The heraldic lion, the Marzoao, to the left of the copy of Michelangelo’s David (next to DONATELLO’s Judith and Holofemes) is also a copy of the original made by Donatello in 1418–20. The original is in the Baigello. After their removal from the Piazza San Giovanni in the fourteenth century, the city’s lions were brought to the Piazza della Signoria; but in the sixteenth century, when Duke Cosimo I occupied the Palace, he had the lions moved because of their smell. The VIA DEI LBONI marks the site of their pen. Hercules and Cacus to the right of the David was finished by Baccio Bandinelli in 1534. The original commission for a Hercules had been given to Michelangelo; but, evidently supposing that Michelangelo might use this opportunity to hint at the virtues of the crushed Republic, Pope Leo X ordered that the marble block should be given instead to Bandinelli. The order was confirmed by Clement VII who wanted to keep Michelangelo fully occupied on work for the Medici.
2. Francesco Ferrucci’s birthplace was at VIA SANTO SPIRITO, 32. As in the case of many other Florentine heroes, a wreath is placed here every year in his honour.
3. Clement VII was ultimately buried, in a fine porphyry urn taken from the Pantheon, in the Corsini chapel at the Basilica of St John in Lateran.
4. The Porta alla Giustizia is now the PIAZZA PIAVE.
5. The forbidding symbol of despotism, the fortbzza da basso, covered an area of almost 120,000 square metres and is the biggest historical monument in Florence. The foundation stone was laid on 15 July 1534, a date deemed appropriate by the skilful astrologers of Bologna. The convent of San Giovanni Evangelista was demolished in order to clear the site.
CHAPTER XX
1. The Viceroy of Naples conducted his daughter to Florence where he and his suite were lodged in the monastery of Santa Maria Novella. Thereafter the former chapter house in the Green Cloister, which was built and decorated in the middle of the fourteenth century, was known as the SPANISH CHAPEL and became the chapel of the Spanish colony in Florence.
2. Cosmopolis became Portoferraio rather more than a century later. The Casa del Ouca at the foot of Colle Reciso is said to be the place from which Cosimo and his architect watched the building in progress. Cellini’s bust of Cosimo, which stood above the entrance to Forte Stella, is now in the Bargello.
3. The great NEPTUNE FOUNTAIN in the Piazza della Signoria was intended to symbolize Duke Cosimo’s naval achievements. The design of the fountain was originally entrusted to Bandinelli who died before he could begin it. After a competition had been held, the commission was given to Ammanati. The fountain was finished in 1575. The Piazza, now renamed the Piazza del Granduca, had been repaved in 1543.
4. The UFFIZI PALACE was paid for by the various government offices which originally occupied it. Their names or mottoes still appear over the big doors under the colonnade. After Vasari’s death in 1574 work on the Uffizi was continued by Bernardo Buontalenti and Alfonso Parigi. It has been one of the great art galleries of Europe for three centuries. Many of the finest pieces of the Medici collection were housed in the Tribuna in which Zoffany portrayed numerous well-known English connoisseurs, diplomats and collectors in the painting he did under the patronage of Queen Charlotte between 1772 and 1778. Sir Horace Mann is shown standing beneath the VENUS DB’ MEDICI, a Roman copy of a Greek original found at Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, brought to Florence in the time of the Grand Duke Cosimo III and still in the Tribuna today. Other works of art shown in Zoffany’s picture, like Titian’s Venus of Urbino were brought in from other rooms in the Uffizi or from the Pitti Palace for the painter’s purpose.
5. The original PITTI PALACE was built in the 1450s and 1460s by Luca Pitti who received 20,000 florins from Cosimo as a contribution towards its cost as a reward for his political services to the Medicean party. It was probably designed by Luca Fancelli. After Ammanati had finished his alterations for Duke Cosimo I and Eleonora of Toledo – the courtyard was completed in 1562 – the façade was again widened by Giulio and Alfonso Parigi in the seventeenth century and two new wings were added by Giuseppe Ruggieri in the eighteenth century. At that time it was known as the Grand Ducal Palace. After the Risorgimento, the Pitti was made over to the House of Savoy and was presented to the nation by King Victor Emmanuel III. It now houses five museums. The Museo degli Argenti on the ground floor contains many of the treasures collected by the Medici.
6. The BOBOLI GARDENS still contain works by all these artists as well as by Giambologna, Fancelli, Cioli, Pietro Tacca, Caccini and Romolo del Tadda. The amphitheatre, shaped on a Roman model, was the site of the performanceof II Hondo Festeggiante given to celebrate the marriage of the Grand Duke Cosimo III. The Giardino del Cavaliere is laid out on the site of a bastion built by Michelangelo during the siege of 1529. The terrace beneath was built for Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici.
7. The original PONTE SANTA TRINITÀ was built in the thirteenth century. The statues on Ammanati’s bridge, Spring and Autumn (by Giovanni Caccini), Summer (by Pietro Francavilla) and Winter (by Taddeo Landini) were made for the Grand Duke Cosimo’s marriage in 1608. The bridge was blown up in 1944. It was rebuilt after the war exactly as it had been before, the masons using copies of sixteenth-century tools to ensure its authenticity. The façade of the CHURCH OF SANTA TRINITÀ was commissioned by the Grand Duke Ferdinando I from Buontalenti and completed in 1594.
8. The PONTE ALLA CARRAIA, first built at the beginning of the thirteenth century, was three times destroyed by floods, and once, in 1304, collapsed under the weight of spectators watching a river festival. It was re-built for the fifth time by Ammanati in 1559. The present bridge was built after the last war, its predecessor having been blown up in 1944.
9. The LOGGIA DEI LANZI was originally known as the Loggia dei Signori. It was built towards the end of the fourteenth century to plans drawn by Simone Talenti as a covered area for public ceremonies. Its present name is derived from Duke Cosimo I’s Swiss soldiers, the Landsknechte, who were quartered in barracks nearby. In Duke Cosimo’s time, it became the open-air sculpture gallery that it still is. Cellini’s Perseus was placed there in 1554. Giambologna’s Rape of the Sabines came in 1583 when Donatello’s Judith and Holofemes, which had formerly been placed on the ringhiera of the Palazzo della Signoria, was returned to the Piazza. Behind these two pieces are another Giambologna, a Roman copy of a Greek statue of Menelaus supporting the body of Patroclus and Pio Fedi’s Rape of Polixena. Six Roman statues which the Grand Duke Ferdinando I brought from the Villa Medici in Rome are in the back row.
10. Although work began in 1605, under the direction of Ferdinando I, to realizeCosimo I’s conception of a huge CAPPELLA DEI PRINCIPI, the structure wasnot finished until 1737, and the decoration of the cupola not completed until 1836. Until ready to receive them in the reign of Cosimo III, the bodies of theGrand Dukes and their wives and sons were temporarily buried in the new andold sacristies. Generations of craftsmen in pietra dura were kept intermittentlyat work on the elaborate tombs of the three Cosimos, the two Ferdinandos andthe Grand Duke Francesco which surround the walls.