20. The VILLA MEDICI – formerly BELCANTO – originally belonged to the Bardi. The reconstruction carried out for Giovanni de’ Medici was finished in 1461. Sold by the Grand Duke Cosimo III in 1671, it was renovated in the 1770s for Horace Walpole’s sister-in-law, the Countess of Orford; and in the nineteenth century was bought by the English painter and collector, William Blundell Spence, when it became known as the Villa Spence. More recently it belonged to Lady Sybil Cutting whose daughter, Marchesa Iris Origo, was brought up there.
CHAPTER VII
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
CHAPTER VIII
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.
CHAPTER IX
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.