THE PONTE VECCHIO
Architecture, Politics, and Civic Identity
in Late Medieval Florence
HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS
HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS
An imprint of Brepols Publishers London / Turnhout www.harveymillerpublishers.com
ARCHITECTURE AND THE ARTS IN EARLY MODERN ITALY
Areli Marina, General Editor
Volume 5
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Contents
Acknowledgements 6
List of Abbreviations and Measurements 7
i ntro D uction 8
c hapter o ne 18
From Origins to Contested Site: The Ponte Vecchio and Villani’s ‘Myth of Florence’
c hapter t wo 38
The Politics of Bridge Building: Civic Patronage and Post-Flood Repair, 1333–1339
c hapter three 56
The Commission and Building History of the Ponte Vecchio, 1339–1346
c hapter four 74
Modo et Forma: The ‘Manner and Form’ of the Ponte Vecchio’s Construction
c hapter five 90
‘A Beautiful and Honorable Bridge’: The Ponte Vecchio, Medieval Aesthetics, and the Politics of Urban Design
c hapter six 116
‘For the Honor and Value of the People and Commune of Florence’: The Shops on the Ponte Vecchio and Their Well-Regulated Order, 1346–1495
e pilogue 150
The Ponte Vecchio after 1495
a ppen D ices
i Chronicle Accounts of the Flood of 4 November 1333 171
ii Ponte Vecchio Documents, 972 to Flood of 1333 173
iii Ponte Vecchio Documents, 1333 Flood to 1495 187
iv Accounts of the Completion of the Ponte Vecchio 247
Bibliography 249
Index 257
Photo Credits 260
book will show, these qualities were desired and intentional features of the Ponte Vecchio’s original, fourteenth-century design. I will also argue that the architectural and urban features that provoked Dati’s civic pride were part of a conscious urban design strategy by the late medieval Florentine republican government, which considered the building of beautiful and honorable civic architecture, its maintenance, and its regulation to be a means of establishing political authority within the city and of encouraging communal pride among Florence’s citizens.
As will be discussed in Chapter One, the most detailed early history of the Ponte Vecchio comes from the so-called ‘Myth of Florence’ that appears in the fourteenth-century historian
0.5
Pianta della Catena (Chain Map of Florence), painting after a woodcut attributed to Francesco di Lorenzo Rosselli, c. 1470, Museo di Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. The bridges shown are (from foreground to background): the Ponte alla Carraia, the Ponte a Santa Trinita, the Ponte Vecchio, and the Ponte Rubaconte (Photo: Reproduced with permission of Scala / Art Resource [art453734]).
Fig. 0.6
Uberti Family and the Florentine Government Battling from Their Towers, manuscript illumination in Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica, Florence, c. 1300/20–48, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. Chig.lviii.926, fol. 64r (detail).
The Uberti family is on the right, and the government forces are on the left (Photo: Reproduced with permission of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana).
5 Giovanni Villani, Nuova cronica (c. 1300/20–1348), ed. Giuseppe Porta (Parma: Fondazione Bembo, 1991), available at: http://www.liberliber.it/ mediateca/libri/v/villani/nuova_cronica/ pdf/nuova__p.pdf. Unless otherwise noted, this edition, which is henceforth cited as Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, will be the one cited in this book. The numeration of Villani’s books differs in other published editions.
6 These routes are the current Via Guicciardini-Romana (the ancient Via Volterrana-Romana, the medieval Via di Piazza), Via dei Bardi (the ancient Via Cassia Nuova), and Borgo San JacopoVia Pisana. In the medieval period, the three Oltrarno neighborhoods (borghi) lining these roads were called, respectively: Borgo di Piazza, Borgo Pidiglioso, and Borgo San Jacopo.
7 For the completion of these bridges, see Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 6 : 41–42, pp. 96–97 (Ponte alla Carraia), 7 : 26, p. 110 (Ponte Rubaconte), and 7 : 50, pp. 122–23 (Ponte a Santa Trinita. For these accounts see Appendix ii
8 In 1319, the Florentines began constructing a fifth bridge, called the Ponte Reale (Royal Bridge) after their protector King Robert of Anjou, but this project was abandoned when the flood of 1333 destroyed all but one pier.
– 12 –
In 1532, Duke Alessandro de’ Medici commissioned the construction of a defensive ‘baluardo’ on the remaining pier. See Giulia Camerani Marri (ed.), Catalogo della mostra documentaria ed iconografica degli antichi ponti di Firenze (Florence: Tipografia Giuntina, 1961), p. 12.
