Medici Portraits

The members of what can be considered the most representative family of the Italian Renaissance were able to build their public image in a sophisticated cultural environment in which famous artists such as Raphael, Pontormo, Bronzino and Vasari were active, as well as poets, men of letters, scientists and humanists. The portraits conserved in the Uffizi Galleries are presented in chronological order,, allowing us to orient ourselves brought the main stages of the history and genealogy of the Medici family and, at the same time, to retrace a fundamental portion of art history in Italy. From the progenitor Giovanni di Bicci, who flourished in the transition between the 14th and 15th centuries, to the family's last grande duke of Tuscany in the Age of Enlightenment, the reader is led to enjoy the mysterious inventions of Vasari, who portrays Lorenzo the Magnificent amidst bizarre masks, or Bronzino's mastery in rendering the preciousness of the gold brocade of Eleonor of Toledo's dress. Immersing oneself in the reading one is confronted with the expressive intensity of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere's concentration on repelling the Lansquenets, to the conscious kingship of Catherine and Maria de' Medici, the two Florentines who ascended the throne of France as mere consort but were instead led by fate to reign.