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Medieval Florence - Interior Design and Frescos

The interiors of churches, the halls of public buildings and the headquarters of the Guilds or the loggias all testified to a love for color which was also to be found in private homes.
Too often one forgets that frescoes were meant to cover all available wall space in the interiors of the fourteenth-century churches. Giotto's frescoes in S. Croce are not an exception but rather an early example of pictorial decoration in Florence.

The Franciscans used wall paintings to illustrate the sacred subjects to their simple flock while the Dominicans could eloquently preach to a more educated public.
In the Dominican churches and convents painting spread later.
None of the churches, with the exception in part of S. Trinita and Orsanmichele, still have their internal decoration.

The abstract Brunelleschian relationship of white intonaco-pietra serena we have become so used to often tends to deceive us into seeing the same relationship of ambience and matter in interiors such as the Cathedral or S. Maria Novella where the fresco cycles were never finished or were destroyed.

External curtains were commonly used. They were hung in two ways: on poles held by hooks.
Paintings were to be found in the rooms of the upper class houses as early as the thirteenth century and became more usual in the following century.
These tempera paintings consisted of geometric motives and ornaments painted free hand, or isolated figures, scenes and stories with many figures.
On various walls in Palazzo Davanzati we find gardens, trees and hangings.
The most important rooms in the house were covered with hangings.

In Palazzo Davanzati simulated hangings were painted in fresco and other rooms had the upper part painted while the lower part of the walls was simply trowel-plastered before being covered with hangings.
The lower parts of the walls were also lined with wooden planks (spalliera) to keep out humidity and cold.
The furniture was set against these boards and sometimes they were all of a piece.
Carpets and rugs were used everywhere (in the poorer homes they were replaced by reed mats), on the floor, on the walls, on pieces of furniture and benches.
In the common houses as well as in the palaces the floors were usually of brick.
Wooden ceilings were generally left plain although occasionally they might have simple geometric decorations.

While wall fireplaces already existed in the thirteenth century, they did not become common until the fourteenth (introduced in Europe by the Crusaders) when a single room often had more than one. Before that the hearths throughout Italy were in the center of a room in the attic that was called caminata (chimney room).

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