Fig.
Giovanni Villani’s Nuova cronica (c. 1300/20–48).5 The fragmentary archaeological and documentary evidence from before the late medieval period suggests that the current Ponte Vecchio is the latest of multiple versions of the bridge, all of which had been built at or very near to the present site since the founding of the ancient Roman colony of Florentia in the first century bce . During antiquity and much of the Middle Ages, the Ponte Vecchio was Florence’s only bridge and, therefore, the only permanent link between the Florentine civitas vetus (the ancient Roman urban core) on the northern bank of the Arno River and the city’s southern bank, called the Oltrarno, where three ancient roads leading to Siena, Rome, Volterra, and Pisa intersect.6 Across the thirteenth century, Florence’s first and only bridge (ponte) finally became ‘old’ (vecchio). Three other bridges were constructed: the Ponte alla Carraia (originally: Ponte Nuovo) in 1220, the Ponte alle Grazie (originally: Ponte Rubaconte) 1237, and the Ponte a Santa
9 The original Chain Map of Florence is a woodcut print dating to around 1470; it is attributed to Francesco di Lorenzo Rosselli, and now in the Bode Museum, Berlin. Copies include: a woodblock print after Rosselli by Lucantonio degli Uberti, dated 1480, now in the bcnf; a woodblock print dated c. 1500–10 in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museum, Berlin; and an eighteenth-century copy painted in tempera owned by the Museo di Firenze Com’era, Florence,
Trinita 1252.7 The Ponte Vecchio that stands today was built after a devastating flood of 4 November 1333, which caused the Ponte alla Carraia, the Ponte a Santa Trinita, and the previous Ponte Vecchio to collapse.8 Only the easternmost bridge, the Ponte Rubaconte, was spared. After the flood, these bridges were rebuilt; we can see the new versions of them in the Pianta della Catena (Chain Map of Florence, c. 1470), which is the earliest detailed image showing all four bridges (fig. 0.5).9
In his Nuova cronica, Villani describes the ‘great flood’ (grande diluvio) of 4 November 1333 that inundated much of the city and destroyed the Ponte Vecchio. He claimed that the flood was considered by the Florentines to be God’s punishment (a ‘scourge of God’ or ‘flagellum Dei’) for their sinful behavior, especially the violent factionalism that had plagued the city for over a generation.10 By 1333, Florence had experienced more than a century of domestic infighting. According to civic chronicles, most of these conflicts were caused by the political alliances and personal vendettas of the grandi (the ‘great’ families, a mix of old feudal aristocracy and a new merchant-banking elite).11 This book situates the Ponte Vecchio’s construction within this political context.
Late medieval Florentine civil strife included contests for power between these grandi families and the emerging communal government. One such urban battle of circa 1177, is represented in an illustrated version of Villani’s Nuova cronica; the illustration shows the Uberti (a Florentine grandi family) fighting against soldiers of the Florentine government from their defensive towers. Villani describes the conflict as follows: ‘thus began in Florence a decline and great warfare among the citizens’ (‘si cominciò in Firenze discensione e guerra grande tra’cittidini’); he observed that this decline and the conflicts continued into his present day (fig. 0.6).12 By the mid thirteenth-century, grandi families had formed alliances (consortiere) to fight each other within the city. These domestic alliances eventually merged to create the international contest between the
but now on display in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. For later artistic representations of the Ponte Vecchio, see Cristina Acidini, ‘Il ponte Vecchio e la sua imagine’, in Di pietra e d’oro. Il ponte Vecchio di Firenze. Sette secoli di storia e di arte, eds. Claudio Paolini et al. (Florence: Maria Cristina de Montemayor Editore, 2016), pp. 36–61(the Chain Map is on pp. 37–39).
10 Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 12 : 1–2, pp. 523–30.
11 On the Florentine grandi, see John M. Najemy, A History of Florence 1200–1575 (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 5–62 and Dale Kent, ‘The Power of the Elites: Family, Patronage, and the State’, in Italy in the Age of the Renaissance: 1300–1550, ed. John M. Najemy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 165–83. On Florentine elite factionalism, see Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).
