What Words You Use to Characterize the Way the Medici Family Maintained Power in Florence?
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Medici Patronage:
Magnificence and Splendor
Extract describing Cosimo de' Medici from Gene Brucker, Renaissance Florence: p. 119: Cosimo de' Medici ...[was] the well-nigh prominent citizen that reached manhood in the early fifteenth century. Vespasiano da Bisticci's biography of Cosimo is laudatory and uncritical, merely it is an honest evaluation of the man, /p. 120: and depicts him as he was seen by the majority of his fellow-citizens. No modern biographer has succeeded in penetrating the surface of Cosimo'south personality, of exposing the man behind the public facade. We tin apply this facade, still, to measure some of the changes that had occurred in the life style of the patriciate.
Cosimo'south authorization derived from his neat wealth and his leadership of a faction. Vespasiano da Bisticci described a conversation between Cosimo and a political rival, in which the former articulated his political philosophy: "Now it seems to me only just and honest that I should prefer the skilful name and honor of my house to you: that I should work for my ain interest rather than for yours. And so you and I will act like two big dogs who, when they encounter, smell one another and and so, because they both accept teeth, go their means. Wherefore now y'all can attend /p. 121: to your diplomacy and I to mine." He demonstrated a particular talent for working backside the scenes, achieving his goals by manipulating others. His instruments were the bonds of obligation by which he tied his supporters to himself. Vespasiano wrote: "He rewarded those who brought him back [from exile], lending to one a good sum of money, and making a gift to some other to help marry his girl or purchase lands...." His political enemies were not killed just exiled; the refusal to shed blood was feature of this cautious politician who gained his objectives past less flamboyant methods. In one sense, his style represented the triumph of the mercantile mentality. He typified the rational and calculating entrepreneur, the shrewd, toughminded realist who had banished passion and emotion from politics.
The cloth dimensions of Cosimo's life also reverberate significant innovations in the patrician mode of living. The construction of a massive palace on the Via Larga provided the arena for a more than refined and luxurious manner of existence, which gear up the design for the Florentine upper form. Although Cosimo deliberately affected the manner of an former-fashioned merchant with unproblematic tastes, his living way signalled the abandonment of such traditional virtues as austerity, thrift, and frugality, and the acceptance of ostentation as a socially desirable trait. The new ethic received political sanction with the repeal or the nonenforcement of sumptuary legislation, a characteristic feature of communal policy in before times. Seven years afterwards Cosimo'south death, his grandson Lorenzo stated that the Medici had spent over 600,000 florins for public purposes since 1434, and he remarked that this expenditure "casts a bright light upon our condition in the city." The living standard in the Medici palace was more than luxurious than Cosimo's ancestors had ever known. This expenditure for magnificent decor, costly furnishings, and elegant clothing was designed to provide an impressive setting for prominent guests, to create an prototype of Medici (and Florentine) wealth and taste. Cosimo was host to both the German emperor Frederick Iii and the Byzantine emperor John Paleologue, equally well as other, less distinguished princes of church and country who dined and lodged in the palace on the Via Larga, or in the villas at Careggi and Cafaffiuolo. The Medici were not the just /p. 122: Florentine family unit to manipulate lavish hospitality, but the scale and opulence of their entertainments marked them as the city'southward most illustrious firm. A visit to the Medici household was a dazzling experience, equally young Galeazzo Maria Sforza, son of the lord of Milan, testified in messages to his father Francesco. This product of a courtly milieu extolled the beauties and charms of the villa at Careggi, and praised the musical and dramatic entertainments which were provided for his amusement.
The tendency toward ostentation and luxury which is so apparent in the private lives of the Medici was too visible in their public ceremonies. Both funerals and weddings had become more formal, more elaborate, and more expensive. The temptation to use these occasions to publicize family unit wealth and status was potent, but in the past, it had been restrained past sumptuary laws and by characteristic Florentine disfavor to wasteful expenditure. In the Quattrocento, these restraints were no longer constructive. Chronicles of the Medici family describe the elaborate character of these events, and as well their cost....
p. 123: In that location is no simple explanation for this intensified patrician impulse to express itself in such material terms as spending inflated sums on dowries and indulging in conspicuous consumption./p. 124: It cannot be understood solely in terms of greater prosperity; Medicean Florence was non richer than the Florence of Giotto or Boccaccio. Nor should this miracle be seen as a total rejection of traditional values. The penchant for luxury had ever existed in patrician social club, virtually strongly among the old magnate clans, but information technology had been restrained by ascetic impulses some of which were religious, and some mercantile in origin. This tenuous balance was destroyed in the fifteenth century. By indulging in extravagance and display, patricians were announcing their release from the restraints imposed past egalitarianism: they were emphasizing their special, exalted place in Florentine society.
