The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (54 page)

  1.
   
DONATELLO’S
David
(
c
. 1430) is now in the Bargello. On its confiscation by the Grand Council after the expulsion of Piero de Medici in 1494 orders were given for it to be erected on a column in the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria.

  2.
   
DONATELLO’S
Judith Slaying Holofemes
(
c
. 1460) was removed from the Medici Palace by order of the
Signoria
after the flight of the Medici in 1494. It was set up on the
ringhiera
at the Palazzo della Signoria – it now stands in front of the Palazzo – with an inscription on its base to the effect that it had been placed there as a warning to all tyrants: ‘
Exemplum.Sal[utis].Pub[licae].Cives.Pos[uere]
.
MCCCCXCV
’. The original inscription read: ‘Kingdoms fall through luxury. Cities rise through virtue. Behold the head of pride severed by humility. Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici dedicates the statue of this woman to the liberty and fortitude bestowed on the Republic by the invincible and constant spirit of its citizens.’

  3.
   Most of
SANTA MARIA DEL CARMINE
was destroyed by fire in the eighteenth century when it was rebuilt by Giuseppe Ruggieri and Giulio Mannaioni. The Brancacci chapel was, however, spared by the fire. The cycle of murals by Masaccio and Masolino was completed by Fra Filippo Lippi’s son, Filippino Lippi.

  4.
   
FILIPPO LIPPI’S
Coronation of the Virgins
is now in the Museo dell’ Accademia (Via Ricasoli, 52).

  5.
   
FRA ANGELICO’S
Crucifixion
is in the Chapter Room at San Marco on the opposite side of the cloister from the San Marco Museum which contains the high altar of San Marco with Cosimo’s patron saints, Cosmas and Damian, shown kneeling on a carpet.

  6.
   All the
CELLS AT SAN MARCO
are decorated by Fra Angelico and his assistants. Fra Angelico’s
Annunciation
is at the top of the stairs to the dormitory corridor.

  7.
   Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici’s sarcophagus in the old
SACRISTY AT SAN LORENZO
is by Andrea Cavalcanti Buggiano. It is placed beneath a marble table on which are the seven red balls of the Medici emblem.

  8.
   
COSIMO’S MARBLE MEMORIAL
in the chancel at San Lorenzoc, the only memorial ever to be placed here, was designed by Verrocchio. The inscription reads:

Cosmus Medices

Hie situs est

Detreto Publico

Pater Patriot

Vixit

Annos LXXV Menses III Dies XX

  1.
   In grirlandaio’s murals in the Cappella Maggiore at Santa Maria Novella, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, sister of the donor, Giovanni Tomabuoni, is represented as the third female figure on the right in the
Birth of the Baptist
.

  2.
   The tabernacle of the crucifix in San Miniato al Monte was built for the crucifix of San Giovanni Gualberto, whose chapel, designed by Caccini, is in Santa Trinità. The Guild of the
Calimala
, which was responsible for the maintenance and ornamentation of San Miniato al Monte, gave permission for the tabernacle to be built provided that the guild’s coat-of-arms was the only
one displayed on it. Piero de’ Medici, however, insisted that his own arms – a falcon holding the Medici diamond ring with the motto ‘
semper
’ and three feathers – should also be displayed; and so they were.

  3.
   The
TABERNACLE OF SANTISSIMA ANNUNZIATA
was made in about 1450. Like the tabernacle in San Miniato al Monte it was designed for Piero de’ Medici, probably by Michelozzo.

  4.
   
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA’S SINGING-GALLBRY
is now in the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo (Piazza del Duomo, 9). Donatello’s gallery is also here. They were both removed from the Cathedral in 1688 to make room for more singers at the wedding of Prince Ferdinand to Princess Violante Beatrice.

  5.
   Work on the
CAMPANILE
began in the 1330s when Giotto was
Capomaestro
of the Cathedral works. Luca della Robbia’s reliefs were done in the 1430s.

  6.
   Part of
LUCA DELLA ROBBIA’S GLAZED TERRACOTTA
decorations made for Piero de’ Medici’s study are now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  7.
   The three panels of uc
CELLO’S
Rout of San Romano
have been dispersed. One is in the Uffizi, another in the Louvre, the third in the National Gallery, London. The Florentine commander pictured in the National Gallery panel is Niccolà da Tolentino, the subject of the marvellous cenotaph memorial by Andrea del Castagno in the Duomo. The cenotaph next to it in the Duomo, a memorial to the English
condoukre
, John Hawkwood, is by Uccello.

  8.
   
POLLAIUOLO’S
Labours of Hercules
are in the Uffizi. His
Hercules and Antaeus
is in the Bargeilo.

  9.
   
BOTTICELLI’S
Madonna of the Magnificat
is in the Uffizi.

10.
   
BOTTICELLI’S
Adoration of the Magi
was painted as an altarpiece for SantaMaria Novella and is now in the Uffizi. According to Giorgio Vasari, the King holding out his hands towards the Holy Child’s feet is Cosimo; the kneeling figure in the white robe is Giuliano, Lorenzo’s brother; and the man behind him, ‘shown gratefully adoring the child’, is Cosimo’s second son, Giovanni. The man on his knees in the centre foreground has been identified as Piero de’ Medici; and the man on the extreme right in the saffron gown as Botticelli himself. The figure in the black gown with a red stripe down the shoulder may be an idealized portrait of Lorenzo il Magnifico.

11.
   
BOTTICELLI’S
Fortitude
is in the Uffizi.

12.
   