12 Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 6 : 9, pp. 83–84. In 1265–66, the Ghibellines (led by the Uberti) similarly battled the Florentine government of the secondo popolo (made up of Guelf popolani), as is recorded in Villani’s Nuova cronica, 8 : 14–17, pp. 154–57. On these early conflicts between the elite grandi and the popolo, see Najemy, A History of Florence, pp. 63–93.
pro-Imperial Ghibelline Party (the Uberti became leaders of the Ghibellines) and the pro-Papal Guelf Party, which later divided into Black and White factions (Villani was a Black Guelf). As the illustration in Villani’s Nuova cronica demonstrates, much of the resulting warfare occurred at defensive compounds within the heart of Florence. Consequently, the battles caused harm both to citizens and to the physical fabric of the city (fig. 0.6). For example, when the Ghibellines were ultimately defeated in 1266, the Florentine Guelf government sent a warning to other rebellious families by demolishing every building belonging to the Uberti and declared that nothing was ever again to be built on the site of the Uberti complex; this site became the Piazza della Signoria and remains an open space to this day.13 Grandi families also destroyed urban property,14 appropriated neighborhoods, public streets, and piazze with their fortified compounds, and threatened or blockaded public thoroughfares, including the city’s bridges. Consequently, these bridges became contested sites in their struggle to maintain power. In response, the late medieval popular government (governo del popolo) passed the Ordinances of Justice in 1293, which designated the most threatening families as magnates (magnati) and prohibited them from holding government office.15 Additionally, the government established a committee, called The Six in Charge of Rights. This committee was tasked with the identification and restoration of communal properties that had been illegally seized or encroached upon—for instance, public streets, walls, piazze, lands, bridges, and buildings in the city and suburbs of Florence.16 In January 1296, the Six declared:
the piazze of the new Ponte Rubaconte, the Ponte Vecchio, the New Bridge [Ponte a Santa Trinita], and the Ponte alla Carraia on both sides … up to the houses of the residents around said piazze and bridges, and all other piazze and public
13 When the Ghibellines returned to Florence after their expulsion in 1260, they proposed to raze the city, but they were restrained by Farinata degli Uberti. See Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 7 : 77 and 7 : 81, pp. 134–35, 137–38.
14 See, for example, Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 7 : 33, pp. 112–14.
15 See Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 9 : 1, pp. 226–27. On the secondo popolo and the Ordinances of Justice, see Najemy, The History of Florence, pp. 81–88.
16 On this popular reform see John M.
Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), pp. 61–63. On the Six in Charge of Rights (originally the ‘six in charge of recovering the rights and property of the Comune’, first established in 1293–95), see Paula Spilner, ‘Ut Civitas Amplietur: Studies in Florentine Urban Development, 1282–1400’ (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1987), pp. 55–78.
17 asf, Capitoli, 35, fols. 123r-v (28 Jan. 1295 [1296 n.s.]), cited in Spilner, ‘Ut Civitas
streets of the city and suburbs of Florence, up to the houses of the residents around these streets and piazze, by full right … belong to the commune and people of Florence.17
This document highlights the civic ownership of the city’s bridges and public spaces, and how much they had been encroached upon by the fourteenth century. Moreover, it shows how critically important restoring and maintaining public access to the city’s streets and bridges was for the Florentine government.18 By the mid-fourteenth century, responsibility for the restitution, oversight, and maintenance of public property had been transferred to a new, permanent government body called the Tower Officials (ufficiali della torre), who were responsible for the city’s public spaces, including the Ponte Vecchio. Their tower emblem appears repeatedly on the bridge (see, for example, the upper portion of the northwestern block in fig. 0.3).19
As demonstrated in Chapter One, though technically civic property, the Ponte Vecchio had become both physically and symbolically associated with Florentine factionalism and with grandi families by the time of its destruction in the flood of 1333. For example, the Mannelli family physically and visibly dominated over access to the bridge from their private tower at its southern end (fig. 0.7). Just days after the flood of 1333, certain Florentine grandi whose towers and compounds stood near to the southern end of the bridge staged a coup. They exploited the city’s vulnerability and e first of a series of attempts to regulate passage across the river as a means of asserting their authority in their struggle against the popular regime (the popolo), which controlled the guilds and the city’s communal government.20 This incident was neither the first nor the last time that the Ponte Vecchio site was a strategic place in such factional Florentine conflicts.
As will be shown, the fourteenth-century Ponte Vecchio
Amplietur’, pp. 62–63 (after her transl. on p. 63, Latin on p. 100, n. 75).
18 The Six in Charge of Rights eventually became a permanent government agency, and its duties were reaffirmed in the Florentine Statutes of 1322–25. For the history and powers of the Six in Charge of Rights, see Spilner, ‘Ut Civitas Amplietur’, pp. 55–77.
