RECALLING THE COUNCIL OF FERRARA AND FLORENCE:

TWO FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FLORENTINE UOMINI FAMOSI CYCLES

by

CARRIE CHISM LIEN

TANJA JONES, COMMITTEE CHAIR MINDY NANCARROW NOA TUREL

A THESIS

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art and Art History in the Graduate School of The University of Alabama

TUSCALOOSA, ALABAMA

2015

Copyright Carrie Chism Lien 2015 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ABSTRACT

In this thesis, I examine the two extant Florentine fresco cycles of famous men, or uomini famosi created in the quattrocento: Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women (1448-51)

[figure 1], created for the private residence of the Carducci family, and Domenico Ghirlandaio’s

Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men (1482-83) [figure 2] located in the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio, suggesting that each recalled the Council of Ferrara and Florence (1438-

39), called by Pope Eugenius VI in 1438 in an attempt to unify the Eastern and Western divisions of the Church. While extensive art historical study has been dedicated to each cycle individually, neither installation has been considered in relation to contemporary political events or in relation to the other. Reference to the Council, its temporary success, and the lasting effect that it had in the hearts of Florentines, I suggest, aids in understanding what have been, in the past, identified as the cycles’ “unusual” iconography, such as the inclusion of contemporary Florentine men and a somewhat minor saint placed as a central figure. To support this expanded analysis of the frescoes, I first consider the history of uomini famosi cycles, demonstrating that, indeed, both

Florentine cycles contain unprecedented groupings and portrayals, intentional departures from cycles produced outside of Florence. Close consideration of both fresco cycles suggests that the multilayered and complex programs each referenced the concerns of their patrons, public and private, to recall the positive nature of the Council of Ferrara and Florence.

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DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to my family. Their patience and unconditional confidence enabled me to complete this project. Their skills as proofreaders, library specialists, listeners, and baristas were also greatly appreciated.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am pleased to have this opportunity to thank the many colleagues and faculty members who contributed to and have helped me with this project. This research would not have been possible without the support of my friends and fellow graduate students and of course of my family who never stopped encouraging me to persist. Most significantly, I am indebted to Tanja

Jones, the chairman of this thesis and my graduate advisor for sharing her research expertise and wisdom regarding the Council of Ferrara and Florence. Her guidance over the past few years has instilled me with confidence, freedom of thought, and an increased appreciation for the power of images and the people who view them. I would like to thank Mindy Nancarrow and Noa Turel for acting as committee members, inspiring questions, and support of both this thesis and my academic progress.

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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ...... ii

DEDICATION ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ...... vi

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION AND PRÉCIS OF CHAPTERS ...... 1

CHAPTER 2. UOMINI FAMOSI ...... 19

CHAPTER 3. ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO’S FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN ...... 44

CHAPTER 4. DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO’S APOTHEOSIS OF ST. ZENOBIUS AND FAMOUS MEN ...... 72

CHAPTER 5. CONCLUSION...... 101

REFERENCES ...... 103

APPENDIX ...... 110

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APPENDIX

Figure 1. Andrea del Castagno, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci,Florence...... 110

Figure 2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio,Florence.....111

Figure 3. Attributed to Giuliano Pesello, Astronomical Fresco, c.1433-1443, Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo,Florence...... 112

Figure 4. Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo,Florence...... 113

Figure 5. Benozzo Gozzoli, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Palazzo Medici, Florence...... 114

Figure 6. Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child, 1463, Palazzo Medici, Florence...... 114

Figure 7. Chapel, Palazzo Medici, Florence...... 115

Figure 8. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Joseph II, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 116

Figure 9. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of John VIII Palaiologos, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 117

Figure 10. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Cosimo de' Medici (left) and Piero de’ Medici (right), Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 117

Figure 11. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Giuliano de’ Medici, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 118

Figure 12. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 119

Figure 13. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Sigismondo Malatesta, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence...... 120

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Figure 14. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Filippo Scolari, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 121

Figure 15. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Farinata degli Uberti, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 122

Figure 16. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 123

Figure 17. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Cumaean Sibyl, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 124

Figure 18. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Esther, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, VillaCarducci, Florence...... 125

Figure 19. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Tomyris, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 126

Figure 20. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Dante, Famous Men and Women,1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 127

Figure 21. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Petrarch, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 128

Figure 22. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Boccaccio, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 129

Figure 23. Andrea del Castagno, Virgin Mary, Christ Child, Adam, and Eve, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 130

Figure 24. East and South Walls with Domenico Ghirlandaio’s The Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 131

Figure 25. Palazzo della Signoria, Florence...... 132

Figure 26. Plan of the second story, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 133

Figure 27. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of St. Zenobius with Sts. Eugenius and Crescentius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 134

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Figure 28. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Madonna, Christ Child, and angels in a tympanum trompe l’oeil terracotta relief, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 135

Figure 29. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Brutus, Scaevola, and Camillus, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 136

Figure 30. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Decius, Scipio, and Cicero, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 137

Figure 31. Nine Heroes Tapestry, c.1400-1410, today located in The Cloisters Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art...... 138

Figure 32. Master of La Manta, Male Worthies, c.1420, Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo...... 139

Figure 33. Master of La Manta, Female Worthies, c.1420, Sala Bronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo...... 139

Figure 34. Master of La Manta, Male and Female Worthies, c.1420, Sala Bronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo...... 140

Figure 35. Master of La Manta, wall with Fountain of Love (opposite Male and Female Worthies), c.1420, Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo...... 141

Figure 36. Detail of Petrarch, badly damaged and heavily repainted, c.1340-1370, originally located in the Sala Virorum Illustrium, today located in the Sala dei Giganti, Carrara palace, Padua...... 142

Figure 37. Domenico Campagnola and Stefano dall' Arzere, Sala dei Giganti, 1539-1540, Carrara palace, Padua...... 143

Figure 38. Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena...... 144

Figure 39. Taddeo di Bartolo, Uomini famosi, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena...... 144

Figure 40. Taddeo di Bartolo, detail of right triad of uomini famosi: Cicero, M. Porcius Cato, and P. Scipio Nasica, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena...... 145

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Figure 41. Taddeo di Bartolo, detail of left triad of uomini famosi: M. Curius Dentatus, M. Furius Camillus, and P. Scipio Africanus Major, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena...... 146

Figure 42. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegories of Good and Bad Government (c.1337-1340), Council Chamber, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena...... 147

Figure 43. View of the Sala Imperatorium, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 148

Figure 44. Foundation of Rome, c.1417, loggia outside of the Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 148

Figure 45. Detail of Rhea Silvea, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 149

Figure 46. Detail of Ugolino Trinci and his two Sons, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 149

Figure 47. View of the Sala Imperatorum, c. 1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 150

Figure 48. Tiberius and Furius Camillus (with verses), c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 151

Figure 49. Octavian, Tiberius, Furius Camillus, and Fabricus, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 152

Figure 50. Curius Dentatus, Manlius Torquatus, and Cincinnatus, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 152

Figure 51. Scipio Africanus, Scaevola, and balcony with onlookers (Ugolino Trinci and Costanza Orsini), c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 153

Figure 52. Cato, Gaius Marius, and Publius Decius, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 153

Figure 53. Corridor with the expanded Worthies and the Ages of Man, c. 1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 154

Figure 54. Corridor with Worthies and earlier series of the Ages of Man, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno...... 155

Figure 55. Julius Caesar, Constantine the Great, and Noah, c. 1438, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 156

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Figure 56. Sala del Consiglio, c.1438-1473, Palazzo del Comune, Lucignano...... 157

Figure 57. Sala del Consiglio, c.1438-1473, Palazzo del Comune, Lucignano...... 157

Figure 58. Detail of Janus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 158

Figure 59. Detail of Gaius Mutius Scaevola, Cicero, and Lucius Junius Brutus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 158

Figure 60. Detail of Pompey, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 159

Figure 61. Detail of St. Paul, Virgil, and Justinian I, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 159

Figure 62. Detail of Boethius, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 160

Figure 63. Detail of Judas Maccabeus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 160

Figure 64. Detail of Octavian, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 161

Figure 65. Detail of Metellus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 162

Figure 66. Detail of Samson, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 163

Figure 67. Detail of Cato Uticensis, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 163

Figure 68. Detail of Lucretia Romana, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 164

Figure 69. Detail of Aristotle, Judith, and King Solomon, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 164

Figure 70. Detail of Camillus and Hercules (?), Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 165

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Figure 71. Detail of Camillus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano...... 166

Figure 72. Paolo Uccello, Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood, 1436, Duomo, Florence...... 167

Figure 73. Diagram of the loggia in the Villa Carducci...... 168

Figure 74. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Madonna and Christ Child, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 169

Figure 75. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Adam, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 170

Figure 76. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Eve, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence...... 171

Figure 77. Esther in Orsanmichele, Florence...... 172

Fiugre 78. Manuscript of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, 14th century, today located in the Bodleian Library, fol. 046v, University of Oxford. Virgil and Dante dream: Human dies on a cross, while Ahasuerus, Esther and Mordecai talk together. Canto XVII. Sequence of pen-and-ink drawings in lower margins which illustrate the progress of Dante and Virgil. This is one of the four Dante manuscripts fully illustrated in the 14th century...... 173

Figure 79. Jael Kills Sisera, Tomyris Kills Cyrus, Manuscript, Speculum humanae salvationis, c.1430-1450, Folio 30 verso, today located in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford...... 174

Figure 80. East Wall with Sixteenth-century Portal into the Room of the Maps, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 175

Figure 81. View of Duomo from North Wall, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 176

Figure 82. Donatello, David (marble), c.1408-1412, Florence...... 177

Figure 83. South and West walls, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Ceiling and entablature designs attributed to Benedetto da Maiano, c. 1472-1480; Benedetto da Maiano, West Wall Portal with St. John the Baptist, c. 1475; Donatello, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1460...... 178

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Figure 84. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Detail of St. Eugenius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 179

Figure 85. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Detail of St. Crescentius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 180

Figure 86. Detail of the Duomo and the Baptistry of the Florence Cathedral, Sala dei Gigli fresco...... 181

Figure 87. Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence...... 182

Figure 88. Detail of St. Zenobius, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence...... 183

Figure 89. Detail of Saint to the Left, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence...... 184

Figure 90. Detail of Saint to the Right, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence...... 185

Figure 91. Dominico Ghirlandaio, Detail of the Central Arch, c.1482-83, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 186

Figure 92. Dominico Ghirlandaio, Detail of Zenobius’s torso, c.1482-83, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence...... 187

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION AND PRÉCIS OF CHAPTERS

The ecumenical Council of Ferrara and Florence, called by Pope Eugenius IV (r. 1431-

1447), opened in Ferrara in January 1438 and was transferred to Florence in January 1439. The success of the Council, which represented an attempt to unify the Eastern and Western divisions of the Church under papal authority, depended upon the participation of a large Byzantine contingent, led by the Emperor John VIII Palaiologos (r. 1425-1448), and the Eastern Patriarch

Joseph II (1416-1439).1 The Decree of Union signed in Florence by the Greeks and Latins on 6

July 1439 represented an official reconciliation that held, technically if not in practice, until

Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.2 While the ultimate failure of the union is frequently mentioned in historical and art-historical studies of works of art produced in Florence during the decades surrounding the Council, the short-lived success of the effort and its impact on artistic production in the city has not been adequately incorporated into art-historical analyses of visual works produced in quattrocento Florence.

In this thesis, I examine two Florentine fresco cycles of famous men, or uomini famosi:

Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women (1448-1451) [figure 1], created for the private residence of the Carducci family, and Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and

Famous Men (1482-1483) [figure 2], located in the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio. The frescoes at each site are distinguished for being the only two extant quattrocento cycles of uomini famosi in Florence, suggesting that each recalled the Council of Ferrara and Florence, its

1 temporary success, and the lasting effect that it had in the hearts of Florentines. Reference to the

Council offers a way of nuancing and enhancing our understanding of these cycles. The connection between the frescoes and a significant historic event is important because it offers new insights into unprecedented iconographic anomalies present at each site that have never been fully explained; this includes the use of near-contemporary Florentine men and a lesser- known patron saint depicted as a central and primary figure. In-depth analysis of the figures included in both fresco cycles combined, with an understanding of Florentine politics and papal relationships surrounding the Council, offers new insights regarding the meaning each cycle held for patrons and viewers.

This analysis is rooted in study of the frescoes, the patrons who commissioned them, and references to the social and political context in which the works were produced. Primary source documents form an important source in the study that follows. These include diaries and government documents regarding the Council of Ferrara and Florence and texts by Cicero (106

BCE-43 BCE), Virgil (70 BCE-19 BCE), Livy (c.64 BCE-AD 17), Dante Alighieri (c. 1265-

1321), Francesco Petrarcha (1304-1374), Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), Coluccio Salutati

(1331-1406), and Leonardo Bruni (1369-1444). The major secondary sources referenced in this study include analysis of the Council by Joseph Gill (1959), Ludwig Pastor (1923) and studies of uomini famosi cycles by Nicolai Rubinstein (1995), Theodore E. Mommsen (1952), Christiane L.

Joost-Gaugier (1982), Josephine Dunn (1990), and Melissa Clancy Hegarty (1988).3

I. The Council of Ferrara and Florence

In order to better understand the iconography of the frescoes, an outline of the historic, political and religious circumstances surrounding the Council of Ferrara and Florence is in order.

Over two hundred years of animosity between the Eastern and Western halves of the former

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Roman Empire culminated in the excommunication of the Byzantine Patriarch Michael I

Kiroularios (1043-1059) from the Western Catholic Church and the resulting anathema against the papacy in 1054.4 The Eastern Church, centered in Constantinople, was structured as a pentarchy, dividing territories of the former Roman Empire into five Patriarchates:

Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome. The latter four territories regarded the Pope as essentially an equal, the Patriarch of the West.5 The Latins did not accept the Greek idea of a pentarchy; it directly undermined belief in the Petrine Supremacy and the Pope as the unequivocal head of the Church. This point of contention was the primary reason the Greeks resisted acceptance of the Latin practices debated at the Council of Ferrara and Florence; the

Greeks believed the Pope did not have the authority to independently make decisions and change practices that were common to all Christians.6 Both the Latins and the Greeks hoped that a union of the Church would achieve a double object: an end to religious discord among Christians and the preparation of a unified Christian force against Ottoman Turks and the ever-looming threat of invasion.7

In 1437 Pope Eugenius IV announced in the papal bull, Doctoris gentium that the

Council would be held in Ferrara. This was a surprising choice of location as the Pope had been in negotiation with the Medici family in Florence regarding the possibility of convening the

Council there.8 Joseph Gill (1959) hypothesized that the pope selected Ferrara because of a threat made by the Duke of Milan that he would prevent access to the city of Florence if the Council convened there.9 Ferrara was a well-fortified city with plentiful resources with which to feed the large number of Council delegates. It was also home to a center of waterways, making it accessible for the Greeks arriving from Venice.10 Even if Ferrara was the most secure choice of location, the Council was transferred to Florence in 1439. Exactly why the move to Florence

3 occurred has long been the subject of debate. The papacy needed assistance in financing the

Council and the de facto ruler of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464), offered that aid.11

To be sure, Eugenius IV and Cosimo de’ Medici had a strong diplomatic relationship. After

Cosimo de’ Medici was exiled from Florence 1433, he returned to the city the following year under Eugenius’s insistence.12 In return, when Eugenius IV was forced to flee Rome in 1434, he sought refuge in Florence. Cosimo loaned the pope 10,000 florins in April of 1438 and later that year agreed to cover the travel expenses of the entire Council when it moved from Ferrara to

Florence. The move occurred and, on 26 February 1439, the ecumenical Council convened as the

Council of Florence at the church of Santa Maria Novella.13

In considering art related to the Council, one should be aware of the five theological issues that divided the delegates: the addition of a phrase to the Nicene Creed, the existence of

Purgatory, the theology of the Blessed Trinity, the issue of papal primacy, and the Eucharist and transubstantiation. Each of these was discussed exhaustively in hopes of finding common ground. The Latin view prevailed and the Decree of Union of the two sides of the Catholic

Church was signed on 6 July 1439.14 While the unification of the Latin and Greek divisions of the Church did not last long, it is important to remember that the Council was viewed as a success and a point of extreme civic pride among Florentines in the decades that followed.15

Art historians have identified several works of art produced in Florence by and for

Medici patrons during the second half of the fifteenth century as relating to the Council. Patricia

F. Brown (1981) identified the frescoed constellations [figure 3] (c. 1439-1443), attributed to

Giuliano Pesello (c. 1367-1446), in the dome above the altar in the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo

[figure 4] as representing, with astounding accuracy, 6 July 1439 at approximately twelve noon.