Cosimo'southward career reflects this aloof, elitist tendency. His pose as a simple merchant, his pretense of existence no greater than any other denizen, deluded no one. He crushed his enemies and exalted his friends and supporters. The artisan or shopkeeper who encountered Cosimo in the street might have pleasure from rubbing shoulders with the bang-up man, but he also knew that the banker could determine his fate. Cosimo's begetter, Giovanni, had been at domicile in the streets, the squares, and the churches of the city; he had conducted his business in his shop in the Old Market. Cosimo erected a vast palace which symbolized both his power and his separation from his beau-citizens. In that location in his private chapel, busy by Gozzoli with magnificent frescoes, he worshipped in isolation. At that place in his study he made the major decisions which determined the course of Florentine policy. Earlier his death, Cosimo had created the structure for that esoteric milieu in which his grandson Lorenzo was to flourish.
Extract from John T. Paoletti and Gary M. Radke, Fine art in Renaissance Italy:
p. 220: The Medici: The rising to ability of the Medici in Florence began in 1418 when Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici (c. 1360-1429) became the broker to the papacy and established the wealth of the family on a sure ground. Giovanni's son, Cosimo (1389-1464), steadily increased the control of his family /p. 221: over the political fortunes of Florence after his return from exile in 1434, leading eventually to their de facto rulership of the metropolis until they were ousted in a revolt in 1494.
Cosimo and his heirs worked carefully to maintain command of the government through an elaborate political network supported past their wealth. They as well sought to dismantle or dominate power bases in the city that were threats to their control. Ultimately the Medici brought the city under their influence, without, however, disturbing the appearances of the formal structures of regime which had been in identify for two centuries. In name Florence remained a commonwealth, while in practice the Medici functioned rather like princes in their rule over it. The Medici surrounded themselves with visual images denoting rulership, although they steadfastly maintained that they were ordinary citizens within the republic. The differences betwixt advent and reality could not assistance but affect the art produced within the city.
Excerpt from Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italian republic 1300-1600: p.122: [A] prodigious proliferation of private altars and chapels began that connected across the entire menses we are examining. The rich were the get-go to move in, but by the fifteenth century ordinary people were also looking for space. The Florentine chapter in this history is well documented. The earliest chapels at that place announced around the transepts (and therefore well-nigh the loftier altar) of the great mendicant churches, such equally those congenital by the Bardi, Peruzzi, and other families at Santa Croce. The richest men, or the ones who could drive the hardest bargain (like the Alberti, once more at Santa Croce), took over the patronage of the high chantry itself [come across the Tournabouni Chapel at Santa Maria Novella], whence the space could extend into the nave to incorporate the entire choir surface area. Others moved into equally prestigious areas such as the sacristy (the Medici at San Lorenzo [and the Strozzi at Santa Trinita]) or the chapter room (the Pazzi Chapel at Santa Croce). Once these zones had been appropriated, large chapel spaces could be built on as additions to the nave...; and when an artist like Brunelleschi /p. 123: got such a commission...the chapel became a prominent architectural monument itself.
The ultimate stride was to build a completely new church planned from the beginning to maximize the space for private chapels --and to pay for it past selling off chapels pro rata. Thus the demand for chapels became a goad for rebuilding in the fifteenth century. Brunelleschi took this demand so much for granted that he made all of his churches chapel-lined --eight around the rotunda of Santa Maria degli Angeli, sixteen down the two sides of the nave of San Lorenzo, xxx-eight around the unabridged circumference of Santo Spirito except for the façade.... It has been estimated that there were six hundred chapels scattered throughout Florentine churches in the fifteenth century....
| Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo (Medici Chapel) Designed by Brunelleschi | Sacristy of Sta. Trinitá (Strozzi Chapel) |
THE Quondam SACRISTY: The beginnings of Medici artistic patronage in fifteenth-century Florence were hardly pocket-size. Giovanni di Bicci, forth with other families in his neighborhood, undertook the reconstruction of the church of San Lorenzo. 
