IL COLLEZIONISMO BIZANTINO DEI MEDICI DA COSIMO IL VECCHIO A LORENZO IL MAGNIFICO

Author(s)
Date Issued
2025
Type
bookPart
Volume
12
Start Page
243
End Page
262
Abstract
The Medici family’s interest in Byzantine artefacts during the 15th century is attested by the inventories (1463, 1465, 1492) in which, starting with Piero il Gottoso’s inventory (1463), the term ‘grecho’ or ‘alla grecha’ appears to indicate a number of works; while only one mosaic icon remains (the Pantokrator in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello), other artefacts in the Medici collections have been recognised as being of Byzantine manufacture (hard stone vases, cameos, ivories). This aspect of the Medici collection, although relevant, has not been the subject of attention until the 1990s, obscured if not obliterated by a historically anti-Byzantine historiography. Only in recent years has it aroused greater interest among scholars. The contribution intends to examine some aspects of the Byzantine collecting of the Medici family in the light of the recent reconstruction of the relations between Florence and Byzantium since the years prior to the Council of Florence in 1439, the dynastic policy of Cosimo Medici, the new slant of studies on the collecting of Lorenzo the Magnificent and the acquisitions of recent studies that have highlighted how Byzantine artefacts were not only collected for devotional reasons or because they were precious or rare, but also as a model of taste for a refined élite. In the cultural climate in which the collection was constituted, certain choices made by Cosimo the Elder appear interesting. In the years in which he imposed a strong dynastic family policy, he looked to Byzantium as a model for the celebration of power. Hence probably the choice of placing porphyry rotae to mark the family’s burial places and ceremonial, or to include in the illustration of the episodes of the Aeneid in Virgilio Riccardiano, among the buildings of besieged Troy, Palazzo Medici to depict Priam’s palace, with the Byzantine imperial coat of arms on the façade, in a parallelism in which Florence is Byzantium. In this particular context, the Byzantine works were probably considered part of the heritage of the ancient world, of that empire, whose last surviving segment was the Eastern Roman Empire, whose testimony Florence ideally wanted to pick up and from which the Greek texts that allowed knowledge of ancient culture came.
Handle