The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (52 page)

37. The Grand Duke Ferdinando II, 1610–1670, by Sustermans.

38 and 39. The spectacular performance of
Il Moudo Festeggiaiite
was given in the Boboli gardens before about 20,000 people to celebrate the wedding of the Grand Prince Cosimo and Princess Marguerite-Louise (see
page 289
). A gigantic Atlas appeared bearing the world on his shoulders and moved around the arena ingeniously propelled by hidden contrivances. After his awesome announcement that Hercules had descended from the sky for Cosimo’s wedding, the sphere on his shoulders suddenly broke, discharged its contents and transformed him into the Atlas mountain with four girls sitting round the summit. The metamorphosed giant is shown in the lower picture where horse-drawn chariots are also to be seen bearing Apollo, the sun-god, and Cynthia, goddess of the moon.

40. The Grand Prince Cosimo, later Cosimo III, 1642–1723, by Sustermans.

41. The Grand Prince Fcrdinando, 1663–1713, by Bernini.

42. The Grand Duke Gian Gastone, 1671–1737.

43. Princess Anna Maria de’ Medici, Electress Palatine, 1667–1743, by Douven.

  1.
   The
PALAZZO DELLA SIGNORIA
, or Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of the city’s government, was begun in 1299 and enlarged and altered at various times up till the end of the sixteenth century. The courtyard was rebuilt by Michelozzo Michelozzi in the 1440s. The Sala del Maggior Consiglio was formed to accommodate the Grand Council in the time of Savonarola. During the reign of Duke Cosimo I, who moved here from the Medici Palace in 1340, the palace was remodelled and redecorated by Giorgio Vasari. When Duke Cosimo took up residence in the Pitti Palace, he handed over the Palazzo della Signoria to his son, Francesco, for whose bride, the Archduchess Joanna of Austria, the courtyard was specially decorated.

  2.
   There has been a bridge where the
PONTE VECCHIO
now stands since Roman times. The present structure, which replaced a twelfth century bridge destroyed by the floods of 1333, was built in 1345. At that time most of the shops on the bridge were occupied by tanners and pursemakers. The butchers who succeeded them were replaced by goldsmiths and jewellers at the end of the sixteenth century on the orders of Grand Duke Ferdinando I.

  3.
   
ORSANMICHELE
derives its name from the ancient oratory of San Michele in Orto which originally occupied the site. The present building, started in 1336, was designed for use as a communal granary as well as a chapel. The statues in the niches along the outside walls were commissioned by the city’s guilds. The original of Donatello’s marble
St George
which was made for the Armourers’ Guild, and a copy of which stands in the most westerly niche on the northern wall, is now in the Bargello.

  4.
   The
MERCATO VECCHIO
was demolished at the end of the nineteenth century to make way for the present Piazza della Repubblica.

  5.
   
VIA CALIMALA
which literally means Street of Ill Fame is perhaps a corruption of the Roman Callis Major.

  6.
   The church and convent of
SANTA CROCE
in the Piazza Santa Croce was built between 1228 and 1385. In 1863, the distinctive marble façade was added to a seventeenth-century design. The tombs of Michelangelo and of Cosimo de’
Medici’s friends Leonardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini and Vespasiano da Bisticci are all here; as also are the chapels of several of the leading families of Florence, including those of the Bardi family into which Cosimo married. The Novices’ Chapel was built for Cosimo by Michelozzo in about 1445.

  7.
   The
BARGELLO
known as the Palazzo del Podestà in the fifteenth century was originally built as the city hall in 1254–5. It was reconstructed in the middle of the fourteenth century when the stairway in the courtyard was built. In 1574 it became the residence of the Chief of Police. It is now the Museo Nazionale and contains many busts and statues of the Medici family as well as works of art commissioned by them.

  8.
   The Alberti family palace in the Via de’ Benci (no. 6) is now the
MUSEO HORNE
. The Alberti were responsible for the chancel in Santa Croce.

  9.
   The
PALAZZO RUCELLAI
, which was finished in the 1450s, is in the Via della Vigna Nuova (no. 18). It was built by Bernardo Rossellino after a design by Leon Battista Alberti. Alberti was also commissioned by Giovanni Rucellai to design the façade of the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella which contains the Rucellai chapel. Part of the restored Rucellai gardens, the
ORTI ORICELLARI
, can be seen between the railway station and the Porta al Prato.

10.
   Niccolò da Uzzano lived in the Via de’ Bardi in the palace now known as the
PALAZZO CAPPONI
(no: 36).

  1.
   The number of
palle
(or balls) on the
MEDICI EMBLEM
was never fixed. Originally there were twelve; but there were usually seven in Cosimo de’ Medici’s time – as on the shield on the south-east corner of the Medici palace – though there are only six at the corners of Verrocchio’s roundel in the chancel at San Lorenzo. There are eight on the ceiling of the old sacristy at San Lorenzo, five on Duke Cosimo’s tomb in the Capella dei Principi and six on the Grand Duke Ferdinando’s arms on the entrance to the Forte di Belvedere.

  2.
   Work on the Cathedral of
SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE
, known as the
DUOMO
, was begun towards the end of the thirteenth century to a design by Arnolfo di Cambio. Brunelleschi’s dome was not finished until 1436 and the exterior was still not completed when he died ten years later. The neo-Gothic façade is late-nineteenth-century (see note 13 to
Chapter XIII
).

  3.
   The Via Porta Rossa was then dominated by the
PALAZZO DAVANZATI
(no:9). At that time it was owned by the Davizzi who had built it in about 1330. It is now a museum.

  4.
   The
MERCATO NUOVO
, now known as the Straw Market, was built by Giovanni Battista del Tasso in 1547–59.

  5.
   The
FLORENTINE LILY
appears less frequently on the buildings of Florence
than the
palle
of the Medici. One example is on the fifteenth-century doorway of the old Mint behind the Loggia dei Lanzi.

  6.
   The Dominican church and monastery of
SANTA MARIA NOVELLA
was begun in the middle of the thirteenth century and finished in the sixteenth. The apartments which were built for Pope Martin V overlook the Chiostro Grande. The interior of the church was redecorated by Vasari in the 1560s. The Rucellai, Bardi and Strozzi all built chapels here. A chapel in the Chiostro Grande was redecorated for the visit of Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Leo X, by Jacopo Carrucci Pontormo and Ridolfo Ghirlandaio in 1515.

  7.
   The grim, late-thirteenth-century palace of the Spini family, now the
PALAZZO SPINI-FERRONI
is on the corner of Via Tomabuoni and Lungamo Acciaiuoli by the Ponte Santa Trinità. The next palazzo downstream is the fourteenth-century Palazzo Gianfigliazzi (see note 2 to
chapter XVII
). A few doors further down (Lungamo Corsini, 10) is the seventeenth-century
PALAZZO CORSINI
whose picture gallery is occasionally open to the public.

  8.
   The monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli has now been absorbed by the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova. The octagonal chapel known as the
ROTONDA DI SANTA MARIA ANGELI
in the Via degli Alfani was started in 1434 to designs by Brunelleschi.

  9.
   Tournaments were traditionally held in the
PIAZZA SANTA CROCE
where chariot races and the football game known as
calcio
were also played. A plaquedated 10 February 1565 marks the centre of the
calcio
field.