That was the date and time when the Decree of Union was signed between the Eastern and

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Western delegates, unifying the Church. As a Medici family burial chapel, the Old Sacristy linked that important Florentine family to the religious and political expectations created through the historical union.16

Roger J. Crum (1996) suggested that Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescos depicting the Journey of the Magi (1459) [figure 5] and Filippo Lippi’s Adoration of the Child (1463) [figure 6], created for the Medici Palace chapel [figure 7], commemorated the success of the Council even though the frescoes and altarpiece were created more than twenty years after the historic event.17 As both Crum and Malcom Oxley (1994) note, Gozzoli’s 1459 commission marked the year that

Pope Pius II (r. 1458-1464) passed through Florence on his way to his own Council in Mantua, called to again promote a crusade against the Ottomans.18 As the frescoes were produced only six years after the fall of Constantinople, the memory of success at the Council of Florence would have been an important association for the Florentines, especially the Medici.19

Lippi’s Adoration of the Child [figure 6] altarpiece shows the Virgin Mary and Christ

Child with St. John the Baptist and St. Bernard of Clairvaux. The Holy Trinity is depicted through images of God the Father, the Christ Child, and the dove of the Holy Spirit. The Greeks at the Council of Florence argued unsuccessfully that the Holy Spirit proceeded only from God the Father, not through the Christ Child too. In Lippi’s painting, the Holy Trinity is shown in the manner agreed upon at the Council. Crum suggests that Lippi’s depiction of the prevailing Latin

Trinity is essential to recognizing the “Council-centered” iconography of the chapel.20 That message continues in Gozzoli’s The Journey of the Magi frescoes, which decorate the chapel walls [figure 5]. These include portraits of the Greek Patriarch, Joseph II [figure 8], and the

Byzantine Emperor, John VIII Palaiologos [figure 9].21 Oxley also identifies portraits of Cosimo and Piero de’ Medici (Cosimo’s eldest son) [figure 10], Giuliano de’ Medici (younger son of

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Piero) [figure 11], Lorenzo de’ Medici (eldest son of Piero) [figure 12], Giovanni (Piero’s legitimate brother), Carlo (Piero’s illegitimate brother), Galeazzo Maria Sforza (ruler of Milan), and Sigismondo Malatesta (Lord of Rimini) [figure 13].22 Of particular interest is the fact that

Gozzoli’s The Journey of the Magi, while a narrative cycle, is filled with “disguised” portraits of famous men, a visual type that recalls the tradition of painted cycles of uomini famosi (“famous men”). Both Castagno and Ghirlandaio’s cycles, the focus of my study, are of this type and, I suggest, shared a similar political function for commemorating the Council of 1438-39.

II. Uomini famosi Cycles

The term uomini famosi (“famous men”) refers to the commemorative practice of grouping venerable men in art and literature as a means of establishing immortality.23 Art historian Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier (1982) has devoted much of her research to this subject and provides a brief history of its literary and visual presence on the Italian peninsula. The literary tradition of paying homage to a group of individuals deemed “worthy” had significant ancient precedents and was revived in the fourteenth century by Petrarch in De viris illustribus (b. 1336, completed posthumously in 1379). The thirty-six men that Petrarch deemed worthy for inclusion in his text included only famous Roman statesmen and generals from the period of Romulus to

Titus; they were all “great men of action.”24 Petrarch’s thirty-six biographies of illustrious men established, for the early modern period, the practice of assembling the lives of famous men in relation to the honor that they brought to their respective cities.25 Petrarch refused to include contemporary men in his De viris illustribus, believing, “Princes of our days furnish material merely for satire, not history.”26

Visual cycles of uomini famosi created during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries deviated slightly from the Petrarchian tradition, including men from biblical, classical, and

6 legendary eras as well as from the Roman Empire and Roman Republic.27 Joost-Gaugier notes that, during the period, Italian uomini famosi series were primarily used to adorn princely palaces and public buildings as examples of civic virtues.28 While organization and thematic content varied per series, each placed a great importance on which heroes were chosen; how those heroes were then represented; that each figure related in some way to one another; and that they all also aligned with the aims of the local government.29

Against this background, it is reasonable to approach each figure in both Castagno’s and

Ghirlandaio’s cycles as calculated visual representations of personal and socio-political propaganda. The visual form of uomini famosi was the likely choice for such programs in

Florence because of the powerful visual rhetoric inherent in such large and recognizable figures.

Size implies importance and the powerful individuals chosen for these programs linked Florence to events and eras, such as ancient Rome, that created lineage and legitimacy so desperately needed in the evolving political climate of the Italian city-states.30

III. The Castagno and Ghirlandaio Cycles

Andrea del Castagno’s frescoes dedicated to Famous Men and Women (1448-1451)

[figure 1] were originally located on the central and longest wall in a loggia of the Villa Carducci at Legnaia, near Florence, but are today located at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence.31 The cycle depicts six men and three women, each over eight feet tall.32 All nine figures are identified though inscriptions. The figures represented include three soldiers from what was then recent

Florentine history: Filippo Scolari (Pippo Spano) (1369-1426) [figure 14], Farinata degli Uberti

(1212-1264) [figure 15], and Niccolò Acciaiuoli (1310-1365) [figure 16]; three historical females: the Cumaean Sibyl [figure 17], Queen Esther [figure 18], and Queen Tomyris [figure

19]; and three literary figures: Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) [figure 20], Francesco Petrarcha

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(1304-1374) [figure 21], and Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) [figure 22].33 On the smaller wall of the loggia in which the figures were originally painted are additional images by Castagno, likely as part of the same commission. These frescoes remain in situ. The Virgin Mary is shown underneath a baldachin with the Christ Child standing in her lap; Eve stands to the right hand of

Mary and Adam stands to her left [figure 23].34

Because of a lack of primary sources, questions surround both the identity of the patron and the date when the Castagno cycle was produced. Most scholars now agree that Filippo di

Giovanni Carducci (1369-1449), an influential and well-connected man in the world of

Florentine politics, was Castagno’s patron.35 Existing analyses of the cycle focus largely on iconographic interpretation. Monuments commemorating heroes of war were not unusual in

Florence at the time, but a frescoed cycle including near-contemporary men was unprecedented.36 Creighton Gilbert (1989) suggested that the cycle was intended to personify the active and contemplative life as well as the need to have a balance of both.37 The pairing of female and male figures in the cycle has also been the subject of analysis, with Robert L. Mode

(1970) suggesting that the women in the cycle had no specific or active role.38

By far the most extensive study of the cycle to date is a dissertation by Josephine Dunn

(1990). Dunn provides an iconographic analysis of the cycle, aligning the content with Florentine politics and the career of Filippo Carducci. She examines each of the figures, male and female, and explains how Florentines viewed each via references to contemporary literature. She also attempts to explain the unprecedented inclusion of the three women [figures 17-19] by relating their roles to the images of the Virgin Mary, Christ Child, Adam, and Eve [figure 23] on an adjacent wall, suggesting that all of Castagno’s figures were united through the concept of

Redemption.39 While Dunn does make reference to the patron Filippo Carducci’s involvement

8 with contemporary politics and the Council, she does not provide a comprehensive statement of how the iconography correlated, through Carducci, with those concerns.40 In the chapters that follow, I suggest a more nuanced and politically-oriented reading of the frescoes that offers additional insights into the iconography and encompasses all of the figures included.

I suggest that the inclusion of near-contemporary Florentine men and women from ancient history in Castagno’s cycle marked a significant and intentional shift in the traditional iconography of Italian uomini famosi that identified the series’ alignment with a timely and contemporary political concern. When the Decree of Union was signed in 1439, Filippo Carducci was Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, the highest civic office held in Florence. He was present at the

Council proceedings; a position that placed Carducci within an elite circle of dignitaries, allowing him access to the key political and religious men visiting Florence. After the conclusion of the Council, the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos bestowed upon Carducci the rank of Count Palatine, an honor that further explains the importance of the Council in the life of

Castagno’s patron. 41

Produced over forty years after the close of the Council of Ferrara and Florence,

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli (“Room of the Lilies”)[figure 24] in the

Palazzo della Signoria [figures 25], also represented a similar break with the uomini famosi tradition as well as imagery that, I argue, recalled events surrounding the Council. Ghirlandaio was commissioned by the city government of Florence to produce the frescoed decoration on the east wall of the Sala dei Gigli in 1482.42 The Sala is one of the only rooms in the Palazzo della

Signoria, or Palazzo Vecchio, that has not been altered since the Renaissance.43 At the time of

Ghirlandaio’s commission the second-story room was a meeting space in government officials received the public [figure 26].44 Documents regarding the commission, as well as inscriptions

9 identifying the figures, leave little room for debate among scholars regarding attribution, patronage, cost, dating, or individuals depicted within the monumental frescoes.45

The frescoed cycle comprises two distinct figural groups: a central triad of religious figures flanked by depictions of ancient Roman republicans. The program, as a whole, is organized around the central figure of Saint Zenobius, a patron saint of Florence.46 The central group on the long wall features St. Zenobius flanked by Sts. Eugenius and Crescentius [figure

27]. Above the central figure of St. Zenobius a tympanum featuring a trompe l’oeil terracotta relief depicts the Virgin and Child situated between two angels [figure 28]. Forming two triads on either side of the central group, six ancient Roman republicans figures are identifiable through inscriptions beneath their feet and through the frieze above. Arranged in chronological order according to their life dates, the figures are arranged from left to right. Under the archway to the left of the central, saintly figures, are: Lucius Junius Brutus(c. 509 BCE), Gaius Mucius Scaevola

(c. 509 BCE), and Marcus Furius Camillus (c. 446-365 BCE) [figure 29]. To the right are:

Plubius Decius Mus (c. 340 BCE), Scipio Africanus (c. 237 BCE-c. 183 BCE), and Marcus

Tullis Cicero (102 BCE-43 BCE) [figure 30].47

Most recent literature dedicated to the cycle centers on iconographic interpretation of the uomni famosi depicted. In a dissertation dedicated to the space, Melinda Hegarty (1988) points out that the combination of Roman heroes and Christian saints within the same pictorial setting on one wall was unprecedented in Florence.48 Hegarty identifies the artistic program of the room, as a whole, with a renewed Florentine republican symbolism that endorsed the underlying governmental control of Lorenzo de' Medici. She cites the deadly Pazzi conspiracy (1478), endorsed in part by Pope Sixtus IV, in which Lorenzo’s brother, Guiliano de’ Medici, was assassinated and Lorenzo injured, as motivating the commission. Hegarty believes the uomini

10 famosi personify defenders of republican liberty, and that they are linked to the central image of

St. Zenobius through a passage written by Cicero and quoted throughout the quattrocento: "all those who have preserved, aided, or enlarged their fatherland have a special place prepared for them in the heavens, where they may enjoy an eternal life of happiness."49

Hegarty’s reading of the iconography is consistent with the type of “double-think” messages for which the Medici were famous but, I argue, overlooks an additional layer of significance that unites the assembles uomini famosi and the triad of religious figures they flank.

Just as Castagno’s Famous Men and Women broke with traditional uomini famosi iconography by including modern soldiers and an unprecedented depiction of the three central women, so too did Ghirlandaio’s cycle via the inclusion of a minor saint as the central figure, augmented with the depictions of six ancient Romans, each shown in identifiable but unprecedented moments of their respective legendary lives.50 I suggest that the figures are united by references to not just

Republican ideals and Lorenzo de’Medici’s escape from the Pazzi conspiracy, but, equally, by recollections of the positive relationship that existed between Florence (the Medici) and the

Papacy during the Council period nearly fifty years earlier.

Prior art historical studies dedicated to both Castagno’s and Ghirlandaio’s uomini famosi cycles have studied the works in relative isolation. To date there has been no consideration of uomini famosi cycles in Florence that may have been bound by shared concerns, specifically with imagery recalling the Council of Ferrara and Florence and its historical importance to fifteenth-century Florentines.51 Contextualizing analysis of these Florentine commissions in reference to the perceived success of the Council and the importance of the event to their respective patrons offers a deeper understanding of each, and uomini famosi cycles in Florence more broadly. Aside from their visual recollections of the Council, both cycles contain

11 unprecedented groupings and portrayals, making intentional iconographic departures from existing visual traditions. These uniquely Florentine cycles both convey pride in the Republic while also bearing a Medician influence.

IV. Precis of Chapters

Following this Introduction, Chapter Two, “Uomini famosi,” outlines the uomini famosi tradition and the function of such cycles in early modern Italy, highlighting ways in which the

Florentine cycles were distinguished from others. To do so, I consider six Italian uomini famosi cycles, created in cities outside of Florence between 1328 and 1473, that have been the focus of multiple studies. Through an analysis of those cycles, and the literature dedicated them, I offer an overview of the evolution of the genre in the tre- and quattrocento. Recognizing the correlation between the historic events that surrounded each cycle’s commission is paramount to the later interpretation of both Castagno’s and Ghirlandaio’s commissions as commemorating a historic event. More important, though, is the recognition that, although the prior cycles were based upon established visual precedents, each one also created a new precedent upon which the the next cycle might build. By following the chronological evolution of the uomini famosi cycle, a more nuanced understanding of the Florentine cycles is possible.

Chapter Three, “Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” shifts focus to the uomini famosi cycle in the Villa Carducci. Importantly, this cycle was created after the 1439 Decree of Union, during which Castagno’s patron was the head of the Florentine government, and before the 1453 fall of Constantinople. I demonstrate that when the cycle is viewed in the context of the political concerns of the patron, Filippo Carducci, the unprecedented choice of individuals is clarified through iconography relating to the Council of Ferrara and Florence. I align each figure in the cycle with either the patron or the concerns of the Council. Castagno’s frescoes emerge as a

12 multilayered statement regarding the importance of religion, civic pride, political duties, and the protection of all three.

Chapter Four, “Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men,” focuses on the reorganized Florentine government, the Council of Seventy, commission in the Sala dei Gigli from 1482. Although the cycle was created twenty-nine years after the fall of Constantinople and the subsequent failure of the Union, I argue that imagery, in a manner similar to the altarpiece and frescoes in the Medici Palace chapel, commemorated the Council and historic events surrounding it. Through an in-depth study of the religious and secular figures in Ghirlandaio’s cycle combined with an overview of the political issues contemporary to the commission, I demonstrate that the frescoes recalled a moment of intense civic pride for the Florentines, and the

Medici family, that would have been important and recognizable in 1482.

Florentine uomini famosi cycles have, thus far, been studied in isolation with little consideration of their iconographical departures from contemporary uomini famosi cycles produced outside the city. This joint analysis of the two surviving quattrocento cycles demonstrates their shared recollection of a crucial moment in the life of the city, the Council of

Ferrara and Florence. Retrospectively, the Council of Ferrara and Florence is not viewed as the success and testimony to piety that many quattrocento Florentines believed it to be. It is this mid-quattrocento Florentine mindset that deserves further research. Through viewing uomini famosi cycles within the same parameters of understanding as a fifteenth-century Florentine, a clearer and more concise understanding may be reached regarding commissions that have hitherto been explained as strange anomalies, such as Castagno’s Famous Men and Women, or whose unprecedented depictions of an older theme have gone unexplained, like Ghirlandaio’s

Apotheosis of Saint Zenobius and Uomini Famosi.

13

1 Pope Martin V died February 20, 1431 and Gabriele Condulmaro, cardinal of Siens, was elected (with the name of Eugenius IV) on March 3, 1431. Pope Eugenius IV had an ally in Sigismund after crowning him as Holy Roman Emperor in 1433. Eugenius was also paying Sigismund 5000 florins a month; see Joseph Gill, The Council of Florence, (London-New York: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 20, 45-46, 53. For further information on the key figures of the Council, see Robert Crum, “Roberto Martelli, the Council of Florence, and the Medici Palace Chapel,” Zeitschrist für Kunstgeschichte 59, no. 3 (1996): 403-17. 2 Patricia Fortini Brown, “Laetentur Caeli: The Council of Florence and the Astronomical Fresco in the Old Sacristy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 176-80.