19 On the relationship between the Six and the Tower Officials, see Spilner, ‘Ut Civitas Amplietur’, pp. 74–78. The role of the Tower Officials relative to the Ponte
– 14 –
Vecchio is discussed in Chapter Six of this book.
20 Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 12 : 4, pp. 533–34: Il dì apresso che fu cessato il diluvio, essendo rotti I sopradetti tre ponti in Firenze, e tutta la città aperta e schiusa lungo il fiume d’Arno, certi grandi di Firenze cercaro di fare novità contro a’ popolani, avisandosi di poterlo fare, però che sopra l’Arno non avea che uno ponte, e quello era in forza di grandi, e la cittàs compigliata e tutta schiusa, e le genti tutte isbigottite’. See full account in Appendix iii. On the Florentine popolo,
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER FIVE
FROM ORIGINS TO CONTESTED SITE
‘A BEAUTIFUL AND HONORABLE BRIDGE’
The
Ponte Vecchio, Medieval Aesthetics, and the Politics of Urban Design
THE PONTE VECCHIO AND VILLANI’S ‘MYTH OF FLORENCE’
In his Nuova cronica entry dated 18 July 1345, Villani describes the urban plan of the Ponte Vecchio:
It was well-founded and its width was thirty-two braccia while the street was sixteen braccia wide, which we believe was too much, as it lowered the arches by two braccia. The shops on both sides were [eight?] braccia wide and eight braccia long, built on the solid part of the arches, and vaulted above and below. There were forty-four [or forty-three?] shops, and the commune earned eight hundred [or eighty?] gold florins or more in rent every year. Previously, these shops had been made of wood and extended over the Arno, and the bridge had been narrow—sixteen [or twelve?] braccia.1
Similarly, in his later chronicle of approximately 1385, Marchione di Coppo Stefani describes the Ponte Vecchio as ‘sixteen braccia wide, aside from the shops, which were made on both sides (‘fu rifatto il Ponte Vecchio di pietre ed archi tre e riccamente. Le quale ponte rimase largo 16 braccia, oltre alle botteghe, che vi feciono suso d’ogni lato’).2
1 Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 13: 46, p. 653, translation is mine. This entry’s dating is discussed in Chapter Three. See also English translation in Villani, The Final Book of Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle, p. 91. The numbers in brackets are those that appear in another edition published as Giovanni Villani, Cronica di Giovanni Villani, ed. Francesco Gherardi Dragomanni (Florence: S. Coen, 1844–45, reprinted: Rome: Multigrafica Editrice,
1980), 12: 46 (18 July 1345), vol. 4, pp. 78–79 (henceforth cited as Villani-Dragomanni, Nuova cronica; note differing book numeration). These chronicle entries for comparison are in Appendix iv
2 Stefani, Cronaca fiorentina, rub. 619a (dated 1345), p. 224. His full entry is quoted and analyzed in Chapter Six and its dating is discussed in Chapter Three. It can be compared with Villani’s description in Appendix iv
Villani and Stefani provide the most detailed fourteenth-century descriptions of the Ponte Vecchio’s urban plan, consisting of a central roadway with several shops along its eastern and western sides (figs. 5.2–5.3). As will be shown, their reports are closely connected to the current structure and likely reflect a generalized, preliminary design for the bridge as it was established by Florentine officials in 1339–40.3
Across this chapter, the design of the Ponte Vecchio will be analyzed by comparing historical records, including Villani’s and Stefani’s descriptions, with physical evidence from the actual bridge. Moreover, the Ponte Vecchio’s plan will be set alongside contemporaneous examples of Florentine urban design to provide a broader understanding of late medieval Florentine urbanism. Additionally, the aesthetic and practical implications of the Ponte Vecchio’s design will be considered, including how the bridge evidences the beauty and honor required by its commission and how these qualities relate to late medieval aesthetics and to a political theory that considered urban order as both essential for civic peace and as a reflection of a city’s good government.4
3 asf, pr, 29, fols. 11v-13r (21 May 1339). See the discussion of this document in Chapter Three. The pertinent portion of this provision reads: ‘ad faciendum et fieri et construi pro ipso comuni quendam pulcrum et honorabilem pontem de lapidibus in flumine arni in eo loco in quo consuevit esse pons vetum illius videlicet longitudinis, altitudinis et latitudinis et eo modo et forma de quibus et prout dictis offitialibus vel quator ex eis in alio et aliis abque et inregistus vel definitis placuit et videbit’.
