The Patron's Role in the Production of Architecture: Bartolomeo Scala and the Scala Palace
Architectural patronage in the late Quattrocento was a way of 11 demonstrating status. I In spite of the republican and unaristocratic rhetoric espoused by the Florentine ruling class, powerful families, like the Medici or Strozzi, sought to impress their compatriots with conspicuous displays of wealth. In the course of the fifteenth century, the attitude towards the manifestation of riches passed from a medieval and Christian contempt to a distinct appreciation of magnificence as a virtue and duty of the rich.2 This need to impress is nowhere more apparent than in the patronage of architecture -especially palace building. As Richard Goldthwaite has shown, the giant and expensive stone palaces of Florence, not economically justifiable, were demonstrations of wealth, social standing, and power.3 Yet not everyone who aspired to a place of significance in Florence was rich. The architectural patronage of Bartolomeo Scala exemplifies an alternative method of self-aggrandizement, one that became increasingly attractive even to patrons of great wealth.