The Renaissance Florentine Captain of the People began as a court, which defended the common people or popolo from the magnates and tried crimes such as assault, murder and fraud. This study reveals how factionalism, economic stress and the rise of citizen magistrate courts eroded the jurisdiction and ended the Court of the Captain. The creation of the Captain in 1250 occurred during the external fight for dominance between the Holy Roman Emperor and the Pope and the struggle between the Guelfs and Ghibellines within the city of Florence. The rise of the Ciompi in 1379, worried the Florentine aristocracy who believed the Ciompi was a threat to their power and they created the Otto di Guardia, a citizen magistrate court. This court began as a way to manage gaps in jurisdiction not covered by the Captain and his fellow rectors. However, by 1433 the Otto eroded the power of the Captain and his fellow rectors. Historians have argued that the Roman law jurists in this period became the tool for the aristocracy but in fact, the citizen magistrate courts acted as a source of power for the aristocracy. In the 1430s, the Albizzi and Medici fought for power. The Albizzi utilized a government mandate, which had the case already carried out or a bullectini to exile Medici adherents. However, by 1433, the Medici triumphed and Cosimo de Medici returned to the city of Florence. He expanded the power of the Otto in order to utilize the bullectini to exile his enemies. The expansion of jurisdiction of the Otto further eroded the power of the Captain. Factionalism, economic stress and the rise of the citizen magistrate courts eroded the power of the Captain of the people.

In Italy the first half of the Cinquecento was marked by both flourishing artistic innovation and deep-seated religious uncertainty, the latter revealing itself most clearly in a widespread impetus towards reform. The relationship between these two cultural spheres--long a fraught problem in art historical scholarship--is made visually manifest in the religious works produced by the Florentine painter Jacopo da Pontormo. By re-examining Pontormo's three monumental religious commissions--the Certosa del Galluzzo (1522-27), the Capponi Chapel (1525-28), and the choir of San Lorenzo (1545-1557)--this dissertation maps the complex dialogue between artistic and devotional practice that characterized this era. Further, in highlighting the active role of the painter in this dynamic I propose a not only a new understanding of Pontormo, but also enrich our current notions of artistic agency in the Renaissance period. The foundation of these arguments derives from a re-evaluation of the specific historical context on the one hand, and the implementation of a broader framework of visual culture on the other. Taking its cue from Giorgio Vasari's 1568 edition of The Lives of the Artists, modern scholarship has tended to view much of the art from the early sixteenth century through a post-Tridentine lens; paintings are labeled controversial or heretical, when in fact such notions would not have been relevant in these earlier decades. Published five years after the conclusion of the Council of Trent, Vasari's Lives is predominantly characterized by the author's own attempts to codify artistic pedagogy and style in the service of the Medici Duchy, whose newly consolidated ties with the papacy were of primary importance. A further difficulty presented by following Vasari's example is the relatively narrow view of the artistic environment that his account affords. Aimed as it was towards the social elevation of the individual Renaissance artist, Vasari's narrative undervalues the importance of other genres and media--such as prints, Mystery plays, terracotta sculptures, and sacri monti--to the work of well-established painters like Pontormo. Each chapter examines a single, monumental project, delineating the artist's responsiveness to, and engagement with, the unique devotional and artistic challenges inherent to the individual commission. Chapter One resituates Pontormo's use of the maniera tedesca within the broader contexts of northern devotional practices and the parallels they form with affective strategies employed by other genres including sacre rappresentazioni and sacri monti. Chapter Two focuses on the painter's decision to portray himself the guise of Nicodemus, and the ways in which this identification evoked an entire web of historical associations--linked to hagiographic tradition and local legend--that would have been accessible to contemporary viewers. Finally, in Chapter Three I investigate Pontormo's pictorial approach, which combined an overarching diagrammatic simplicity with a complex, allusive figural language, as a means of communicating to the different levels of Florentine society that would have been his audience in this important parish church.

Girolamo Savonarola lived at the apex of the Renaissance, but most of his biographers regard him as an anachronism or a precursor of the Reformation. Savonarola, however, was influenced by the entire milieu of Renaissance Florence, including its humanism. Savonarola's major work, Triumph of the Cross, is a synthesis of humanism, neo-Thomism and mysticism. His political reforms were routed in both the millennialist dreams of Florence and the goals of civic humanism. Hoping to translate the abstract humanist life of virtue into the concrete, he ultimately failed, not because the Renaissance was rejecting the Middle Ages, but because the former was reacting against itself. Florence, for all its claims of being the center of the Renaissance, was not willing to make humanist reform a reality.

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Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 8-27).

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The controversial dating of the Baptistery San Giovanni is approached through formalistic considerations. Formal analyses of the Baptistery and the Duomo of Pisa lead to comparison and isolation of definitive features of Pisan and Florentine styles. As such, the buildings are shown to be prototypes and their respective receptions are traced in the Romanesque churches of Fiesole, Empoli, Lucca, Pistoia and Sardinia. It is concluded that the Baptistery must have been completed before the Duomo of Pisa was begun.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Melbourne, 1989. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--New York University, 1997. / Includes catalogs of the sculptures and the drawings for Michelangelo's commission for the apostle statues. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (doctoral)--Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 1977. / Spine title: Familienloggien. Includes index. Includes bibliographical references (p. 744-752).