4 Some of the ideas in this chapter previously appeared in Flanigan, ‘The Ponte Vecchio and the Art of Urban Planning’, pp. 1–15 and Theresa Flanigan, ‘The Ponte Vecchio as a Public Good: Civic Architecture and Civil Conflict in Trecento Florence’, in Art and Experience in Trecento Italy, eds. Holly Flora and Sarah Wilkins (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 97–112.
F ig. 5.2
Ponte Vecchio, Florence. Street view looking north from the center of the piazza. The Vasari Corridor is on the right (Photo: Author, 2023).
F ig. 5.3
Ponte Vecchio, Florence. Street view looking south from the center of the piazza. The Vasari Corridor is on the left, and the Mannelli Tower is located at the far left (southeastern) end of the bridge (Photo: Author, 2023).
The Ponte Vecchio’s Piazza and Scenographic Design
The most notable feature of the Ponte Vecchio that is missing from Villani’s description is the relatively large open square (piazza) at the center of the bridge (fig. 5.1). This piazza is not mentioned in any fourteenth-century chronicles or civic documents, including those recording the Ponte Vecchio’s commission, and there is no indication that a similar piazza existed on the previous version of the bridge.16 This silence suggests that the piazza may have been a later addition to the Ponte Vecchio’s preliminary design. It may have been added when the shops were built or after they were commissioned in November of 1345; however, a piazza is also not specified in the documents related to commissioning the shops.17 What could have motivated the inclusion of a piazza on the Ponte Vecchio at the expense of rentable retail space? Perhaps the piazza was the result of an aesthetic decision that was connected to a new interest in the visual experience of individuals as they moved through Florence. In his early fifteenth-century account (quoted at the very beginning of this book), Goro Dati praised the piazza for creating expansive views up and down the river; otherwise, the shop blocks would have run continuously along the bridge’s street from north to south (figs. 5.8–5.9).18 As noted in the introductory chapter, Creighton Gilbert has attributed Dati’s observation to a new fifteenth-century ‘consciousness’ of ‘view planning’, which he linked to the development of Renaissance linear perspectival painting.19 Marvin Trachtenberg, however, has convincingly demonstrated that a consciousness of ‘view planning’ (or what he terms ‘scenographic design’) had already existed in late medieval Florence for at least a century.20 According to Trachtenberg, as one
15 Franklin Toker, ‘Gothic Architecture by Remote Control: An Illustrated Building Contract of 1340’, Art Bulletin, 67, no. 1 (1985): pp. 67–95.
16 A piazza is not mentioned in any records of the flood of 1333 or accounts of the early-fourteenth-century fires that burned the wooden shops then on the bridge. See Villani-Porta, Nuova cronica, 10 : 158 (7 July 1322), and 11 : 183 (23 June 1331), pp. 352 and 503 and documents in Appendices i –ii
17 asf, pr , 33, fols. 169r-v (28 Nov. 1345). See document in Appendix iii. For construction of the shops, see Chapter Six.
18 Dati, Istoria di Firenze, p. 115: ‘.in sul quale [ponte] da ogni parte son bellissime botteghi d’artefici, lavorate di pietra, che non pare che e’sia ponte, se non in sul mezzo d’esso, dove è una piazza con le sponde, che dimostra il fiume sopra, e di sotto’ See the discussion of this passage at the very beginning of this volume.
19 Gilbert, ‘Earliest Guide to Florentine Architecture’, pp. 33–46, esp. 40.
20 Marvin Trachtenberg, ‘What Brunelleschi Saw: Monument and Site at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 47, no. 1 (1988): pp. 14–44; Trachtenberg, “Scénographie urbaine et identité civique,” pp. 11–31; and Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye
Fig. 5.8
Arno River, Florence. View looking west from the Ponte Vecchio toward the Ponte a Santa Trinita (Photo: Author, 2023).
F ig. 5.9
Arno River, Florence. View of the Arno looking east from the Ponte Vecchio (Photo: Author, 2023)
Fig. 5.10
Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio), Florence, 1299-c. 1315. View from the entrance to Piazza della Signoria at the end of Via dei Calzaiuoli. The Loggia dei Lanzi (1376–82) is to the right (Photo: Author, 2023).
Fig. 5.11
Schematic plan showing the Palazzo della Signoria (Palazzo Vecchio, 1299–1315, labelled Pv) and the development of the Piazza della Signoria (1299–1387). (From: Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, 1997, Fig. 82, reproduced permission of Marvin Trachtenberg).