3 See Gill, The Council of Florence, 20, 45-46, 53; Ludwig Pastor, 1305-1447, Popes at Avignon, The Schism, Councils of Pisa and Constance, Martin V and Eugenius IV, vol. 1 of The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages, 5th ed., edited and translated by Frederick Ignatius Antrobus. (St. Louis: Herder, 1923-69); idem, 1464-1483, Paul II and Sixtus IV, vol. 4 of The History of the Popes: From the Close of the Middle Ages, 4th ed., edited and translated by Frederick Ignatius Antrobus (St. Louis: Herder, 1923-69); Nicolai Rubinstein, "Classical Themes in the Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence," Journal of the Warburg and Courtlaud Institutes 50 (1987): 29-43; idem, “The Beginnings of Political Thought in Florence: A Study in Mediaeval Historiography,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 198-227; idem, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to 1494) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), idem, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Also Theodor E. Mommsen, "Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in Padua," Art Bulletin 34, no. 2 (June 1952): 95-116; Christaine L. Joost-Gaugier, "A Rediscovered Series of Uomini famosi from QuattrocentoQuattrocento Venice" in Transmissions and Transformations in Medieval and Renaissance Textual Cultures, ed. Guyda Armstrong and Rhiannon Daniels, special issue, The Art Bulletin 58, no. 2 (June 1976): 184-95; idem, “Castagno’s Humanistic Program at Legnaia and its Possible Inventor,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 45, no. 3 (1982): 274-82; idem, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune, Part I: The First Triumvirate at Lucignano,” Artibus et Historiae 2, no. 21 (1990): 15-30; idem, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune, Part II: The Sala del Consiglio at Lucignano,” Artibus et Historiae 2, no. 22 (1990): 23-46; idem, "Giotto’s Hero Cycle in Naples: A Prototype of Donne Illustri and a Possible Literary Connection,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 43, no. 3 (1980): 311-18; idem, "Poggio and Visual Tradition: Uomini famosi in Classical Literary Description," Artibus et Historiae 6, no. 12 (1985): 57-74; idem, "The Early Beginnings of the Notion of Uomini famosi and the De Viris Illustribus in Greco-Roman Literary Tradition,” Artibus et Historiae 3, no. 6 (1982): 97-115; idem, “Why Janus at Lucignano? Ovid, Dante, St. Augustine and the First King of Italy," Acta historiae artium 30 (1984): 109-122. Further, Josephine Marie Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s ‘Famous Men and Women’,” PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1990; and idem, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sybil and Two Queens,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 58, no. 3 (1995): 359-80. Finally Melinda Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble of the Sala dei Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio in

14

Florence,” (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1988); and “Laurentian Patronage in the Palazzo Vecchio: The Frescoes of the Sala dei Gigli,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 2 (June 1996): 264-85. 4 Richard Mayne, “East and West in 1054,” Cambridge Historical Journal 11, no. 2 (1954): 133- 36.

5 Gill, The Council of Florence, 4-5.

6 Gill, The Council of Florence, 12-13.

7 Gill, The Council of Florence, 18.

8 Gill, The Council of Florence, 90-92.

9 Gill believes that the Duke of Milan could have probably accomplished this with the help of the King of Aragon; see Gill, The Council of Florence, 92.

10 Bologna wanted the honor, but had unstable loyalty to the papacy and was too near Milan; see Gill, The Council of Florence, 92-93.

11 On Cosimo de’ Medici’s position of Gonfaloniere di Giustiza, see Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 403; also, Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, 1204-1574 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1976): 53-54.

12 Eugenius IV fled to Florence in June of 1434 while Cosimo de’ Medici was still in exile. Brown notes that the Pope may have aided in Cosimo’s return to Florence and that Medici support was beneficial for Eugenius IV as he confronted the issues raised by the Council of Basle, see Brown, “Laetentur Caeli,” 178. On the dates of Cosimo de’ Medici’s exile, see Robert J. Crum, “Retrospection and Response: The Medici Palace in the Service of the Medici, c. 1420- 1469,” (PhD diss., University of Pittsburg, 1992), iv.

13 Gill, The Council of Florence, 109.

14 Brown, “Laetentur Caeli,” 179.

15 See Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 406-16.

16 See Brown, “Laetentur Caeli,” 176-80.

17 Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 408-12.

18 Malcom Oxley, “The Medici and Gozzoli’s Magi,” History Today (December 1994): 18.

19 On the Florentine view of the Council and its continued celebration in the city after the fall of Constantinople, see Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 408-12.

15

20 Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 408.

21 Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 406.

22 Oxley, “The Medici and Gozzoli’s Magi,” 17.

23 For further information, Joost-Gaugier, "The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 97-115.

24 Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 97-105.

25 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 100; Twenty-four of the biographies were written by Petrarch and twelve were written after his death by his colleague and follower, Lombardo della Sella, see Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 98.

26 Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 98-99.

27 Joost-Gaugier, "Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 314. 28 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98.

29 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98-99.

30 On the Italian city-states’ desire for legitimacy and lineage, see Randolph Starn, “Reinventing Heroes in Renaissance Italy,” in “The Evidence of Art: Images and Meaning in History,” special issue, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 17, no. 1 (Summer 1986): 67-84.

31 See, Marita Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete Edition with a Critical Catalogue (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980): 30. The frescoes were moved in 1966 when the flood damaged sections of the Castagno Museum; see John R. Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and his Patrons (Durham: Duke University Press, 1991), 10.

32 Josephine M. Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sybil and Two Queens,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 58, no. 3 (1995): 359.

33 Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 29.

34 The smaller right side wall containing the images of Adam and Eve and the longer central wall with the uomini famosi are assumed by Mode to have been completed during the same artistic campaign and by the same artist. Mode believes that the figures’ undeniable correspondence to one another as well as their isocephalic unity allows this presumption. See Robert L. Mode, “Re- Creating Adam at Villa Carducci,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 47 (1984): 501.

35 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 504; Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and his Patrons, 33-35.

36 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 362.

16

37 Creighton Gilbert, “On Castagno’s Nine Famous Men and Women: Sword and Book as the Basis for Public Service,” ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald G. Witt, and Rona Goffen, Life and Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), 174-92.

38 Robert Louis Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men Cycle of Cardinal Giordano Orsini and the Uomini famosi tradition in Fifteenth-Century Italian Art” (PhD diss. University of Michigan, 1970), 207. Dunn believes that the central placement of the women within Castagno’s cycle eliminates the possibility of their inclusion as of secondary importance. She also notes the possibility that the commission was originally intended to include more images on another wall. See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 360, 368. The parameters of the artistic programs knows as The Nine Worthies is outside the scope of this study. For more information, see Mode, "The Monte Giordano Famous Men Cycle," 173-75.

39 On the relationship between Castagno’s figures and Dunn’s explanation that they are united by a theme of redemption through the religious figures’ relationship to the three women, and therefore to the six Florentine men, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 460-66.

40 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 522.

41 See Stuart M. McManus, “Pagolo di Matteo Petriboni’s Account of the Council of Florence,” Reformation and Renaissance Review: Journal of the Society for Reformation Studies 10, no. 2 (2008): 247-263; and Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 514.

42On October 5, 1482 the Florentine Operai submitted a contract for the north wall above the Dogana in the audience hall of the Signori. Dominic E. Colnaghi, Colnaghi’s Dictionary of Florentine Painters, From the 13th to the 17th Centuries, ed. Carlo E. Malvani, trans. Ursula Creagh, Christopher Evans, and Francesca Malvani (Florence: Archivi Colnaghi Firenze, 1986), 120. For a dating of the commission to 1482 and suggestion that Ghirlandaio was given a major portion of the program and assigned the long wall opposite the marble portal, see Martin Wagernackle, The World of the Florentine Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshops and Art Market, trans. Alison Luchs (Princeton, N. J: Princeton University Press, 1981), 160. 43 Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press: 1995), 35.

44 Beginning in 1480 the room was used as an assembly hall for the Council of Seventy as well as a reception and dining hall; see Eckart Marchand, “Exemplary Gestures and ‘Authentic’ Physiognomies,” Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 159 (April 2004): 3. The original function of the Sala dei Gigli was as a meeting place for the Signoria and as an anteroom to its audience chamber. Six times per year the government officials would convene in the Sala dei Gigli for the appointment of the new head of the Signoria, Gonfaloniere di Giustizia. On function, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble," 365-366; Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 103, 58-59.

17

45 Hegarty identifies the specification of figures to be included in the painting as well as the location of the painting through a primary document dated 26 August 1482. Through her research of the primary documents of the Opera del Palazzo, Hegarty shows that St. Zenobius, his attendants, and the Virgin Mary were to be painted on the east wall of the Sala dei Gigli. In the same text Hegarty also states that scholarly opinion unanimously gives the design of the Sala dei Gigli fresco to Domenico Ghirlandaio but much of the application may have been completed by his workshop. Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 223-24, 245. 46 Jean K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 228. For original documents from the Opera del Palazzo that state that on 22 May 22 1482 members of this committee were given permission to commission a painting of St. Zenobius in the Sala dei Gigli, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 223.

47 The uomini famosi in the Sala dei Gigli are all Roman citizens from antiquity and are portrayed wearing variations of Roman armor. Their personal descriptions are written in first person accounts; see Chapter 3.

48 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 281-82.

49 Melinda Hegarty, “Laurentian Patronage in the Palazzo Vecchio: The Frescoes of the Sala dei Gigli,” Art Bulletin 78, no. 2 (June 1996): 266-73.

50 Rubinstein, “Classical Themes in the Decoration," 29-43.

51 For further information regarding the lack of published materials on the development of this subject, see Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98.

18

CHAPTER 2

UOMINI FAMOSI

This chapter traces the literary and visual tradition of uomini famosi cycles, identifying the historical basis for the type and medieval precedents for Renaissance examples. A chronological exploration of uomini famosi cycles in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy, combined with a consideration of the textual traditions important to their production, offers a basis for understanding the political value likely attached to Castagno’s Famous Men and

Women [figure 1] and Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men [figure 2] in fifteenth century Florence. This chapter also provides essential background to my reading of

Castagno and Ghirlandaio’s cycles as both extending and departing from established visual traditions.

I. The Ancient and Medieval Background

The ancient roots of the uomini famosi tradition are well established in existing literature. As Christaine L. Joost-Gaugier (1982) points out, exalting, honoring, and commemorating heroic individuals is an ancient concept.1 Among the oldest literary accounts confirming the existence of commemorative hero monuments in pre-classical and classical antiquity is the Greek Histories (c. 500 BCE) of Herodotus that describes a temple in the

Egyptian town of Bubastis that contained figures of mortal human heroes, not depicted as deities.2 Cicero was the first Roman to record the existence of painted portraits.3 In his Oration

Against Verres (c. 70 B.C.) Cicero states that the lives of Roman Republican heroes should serve

19 as instructions to his audience and he gives examples of ‘heroic behavior’ that they should follow.4 In De Architectura (c. 25 BCE), Vitruvius observed that wealthy Romans decorated the atriums of their homes with ancestral busts.5 In the Natural History (77-79), Pliny the Elder recorded that ancestral portraits in Roman homes were being replaced with portraits of strangers.

In the same text Pliny also made multiple references concerning famous individuals depicted in series. He suggested that the concept, ancient in his own time, could be traced to a fifth century

B.C. series of Roman shields with the portraits of famous warriors that were displayed in a shrine of the Goddess of War in an attempt to inspire valor. Pliny also noted the significance of the placement of these hero images above the viewer on columns, indicating that they were elevated beyond common mortals.6

As Joost-Gaugier notes, the shift from ancestor portraits and busts in Roman homes to depictions of non-familial worthy individuals that Pliny recorded suggests the evolution of visual commemoration.7 These images of famous men retained identification with lineage and subsequently, legitimacy, but transitioned into a more abstract concept what was previously understood as lineage and legitimacy. Patrons selected both painted and sculpted images of deceased heroes to adorn their homes based on the individual’s merits, rather than their related bloodlines; they were, in a way, choosing their own ancestors and lineage. The figures that were chosen, in turn, informed viewers of the patron’s legitimacy.

In medieval France and Britain visual commemoration of heroic individuals took the form of the Neuf Preux, or “Nine Worthies.”8 The concept of Nine Worthies was first realized in an allegorical poem written by Jacques de Longuyen (c. 1310) titled Vouex de Paon.9 Combining secular and religious men, the figures included in the Neuf Preux were traditionally the same nine men.10 The Worthies included three Old Testament figures (David, Joshua, and Judas

20

Maccabeus), three pagan figures (Hector, Alexander, and Julius Caesar), and three Christian figures (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey de Bouillon).11 Referred to as “princes,” the historical males were conquerors that personified soldierly courage and leadership; they represented the chivalric ideal that held monumental importance during the period.12 For medieval viewers, the three figures from the Old Testament represented God’s chosen nation and its mission to prepare the world for the coming of Christ. The three pagan figures signified the era of Roman rule around the time of Christ, recalled as a time of peace, founded on pagan chivalry, that Christ’s apostles to spread the Gospel of Christ and establish the Christian Church.

The final three, Christian figures represented God’s new chosen people whose calling derived from the previous two eras: to uphold the peace of God, to spread the law of God, and to protect the sacred places of Christianity. The three eras recognized through the Nine Worthies epitomized chivalrous history and defined its place in fourteenth-century Christian world history.13

The Nine Worthies theme was most commonly depicted on tapestries and is among the oldest subject matter recorded for that medium. A sign of wealth, elaborate tapestries adorned the walls of medieval castles throughout northern Europe.14 The first known example depicting the

Nine Worthies belonged to King Charles V of France (c.1364-1380).15 The Cloisters Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York houses fragments from another set, one of the oldest extant tapestry series dedicated to the Nine Worthies, those originally belonging to

Charles V’s brother, Jean de Berry (1340-1416) [figure 31].16 The Neuf Preux was likely exported to Italy via texts and tapestries that illustrated the figures.17 The frescoes in the Castello della Manta in Saluzzo (c. 1420) [figure 32-35], commissioned by a patron with strong ties to the

French court, provide a fifteenth-century Italian example of the Nine Worthies theme.18

21

As the Manta frescoes illustrate, by the fifteenth century depictions of the Nine Worthies began were sometimes accompanied by a cycle of nine women, the Neuf Preuses.19 Unlike the men, the nine women were not drawn from three historic eras.20 Generally antique figures, they commonly included: the Delphic Sibyl, Ethiope, Hippolyte, Lampete, Penthesilea, Semiramis,

Sinope, Tetua, and Thomyris [figure 33].21 Unusually for the period, the women were not depicted as either the subordinate partners to the male figures or as descendants of Eve and therefore responsible for the downfall of male potential. Instead, Robert L. Mode (1970) suggested that the nine women were chosen because of their meritorious lives and actions.22

II. Uomini famosi in the Renaissance

In the fourteenth century a visual tradition emerged for producing secular, commemorative cycles depicting a multitude of individuals outside then-traditional and chivalric group of the Neuf Preux; these were cycles dedicated to famous men, or uomini famosi.23 Uomini famosi cycles are among the earliest and the most important forms of secular iconography and may be regarded as early examples of monumental “public” art and predecessors to the modern portrait gallery.24 In 1900 Paul Schubring produced the first modern art-historical analysis to identify cycles of famous men from the Italian Renaissance as a specific visual type.25 Still, because of the great variety amongst such cycles, in terms of number and identity of figures included, there is not a concrete and agreed upon definition of what constitutes a series or cycle of uomini famosi.26 Study of early examples is difficult because most thirteenth- and fourteenth- century uomini famosi cycles are lost and those that survive are badly damaged or heavily restored. The lack of primary visual sources has affected the scholarly consideration of this visual theme chronologically and geographically, as well as its place within art historical study.27

Joost-Gaugier (1982), however, has made significant contributions to the study of the cycles. She

22 notes that, during the Early Modern period, series’ of famous men primarily adorned princely palaces and public buildings as examples of civic humanism.28 Indeed, many of the cycles were intended to bring honor to the city in which they were created.29 Patrons placed great importance on the heroes chosen, how those heroes were then represented, that each figure related in some way to one another, and that they all aligned with the aims of the local government.30 Through engaging in that tradition, patrons celebrated their legacy and modeled their lives so that they, too, might be worthy of such reverence and remembrance.31

Consideration of six examples of uomini famosi cycles created outside of Florence prior to Castagno’s Famous Men and Women [figure 1] and Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men [figure 2] is especially instructive for establishing the larger visual tradition of which Castagno and Ghirlandaio’s frescoes formed a part. As would Castagno and Ghirlandaio’s imagery, each of the six cycles discussed in the pages, produced between 1328 and 1473, also included life-sized full-length historic figures and was commissioned by an active political entity to be displayed in a public or semi-public location. Each of the earlier cycles coincided with or around specific socio-political events and circumstances as, I will argue, were the Castagno and

Ghirlandaio cycles.

