Resumen de Political portico: exhibiting self-rule in early communal Italy
The city-states of the communal period in Italy (ca. 1080-1380) produced the first republican governing bodies in Europe since the fall of the Roman Republic; they also fashioned public squares studded with an unprecedent array of porticoed architecture. Pressured by external and internal forces critical of collective rule, urban nobles and elite citizens sought to legitimized their novel institutions and actualize their participatory ideology. An examination of text, pictorial works, and architectural form reveals that communes deployed porticoes innovatively to promote radical civil values by showcasing performances of self-governance for public consumption.