Fig. 5.12
Piazza della Signoria, plan showing the piazza’s ideal geometry (solid line) superimposed over the piazza’s actual shape (dashed line) (From: Marvin Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, 1997, Fig. 114, reproduced with permission of Marvin Trachtenberg).
moved along the main routes of late medieval Florence (what he calls the Florentine ‘ringstrasse’), one observed deliberately composed views of key civic monuments. Each monument was meant to be seen from a particular position, often at an oblique view, and from a calculated distance from the monument—for instance, at the main entrance to a piazza. The Florentine government intentionally created these views as a give and take between architectural construction and urban planning, which sometimes included the costly widening of streets or piazza redesign. By the mid-fourteenth century, the Piazza della Signoria had been expanded to create an oblique view of the Palazzo della Signoria from the piazza’s entrance on Via dei Calzaiuoli (figs. 5.10–5.12). In addition, as Trachtenberg has shown, the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria (built c 1310) was designed with a height that equaled the distance from the base of the tower to the entrance of the piazza so that the tower would be fully visible from the piazza entrance. Similarly, Piazza Sant’Apollinare (now Piazza San Firenze) was expanded to offer an oblique view of the Palazzo del Podestà (Florence’s original town hall, now the Bargello) (fig. 6.36). Repeatedly, then, during the fourteenth century, Florentine piazze were considered viewing spaces. Trachtenberg relates such late medieval view planning to contemporaneous developments in surveying and optical theory; these developments also influenced Trecento experiments in perspectival painting, including the oblique images of buildings painted by Taddeo Gaddi in the Baroncelli Chapel, Santa Croce (1332–38), and the oblique view of the Palazzo della Signoria in Orcagna’s Expulsion of the Duke of Athens (1343, fig. 3.1).21
The piazza on the Ponte Vecchio, therefore, may have been included (at least in part) for the views that it created. For example, anyone entering the piazza could see oblique views of the Ponte Vecchio’s shop blocks (figs. 5.2–5.3).22 The piazza also offers a
21 For images of Gaddi’s paintings in the Baroncelli Chapel, see Trachtenberg, Dominion of the Eye, figs. 158a-b.
22 According to Trachtenberg, (‘Scénographie urbaine et identité civique’, pp. 20–22) the design of piazze in late medieval Florence took into consideration visual perception. They were made to open up views as much as space within the densely packed city.
23 Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, transl. S. G. C. Middelmore (London and New York: Macmillan Co., 1878), part iv, pp. 298–303, available at: http://www. gutenberg.org/files/2074/2074-h/2074-h. htm#fnanchor_692_692. Burckhardt cites Dante, Purgatorio, canto 4, ll. 26–57 (see Sinclair ed., vol. 2, pp. 58–59), and Petrarch, ‘The Ascent of Mount Ventoux’ (see in Medieval Sourcebook, ed. Paul Halsall (New York: Fordham University 1998), available at: https://sourcebooks. fordham.edu/source/petrarch-
panoramic view of the Arno, Florence, and the surrounding landscape (figs. 5.8–5.9). In fact, it was one of the few places in crowded, medieval Florence where such an expansive view of the cityscape could be experienced. Jacob Burkhardt traced the Italian ‘rediscovery’ of the beauty of nature to the writings of Villani’s contemporaries, most notably Dante’s poetic description of the views on his climb at San Leo (by 1320) and Petrarch’s (1304–74) account of his ascent up Mont Ventoux, near Avignon, in a letter of 1336 to Dionisio da Borgo San Sepulcro.23 However, the views from the piazza on the Ponte Vecchio are most akin to those visible in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s contemporaneous landscape frescoes in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, especially his Effects of Good Government (or Peace) in the Countryside (1338–9) (fig. 5.16 ).24 Like the views from the piazza of the Ponte Vecchio, this fresco displays a panoramic vista of a peaceful and fertile countryside. In the adjacent scene, a similarly panoramic view of a peaceful and well-ordered city is depicted (fig. 5.17).25
The Ponte Vecchio and Florentine Urban Planning
The piazza at the center of the Ponte Vecchio also suggests a geometric approach to urban planning on the bridge. Currently, one’s sense of the geometry of the piazza is impeded by the three-bay loggia that Vasari added across a quarter of the piazza to support his corridor above (the ‘Vasari Corridor’, built in 1565). Originally, however, the piazza extended uncovered across the approximately 32 braccia (c. 18.68 m) width of the bridge. From north to south, the piazza was also approximately 32 braccia since its actual measurement is 18.8 m (or 32.2 braccia, figs. 5.5–5.6). Because the piazza is close to a perfect square, it was probably meant to be perceived as such. Consequently, it was a piazza with an ideal plan; this type
ventoux.asp). He also cites the slightly later geographical writings of Fazio degli Uberti, who described a wide, panoramic view from the mountains of Auvergne in Il Dittamondo [c. 1360], iii. cap. 9.
