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The story of the Pucci family, great patrons of Renaissance art and architecture.Shrewd and ruthless, the Pucci were Medici loyalists whose political and cultural alignment with the most powerful family in Renaissance Florence was rewarded with wealth and influence. The Pucci's martial support for the Medici in the dangerous business of ruling Tuscany drove their transformation from a clan of minor guildsmen to a noble dynasty with three cardinals to its name. Over the next two centuries, they showcased their exalted status with art and architecture that mirrored Medici tastes and reflected the values of civic humanism. The political and religious turmoil of the High Renaissance is writ large in this vivid portrait of the Pucci cardinals and their artistic patronage, a cultural biography inflected by the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, the Sack of Rome, the Reformation, and the occupation of Italy by Emperor Charles V.New archival evidence documents the chapels, palaces, and villas that were built, expanded, and decorated by the Pucci family in Rome, Tuscany, and Umbria. These celebrated projects were carried out by luminaries of Renaissance  art and architecture: Michelozzo, the Pollaiuolo brothers, the Sangallo family, Baccio d’Agnolo, the Montelupo workshop, and others. A remarkable body of inventories reveals how the family's  trials and tribulations shaped the fate of their estates and illustrates the role luxury goods played in the social ambitions of this newly-arrived family. A previously unknown catalogue of Palazzo Pucci tells the tale of the nineteenth-century dispersal of the family’s priceless  Renaissance  artworks, a collection that once mirrored the splendor of the Medici court.Carla D'Arista holds a PhD in architectural history and a masters degree in European history from Columbia University.Table of ContentsAcknowledgementsAbbreviationsA note on Money and CurrenciesA note on Weights and MeasuresA note on DatesA note on SpellingArchival Sources Used in this StudyFamily TreeIntroduction: ‘Beneath the Shadow of Thy Wings I Sleep’I.    From the Beginning: Medici LoyalistsII.   The Pucci Oratory in Santissima AnnunziataIII.   Antonio Pucci: Dynastic Promotion and Image-BuildingIV.  Casa Pucci in Florence (1503-1537): Fashioning Social HierarchiesV.   Cardinal Lorenzo Pucci in the Eternal CityVI.  Cardinal Antonio Pucci: A Scholarly DiplomatVII. Roberto Pucci (1531-1547): It’s All in the FamilyVIII. Reframing Ambition, Wealth, and Dishonor (1547-1612)Epilogue (1612-1913)Source