A Global Renaissance in Florence

Catalog description

Still pictured in popular culture today as eminently Italian and specifically Florentine, in recent decades the Renaissance has come to be understood by scholars as a global cultural and artistic phenomenon. While Florence was indeed one of its epicenters, the city's wide-ranging mercantile, political, and religious networks impacted in a myriad fundamental ways on artistic production. They provided the city access to precious commodities and costly materials, like African gold; allowed the circulation of foreign artefacts, to be collected and studied, including by artists; and facilitated the transmission of ideas, knowledge and technologies across vast expanses of space, and across cultures.