Spinello Aretino, Benedetto Alberti, and the Olivetans: Late Trecento patronage at San Miniato al Monte

The first study in English of monastic and family patronage in late Trecento Florence, this dissertation focuses on the decoration of the sacristy at San Miniato al Monte. While the church itself has been the focus of several studies, the historical events that led to the construction and decoration of this room (used as sacristy, chapter house, and commemorative chapel) have yet to benefit from an integrated, art historical investigation. A fresco Life of Saint Benedict is the artistic centerpiece of the sacristy's decorative program and itself an iconographic watershed. This cycle---one of the most important monuments of late-Trecento Florentine painting---is also the artistic apex of Spinello Aretino's career and his third major commission for the Olivetan Order. The three audiences addressed by the cycle are identified for the first time and the disparate perspectives of each group inform my reading of the iconographic sub-texts.;New also to the literature is this dissertation's comprehensive examination of the Alberti family as benefactors of religious institutions and patrons of the visual arts. Drawing from published and unpublished documents and a variety of historical studies, this project places the sacristy in perspective as the family's premier artistic campaign of the 1380s. Benedetto Alberti---the city's richest and most dangerous statesman---paid for the decoration of the new sacristy at San Miniato al Monte on the eve of his two-year exile from Florence in 1387, immediately before departing on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The sacristy project was his family's first involvement with the Order for whom they would continue as active patrons well into the next century.;The early visual culture of the Olivetan Order is examined here in a comprehensive manner for the first time. Never before has that group's artistic heritage been chronicled with any sophistication; San Miniato al Monte's status as their first monumental fresco commission makes it an ideal starting point for such research. Moreover, this study accounts for the monastic patrons' role in the conception and execution of artistic commissions and their participation in the production and trade of decorated liturgical texts.