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Overview
Cox-Rearick reveals the Chapel of Eleonora as an intimately devised decorative program that transmits messages about its patrons and Medici rule. Detailed color photographs of the newly restored art splendidly document this early tour de force of a major artist whose works are still relatively unexamined.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780520375994 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of California Press |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2023 |
| Series: | California Studies in the History of Art , #29 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 445 |
| File size: | 59 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
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Read an Excerpt
Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio
By Janet Cox-Rearick
University of California Press
Copyright © 1993 Janet Cox-RearickAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-520-07480-7
Chapter One
Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of FlorenceThe Marriage of Eleonora di Toledo and Duke Cosimo de' Medici
The words of this chapter's epigraph by the Medici court poet Martelli praise Eleonora on her arrival in Florence as the bride of Duke Cosimo. Eleonora was the sixth child and second daughter of Don Pedro di Alvarez di Toledo, brother of the powerful duke of Alba and viceroy of Naples under Emperor Charles V from 1532 until his death in 1553. She was born at Sebeto on 11 January 1519, but little is known of her early life. As a seventeen-year-old she was noticed by the young Cosimo de' Medici when he visited Naples in the train of his cousin Duke Alessandro.
Cosimo, Eleonora's bridegroom, was the son of the famous condottiere Giovanni delle Bande Nere and Maria Salviati, a niece of Pope Leo X (Giovanni de' Medici), who belonged to different branches of the Medici family (Fig. 17). Their only child, he united the two sides of the family. Cosimo was unexpectedly elevated to the Florentine dukedom in January 1537 after the murder of Alessandro and at the Battle of Montemurlo in August of the same year consolidated his claim to rule Florence. It was then deemed essential that he marry and produce an heir to secure the rule of the Medici, there being no eligible descendants after Alessandro's demise. It was also desirable that Cosimo take a wife who would enhance his alliance with Charles V, to whom he owed his title duke of Florence and who was effectively his feudal lord. Cosimo's first choice, Margaret of Austria, was expedient, for she was Charles's daughter (even if illegitimate) and the widow of Alessandro. The emperor, however, chose to give Margaret to Ottavio Farnese, a nephew of the new pope, Paul III.
During the year 1538, Giovanni Bandini, Cosimo's ambassador at the imperial court, pursued other options. Writing to Cosimo in November, he reviewed the possibilities for a suitable wife in Portugal, Germany, Flanders, and Calabria-one who would be not only an advantageous match politically but also "bella, nobile, riccha, et giovane" (beautiful, noble, rich, and young). By 23 November Bandini had obtained the emperor's approval for Cosimo's marriage to Don Pedro's eldest daughter, Isabella. Cosimo, however, apparently attracted to Eleonora when he saw her in Naples in 1536, insisted on her as his bride:
Intendo che il Viceré di Napoli ha spedito costà per impetrare da S. M.tà di appiccarmi addosso la sua prima figliuola. Non credo che quella permetta cosa tanto sproportionata et disconveniente: che quando altrimenti fussi, confesserei ingenuamente di tenermi molto male satisfatto di tal cosa, iudicando che al prefato Viceré debbi parere assai di darmi la seconda.
(I understand that the viceroy of Naples has written to beseech his majesty [Charles V] to palm his elder daughter off on me. I don't believe that he will permit something so outrageous and disagreeable. Were I to think otherwise, I would honestly confess to consider myself very dissatisfied, judging that you should present matters to the above-mentioned viceroy adequately enough so that he gives me the second daughter.)
Eleonora seems to have fulfilled all the conditions set forth for Cosimo's wife. The portraits Bronzino painted of her, especially the first, which portrays her at the age of twenty-four (Plate 2), show an attractive brown-eyed young woman with regular features and light chestnut hair. Contemporaries commented on her beauty. Cosimo's secretary, Jacopo de' Medici, remarked on her "ragionevol belleza" (remarkable beauty) at the time of her marriage, and in the letters of her intimates she is described as "bella, fresca, e colorita come una rosa" (beautiful, fresh, with the complexion of a rose). The conditions of the marriage were negotiated, Cosimo making a good bargain with Don Pedro, and the marriage (by proxy) took place on 29 March 1539 in Naples, with Jacopo de' Medici and Luigi Ridolfi, the representatives of Duke Cosimo, signing the marriage contract and presenting a wedding ring to Eleonora. On that day Jacopo wrote to Riccio, announcing the news and praising Eleonora, as well as indicating the courtly ambience in which Eleonora lived at Naples and the luxury to which she was accustomed; Jacopo remarks on his and Ridolfi's astonishment at the elegant life of Don Pedro's court. The taste for lavish display was later to affect Eleonora's court life, mode of dress, and patronage of art-and, by extension, those of Cosimo as well.
