Florence, Art in

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FLORENCE, ART IN

FLORENCE, ART IN. Art in Florence during the period from 1450 to 1789 marked the transition from Florence as the birthplace of Renaissance art in Europe during the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries to the peak of Florence's importance during the second half of the fifteenth century and its gradual loss of artistic status to Rome and Venice in the sixteenth century. Florence under the Medici grand dukes during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries served as the prototype for the emergence of artistic courts such as Versailles, but it became increasingly a destination for art tourists rather than a center of artistic creativity.

LATE-FIFTEENTH-CENTURY ART

During the second half of the fifteenth century, private collectors began to replace the church and medieval guilds as the most important patrons of art in Florence. In 1459 Piero de' Medici (1416–1459), the son of Cosimo de' Medici (1389–1464) and father of Lorenzo il Magnifico (1449–1492), commissioned Benozzo Gozzoli (born Benozzo di Lese, c. 1421–1497) to paint the Medici family's private chapel in their original palace. The frescoes, one of the last great examples of the international Gothic style, depicted the journey of the magi with members of the Medici family appearing as portraits in the painting. Another leading Florentine family, the Rucellai, commissioned Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), the leading architect of the fifteenth century, to design their family palace and the facade of their parish church, the most important edifice of the Dominican order in Florence, Sta. Maria Novella (c. 1458–1470). Tomasso Portinari, the Bruges representative of the Medici, exerted an enormous influence on the development of Florentine painting during the late 1470s when the altarpiece he had commissioned from the Flemish artist Hugo van der Goes (active 1467–1482), Adoration of the Magi (1476–1478, Uffizi), arrived in Florence in 1478 at the Church of St. Egidio. Domenico Ghirlandajo (born Domenico di Tommaso Bigordi, c. 1448–1494) closely modeled his Adoration of the Shepherds (1483–1486) after Portinari's painting for the family chapel of Francesco Sassetti in Sta. Trinita (probably the finest ecclesiastical interior decoration of the era). Ghirlandajo was the most prolific fresco painter of his age, and perhaps the greatest influence he would have on the future development of Italian painting occurred in 1488 when the then thirteen-year-old Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) served as his apprentice and developed the fresco skills that would prove so valuable when he painted the Sistine ceiling.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was also influenced by the Portinari altar. His Adoration of the Magi (Uffizi), commissioned by the monks of St. Donato a Scopeto in 1481 and left unfinished in 1482 when Leonardo left Florence for Milan, is especially close to the almost shocking realism and psychological depth of Hugo's altar. Leonardo apprenticed with Andrea del Verrocchio (born Andrea di Michele di Francesco Cione, 1435–1488) who had replaced Donatello (born Donato di Niccolo, 1386?–1466) as Florence's leading sculptor. Verrocchio is best remembered for his impressive Christ and Doubting Thomas (1465–1483), prominently situated on Orsanmichele in the center of Florence, and his playful David (c. 1476), commissioned by Lorenzo de' Medici and currently in the Bargello (the former Palazzo del Podesta and now the leading museum for sculpture in Florence). Both of Verrocchio's statues reflect the concern for emotions and drama that would be so central to Leonardo's style. The interest of Leonardo and Michelangelo in anatomy was foreshadowed by the work of Antonio del Pollaiuolo (born Antonio di Jacopo Benci, c. 1431–1498) whose engraving Battle of the Nudes (c. 1465, Metropolitan Museum, New York) was the largest Florentine print of the fifteenth century and served artists as a model for nude figures in a variety of poses.

The best-known work of this era is certainly the Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (born Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, 1445–1510) in the Uffizi (commissioned by Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici for his Villa di Castello). The Neoplatonic theme of celestial Venus expressing divine love is the clearest example of the revival of pagan antiquity in Florence during the Renaissance and is typical of the transformation of art from a predominantly Christian to an overwhelmingly secular medium. The nude Roman goddess of love was symptomatic of the type of art and literature that would soon spark a backlash, advocated by the Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola, against the revival of Greco-Roman civilization. Savonarola was a puritanical forerunner of Martin Luther, and his attacks against the increasingly pagan nature of Florentine civilization resulted in the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 and a brief theocratic regime until he was burned at the stake for heresy in 1498.