FILIPPO LIPPI’S
The Virgin Adoring the Child
was removed from the Medici Chapel in 1814 and is now in Berlin. The painting at present in the chapel is a copy by Neri di Bicci.

13.
   
GENTILE DA FABRIANO’S
Adoration of the Magi
is now in the Uffizi.

14.
   The pretty young man in blue near the front of the procession riding a prancing horse on which also sits a leopard is usually identified as Giuliano de’Medici, though it has been suggested that Gozzoli may have intended by way of a pleasant joke to represent the fearsome and cruel Castruccio Castracani degli Antelminelli, lord of Lucca, Florence’s most powerful enemy in the
fourteenth century. The leopard was the symbol of the Castracani. In accordance with the custom of his time Gozzoli, of course, made little attempt to portray accurate likenesses being content to represent the people in his pictures by symbols and details immediately recognizable by their contemporaries.

15.
   
VERROCCHLO’S TOMB FOR PIERO AND GIOVANNI
in the old sacristy at San Lorenzo, a magnificent structure of serpentine, bronze, porphyry and marble, was finished in 1473.

  1.
   The
RIDOLFI
were shortly to build the palazzo on the corner of Via Maggio – now known as the Via Maggiore – and Via Mazzetta. It is now known as the Casa Guidi. This is where Elizabeth Barrett Browning died in 1861.

  2.
   The fourteenth-century palazzo salviati is on the corner of the Via della Vigna Vecchia and the Via Palmiere.

  3.
   The
BORGO SAN PIERO
is now the Borgo degli Albizi.

  4.
   The Abbey of
CAMALDOLI
, mother house of the Camaldolensians, was founded at the beginning of the eleventh century by St Romualdo. Its name derived from Campus Maldoli, the three-thousand-acre forest site presented to the order by one Maldolus, a rich merchant from Arezzo. The pharmacy is sixteenth-century, other buildings are mostly seventeenth-and eighteenth-century.

  1.
   The family palace, now known as the palazzo pazzi-quaratesi, wasbuilt in the last quarter of the fifteenth century possibly to the designs ofGiuliano da Sangallo, and is in the Via Proconsolo (no. 10). After the Pazziconspiracy it passed into the hands of the Medici, then into those of Cibò and Strozzi.

  2.
   The
CHURCH OF SANT’ APOSTOLI
was built at about the same time as the Baptistery. The early-sixteenth-century main portal is by Benedetto da Rovezzano. The painted wooden roof is early-fourteenth-century.

  3.
   After Brunelleschi’s death the pa zzi chapel was completed by Giuliano da Maiano who made the wooden doors. The terracotta decorations are by Luca della Robbia. The stained-glass window of St Andrew is a copy of the original now kept, with many other treasures, in the Museo dell’ Opera di Santa Croce, which is approached from the cloisters.

  4.
   The
SCOPPIO DEL CARRO
has been resumed. It used to take place at Midnight Mass on Easter Saturday. Now the ceremony is performed at noon on Easter Day. The flints are collected from the church of Sant’ Apostoli and, at the appointed hour, in front of the High Altar of the Cathedral, they are used to
strike sparks which ignite a rocket, shaped like a dove. The dove shoots along a wire out of the Cathedral and into the Piazza where, it is earnestly hoped, it will reach a cart full of fireworks, set the fireworks ablaze and then fall back down the wire into the Cathedral. The operation successfully performed gives promise of a good harvest.

  1.
   The severe and unflattering
Portrait of a Young Woman
by
BOTTICELLI
in the Pitti Palace has been identified as Clarice Orsini and – less probably – as Simonetta Vespucci. A more likely identification seems to be Fioretta Gorini.

  1.
   Lorenzo bought the
VILLA OF POGGIO A CAIANO
in 1479. Giuliano da San-gallo began converting it to a purely Renaissance design the next year, but it was not until the following century that the pediment and gabled loggia were added. The outside staircases were bulit in the seventeenth century. The mural inside the loggia is by Filippino Lippi. The walls of the
salone
, the courtyard of the original building, are decorated with paintings by Francesco di Cristofano Franciabigio, Alcssandro Allori, Andrea del Sarto, and Jacopo Carrucci Pontormo. Apart from this room, the interior of the building has been much changed. It now belongs to the State and is being restored as a museum.

  2.
   According to Vasari, the site of Lorenzo’s school was a garden near the Piazza San Marco which had once belonged to the Badia Fiesolana and had formed part of Clarice Orsini’s dowry. Contemporary records do not mention it and its precise location is unknown.

  3.
   Various examples of Michelangelo’s earliest work may be seen at the
CASA BUONARROTI
(Via Ghibellina, 70) which was built by his nephew on the site of property long owned by his family. The
Madonna of the Stairs
was done in about 1490, the
Battle of the Centaurs
about 1492.

  4.
   
BOTTICELLI’S
Pritnavera
(now in the Uffizi), replete as it is with classical andliterary allusion, has been the subject of the most complicated explanations. Ithas pleased some writers to recognize in both Venus and Flora the features ofSimonetta Vespucci whose kinsman, Amerigo Vespucci, the navigator, was togive his name to America. The figure of Mercury on the left of the picture doescertainly bear a resemblance to Botticelli’s
Portrait of Giuliano de Medici
(in theCrespi Collection, Milan) which was painted two or three years earlier – about 1475

  5.
   It has also been suggested that the model for Venus in
BOTTICELLI’S
Birth of Venus
was Simonetta Vespucci. The picture (now in the Uffizi) was painted in about 1485.