books as “must” reading for an eager and literate elite; and it promoted old,
sometimes crumbling, and formerly little-appreciated classical art, sculpture, and
architecture as inspiring models for Italian artists and builders. Meanwhile, it
downgraded the immediate past—the last thousand years!—as a barbarous “Middle”
Age. Above all, the Renaissance gave city communes and wealthy princes alike a
new repertory of vocabulary, symbols, and styles, drawn from a resonant and heroic
past, with which to associate their present power.
At Florence, for example, where the Medici family held sway in the fifteenth
century behind a façade of communal republicanism, the sculptor Donatello (1386–
1466) cast a gilded bronze figure of Judith beheading the tyrant Holofernes (Plate
8.2). Commissioned, probably in the 1420s, for the private garden of the Medici
Palace, the heroic woman paired with the drunk and groggy Holofernes was meant to
present the Medicis as glorious defenders of liberty. An inscription added about forty
years later by Piero de’ Medici made the symbolism clear: “Kingdoms fall through
luxury, cities rise through virtue; behold the neck of pride severed by the hand of
humility.... Piero, son of Cosimo Medici has dedicated the statue of this woman to
that liberty and fortitude bestowed on the republic by the invincible and constant
spirit of the citizens.”^12 The unabashed fleshiness and dramatic gestures of the
figures were reminiscent of ancient Roman art (see, for example, Plate 1.4 on p. 15)
but had many more recent precedents as well (see, for example, Plates 7.9 on p. 273
and 7.11 on p. 275).
