Flanders in Florence: Architectural Exchanges from North to South, 1400-1600

This project will be the first to investigate the role of ‘Le Fiandre’ for Florence’s architectural culture
in the period 1400-1600. It does not argue for a marked Flemish influence on Florence’s Renaissance
architecture but intends to study how the intense commercial, artistic, political and military ties with
the Low Countries have enriched Florence’s broad architectural culture. While the impact of Flemish
painting on Florentine art is well-studied, the transfer of architectural ideas, images, materials and
techniques from Flanders to Florence remains a blind spot in scholarship on Renaissance Florence’s
internationalism. The project analyses what Tuscan merchant-bankers working in Flanders wrote
about its local manners of building and dwelling, and how they adorned their palaces in Florence with
Flemish paintings, tapestries and luxury objects. It also examines how depictions in the admired
Flemish paintings of a distinctly northern, gothic architecture were perceived in Florence, where most
artists, patrons and architects ostensibly favoured a totally different all’antica style. And it studies
the decoration of major Florentine buildings with Flemish black marble and stained glass and with
painted battle scenes and cityscapes from the Low Countries. Assessing how all these aspects
interacted and evolved will enhance our understanding of a vital chapter in Europe’s cultural history
and elucidate also the (perceived) characteristics of ‘Flemish’ art and architecture