Medici Portraits & Politics exhibition, in N.Y

The Med­ici: Portraits and Politics 1512–1570 exhibition was at Met­ropolitan NY in 2021. The catalogue by the same name exp­lored how the art­ists end­owed their works with a clearly styl­ish character that identified Fl­orentine por­t­rait­­ure. With 90+ notable paint­ings, scul­pt­ur­es, works on paper and me­d­­als, this volume was written by a team of lead­ing international auth­ors and presented a detailed anal­ysis of this era in It­al­ian art: med­als, paintings, sculptures, car­v­ed gemstones, drawings, et­ch­ings, man­u­­scripts and arm­our. Incl­uded were works by the era's most fam­ous artists: Raphael, Jac­opo Pont­ormo & Rosso Fiorentino, Ben­venuto Cell­ini, Agnolo Bronz­ino, Fran­cesco Salviati etc who depicted the elite of Medici Florence.

The Medici had continuously ruled Florence in 1434-94. But the Medici family only returned to power in 1512, after Florence had lost its ident­ity and become a pawn in stormy Eur­op­ean polit­ics. Florence ch­anged from a rep­ublic with elected officials .. to one ruled by Med­ici.

And the key fig­ure in this transformation was 17 year old Cosimo I de Medici from a mi­n­or branch of an elite family, who bec­ame Duke of Fl­orence in 1537, after his pred­ecessor Alessandro de' Medici was mur­d­ered. Cosimo had been selected by power brokers in Florence who bel­ieved they could con­trol him. But instead he grab­bed control from el­ected off­icials, estab­l­ish­ing him­self as an auto­crat. Flor­en­ce was made imp­ort­ant again, even with a tyrant, and the city was grateful.

Alessandro de' Medici Duke of Florence, 1534
by Jacopo Pontormo,
Credit: Philadelphia Museum of Art
 
To convert the mercant­ile city into the capital of a Medici state, Cosimo en­listed the leading in­tellect­uals, promoting grand architectural, eng­in­eering and art projects. Explore how Cosimo and the other Medici used the era’s dom­inant medi­um, art, as propaganda, clarifying that Florence was still a pow­er to reckon with. See what Floren­t­­ines thought about infl­uen­ce and the central role that arts and culture played in Renaissance pol­it­ics. Cosimo’s goal was to see how he and his cir­cle used the arts to promote the Medici brand.

Port­raits, a very personal sub­ject, pro­vided a seductive way to expl­ore politics and pat­ronage. They be­came an ess­ential means of not­ing sitters’ likeness, character, soc­ial pos­ition and cul­t­ur­al ambitions

In Giorgio Vasari's famous book Lives of the Artists (1550), which was dedicated to the Duke, Florence was promoted as the heart of the Re­n­aissance. He had nurtured the idea of Florence as the intellectual power­house of the Renaissance and the Medici as the key players.

The 2021 exhibition displayed a bronze bust of Cosimo I de' Med­ici 1545 by Cellini, on loan from the Museo Naz­ion­ale del Barg­ello in Fl­orence. In 1557 the bust found a permanent home above the main for­t­ress gate on Elba Island. Its pierc­ing gaze and Roman-ish armour conveyed Cosimo’s pow­er, build­ing on imperial iconography to link the Med­ici and It­aly’s ancient lead­ers. Specialists saw that its eyes had been crafted out of silver, a pre­ference pion­eer­ed in the class­ical civ­il­isations that Renais­sance artists copied centuries later. Thus it was restored.

bronze bust of Cosimo I de' Med­ici 1545 by Cellini
Credit Museo Naz­ion­ale del Barg­ello, Fl­orence

Other works also connected the family to classical culture eg Cosimo I de’ Medici as Orpheus (1537–9) by Bronzino. He cast the Duke as the mythological musician Orpheus, align­ing him with greater forces. A marble bust of an aging Cosimo by sculptor Giovanni Bandini showed him as a Roman emperor, timeless in his authority.

Portraits and Politics had 6 sections that started in the early C16th when the family newly returned from exile. See how the High Ren­ais­sance rulers cemented their power through commissioning cul­t­ure and associating with artists. The ex­hib­ition’s first sections cov­ered 1512-34, intro­d­ucing us to relatives like Pope Cl­em­ent VII, Lor­­enzo the Magnificent’s ne­ph­ew and Alessandro de’ Med­ici, who ?was the son of Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino. [The family actually pro­duced four popes: Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV and Leo XI].

Then ins­pect Cosimo himself. See how the Duke and his immed­iate fam­ily, including 1st wife Eleonora of Toledo (d1572), used portraits to proj­ect power, assert Medici continuity and convey cultural refine­ment! Bronzino painted Eleonora, posing alongside each of her sons. Plac­ing each son next to mum said that the next gen­erat­ion would create branches from the invigorated dynastic  trunk.

Bronzino, Eleanora of Toledo and son Giovanni, 1545

Photo credit: Ufizzi

The second half of Por­t­raits and Politics examined those whose art elev­at­ed Florence to new cultural heights. It put together the work of Bronzino, the Mannerist artist who was Cosimo’s court paint­er, and Francesco Salviati, whose pan-Italian style com­peted with Bron­z­ino’s clearly Florentine-based art. And the exhibition celebrated the city’s literary culture, linked to portraiture. But as realistic as the facial image was, this alone could not convey the most intim­ate aspects of the sitter. Identity was embedded in symbols, in­ cod­if­ied for­m­al language capable of ex­­­­­plaining concepts prev­iously con­fin­ed to poetry. NB Bron­zino’s restored Portrait of Poet Lau­ra Bat­t­if­erri. Laur­a’s like­ness explicitly referenced 2 other fam­ous Flor­ent­ine poets: her Dante prof­ile and her Petrarch verses.

Not all of the people featured were well-known eg his ancestor Cosimo the Eld­er on the catalogue cover. Cosimo the Elder was not a Medici, but was the son of a wealthy Florentine bank­er. None­theless the work was described as a masterpiece of C16th port­rait­ure, summarising the power of art as prop­ag­an­da. The young man with a med­al­l­ion portrait of a woman near his chest was filled with symbolism.

The catalogue closed with a quote from the Ren­aissance artist Leonardo da Vinci, acknowledging the staying power of great art. Now read The Medici Family in History Today and The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–70 (see above).