IIa. Naples, c. 1328-1333

Giotto’s uomini famosi cycle (c. 1328-1333) in the Sala Grande of the Castel Nuovo in

Naples for King Robert (r. 1309-1343) may well have been the first example of monumental, secular commemorative decoration in the TrecentoTrecento. By the sixteenth century, however, the cycle was destroyed, leaving behind few definitive primary accounts of the design.32 In her study of the Naples cycle Joost-Gaugier (1980) cites a lack of primary accounts as the reason that the iconographic uniqueness of this program has received little scholarly attention.33

23

The cycle apparently included nine male and female figures. They are identified today via manuscripts containing sonnets produced contemporary to the frescoes, illustrated with miniature copies of the original frescoes and showing the figures depicted in full-length. Unlike the Nine

Worthies, the nine men included were not arranged in triads of three ages; the series also contained no men from the Christian era. Seven Greco-Roman heroes and two Old Testament heroes were portrayed: Solomon, Hector, Aeneas, Achilles, Paris, Hercules, Samson, and

Caesar.34 The cycle was is the only known example of an Italian uomini famosi cycle containing women from the TrecentoTrecento. Joost-Gaugier believes that, unlike the French portrayal of the Neuf Preuses, the women in the Sala Grande played a subordinate role and were not portrayed as exemplars or donne famose (“famous women”).35

Joost-Gaugier aligns the unprecedented iconography of Giotto’s cycle with the political circumstances in Naples around the time of the commission. In November of 1328 King Robert’s only son, Carlo, Duke of Calabria, died. With no male heir, King Robert named Giovanna, the eldest daughter of his deceased son, heir to the throne of Naples. The formal announcement was a grand ceremony that took two years to plan. The date of the convocation and its location within the Sala Grande of the Castel Nuovo coincided with Giotto’s commission.36 According to Joost-

Gaugier, artists did not choose the figures in uomini famosi cycles, patrons and humanists collaborated to realize elaborate decorative programs that communicated individualized intentions.37 Through the unusual inclusion of women in the uomini famosi cycle in the Castel

Nuovo King Robert provided a historical justification for the untraditional succession.38

While neither Castagno nor Ghirlandaio repeated the figures from the Naples cycle in their uomini famosi cycles, Giotto’s cycle marked an important visual shift in the European concept of heroic commemoration that is essential to understanding the later Florentine imagery.

24

The series are not limited to the chivalric Nine Worthies; instead, the patron and political circumstances determined the identity of the figures included. This shift from the medieval tradition of the Neuf Preux to an iconography determined by events important to the patron became common practice in subsequent uomini famosi cycles.

IIb. Padua, c. 1340-1370

In Padua between the years 1340-1370 Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara (1325-1393),

Lord of Padua (r. 1350-1388), commissioned a uomini famosi cycle his palace. The cycle was produced after renowned scholar and crowned poet laureate, Francesco Petrarcha, dedicated De viris illustribus (b. 1336, completed posthumously in 1379), his manuscript on the lives of illustrious men, to Carrara.39 Theodor E. Mommsen (1952) conducted an extended analysis of the relationship between Francesco il Vecchio da Carrara and Petrarch and its influence on the decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium and the completion of De viris illustribus.40 Petrarch’s progress on the text took many years and was not continuous, resulting in a shift from his original goal of writing on “illustrious men of all countries and of all times” to only including great men of action from Ancient Rome.41 Mommsen believes the alteration of Petrarch’s original plan can be attributed to the scholar’s first visit to Rome in 1337. Petrarch’s first impression of Rome, and its then state of disarray, did not match the poet’s imagined ideal of ancient Rome. Mommsen suggests Petrarch shifted his concept of world history in De viris illustribus to that of solely Roman history because of the author's belief in the superiority of

Rome and it's resilient ability to rise again as a mighty power and as the civilization all should aspire to emulate. He began with the establishment of Rome by Romulus and ended just before the decline of the Roman Empire.42

25

The Paduan uomini famosi cycle was a visual figuration of Petrarch’s manuscript and

Mommson believes that the poet, who joined the Carrara court in 1367, was the creative designer of the artistic program.43 Francesco da Carrara requested that Petrarch create a second condensed version of De viris illustribus to be used as a sort of guide to accompany the cycle, emphasizing the importance of this text to the original artistic program of the room.44 The thirty-six figures painted in the great hall were organized in chronological order and identified through tituli.45

Around the turn of the fifteenth century the frescoes were badly damaged; only a portrait of

Petrarch survives today to represent the original cycle [figure 36].46 In 1539-140, Domenico

Campagnola and Stefano dall’Arzere created a new series of Famous Men in the space. The room, today referred to as the Sala dei Giganti [figure 37], contains some of the original figures, but many new names were chosen for inclusion.47 The newer giganti are, as their name suggests, over life-size; as a replacement program for the lost original, it is therefore conceivable that the

Sala Vivorum Illustrium figures were monumental, as well.48 Several possible recreations of the original program have proposed based on surviving manuscript evidence.49

Similar to the uomini famosi cycle in Naples, the Paduan cycle was commissioned by a ruler to adorn a hall that would be viewed by important dignitaries and guests.50 As had Giotto’s cycle, the uomini famosi program in the Sala Virorum Illustrium commemorated a significant event in the life of the ruler. Carrara had recently regained his position of power and visiting dignitaries were made aware of Carrara’s military strength through a nearby hall of frescoes depicting his victories and battles.51 The adjacent Sala Virorum Illustrium confirmed that

Francesco da Carrara was not just a military ruler; he was the learned patron of Petrarch.52

Similar to King Robert’s commission in Naples, this uomini famosi cycle, then, commemorated an event of importance to the patron. Again the figures depicted were not members of a

26 previously established visual canon, such as Nine Worthies; rather, they promoted the political agenda of the patron.

IIc. Siena, 1413-1414

In 1413 the Sienese government commissioned Taddeo di Bartolo (c.1363-1422) to paint honoratas et pluchras figuras in the antechapel of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico [figure 38].53

Known at the time as the Salette ante Consistorium, the space functioned as both a vestibule for the chapel and, more importantly, as a corridor connecting the chambers of the judicial and executive bodies of the Sienese government.54 The placement of the cycle allowed the figures to be seen by the public on their way to worship as well as by the political leaders of the Commune.

Bartolo painted many figures throughout the antechapel, but the six central full-length uomini famosi figures consist only of men from the Roman Republic [figure 39]. The men are: Cicero,

M. Porcius Cato, P. Scipio Nasica, M. Curius Dentatus, M. Furius Camillus, and P. Scipio

Africanus Major [figures 40, 41]. 55 Each of Bartolo’s figures is identified through an inscription beneath;.the tituli follow classical models and are similar to those used in contemporary uomini famosi cycles.56

Many scholars have studied the cycle.57 Nicolai Rubinstein (1958) states that, like the earlier Ambrogio Lorenzetti frescoes Allegories of Good and Bad Government (c. 1337-1340)

[figure 42] in the council chamber of the Palazzo Pubblico, the central theme of the program is an emphasis on the common good and internal unity, with an emphasis on freedom and power.58

Rubinstein believes that the six uomini famosi were each chosen because of their Roman republican roots and for their legendary connections with Siena.59 He shows that humanists and government officials during this time were revising the foundation legends for their respective cities in an attempt align them with republican and humanist ideals while also justifying the

27 governing body’s claim to rule.60 These changes in well-known folklore required some blurring of the lines between similar figures and their familiar tales in order for the revised story to be understood in a republican manner.61 Rubinstein identifies the Sienese uomini famosi as the earliest extant example of this new humanistic portrayal in a city-republic.62

With no equivalent visual precedent, this commission held great political value in regards to contemporary political thought. While the Sienese government was not responding to a specific event or occasion, theirs was a response to the evolving socio-political ideology of humanism. By promoting the ancient Roman origins of Siena, the government legitimized its position in history. This shift in social consciousness, rooted in a glorification of the Golden Age of ancient Rome, retrospectively became foremost attribute of the Italian Renaissance. As we shall see, a similar glorification of a “golden era” can be seen in both Castagno’s and

Ghirlandaio’s cycles.

IId. Foligno, c. 1417

The uomini famosi cycle in the Sala Imperatorum (c.1417) [figure 43] of the Palazzo

Trinci, home of the ruling family of Foligno, again appropriated classical models, specifically through the figures included and the use of Latin tituli, and referenced a foundation legend to legitimize political authority. Ugolino III Trinci (d. 1415) became the Lord of Foligno in 1386, and acquired titles such as Justice Gonfalonier, Captain of the People, and even Papal vicar.

Upon his death, the title of Lord of Foligno was passed down to his son, Niccolò. The frescoes of the Sala Imperatorum first appear in a document dating 1417, suggesting that they were commissioned to commemorate the life of the recently deceased Ugolino.63

The loggia outside of the Sala Imperatorum was painted with the foundation legend of

Rome and depicts the story of Rhea Silvia, daughter of King Numitor of Alba Longa and mother

28 of Romulus and Remus [figure 44]. There are three larger male figures included in the death scene of Rhea Silvia [figure 45]. Anne Dunlop (2009) identifies these men as Ugolino Trinci and his two sons, who thereby inserted themselves, and aligned their authority, with the founding of

Rome [figure 46].64 The scenes in the loggia progress down the walls towards the entrance to the

Sala Imperatorum.65 That large room today contains fifteen double-life-sized depictions of

Romans grouped together by type, not chronologically. Because of the scale of the figures, the room is also referred to as the Sala dei Giganti [figures 47]. Unfortunately, the frescoes of are badly damaged and many large areas are lost completely.66 The surviving uomini famosi are:

Romulus, Augustus, Tiberius, Marcus Furius Camillus, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, M. Curius

Dentatus, Titus Manlius Torquatus, Cincinnatus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Scipio Africanus,

Scaevola, Cato the Elder, Caius Marius, Publius Decius Mus, Gaius Claudius Nero, and Fabius

Maximus Cunctator [figures 48-52]. Latin inscriptions, originally beneath each figure, explained the merits of the illustrious men. Multiple manuscripts by the humanist Francesco da Fiano

(c.1340/50-1421) affirm that there were six other figures in the original program: Romulus,

Julius Caesar, Caligula, Pompey, and Trajan. All but four of the Foligno uomini famosi were also included in Petrarch’s De viris illustribus, and were thus also included in the Sala Vivorum

Illustrium in Padua.67

Similar to the frescoed portrait of Petrarch included at the end of the Carrara uomini famosi cycle in Padua, a painted balcony at the end of the Sala Imperatorum contains depictions of two contemporary fifteenth-century individuals, identified as Ugolino Trinci, and his wife,

Costanza Orsini [figure 51]. Outside of the Sala Imperatorum, along the walls of the passageway, also appear a variation of the Nine Worthies theme and the Ages of Man [figures

53-54].68 Similar to the previous uomini famosi cycles in Naples, Padua, and Siena, the

29 iconography commemorated an event important to the patron, in this case his death and commemoration of his life, and the figures included augment his importance and affirm the deceased's power as recognizable to viewers.

IIe. Rome, c. 1432

In 1432 Cardinal Giordano Orsini commissioned another cycle depicting the Ages of

Man for the Sala Theatri in the Orsini family palace at Monte Giordano in Rome.69 Orsini was a member of one of the most influential families in Rome. The Cardinal was a humanist patron of the arts and scholarship, and acquired a vast array of manuscripts. The massive collection specialized in history and group biographies.70 A circle of leading humanist scholars of the time met frequently at Monte Giordano, costumed as characters from antique dramas, to debate ethical concerns within both pagan and Christian frameworks.71

Robert L. Mode (1973) suggested that the Sala Theatri was created and decorated specifically for those theatrical, humanistic gatherings.72 The monumental fresco program, attributed to Masolino (1383-1447), consisted of 300 full-length uomini famosi and divided the history of the world into six ages. The illustrious figures included were depicted in chronological order in multiple layers of bands around the grand room.73 They included: Tiberius, Decius,

Diocletian, Brutus, Saint John the Baptist, Eve, Popes Leo and Gregory the Great, playwrights

Plautus, Terence, and Seneca, Greek dramatists Aeschylus and Euripides, and Nimrod, the legendary founder of the first Mesopotamian dynasty.74 Unlike other uomini famosi cycles, the figures were not placed within an architectural framework or separated by pictorial elements; simplicity was embraced in order to complete the expansive program in a timely manner. The program was completed by 1432, but Cardinal Orsini abandoned Monte Giordano in 1434 when he fled from Rome with Pope Eugenius IV.75 Within fifty years the Sala Theatri was destroyed

30 in an attack on Monte Giordano. The contents of the original commission are known today from primary textual sources.76

What purpose did such an ambitious and diverse cycle serve in Monte Giordano? Mode suggested it memorialized good and bad leaders throughout history.77 In keeping with previous uomini famosi cycles, legitimacy and lineage were created for the Orsini family in both the frescoes and in the location of this particular family palace. The Orsini family had previously occupied at least three ancient theater sites throughout history and Monte Giordano was believed to have been located on top of an early Roman amphitheater.78 The location may have partially inspired the humanistic scholars gathered in costumes of the ancients while surrounded with illustrious historical figures that had succeeded as well as failed. The Orsini cycle created a new function for the fluid genre of uomini famosi by attempting to document world history in its entirety, as opposed to the more rigid parameters of smaller groupings, such as chivalric or civic exemplars.79 As we shall see, the concept of larger history, world and salvific, becomes important when we look at Castagno’s Famous Men and Women and Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men.

IIf. Lucignano, c. 1438-1473

This new turn in the visual tradition of uomini famosi cycles, however, was not the last.

In 1438 a triad of images [figure 55] was painted in the Sala del Consiglio of the Palazzo del

Comune, the public council hall, in Lucignano [figure 56-57]. Over the next 40 years, and under the direction of multiple consiglieri, the Sala del Consiglio was frescoed with a total of thirty-one uomini famosi [figures 58-71] all from ancient history.80 Joost-Gaugier (1990) believes that, while not planned as a specific series, the frescoes within the Sala del Consiglio formed a cohesive and unified decorative program. She suggests that the series reflected the increasing

31 popularity of humanistic thought, as seen in previous uomini famosi cycles, but did so as visual manifestations of the writings of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), rather than, as was more common, via references to the work of Petrarch.81 The majority of the historic illustri depicted on the walls of the Sala dei Consiglio are accompanied not with classical tituli, but with passages from works authored by Dante such as Divina Commedia, De monarchia, and The Convivio. According to

Joost-Gaugier, each figure is praised in Dantean terms for their impact on the preservation of

Roman posterity.82

Like Petrarch, Dante believed that the turmoil and despair felt throughout his lifetime could be reversed through an understanding of the posterity of Rome and an application of past successful Roman ventures to contemporary culture. Unlike Petrarch, however, Dante’s praise if

Rome was not confined to one specific era of Roman history.83 As the figures in the Sala dei

Consiglio demonstrate, Dante exalted St. Paul as the Christian application of justice in the

Roman world; praised Justinian as the restorer of Rome’s authority under a coexisting and unified church and state [figure 61]; and credited Boethius with the survival of the concept of returning to the past greatness of Rome during the rule of the Ostrogoths [figure 62].84 Julius

Caesar, Constantine, and Noah, making up the earliest frescoes in the Sala del Consiglio, are shown as the three founders of Rome: the Empire, Christian Rome, and ancient Rome, respectively [figure 55].85

The patrons of the multiple phases of frescoes, the consiglieri, were the judges of the commune, and dispensed justice from within the Sala del Consiglio. Each frescoed figure reiterated the importance of justice and its place in the overall goal of contemporary culture to return to the prosperity of Rome. The patrons’ understanding and promotion of Dante’s concept of justice is visually displayed on the walls of the council hall through unique representations of

32 the figures.86 Epitomizing Dante’s love of Rome, the uomini famosi visually express the commune of Lucignano’s desire to be independent from the governance of Siena, whose rule

Lucignano had been under since 1402.87 Because the figures were commissioned over many years by different consiglieri there is not one specific event with which the creation of the uomini famosi coincided. Instead, the frescoes commemorated an ideal and narrated a generation of discontent within the commune. As a unified series, the frescoes held political value to their audience and reiterated the solitary goal that permeated throughout the commune.88 This is important in regard to the two later Florentine cycles because it creates a precedent of a uomini famosi cycle expressing contemporary values and beliefs through ancient ideals and characters.

III. Conclusion

The evolution of monumental commemorative Italian wall paintings depicting renowned secular figures occurred rather rapidly, retrospectively. From the undiscriminatory schoce of figures from all of history in Naples (c. 1320) to the refined version of Petrarch’s concept of history as an exclusively Roman one in Padua (c.1340-1370), the evolution of that author’s ideas and his influence on the visual manifestation of uomini famosi is apparent. Through the cycles in

Siena (1413-1414) and Foligno (c. 1417), founding legends were visually linked to ancient Rome in an attempt to establish each commune as a legitimate descendant of the ancient empire, justifying claims of authority. This use of Roman antiquity also recalled the ideals of Petrarch and his desire to see Rome flourish as it once did, as well as the growing interest in humanism.

