Art and power in Medici Florence
5 min read
The concept of “art for art’s sake” may be a fine vision, but the reality of art is often far less idealistic. From Napoleon’s patronage of Jacques-Louis David to John F. Kennedy’s choice of Robert Frost to recite a poem at his presidential inauguration, political leaders have long used art to garner support. The term “propaganda” may get a bad name, but the history of states sponsoring the arts as a means of accruing glory has led to the creation of some of the finest art the world has ever seen, from Diego Velazquez’s portraits of the Spanish royal family to Hans Holbein the Younger’s paintings for King Henry VIII of England.
Perhaps no patron was more influential than the 16th-century Florentine Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Cosimo used his wealth, accumulated from his family’s moneylending and banking businesses, to finance the creation of a wide array of art and literature. The subsequent flourishing of Florentine art, much of it funded directly by Cosimo and other members of the Medici family, contributed to the consolidation not only of Medici rule (their reign over the Republic of Florence and eventual Grand Duchy of Tuscany would endure for another two centuries) but also of Florence’s reputation as one of the cultural centers of the world.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s groundbreaking exhibition “The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570,” on view now in New York through Oct. 11, comprehensively surveys Cosimo’s contributions to the Italian Renaissance while also giving viewers a glimpse of some of the more resplendent ways that art has been used to promote a political agenda. “The Medici” brings together paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, and drawings from collections from all over the world to explore the evolving self-perception of Renaissance-era Florentines and their leaders. Ironically, and perhaps fittingly, “the Medici” is itself funded by a governmental endowment, the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, in addition to private corporate and philanthropic foundations.
“The Medici” may be most significant for its function as a meditation on the relationship between art and politics, but it is also an exploration of a very particular slice of history, particularly in its wide-ranging section on 16th-century Florentine portraiture. Portraits during this era, explain Met European Painting curator Keith Christiansen and guest curator Carlo Falciani, were often likened to masks because the process of constructing an identity involves hiding as well as revealing. The portraits painted by Medici-funded artists during this period were careful to conceal the sitters’ private selves while displaying the more synthetic, public selves that the Medici wished to broadcast to the Florentine people.
This political purpose is most palpable in Benvenuto Cellini’s arresting bronze bust of Cosimo (1546-47), which was placed over the gates of the city in 1557 to celebrate the ascendancy of Florence — and of the Medici. Cellini fashioned Cosimo in the style of a Roman emperor, depicting the duke not as a politician but as a conquering general, wearing armor engraved with eagles (the symbol of imperial Rome), lions (the symbol of republican Florence), and trumpets (the symbol of fame in classical Greece and Rome). The slight turn of Cosimo’s head and his commanding gaze convey an image of a far-sighted, visionary political leader. For contemporary viewers, the bust conjures Shepard Fairey’s now-iconic “Hope” poster from Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, one of the more effective pieces of propagandistic art in our times.
Although the Medici were active in Florentine civic life as early as the 14th century and ruled it for much of the 15th, they only gained firm control over the city in 1512, conquering it from a republican faction that had gained the upper hand and subsequently installing themselves as hereditary rulers with the title of duke. The fluctuating political fate of Florence during these years paralleled the evolving fortunes and styles of Florentine artists. Prior to the establishment of the duchy, most Florentine art and literature promoted biblical values in a style heavily indebted to Dante and Petrarch. But under the Medici dukes, artists began to glorify the city’s secular culture.
This transformation is apparent in Jacopo da Pontormo’s “Portrait of a Halberdier,” from 1528-30, which depicts a teenage boy whom most art historians identify as Francesco Guardi. Guardi was reputed to have taken part in the 1529 siege of Florence, when the Medici had to again reconquer the city from republicans. Pontormo depicts the youth in an artistic vein, with stylistically elongated limbs and a neck that would become characteristic of the Mannerist movement, as well as in a heroic vein intended to commend the defenders of Florence. Guardi is shown wearing the colors of the city, red and white, holding a spearlike weapon in his right hand, and posed in front of fortifications, in what was effectively a 16th-century military recruitment poster.
Other highlights include Agnolo Bronzino’s elegant portrait of the pious Eleonora di Toledo, Cosimo’s wife and his partner in political campaigns, who bore him 11 children and was a major patron of the arts in her own right; Francesco Salviati’s remarkably naturalistic portrait of Carlo Rimbotti, a medical doctor who became an important political figure in 16th-century Florence; and Bronzino’s bizarre portrait of the poet Laura Battiferri, depicting her as a female version of Dante, with an open book resting on her right hand and two elongated fingers of her left hand pointing to a sonnet of Petrarch’s.
Complex, mutually beneficial, and, occasionally, mutually deleterious relationships between artists and politicians will continue to exist as long as both art and politics continue to exist. “The Medicis” makes us more understanding of and sensitive to these inevitable relationships, as well as a bit more canny about the fact that some of the greatest paintings hanging in our museums may have emerged not only from the mind of an artist but from the pockets of a powerful leader as well. Whether this realization serves to downgrade the aesthetic value of these works is, like much else in art, very much in the eye of the beholder.
Daniel Ross Goodman is a postdoctoral fellow and research scholar at the University of Salzburg and the author of Somewhere Over the Rainbow: Wonder and Religion in American Cinema and the novel A Single Life.
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Tags: Art, painting, Art History, Florence
Original Author: Daniel Ross Goodman
Original Location: Art and power in Medici Florence
