Popolo," later "Palazzo Ducale," only becoming "Palazzo Vecchio" after Cosimo I transferred his residence to the Pitti). This designation however, is rendered problematic by the external form of the structure. With its huge, menacing tower, watchbox, and multiple tiers of battlements (replete with arrow loops and machicolations concentrated over entrances), the building is fiercely defensive in look and capability, and it could as easily -- perhaps more easily -- be called a fortress. This strident military character, however, was alien to the initial project begun in 1299, and resulted only from radical changes made in the plans for the superstructure in 1306/7-1310. [4] Originally the building was to receive merely a standard form of battlements (without gallery), and the tower was restricted to the narrow, much lower old Foraboschi family shaft that was incorporated in the new fabric to support the belfry (fig. 2). The main facade of the monument, moreover, was not the present west front but rather the symmetrically composed, narrow north wall, which faced the pre-existing Platea Ubertorum -- site of the properties of the rebel Uberti clan destroyed in 1258 -- that now became the first Piazza della Signoria (fig. 3). [5]

As thus originally designed and built until 1306, the most striking and exceptional aspect of the project was neither its ordinary battlements (common to many contemporary palaces, including Florentine guild halls) nor its tower (entirely or largely invisible from the Platea Ubertorum). Rather, what would really have stood out was the rusticated stone facing, applied to what in most other respects was externally a rather unexceptional, although very large-scaled example of contemporary palace design. Covering all three main stories of the building on all sides, this novel program of rustication -- later to be the model for the great private palaces of the quattrocento -- has been the subject of some debate as to its sources and meaning. One school of thought proposes the medieval and the military, another Roman antiquity and the civic. Although a certain ambiguity will always vex this question -- the medieval examples themselves reflecting Rome, with defensibility never completely alienated from the civic -- the evidence strongly suggests that the Palazzo Vecchio probably reflected ancient Roman civic rustication, which in all likelihood would have been far better known and more meaningful to Florentines than German Imperial fortresses in distant southern Italy that have also been proposed as models. [6]

It has often been noted that in strictly functional terms of defense, rustication was counterproductive, being easier for attackers to scale, among other disadvantages. In fortifications what counted was always its look, whether suggestive of strength, antiquity, or both. Although, to be sure, the rustication of the Palazzo Vecchio may to some degree have conveyed the idea of strength -- which was, after all, a standard trait of the closed, austere, defensible Tuscan palace design of the period -- this connotation of the stonework only gained its present intensity from the heightened fortification of the building as altered in 1306-1310; the new (unrusticated) superstructure was so powerfully and fiercely militant that it visually and symbolically colonized and transformed the main palace block below. But originally, I would maintain, the symbolic thrust of the rustication probably was more civic than militaristic. Indeed, its closest known potential model was the three-tiered "Palace of Nerva," as the massively rusticated precinct wall of the Forum of Augustus in Rome was known at the time. [7] Possibly directly referential to this ancient Roman "palace," the Palazzo Vecchio rustication was in any event primarily conceived as a sign of romanitas and of Roman-like civic magnificence (an important reason why it was immediately taken up in the ground stories of numerous private palaces of the trecento, and more fully later). Just as the contemporary Florentine imaginary transformed the Romanesque Baptistery into a Roman "Temple of Mars," so, it can fairly be argued, Florentines would have seen -- have intended -- in the palace rustication a parallel sign of the romanitas of their city, another visible manifestation of the "Myth of Florence" (the "daughter of Rome") that was the ideological center of civic identity (embodied also in the figure of Hercules on the city seal). [8] To put this another way, if the palace rustication -- thereby the original palace project as a whole, which it dominated -- was in any way intended as a defensive measure, such "defense" primarily was not physical or even perceptual but ideological and representational, addressing the need of the young, fragile republic for visible signs of its status, legitimacy, and authority.

If the Palazzo Vecchio has been often misread through a failure to distinguish between its original, essentially civic form and its final, more militaristic guise, so too has the political history of the years of its creation been seen (in discussions of the palace) in inattentive, overgeneralized terms that fail to make crucial distinctions between what were, in fact, very different, changing conditions within a highly volatile period. What I refer to here is the false picture of Florentine internal affairs of the period from the 1290s through the first decade of the trecento as one uniformly of violence and terror, typically summoned up in discussions of the building (and its "defensive" character). [9] In accounts of the years around 1299 certain dramatic episodes of civic violence stand out to color our overview, most notably the reign of terror of the years 1301-1304. That Dante was the victim of these ferocious political disorders -- lucky to have been only exiled for life in 1301 and not executed for his membership in the wrong party (the White Guelfs) when he served a term as prior in 1300 -- reinforces the dark impression of the times. (In 1302 alone, 559 death sentences by hanging, decapitation, or fire were pronounced against the Whites.) Serving to set the palace into this gloomy picture is the most colorful and detailed contemporary account of the period, the chronicle of Dino Compagni, which not only describes the attack on the building in 1304 but informs us that in their very first meeting at the founding of the republic in 1282 the priors "locked themselves into the torte della Castagna near the Badia, so that they should not have to fear the threats of the powerful." [10]

Such events are by no means to be discounted in the history of the palace and its times; indeed, the final, militaristic form of the palace took shape largely as a corrective response to the grievous experiences of 1301-1304. [11] Yet we should not allow these events to distort our interpretation of the entire turn-of-the-century period and its relevance to the monument. Although the palace founded in 1299 was part of a communal drama, it seems to have had a rather different plot than any simplistic palazzo-as-stronghold story might suggest. A review of the years between the founding of the republic and the completion of the palace -- 1282 to circa 1315 -- reveals a period not of continuous civic violence, but rather of largely peaceful times (by Florentine standards), marred only by relatively few eruptions of serious disorder, most of them shortlived. [12] The great exception, of course, was the virtual reign of terror of 1301-1304 imposed on Florence by Corso Donati and the Black Guelfs. But otherwise, al though political tension was rarely absent, open, widespread violence was sporadic and infrequent. The first decade of the republic saw practically no public internal strife whatsoever. Although the following years, 1292-1295, were revolutionary, with considerable mob agitation contributing to the pressures that led to the radical legislative reforms of the Ordinances of Justice (which excluded from high office the troublesome nobility; or magnati, and opened the regime slightly to the craft guilds), the only serious violence came at the end of these reform years in short-lived disturbances that resulted in the fall and exile of Giano della Bella, the reform leader.

