City Palaces

The Via de' Tornabuoni has served as the setting for pageants and processions to the cathedral and baptistery since mediaeval times. In the 15th and 16th centuries, influential Patrician families such as the Strozzis, Tornabuonis and Vivianis built their palaces here. Since the 18th century, these buildings have often been used as an imposing backdrop in graphical portrayals of the Via de' Tornabuoni as a place for urban promenading, whereby the visualisations by Giuseppe Zocchi, the eminent Florentine copper engraver (died in 1767) were used as templates. Our first plate is dominated by the massive stonework of the Palazzo Strozzi, which was the first palazzo of the Quattrocento to have three complete front sides. To balance this, the street stretches across the entire right side of the picture to a square. Emilio Burci’s view of the monumental west front of the Palazzo Strozzi towards the north points to the Palazzo Viviani and Palazzo Corsi, both bathed in sunlight, in a similarly sweeping manner. Here, as on our third plate as well, the old front of the Palazzo Corsi (formerly Tornabuoni) is visible with the Cigolis Loggia, which disappeared when the road was widened in the 1860s. A purely architectural interest is hidden behind the printed elevations of individual palaces. Alongside the Renaissance palaces, such as the Palazzo Pandolfini accredited to Raphael, contemporary works appear, such as the copper engraving showing the front of the Palazzo Borghese, which was published shortly after completion of the palazzo in 1821.