Displacement and Reconfiguration: The Effects of the Florentine Guasto of 1529 on Devotional Spaces and Networks of Artistic Patronage

On 29 September 1529, with Charles V’s troops marching towards Florence, the city authorities decided to implement a dramatic military strategy called *guasto*. Under this blanket decree all buildings within a mile of the city walls were to be demolished for purposes of defence. The decree affected some of the most eminent suburban monasteries, including the Vallombrosan nunnery of San Giovanni Evangelista, the Clarissan convent of Monticelli, the monasteries of the Gesuati (San Giusto), the Camaldolese (San Benedetto Fuori alla Porta Pinti), the Augustinians (San Gallo), and the house of the Canons Regular of San Donato a Scopeto. Nuns, monks, and canons had to decide quickly which objects to take with them when they evacuated, choosing to save from ruin what was essential and what could be used later to perpetuate their collective memory. My research has considered the displacement of religious communities and their possessions, as well as their reinstatement into new contexts enacted by the *guasto*, in all but one case to sites within the walls, as a fundamentally interdisciplinary area of research calling for consideration of the social, liturgical and artistic factors that led to the selective preservation of material heritage. Displaced communities needed to shape and maintain their institutional memory through identity-creating visual means, making ‘the lived visible’ at their destination sites. In addition, objects had to respond to new liturgical needs and rarely retained a connection to the patron who paid for their production, requiring a change in both their everyday use by the community and their reception as objects of self-promotion. Through three thematic chapters focussing respectively on altarpieces, relics, and architectural fragments, the thesis integrates traditional art historical methods with approaches from Digital Art History – in particular non-invasive archaeological surveying to investigate underground remains of demolished buildings, and 3D modelling for lost churches whose appearance is only known from archival documents – to bring together heterogeneous source materials. The dissertation assesses the impact of the unprecedented obliteration of entire suburban neighbourhoods and the subsequent movement of people and goods. In addition, it reveals and analyses the strategies adopted by each of the religious communities affected to perpetuate their corporate identity after the destruction. Ultimately, the thesis reflects on loss and displacement as central to Florentine sacred geography. More broadly, it reconsiders the Florentine case alongside other similar *guasti* as key disruptions in the urban and artistic development of Renaissance cities, challenging the dominant narrative of continuous urban expansion during the early modern period.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

Doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of Cambridge

Year dc:date.issued

2023

Author dc:creator

• Capulli, Chiara

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cooper, Donal

• artistic patronage
• collective memory
• digital art history
• displacement
• Florence
• urban history

Licence

• https://apollo8-f-pro.lib.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/f5ee1bac-e76b-44fb-bf3c-0f65a477fb0d/download
• https://www.rioxx.net/licenses/all-rights-reserved/

Language dc:language

eng

DOI dc:identifier.doi

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.109758

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.repository.cam.ac.uk:1810/370299