Before leaving Florence in 1494 after the fall of the Medici, Michelangelo had been a close associate of the family since 1489 and carved his early marble relief sculptures, the Madonna of the Stairs (1489–1492, Casa Buonarroti, Florence) and the Battle of the Lapiths and Centaurs (c. 1492, Casa Buonarroti), which remain unfinished (like so much of his work). Both powerful and dynamic works, although modest in scale, illustrate Michelangelo's troubled psyche and his lifelong obsession with classical forms in a variety of complex postures.

THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

Prior to the return of the Medici in 1512, Michelangelo, who had been in Bologna and Rome in 1494–1501, designed a fresco that depicted the Battle of Cascina, a scene from the war of 1364 with Pisa (c. 1504–1506; abandoned in 1506 when Michelangelo left for Rome to work for Pope Julius II). The fresco was intended for the Florentine Republic's main assembly hall, the Salone del Cinquecento in the Palazzo Vecchio, and was a reference to Florence's loss of Pisa in 1494 and its subsequent reconquest in 1502. The city was redecorating the Palazzo Vecchio (then serving as the seat of government of Florence) to emulate the lavish Doge's Palace (the principal government building) in Venice. Michelangelo was in direct competition with Leonardo (in Florence from 1500–1508), whose Battle of Anghiari (c. 1503–1506; destroyed in 1506) depicted the battle of 1440 against Pisa. Michelangelo's David (1501–1504; moved in 1873 to the Galleria dell' Accademia), originally commissioned by the Opera of the Cathedral to be placed on a buttress below the dome, was eventually placed at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio, as a defiant symbol of the republic (the young underdog David against the evil giant Goliath, symbolizing in Florence's case Rome or Milan). Michelangelo had gained a reputation as an adept forger of classical antiquities; with David he laid claim for the first time to being superior to any of the Greco-Roman sculptors.

Before departing for Rome in 1505 to work for Pope Julius II, Michelangelo completed his only panel painting, the Doni Tondo (Uffizi), for the wedding of Angelo Doni and Maddalena Strozzi. The crisp sculptural style of the work and its twisting Madonna clearly illustrate Michelangelo's belief that the more painting resembles sculpture, the better it is. The bright, almost neonlike colors would be seen again in the Sistine ceiling (recently cleaned) and later in the disturbingly beautiful paintings of Pontormo.

After Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael (born Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520; in Florence in 1504–1508) left Tuscany, the leading painter was by default Andrea del Sarto (born Andrea d'Agnolo, 1486–1530), whose aloof and somewhat eerie Madonna of the Harpies (1517, Uffizi) signaled the transition from the High Renaissance to mannerism. The High Renaissance (1500–1520) is generally considered the zenith of Italian art; the twentieth century became fascinated with the succeeding era, mannerism (1520–1600), because of its richer, if somewhat frightening, psychological content. Sarto's pupil Jacopo da Pontormo (born Jacopo Carrucci, 1496–1557) emerged as the first leading mannerist during the 1520s; his bizarrely haunting Deposition (c. 1526–1528) in Sta. Felicita is deservedly the best-known early mannerist painting. Pontormo was further influenced by Michelangelo's New Sacristy in St. Lorenzo (1519–1534), commissioned by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici (1478–1534), who became Pope Clement VII, for the duke of Nemours (Giuliano de' Medici, 1479–1516) and the duke of Urbino (Lorenzo de' Medici, 1492–1519). The depiction of the Medici dukes as elongated moody aristocrats typified the new mannerist ideal for the human figure. Michelangelo remained in Florence until 1534, when the Medici pope Clement VII died, and then the artist left permanently for Rome, where he died in 1564. His project for the facade of St. Lorenzo (1517), commissioned by Pope Leo X (born Giovanni de' Medici, 1475–1521), was canceled in 1520 (the model survives in the Casa Buonarroti in Florence), but he designed the addition to the Medici parish church of St. Lorenzo that houses the Medicis' private book collection, the Laurentian Library (1524–1534; stairway completed 1559), for Pope Clement VII.

