Visualizing neighborhood in renaissance Florence: Santo Spirito and Santa Maria del Carmine

The organization and decoration of chapels in the churches of Renaissance Florence have much to tell us about neighborhood relationships. Analysis of the church works committees and of the ownership of chapels in the Santo Spirito and Carmine churches reveals that administrative divisions were more important than proximity in determining which church the key families of the area chose to patronize. In both cases the allocation and decoration of chapels expressed local status relationships in visual form, yet the visual language of the two churches was fundamentally different. In Santo Spirito the new Renaissance style expressed the power and aspirations of a community elite. At the Carmine there was extensive neighborhood involvement in the decoration of chapels, sometimes in providing funding and sometimes in regulating their style. There the older style expressed the involvement of a less extensive but more socially diverse neighborhood.