Palaces. During the fifteenth century, extensive domestic building projects were undertaken in many Renaissance Italian cities. In Florence, for example, the banking and commercial elite employed architects to design palazzi (palaces) as markers of their political, social, and cultural power. In the mid fifteenth century, Cosimo de' Medici commissioned Filippo Brunelleschi to build a family palace near the center of town, not far from a cluster of older family houses. The design turned out to be too grand for de' Medici's taste, and Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, a collaborator of Lorenzo Ghiberti and Donatello, was called upon to design the palace, which still exists. Architects wanted to express the humanist value of magnificence, conflating architectural design with the dignity and social standing of the owners. In the early fourteenth century, they continued to employ designs that fortified the palace against public attacks and...