/p. 187: Sometime around 1418 a group of citizens living in the neighborhood of the church of San Lorenzo decided to human activity together to rebuild their parish church. Led by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, and so the banker to the papacy and head of a family attempting to plant its prominence in the metropolis, each member of the group agreed to contribute funds for the construction of his family'due south chapel effectually the transept of the proposed new structure. Giovanni agreed to build the sacristy of the new building as a family burial site and also to build an adjacent double chapel at the cease of /p. 188: the transept. This gave the Medici patronage rights over a traditionally of import part of the building --the sacristy-- and also more than twice as much space as any other family participating in the project.
The building already at the site was an eleventh-century Romanesque church, itself a replacement for an Early Christian basilica dedicated in 393 by no less a person than St. Ambrose, who had as well consecrated Florence'southward kickoff bishop. San Lorenzo, then, represented the entire history of Florence --more and so, even, than the Duomo, which had a later foundation....
/p. 221: Although the Old Sacristy was substantially complete at the fourth dimension of Giovanni'southward expiry in 1429, it owes most if its subsequent ornament to Cosimo and his blood brother Lorenzo (not to be confused wtih Lorenzo the Magnificent, Cosimo's grandson).... The classically inspired sarcophagus of Giovanni de' Medici and his wife Piccarda, lies directly below the lantern, emphasizing the patrons' hopes for eternal life. The inscription on it names both Cosimo and his blood brother Lorenzo as its commissioners..., jointly discharging their filial responsibilities. In a social system in which the oldest son became the head of the family upon the decease of the father, this manifestation of equality speaks quietly but eloquently nearly the unity of the Medici family and deflects attention for Cosimo'due south leadership part just at the time when he was besides beginning his consolidation of political power in the urban center.
The brothers' presence in the sacristy is likewise marked by other visual signs. Big stucco reliefs over pocket-sized doors on either side of the chantry wall present dramatically posed standing figures of saints Lawrence and Stephen on the left and saints Cosmas and Damian on the right. These figures could simply be titular saints --Lawrence (Lorenzo), for the church in which they appear and Cosmas and Damian, the doctors (medici), for the family that had built the One-time Sacristy. These saints, nonetheless, are also the patron saints of Lorenzo and Cosimo, who probably commissioned these reliefs after their father's death, the sons appearing in the guise of their patron saints only equally Giovanni does in the roundel of St. John the Evangelist above the chantry arch....
/p. 222: SAN LORENZO: Work that had begun so earnestly on the transept of San Lorenzo had all just ceased by the time of Giovanni di Bicci's death in 1429. Information technology was not until 1442 that Cosimo alleged that he would himself pay for the structure of the new building. In doing and then he assumed property rights over the main altar area and he stipulated that no family crest other than that of the Medici announced in the church. Cosimo's assumption /p. 223: of the building costs effectively transformed San Lorenzo into a Medici construction, despite the presence of families who maintained control of the chapels along the transept. Insofar as the building marks the site of the beginning Christian church in Florence, dedicated in 393, Cosimo also symbolically appropriated the entire religious history of the city for his family; the princely overtones of this human activity recall royal foundations such as St. Denis, exterior Paris, or the Visconti patronage of the Certosa of Pavia. In a city that called itself a republic, this form of patronage must take seemed extraordinary.
SAN MARCO: Cosimo'due south activities at San Lorenzo were not his only endeavors at church edifice. When the Dominican order took charge of the battered monastery of San Marco in 1436, Cosimo hired Michelozzo di Bartolommeo (1396-1472) to rebuild it. Cosimo likewise added a library (which he so helped to make full with books), a curtilage, a chapter room, a statuary bong, and church effects, including an imposing altarpiece by Fra Angelico (c. 1395-1455), for the chief altar.
