7 - Florentine Customs and Practices

Summary

The wedding of Francesco de’Medici and Giovanna of Austria was accompanied by processions and art that celebrated Florence’s history and its cultural and artistic achievements. Vincenzio Borghini and Giorgio Vasari worked with Duke Cosimo on the program. New paintings on Florentine history in the Palazzo Vecchio led Girolamo Mei to write a treatisethat challenged Borghini’s assessment of the city’s history, using evidence that included the writings of Annius of Viterbo. They exchanged letters that raised issues about the use of ruins and other non-textual evidence. Borghini went on to write Discorsi on Florence’s history and traditions that also explored methods of studying the past; he wrote on medieval coinage, on families and family crests, the nature of nobility, and more. Borghini argued that traditions and social practices develop and change like languages. Many typically Florentine customs, he suggested, developed in parallel with the formation of the city’s government in the thirteenth century.