What is most telling in this survey, however, concerns the half-decade preceding and including the founding of the palace. Between July 1295, when conservative forces led by the great magnate leader, Corso Donati, failed in an attempt to bring down the republic and thereafter largely abandoned such ideas, and May of 1300, when disorders surfaced that led to the debacle of late 1301 and the ensuing horrors (in which Donati again played a major role), Florence experienced virtually no serious open civic strife at all. [13] Although strong tensions may have existed beneath the surface of public affairs, and discounting relatively minor outbursts of factional rivalry and discontent regarding one issue or another, the years were so "uneventful" that it has been said that were it not for the presence of Dante and Dino Compagni historical interest in this undramatic half-decade would be even more negligible that it generally has been. [14] In relative terms, the years were thus exceptionally -- though, of course, n ever absolutely -- secure ones for the republic and its highest magistrates, the priors. This fact sharply undercuts the usual interpretation of their new palace primarily as a response to threatening public disorder.

In this account we cannot, of course, dismiss the undeniable fact that the new palace did provide great security for the government of the priors, nor can it reasonably be argued that such security was merely fortuitous. Even in its originally founded, nominally military form as explained above, the palace was at the very least inherently a massive edifice whose solid, imposing walls and "standard" battlements did much to reinforce the status and safety of the state. Yet the obvious need for such a "safe" building had manifestly existed from the outset of the republic in 1282; indeed, irrespective of security, the need for a palace had become something of a chronic public issue. Between 1285 and 1297 the question of a new palace arises at least eight times in meetings of the city councils (by which all legislation had to be approved) only to be summarily tabled or left undecided (1285, twice; 129O); [15] vaguely and ineffectively incorporated in the Ordinances of Justice (1293, when the priors are granted un financed authority to decide where to reside); [16] approved but with no action taken (1294); [17] and then repeatedly tabled (1295, 1296, and on 22 October 1297 until January 1, at which point it does not reappear). [18] Only on 30 December 1298 was a definitive decision made, specifically granting the priors (with an elite group of advisors) wide building authority, including the choice of building site and the expropriation of the necessary real estate. [19] Implementation followed rapidly: within three days, agents were appointed to purchase land; [20] and the cornerstone was laid within two months (on February 24, which in the Florentine calendar that turned on March 25 was still technically 1298). [21] The question is, why did the firm decision to build come at the end of 1298, a tranquil year with neither external crisis nor internal upheaval, which Machiavelli was to deem one of the sunniest in Florentine history; [22] and not earlier -- during the years of the Ordinances of Justice, for example, when public support for the republic ran at an unusually high level, or in 1295, following the attempted right-wing coup whose suppression required vigorous and courageous action and whose energies might readily have been converted into a building campaign. Or again, having been delayed already so long, why was the project not then left until after the bloody violence of 1301-1304?

It might, of course, be argued that it was the very tranquility of 1298 that was responsible for the founding rather than the opposite. With no urgent civic crisis to distract them, the Florentine leaders would have felt free to turn their attention seriously to the problem of the palace. This benign state may indeed have played a role in the founding, but it cannot have been the decisive factor, for Florence had been similarly untroubled since mid-1295. Moreover, the civic atmosphere would appear to have played no identifiable, decisive role -- certainly not a consistent one -- in the string of major public works that preceded the palace, which included the enormous new ring of walls (laid out in 1284), the Badia (begun 1285), the Piazza di S. Maria Novella (1289), S. Croce (1294), and the new Cathedral (1296), all begun in a Florence of varying public conditions (although it must be noted that no major building was begun during the war years 1288-1292). The recollection of these projects is important, for it raises the question of why the new communal palace found its place only at the end of this prestigious architectural lineup. One would think that no building would have been more urgent to the new government than its own palace, yet it was delayed time and again. For the many supporters of the regime its founding can only have been an event much to be desired; its delay, particularly given the string of other ambitious undertakings, must be accounted for. Thus we now find ourselves in search of an explanation for two interrelated problems: the extended retardation of the project, and the timing of its initiation in 1298/1299.

CHOOSING THE SITE: AN INDECISIVE FACTOR

Undoubtedly one major obstacle blocking the new palace was the problem of choosing its site (a point raised repeatedly in the series of abortive palace initiatives). [23] The question is, however, was this in fact the decisive delaying factor, as has been claimed? [24] To be sure, the site problem was not one to be underestimated in the contentious, fractious democratic regime in which vociferously competing voices in city councils and among the priorate made all firm decisions difficult. But as with the spurious issue of public security, scholarship appears to have exaggerated the problem of the site with respect to the problem of the delay and timing of the palace project.

Had the site been selected arbitrarily, that is, had there been no strong, rational reason(s) to favor one location over another but only certain now-irretrievable factors of intrigue and faction, it perhaps could be argued that debate simply continued back and forth aimlessly until finally the proponents of a given area somehow gained the day. But in fact the site finally settled upon was, from all evidence, not capriciously chosen. Numerous factors (some attested to explicitly in the sources) made it uniquely desirable. Among them were its central location, [25] proximity to the Palazzo del Podesta, and adjacency to the quasi-state church of S. Pier Scheraggio. [26] Perhaps its most important advantage was the empty space at its northern boundary; the Platea Ubertorum, which provided a readymade initial piazza for the building, thereby satisfying without conflict or expense one of the primary requirements of such civic monuments. [27]

All of these points would have made a powerful argument, hard to resist in city council meetings (or among the group of priors that was delegated the final decision in 1298). Yet I find it difficult to imagine that such an argument would have been a new one in 1298, for it would have been every bit as valid in 1294 or 1285, even allowing for the likelihood that it would have taken some time for the Florentines to become fully aware of all of its ramifications. If site was an issue from beginning to end -- a constant in the process -- it cannot have been the only, or even the most important issue. The Florentine regime was fully capable of making difficult choices when the goal was something intensely and securely desired. The long deferral and "sudden" approval of the palace suggests that it was not the site problem but the project itself that was the real issue; that the go-ahead was attained not when the site question was "solved," but the other way around -- the site decision depended on a firm committmen t to the project itself, irrespective of site. [28] And in fact, the deliberation of December 30, 1298 did not resolve the site issue of the palace ("no decision on its location had yet been made," as Rubinstein himself points out) but only empowered the priors to do so (along with raking all other necessary steps towards construction) [29] Thus we are returned to our original question: the causes of the project's long retardation and turnabout in 1298/99.

1282-1295: PROBABLE REASONS FOR THE DELAY

From our perspective of seven centuries the palace would appear a self-evident desideratum of the republic from its outset in 1282, something obvious and urgent, if not categorically necessary for the regime to undertake for reasons of utility; security; and prestige. At the time, however, the matter would probably not have seemed quite so clearcut. A number of factors would have rendered the project rather more complicated and ambiguous, among them the historical perspective of the time and the competing presence of other pressing public needs of higher priority.

