 |
| The Piazza della Signoria, Loggia di Lanzi, and Palazzo Vecchio. Photo courtesy of www.italiaabc,it |
After a busy weekend sightseeing, our group reconvened for our last week in Florence. On the agenda for Monday was a square we had passed countless times during our stay, the Piazza della Signoria, as well as the Loggia di Lanzi and a tour inside the Palazzo Vecchio. The Piazza and attached edifices have a long historic and artistic importance to Florentines, which can still be seen today.
The seat of civic government, the Piazza was originally home to the powerful Uberti family, who lived in a private Palazzo until tensions between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines came to a head. The family, who supported the Holy Roman Emperor and was considered part of the Ghibelline faction, was eventually run out of town when the Guelphs, who supported the Pope, came into power. The civic government, which had been previously located at the Bargello, saw the now-abandoned Palazzo as prime real estate and bought up the surrounding buildings in order to expand the existing Piazza in 1360. Likewise, the Uberti’s Palazzo was razed, and the Palazzo Vecchio was built on its foundations, though the architects incorporated the tower, which was part of the Uberti’s Palazzo, in the redesign.
The tower, as we look at it today, is noticeably off-center. The tower, used for defense and fortification, is a vestige of Medieval Florence. The Palazzo, when it was built in 1250-1255, was oriented to the north but with its appropriation by the government it was decided that building was to be reoriented to the west, which is how it is seen today.
Renaissance artists have used the surrounding Piazza as a kind of artistic showroom – furthermore, most, if not all, of the sculptures provide political commentary that would have been readily understood by the public at the time. This political bent is only fitting, as the Palazzo Vecchio (then the Palazzo della Signoria - center of government) was used as a hub of legislative debate during the Republican period, though the public outdoor setting of the attached piazza allowed for artists to showcase new, cutting edge experimentation in their craft.
 |
| Donatello's Marzocco. |
The first statue we looked at was a replica of Donatello’s Marzocco, dated to roughly 1410. This lion, carved from pietra serena, holds a shield emblazoned with a heraldic symbol of the city, a red fleur-de-lis, in its right paw. The Marzocco replaced an older statue from the 13th century. The lion represented Florence as a city and, because the city-state had no monarch present, it also represented the absent ruler. We saw this kind of substitution in Siena with Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government in Siena, where Dan and Tom gave their presentation. The figure in Lorenzetti’s work that represents the absent ruler is that of Ben Commune. Donatello fashions his marble lion as a way of representing the monarchial absence, just as the Sienese artist did with Ben Commune.
 |
| Donatello's Judith and Holofernes. |
We then took a look at another of Donatello’s works, the bronze Judith and Holofernes, the replica of which stands in its Signoria location next to the Marzocco in front of the Palazzo Vecchio. We saw the original Judith inside the Palazzo Vecchio (in the Sala dei Gigli) a little further into the day. Originally installed at the Palazzo Medici in the garden, Judith and Holofernes may have been commissioned as a fountainpiece though there is no evidence that it was ever used as such. The bronze can be read many different ways, some of them more controversial than others, which has led to much scholarly debate. Though Judith and Holofernes once stood where a reproduction of Michelangelo’s David now guards the entrance to the Palazzo, the bronze was relegated to the David’s right. On the one hand, it may represent chastity or virtue (Sanctimonia) triumphing over lust (Luxuria), which would have had positive connotations for the Florentine viewer. It also represents the triumph of an embodied Florence over her enemies. However, even as these moral and political readings work, these readings are complicated by the imagery of a woman conquering a man, which would have disturbed the statue’s audience in Renaissance Florence. The placement of Judith’s body – one foot on his genitals, the other on Holofernes’s wrist, her legs straddling his shoulder – is both disturbingly violent and erotic. Scimitar raised overhead, Judith is caught in a temporal suspension, between the first and second blows before Holofernes is beheaded. Furthermore, the scenes depicted on the base link the statue’s inception as a fountainpiece with the drunken revelry of a Bacchic procession with allusions to Holofernes’s inebriated state in the narrative.
 |
| Michelangelo's David. |
Of course, we couldn’t visit Florence without talking about Michelangelo’s David. Though we didn’t see the original at the Piazza della Signoria (we’ll see it tomorrow at the Galleria dell’Accademia), we did see a copy in its original placement in front of the Palazzo’s entrance. Ousting Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes from its place of honor in 1504, the David represented a more masculine embodiment of a Republican Florence, free of Medici influence. The block of marble used to carve the David was originally intended for use in the Duomo; sculptors had tried to carve figures from it for years before Michelangelo co-opted it for his own masterpiece. Placement of the David at the time sparked debates among influential Florentines, among them the herald of Florence Filarete and the artist Leonardo da Vinci (who was invited to the meetings). Location was key; placement in front of the Signoria would be read as a strictly anti-Medici message while placement in the Loggia di Lanzi would have neutralized these anti-Medici overtones (this location would have had the David facing south towards Rome, where the Medici Pope resided). After meetings for days, it was finally decided that the David would be placed in front of the Palazzo as a symbol of a heroic, virile, male symbol of the Florentine Republic.
