As a result, patrons and patrons often competed with each other, and this competition gave rise to a healthy rivalry between artists who tried to come up with new patterns and models (even if they were often not fully understood by a patronage still culturally bound to late Gothic stylistic features).
Why is Florence the place where we can say that the Renaissance originated? In Florence, and in Tuscany in general, the rediscovery of antiquity had already laid its foundations two centuries earlier, through the work of sculptors, men of letters (Dante Alighieri and Francesco Petrarch in fact had initiated the study of ancient literature) to find fulfillment with the work of the humanists, such as Coluccio Salutati and Leonardo Bruni, who in Florence gave a considerable impetus to the study of classical sources. What’s more, Florence was not, in the early fifteenth century, dominated by a lordship or court that dictated tastes, but had a republican form of government that favored the rise of a very rich and powerful bourgeoisie that financed and protected artists. As a result, patrons and patrons often competed with each other, and this competition gave rise to a healthy rivalry between artists who tried to come up with new patterns and models (even if they were often not fully understood by a patronage still culturally bound to late Gothic stylistic features). From this bourgeoisie then later emerged the Medici, who in 1434, with Cosimo the Elder, “took over” the city, establishing a de facto seigniory that, however, did not fail to encourage the arts, and indeed nurtured their development. These were in essence the factors that allowed Florence to play a leading role in the process that gave birth to the Renaissance as we understand it today.