The San Marco Altarpiece was badly abraded through faulty restoration in the nineteenth century, even so it is however remarkable for what it says of Fra Angelico'south work, and of his patron's wishes. In some sense the paradigm is profoundly traditional, with a centrally placed group of the Virgin and Kid flanked by angels and saints. However the setting has an arrestingly open, spacious quality. The architectural throne, with its shell niche framing the Virgin and Kid, is large and decorated with classical garlands and Corinthian pilasters. Infinite expands non merely into the altitude, but as well behind and around the figures and focuses on the hand of the Virgin, tellingly placed in front of her womb, as if to emphasize the Incarnation of Christ and her motherhood, a primal concern in Dominican theology. The inscription from the Dominican Little Office on the hem of the Virgin's garment emphasizes this tenet: "...like a vine I caused loveliness to bud, and my blossoms became glorious and abundant fruit." The background mural, framed past patterned draperies, is remarkably naturalistic in its delineation of trees, of the sea meeting the land, and of the sunlit sky. It too relates to a holy text; in the Old Testament volume of Ecclesiasticus, Wisdom says, "I have grown alpine as a cedar on Lebanon, as a cypress on Mount Hermon; I take grown alpine as a palm in Engedi, as the rose bushes of Jericho; as a fine olive in the plain, every bit a plane tree I have grown tall" (24:thirteen-xv). The illusionistic draperies, tied to the frame at the upper left and right, refer to gimmicky altarpieces, which were actually covered by fabric, drawn open only on festival days. Hither, by contrast, the mood would e'er exist celebrating, a stage set for the adoration of the Child whose redemption of the globe is symbolized past the crucifix on the small-scale tabernacle door that interrupts the composition at the bottom.
The draperies of the kneeling figures, with their thick folds and weightiness, suggest that Fra Angelico, for all the tranquility of his images, had looked carefully at the more /p. 224: dramatic painting of Masaccio. Such features equally the hanging cloth behind the figures and the expressive modeling of the faces besides suggest that he had studied the piece of work of Gentile da Fabriano....
Although at that place are obvious differences in spatial system and figural structure between Fra Angelico's San Marco Altarpiece and 
/p.225: It is worth noting, however, that instead of choosing the courtly subject thing of the Magi, Cosimo ordered a traditional sacra conversazione for his altarpiece. The sobriety of the figures is advisable for their Dominican location, yet their poses give them the gravity of Roman statemen, unlike the lively, elegant figures in the Strozzi Altarpiece. Cosimo and Fra Angelico seem deliberately to accept employed a visual linguistic communication that could exist seen as an culling to that used by the leading member of the oligarchy --and yet at the aforementioned time to have incorporated some of the signs of wealth and social prestige that characterize the Strozzi committee.
As in the ornament for the Old Sacristy there is a dynastic "subtext" in the imagery in the San Marco Altarpiece. Its patron, Cosimo de' Medici, appears in the guise of St. Cosmas kneeling in the traditional position of the donor in the left foreground of the painting. John the Evangelist, standing 2nd from the left, probably represents Giovanni di Bicci, Cosimo's father; and St. Lawrence, at the far left with his grill, Cosimo'south blood brother, Lorenzo, who died in 1440, the year the painting was completed. The red balls on a gilded ground of the Medici family crest appear along the border of the rug at the bottom of the altarpiece. The red and white floral garlands hanging at the top of the painting, although nigh probable referring to Ecclesiasticus, represent the heraldic colors of the metropolis of Florence, uniting Medici and civic imagery again.
The northern Italian artist Domenico Veneziano became enlightened of the Medici commission for the San Marco Altarpiece. In hopes of gaining the commission, Domenico wrote the following letter of the alphabet to Piero di Cosimo de'Medici to intercede on his behalf to Piero's father, Cosimo de' Medici:
To the honorable and generous man Piero di Cosimo de' Medici of Florence, his honored superior, in Ferrara.
Honorable and generous Sir. After the due salutations. I inform you that by God's grace I am well, and I wish to see you well and happy. Many many times I have asked about yous, and take never learned annihilation, except that I asked Manno Donati, who told me you were in Ferrara, and in excellent health. I was greatly relieved, and having first learned where y'all were, I would have written y'all for my comfort and duty. Because my low condition does not deserve to write to your noblity, just the perfect and adept love I take for y'all and all your people gives me the daring to write, because how duty-bound I am to practice so.