First, considering the great expense of such a building project as well the social costs of the demolition necessary to clear a place for it in the dense urban fabric, we may reasonably conjecture that in general during most of this period, and especially with respect to the earliest palace initiatives, the project was regarded by the regime, which was dominated by shrewd businessmen and legal professionals of the five most powerful guilds, as something of an unsound investment -- or at least a not entirely sound one -- in a rather speculative enterprise. They had no inkling that the republic would last for two centuries; indeed, given historical experience their expectations were probably quite to the contrary. In the previous half century Florence had experimented with a half-dozen modes of government, all of which failed. Who, then, could be sure that the latest, the guild republic formed only in 1282, would prove any more lasting in the tumultuous city than the previous constitutional enterprises? (And i ndeed, severe constitutional crises and temporary collapses of the republic extended well into the trecento, the notorious dictatorship of the Duke of Athens of 1342-1343 being only the last of such episodes.) [30] Why destroy a good neighborhood for an expensive palace that would be potentially only a monument to futility? Not building it -- letting the initiative fail -- while still supporting the nascent institution was a sound way of hedging one's bets.

Such doubts would have soon been reinforced by the pressure of events: the long, fruitless expansionist war against Pisa and Arezzo of 1288-1292, and the ensuing three years of political near-revolution and counterrevolution. The war not only diverted attention from the palace project, but military expenses stretched Florentine financial capacities to their limits, contributing to the failure of the 1290 palace initiative by making it unaffordable. On the other hand, during the revolutionary years 1292-1295, with enthusiasm for the republic at a peak, one might have expected a breakthrough, especially given the passionate democratic idealism of the reform leader, Giano della Bella. And indeed, as we recall, the palace project was tacitly favored in the Ordinances of Justice in 1293 (which gave the priors authority to decide where to reside) and explicitly approved for the first time by the city councils in July of 1294 (although by no means unanimously). Yet in the first instance the initiative was incomplet e and unfunded (a new palace not being mentioned), and in the second it quickly evaporated. Here much of the failure of the project may be attributed to the priorities of the reform leader, Giano della Bella, for whom radical changes in the law seem to have counted more than the architectural enshrinement of the state, and also, of course, to his dramatic downfall in the months following the inconsequential approval of the palace. [31] In other words, we may conjecture that during 1293-1295 attention was distracted from the project first by the urgency of legal reform, and then by the urgency of stopping further reform, which had come to threaten the ruling coalition. Yet had the palace acquired the firm, enthusiastic support of the popolo grasso -- the dominant class of businessmen and professionals -- who remained the center of power all through the turmoil, exploiting della Bella until he threatened to become more of a liability than an asset, one can well imagine that the breakthrough of the project would have occurred during the reform movement. That it did not suggests that the regime had not yet fully or definitively committed itself to the expensive, ambitious, and perhaps still somewhat dubious undertaking. [32]

AFTER 1295: PROFIT AND HONOR

It might be imagined that after 1295 the outlook on the palace initiative progressively shifted in its favor. Certainly we have reason to believe that the attitude toward the republic -- so critical to the viability of its palace -- would have been newly sanguine and increasingly optimistic, for it had now proven itself by having survived a long, bitter war, quasi-revolutionary constitutional reform, and counterrevolution, which ended in the violent attempt to bring down the republic in July 1295 by the massed magnati that was quickly put down by the guildsmen. In the eyes of the powerful mercantile and professional class, the project probably was becoming a better potential investment, certainly a more affordable one in these peaceful, prosperous times.

Nevertheless, a critical mass of enduring enthusiasm and support for it did not emerge until the end of 1298. I will argue that this occurred not because it was only then that confidence in the republic happened to drift across a certain threshold of approval and action, but rather because it was only then -- on one particular day -- that the underlying need and desire for the palace was fueled by a singular set of motivating and enabling factors to produce the needed impetus.

Thus far I have speculated how one factor may have adversely affected the project's fortunes, i.e., the instrumentalist, profit-oriented, hard-nosed mentality centered in the dominant mercantile class. But, of course, the commercial perspective was not the only one from which the palace project might potentially be seen and judged (even by the popolo grasso). Counter to the dedication to profit were other values from the complex, entangled interweave of Christian, feudal, and civic codes that regulated Florentine life. [33]

Among them was the feudal-based code of honor, whose importance cannot be overestimated in medieval/Renaissance Florentine society. One's honor was one's most important possession, "the most important thing in anyone's life," according to Alberti. [34] Without it wealth and safety were threatened, status and identity erased: all was lost in what became, in F. W. Kent's words, "a living death." [35] So hypersensitive was society to the code of honor and shame that it was possible to severely punish a criminal in absentia with a pittura infamante, whereby the guilty party was made to wither away as a social being through the mete display of a painted image of his ignominy. [36]

Like many other values, honor was a fluid concept. It affected not only individuals and families, but could attach itself to corporate groups and institutions, and especially to cities. It is not necessary to go as far as Trexler, who argues that due to its "dishonorable" commercial and mercantile basis Florence was preoccupied by an enduring crisis of honor, to recognize the Florentines' high sensitivity (in Gene Brucker's words) "to anything that cast a shadow upon the integrity and honor of their government." [37] For Florentines the honor of their city, the ultimate ground of their individual identities as social and economic beings, was vital. Just as the honor of individuals was crucial to their standing in the community, without which they were exposed and unprotected, so the honor of a city was necessary for its standing in the community of cities, with analogous relevance to security, status, and the ability to function -- indeed, to survive -- in the treacherous, lawless world of regional Italian g eopolitical relationships and interaction.

Architecture was, of course, deeply implicated in the honor of the city, whose public works formed its most important material and representational dimension. The splendid set of monuments at the center of Florence -- the Duomo, Campanile, Baptistery, Orsanmichele, Bargello, Palazzo dei Priori, and ancillary works -- came to articulate its ideological program of civic identity in rather precise symbolic terms. [38] But beneath such programmatic symbolism was the sheer magnificence of the buildings, the immense pride the inhabitants took in them, and the importance of that pride. The architectural documentation of the period, though comparatively mute, does cite as grounds for building and funding in general the "honor" of the city (along with "utility" and "beauty"). A case in point is the founding decision of 30 December 1298 of the Palazzo Vecchio itself. [39] Nor was such reference merely rhetorical: everything that we know about these great public works, including the immense amount of time, expense, and energy necessary for their production and their praise in certain contemporary documents and in early descriptions of the city, suggests that the Florentines meant it. "Honor" was not a term used lightly in the period.

