Macht en architectuur in de Renaissance. Familiekapellen in Florence, 1300-1500

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Power and Architecture in the Renaissance. Family Chapels in Florence 1300-1500. The social history of Florence is visible in the city's architecture. The architectonic developments in the churches of the mendicant orders can be accounted for on the basis of the changing power relations in urban society, particularly the relations between the families of wealthy merchants and the mendicant friars. From approximately 1260 to 1320, the regular clergy had control over the constructions of the churches. With the funds of the laity, they had churches built according to their own architectural and liturgical specifications. The rise of an elite of wealthy families enabled the donors to exert greater influence, which manifested itself in the construction of separate family chapels in the nave and transept. After 1440, the clergy became increasingly dependent on one family, the Medici. By accumulating more and more patronage rights for themselves and for their clients and associates, within three generations this family succeeded in gaining a large extent of control over the overall appearance of ecclesiastical architecture. Via the power of their donations, they dominated the decision-making process about how the mendicant churches were to be built, decorated and furnished. The changes in the power relations, which can be described by the terms automatization, privatization and secularization, became visible in greater ostentation on the part of the laity in separate chapels and subsequently in the vacating of the large choir in the nave, which was moved to a chapel behind the high altar hardly any larger than a family chapel, and in the removal of the choir enclosures in the nave. Thus the architects, sculptors and painters were able to bring about the universally praised artistic innovations known as the Renaissance.