Playing with Luxury: Dolls as Ambassadors for the Florentine Business Community in Sixteenth-Century Spain?

Through the analysis of a doll made in Florence and destined for a family of Florentine merchants active in Seville, this paper outlines the patterns of consumption and the concept of luxury to be found amongst members of the Florentine economic elite of the sixteenth century. The doll is evidence for a lifestyle which was the culmination of a typically Renaissance intellectual sophistication and aesthetic sense, but also of the multiplicity of artistic and cultural influences which a merchant with a lengthy trading presence in one of the wealthiest and most important cities of the day came into contact with.