Honor and shame, of course, were not experienced simply as present or absent qualities, but were highly variable in intensity depending on any number of factors; and the effect could be multilayered. Attending the absence of the palace would have been a base line level of feeling regarding honor: that is, the simple collective desire for an honorable representational building for the highest civic institution of Florence. This intramural motivation would have been reinforced by an extramural factor: the presence by the late dugento of impressive town halls in many cities in Tuscany and north Italy made the absence of the Florentine palace that much more pointed and shameful. With its highest civic institution standing virtually naked architecturally, the city cut a poor figure in the world of civic palaces.

This was, however, an inherited condition, a problem resident from the very beginning of the republic. It probably would have been, I suggest, experienced generally as a diffuse, nagging annoyance, assimilated and tolerated in its gradual intensification from year to year as the sense of shameful procrastination slowly grew. It took a sudden jolt, in fact several shocks to make dramatically manifest the shame of the palace's absence, raising the consciousness and the stakes of architectural honor and shame to an unbearable level, which rendered continuing inaction now impossible.

To fully appreciate the significance of these motivating events, however, we must take into account several further considerations concerning the question of honor in concept and in practice, in the way of distinctions that were quite real and important in a society in which honor was so crucial. I refer here first to the obvious distinction between what might be called intrinsic and extrinsic honor (and dishonor/shame). The former is absolute, involving one's personal sense of honor in one's own eyes and the sight of God, regardless of the knowledge or opinion of others. This mode being obviously a moot question regarding the palace project, it is the alternative that concerns us, the type that is relative, socially constructed and contingent. Within this category certain conditions directly affect the degree of honor and particularly the intensity of dishonor/shame, with which we are directly concerned here. To the extent that the dishonorable fact remains hidden, the subject is spared shame, and vice vers a. That is, the magnitude of relative honor/dishonor tends to vary according to the extent of its public knowledge. Moreover, its intensity tends to vary directly with the relational distance between victim and audience: within one's close family it might be possible to manage the effects of one's dishonor (honor being here above all a public, social issue); with friends it becomes problematic; while with strangers, especially socially important ones, the matter becomes intolerable. To these possibilities must be added still another variation, which might be called competitive, or inverse dishonor: the possession or reception of an honor by another person, such as a rival, may cause one to consider oneself to that degree dishonored (particularly in a highly competitive society like Florence).

The case of the chronically delayed palace project was a worst-case scenario of these possibilities, combining all the most deleterious levels and factors. The initial source of the architectural dishonor was, we have noted, not merely the absence of a communal palace, but the presence of splendid town halls in other cities. It was this differential, openly apparent to the eyes of all, that shamed the city. In 1297 an event occurred -- the first of the two events that, in this reading, would have provoked the crisis of the palace initiative -- which painfully widened the gap (again through the mechanism of competitive dishonor): the founding of the magnificent Palazzo Pubblico in Siena, truly putting dilly-dallying Florence to shame. [40] That the Florentines were sensitive to this issue is apparent not only in a series of architectural responses to Sienese projects in the period (including the later building history of the Palazzo Vecchio itself), but evident in a well-known document of 1300. In it the Sign oria exempts Arnolfo di Cambio from city taxes because of his "capomaestroship" of the new Florentine cathedral, which is "expected to be the most beautiful and honorable in Tuscany." [41] This phrase was not the mere pro forma repetition of a topos such as "most beautiful in the world," or "in Italy." It pointedly, if implicitly, referred to Pisa Duomo -- and particularly to Giovanni Pisano's spectacular new Duomo facade rising in Siena since 1284, which the Florentines countered in 1296 by beginning their own church with a lavish facade and not with the much-needed nave behind it. That is, Arnolfo's project was literally a "face-saving" measure for the city. A year later the Palazzo Pubblico project, funded on October 5, [42] seems to have had the effect of making the Florentine regime take the Palazzo Vecchio initiative somewhat more seriously than it had for several years, delaying approval that same month (October 22) not indefinitely or for half a year as on the two previous occasions (1295 and 1296), b ut for only a two-month period. [43]

But the Sienese provocation was evidently not yet enough. The true crisis of Florentine civic architectural honor occurred only when, on top of everything else, the worst part of the worst-case scenario of dishonor came into play: that is, when the shameful absence of a Florentine town hall was prominently displayed to a large group of distinguished, prestigious foreigners whom Florence had been working hard and successfully to impress. In other words, the critical moment, I propose, would have paralleled the birth two centuries later of Michelangelo's Campidoglio renovation in Rome, which hinged on the Pope's acute embarrassment during Charles V's triumphal entry in 1536 into the city, whose intended culmination at the Capitol was thwarted by its lack of suitable access, forcing a shameful detour. [44]

The Florentine crisis in question, which marked the definitive turning point in the palace project, involved an ambitious foray in diplomacy. Through much of 1298 the priorate had worked energetically on a diplomatic mission that established Florence as a power-broker not merely in Tuscany, but on the larger Italian scene -- the negotiation of peace between the Estense of Ferrara and Bologna (traditionally a Florentine ally). In December a surprisingly successful conclusion was reached (with Florence to occupy numerous castles of both cities to form a kind of neutral, buffer zone), and on December 29 an elaborate, festive celebration of this diplomatic coup occurred in Florence, attended by notable emissaries from the cities involved. [45] Suggestively, it is precisely on the following day, 30 December 1298, in a council session now filled with "orations ... delivered affectingly and with great persuasive eloquence," that Florence definitively voted (in an act sprinkled with the word "honor" or its derivativ es) [46] to build a new town hall -- the town hall that had not been present, that had been embarrassingly and shamefully absent at the reception of the illustrious guests.

I suggest that this turnabout occurred with the ears of the Florentines still burning from slighting remarks made by the prestigious visitors regarding the miserable quarters of the highest state body of the city, marring the day of glory. Or perhaps it would have been merely their disdainful, knowing looks -- even imagined ones -- that served as the last straw that finally broke the camel's back of Florentine procrastination. In either case, in this scenario, a project that only a few years previously would have been regarded as a dubious architectural investment by the mercantile oligarchy now -- as I reconstruct the event -- was transformed into urgent viability by a flash-point ignition of the code of civic honor, releasing a wave of accumulated Florentine desire for the new palace that led quickly to the purchase of land and the cornerstone laying in February of 1299. [47]

THE ROLE OF THE MAGNATI AND CORSO DONATI

It is of course possible that the architectural shaming of Florence would have precipitated the decision irrespective of further contingencies -- that it would have been sufficient in itself to spur Florence finally into architectural action through sheer, undifferentiated, collective reaction in the regime. Yet the events of 29 and 30 December 1298 were attended by a factor that not only must be taken into account, but which makes still more likely the causal connection between them I have posited. In my earlier discussion of the conditions affecting the intensity of honor and shame one variable was omitted: the degree to which certain groups tended to experience honor/shame more strongly than others and, moreover, reacted to that experience more spontaneously and forcefully. The fact is that at the moment of decision, the leadership of Florence happened to belong to that class most sensitive and behaviorally responsive of all to honor and shame. This is a crucial point given that even the most intense colle ctive discontent and desire generally required strong leadership for effective action (as in the case of the Ordinances of Justice, so dependent on the personal leadership of Giano della Bella that upon his demise the reform movement collapsed and was partly rolled back).