24 On the spatial qualities of these frescoes, see John White, The Birth and Rebirth of Pictorial Space (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1987), pp. 93–101.
25 The meaning of Lorenzetti’s fresco of the Effects of Good Government (or Peace) in the Countryside (1338–39) is indicated by a winged allegorical figure of Securitas, who holds a banner, which reads: ‘Without fear every man may travel freely and each may till and sow, so long as this commune shall maintain this lady sovereign, for she has stripped the wicked of all power’. The peace, security, and productiveness of this countryside thus results from good government.
See Jack M. Greenstein, ‘The Vision of Peace: Meaning and Representation in Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Sala della Pace Cityscapes’, Art History, 11, no. 4 (December 1988): pp. 492–510.
original appearance reveals a renewed interest in the preservation of the past, in contrast to the nineteenth-century proposals that had placed much less value on medieval architecture.
Efforts to preserve Florence’s historical bridges were disrupted by World War II. On the night of 3–4 August 1944, Nazi soldiers retreating from Florence blew up all of the city’s bridges, except for the Ponte Vecchio, and destroyed much of the city’s physical fabric immediately north and south of the bridge.51 Fortuitously, the Ponte Vecchio narrowly escaped the fate of the other bridges.52 Documents and photographs from World War II indicate that German anti-tank mines (Tellerminen) were placed on the
48 This inscription (recorded in Wolfers and Mazzoni (eds.), La Firenze di Giuseppe Martelli, p. 88) reads: ‘pri M a bottega D’orficieria / rior D inata nel 1857 / sul D isegno / iposto Dal M unicipio / questa effige / ricor D i le so MM e glorie D ell ’arte / e accen Da gli ani M i / a generosa e M ulazione / gius M artelli architetto ’.
49 Anna Gallo Martucci, ‘Ponte Vecchio nella Firenze del nostro secolo’, in Un ponte dalle botteghe d’oro. Le botteghe degli orafi sul ponte Vecchio. Quattro secoli di storia, ed. Doria Liscia Bemporad, (Florence: M. C. de Montemayer, 1993), p. 43.
50 Martucci, ‘Ponte Vecchio’, p. 44.
51 Martucci, ‘Ponte Vecchio’, pp. 46–48.
Fig. E.11
Ponte Vecchio, Florence.
Southwestern block with shop surmounted by nineteenth-century terraces and balconies (Photo: Author, 2023).
Fig. E.12
Rafaello Romanelli, Bust of Benvenuto Cellini, bronze with a bronze and marble base, 1900–01, piazza of the Ponte Vecchio, Florence (Photo: Author, 2023).
Ponte Vecchio during July 1944, as they were on the other bridges, in order to blow up the bridge and halt the advance of the Allies (figs. e .13-e .14). On 30 July 1944, these mines were removed from the Ponte Vecchio during operation Feuerzauber, and German soldiers were ordered to blow up all the bridges ‘in and near Florence […] with the exception of the Ponte Vecchio’.53
According to legend, it was supposedly Adolf Hitler’s personal appreciation for the Ponte Vecchio’s ‘medieval’ qualities (it is unclear what he considered ‘medieval’) that saved the bridge from demolition. Another story, based on a recently discovered letter, suggests instead that a brave shop assistant disabled the mines on
52 Pre-war photographs of Florence’s bridges appear in Bargellini, Com’era Firenze, pp. 50–53 (Ponte Vecchio), pp. 54–55 (Ponte alle Grazie with its monastic buildings), p. 56 (Ponte alle Grazie after structures removed and deck widened in 1860), pp. 57–59 (lungarno between Ponte Vecchio and Ponte alla Carraia), pp. 60–61 (Ponte a Santa Trinita with Ponte Vecchio in background), and p. 62 (Ponte alla Carraia). See also Marilena Tamassia (ed.), Firenze ottocentesca nelle fotografie di J .B. Philipot (Florence: Sillabe, 2002), pp. 32–37 (Ponte alla Carraia), pp. 36–39 and 58–59 (Ponte alle Grazie with structures), pp. 40–41 and 56–57 (Ponte Vecchio), and pp. 42–43 (Ponte a Santa Trinita and houses of Borgo San Jacopo from the Arno).
