Premium Featured Accommodation

Medieval Florence - Types of Windows used in Buildings

In 1390 the stone shields with the coats of arms of the Florentine Churches, the house of Anjou, of the Popolo, the Comune, the Guelph Party, the Priori della Libertà, as well as two large square slabs with the insignia of the Arte della Lana or the Opera, one at each end of the row of windows, were walled in above the arches of the seven windows of the Opera headquarters, on the north side of the piazza in the stretch between Via dei Servi and Via dei Ricasoli (the shields can still be seen on the facades of the buildings in Piazza del Duomo nn. 3, 4, 5).

Analogous operations aimed at a uniformity in the urban setting with unified arcading were applied to the building walls in Piazza della Signoria (1390 and later) and Via Calzaiuoli.

Similar private operations such as that in Via de' Cimatori (1297-1301) had been undertaken earlier, as were those promoted by the Peruzzi (probably in the second half of the fourteenth century) for Via de' Benci and part of Piazza S. Croce.

In ordinary houses the windows were equipped only with two robust wooden shutters, also known as 'windows' or 'openings' (usci), which opened outwards.
In the wealthier houses, in addition to the shutters, which might consist of several articulated parts, there were the 'impannate' or the 'vetrate’.
The impannate were light cloth panels, either waxed or oiled, and fixed with nails to wooden frames.
Every impannata was composed of two shutters, each of which had a panel at the bottom which could open outwards at one side, or, more commonly, on the upper horizontal side. The tenants had to procure their own impannate.

The use of glass panes for windows is documented as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, for example in the convents of S. Croce and the Badia, but they were still very expensive and rare as late as the first half of the fifteenth century.

They were fixed to the window jambs or on poles inserted in the bar hooks (arpioni da stanghe) set into the masonry about a third of the way up.
The bar hooks were also used for hanging out clothes and linen for drying or airing; at times domestic animals might be attached to them.

Other wrought-iron accessory elements were scattered more or less everywhere on the walls of the buildings, with horse hooks to which a ring or a Gothic M upside down was attached, the banner hooks, the torch hooks.

Articles