ABSTRACT
Art was once treated as the expression of patrons' values; more recently it has been seen as a token of their sufferance or power. The German historian Antal represented the older school in claiming that art reflected a dominant class. In a famous book ( Florentine Painting and its Social Background (English trans., 1947)) Antal argued that industry and international trade gave Florence an unusually developed bourgeoisie. Renaissance art mirrored the vicissitudes of this elite. Its triumph in the late thirteenth century produced the art of Giotto which was spatial, rational and humane. The retreat of the same class in the mid-fourteenth century before an advancing petty bourgeoisie gave birth to a new art that was popular, emotional and hieratic. The upper bourgeoisie and Giotto's art revived again after 1380. This revival reached its peak in the 1420s with the sculpture of Donatello and the painting of Masaccio.