The class in question was the magnati, the Florentine aristocracy whose core comprised the old feudal and urban nobility (such as the Rossi, Donati, Lamberti, Cavalcanti, Malispini, and Buondelmonti), joined in recent generations by certain originally high popolani families (including the Frescobaldi, Bardi, Mozzi, Spini, and Cerchi). [48] Although modern scholarship has tended to emphasize the commonality of outlook of magnati (old and new) and the popolo grasso, the overlap of their value structures was not complete. To be sure, the popolo grasso and the magnati shared many economic and political goals; and the two groups engaged in much intermarriage, business associations, and mutual imitation of lifestyles, the magnati, in many cases, learning that hard work pays, and the popolo grasso imitating the chivalric, glamorous, and haughty ways of the magnati -- some so strongly that they were considered to "impersonate" them [49] and were thereby officially included in their numbers in 1293 by the Ordinances of Justice, which excluded the entire magnati class from high political office. But certain core values tended to endure in the depth and intensity of class attachment to them -- values being, of course, one of the main things that defines a class both externally and in self-conscious identity. The Florentine bourgeoisie, although inevitably affected by the code of honor, [50] aspired to control its demands through an effective legal system and in any case countered them with the hard-headed instrumentalist outlook of the mercantile value system. But the magnati refused to -- could not as a class -- abandon the feudal outlook with its hypervaluation of onore, and continued to indulge their sense of social superiority and beyond-the-law entitlement in violent acts of aggression and vendetta. [51] Indeed, the refusal to suppress their core code of values was the major reason why they came to be excluded as a class from high political office, becoming in effect a virtually disenfranchised caste.

Just because the Florentine magnati so often behaved in antisocial ways, however, or adopted a cynical attitude towards the bourgeois, republican form of government, we should not imagine that they loved their city any the less for it, or would not have been concerned with its honor. Florence was the city they considered theirs by right: the city of their birth and of their ancestors for generations, for which they had bravely spilled their blood on countless battlefields, whose churches were filled with family shrines, and whose history was filled with their names; the city, in sum, whose temporal and physical existence was coextensive with their own lives and destinies. Considering their deep attachment to Florence, hypersensitivity to honor and shame, and, moreover, their tendency to blur the private and public realms, [52] it would seem likely that the sensitivity of the magnati to questions of civic honor would have been unusually intense: one well imagines that they would have experienced the dishonor of "their" city as a virtually intolerable condition. Given their much-lamented, reactive tendency to erase dishonor with dramatic corrective action, [53] this class distinction becomes potentially relevant indeed for our discussion.

With respect to the problem of the founding of the palace, however, the question now becomes how the feelings of this politically marginalized class might have come to bear on the decision to build. Although the story of the continuing political role of the magnati after 1293/95 is complicated and incompletely understood, for present purposes certain essential points are adequately clear.

The Ordinances of Justice, by largely excluding the official political participation of the magnati, made them newly conscious of themselves as a class. [54] It was natural for this newly self-aware group of about seventy of the most powerful Florentine families -- or, more precisely, a number of its more ambitious members -- to seek a political structure, a mechanism to regain leverage in Florentine affairs. [55]

This structure proved to be the political party, or rather a set of two opposing Guelf parties (which came to be known as the Blacks and the Whites). The duality was a critical factor in the success of the movement, for the split strengthened rather than weakened the magnati, who were transformed from an amorphous, directionless mass into two cohesive factions animated by the spirit of competition and directed towards the realistic immediate goal of defeating their opposites. With this new energy and focus, the parties could reach towards their ultimate aim, to recover their powerful say in the control of the city. This would be accomplished not openly in the public forum but through the sustained practice of an insidious domestic realpolitik in private power circles and backrooms -- a precursor to the type of political "machine" that modern democracies and cities know all too well. As the party rivalry became the center of political action in the otherwise quiet late 1290s, the popolo grasso inevitably beca me deeply coinvolved. But with the crucial political action moved off the official playing field and away from its strict rules, the glamorous and powerful magnati provided the core and, above all, the leadership of both branches of the coalition. [56]

At the outset of this paper it was rather flatly stated that Corso Donati, leader of the Black faction, was the intrepid enemy of the republic [57] But he was so only in the ambiguous manner of the magnati class, devoted to its city while casting a cynical eye on its government of the guilds. In the case of Corso, however, all such feelings -- including those involving honor and shame -- were intensely exaggerated, beyond even the magnati norm. Like his opposite, Giano della Bella, Corso was a larger-than-life personage. He was anything but a trendy late-dugento blue-blooded banker of the type widespread among the Florentine magnati. Corso was an atavistic phenomenon, a throwback to the high middle ages; if the bourgeoisie aped the manners of the late chivalric world, Corso seemed intent on returning to the world of his ancestors (although in a paradoxical way he might also be said to have foreshadowed in personality such Renaissance princes as Sigismondo Malatesta and Cesare Borgia). A member of one of the most ancient Florentine families, he disdained the commercial world and despised such men as the prodigiously wealthy leader of the Whites, Vieri de' Cerchi, an arriviste magnate international banker (into whose clan, however, Corso, with typical lack of scruples, felt free to marry to help compensate for his state of relative impoverishment, only to then have it rumored when a widower that he had murdered his wife). Corso possessed the feudal attributes in spades, being fearless, gallant, cultured, and handsome, as well as violent, ambitious, cunning, ruthless, and cruel. Famous throughout Italy, he cut a uniquely glamorous figure in the city, was much beloved by the Florentine masses (who were prone to shout "Viva il Barone!" as he passed on horseback), and was held in awe by the bourgeoisie whom he despised.

A great natural leader of tremendous presence and relentless energy he would have probably become a town dictator had he lived in one of the many Italian cities that in the late dugento were turning to autocracy as a solution to their internal problems. Indeed, this was, it seems, probably his ultimate ambition in Florence. Emerging in the 1280s to become the hero of Campaldino, where he led the victorious cavalry charge of 1289, following the years of Giano della Bella he rose swiftly to a position of leadership among the disaffected magnati. It was Corso who led the unsuccessful attack of July 1295 on the republic, and thereafter around Corso that the faction which came to be known as the Blacks took form. Outmaneuvering the White party of the Cerchi, Corso led his faction to virtual control over the state within a few years.