On the other side of the Palazzo entrance stands Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus. Commissioned by the Medici after their return to Florence, the Hercules and Cacus neutralizes the anti-Medici message of the David, as the Hercules myth was one co-opted by the Medici, as was their wont. Florentines, of course, hated it, and saw its overly emphasized musculature as a failed response to the masterpiece of Michelangelo’s David.
 |
| Cellini's Perseus and Medusa. |
Cellini’s Perseus and Medusa, housed in the Loggia di Lanzi adjacent to the Palazzo, responds directly to both the David and Judith and Holofernes. By echoing the two-person system established by Judith and Holofernes and Hercules and Cacus as well as the violent imagery of domination through beheading, Perseus and Medusa can be seen as the triumphant return of the Medici family to power. Though all of the works of art we have seen in Florence spark multivalent readings, Michael Cole’s “Cellini’s Blood,” which we read for today, emphasizes the aspects of Cellini’s Perseus that were not dictated by Medici patronage. The artist, too, incorporates certain elements or messages that he wants viewers to extract; in the case of the Perseus, Cellini was interested in the organic process of creating his bronze. Cellini writes in his autobiography about the vitality of the casting and talked of spiritelli and the way the bronze itself seemed to be alive. This quality of life can also be seen in his rendering of Medusa’s blood. The way it spurts from both head and decapitated body recalls the formation of coral, which has both mythical and Biblical connection (mythical because Medusa’s blood falls into the ocean to form coral and Biblical because blood to Christians recalls the shedding of Christ’s blood). Furthermore, Cellini equates bronze to blood, so that lifeless bronze takes on a new vitality.
After spending some time outside in the Piazza, we headed inside the Palazzo Vecchio, where the warmer environment was a welcome change from the January cold. First on the agenda was the Room of Five Hundred. During the Republican period (1498-1512), it was used for legislative meetings where 500 officials would come together to debate governmental measures (Note: under the Medici, the number of elected officials dwindled to roughly 80). Frescoes by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were commissioned to decorate the walls, though they remained unfinished. Leonardo got as far as a wax-and-fresco sketch of the Battle of Anghiari on the walls, while Michelangelo only had a cartoon of the Battle of Cascina. When the Medici came back into power, Cosimo Primo commissioned Vasari to paint over these fresco cycles, which he did.
In the 1550s, Vasari paints the Conquering of Siena as well as the Conquering of Pisa. The Pisa cycle illustrates the battle between Florence and Pisa in 1509. The subjugation of Pisa was seen as proof of Florence’s Manifest Destiny. Because the battle occurred while the Medici were in exile, Vasari paints the soldiers in all'antica garb, classicizing and idealizing the battlefield. In the Siena cycle, Vasari emphasizes the role of Cosimo Primo as a brilliant military general and tactician. The representation of the battle of Siena contrasts sharply with the organized chaos of the Pisa cycle. Vasari paints carefully ordered regiments and cutting edge military technology such as muskets, cannons, and crossbows to underscore his patron’s greatness. The ceiling, too, aggrandizes the family by depicting the apotheosis of Cosimo Primo.
 |
| Michelagelo's Victory. |
Also displayed in the Room of Five Hundred is Michelangelo’s Victory, a marble sculpture in the round that has Victory triumphing over a crouched enemy. Taken as an allegorical Florence triumphing Pisa, this Victory is an ambiguous work because of its non-finito status. It is unclear if the unfinished roughness of the statue (seen in the claw-footed chisel marks of the conquered older man) is an aesthetic choice on the artist’s part, or if Michelangelo simply abandoned the work.
Leaving the Room of Five Hundred, we toured the private apartments of the Medici Family; when Cosimo Primo took control of Florence after the Medici exile, he claimed the Palazzo Vecchio as his living quarters though it had previously been the seat of government. He also had many of the rooms redecorated. In the apartments of Leo X, the first Medici Pope, he commissioned decorations celebrating his family history. The most interesting painting was a fresco scene in grisaille that depicted post-Republican sentiments about Michelangelo’s David. In the fresco, the David has been decapitated while a dog defecates directly under it.
Following the apartments of Leo X, we wandered through the apartments of Cosimo Primo’s wife, Eleanora of Toledo. The artist featured heavily in the Spanish princesses private quarters was Bronzino. Of particular note was her chapel, which featured a Moses cycle. Bronzino often quoted the innovations of Michelangelo in his depictions of the biblical narrative, echoing the detailed male musculature and use of color seen in the Sistine Chapel. Bronzino also painted the altarpiece, though the one housed in Eleanora’s chapel is a copy of the original (which was gifted to a French ambassador who so admired it. Bronzino made the copy that stands in the chapel today).
 |
| Ghirlandaio fresco in the Salla dei Gigli. |
 |
| Original Judith. |
The decorations of the Sala dei Gigli , or Room of the Lilies, dates before Cosimo Primo’s time, though the Medici had a hand in the process. Lorenzo de' Medici was in charge of electing Opera officials and used the system to get the decorations he wanted. Ghirlandaio was in charge of the fresco cycles on the far walls – the leftmost field displays Brutus, Scevolus, and Camillus, the central field features the saints Zanobi, Stephan, and Laurence, and the rightmost field displays Decio, Scipione and Circerone. The original Judith and Holofernes is also housed in this room, though this is a later addition.
 |
| Study of Francesco I. |
Our final destination was the Study of Francesco I, the son of Cosimo I. The study is comprised of four separate parts, each corresponding to a separate element of Earth, Air, Wind, and Fire. Paintings of alchemical or natural processes covered these walls and also doubled as cabinet fronts, inside of which natural or metallurgic curiosities relating to the paintings were kept. Though we were forbidden from actually entering the study, the oddity of paintings was certainly interesting to sneak a peek at.
The Study concluded our day at the Palazzo Vecchio, Piazza della Signoria, and Loggia di Lanzi. Tomorrow, we head to the Galleria dell’Accademia, where the long anticipated David is displayed, as well as the New Sacristy. Prepare yourselves for all Michelangelo, all day!
Blogger of the Day – Ting Chang
