ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how and why Renaissance theorists wished to control the genre and shows the profound effect their ideas have had on all subsequent treatments of painted palace facades. The sudden and intense rise in popularity of figurative painted facades in Trent in the early sixteenth century also corresponded with significant social and political changes. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, Trent became an increasingly important launching point for Emperor Maximilian's various ambitions in Italy. The sixteenth-century Italian palace facade was the site of considerable competition between painters and architects. Painted facades were particularly common in parts of Rome colonized by new, politically important and upwardly-mobile immigrants, such as the Via Giulia, Piazza Navona, Monte Cavallo, and Borgo. Although painted facades were produced in Venice throughout the sixteenth century, this aspect of Venetian palace design has received relatively little attention from scholars, especially architectural historians.
