ART historian Hendrika Foster returns to Salisbury on February 24 after her highly-successful series of lectures on Rome in the Arts Centre in October.

This new lecture series is entitled Florence and the Power of Art, 1400-1600.

Residents of the 15th century republic of Florence lived subject to an expected code of conduct. With no duke or prince as head of state, competition between families of merchants was intense, and yet to flaunt aristocratic pretensions was unwise. The most valued title was that of “Florentine Patrician”.

Pious conduct had to be observed and yet, inevitably in a capitalist economy, fortunes were made and lost, some succeeded while others failed and some remained irrevocably in charge.

The art produced for these families abides today as a legacy for visitors to this inspiring city of art.

The Medici family is, of course, the most famous and their coat of arms appears in numerous venues and on street corners.

Other families are remembered in street names like the Via Tornabuo, palazzos like the Strozzi or in churches in the family chapels they paid for, such as the Brancacci, Pazzi, Sassetti and Capponi chapels.

The art they commissioned was intended to preserve their name in perpetuity – it mostly succeeded, although not always in the way they had intended.

For modern art enthusiasts, names of artists from Masaccio to Fra Angelico and Botticelli to Michelangelo are the stars of the Renaissance but, in the 15th century, they were fairly unimportant artisans.

It would take a Leonardo da Vinci to elevate the status of an individual painter or sculptor, largely achieved through self-education.

It was the Florentine families with their own elevation and self-aggrandisement who had the vision, the motivation and the wealth which resulted in creating one of the greatest cities of art in the world.

Lectures take place in Salisbury Arts Centre each Tuesday from February 24 until March 24 from 10.30am-1pm.

Tickets for the series cost £85 from 01963 32172 or email hendrik-fos ter@hotmail.co.uk.