Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The palace's Renaissance facade with its rusticated stone walls.

The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence, Italy. It is the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence and a museum.

Overview

Michelangelo's "kneeling windows", a feature later copied by the Medici at their Palazzo Pitti, also in Florence.

The palace was designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo[1] for Cosimo de' Medici, head of the Medici banking family, and was built between 1444[2] and 1484. It was well known for its stone masonry, which includes architectural elements of rustication and ashlar.[3] The tripartite elevation used here expresses the Renaissance spirit of rationality, order, and classicism on human scale. This tripartite division is emphasized by horizontal stringcourses that divide the building into stories of decreasing height. The transition from the rusticated masonry of the ground floor to the more delicately refined stonework of the third floor makes the building seem lighter and taller as the eye moves upward to the massive cornice that caps and clearly defines the building's outline.

Michelozzo was influenced in his design of the palace by both classical Roman and Brunelleschian principles. During the Renaissance revival of classical culture, ancient Roman elements were often replicated in architecture, both built and imagined in paintings. In the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the rusticated masonry and the cornice had precedents in Roman practice, yet in totality it looks distinctly Florentine, unlike any known Roman building.

Similarly, the early Renaissance architect Brunelleschi used Roman techniques and influenced Michelozzo. The open colonnaded court that is at the center of the palazzo plan has roots in the cloisters that developed from Roman peristyles. The once open corner loggia and shop fronts facing the street were walled in during the 16th century. They were replaced by Michelangelo's unusual ground-floor "kneeling windows" (finestre inginocchiate), with exaggerated scrolling consoles appearing to support the sill and framed in a pedimented aedicule, a motif repeated in his new main doorway. The new windows are set into what appears to be a walled infill of the original arched opening, a Mannerist expression Michelangelo and others used repeatedly.

Reception

Sforza was himself depicted in the chapel's fresco.

Regardless of it purposely plain exterior, the building well reflects the accumulated wealth of the Medici family. The fifteen-year-old Galeazzo Maria Sforza was entertained in Florence on 17 April 1459, and left a letter describing, perhaps in the accomplished terms of a secretary, the all-but-complete palazzo, where his whole entourage was nobly[4] accommodated:

"[...] a house that is — as much in the handsomeness of the ceilings, the height of the walls, smooth finish of the entrances and windows, number of chambers and salons, elegance of the studies, worth of the books, neatness and gracefulness of the gardens, as it is in the tapestry decorations,[5] cassoni of inestimable workmanship and value, noble sculptures, designs of infinite kinds, as well of priceless silver — the best I may ever have seen..."[6]

Niccolò de' Carissimi, one of Galeazzo Maria's counsellors, furnished further details of the rooms and garden:

"[...] decorated on every side with gold and fine marbles, with carvings and sculptures in relief, with pictures and inlays done in perspective by the most accomplished and perfect of masters even in the very benches and floors of the house; tapestries and household ornaments of gold and silk;silverware and bookcases that are endless... then a garden done in the finest of polished marbles, with diverse plants, which seems a thing not natural but painted."[7]

Furthermore, Cosimo received the young Sforza in a chapel "not less ornate and handsome than the rest of the house".

Artwork

Gozzoli, the procession of the Magi.

Perhaps the most important section of the palace is the Magi Chapel, famously frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who completed it around 1459. Gozzoli adorned the frescos with a wealth of anecdotal detail and portraits of members of the Medici family and their allies, along with Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos and Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg parading through Tuscany in the guise of the Three Wise Men.[8] Regardless of its biblical allusions, many of the depictions allude to the Council of Florence (1438-1439), an event that brought prestige to both Florence and the Medici.

The chapel also used to host Filippo Lippi's Adoration in the Forest as its altarpiece. Lippi's original is now in Berlin, while a copy by a follower of Lippi has replaced the original.

Other decorations of the palazzo included two lunettes by Filippo Lippi, depicting Seven Saints and the Annunciation, both now at the National Gallery, London.

Trivia

  • When the Medici family returned to Florence after their short exile in the early 15th century, they kept a low profile and exercised their power behind the scenes. This is reflected in the plain exterior of this building, and is said to be the reason why Cosimo de' Medici rejected Brunelleschi's earlier proposal.

Notes

  1. ↑ Fabriczy, Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, 38, 41f.
  2. ↑ Aby Warburg,,., "Die Baubeginn des Palazzo Medici", in Gesamelte Schriften, (Leipzig and Berlin) 1932: v. I, 165.
  3. ↑ Hatfield 1970, p. 235, Vespasiano da Bisticci estimated that the structure alone had cost 60,000 ducats; the inventory of moveables in 1492 totalled just over 81,000.
  4. ↑ Hatfield 1970, p. 232, "...with such honor that where the least important of them is staying, the emperor could be accommodated," asserted Niccolò de' Carissimi in a letter quoted by Hatfield.
  5. ↑ Tapestries covered walls that were simply plastered, complementing the rich painted and gilded woodwork of ceilings.
  6. ↑ Hatfield 1970, p. 232.
  7. ↑ Hatfield 1970, p. 233.
  8. ↑ Cristina Acidini discounts this long-held legend in her essay in The Chapel of the Magi. Benozzo Gozzoli's Frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi Florence (London: Thames & Hudson) 1994.

Bibliography

  • Hatfield, Rab (September 1970). "Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459". The Art Bulletin. 52 (3): 232–249.

Coordinates: 43°46′31″N 11°15′20″E / 43.775200°N 11.255429°E / 43.775200; 11.255429

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.