In Rome, the city whose ancient history was revered by fifteenth-century humanists, the visual concept of uomini famosi was conceived in its grandest scale to that date. Going beyond

Petrarch’s original concept of history with the representation of over 300 figures from all aspects of world history and not limiting the figures to specific exemplars, but including infamous

33 persons whose stories must also be remembered lest their errors be forgotten and then repeated, this Roman cycle stretched the concept what constituted a uomini famosi cycles. Finally, in the largely overlooked fresco series in Lucignano (c. 1438-1473), the praise of past heroes that championed for the establishment, survival, posterity, legitimacy, and restoration of a Rome of all ages marks the most contemporary depictions of the theme that we have discussed, thus far.

The use of Dante’s texts, verbatim, rather than classical Latin hexameters, and the underlying defiant message regarding Lucignano’s desire rid their commune of Siena’s rule, lend themselves to a steadily growing cultural unrest and desire for change.

All of these cycles form a backdrop to the two cycles studied in the following chapters.

Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women [figure 1] was commissioned for the private residence of a government official, like the cycles from Naples, Padua, Foligno, and Rome.

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius with Famous Men [figure 2] was commissioned by government officials for a civic building, like the cycles from Siena and

Lucignano. The two Florentine cycles, like their Italian predecessors, were, as we shall see, each commissioned by a leader of the local government, or the government itself; were more or less accessible to a controlled public through their respective locations; contained full-length and identifiable figures; and were created to commemorate events that held socio-political importance within the contemporary society. It is in Lucignano, I believe, that the visual narrative expressed by the later Florentine artists, Castagno and Ghirlandaio, was first realized.

Through the understanding that the consiglieri of Lucignano decorated the walls of their council hall to display their desires for their commune in both a general sense and also in regards to a contemporary struggle, a precedent was established that aids in the understanding of Castagno’s

Famous Men and Women and Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius with Famous Men as

34 visual vite of worthy individuals and as “participants” in the political discourse surrounding their respective patrons.89

35

1 On hero commemoration in Antiquity, see Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 97-115.

2 In an account describing a tomb of a Lydian king in western Asia Minor, Herodotus describes engraved records of the work accomplished by the builders. This suggests the long practice of recording for posterity the accomplishments of individuals and grouping these men by category, see Christiane L. Joost-Gaugier, "Poggio and Visual Tradition: Uomini famosi in Classical Literary Description," Artibus et Historiae 6, no. 12 (1985): 60-62.

3 Cicero mentions painted portraits in his writings through a reference to the destruction of the Temple of Minerva in Syracuse, see Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 66.

4 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 66.

5 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 67.

6 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 68.

7 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 60-68.

8 On the Nine Worthies’ popularity in Britain and France, see Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984).

9 For information on Jaques de Longuyon’s poem, see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 173; James J. Rorimer and Margaret B. Freeman, "The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters," The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 7, no. 9 (May 1949): 244; and Keen, Chivalry, 121-22.

10 See Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 173; H.C. Marillier, “The Nine Worthies. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 61, no. 352 (July 1932): 13-15, 19; Rorimer and Freeman, “The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters,” 244; and Keen, Chivalry, 120-22.

11 For information on the nine figures included, see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 173; H.C. Marillier, “The Nine Worthies. The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 61, no. 352 (July 1932): 13-15, 19; Rorimer and Freeman, “The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters,” 244; and Keen, Chivalry, 120-22.

12 On the theme of “chivalry” in the Nine Worthies and an explanation of the men as “conquerors,” see Rorimer and Freeman, “The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters,” 244. Keen believes the entire concept of the Nine Worthies to revolve around chivalry. He explains also that during the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries individual books from the Old Testament had been translated into the vernacular and that by the thirteenth century there existed

36

a complete translation of the Bible into French. He believes that Old Testament stories had a specific relevance to chivalry in a crusading context; see Keen, Chivalry, 120-21.

13 Keen, Chivalry, 122.

14 For information on fourteenth-century ownership of Nine Worthies tapestries, see Rorimer and Freeman, “The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters,” 244; and Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 174. For information on the tapestries as an indicator of wealth in Gothic castles, see Marillier, “The Nine Worthies,” 13.

15 For information on the theme of the Nine Worthies and tapestries, see Mariller, “The Nine Worthies,” 13-14.

16 For information on the tapestries containing the Duke of Berry’s arms, see Rorimer and Freeman, “The Nine Heroes Tapestries at the Cloisters,” 243-260; and Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 174-75.

17 Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 174.

18 For information on the castle of Manta and its fresco program, see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 176-89; and Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 1-9.

19 Mode notes that the inclusion of women in the Nine Worthies’ series may be attributed to a medieval “craving for symmetry,” see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 178.

20 Keen, Chivalry, 121.

21 For information on the inclusion and depictions of the Neuf Preuses, see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 178.

22 For information on the representation of women during the Renaissance as descendants of Eve and the original sin, see Robert L. Mode, “Re-Creating Adam in the Villa Carducci,” 503-14.

23 Note that this does not include cycles of completely religious figures and that the Nine Worthies contained both secular and religious figures; on this, see Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98-99.

24 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 99.

25 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 97-98; and Paul Schubring,"Uomini famosi," Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft 23 (1900): 424f.

26 Robert L. Mode attempted to define painted cycles of “famous men” produced during the early Renaissance through a series of criteria. According to Mode, the figures included must be renowned individuals from the past, identifiable (not necessarily through a portrait likeness, can

37

be through attributes), full-length figures, monumental in scale/at least life-sized (more important that identifiable), placed side-by-side in sequential order, parallel to the picture plane, in a mural scheme. Without meeting all of these criteria, Mode suggested artworks might qualify as famous men “series,” but not a famous men “cycle.” He divided most early famous men cycles into three groups: chivalric (mostly Nine Worthies), popular, and humanistic (civic virtue); see Mode, “The Monte Giordano Famous Men,” 160-290.

27 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98-101.

28 For “civic humanism” as “statements of political ideology manifested through the representation of subjects, drawn for the most part from past history, who were perceived through the meritorious deeds they performed to have bequeathed a legacy from which subsequent generations might derive benefit or example,” see Joost-Gaugier, "The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98.

29 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 57.

30 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98-99.

31 Joost-Gaugier, “Poggio and Visual Tradition,” 57.

32 Aiding in the dating of Giotto’s cycle’s creation and discussion, Joost-Gaugier notes that the cycle was mentioned by Ghiberti in his list of works by Giotto. She also believes that it is unlikely that this cycle was seen by Vasari, See Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 311.

33 Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 311.

34 Joost-Gaugier believes that the absence of Christian figures was intentional and should be noted, Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 311-12.

35 Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 311-12.

36 The dates of these events also coincide with Giotto’s time in Naples. He left Florence in 1328 and traveled to Naples and is recorded in 1333 as still residing in Naples. King Robert’s subsequent decision to also announce Giovanna’s engagement to Andrea d’Ungheria, the second son of Robert’s brother, Caroberto, emphasizes the subordinate place of women within the realm of royalty at the time and might explain the secondary role of the women in Giotto’s uomini famosi cycle; on this, see Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 313, 317-18.

37 Joost-Gaugier, “The Early Beginnings of the Notion,” 98.

38 Joost-Gaugier, “Giotto’s Hero Cycle,” 317-18.

39 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 116.

38

40 Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 95-116.

41 His original manuscript was to contain short biographies of men from myth and reality, from Adam to Caesar. These biographies were to also include Jewish, Oriental, Greek, and Roman men. This first text of De viris illustribus was discovered towards the end of the nineteenth century by P. de Nolhac and extracts from it were published; see Theodor E. Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages’,” Speculum 17, no. 2 (April 1942): 229.

42 Since childhood Petrarch idealized Rome and referred to it as “the city to which there is none like, nor ever will be”; quoted in Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of ‘The Dark Ages’,” 230- 33.

43 Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 95-116. For Petrarch’s position in Carrara’s court in Padua, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 115; and Diana Norman, ed., Siena, Florence, and Padua: Art, Society, and Religion, 1280-1400, Volume 1: Interpretive Essays (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 166.

44 The two versions of Petrarch’s text, completed in Padua by Lombardo della Seta after Petrarch’s death, are known as the Epitome and the Compendium, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 115-116.

45 Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 104-105; on the attribution of Altichiero da Zevio, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 116.

46 The original figures were: M. Claudius Marcellus, C. Claudius Nero, M. Livius Salinator, P. Cornelius Scipio Africanus, M. Porcius Cato (Censor), P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, T. Quinctius Flaminius, L. Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus, L. Ameilius Paullus Macedonicus, Q. Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, P. Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus, C. Marius, Cn. Pompeius, C. Julius Caesar, Augustus, Vespasianus, Titus, Trajanus, Romulus, Numa Pompilius, Tullus Hostilius, Ancus Martius, L. Junius Brutus, Horatius Cocles, L. Quinctius Cincinnatus, M. Furius Camillus, M. Valerius Corvinus, T. Manlius Torquatus, P. Decius Mus, L. Papirius Cursor, M. Curius Dentatus, C. Fabricius Luscinus, Alexander, Pyrrhus, Hannibal, and Q. Fabius Maximus Cunctator. The six kings and ten emperors included in this newer fresco are in chronological order, while the remaining Sala dei Giganti figures are not; see Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 102-103. For more information on the uomini famosi cycles in the Carrara Palace, see John Richards, Petrarch’s Influence on the Iconography of the Carrara Palace in Padua: The Conflict Between Ancestral and Antique Themes in the Fourteenth Century (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2007).

47 For information on the Sala dei Giganti, see Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 103- 106.

48 On the tradition of other life-size figures within the Carrara Palace, further emphasizing the probability of the original uomini famosi being of the same stature, see Norman, Siena, Florence, and Padua, 164-65.

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49 Mommsen recreated the Sala Vivorum Illustrium’s original uomini famosi decorative scheme based on illuminations discovered by Julius von Schlosser in the Darmstadt Codex. The Darmstadt Codex is a manuscript of Petrarch’s De viris illustribus translated around 1400 by Donato delgi Albanzani. Written for a family connected with the Carrara dynasty in Padua, this codex contains a portrait of Petrarch that Schlosser believes to be a very accurate copy of the portrait that was once in the Sala Vivorum Illustrium and is still located today, though heavily repainted, in the Sala dei Giganti. Both Schlosser and Mommsen believe that this manuscript was created before the original frescos had been destroyed, giving the most accurate recreation possible. Also, Mommsen identifies the differences in the subjects of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in comparison to the later Sala dei Giganti and notes that the latter’s decorative scheme included men that Petrarch would not have deemed as uomini famosi, per the parameters of inclusion established by the author during his later drafts of De viris illustribus. See Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 105-107. Lilian Armstrong also created a reconstruction of the original room; on that, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 116, 118.

50 Functioned as an imposing hall used for ceremonies and important occasions, such as weddings, see Norman, Siena, Florence, and Padua, 165; On the timing of the commission in relation to Petrarch’s dedication, see Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 96.

51 On the significance of this high and somewhat unusual honor given by Petrarch, see Mommsen, “Petrarch and the Decoration,” 98. On the Carrara rule in Padua, see Norman, Siena, Florence, and Padua, 164-65.

52 Both versions of Petrarch’s text belonging to Carrara had a frontispiece attributed to Altichiero da Zevio: a Petrarchan Triumph of Fame (on the Compendium) and, according to Dunlop, “a political allegory of Padua in the form of a bull, pushing the encroaching lion of Venice back into the sea” (on the Epitome), see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 115-116. On the painted decorations as maneuver to persuade visitors of the patron’s worth and magnificence, see Norman, Siena, Florence, and Padua, 165.

53 Unlike Taddeo’s previous commission (1406-1407) to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin in the chapel, he was instructed to follow the directions of Messer Pietro de’ Pecci and Ser Cristoforo di Andrea, two prominent and political citizens, regarding the design of this commission for the antechapel; on that, see Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 189-90.

54 On the location and function of the antechapel of Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 190. Also Edna Carter Southard, “The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, 1289-1539: Studies in Imagery and Relations to other Communal Palaces in Tuscany,” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 1978): 354.

55 On the figures included, see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 195.

56 Rubinstein finds that the choice of men from Roman history and the classical model of the tituli aid the humanistic concept of the program. He notes that the tituli are in Latin hexameters

40

and are similar to the epigrams written for the uomini famosi cycle in Florence by Salutati for the saletta in the Palazzo Vecchio (c. 1400) and in Foligno by Francesco da Fiano for the Palazzo Trinci (c. 1424); see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 194-95.

57 Edna Carter Southard states that the virtues were frescoed above the Roman heroes in an attempt to relate the two, and therefore also connecting Roman and Christian history. Southard, “The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico,” 95-96.

58 On Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegories of Good and Bad Government in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico and Taddeo di Bartolo, see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 179-89, 193- 94.

59 On the founding legends of Siena, see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 200- 203.

60 Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 203; For information on the common practice of Tuscan communes claiming to be descendants of/founded by the Romans and using that claim to justify their claim to rule, see Southard, “The Frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo,” 59, 66.

61 Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 200.

62 On the uomini famosi as a popular subject for the adornment of princely palaces and civic buildings at the time of this commission, separating the treatment of this subject matter between the Nine Worthies, as previously discussed, and the rising humanist interest in classical antiquity, see Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 194.

63 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 187-88.

64 For more information regarding the legend of Rhea Silver and the scenes depicted in the loggia of the Palazzo Trinci, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 188-195.

65 An inscription was located outside of the entrance to the Sala Imperatorum: “Whosoever you may be, coming to this shining threshold,/ Here you may see the venerable features of men of old,/ Here men distinguished in peace and war, whom Golden Rome once bred,/ And illustrious virtue made worthy of heaven/ If the illustrious deeds of such great men are pleasing/ Feast your eyes upon them, and study each in turn”; quoted in Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 195.

66 Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 188-99.

67 The four Romans that were included in the Palazzo Trinci, but not in the Carrara Palace are Gaius Marius, Scaevola, Caligula, and Tiberius. For more information on the Sala Imperatorum, the uomini famosi, and the epigrams by Francesco da Fiano, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 188- 201.

68 Outside of the Sala Imperatorum there is a second series of famous men frescoed along the walls of a passageway connecting the Sala Imperatorum to a second family palace. This series is

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a variation of the Nine Worthies theme and was painted by the same artistic workshop as the nearby uomini famosi. It includes: Romulus, Scipio Africanus, Joshua, David, Judas Maccabaeus, Hector, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon. Again, a contemporary figure, this time dressed as a humanist scholar, sits above the door to the adjacent palace. There is a third cycle of giganti along the walls of this corridor depicting the Ages of Man. The Trinci court desired to be at the forefront of the humanistic movement. The inscriptions along the corridor are designed as a series of questions and answers written in French, making this the first trilingual cycle. For more information on this and on the inclusion of Ugolino Trinci and Costanza Orsini, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 197-98, 203-205.

69 On the Orsini cycle at Monte Giordano cycle as a representation of history and the Ages of Man, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 201-202. For information regarding the commission date, patron, and location, see Simpson, "Cardinal Giordano Orsini,” 135-59; Mode, “Masolino, Uccello and the Orsini ‘Uomini famosi’,” 369; and Robert L. Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri at Monte Giordano in Rome,” Renaissance Quarterly 26, no. 2 (Summer 1973): 167-72.

70 Cardinal Orsini was a leading proponent of the spread of humanistic culture in Rome. Upon his death, his collection of manuscripts went to the Library of the Vatican. Thanks to the preservation of the Cardinal’s complete inventory, his personal tastes as well as what would have been available to visiting scholars is known with a great degree of accuracy. According to Mode, Orsini owned five separate manuscripts by Plutarch, each in varying states of completeness. Also, major Greek playwrights were not represented in the Orsini collection. The rarest item was a single copy of around twenty plays by Plautus, twelve of which were preserved in no other known text; see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 168.

71 Humanists known to have gathered at Monte Giordano included Poggio Bracciolini and Leonardo Bruni. Lorenzo Valla documented his experiences at these gatherings and explained the costumes and discussion topics; on this, see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 169.

72 Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 167-72.

73 For more information regarding the aesthetic elements of the Orsini cycle, see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 170.

