Building Blocks of Power

This dissertation analyzes the dates and artistic provenance of key architectural and decorative projects commissioned by the Pucci family for their townhomes, villas, and palaces during the Renaissance. It identifies the family’s insistent identification with prestigious Renaissance architects and artisans as a key element in a political and social stratagem that took its cue from the humanist ethos cultivated by their political patrons, the Medici. Temporally, this study is bracketed on both ends of the Renaissance by architectural commissions related to the Pucci’s long-standing patronage of Santissima Annunziata, the most important pilgrimage church in Florence. Methodoligically, it is an archival project that relies principally on previously unknown letters, wills, payment records, inventories, and notarial documents.