The Intellectual World of Renaissance Florence Depicted in Religious Frescoes

A Series on Astonishing Art in Florence's Churches

Florence has so much art in its churches—of such high quality—that you almost don’t need to pay for museums. For my fourth post on astonishing art in Florence’s churches I’m going to take you into one of the city’s venerated churches, and to a chapel with frescoes from the Renaissance, and tell you how to decode the messages under the religious themes—messages about political connections, humanism, the city as a “new Rome” and the self-fashioning of the man who commissioned these frescoes.

Learn to “read” this artwork in the same way the viewers of 15th century Florence did!