74 Mode believes that Masolino was likely chosen because his workshop was one of the few that was large enough to accommodate such a large commission; see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 169. For a complete listing of the uomini famosi included in the Orsini cycle, see Silvia Tomasi Velli, “Scipio’s Wounds,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995): 231-34.

75 Cardinal Orsini followed Pope Eugenius IV to Florence, where he passed away five years later; he never returned to Monte Giordano or to Rome. On this, see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 172.

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76 On the destruction of Monte Giordano, see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 172. On the sources used to identify the figures included in the original program, idem, “Masolino, Uccello, and the Orsini,” 368-78.

77 Mode believes this is visually explained through the pairings of a positive exemplar with their antithesis; see Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 170-71.

78 For information regarding the history of Monte Giordano, see Dunlop, Painted Palaces, 202; and Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 171-72.

79 Mode, “The Orsini Sala Theatri,” 171-72.

80 Of the estimated thirty-one original images created for the Sala del Consiglio, there are twenty-three full-length frescoes images that survive today; see Joost-Gaugier, “Part 1: The First Triumvirate at Lucignano,” 15.

81 Joost-Gaugier notes that, like Petrarch, Dante influenced artistic works associated with political ambition; see Joost-Gaugier, “Part 1: The First Triumvirate,” 15-16. Also, Joost- Gaugier, “Part 2: The Sala del Consiglio,” 24.

82 Christaine L. Joost-Gaugier, "Why Janus at Lucignano? Ovid, Dante, St. Augustine and the First King of Italy," Acta historiae artium 30 (1984): 109-122; idem, "Part I: The First Triumvirate at Lucignano," 15-30; and idem, "Part II: The Sala del Consiglio," 23-46.

83 Brenda Deen Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” Dante Studies 116 (1998): 95-118.

84 For St. Paul, Justinian, and Boethius, see Joost-Gaugier, “Part 2: The Sala del Consiglio,” 28, 30.

85 Joost-Gaugier, “Part 1: The First Triumvirate,” 15-30.

86 Regarding the consiglieri and their intense comprehension of the writings of Dante, see Joost- Gaugier, “Part 2: The Sala del Consiglio,” 41.

87 On the similarities, differences, and the possible influence of Siena’s uomini famosi cycle on the program at Lucignano, see Joost-Gaugier, “Part 1: The First Triumvirate,” 16; and Rubinstein, “Political Ideas in Sienese Art,” 207.

88 On the relationship between Siena and Lucignano, see Joost-Gaugier, “Part 2: The Sala del Consiglio,” 23-24.

89 Crum initiates the idea of a room’s contents as a “participant” in a contemporary dialogue; see Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 45.

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CHAPTER 3

ANDREA DEL CASTAGNO’S FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN

As the previous chapter demonstrates, a chronological study of the uomini famosi tradition in Italy, via the six cycles produced between 1328 and 1473, shows that while all six held a political function, each cycle deviated slightly from its predecessor. In this chapter an analysis of the figures, the patron, and the social issues surrounding the commission of Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women (1448-1451) [figure 1] will further expand upon the iconographic shift from the use of men from ancient history to the incorporation of Petrarchian ideals. Similar to the underlying function of the uomini famosi in Lucignano, the figures in the

Villa Carducci can be understood as publically popular exemplars. But upon a closer examination, the intense thought, understanding, and knowledge behind this commission emerges and the concept of uomini famosi as an artistic theme shifts from the literal meaning of

"famous men" toward an iconography of exemplars that included women as central players in the narrative. I suggest that Castagno’s frescoed ensemble might best be understood when viewed in relation to the political and social discourse in which the patron, Filippo Carducci played an active role, particularly as related to the Council of Ferrara and Florence. I propose a reading of the frescoes by Castagno in the loggia of the Villa Carducci as a positive commemoration of the

Council, which closed a decade before the frescoes were commissioned, and the patron’s role in the events surrounding it.

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I. The Cycle and Literature

Andrea del Castagno’s fresco cycle of Famous Men and Women was originally located in a loggia of the Villa Carducci at Legnaia, Florence, a room that functioned as a hall for entertaining guests, many of whom would have been intellectual elites who likely recognized the historic and near-contemporary figures frescoed on the walls. The cycle depicts six males and three females, each over eight feet tall. All nine figures are identified through Latin inscriptions.

In 1966 the cycle was moved, in its entirety, to the Uffizi Gallery. When Castagno’s frescoes were in situ, the nine figures of the Famous Men and Women formed a horizontal line that encompassed the entire back wall of the room. Each of the figures was displayed in an individual painted niche and separated from the other figures by illusionistic architectural elements [figure

1]. The figures were arranged in groups, from left to right. These included three soldiers from

Florentine history: Filippo Scolari, Farinata degli Uberti, and Niccolὸ Acciaiuoli; three historical females: the Cumaean Sibyl, Queen Esther, and Queen Tomyris; and three literary figures: Dante

Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca, and Giovanni Boccaccio.1

The three males on the left-hand side of the cycle were all near-contemporary

Florentines, each with a distinctive military background. The first figure is Filippo Scolari, also known as Pippo Spano (1369-1426) [figure 14]. Scolari was a Florentine generalissimo and a commander of the Hungarian army.2 To the right of Scolari is Farinata degli Uberti (1212-1264)

[figure 15], a Florentine citizen and commander of the Ghibelline political faction in Florence.3

The final male military figure in Castagno’s cycle is Niccolò Acciauoli (1310-1365) [figure 16], a Florentine citizen who became Grand Seneschal of the Kingdom of Naples.4 To the right of the three Florentine soldiers were three female figures from classical antiquity and Biblical literature. To the right of Niccolò Acciaiuoli was the Cumaean Sibyl [figure 17], famous for her

45 role in predicting the coming of Christ, an incident recounted in Virgil's Aeneid.5 Castagno’s fresco cycle is divided in the center by a doorway, above which appears the half-length image of

Queen Esther, an Old Testament Biblical figure [figure 18].6 According to the Book of Esther, she became the Jewish queen of the Persian King Ahasuerus and risked her life to save the

Jewish people in his kingdom from death.7 The final female figure in Castagno’s cycle is Queen

Tomyris (c. 500 BC) of the Massagetai [figure 19]; according to the ancient historian Herodotus,

Tomyris defeated the Persian emperor, Cyrus, after he attempted to take over the lands of her kingdom.8 The final three figures in the fresco cycle were all contemporary authors with strong

Florentine and humanist ties. To the right of Queen Tomyris was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

[figure 20], author of the Divine Comedy (1308-1321). To the right of Dante is Petrarch (1304-

1374) [figure 21], author of, as we have seen, De viris illustribus. The final was Giovanni

Boccaccio (1313-1375) [figure 22]. Boccaccio was a pupil and friend of Petrarch and used De viris illustribus as a model for his own book, De mulieribus claris (“Famous Women”) (1361-

1362).9

Giorgio Vasari identified four of the over life-sized figures in the Villa Carducci in his short biography of Andrea del Castagno in 1550 as Filippo Scolari, Dante, Petrarch, and

Boccaccio.10 Because of a lack of additional primary sources or information relating to the commission, there are questions regarding patronage and dating. Most secondary literature dedicated to the cycle deals with these issues and iconographic interpretation. Both Filippo

Carducci and his nephew, Andrea Carducci, have been identified as patrons for the cycle.11 Most scholars agree that the fresco cycle should be dated between 1448 and 1451, but the three years between raise questions regarding patronage. Based on archival evidence, specifically primary source tax documents belonging to the Carducci, most now accept Filippo Carducci as patron.12

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By far the most extensive study of Castagno’s cycle in the Villa Carducci is, as was noted in

Chapter One, a dissertation by Josephine Dunn (1990). Dunn provides an iconographic analysis of the cycle, aligning the content with Florentine politics and the career of Filippo Carducci. She examines each figure and explains how Florentines viewed each, through contemporary literary and visual precedents.13

As Dunn makes clear in her analysis, there was no specific visual or literary precedent for the combination of figures in Castagno’s cycle. As was discussed in Chapter Two, fresco cycles created during the early Italian Renaissance that contained soldiers typically commemorated war heroes from ancient history. As such, Castagno’s inclusion of contemporary individuals varied somewhat from the uomini famosi tradition. But frescoed monuments commemorating near- contemporary heroes of war were not unusual in Florence at the time. A series of secular memorials was proposed for the Florentine Cathedral prior to Carducci’s cycle, creating a precedent for the inclusion of contemporary soldiers. By 1436 Paolo Uccello’s equestrian fresco of the British knight, John Hawkwood (d. 1394) [figure 72], was the only completed memorial of the series planned for the Cathedral at the time. Like Castagno’s three soldiers in the Villa

Carducci, Hawkwood was a near-contemporary and identifiable figure in Florence. Unlike the soldiers in the Villa Carducci, the fresco of Hawkwood served as a funerary monument and was located in a religious building. Additionally, Castagno’s three soldiers were all Florentine-born while Hawkwood was a non-Florentine general who was hired to protect the patria.14 While

Uccello’s temporarily solitary fresco in the Florentine Cathedral does create a working dialogue on the commemoration of near-contemporary men of worth, an entire cycle including such figures was unprecedented in Florence at the time of Castagno’s commission.15

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Castagno’s fresco in the Villa Carducci stands as the earliest extant visual example of

Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio grouped together.16 Scholars and poets were also included in previous uomini famosi cycles, such as the Orsini cycle in Rome. Unlike Castagno’s cycle, the scholars in the Orsini series were not grouped together by type, but arranged chronologically, amid a variety of other figures.17 In the Villa Carducci, only Castagno’s three poets stand in chronological order; the soldiers and the women do not. Florentine literary precedents for the grouping of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio existed, somewhat, in the fifteenth century.

Leonardo Bruni (1401-1406) and Giannozzo Manetti (1440), Florentine statesmen and chancellors, included each of the three poets in their respective texts, but not as a triad.18 The three poets were depicted individually prior to Castagno’s series; but, as Dunn notes, only Dante and Petrarch were previously depicted together. She examines the possibility of Castagno’s three poets representing and epitomizing the primacy of the Tuscan vernacular.19

While the choice of the six individual men in Castagno’s frescoed series have no exact visual or literary precedent, they do fit within established visual themes based on their identification as either soldiers or scholars. The three women, however, have not been so easily explained. They are not grouped in chronological order, are not from the same historical eras, and are not identified as members of a cohesive type, other than that they are female.20 To date, no known visual precedent for Castagno’s combination of female figures has been discovered.21

Today, only one other wall of frescoes from the original installation remains in situ

[figure 23]. Discovered in 1948, the religious figures are located on the smaller wall to the left of where the nine figures were originally located [figure 73]. What has rarely been considered in prior studies is that, in their original location in the Villa Carducci, the Cycle of Famous Men and

Women was adjacent to a group of religious images, a fact that lends itself to the idea of a

48 correlation of the commission with the Council of Ferrara and Florence, which closed ten years prior to the fresco commission.22 Various scholars have attempted to establish a connection between the religious figures and the cycle of Famous Men and Women.23 One reason for the historical hesitancy to consider the room as a whole is the debate regarding the original structure of space. Scholars have discussed whether the room was originally a four-walled rectangular room or a three-walled hallway with arches on the fourth long wall opening up the room to the outside.24 Dunn attempts to explain the choice of the three women in Castagno’s Cycle of

Famous Men and Women by relating their roles to the Virgin Mary and Christ Child [figure 74],

Adam [figure 75], and Eve [figure 76] on the adjacent wall. This explanation, however, does not adequately consider Castagno's remaining six figures.25 There remains, then, a need to consider the religious imagery on the smaller left wall of the loggia in relation to the adjacent Cycle of

Famous Men and Women as an equal contributor to the overall theme.26

As this review of the literature demonstrates, the majority of art-historical research dedicated to the Castagno series takes the form of iconographic analysis.27 Dunn and others have identified the nine figures painted in the Carducci Villa, and the adjacent, explicitly Christian imagery, as unified through notions Florentine civic pride, the importance of active and contemplative life styles, and as bolstering the political career of their patron. I do not believe that any of these explanations are necessarily incorrect. While the nine figures Castagno depicted may have, indeed, served those purposes, others were available that would have better and more cohesively exemplified those ideals. While Dunn does make reference to the patron Filippo

Carducci’s involvement with the Council, she does not provide a comprehensive statement of how the iconography correlated, through Carducci, with concerns of and events surrounding the

Council of Ferrara and Florence.28

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Reference to the Council of Ferrara and Florence offers a context for better understanding the space and the iconography. When the Cycle of Famous Men and Women is analyzed, keeping in mind the importance of the Decree of Union and the protections that it assumed as a historic event in the lives of contemporary Florentines, specifically Filippo Carducci, an underlying and unifying theme begins to emerge. While Dunn referenced Filippo Carducci’s position within the

Florentine government and his involvement with the Council of Ferrara and Florence in her analysis, she overlooked, I suggest, the possibility that the unusual iconography of the cycle series may have been shaped by Carducci’s role in and desire to commemorate the Council.29

II. The Council of Ferrara and Florence and the Patron

A consideration of the political concerns of Filippo di Giovanni Carducci offers new insights regarding the choice of figures in the Castagno cycle and the underlying theme of the frescoes. The Carducci family of Florence consisted of thirteen households, all of which were located near Santa Maria Novella. They were wealthy, but not to the extent that the Medici were; the Carducci were ranked forty-first in wealth in their quarter.30 Filippo Carducci and his brother,

Bartolommeo, were members of the Florentine Silk Guild as well as established bankers within the city. As bankers, they once obtained the papal privilege of acting as creditors to Pope John

XXIII (r. 1410-1415), along with the Medici.31

Filippo Carducci held many political and civic positions within the Florentine Republic during his lifetime. These included the position of gonfalonieri of Santa Maria Novella, which he held three times, twice under the Medici regime; service as one of the Dodici Bonomini, a position he also held three times; seven terms on the war magistracy, the Magistrato degli Otto; and membership in the Medici Council.32 His most prestigious position, however, was as

Gonfaloniere di Giustiza, the highest Florentine civic office. Filippo first held this position in

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1417 and again in 1439, the latter term having significant historical value.33 Florentine elected civic offices rotated every few months, as a result, there were multiple Gonfaloniere di Giustiza during the period when the Church Council met in Florence. Carducci held this position from the first day of July to the last day of August 1439. As such, Filippo Carducci was the highest- ranking official of the Florentine government when the Decree of Union was signed on 6 July

1439. Carducci’s prominent position within the government during the time of the Council placed him at the front of the political and religious debates.34 A rare non-ecclesiastical account of the Council places Carducci, as the Standard-bearer of Justice, near Pope Eugenius IV during

Council proceedings. Carducci even aided in readying water and wine for papal use in the

Mass.35 On the day of his departure from Florence, the Byzantine Emperor John VIII Palaiologos honored Filippo Carducci with the rank of Count Palatine, making him a member of the emperor’s household with “the authority [to] bear the arms of the said Emperor, and…legitimize bastards, and…appoint imperial notaries.”36

It is conceivable that holding the highest elected position in the Florentine government during what was viewed as one of the most historic unions to date was one of the most significant days of Filippo Carducci’s life. As such, considering the program for the walls in the loggia of Carducci’s palazzo as potentially commemorating the success of the Council and its historical importance in Florence seems a worthy effort. Carducci understood the political and social importance in commissioning artwork that expressed ideas and emphasized events that were not only important to the patron, but also positively reflected his position within the

Republic. As a member of the elite Medici circle, Carducci would have been conscious of the benefits derived from remaining in the favor of the powerful family.37 As was noted in Chapter

One, Cosimo de’ Medici was intensely proud of his own role in bringing the Council to Florence

51 and position as Gonfaloniere di Giustiza during the opening ceremonies of the Council there.38 A pride that, Roger Crum demonstrated, likely shaped the later iconography of Gozzoli's Journey of the Magi (1459) and Lippi's Adoration of the Child (1463). After the publicized success of the

Union in Florence, Carducci seems to have recognized the religious and political value of emphasizing his role in promoting the reunification of the Church, especially as a defense against the ever-present threat of attack from the Ottoman Turks.39

III. Castagno’s Famous Men and Women and the Council

An important signal regarding Carducci’s pride in his role in the successful Council is found on the exterior of the loggia façade. Visible today, it displays the patron’s revised coat of arms, including the double eagle of the Palaeologan Greek empire.40 Inside the loggia, the individuals depicted in the Cycle of Famous Men and Women were carefully chosen to create a coordinated cycle unified by the political and religious interests of the patron, creating a dramatic, multilayered message regarding the importance of religion, civic pride, political duties, and the protection of all three in the Carducci home.