After the marriage-by-proxy, arrangements were made for Eleonora to travel from Naples to Florence. On 24 April Cosimo wrote to Don Pedro: "Attendo hora la nuova della partita della S.ra Duchessa con quel desiderio che la Ex. V. può pensare." (I'm waiting now with the eagerness Your Excellency might imagine for news of the departure of Her Ladyship the duchess). Cosimo also wrote to Eleonora herself; one of his secretaries reported to Jacopo in Naples that Eleonora had answered a letter from the duke written in his own hand. From the letter to Jacopo we learn that the Spanish-speaking Eleonora could not read Italian well but that "la Signora Duchessa si era vantata di interpreterla da sé senza aiuto di persona" (Her Ladyship the duchess prided herself on understanding it without assistance from anyone). Cosimo's secretary concludes by telling Jacopo: "La S.ra Duchessa si chiamerà contenta e satisfatta insino in cima, e di questo voglio farne la sicurtà io" (Her Ladyship the duchess considers herself supremely happy and satisfied, and I want to assure [you] of this). Eleonora's letter has not survived, the only extant autograph communication from her to Cosimo of this period being an illegible postscript to a letter of solicitation from one of her entourage with the signature "Do na le / o no r de to." Cosimo, who went to Villa Castello to await news of Eleonora's arrival in Pisa, wrote her anxiously on 11 May to inquire why her departure from Naples had been delayed. Plans went ahead, and on 18 May Chiarissimo de' Medici wrote to Riccio from Pisa, describing the arrangements for Eleonora's arrival at Livorno and her brief stay in Pisa:
A Livorno si farà molto ornamento. Per non avere di che farlo, farò che vi sia buon vini et altre cose da rinfrescharsi et strami et biade per una sera. (In Livorno we will make a great deal of fanfare. So that we will not lack anything, I shall see that there is good wine and other things so they can refresh themselves, and straw and feed [for their horses] for one night.)
Eleonora finally left Naples on 11 June with a convoy of seven galleys, accompanied by her brother Don Garzia and an entourage of Spanish nobles. Pierfrancesco Giambullari, an academician at Cosimo's court who was partially responsible for the ducal couple's wedding apparato, prefaces his description of it with an account of the events preceding the marriage. He recounts that on 22 June Eleonora arrived at Livorno, where she was received in Cosimo's name by the archbishop of Pisa, and that she left for Pisa the same day. She met Cosimo and his entourage on the road, and together the ducal couple made an entrata (ceremonial entry) into the city, festive with triumphal arches and other decorations. Riccio, in a letter to Lorenzo Pagni, a ducal secretary in Florence who was in daily contact with Cosimo in the early 1540s,18 relates that poems were read ceremonially to Eleonora and her brother:
Dell'arrivata costì del Selvastrella,... io subito lessi due volte il capitolo alla Signora Duchessa et al Signor Don Gratia, che ne presono piacere; così lessi il suo sonetto che piaque, et il Signor Don Pedro de Toledo, persona gentilissima, ne ha chiesto la copia et gliela donò.
(Of the material that came from Selvastrella,... I immediately read the capitolo [a type of poem] twice to Her Ladyship the duchess and Don Gratia [Garzia], who took pleasure in it, and similarly read [to them] his sonnet, which pleased [them], and Don Pedro di Toledo, [that] most courteous person, asked for a copy of it, and I gave it to him.)
Riccio also tells Pagni that Cosimo then presented his entourage to Eleonora:
Hoggi dopo desinare, il Signor Duca fece conoscere alla Signora Duchessa el Signore Alamanno Salviati, Piero e tutti, così gli altri giovani fiorentini: che fece lor grande accoglienza come fa a tutti universalmente, con la più dolce et accorta maniera che mai si sia vista.
(Today, after dining, the duke introduced Signore Alamanno Salviati, Piero, and all the other young Florentines to Her Ladyship the duchess, who gave them a great welcome, as she always does with everyone, in the most gracious and courtly way ever seen.)
On 24 June the ducal couple proceeded to Empoli, and on the twenty-fifth they arrived at Villa Poggio a Caiano to rest until the entrata into Florence. The events of these days are recounted by Cosimo himself in letters to Eleonora's parents in Naples. Reassuring them of their daughter's well-being, he tells them:
Alli 22 del presente arrivò la Signora Duchessa con tutta sua compagnia a Livorno a salvamento, Dio laudato, senza haver sentito del viaggio e del mare incommodo o fastidio alchuno. Di che io hauto quel contentamento et allegrezza che la Exitia V. può pensare, senza che io m'allarghi molto in exprimerlo con parole, non havendo al mondo cosa che più fussi et aspetatta e desiderata da me. (On the twenty-second instant, Her Ladyship the duchess with all her retinue arrived at Livorno-and safely, God be praised, having felt no discomfort or distress from the journey or the sea. Your Excellency can imagine my pleasure and joy over this, even without my dilating on it verbally, since nothing in the world was more awaited and desired by me.)
