Cosimo de' Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (review)

Duke Cosimo de' Medici's commissions at critical points in his reign, and shifts in tenor of ducal propagandistic responses, are reassessed in Veen's probing survey. His introduction traces Cosimo's aggrandizement from youthful "capo" of Florence in 1537, tout court to hereditary dukedom, and ultimately to Grand Duke of Tuscany in 1569. The author's challenging premise is that although Cosimo initially trumpeted absolutism, he espoused republicanism throughout the 1560s when his princely status seemed secure; conversely, theories of unwavering ducal absolutism, adhered to by Vasari and many Medici scholars, are questionable.

Familiar early "absolutist" commissions include Tribolo's 1537 Castello program, and the 1539 wedding apparato, each vaunting Cosimo's Apollonian autocracy. Especially engaging are perspectives on the boy-duke's unrealized, megalomaniacal notions: an "imperialist" false facade for the Palazzo della Signoria, with a strada ducale to the Duomo forming a princely "liturgical theatre for ceremonial" (12, 192, n. 29); a Michelangelesque piazza encompassing a "royal" mausoleum; and a palace complex replacing Florence's adjacent core. Prudence prevailed. Cosimo occupied the Signoria, republicanism's historic landmark, in 1540; by 1545, his ambassador to France informed Francois I, "we are a ruler who accepts the authority of no-one but God" (196, n. 112). Personifications — Hercules, Apollo, Perseus, Camillus, Moses, Joseph, Zeus, and Jupiter — express princely triumphalism with overarching anti-republicanism. Vasari's Palazzo Vecchio cycles promote subjugation of Tuscan territories, stridently culminating in Saturn Castrating Heaven (1555–57), with its all-encompassing crown. Meanwhile, letterati disseminated Cosimo's persona as "mirror of princes."

European endorsement of Cosimo as Duke of Florence and Siena by the Treaty of Cambrai, and the election of his protégé Pius IV in 1559, emboldened his bid for kingship, to which end, Veen contends, Cosimo abjured autocratic referencing. That his Quartiere tapestries align Solomon and David's wisdom and piety with Cosimo's civic virtue is moot: David had served as republican hero, but lurking "royal" claims could inhere in this regal pairing. Republican, civic virtue trumps female virtue in Eleonora's Gualdrada room (1561), but when her Quartiere's "virtuous women" program is holistically assessed — see Pamela Benson, Ilaria Hoppe, and Paolo Tinagli's contributions in Konrad Eisenbichler, ed., The Cultural World of Eleanora di Toldeo (2004) — its traditional overlapping regal and domestic virtues are revealed (Tinagli, 130–31).

Homage to Florence, with Cosimo as "citizen prince" of its "buon governo" (54) informs Veen's extensive Sala Grande analysis. Former interpretations of the central tondo's cloudborne, hieratic Cosimo-Augustus crowned by Fiorenza as an absolutist "apotheosis" reflect Kurt Forster's "Metaphors of Rule" (MKIF 15 [1971] 85–86, 97–98): in 1561, Fedeli, the Venetian ambassador, asserted Cosimo's unbroken divine rule; the tondo manifests Vasari's record of "Cosimo, trionfante e glorioso" in tandem with Florence's historic past. Veen argues otherwise: Cosimo-Augustus's inclusion was a ducal afterthought; rebuffs to his "royal" title instigated symbolic "abdication"; the oak-leaf crown recalls Augustus's "studied modesty" when offered the corona civica, not his imperial status (66–72, 79, 205, n. 88). Reference to ducal retention of Luca Pitti's palazzo and eponym to shore up Cosimo's "republican" virtú civile is, however, debatable. Machiavelli recorded popular outrage at urban demolitions for it, viewing it as overweeningly "royal" and isolationist (Istorie Fiorentine, VII, iv). Marcello Fantoni (Il Corte del Granduca [1994], 27) opined that, on his 1559 European endorsement, the Pitti's "royal" function probably germinated in Cosimo's mind.

Florentine patria informed the stupendous apparato for Joanna of Austria's 1565 entrata (chapter 5). Veen proposes that its principal arches defined ducal rule in a republican ethos of Prudence/Virtù Civile, and that Prudenza "had never had any part in Cosimo's [absolutist] propaganda" (96–97). But Randolf Starn and Rudolf Partridge (Arts of Power [1992], 182, 187) noted Prudence...