Only now I have heard that Cosimo [de' Medici, Piero'south father] has decided to have an altarpiece made, in other words painted, and wants a magnificent work, which pleases me very much. And it would please me more than if through your generosity I could paint it. And if that happens, I am in hopes with God's assistance to do marvelous things, although there are good masters like Fra Filippo and Fra Giovanni [Angelico] who have much piece of work to do. Fra Filippo in particular has a panel going to Santo Spirito which he won't terminate in five years working day and night, it's so big. Merely however that may exist, my great adept will to serve you makes me presume to offer myself. And in case I should do less well than anyone at all, I wish to be obligated to any merited punishment, and to provide any exam sample needed, doing honour to everyone. And if the work were so big that Cosimo decided to give information technology to several masters, or else more to one than to another, I beg yous as far as a servant may beg a primary that you may be pleased to enlist your force favorably and helpfully to me in arranging that I have come some little part of it. For if you knew how I long to do some famous work, and specially for you lot, you would exist favorable to me, I'm certain we won't be wanting in that. I beg you to do anything possible, and I promise yous my work volition bring you honor.
Nothing else at the moment, except that I tin do anything for yous here, command me as your servant, and I hope you won't dislike giving me a reply, and above all inform me of your health, wnich I desire above all things, and Christ prosper you and fulfill all your duties.
By your near true-blue servant Domenico da Venezia painter, commending himself you you, in Perugia, 1438, beginning of April.
Thus, just before taking control of the main chantry of San Lorenzo in 1442, Cosimo also visually appropriated the high chantry of San Marco, just a short altitude away from his dwelling house, further enhancing his presence in the city. Medici patronage, also marked by the advent of their crest on the exterior of the monastic buildings, served as a public reminder of the family's power as well as generosity.
Excerpt from Richard Goldthwaite, Wealth and the Demand of Art in Italy 1300-1600, p. 216: Palaces were obviously family unit, not merely individual, monuments. They were usually built in the neighborhood where the family had deep roots, and their builders probably viewed them as a symbol of family unit traditions and a focus for the loyalties of the wider family collectivity. They besides looked to the future, for they were built to accomodate the dynasty that derived from the builder and to give it a prominent concrete presence.
THE MEDICI PALACE: When in 1446, Cosimo de' Medici began to build his palace on the Via Larga (now the Via Cavour), he had already hired and dismissed Brunelleschi every bit its architect and replaced him with Michelozzo, supposedly because Brunelleschi'due south model was for too grand a construction. Yet the palace that Cosimo congenital was more splendid than any in the city, leading to speculation that Brunelleschi's project placed the palace opposite the church of San Lorenzo rather than on its electric current site. Such a configuration of church and palace, given Cosimo's accept-over of San Lorenzo, would have referenced to a well-known architectural iconography of authority most typically seen in juxtapositions of bishops' palaces and cathedrals, a message too breathy for Cosimo, who maintained that he was just an ordinary citizen of the commonwealth, despite his de facto command over the land.
The exterior of the palace is hit in its use of extremely heavy rusticated masonry on the basis story, which gives the building a fortress-like attribute --softened in the increasingly refined treatment of surface on the stories above. 
Deviating from normal edifice do in Florence, Cosimo built his palace from the foundations up, having destroyed whatever pre-existing structures were on the site. A more common practice was for owners to acquire next properties, which they then enveloped with a thin facing of stone; this presented a unified façade to the street while the interior spaces maintained some of the haphazard /p. 226: arrangement of the original buildings. 
The primal courtyard of the Medici Palace is strikingly different from the exterior of the edifice. Hither the novelty of the building becomes obvious in the refined classical detailing of the arcade which surrounds the courtyard, and in the sculpted roundels suggesting ancient Roman gems that decorate the frieze above the arcade. Whether Cosimo and Michelozzo drew on local sources for this courtyard or on courtyards that they would have seen in northern Italia during Cosimo'due south exile in 1433-34, the size, the uniform society, and the allusions to classical forms were new to Florentine architecture.
