The Grand Ducal Crown of Cosimo I

Cosimo I de’ Medici and Palazzo Vecchio: 450 years after the reading of the grand ducal bull of appointment, opening on Friday 13 December Nel palazzo di Cosimo. I simboli del potere

Until 15 March 2020 at the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio a museum tour curated by the Municipality of Florence and MUS.E that retraces room after room the life of the Medici Palace. In the Sala delle Udienze (Audience Hall), there will also be the Collar of the Golden Fleece, the Sceptre and the Grand Ducal Crown, three precious artefacts offered thanks to the excellence of Florentine artistic craftsmanship, created by master goldsmith Paolo Penko and presented on hand-woven silk velvet cushions thanks to the collaboration with Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio.

On 13 December 1569, in the Sala Grande of Palazzo Vecchio, the official reading of the papal bull in which Pope Pius V decreed the appointment of Cosimo as Grand Duke of Etruria was given: exactly 450 years later, Friday 13 December 2019 sees the opening at the Museo di Palazzo Vecchio of “Nel palazzo di Cosimo. I simboli del potere”: a special project that weaves together different languages to highlight the very close relationship that Cosimo I de’ Medici had with Palazzo Vecchio, “his” ducal palace.

The initiative, curated by the Municipality of Florence and MUS.E in collaboration with Paolo Penko and Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio, is part of the celebrations for the five hundredth anniversary of the birth of Cosimo I and Caterina de’ Medici, promoted by an organising committee made up of over twenty cultural institutions in the city and coordinated by the Municipality of Florence.
In the Palace of Cosimo. I simboli del potere, which will continue until 15 March 2020, will ideally retrace, room by room, the habits, meanings and roles of life in the Medici Palace.

Three important symbols of Cosimo’s power will be presented in the Sala delle Udienze: the Collar of the Golden Fleece, the Sceptre and the Grand Ducal Crown, three precious artefacts that are extraordinarily offered to the general public thanks to the excellence of Florentine artistic craftsmanship.

Master goldsmith Paolo Penko, after careful work on written and iconographic sources, has created three works that have no equal: they are not reproductions (there are no similar originals), but true handcrafted creations made on the basis of complex philological research and thanks to extremely high technical skill.

All three objects are presented on hand-woven silk velvet cushions placed on a chiselled velvet centrepiece with a sixteenth-century motif, thanks to the collaboration with the Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio, another great Florentine excellence.

The Collar of the Golden Fleece, awarded to Cosimo by Charles V in 1546, was made as depicted in the portrait of the Duke in the Castello Odescalchi collection in Bracciano (1551): it is made up of 25 intertwined hairpins, alternating with elements simulating flints surrounded by flames; the pendant reproduces the Fleece, related to the legend of the Golden Fleece. 

The Grand Ducal Sceptre was executed in conformity with the large painting on blackboard by Jacopo Ligozzi (c. 1590), depicting Cosimo’s Grand Ducal coronation in Rome in March 1570, and with portraits of Cosimo as Grand Duke, such as the paintings by Giovan Battista Naldini (Uffizi Galleries, 1585) and Ludovico Cardi known as Cigoli (Palazzo Medici Riccardi, 1603).

The Grand Ducal Crown, a precious example of goldsmith’s art, reproduces the design found in the Papal Bull of Pius V of 24 August 1569, kept in the State Archives in Florence: it has 19 points, alternating silver and gold with stones and decorative elements;

In the centre is the Florentine lily, enamelled in red with gold highlights. Underneath is an astragal with beads and a frieze of denticles with enamelled pearls and ovules, while the central band bears the following chiselled and engraved inscription: Pius V. Pont. Max. ob eximiam dilectionem ac catholicae religionis zelum praecipuumque iustitiae studim donavit (Pius V, Supreme Pontiff, donated for his exceptional devotion and zeal towards the Catholic religion and for his very special love of justice).

In the centre of the band is a cameo made of sardonyx chalcedony, on which the personification of the river Arno is carved. Underneath there is a moulding with emeralds and iolites in bezels, spaced out by pearls. 

An artistic craftsmanship that this initiative has sought to highlight in all its wisdom and in absolute continuity with the excellent craftsmanship that surrounded Cosimo I in the mid-sixteenth century, when painters, sculptors, carvers, plasterers, goldsmiths and weavers worked in unison, each with their own language, to celebrate his figure thanks to the wonder that art can generate.

The afternoon of 13 December, dedicated to living history, will open at 5.30 p.m. in the Salone dei Cinquecento with the re-enactment of the reading of the papal act by Giovan Battista Concini in the presence of Cosimo I de’ Medici, and will close in the same hall at 7 p.m. with the living history show Illustrissimo Signor Duca, a great theatrical event on the figure of Cosimo I in an exceptional setting.

The initiative Nel palazzo di Cosimo. I simboli del potere is curated by Carlo Francini, Head of the UNESCO Office of the City of Florence and Valentina Zucchi, Head of Mediation MUS.E, with catalogue Edifir: Nel palazzo di Cosimo. I simboli del potere
Museum of Palazzo Vecchio
13/12/2019 – 15/03/2020

Initiative promoted by Comune di Firenze

Organization: MUS.E

Curated by Carlo Francini and Valentina Zucchi
Lenders: Paolo Penko and Fondazione Arte della Seta Lisio

Tappezzeria: Antica Tappezzeria Borsellini, Grafica: Frush Design
Progetto allestitivo: Alessandra Carta – Leonardo Boganini Architetti
Totem esplicativi: Tecniform Studio srl
Fotografie: Daniela Nizzoli Photography 
Illuinazione: Progetto Luce srl