An Enthusiastic Amateur: Lorenzo de' Medici as Architect

Abstract

Ottavio Vannini's Fresco, Lorenzo the Magnificent as a Patron of the Arts (Fig. I), forms part of a cycle painted around 1623 in the Palazzo Pitti to celebrate the marriage of Ferdinando II and Vittoria della Rovere. Lorenzo is seen surrounded by artists who proffer the fruits of their creative endeavor. Among them we immediately recognize the young Michelangelo, who presents a marble copy of an antique fawn's head, made, Vasari tells us, at Lorenzo's urging, and to the extreme left Giuliano da Sangallo, who holds under his arm a drawing from the façade of the Medici villa, Poggio a Caiano. The implication of Vannini's fresco is beyond doubt. By evoking the history of the early Medici, the Grand Dukes hoped to establish a framework within which their own glory might shine all the more brilliantly.