By the autumn of 1297 the Donateschi "machine" was nearing full operation, and in the winter of 1298-1299 -- the winter of the founding of the Palazzo Vecchio -- it reached its apogee. [58] As his influence mounted, Corso's sense of power appears to have risen to the point where he himself became its own victim, almost perishing in the intoxication of his de facto near-rule over Florence. On 1 January 1299 a new podesta took office, the thereafter infamous Monfiorito da Coderta da Treviso, handpicked by Corso as a personal tool in the subversion of justice. [59] Not only did this obscenely corrupt official (who took prominent part in the laying of the Palazzo Vecchio cornerstone on February 24) bring a perverted decision in early January against the Cerchi family, which resulted in the hushed-up deaths of six young men (in a case in which the Donati were actually the guilty party), but in another flagrant miscarriage of justice in Match he allowed his benefactor Corso to maul his own mother-in-law financiall y in court, so hideously, in fact, that reaction set in now against Corso, leading to his expulsion from Florence in May 1299 (also brought about by excessive and inequitable taxation). [60] In his heady days of power the impetuous, fearless knight had forgotten, to his own temporary ruin, that the successful operation of machine politics depends on a semblance of lawful rule. (He was to reemerge on the Florentine scene in November 1301 with a vengeance; his last stand would come only in 1308, when he was finally brought down and killed.)

The close synchronicity of the architectural shaming of Florence, the founding of the palace, and Corso's (initial) peak of influence in civic affairs is unlikely to have been fortuitous, given all the factors that I have considered, which would now include an ambitious, charismatic political leader high, if not supreme, among Florentines in his hypersensitivity and reactivity to questions of honor (and also the fact that Corso had been podesta in Bologna, one of the key cities involved in the diplomatic celebration of December 29). Certainly the palace could not have been easily voted against his wishes. At the very least, he would have shared in the decision, and more probably he would have been strongly behind it, if not indeed heavily responsible personally for the sudden and rapidly implemented decision to build. That Corso, according to Dino Compagni (and his own life's evidence), carried a "love for grandiose projects" is surely not irrelevant here, nor is his capacity for sudden, dramatic action (exe mplified by his heroic cavalry charge at Campaldino). [61] Perhaps Corso's effect on the founding decision was redundant -- it might have happened even without him. Yet I think not. Rather, his role would reinforce the scenario of civic architectural shame as catalytic event by providing a plausible and necessary agent for focusing and transforming collective desire into political action.

Once launched and having passed the threshold of material initiation, the project acquired its own momentum, its own life, and there would be no turning back (regardless of Corso's continuing presence or absence). Within a few years the splendid all'antica rusticated walls rose that would regain for Florence its lost architectural honor, and more. The civic shame of such a building's absence was transformed by the great new palace into a central point of civic honor, in its final form providing an icon of identity and power so compelling that it would serve, and outlive, all the Florentine regimes through all the centuries that followed (even becoming for a few years the capitol of all of Risorgimento Italy before finally lapsing into the museum that it essentially remains today). Nearly everything about the building would become part of Florentine lore, except for the name of the person who, from all evidence, seems to have served as its founder -- or, given Corso Donati's sometimes rather sinister, off-sta ge position in the state, as its Godfather. Possibly his role was merely lost in the shuffle of the tumultuous years of the construction of the building. But it is also possible, if not altogether likely that the Florentines -- who had him assassinated in 1308 -- did not wish to remember his role or the crisis of architectural honor/shame, and soon suppressed their memory of these events (as they were to suppress the true history of most of their primary civic monuments, including the Baptistery, the Campanile, and the Duomo). [62] Eventually, by Vasari's day, the only name associated with the founding would be the putative architect of the building: it became "Il Palazzo di Arnolfo," displaced thereby from the political world to Vasari's narrative of the rebirth of art.

The restored origin-story of the palace proposed by this paper necessarily affects our impression of the monument, that is, the original project of 1299. We now would see it primarily in quasi-anthropological, symbolic terms of "honor" rather than at the material, utilitarian level of "security." But were these two aims really so different? In fact, as already noted above, they were closely related in the social practice of the period: without honor, there could be no security for the individual, or for the larger group. Collective preoccupation with civic architectural honor was not merely a yearning for supererogatory status but rather involved primal anxieties concerning safety, indeed existence, in a world in which one's honor was fundamental to them, and shame their nemesis. What the massive, all' antica rusticated walls of the palace provided, in this reading, was less a physical or even perceptual barrier to assault than a much-needed symbolic aura of honor, an honorific mantle and shield that legitim ized the regime housed by the building, endowing it with a firm sociopolitical status that ultimately was the measure sine qua non of security, the first and strongest deterrent against attack. Although the final, more militarized form of the palace strengthened its physical defenses, even here it was the impregnable look of the building, bristling with multiple levels of observation and fire-power, that probably counted most. The intense symbolic figuration of the monument is epitomized in the colossal baldachin-like columnar belfry, referential to the Imperial watch-tower at S. Miniato al Tedesco, that literally crowns it. [63]

What this revised origin-story of the Palazzo Vecchio finally offers is thus not a total rejection of the old reductive reading, but rather a historically and architecturally more nuanced and concrete account of the motivational events and forces behind the founding of the building than previously given, and a firmer, more integrated understanding of the relation of its singular, stunning form to these motives in terms that allow for the interplay of physical and symbolic dimensions of architecture. The complexity and shape of the historical interweave was such that it appears to have permitted, indeed invited the paradoxical figure of Corso Donati -- noble enemy of the guild republic, who brought the merchants to save their architectural honor -- to its center.

INSTITUTE OF FINE ARTS 

(1.) On the palace and its masters in the republican period see: Rubinstein, 12; Trachtenberg, 1989; on the principiate see: Satkowski, 45-59; Trachtenberg, 1997a, 275-80.

(2.) "E armato a cavallo venne in piazza, e con balestra e con fuoco combatte il palagio de' Signori aspramente" (D. Compagni, bk. 3, 3; Rubinstein, 12).

(3.) Reiterated as recently as Spilner (396) and Rubinstein (6, 12), the notion appears first in (and uncritically relies on) Giovanni Villani (writing decades after the event, however, 8: 26; see below nn. 8, 20). On the pre-palace housing of the Priors, see Compagni, 275-77.

(4.) Trachtenberg, 1988. In 1342-1343, the Duke of Athens militarized the building even further, attempting to convert it into a veritable fortress with antiportals and other measures, which were subsequently dismantled.

(5.) The initial north orientation of the palace was first observed by Paul, 54ff; see now, Trachtenberg, 1988, and 1997, chap. 3.

