Portrait of I. Cosimo de' Medici
Firenze, Museo degli Argenti
Exhibition Our exhibition embraces those two centuries during which Medici rule strengthened and consolidated in Renaissance Florence. In order to protect its commercial interests Florence often waged war with its neighbouring city-states; however, it acquired its fame as a generous contributor to the Renaissance and Humanism. The citizens who lived here made expensive fabrics, traded, and pursued banking activities, constructed huge palaces, supported the arts and surrounded themselves with paintings, sculptures, and objects of fine art, read poetry and novels, sometimes even writing them, listened to music, and trained and educated themselves. The exhibition presents the history, culture and art of the city in the 15th and 16th centuries, first through the collection of the Medici family who initially pursued their activities as merchant-bankers and later acquired the titles of duke and grand duke. We divided the exhibition into two large chronological units in accordance with the Quattrocento and the Cinquecento, both of which are further divided into three sub-categories. The rise of the Medici family presented in the first chronological unit can primarily be seen by visitors to the exhibition through documentation relating to the family's commercial and financial activities with a contemporaneous family tree, portraits of the adult, male members of the family, as well as wall panels, textiles and ceramics showing the heraldry of the Medici. This is followed by the works of art linked to the outstanding events in the political history of the family: portraits depicting members of allied great families, and personal possessions. Finally, those pictures, sculptures and objects of fine art of prime importance are exhibited that testify to the Medici's role as patrons of the arts in the 15th century. In the second chronological unit the pieces displayed at the beginning of the section consist of portraits of princes, queens and popes whom the family produced. These are followed by the models of buildings and other objects connected to the family's most important building projects in the city and the Medici's governance of Tuscany. Finally, visitors are given an insight into the life of the Medici at the ducal and grand ducal courts, and can see the objects and works of art that were used in the celebrations at these courts and which became part of the Medici collection during the 16th century. Unlike the layout of the exhibition, the Medici collection on the homepage is arranged in groups according to genres, devoting separate sections to paintings, sculptures, books, codices, textile art and the applied arts. By selecting the appropriate menu points visitors to the homepage can view the municipal building activities of the family under Florence, the family portraits under the Medici, and the works of art testifying to the ties between Hungary and Tuscany under Florence and Matthias Corvinus.