PORTRAIT BUSTS
Although Cosimo was the patron for the architecture of the Medici Palace, his son Piero manifestly took responsibleness for the lavish decoration of its rooms. I of Piero's earliest commissions marks his inventiveness. He employed Mino da Fiesole (1429-84) to carve marble portrait busts of himself and his blood brother Giovanni. Piero's portrait is a vivid portrayal of the actual features of the man combined with a stoic vitality in his firmly fix features and turning caput. It was fairly common practice at this fourth dimension to make life masks or death masks of of import people from wax or plaster of Paris; but Piero's bust, finished in 1453, marks the first example in marble to recollect antique 
| Cosimo de' Medici (1389-1464), Pater Inscription: COSMVS MEDICES DECRETO PVBLICO P[ater] P[atriae] (Cosimo de Medici, the Begetter of the State by Public Decree) | Florence Holding an Orb and Triple Inscription: PAX LIBERTAS QVE PVBLICA; across bottom: FLORENTIA (Public Peace and Freedom/ Florence) |
The Renaissance Medal
Excerpt from Laurie Schneider Adams, Italian Renaissance Art, p. 145: A characteristic of the Classical revival in fifteenth-century Italia was the production of medals, usually made of bronze or lead. They were inspired past regal Roman coins, which were smaller than the medals but similar in design --a bust-length profile of an emperor on the obverse, a emblem on the contrary, and an inscription.
| | |
| Augustus, Denarius, xix B.C. | |
During the Renaissance, medals were commissioned by diverse rulers and wealthy families as a fashion of circulating their images in portable, relatively inexpensive form. In addition, the message conveyed by the keepsake or scene on the reverse could serve the role of political propaganda. To a certain extent, the iconography of a medal and its inscription provide biographical insights into the patron. Sometimes medals were struck to commemorate the blueprint of a building in which case they can be useful architectural documents.
/ P. 227: Ornamentation OF THE MEDICI PALACE
The minor chapel of the Medici Palace is strikingly ornate. The elaborately coffered and gilded ceiling and the richly inlaid marble floor centered effectually a porphyry deejay form a suitably g setting for the spectacular frescoes on the walls. Beginning on the correct wall of the chapel and moving clockwise around the room are frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli depicting the procession of the Magi to Bethlehem. With one king and his retinue occupying each wall, the procession directs the viewer to the altarpiece, which depicts the admiration of the Christ Child.
The wall with the youngest king is particularly lavish in its handling of costume,
The ii mounted figures behind the young king are Piero de' Medici, on the white horse, and Piero's father, Cosimo, on the donkey. Although there is considerable dispute over the identity of the young rex, he probably represents an idealized 10-yr-onetime Lorenzo (1449-92), Piero'due south outset son, who, in luxurious costume, had ridden the lead horse during an elaborate public ceremony staged by Piero in 1459 to honor Pope Pius Two and Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan, both then visiting Florence. This role as one of the Magi would accept been appropriate for Lorenzo, since he had been baptized on January half dozen, the feast of the Magi. Moreover the men of the Medici family belonged to the Company of the Magi, a confraternity that candy through the metropolis each yr on that feast day, from the monastery church building of San Marco, where the relics of the Magi were kepts, past the Medici Palace, to the Baptistry. Thus this fresco in the individual chapel of the Medici, where Piero often greeted visiting dignitaries, gave a noticeably imperial /p. 228: cast to the family unit while at the aforementioned time celebrating their civic generosity and religious devotion.
Other rooms in the palace conveyed as circuitous messages. Inventories of the period betoken that a room marked as Lorenzo's was decorated with three large paintings by Paolo Uccello showing the battle of San Romano. The victorious full general, Niccolò da Tolentino, appears in 1 of them with a banner conveying his device of a knot floating above his head. Uccello's paintings of this boxing have a curiously frozen, doll-like quality. The geometrically simplified humans and animals and the advisedly arranged angles of the fallen lances indicate the painter'south reputed interest in the new scientific discipline of perspective. Behind the figures at the left of the panel shown are trees begetting brilliant oranges, a fruit known during this time as mala medica, or "medicinal apple." Since the Medici name means "doctors", it was natural for them to choose this fruit equally their symbol.
In add-on to their charm these battle scenes are important considering such subject matter was at that time depicted in the palaces of princes and on the walls of town halls to commemorate country military victories. Thus Lorenzo's room seems to have conflated not only denizen and prince but also individual room and public quango chamber, giving the family a visual language of dominion.