IIIa. Filippo Scolari

The first figure in Castagno’s cycle is Florentine-born Filippo Scolari (1369-1426)

[figure 14], commander of the Hungarian army under King Sigismund (1368-1473) for over thirty years. Sigismund was the Holy Roman Emperor for the majority of the Council debates; he died shortly before the Council was moved from Ferrara to Florence. Scolari was titled count supreme, or gespann, of Temesvar, a position that allowed him to act as surrogate ruler on behalf the Hungarian monarchy, influencing military and political decisions throughout the kingdom.

King Sigismund also bestowed upon Scolari the title “Silver Knight of the Order of the Dragon,”

52 a distinction that meant he was to protect the throne of Sigismund as well as battle the enemies of

Christendom.41

While a member of the household of King Sigismund, Scolari fought many battles both domestically and abroad. During his lifetime, his militant reputation was known throughout the

Italian states and also by the Turks.42 Early Florentine humanists extolled Scolari’s military successes, intentionally emphasizing his multiple victories over the Turks, won in the name of

Christianity.43 Prohibiting the invasion of Turks into Hungary as well as other parts of Christian

Western Europe became the primary issue in Sigismund’s, and therefore Scolari’s, external policy.44 Sigismund’s legitimate concerns regarding manifested in his insistence on a Council to discuss the unification of the Eastern and Western divisions of the Church as a defense against the Turks. Scolari attended the Council of Constance (1414) the precursor to the Council of

Ferrara and Florence with King Sigismund.45

Within the Villa Carducci, Scolari, clad in fifteenth-century armor, stood alert with his sword is drawn [figure 14]. Dunn proposes that Scolari’s stance and unsheathed sword could have been a signifier to contemporary viewers of the ever-present possibility of invasion by the

Turks, but does not connect this to the Council.46 Another reading of Castagno’s portrayal of

Scolari is possible, though.47 Scholars have noted that Castagno’s Scolari could be holding a scimitar, a Turkish single-edged curved weapon, or a broken sword.48 In 1436 Scolari gave his friend and kinsman, the Florentine Rinaldo degli Albizzi, a Turkish scimitar as a gift.49 When understood as a spoil from the victory of battle given to a prominent government official, the scimitar reiterated Scolari’s ability as a defender of the Christian nations. Castagno’s depiction of

Scolari, painted after the unification of the Church and before the fall of Constantinople to the

Turks, epitomizes the Florentine-born soldier as a conqueror of the Turks, confirmed through

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Scolari’s possession of his enemy’s weapon. Florentines saw Scolari’s military victories as evidence of their city’s ability to produce exemplary men. Born in the same year as Filippo

Carducci, Scolari was a contemporary and a relative by marriage. Like Carducci, Scolari was also honored with the rank of Count Palatine by the Byzantine emperor.50

IIIb. Farinata degli Uberti

The soldier Farinata degli Uberti (d. 1264) [figure 15] was commander of the Ghibelline faction in Florence from 1239-1264 and major player in the Guelph and Ghibelline conflicts of

1250-1270. In 1260 Ghibelline troops under Farinata’s leadership intended to burn down the city of Florence. Despite Farinata’s party loyalty and his family’s continual exile from the city by the

Guelph majority, his love and civic pride for the city of his birth would not allow this travesty to occur. He was praised in fifteenth-century Florence as a savior of the city and is seen in

Florentine history as a figure of deliverance.51 Dunn remarks that it is because of this that

Farinata could be praised in a predominately Guelf Florence of the 1450’s.52

Key to Castagno’s Council-centered program is, I suggest, Farinata’s redemptive act: he stood defiantly against the troops that he once commanded in order to ensure the preservation of

Florence. The inscription in the Villa Carducci identifies Farinata as the liberator of his country.53 Castagno did not depict Farinata addressing his troops and expressing his opposition to their plan. Instead, Farinata’s sword is sheathed; the Ghibelline commander has no intention of fighting. His historical decision and Castagno’s inscription align Farinata with the defense of his homeland and the preservation of the papacy, key issues to Florentines and the Western Church during the Council of Ferrara and Florence.

Dunn explains that, visually, Farinata’s sword [figure 15] promises his defense of

Florence and Scolari’s firm grip on his weapon [figure 14] reiterates his desire to preserve the

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Eastern boundaries of the Church.54 What she does not state directly is that by alluding to the defense of Florence and the guarding of Eastern boundaries, Castagno aligned the figures with the Council of Florence and its hope that, through aligning the Eastern and Western Catholic

Churches, a united front would be formed to defend against the Ottomans, east of

Constantinople.

IIIc. Niccolò Acciaiuoli

The third soldier in Castagno’s cycle is Niccolò Acciaiuoli (1310-1365) [figure 16]. Like

Scolari, Acciaiuoli was a Florentine citizen who resided abroad. In 1347 Acciaiuoli was the chief advisor Louis of Taranto, the second husband to Queen Joan of Naples. A year later, Acciaiuoli was given the title of Gran Seneschal of Naples. In that position he commanded the Neapolitan army and stood as the unofficial ruler of the region.55 Like Filippo Carducci, Acciaiuoli was bestowed with the rank of Count Palatine by the Byzantine emperor.56 Carducci’s family was historically associated with the Acciaiuoli family through business partnerships and marriages.57

Because of his close association with the Carducci family as well as his political and military power abroad, Acciaiuoli’s inclusion in the cycle would have reaffirmed the status of the patron and expressed his opinion regarding the greatness of Florence, using the success of her citizens as criteria.

In 1343 Acciaiuoli’s friend, Petrarch, traveled to Naples and wrote that he found there to be “no piety, no trust, no faith.”58 Acciaiuoli might have felt a similar absence of Christian values upon his arrival in Naples four years later; he founded a knightly order that aligned itself with Virgil. As a Knight of the Order of the Knot, Acciaiuoli expressed desire was to conquer the

Holy Land as a Knight of Christ.59 Political unrest, both domestically and abroad, aggravated by internal religious discord was prevalent throughout the Italian states. As commander of the

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Neapolitan military, Acciaiuoli would have been acutely aware of the possibility of invasion from the East. As a self-proclaimed Christian knight yearning for a crusade, the defense of the holy city of Constantinople and the preservation of the papal land holdings from the Turks would have been of upmost importance. Acciaiuoli’s order of Christian knights and his desire for a crusade are the key factors for Carducci’s Council-themed program.

IIId. Cumaean Sibyl

The three female figures in Castagno’s cycle are known from literary sources, both

Biblical and classical. The first female, the fourth figure in the series, is the Cumaean Sibyl

[figure 17]. The Carducci Villa frescoes likely represent the first monumental depiction of the

Sibyl in early Renaissance Florence.60 The titulus at her feet, recalls her fabled prediction of the coming of Christ Virgil’s fourth Eclogue (line 4). There, the Cumaean Sibyl references a “new ruler.”61 Throughout the Middle Ages this was taken as a prophecy of Christ’s birth.62

The titulus provides the only means of accurately identifying the figure. Historically, accounts of sibyls varied. The women were often given multiple names or called the wrong name, and their respective attributes were never agreed upon.63 Varro’s ancient Roman account of the Cumaean Sibyl tells of the prophetess’s arrival in Italy and of her meeting with the first

King of Rome, Tarquin. In her possession, the Sibyl had books that foretold future events, which

Tarquin eventually purchased.64 Castagno’s Cumaean Sibyl holds one book, plausibly representing the book of prophecies sold to Tarquin. Dunn, however, does not believe that the ancient Roman story of the Sibyl burning her books of prophecy fits within the calm aesthetic of the Villa Carducci. She explains that it was somewhat common throughout the Renaissance to depict sibyls holding manuscripts as an attribute of wisdom.65 Disagreeing with Dunn's interpretation of Castagno’s Cumaean Sibyl, I believe that the previous figures of Scolari and

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Farinata (and later, Queen Tomyris) establish that a depiction of the Sibyl holding the book of prophecy is understandable within the program of the loggia. Boccaccio’s tale of the Sibyl and

Tarquin emphasized Roman dependency on the prophetic text to rule the Empire. Boccaccio’s text, popular in fifteenth-century Florence, would have aided in the understanding of the

Cumaean Sibyl as a key character in the reign of the first King of Rome.66

The combination of the Sibyl’s fabled prediction of the coming of Christ and identification with the success of Rome may have motivated her inclusion within the Castagno cycle. For fifteenth-century Florentines Castagno’s Cumean Sibyl may have recalled the success of the Roman Empire and, through prophecy of a “new ruler”, that a return to a unified Empire was possible again.67 The dualities in her character speak to the inherent religious and civic nature of the Council of Ferrara and Florence and its dual role of unifying the Church and protecting secular lands The ties of the religious figures within the political realm as well as the political figures within the religious realm were indistinguishable.

IIIe. Esther

The central figure in the cycle was Queen Esther [figure 18], the Jewish spouse of the

Persian King, Ahasuerus, also known as Xerxes.68 According to the Old Testament Book of

Esther (2:20), out of fear, Esther did not tell her husband that she was a Jew. An order was given by the King’s chief minister, Haman, that all Jews within the kingdom would be killed. Esther risked her life by revealing to the King that she was a Jew in a selfless attempt to save her people.69 The fifteenth-century Florentine Archbishop Antoninus stated that Florentine women should strive to emulate Queen Esther.70 Castagno had few visual examples of Queen Esther.

The only known extant example of a public image of Esther in Florence in the first half of the fifteenth century is Franco Sacchetti’s depiction of Esther in a vault in Orsanmichele [figure

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77].71 Contemporary Biblical manuscripts typically depicted Esther before Ahasuerus or near the deceased Haman [figure 78].72

Of particular import here is the fact that, in the eyes of the Christian Church, Esther successfully changed the fate of the Persian Empire.73 The goal of fifteenth-century crusaders was to accomplish the same with the Ottomans. This was reiterated by Castagno through a contemporary understanding of the land occupied by the Turks as the former Persian empire.

Most importantly, though, Esther was often seen as a symbol of the Church, her heroic act identified as saving God's chosen people.74 Her position at the center of the Carducci cycle might, therefore, be understood as symbolic of that role. Within the mid-fifteenth century context this meant keeping Florence and the Church safe from the Turks.75

IIIf. Tomyris

Queen Tomyris of the Massagetai (c. 500 BCE) [figure 19] is located to the right of

Esther. According to ancient historian Herodotus (The Histories), the Massagaeti were an eastern warrior nation that worshiped only the sun. Their queen, Tomyris, took the throne after the death of her husband. The Persian emperor, Cyrus, tried to convince Tomyris that he wished to marry her but she rejected his offer immediately, knowing that the ruler desired nothing more than to expand his dominion. After Cyrus attacked her people and took her son prisoner, Queen Tomyris led her people into battle against the Persian’s forces, resulting in what Herodotus wrote called the fiercest of all combats between barbarians. Tomyris’s army prevailed, killing Cyrus and the majority of his army.76 Illustrations of Tomyris from the fourteenth and fifteenth century traditionally depict her mutilation of Cyrus’s corpse [figure 80].77 Castagno’s Tomyris [figure

19], like Farinata [figure 15], stands without her weapon drawn; her battle is over and she has prevailed.

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The story of Queen Tomyris, too, may well have been linked in the minds of Florentines with defense against the Ottoman threat. Like Queen Esther, Tomyris changed the course of the

Persian Empire. Through the death of Cyrus, Tomyris halted the expansion of his dominion and ensured that her people would not fall under the rule of the eastern king.78 The land of the

Persian Kings, Ahasuerus and Cyrus, was that of the Ottomans in the fifteenth century, aiding an understanding of Castagno’s women as representing the unified Church, through the Council, prevailing over the Turks.

IIIg. Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321

Adjacent to the three female figures are three renowned Florentine poets from contemporary history: Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Each wrote numerous texts which circulated throughout Italy and were popular within their lifetimes. Many of the ideas, both secular and religious, that sparked debate and discussion between the eastern and western delegates at the Council, originated in their texts. The blurred line between secular and religious images, as noted previously, was an art that they had mastered. The depictions of Dante,

Petrarch, and Boccaccio by Castagno are remarkable in that each represents the earliest extant mural image of the poet produced in early modern Florence.79 While their opinions and beliefs did not always coincide, each man had strong feelings regarding religion, Florentine pride, humanism, the glorification and supremacy of Rome and efforts to protect her magnificence – all of which might have held special appeal for Carducci in commemorating the success of the

Council.

The first Florentine poet in Castagno's uomini famosi is Dante Alighieri (1256-1321)

[figure 20]. Unlike the crusading dreams of military men, such as Acciaiuoli, Dante’s crusading goals centered more on the domestic front, rather than foreign wars.80 To him, schism was a

59 much more pressing issue crusades to the East.81 As an adult, Dante saw the divisions within the

Church drive the pope out of Rome, to Avignon.82 In his De Monarchia (1312-1313) Dante suggested peace between European rulers and advocated for a restoration of the Empire based on the model established by the Romans.83 Dante’s ideal crusader traveled west, not east, fighting to reclaim his religion and his nation from its own destruction.84 The frustrations felt by Dante and his contemporaries were not foreign concepts to fifteenth-century Florentines. The desire to end the schism within the Church had come to fruition, they believed, with the Council of Ferrara and Florence. Dante’s grand plan for the restoration of the Roman Empire as a means to establish unity and peace resonated among the fifteenth-century humanists and was increasingly prevalent in art and literature. However, in fifteenth-century Florence, this theme could have been understood another way in the Villa Carducci: Florence, as the new Rome, had established unity and peace through the Council of Ferrara and Florence.

IIIh. Francesco Petrarca, 1304-1374

Like Dante, Petrarch advocated the revival of Ancient Rome. Petrarch’s 1337 impression of disarray in Rome juxtaposed with the imagined ideal of Ancient Rome that the poet held with the highest esteem.85 While in Rome for his coronation as poet laureate in 1341, Petrarch wrote to a friend, discussing his frustrations with contemporary Romans and their lack of knowledge or appreciation of their own history. He states, “Who can doubt that Rome would rise up again if she but began to know herself?”86 Petrarch rarely mentioned the years between the decline of the

Roman Empire up to his own generation.87 Petrarch saw the era of ancient Rome as the ideal; there was unification and peace. Beginning with the decline of the Empire and the shift in power to the East, to Constantinople, Petrarch was highly critical. The loss of Roman primacy and power, wealth and land, and the division of the Roman Catholic Church, as Petrarch understood

60 them, all occurred during that era. In the minds of Petrarch and his contemporaries, the

“barbarians” in the East were to blame for this societal decline.88

Petrarch felt that the Turks were “crossing over from there [Greece] toward us and true

Catholicism.”89 Believing his generation the modern heirs of Roman tradition, Petrarch felt that it was their right to send crusaders East, to reclaim the vast amounts of land that once made up the Empire. As a humanist, Petrarch melded the identities of victorious ancient Romans with contemporary Christian values, creating a new understanding regarding Turks in the East and crusades. Using the Persian Wars as a compelling example, Petrarch preached the supremacy of

Western Civilization. He believed that the triumph of the Greeks, who he identified as

Westerners like the Romans, over the Persians nearly two-thousand years before assured the success of the Western crusaders.90

In the fifteenth century, crusades were not as common as in previous generations.

Domestic issues such as the Schism within the Church and disputes among the Italian city-states took precedent and inhibited the scale of recruiting and fundraising necessary for a successful crusade.91 The fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manifestation of a new crusading rhetoric can be best understood in the form of the numerous enumerical Councils formed that were aimed at restoring the primacy of the papacy, and therefore Rome, and establishing a successful campaign designed to keep the eastern invaders from attacking the Church's lands. Petrarch’s popular dialogue regarding crusading and contemporary heirs of ancient Rome was visually understood in the Villa Carducci, and his position next to the figure of Dante amplified the possibility of a

Florentine interpretation.

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IIIi. Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375

The last of Castagno’s poets is Giovanni Boccaccio [figure 22]. Boccaccio reached the highest level of his fame later in life than did both Dante and Petrarch. Because of this,

Boccaccio is traditionally depicted in middle age. Castagno, breaking from an established canon, painted Boccaccio as the Florentine academic and citizen of his earlier years.92 Early biographers of Boccaccio praised his Latin works, yet ignored his earlier works written in the vernacular.

Fifteenth-century biographers, however, praised the works by Boccaccio, Dante, and Petrarch in the vernacular and credited the poets for legitimizing the language read by the majority of literate

Florentine citizens.93 Like Dante and Petrarch, Boccaccio was an influential Florentine humanist and believed in a rebirth of the formerly glorious Rome. His book De mulieribus claris was the first Renaissance text devoted to the stories of the lives of famous women.