In 1532 Alessandro de' Medici (1510–1537), a somewhat obscure member of the Medici family (he was the son of the duke of Urbino portrayed in Michelangelo's Medici Chapel in St. Lorenzo and the brother of Catherine de Médicis, who married King Henry II of France), became the first duke of Florence. After the marriage of his distant cousin Cosimo I (1519–1574), who replaced him as duke, to Eleonora of Toledo (1522–1562) in 1539, the Palazzo Vecchio became the new Medici residence in 1540. Pontormo's pupil Il Bronzino (born Agnolo di Cosimo, 1503–1572) emerged as the leading painter of the polished and aristocratic Maniera of the mid-sixteenth century and painted the most typical panels of this era, the haughty Eleonora of Toledo and Her Son Giovanni de' Medici (c. 1540, Uffizi) and the sophisticated and complex Allegory of Venus that was given to King Francis I of France by Duke Cosimo de' Medici (c. 1546, National Gallery, London). Giorgio Vasari, the famous historian of Italian Renaissance art, was appointed court architect and painter in 1554, and in 1565 he stripped and refurbished Florence's two most important parish churches, the Franciscan Order's Sta. Croce and the Dominican Order's Sta. Maria Novella.

The Arezzeria Medicea was founded in 1554 to produce tapestries, and in 1563 the Accademia del Disegno, the world's first art academy, was established to raise the status of artists from the medieval guilds. In 1564 the academy's first assignment was to supervise the funeral of Michelangelo, whose body had been stolen from Rome by the Florentines; the following year the academy was placed in charge of the decorations for the wedding of Francesco I (1541–1587) and Joanna of Austria. Florence annexed Siena and in 1569 became the Grand Duchy of Tuscany (a reference to the Etruscans, who Florentines proudly noted had predated the Romans). Vasari signaled the transformation of Florence from the birthplace of the Renaissance to a tourist destination with his construction of the Galleria degli Uffizi (1560–1580), originally the offices of the Grand Duchy and now Florence's premier art museum, and his publication of the Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1550, revised 1568). Vasari also supervised the design and construction of the playful and highly decorative studio of Francesco I in the Palazzo Vecchio (1570–1572), which has become a symbol of the overly precious nature of late mannerism in Florence. Because of the nature of the room, a small walk-in closet where the semiprecious jewel collection of the duke's son was stored, all the paintings were small and depicted obscure subjects. Vasari contributed images of Perseus and Andromeda, and Bronzino's pupil and Francesco's favorite painter, Alessandro Allori (1535–1607), created the Pearl Fishers, which is probably the most familiar painting of late-sixteenth-century Florence and unfortunately has become a symbol of the city's decline into relative insignificance in relation to Rome and Venice.

Perhaps the best-known example of mannerist sculpture is Benvenuto Cellini's elegant bronze Perseus and Medusa (1545–1554), commissioned by Duke Cosimo de' Medici and placed prominently on the Loggia dei Lanzi opposite Michelangelo's David. Bartolommeo Ammannati (1511–1592) also participated in the decoration of the Piazza della Signoria in front of the new Medici residence with his elaborate Neptune fountain (1560–1575). After the religious climate changed in Florence, Ammannati in 1582 wrote a letter to the Accademia apologizing for the nudes created for the Neptune fountain and urging artists to paint and carve fully draped figures. Ammannati also designed the bridge downstream from the Ponte Vecchio, the Ponte Santa Trinita (1566; destroyed by the Nazis during their retreat in World War II and rebuilt by the American art historian Bernard Berenson after 1945), and the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti (1558–1570) that, coupled with the Boboli Gardens (begun during the second half of the sixteenth century behind the Pitti Palace), made the complex a prototype for the elaborate palace and garden estate of Versailles. Giovanni da Bologna or Giambologna (born Jean Boulogne, 1529–1608) anticipated the melodramatic style of Bernini with his proto-baroque Rape of the Sabine Women (1583, Loggia dei Lanzi); he was also commissioned to decorate Florence with equestrian statues of the Medici: Cosimo I in Piazza della Signoria (1587–1593) and Francesco I (1608) in Piazza SS. Annunziata.

