國立政治大學歷史學系

The Girolami’s Plaque of Saint Zenobius, c.1415 -1420: Approaching a Personal Political Advertisement in Quattrocento Florence

This paper explores the extents to which visual arts were used by fifteenth-century Florentine elites as an instrument of political power, upholding and consolidating an individual family’s public imagery. Between 1415 and 1420, the Girolami family ordered a marble plaque to be installed on the façade of their private tower. Known as The Plaque of Saint Zenobius, the lower section of the plaque bears an inscription referring to the Girolami’s annual offering to the saint; the upper part presents a pictorial narrative, showing the figure of Saint Zenobius, as well as many ecclesiastical and civic monuments in Florence, including the city’s communal palace - the Palazzo della Signoria. In the light of the civil and political importance of the Palazzo della Signoria that has been demonstrated in fourteenth and fifteenth-centuries pictorial and textual representations, the unprecedented juxtaposition of Palazzo della Signoria and Saint Zenobius draws our attention to the political significance of the plaque: the communal palace motif in this context underlines the Girolami’s active role in Florence’s political nucleus. As for the saint’s icon, it seems to imply that the family’s political authority was claimed to have been derived from the authority of the saint. From this perspective, the relief is more than a devotional tribute of the Girolami, but it can be seen as the family’s political statement, providing evidence for the politics and rhetorical potential of visual arts in Quattrocento Florence.

Saint Zenobius of Florence, Medieval and Renaissance Florentine Civic Arts, Art and Politics, Fourteenth and Fifteenth-centuries Florentine Political History.