He then says that he and Eleonora were resting up at Poggio a Caiano in preparation for her entry into Florence:
La S.ra Duchessa et io siamo venuti poi qui al Poggio, luogo vicino alla città, per reposare insino alla domenicha proxima, che sarà il giorno della entrata di S. Exitia in Firenze, la quale piaccia a Dio sia in buon punto et honore et servitio suo et contentamento di tutti noi.
(Her Ladyship the duchess and I have now come here to Poggio, a spot near the city, to rest until next Sunday, which will be the day of Her Excellency's entry into Florence, which, may it please God, will go well in both his honor and service and to the contentment of us all.)
Much later, Eleonora's arrival at Poggio a Caiano was evoked in a vignette in Vasari's Sala di Cosimo in the Palazzo. There, Giovanni Stradano depicted the long ducal cortege with Eleonora's litter making its way toward the facade of the villa (Fig. 18).
Eleonora finally entered Florence on 29 June through the Porta al Prato; days of celebration followed in the lavishly decorated city, an apparato that was the joint work of the poet and academician Giambattista Gelli and Giambullari, who described it in a fictive letter to Ambassador Bandini at the court of Charles V. At the Porta al Prato was a magnificent triumphal arch designed by Tribolo and decorated with statuary all'antica (in the antique style) and paintings by Ridolfo and Michele Ghirlandaio and Battista Franco. An enormous statue of Fecundity with "cinque bei figlioletti nudi d'intorno" (five beautiful nude children around her) was flanked by Security and Eternity. This group was dedicated to Eleonora as the producer of a Medici heir, a theme that was to dominate her personal imagery during her lifetime and beyond. On the Porta al Prato itself was an elaborate image of Charles V and his dominions, including an allegorical figure of Spain in reference to the Toledo family. Singers and instrumentalists performed a motet by Francesco Corteccia (a native Florentine then in charge of the music at S. Lorenzo) whose text (also inscribed on the arch) linked the security of the Medici to Eleonora's fecundity:
INGREDERE INGREDERE FOELICISS. AUSPICIIS URBEM TUAM HELIONORA AC OPTIMAE PROLIS FOECUNDA ITA DOMI SIMILEM PATRI FORIS AVO SOBOLEM PRODUCAS UT MEDICEO NOMINI EIUSQUE DEVOTISS. CIVIBUS SECURITATAM PRAESTES AETERNAM.
(Enter, enter, under the most favorable auspices, Eleonora, your city. And, fruitful in excellent offspring, may you produce descendants similar in quality to your father and forebears abroad, so that you may guarantee eternal security for the Medici name and its most devoted citizenry.)
From the Porta al Prato (where Cosimo left his bride, to take a shortcut to the Palazzo Medici) Eleonora's entourage followed a circuitous route through the city that allowed Florentines to see their new duchess. At the Duomo she was received by the archbishop and conducted to the high altar of the church-beautifully decorated for the occasion. From there the procession followed the Via de' Servi through Piazza SS. Annunziata to Piazza S. Marco, then to Via Larga, where the entrance to the Palazzo Medici was decorated with a stemma (coat of arms) announcing to all the union of the Medici and Toledo families under the auspices of the emperor. The decorations of the first courtyard of the palace emphasized several themes relating specifically to Eleonora. One was the bride as goddess, exemplified in the inscription over the doorway, ACCIPIAT CONIUNX FOELICI FOEDERE DIVAM (Let the bridegroom receive the goddess bound to him in this happy alliance). Another was marital fidelity. The most important, however, was fertility. Eleonora genetrix was alluded to in lunettes such as one showing Fecundity with many children, with the motto VENTVROS TOLLEMVS IN ASTRA NEPOTES (We shall bear your descendants up to the stars). The second courtyard, where the wedding banquet took place on 6 July after the nuptials, was also the site of that day's entertainment: a pageant with music by Corteccia and others, along with songs to verses by Gelli. The decorations (lost, like the rest of the apparato) celebrated Cosimo's Medici heritage in two series of six paintings each, one series featuring scenes from Medici history, the other illustrating parallel events in Cosimo's life. Bronzino painted the climactic picture of each series: The Dispute of Duke Alessandro de' Medici with the Exiles at Naples represented the occasion in 1536 when Cosimo and Eleonora had first met, with the two adolescents perhaps portrayed among the bystanders; The Marriage by Proxy of Duke Cosimo would of course have featured Eleonora. This painting is described by Vasari:
Nell'ultimo di tutti questi quadri erano le nozze del medesimo duca Cosimo fatte in Napoli: l'impresa erano due cornici, simbolo antico delle nozze, e nel fregio era l'arme di don Petro di Tolledo viceré di Napoli, e questa, che era di mano del Bronzino, era fatta con tanta grazia, che superò, come la prima tutte l'altre storie. (In the last of all these pictures was [depicted] the marriage of the same Duke Cosimo in Naples.
Continues...
Excerpted from Bronzino's Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio by Janet Cox-Rearick Copyright © 1993 by Janet Cox-Rearick. Excerpted by permission.
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