In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Chapter 4 The BraNCaCCI ChapEL in S. marIa dEL CarmINE Where renaissance Painting Was Born T he shabby exterior of the monastic church of s. Maria del Carmine looks so unpromising that visitors might be tempted to walk right past it. But if they do, they’ll miss one of the city’s greatest treasures : the spot where renaissance painting was born. Inside, in the right transept, now entered separately from the church through a door to the right of the church façade, is a chapel endowed in the mid-1300s by a member of a family of wealthy silk merchants named Brancacci. It was dedicated to st. Peter, both the name saint of Pietro Brancacci, the chapel’s founder, and the patron saint of the Brancacci family. Pietro Brancacci declared in his will that he desired the establishment of a family chapel in s. Maria del Carmine as “a certain and acknowledged testimony to the standing of the family and a symbol of its solid prosperity.” The endowing of family chapels was a practice that benefitted both the donor and the religious institution—cathedral, monastery, or parish church—where the chapel was located. The family that contracted with the church to decorate a chapel had to purchase the space or, more precisely, pay for obtaining patronage rights to it. In addition to paying the individual church for the privilege of having a private chapel, the donor also saved church officials the expense of providing frescoes for the walls, the altarpiece, and other furnishings for the chapel’s altar. The commissioning family, in turn, gained spiritual benefits as well as prestige and public recognition for their efforts and expenses. The Brancacci Chapel in S. Maria del Carmine 71 Families like the Brancacci might undertake the decoration of a chapel for a variety of reasons, only some of them religious. It’s obvious that those who donated a chapel expected God to reward their gift by granting them faster access to salvation, and two religious developments of the Middle Ages helped link the hope of salvation to the patronage of chapels. One was the development of the doctrine of Purgatory, a place of temporary punishment for those who had not paid the full price of their sins, a concept that first appeared in the late twelfth century. The second was the sale of indulgences, by which the Church offered the remission of punishment for sins already forgiven—in recognition of good works, prayers, or money offered by the sinner. The patronage of a chapel was one important way that wealthy Florentines believed they could be granted an indulgence and lessen their time in Purgatory. secular motives also played an important part. Depending on the size of the chapel, its position within the church, the amount of decoration it contained, and the prominence of the church that housed it, the commission gave public notice of the patron’s wealth and high social status and sometimes signaled his place in the Florentine political hierarchy as well. The sacred subjects chosen by the patron to appear on the chapel walls and in its altarpiece could convey specific messages, most of them religious but some surprisingly secular, as seems to be the case with at least one of the frescoes in the Brancacci Chapel. It wasn’t until the 1420s that a member of the family, Felice di Michele Brancacci, dedicated energies and money to decorating his family’s chapel. At that time he was both a successful businessman and a prominent figure on the Florentine political scene. He’d held a number of important offices, including governor of two of Florence’s subject cities, Pisa and Livorno; he’d been the city’s maritime consul, and between 1422 and 1423 he served as the head of a Florentine embassy to egypt. He endured some harrowing trials and dangers in the east, which he recounted in his diary, and he was extremely grateful to have come home alive. Perhaps he undertook the decoration of his neglected family chapel as a thank offering to God for his safe return. But Felice Brancacci may have had a further motive beyond his family’s devotion to st. Peter for his choice of subject. Peter’s authority had been assumed by the popes, and the government of Florence had long been Guelph, or pro-papal, in its policies. A program of paintings devoted to the life of st. Peter, sponsored by a leading citizen, would be a way...

Share