of the principal means of generating income was the raising of wealthy families to the nobility. Thus, early in the century "admission to the nobility depended solely on wealth." Those families who desired such elevation found that ostentatious spending on public and private building and art was one of the best means of positioning themselves. Once they had been accepted, the spending went on as they strove to earn the full acceptance and respectability that the older patrician families denied them.
But this "unparalleled splendour and love of display" were shared by these older families as well. The older nobility were also conscious of the fact that, in their Republic, it was the nobility who constituted the state rather than a king or emperor--as in those now-powerful nations that despised them. Both older families and new were also "intensely conscious of the artistic heritage of their city," and sought consolation for their lapsed glory both in reminding themselves of that tradition and in having themselves portrayed as something far gr
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