The Medici: Mugello Folk. Family portraits from the Gallerie degli Uffizi

Lands of the Uffizi brings the Medici family portraits to the noble halls of Scarperia’s Palazzo dei Vicari to evoke the lengthy and widespread presence of the Medici in the country and towns of the Mugello, the family’s legendary homeland. From 19 May to 5 November the Museo dei Ferri Taglienti in Scarperia and San Piero will be hosting "The Medici: Mugello Folk. Family portraits from the Gallerie degli Uffizi", an exhibition devised and produced by the Fondazione CR Firenze and the Gallerie degli Uffizi in the context of their respective Piccoli Grandi Musei and Uffizi Diffusi schemes.
The portraits of the Dukes and their consorts in this exhibition are by leading Florentine artists who populated the art scene in the city in the 1530s and ‘40s, following in the footsteps of such great early 16th century masters as Fra Bartolomeo, Raphael, Michelangelo and Andrea del Sarto.
Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio painted the portrait of Cosimo, the son of Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and Maria Salviati, who, though barely older than 10, is already proudly aware of his rank, underscored by his rich attire and the presence of his coat-of-arms with the inscription “cosmo med” upper right.
The portrait of the Duchess Eleonora, Cosimo’s wife and the daughter of Don Pedro de Toledo, the Viceroy of Naples, was painted by Lorenzo Sciorina, a pupil of Bronzino, who revisited his master’s famous portrait – it, too, in the Uffizi – with a number of variations and a somewhat more academic tone. The Duchess wears a magnificent brocade gown with gold thread and the pearls she so loved, but unlike in Bronzino’s portrait where she is shown with her second son Giovanni, here she is in the company of Garcia, her eighth son who died of malaria while still very young.
The portraits of Francesco I, here aged about 30, and of Bianca Cappello, his second wife, were also intended as official likenesses. Painted by artists from the circle of Santi di Tito and Alessandro Allori, the two pictures are remarkable both for their descriptive intent and treatment of the sitters’ contained yet intense expressions, and for their attention to detail in the setting, fabrics and ornaments, reflecting the trend in painting in Florence in the final years of the 16th century. Bianca had purchased a number of estates in the Scarperia area, and tradition has it that she had a special devotion to the miraculous image of the Virgin venerated in the church of Santa Maria a Olmi, whence the portrait comes. Originally frescoed in the rectory, it was detached in 1871 and taken to the gallerie fiorentine.