The majority of mural paintings in municipal residential buildings from the late Middle Ages are no longer extant today. Very few painting cycles have escaped destruction and, until now, those have seldom received the research they deserve. Socially, formally, as well as with regard to content, they move in a multilayered gray area between a private and public sphere, between standardized interior design and a sophisticated iconographic program.
Using three Tuscan examples – the Casa Datini, the Canto dei Pecori and the Palazzo Galganetti – the study shows how the original context of the claims to prestigious representation, and therefore the formal design, substantially determined the painting cycles. The motifs became a selfrepresentation of the patrons, borrowed from the courtly and sacred context, but adapted to conform to communal values. With these analyses this volume provides new access to the strategies and pictorial solutions that evolved during the Trecento.