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Florence in the XV Century-The Florentine Crisis and the Return of Medici

The crisis that invested Florentine history in the final years of the XV century was not entirely separate from the great events which transformed the western world between 1490 and the first two decades of the XVI century.

The great geographic discoveries, the changes in the distribution and balance of power among the great European powers, etc., conferred a new dimension on all the problems. Men such as Vespucci, Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Leonardo and later Galileo, responded with individual talent. However, after having lost her freedom and economic primacy, Florence also lost its place as the fulcrum in the history of western civilization.

When they returned to Florence by force (1512) the Medici definitively gave up their policy of de facto government of the city, while they maintained the republican institutions in name. The Medici acquired the official title of dukes and later grand dukes. Machiavelli's "prince" finally arrived; and during those years the Medici tried to reaffirm their prestige in several ways, including works or projects, as they would be called today, in the city.

It was probably after 1512 that Giuliano da Sangallo, who had participated in the works that led to the fall of the republic in 1509 by building a pontoon bridge across the Arno, designed a grandiose urban plan for a new Medici residence between Via degli Alfani, Borgo Pinti, the city walls and Via Gino Capponi. The grandiose scale of the elaborate composition clearly used the building as the structure for urban space and anticipated some aspects of sixteenth century issues.

The plans can also be viewed and interpreted as a personal reflection on a new dimension of combining open, closed and modular spaces in orthogonal lines which, launched in the XIII century, found a new raison in Brunelleschi's metaphysical views and in Michelozzo's concrete clarity. Many Medicean projects that were never completed because they were too ideal or Utopistic with respect to early sixteenth century developments were characterized by a clear desire for formal definitions.

The Medici readily understood that in the new political dimension of their century the lord's authority was no longer bound to armed strength, but rather to the system of relationships between the family in power, families linked to it, religious orders and cultural components. It was a system that comprised the urban effects of a settlement. Among other things this led to the utility and importance of conferring monumental form not only upon a cathedral or municipal palace, to large city-scale public centers, but to each element comprising the "system".

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