Promotie K.D. Botke – Het kunstmecenaat van de Salviati in Florence tijdens de heerschappij van de Medici

‘La gloria della famiglia Salviati’. The Salviati family and their art patronage during the reign of the Medici grand dukes.

During the fifteenth and sixteenth century the Salviati family was one of many patrician families that shaped the city of Florence and its surroundings. The Salviati were also actively displaying their wealth, by initiating expensive and conspicuous projects: artists painted large fresco-cycles in their palazzi, decorated their villa’s and chapels, and designed their gardens. Moreover, members of the Salviati family assembled substantial art collections, and all these antiquities, sculptures, paintings, and other precious objects were on display in their houses. Many of the projects and art works they commissioned reflected and signalled the political, economical, and social developments in Florence during the sixteenth and seventeenth century. Furthermore, these commissions expressed, directly or indirectly, the relationship of the Salviati with the Medici family. In almost all cases, the Salviati strove to present themselves as the Medici’s equals, even while they became more and more dependent on the Medici court.

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