53 Gurrieri, Bacci, and Pedreschi, I ponti sull’Arno, pp. 76–83.
the Ponte Vecchio to prevent its destruction.54 A plaque on the eastern side of the piazza, however, credits the Ponte Vecchio’s preservation to Gerhard Wolf (1886–1962), a German consulate from Dresden who advocated to preserve the bridge (fig. e .15; see also figs. 6.24–25). The plaque reads:
Gerhard Wolf (1886–1962). German consul, born at Dresden—subsequently twinned with the city of Florence—played a decisive role in saving the Ponte Vecchio (1944) from the barbarism of the Second World War and was instrumental in rescuing political prisoners and Jews from persecution during the dramatic phase of the Nazi occupation. The Commune places this plaque on 11 April 2007 in memory of the granting of honorary citizenship.55
Although the overall structure of the Ponte Vecchio was saved, several of its shops suffered damage from nearby explosions (figs. e .16–e .18). Instead of detonating the Ponte Vecchio, the Nazis mined the areas north and south of the Ponte Vecchio, the Allies’
Fig. E.13
Mines placed on the Ponte Vecchio by German soldiers during World War II, 24 July 1944 (Photo: Reproduced with the permission of the Beyer / Bundesarchiv, Bild 101i -480–2227–21a ).
Fig. E.15
Plaque on the piazza of the Ponte Vecchio that commemorates the salvation of the bridge in 1944 by the German consul Gerhard Wolf (Photo: Author, 2023).
Fig. E.14
Mines planted on the Ponte Vecchio during World War II, 24 July 1944. Lost arcading along the eastern side of Via Guicciardini is visible just beyond the bridge (Photo: Reproduced with the permission of the Beyer/ Bundesarchiv Bild 101i -480–2227–12 a ).
54 See Lucia Barocchi, ‘La notte delle mine’, in Di pietra e d’oro. Il ponte Vecchio di Firenze. Sette secoli di storia e di arte, eds. Claudio Paolini et al. (Florence: Maria Cristina de Montemayor Editore, 2016), pp. 120–25.
55 The original plaque reads in Italian: ‘gerhar D wolf (1886–1962). console te D esco nato a D res Dà in seguito unita Da ge M ellaggio con la città D i firenze si a D operó con ruolo D ecisivo per la salvezza
Fig. E.16
View of damaged shops on the Ponte Vecchio, 1944, Florence. Debris blocks the northern approach (Photo: Reproduced with the permission of the Albert Sheldon Pennoyer Collection, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University).
E.17
Damaged buildings along the Ponte Vecchio looking north toward the Cathedral (Duomo), 1944, Florence (Photo: Reproduced with the permission of the Albert Sheldon Pennoyer Collection, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University).
E.18
Damage to the southern end of the Ponte Vecchio and the Vasari Corridor on corbels at Via dei Bardi and Via Guiciardini, looking north toward the Cathedral (Duomo), 1944, Florence (Photo: Reproduced with the permission of the Albert Sheldon Pennoyer Collection, Department of Art and Archaeology, Princeton University).
D el ponte vecchio (1944) Dalla
barbarie D ella ii guerra
M on D iale fu D eter M inate per il rilascio D i perseguitati politici
e ebrei nella D ra MM atica fase
D ell ’occupazione nazista il co M une pose l ’11 aprile 2007 a ricor D o D ell ’attribuzione D ella citta D inanza onoraria ’.
Fig.
Fig.
Famous today for the shops lining its sloped street, the Ponte Vecchio is the last premodern bridge spanning the Arno River at Florence and one of the few remaining examples of the once more prevalent urbanized bridge type. Drawing from early Florentine chronicles and previously unpublished archival documents, this book traces the history of the Ponte Vecchio, focusing on the current bridge’s construction after the flood of 1333. Much of the Ponte Vecchio’s original fourteenth-century appearance is now obscured beneath later accretions, often mistakenly interpreted as original to its medieval character. To the contrary, as argued in this book and illustrated by new reconstruction drawings, the mid-trecento Ponte Vecchio’s vaulted substructure was technically advanced, its urban superstructure was designed in accordance with contemporary
Florentine urban planning strategies, and its original orderly appearance was maintained by legislation enforced by a government agency. The documents also reveal new information about the commission and rental of its famous shops. Relying on these sources, this study o ers a more complete history of the Ponte Vecchio, adding significantly to what is currently known about the bridge’s patronage and construction, and the aims of civic architecture and urban planning in late medieval Florence.
HARVEY MILLER PUBLISHERS