Sixteenth-century painting after Bronzino has been largely ignored. Bernard Berenson, the pioneer of modern Italian Renaissance art history, ended his lists of the Florentine painters with Bronzino, and Heinrich Wölfflin, in his Classic Art, cavalierly dismissed the importance of central Italian painting in the last third of the cinquecento with a brief postscript to his chapter on the late Michelangelo that he labeled "The Decline." This period was one of crisis and transition for central Italian art. Although mannerism remained the dominant style until the emergence of the baroque school around 1600, it became increasingly controversial after 1563, the year the Council of Trent issued its decrees that launched the Counter-Reformatory movement in religious art. One of the first Italian artists to break openly with the Maniera and conform closely with the demands of the Counter-Reformation was the Florentine painter Santi di Tito (1536–1603), who, during the final third of the century, quietly yet thoroughly transformed the high Maniera of his master Bronzino. Santi's best paintings are the Resurrection and Supper at Emmaus (early 1570s, Sta. Croce) and the altarpieces that anticipated by a generation the baroque style that would emerge in Bologna and Rome. Even more progressive was Santi's pupil Lodovico Cardi Cigoli (1559–1613) who, in addition to mastering Santi's style, also discovered the proto-baroque painters Federico Barocci (1526–1612) and Correggio (born Antonio Allegri, c. 1494–1534). Zacaria Tonelli commissioned Cigoli's Martyrdom of St. Stephen (1597) for the Chiesa del Convento di Montedomini; it was moved in 1814 to various museums in Florence. From 1928 it hung in the Pitti, where it was greatly admired by Pietro da Cortona (1596–1669), who considered the painting to be the best in Florence. According to Filippo Baldinucci (1624–1696), the leading Florentine art historian of the seventeenth century, the work earned Cigoli the epithet "Correggio Fiorentino."

SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES

The seventeenth century began auspiciously for Florence with the wedding of Henry IV, king of France, and Marie de Médicis (1573–1642; daughter of Grand duke Francesco de' Medici [1541–1587]). Marie's children would be the future king of France (Louis XIII, 1601–1643) and the queen of England (Henrietta Maria, 1609–1669, wife of King Charles I). The collection at the then recently completed Uffizi was updated in 1608 when Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte gave Grand Duke Ferdinando I (1549–1609) Bacchus by Caravaggio (born Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1573–1610). The galleries of the Uffizi and Pitti that housed the Medici paintings especially benefited from the gifts of Grand Duke Ferdinando II (1610–1670) and his brother Cardinal Leopoldo (1617–1675).

Among the artists present in Florence in the seicento was Artemisia Gentileschi (c. 1597–after 1651) who resided in the city during the second decade of the seventeenth century. The most important paintings of the seventeenth century in Florence were the frescoes by Pietro da Cortona in the Palazzo Pitti (1637 and 1640–1647) that transferred the high baroque style of his ceiling painting in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome (1633–1639) to Florence. The Neapolitan painter Luca Giordano (1632–1705) completed a similar baroque cycle in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, the Apotheosis of the Dynasty of the Medici (1682–1683), and also painted the cupola of the Corsini Chapel in the Carmine. The most spectacular example of baroque sculpture and architecture was created in the Medici parish church of St. Lorenzo adjacent to Michelangelo's new sacristy, the extremely ornate Princes' Chapel (1604–1610) by Matteo Nigetti (active 1604–died 1649).

The conservative sixteenth-century tradition of Florentine painting continued under the son of Alessandro Allori, Cristofano Allori (1577–1621), whose Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1616, Pitti) reflects the traditional branch of Florentine baroque painting that seems little changed since the time of Bronzino. Cristofano Allori and Artemisia Gentileschi were among the artists who participated in the decoration of the Sala della Gloria di Michelangelo in the Casa Buonarroti (1613), which was a Florentine baroque version of the late mannerist studio in the Palazzo Vecchio. Carlo Dolci (1616–1686), the miniaturist much beloved by Grand Duchess Vittoria, painted saints in adoration or ecstasy in a very similar tradition. The most important palace of the seventeenth century was the Palazzo Corsini (1648–1656), which currently houses the best Florentine private art collection, begun in 1765 by Lorenzo Corsini, the nephew of Pope Clement XII.

In the eighteenth century the Venetian painter Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734) worked in the Palazzo Marucelli (c. 1706), and Florence officially became the world center for art tourism in 1743 when Anna Maria Ludovica de' Medici (1667–1743), electress palatine and the final member of the Medici dynasty, gave the Medici art collection to the city. Luigi Lanzi modernized the Medici Museum at the Uffizi in 1780, and one of the city's top attractions, Masaccio's Brancacci Chapel, was miraculously spared by the fire that destroyed the Carmine in 1771. The rebuilt church (finished in 1782) is perhaps the best example of eighteenth-century architecture.

See also Caravaggio and Caravaggism ; Cellini, Benvenuto ; Florence ; Gentileschi, Artemisia ; Leonardo da Vinci ; Medici Family ; Michelangelo Buonarroti ; Raphael ; Vasari, Giorgio .