(6.) 0n the varying interpretations of the rustication and its ancient-vs.-medieval sources -- including Mario Salmi, Isabelle Hyman, Juergen Paul, Staale Sinding-Larsen, Andreas Tonnesmann, and the author -- see Trachtenberg, 1993, 16 and 28 n. 16. In this debate one point to be emphasized is that, apart from the sheer obscurity of the southern Italian fortresses for Florentines, in 1299 the Empire had been a dead issue for nearly a half century; it only suddenly came back to life towards 1310 with the siege of Henry VII -- well after the completion of the rustication at the Palazzo Vecchio. It might be mentioned that prior to the Palazzo Vecchio there were some minor local examples of rustication: the base of one of the towers of Frederick II's fortress in Prato has shallow, drafted rustication alien to the Palazzo stonework; a number of pre-trecento Florentine private towers have rusticated bases, including the one incorporated into the Bargello; and by the early 1290s rustication had started to appear in the bottom story of private palaces, e.g., that of the Cerchi (on which see Preyer). The Palazzo Vecchio rustication is stylistically antithetical to such examples, programatically vastly more ambitious, and, I would contend, symbolically divergent in its civic dimensions; it would not be reasonable, I would contend, to imagine that they inspired the Palazzo stonework, especially given the availability of Roman models, as discussed below. I hope to clarify this issue in a future study.

(7.) See n. 6.

(8.) On the architectural dimensions of the Myth of Florence, see Trachtenberg, 1993, 14-20.

(9.) E.g., Rubinstein, 5f; Spilner, 396. The blurring of distinctions in political conditions in these years goes back to Giovanni Villani, who wrote his account (8:26) decades later and appears to contradict himself in other passages; see n. 22.

(10.) Compagni, bk. 1, 4 (17f).

(11.) Trachtenberg, 1988, 24f; cf. Rubinstein, 10.

(12.) The history of this period throughout my discussion relies closely on standard literature, which includes Davidsohn, 1972, vols. 3, 4; Ottokar; Raveggi et al.

(13.) In the words of Patrizia Parenti, "non conrengono nessun clamoroso episodio di cronaca cittadina od esterna" (in Raveggi et al., 282).

(14.) Ibid., 309.

(15.) On 30 March 1285 a council debates a statute regarding the construction of a new communal palace ("Infrascripta sunt ea statuta que debent asolvi. Primum, staturum quod loquitur de Palatio construendo, quod est sub subrica 'De Palatio Comunis Florentie faciendo,' in V libro," 30 March 1285, Consulte, 1:195; Rubinstein, 1995, 6; Davidsohn, 1908, 4: 499). On 29 June 1285 the site is discussed ("quod habeantur boni et legales homines, et ante quam discedant debeant invenire locum secrete in quo palacium fiat," Consulte, 1: 257; Compagni, 276). The site issue appears again on 28 January 1290 ("Latinus Bonacursi consuluit,, quod capitulum quod loquitur de Pallatio non suspendatur, quantum est ad inveniendum locum in quo Pallatium fiat," Consulte 1: 356; Compagni, 276).

(16.) "ipsi Priores omnes cum Vexillifero Justitie insimul morari, state, dormire et conmedere debeant in una domo ubi voluerint, et quam viderint abiliorem pro eorum offitio commodius exercendo" (Compagni, 27Sf).

(17.) On 21-22 July 1294 an initiative is approved regarding "de loco ubi Pallatium debeat fieri inveniendo, et de extimatione domorum, hedificiorum et terrenorum ubi Pallatium fiat" (Consulte, 2: 418-21; Rubinstein, 8; Davidsohn, 1908, 4: 499). In the debate, Giano della Bella spoke to the proposal, although his words are unrecorded ("Gianus de la Bella consuluit").

(18.) 16 November 1295, "quod capitulum quod loquitur de Pallatio Communis," (Consulte, 2: 502); 15 May 1296, "super suspensione facienda de infrascriptis capitulis usque ad kallendas novembris proxime venturi ... aliud est sub rubrica 'Quod provideatur de habendo et faciendo Pallatium pro Comuni' (2: 550); 22 October 1297, "Item, super suspensione capitulorum Constitutorum domini Potestatis et Capitanei, loquentium de Pallatio faciendo, et de lagho, et etiam de omni alio laboreriio faciendo, expensis Comunis; suspendantur usque ad kallendas ianuarii proxime venturi," 2:585; Davidsohn, 1908, 4: 499). Cf. Spilner, 393-401.

(19.) Provvisioni, 9, 120v-121v; cited in full by Frey, 183-85, n. 18.

(20.) January 1299, Provvisioni 9, 243v (Spilner, 442 n. 38); on 26 January a minimum of 1000 florins is directed to be spent every two months on these acquisitions.

(21.) The founding is recorded by Simone della Tosa and Giovanni Villani; see Rubinstein, 5 n. 1.

(22.) Machiaveili writes, "Ne mai fu la citta nostra in maggiore e piu felice stato che in questi tempi, sendo di uomini, di ricchezze e di riputazione ripiena," (1: 85); he evidently derives this from Villani, 8: 38 ("Ne detto tempo essendo la nostra citta di Firenze nel maggiore stato e piu felice che mai fosse stata..."). Here, Villani would appear to contradict his dark depiction of the times in his account of the founding of the palazzo (see n. 9). A similar contradiction occurs in his account of the founding of the new cathedral in 1296, "sendo la citta di Firenze in assai tranquillo stato, essendo passate le fortune del popolo per le novita di Giano della Bella" (8: 9); moreover here he misdates the event to 1294, when the "revolution" was still at its height (sic).

(23.) See nn. 15-18.

(24.) Rubinstein, 7ff, cf. Spilner, 393-401.

(25.) In the deliberations of July 1294, a council member urges that the site "should touch, in some part of it, at least three sesti'" -- "locus predictus tangat in aliqua sui partetres sextus ad minus" (Consulte, 2: 420), which meant a central position in the city as Spilner has pointed out (393-96, noting that in the event the chosen "site lay not only within a single sesto but within a single parish, that of San Pier Scheraggio"). On its centrality as perceived by Gregorio Dati and Leonardo Bruni, see Trachtenberg, 1997a, 267.

(26.) Simone della Tosa locates the palace adjacent to the church in his account of the founding: "s'incomincio a fondare il Palagio del Comune di Firenze da San Piero Ischeraggio" (156). See also Spilner, 401.

(27.) Giovanni Villani connects the palace site with the Uberti space, 6: 65; Cf. Rubinstein, 8f; Spilner, 397-401.

(28.) Spilner (393-96) points our that often the councils appear to have debated less the merits of specific sites than who should make the final decision. Evidently it was perceived that a select group -- in effect, a subcommittee -- would be more effective in making the choice than large council meetings.

