Patrician Patronage Project

Department of Art History of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands.

In collaboration with the Dutch University Institute of Art History, Florence, Italy.

Project director: Prof Dr Henk Th. van Veen

The aim of the Patrician Patronage Project: Commissioning Art and Architecture in Florence during Medici Rule 1530-1670 is to reconstruct the art patronage of Florentine patricians of the period 1530-1670. For a long time this patronage has received little art historical attention due to the fact that most of the research was dedicated to the patronage of the grand-ducal Medici court. This has led to a distorted picture of the way in which Florence functioned in this period as a center of art and culture. By shedding light on the patronage of Florentine patricians, which has proven to be very important, the patronage of the Medici-court is put in an entirely new perspective.

For the purpose of the PPP a database has been developed in which the individual commissions of Florentine patricians are entered and which, subsequently, allows to retrieve information by entering specific research questions. In the upcoming five years interns affiliated with the project and hosted by the Dutch University Institute for Art History in Florence will enter records of objects commissioned by fifteen prominent Florentine patrician families into the database, in order to gain a first overview of the patrician patronage in the period under discussion.