An even more obvious appropriation of civic imagery can be seen in a small tabular array statuary of Hercules and Anteus made for the Medici by Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1433-98). Hercules had been represented on the state seal of Florence since the cease of the thirteenth century [Gregorio Dati in his Istoria du Firenze explains that the inclusion of Hercules on the seal of the Signoria is meant "to signify that Hercules, who was a giant, overcame all tyrants and evil lords as the Florentines take done." D. Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, pp. 286-87]. Pollaiuolo'southward sculpture depicts the defeat of Anteus, achieved past lifting him off the basis, since Anteus derived his force from his mother, Earth (Ge).... In medium as well as subject matter, such bronze statuettes mark an innovation in Florentine sculpture and the extension of a classical vocabulary into the domestic interior.
DONATELLO'S Statuary DAVID AND JUDITH AND HOLOFERNES
The post-obit inscription was apparently associated with the statue: "The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! a boy overcame a great tyrant. Conquer, O citizens!" (D. Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance, p. 283)
Donatello's statuary David is one of the all-time-known of the Medici commissions and yet one of the most perplexing. It is recorded in 1469 in a description of the wedding festivities of Piero's son, Lorenzo, and Clarice Orsini. The slightly smaller than life-sized statue then stood on a column in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, although the effigy may well accept been made for another site. The sleekly sensual delineation of the adolescent David , who stands in a languid pose, his left human foot carelessly resting on Goliath's severed head, is remarkable for its naturalism. Donatello departed from tradition by presenting David nude, in the manner of a classical hero. Nonetheless despite references to antique column statues and to the antique gems carved on Goliath's helmet, the handling of the body does not recall the arcadian male nudes of antiquity. This is a slim, pre-pubescent male child, not a powerful human. The unusual representation of the David suggests that Piero de' Medici wished to convey more than the usual meanings attached to this subject when he placed the statue in the Medici courtyard.
Piero and Donatello were, of course, aware that Donatello'due south earlier marble statue of David stood in the Palazzo della Signoria, placed in front end of a wall which was painted blue and decorated with gold fleur-de-lys, one of the symbols of Florence. David had get a metaphor for the city, strong in protecting its freedoms from external threat. Piero's placement of the David in the private context of the palace thus appropriated civic imagery for the Medici. Contemporary awareness /p. 230: of this strategy of appropriation can be constitute in 2 after events. In 1476 Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici sold to the Signoria a traditionally clothed bronze David by Verocchio, and then also in the Medici Palace, for placement in the Palazzo della Signoria, thus parting with the less problematic of the two Davids in their palace. In 1495, after the expulsion of the Medici from the city, the Signoria transported Donatello'south David to the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria, a new inscription making explicit recognition of the state iconography carried past the statue....
The placement of the David in the Medici palace courtyard resonates with the marriage festivities of 1469. For the nuptials feast the women were seated on the second floor of palace, looking down into the courtyard --just as Michal, David'due south wife, looked from her balustrade at her married man. This then would have transformed the David into Lorenzo, a youthful hero growing into a wise ruler, just as the young king in the palace chapel frescoes evokes Lorenzo'due south role equally a courtier in the 1459 civic procession honoring the Pope and Galeazzo Sforza. The multiple meanings evoked by the David typify the complex interweaving of personal and public imagery in Medici commissions.
Paired with the David in Medici imagery was Donatello'southward bronze statue of Judith and Holofernes. Equally a woman who saved the Jewish nation from foreign domination by slaying the Assyrian full general Holofernes, Judith is apparently a counterpart of David. In that respect she is also a borough icon. Intended as a fountain sculpture in a small garden within the palace circuitous, that statue is an early example of sculpture meant to be seen in the round, with no single viewpoint fexed for the observer. Judith'due south heavy garments contrast with the about nakedness and overtly sensual fleshiness of Holoferne. Judith'due south foot /p. 232: is placed squarely on Holofernes's groin as her hand rises for the second time to strike at his already partially severed caput. Every bit part of the fountain, the statue would have had water trickling from the corners of the cushion on which the figures are placed --a startling add-on of a gurgling audio to the already grizzly scene. The sculpture could be interpreted but as virtue overcoming vice; however, a political significant is clearly unsaid by the inscription that Piero originally placed on the group: "Piero, son of Cosimo, has defended the statue of this woman to that liberty and fortitude bestowed on the commonwealth by the invincible and constant spirit of the citizens."
For a recent account of the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici see: Dale Kent, Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron's Oeuvre, New Haven, Yale Academy, 2000.
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Source: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/arth/arth213/medici_patronage.html
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