(29.) Rubinstein, 8. The relevant passage reads, "quod ipsi domini Priores et Vexillifer nunc in offitio residentes cum consilio sapientum virorum ... possint eisque liceat ... providere, deliberare et firmare, in quo loco civitatis ... pro ipso Comuni morati, stare et residentiam facere debeant" (Provvisioni, 9, 120v-121v; entire text in Frey, 183-85, n. 18).

(30.) After the military disaster at Altopascio, Charles of Calabria became lord of Florence for seventeen months, and was finally persuaded to abdicate in 1328 by a payment of nearly a million gold florins. Previously, Robert of Naples was granted the signoria over Florence in 1313 for five years, extended for another five in 1317, to be sure always under sharp constitutional restrictions, which nevertheless gave him to right to appoint the podesta.

(31.) Although Giano della Bella supported the initiative when it was debated in 1294, there is no evidence that the project ever became a personal cause for him Like political reform.

(32.) Davidsohn cites evidence for an aversion among many Florentines to the "expensive project" in these years (1972, 3:757).

(33.) Brucker, 1969, 101.

(34.) Alberti, 149.

(35.) "Kent, 201. On the role of honor in early modern Florence, see Kuehn. The comment of Neuschel (101) -- "loss of honor ... meant possible annihilation" -- is also applicable to Florence. See also Peristrany.

(36.) Edgerton.

(37.) Trexler; Brucker, 1962, 39, 75.

(38.) Trachtenberg, 1993.

(39.) Provvisioni, 9, 120v-121v; cited in full in Frey, 183-85, doc. 18. Cf. passages cited in n. 46.

(40.) Brandi, 417 docs. 70-72; Cf. Rubinstein, 11.

(41.) Guasti, doc. 24 ("venustius et honorabilius templum aliquo alio sit in partibus Tuscie").

(42.) 0n Siena see Brandi, 417 doc. 72.

(43.) See n. 18. Spilner writes, "Another goad to action, of course, may have been Siena's decision to proceed with its new communal palace ... Given the historic rivalry between the two Tuscan cities, the Sienese initiative cannot have escaped the notice of the Florentines" (396). Rubinstein, analogously, sees the Siena factor as having contributed to the great size of the palace (11).

(44.) Ackerman, 1: 60.

(45.) Davidsohn, 1972, 4: 70-72.

(46.) Provvisioni, 9, 120v-121v: "et auditus et intellectis orationibus super infrascriptis, per quam plures sapientes et bonos populares ciuitatis Florentie affectuose et cum multa suasionis instantia factis pro honore et euidenti utilitate populi et comunis Florentie"; "ad quorum precipue spectat offitium honori, defensioni et commodo reipublice uigilare et cum solicitudine prouidere"; "in quo loco ciuitatis domini priores artium et uexillifer iustitie ... morari, stare et residentiam facere debeant pro eorum offitio gerendo et honorabiliter faciendo" (cited in full in Frey, 183-85, doc. 18).

(47.) 1t might be argued that, considering their diplomatic victory, Florentines would have experienced 29 December 1298 not as a day of shame but rather of pride and vindication of their regime, producing a quantum leap of confidence that might explain the sudden decision to build. I would counter that it was a day of both pride and shame, the former, in fact, intensifying the experience of the latter during hours of keyed-up, conflicting emotions. Although increased civic pride and confidence would have supported the palace project, it is hard to see how they could have produced such an immediate turn in its fortunes, especially given the sudden, deep architectural shaming of the city reconstructed here that unequivocally would have demanded immediate corrective action.

(48.) 0n the magnati see Salvemini, Becker, Raveggi et at, Tabacco, and Lansing.

(49.) Parenti, in Raveggi et al, 242.

(50.) Brucker, 1962, 39.

(51.) Becker observes, "the persistence of vendetta and the claims of honor were directly proportional to the place one occupied in the Florentine patriciate" (276); cf. Lansing, 166f.

(52.) Lansing, 165.

(53.) "Ibid., 166. ("Nobles were driven by a concern for honor and shame. These were not interior qualities but external attributes, nor internalized but acted our. When a man -- or a lineage -- was dishonored, the remedy was dramatic public action.")

(54.) Ibid., 210f.

(55.) "The number varies between the 1293 and 1295 lists; cf. Salvemini, Appendix IXf, 375-77.

(56.) On the Blacks and Whites, see Davidsohn, 1972, 4: 31-105; Del Lungo, 1921; Masi, 1927, 1930; and Parenti, in Raveggi et al, 277-322. The Blacks, led by the Donati, included the Spini, Pazzi, della Tosa, Visdomini, Bardi, Rossi, Brunelleschi, Tornaquinci, Manieri, Buondelmonti, Bostichi, and Franzesi. The Cerchi-led Whites included the Adamari, Calvalcanti, Gherardini, Frescobaldi, Scali, Mozzi, Nerli, Abati, Malispini, della Tosa, Biligiardo, Baschiera, and Baldo. About half of each group were magnates.

(57.) On Corso Donati, Davidsohn, 1972, 4: 3lf; Raveggi, 1992.

(58.) Parenti, in Raveggi et al, 308f; Raveggi, 1992, 20f.

(59.) As Davidsohn puts it, "egli non era altro che uno strumento nelle mani di Corso Donati e degli altri capi di quella fazione" (1972, 4: 92).

(60.) Ibid, 90-102.

(61.) At the great battle of 1289, Corso, seizing a window of strategic opportunity, led the victorious charge against orders not to charge until ordered (against a death penalty): according to Villani (7:131), his astute, courageous and patriotic reasoning was, "Se noi perdiamo, io voglio morire nella battaglia co' miei cittadini" and (correctly) "e se noi vinciamo, chi vuole vegna a noi a Pistoia per la condannagione" (i.e., if he wins no one will object to his disobedience).

(62.) On the mythologizing of the Baptistery, Davis, 33-51. On the Campanile, Trachtenberg, 1971, 6. The Duomo, essentially the 1350s design of Francesco Talenti as modified 1366-1367 by a committee of artists, becomes "Arnolfo's" in Vasari, except of course for the Cupola, which was quickly given over entirely to Brunelleschi's authorship despite strong evidence that it was a collaborative enterprise, led but not exclusively designed or built by him (Trachtenberg, 1983).

(63.) Trachtenberg, 1993. Lansing describes what would constitute a background in private Florentine architecture for the symbolic emphasis of the Palazzo Vecchio: "Palaces constructed in the late Dugento show little preoccupation with defense; they were designed not for physical protection but to make a formidable public show. Private military force was not longer the key to power within the commune" (231).

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