The common feature of all nine characters found in Castagno’s series is their link to the

Council of Ferrara and Florence and its unification of the Church, still valid at the time of the commission. The three soldiers all fought to defend the boarders against the Turks, praised the city of their birth, and were Christian warriors. By choosing these three statesman, Scolari,

Uberti, and Acciaiuoli, Carducci emphasized the power of Christianity and its empire outside of

Rome, the importance and power of Florence in modern history, and the divine right of the

Church in its ordained crusade against the Turks. The importance of secular and Christian texts in one’s understanding of the correct and virtuous way to live was discussed in the writings of both Petrarch and Boccaccio.94 Eastern and Western humanists present at the Council of

Florence and Ferrara believed in a liberal arts religious education and debated both Greek and

Roman manuscripts throughout their extended stay in Florence.95 Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio each wrote on the primacy of Rome, and therefore of the Roman church, and their society’s need

62 to return to this era. This “return,” as seen in the years following the Decree of Union, was initiated by the union, and therefore the defense established of the one true Church with the

Roman pontiff as its divinely appointed leader. The humanistic desire to see a new dawning of the Golden Age of Rome and a rebirth of ancient Rome’s peace and prosperity seemed attainable once the church was united and the threat of the loss of Constantinople and invasion of the

Church’s rightful land was temporarily thwarted. The three women included also represented liberation from tyrants (like the Ottoman Turks), war and death for virtuous causes (like the defense of Constantinople from an invasion of the Turks), and the melding of secular and religious figures hailing from different cultures (like those of the Greeks and the Latins) into a unified theme of the one true Church.

IV. Famous Men and Women and the Religious Imagery in the Loggia

As noted previously, scholars have alluded to an iconographical connection between the two extant frescoed walls within the Villa Carducci. However an explanation encompassing all nine of the Famous Men and Women as well as the Virgin, Christ Child, Adam, and Eve has not yet been proposed. The close proximity of the religious figures to the nine Famous Men and

Women augments the reading of the frescoes as a commemoration of the Council of Ferrara and

Florence. Politically, the successful union of the Churches, ideally, ensured Western protection from Ottoman invaders. Spiritually, the Churches debated many theological issues in an attempt to reach an overall agreement in doctrine. The Western views prevailed and this fact was widely celebrated in Florence, after the fact. Similarly, this new Church doctrine was reiterated in the later arrangement in the Medici chapel, Adoration of the Virgin (1463) by Filippo Lippi. By situating the secular Famous Men and Women perpendicularly to the religious figures, Carducci's

63 loggia suggests the political need to protect the holy lands and territories of the Church while reiterating the importance of the Church's piety and doctrine.

V. Conclusion

The Council of Ferrara and Florence was an important moment in history for Florentines.

Not only did it unite the Church under a Latin doctrine, but also it fostered Florentine civic pride.

Castagno's Cycle of Famous Men and Women represents what may have been the first large- scale commemoration of this event. Reference to the political career of Filippo Carducci at the time of the Council of Ferrara and Florence and at the time of the commission provides a more nuanced reading of Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women. The theme of the cycle, as a whole, as well as each figure individually, can be uniquely connected with the Council of

Ferrara and Florence and Filippo Carducci’s involvement.

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1 See Franklin, Boccaccio’s Heroines, 86; and Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 29-32, 178.

2 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 31-32.

3 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 108. Boccaccio wrote the longest commentary ever written about Farinata in an unfinished commentary on Dante’s Inferno; see Gilbert, “On Castagno’s Nine,” 177.

4 On Acciaiuoli’s position in Naples, see David Abulafia, “Southern Italy and the Florentine Economy, 1265-1370,” The Economic History Review 34, no. 3 (1981): 377-88. On Acciaiuoli’s friendships with both Petrarch and Boccaccio, see Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 31, 177.

5 Anke Holdenried, The Sibyl and Her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin “Sibylla Tiburtina” c. 1050-1500 (Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing), 2006.

6 Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 178. Esther’s original inscription was most likely at her feet, like the other eight uomini famosi. With the addition of the doorway in the loggia, her inscription was probably transferred to the lintel above. Esther’s titulus was then destroyed during a 1966 restoration. For information regarding Esther’s missing inscription and the paint loss that occurred to all of Castagno’s uomini famosi during the earlier addition of the doorway, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 362, 366.

7 Book of Esther, Books 1-10.

8 See Herodotus, The History, trans. George Rawlinson, (New York: Dutton, 1862). Tomyris is also mentioned in Famous Women, see Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women. trans. and ed. by Virginia Brown (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001).

9 Boccaccio, Famous Women, xi, xii.

10 Out of the nine figures in the cycle, four of them had been previously identified by Vasari in 1550 and again in 1568; Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sybil,” 359. In 1510 Albertini correctly attributed the fresco cycle to Andrea del Castagno, but interprets the series as depicting famous Florentine men, with no mention of the men’s names or statuses. He also incorrectly identifies the three female figures as three sibyls; see Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 29.

11 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 504; Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and his Patrons, 33-34; and Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 179.

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12 Regarding the claim and proof that the patron for Castagno’s Famous Men and Women is Filippo di Giovanni Carducci, see Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and his Patrons, 35. Alternatively, Joost-Gaugier discusses theories concerning the possibility and identity of a humanistic advisor on the artistic program under the assumption that Andrea Carducci is the patron, in order to support her hypothesis, see Chrisiane L. Joost-Gaugier, "Castagno's Humanistic Program at Legnaia and Its Possible Inventor," Zeitschrift fur Kunstgeschichte 45, no. 3 (1982): 281-82. To date, no scholar has provided a cohesive and coherent reading of the space that accounts for the iconography in its entirety or fully explains the reason for the assemblage of figures in the space. Creighton Gilbert (1989) proposed that the composition of Castagno’s uomini famosi was actually organized around two groupings of four individuals with Queen Esther as the center image. Gilbert believes compositionally that the Sibyl, shown with a book, was grouped with the Florentine soldiers, while Queen Tomyris, shown with a spear, was grouped with the scholars. This dissonance, Gilbert states, was intended to personify active and contemplative lifestyles and the need to have a balance of both, an important concept during the Renaissance; see Gilbert, “On Castagno’s Nine,” 174-92. Dunn gives a brief synopsis of Gilbert’s hypothesis but does not explain why he believes that Esther was chosen to be the apex of the two groups of four figures, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 368-69;

13 Dunn describes the cycle as a formal unit with the trio of women complementing the two groups of male figures adjacent to them; within the groupings of three figures, two seem to be conversing while one is communicating to the outside audience through a silent gesture. Dunn suggests that figures are united by a theme of redemption through the religious figures’ relationship to the three women, and therefore to the six Florentine men; see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 360, 460-66.

14 Originally, the proposed series within the Florence Cathedral was to exemplify Republican virtues as a type of visual recreation of the Forum of Augustus, which boasted statues of viri illustri. For information regarding the proposed Cathedral program, which later included Castagno’s equestrian fresco of Niccolò da Tolentino (c. 1455), and Uccello’s John Hawkwood, see, W.J. Wegener, “’That the Practice of Arms is Most Excellent Declare the Statues of Valient Men’: The Luccan War and Florentine Political Ideology in Paintings by Uccello and Castagno,” Renaissance Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 132, 136. 15 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 362.

16 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 382.

17 The division of uomini famosi chronologically within artistic cycles was done with Ages of Man, World Chronicle, De viris illustribus, and Nine Worthies themes; see Mode, “Re-Creating Adam,” 503.

18 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 382.

19 In her exhaustive examination of the lives and works of these men, Dunn suggests that their inclusion in the Villa Carducci may not be simply because of their profession as authors, but

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because of the specific works that each man produced; see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 383.

20 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 404.

21 Dunn finds one extrabiblical text in which all three of the female figures are referenced: Speculum humanae salvationis. In this text the women preconfigure Biblical figures and allude to three key points in Christian ideology and salvation: incarnation, redemption through the wounds of the passion, and victory over Satan. There is no prior visual precedent for this triad of females or an example of all three portrayed in the same scene, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 371-376, 404.

22 Eve’s inscription reads: EVA. OM(NIVM). MATER. SVASIONE SVA. GENVS. PEREMIT(MALIS). There is no existing inscription beneath the figure of Adam and the condition of this figure is fragmentary, see Mode, “Re-Creating Adam,” 504. For a translation of Eve’s inscription as, “Eve, mother of all, she guides humanity away from evil with her persuasion”; see Yael Even, “Andrea del Castagno’s Eve: Female Heroes as Anomalies in Italian Renaissance Art,” Woman’s Art Journal 14, no. 2 (Autumn 1993-Winter 1994): 37-42.

23 Robert Mode suggested that a third wall of images may have been originally included in the commission at the Villa Carducci, but this cannot be substantiated at present. Antonio Billi’s translation references a third wall within the loggia at the Villa Carducci and its possible inclusion of St. Jerome; see Mode, “Re-Creating Adam,” 501-14. This is an important hypothesis when considering the theme of memorializing the Council of Ferrara and Florence, including: Pope Martin V had a fascination with St. Jerome, St. Jerome had himself written a manuscript within the framework of uomini famosi, and St. Jerome was credited with translating the Vulgate.

24 Mode, “Re-Creating Adam,” 504

25 Dunn interprets Joost-Gaugier’s reading of the women in Castagno’s cycle as secular heroines emphasizing the liberty and salvation of nations and therefore relating to other figures in the cycle, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 368; also, Joost-Gaugier, “Castagno’s Humanistic Program,” 275.

26 Typically their presence overshadows or trumps any other interpretations or non religious interpretations OR they are separated out of reverence. Because of the secular/religious atmosphere surrounding the Council, it makes sense that it was understood here in the same manner. For more information on this, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women,” 368; Joost-Gaugier, “Castagno’s Humanistic Program,” 275; and Mode, “Re-Creating Adam at Villa Carducci,” 501.

27 Franklin believes that Castagno’s figures can be deduced to a theme of civic responsibility, Franklin, Boccaccio’s Heroines, 89. For the program as serving to personify contemporary ideals of character and achievement, see Mode, “Re-Creating Adam at Villa Carducci,” 501.

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28 See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 522. Marita Horster attests that Castagno’s series was unique due to its combination of historical women grouped with contemporary writers and soldiers; see Horster, Andrea del Castagno: Complete, 29.

29 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 405, 522; and Crum, “Roberto Martelli,” 406-12.

30 Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and his Patrons, 36.

31 Regarding the business partnership between the Medici and the Carducci, see, Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 508.

32 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 500-18. On Carducci’s position under the Medici regime, see Spencer, Andrea del Castagno and His Patrons, 36.

33 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 514.

34 See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 518; and McManus, “Pagolo di Matteo Petriboni’s,” 257-58.

35 McManus, “Pagolo di Matteo Petriboni’s,” 257-58.

36 On the rank and honor of this position, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 514; and McManus, “Pagolo di Matteo Petriboni’s,” 259.

37 Andrea del Castagno’s “Famous Men and Women,” 508.

38 Crum, "Roberto Martelli," 412.

39 Crum, "Roberto Martelli," 406-12.

40 Filippo Carducci was awarded the double eagle and the coat of arms is still visible on the façade, see Franklin, Boccaccio’s Heroines, 86.

41 See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 31-32; and Gustina Scaglia, "An Allegorical Portrait of Emperor Sigismund by Mariano Taccola of Siena," Journal of the Warburn and Courtauld Institutes 31 (1968): 428-34.

42 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 31-33.

43 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 31.

44 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 30-33, 50-53.

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45 Thomas E. Morrissey, "Emperor-Elect Sigismund, Cardinal Zabarella, and the Council of Constance," The Catholic Historical Review 69, no. 3 (July 1983): 359.

46 Dunn provides detailed biographical information on Filippo Scolari as well as his formal depiction within the Villa Carducci. On this, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 68-69.

47 In Florence, Scolari's reputation on the battlefield and his power off of it preceded him. In 1410 he resided in the city for forty-days, causing the government much anxiety. The Florentine people, however, celebrated his arrival in the streets and documented his lavish excess and gifts to the city of his birth in multiple extant diaries. On this, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 53-55, 368.

48 Dunn states that if, in fact, Scolari was depicted by as holding a scimitar, the artistic decision was most likely made based on the gespann’s residence in an eastern land and the assumed consequential assimilation of foreign weapons; see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 57-72.

49 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 56-73.

50 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 366-68.

51 For Farinata’s redemptive act as first noted in Dante’s The Divine Comedy, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 109

52 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 373.

53 On Farinata’s inscription in the Villa Carducci, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 134.

54 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 374.

55 See Ernest H. Wilkins, “Petrarch's Exul ab Italia,” Speculum 38, no. 3 (July 1963): 455; and Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 374-76.

56 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 366.

57 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 167-69.

58 Wilkins, “Petrarch’s Exul ab Italia,” 455.

59 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 376.

60 Unidentifiable sibyls were displayed on a handful of Florentine public buildings. See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sibyl,” 363.

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61 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 416-17; Virgil, Ecologue, IV 268.

62 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 416-17.

63 On the varied accounts of sibyls throughout history, see Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 410-14.

64 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 413.

65 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 416.

66 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 421.

67 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 417.

68 Sidnie White Crawford, “Esther Not Judith: Why One Made It and the Other Didn’t,” Bible Review 18 (2002): 5. 69 Book of Esther, books 1-10.

70 See Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sibyl,” 366; and idem, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 429.

71 In Sacchetti’s image, Esther is holding a rope while Haman kneels at her feet. On this, Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Women: One Sibyl,” 366; and idem, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 430.

72 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 430-31.

73 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 445.

74 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 430.

75 Crum, "Roberto Martelli," 406.

76 Herodotus, The History, trans. by George Rawlinson (New York: Dutton) 1862, I.201-I.214; Vasuni, “Herodotus and the Greco-Persian Wars,” 1836.

77 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 486.

78 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 445.

79 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 335.

80 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 95.

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81 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 118.

82 On the Babylonian captivity and other divisions felt in the time of Dante, see Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 96.

83 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 95-118.

84 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 115.

85 For the Petrarch’s Petrarch idealization of Rome and reference to it as “the city to which there is none like, nor ever will be,” see Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of ‘The Dark Ages’,” 230- 33.

86 On Petrarch’s letters to Giovanni Colonna recalling their travels around Rome in 1341, see Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of ‘The Dark Ages’,” 231-33.

87 Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of ‘The Dark Ages’,” 231-34.

88 Nancy Bisaha, “Petrarch's Vision of the Muslim and Byzantine East,” Speculum 76, no. 2 (April 2001): 284-314.

89 Bisaha, “Petrarch’s Vision of the Muslim,” 284.

90 Bisaha, “Petrarch’s Vision of the Muslim,‘ 284-91.

91 See Setton, The Papacy and the Levant.

92 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 323-327.

93 Dunn, “Andrea del Castagno’s Famous Men and Women,” 324-326.

94 Barsella, “Boccacio, Petrarch, and Peter Damian," 16-48.

95 Sevcenko, “Intellectual Repercussions of the Council of Florence,” 291.

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CHAPTER 4

DOMENICO GHIRLANDAIO'S APOTHEOSIS OF ST. ZENOBIUS AND FAMOUS MEN

The previous chapter demonstrated that Castagno’s Famous Men and Women and religious imagery in the Villa Carducci functioned as a unified ensemble to recall the patron’s involvement with the Council of Ferrara and Florence, which closed ten years before the commission. That cycle, commissioned for a family home, the Villa Carducci, was, I argued, intended to reflect the political values and accomplishments of Filippo Carducci and his position in relation to that historical, social, and religious event. In this chapter I consider Domenico

Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men [figure 2], located in the Sala dei

Gigli in the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florentine city hall. Ghirlandaio’s frescoes were commissioned by the newly created governing body of the Florentine Republic, the Council of Seventy, controlled by the de facto ruler of the city, Lorenzo de’ Medici. I suggest that Ghirlandaio’s cycle, created more than thirty years after the Villa Carducci frescoes and located in a public space rather than a private palazzo, was another ensemble of uomini famosi that featured significant references to the Council of Ferrara and Florence.

The transfer of the Council of Ferrara to Florence and its resulting success was, as we have seen, an enormous source of civic and religious pride for Florentines who retrospectively recognized the Council's time there from 1438 to 1439 as monumentally important for the

Republic and its influence. The unification of the Eastern and Western Churches that took place in the Florence of Cosimo il Vecchio and Eugenius IV, however, was far removed from the

72 discord that marked Florentine and papal relations in 1482. I suggest that a recollection of

Florence's glorious past was attractive to the government, which was experiencing civil unrest and at odds with the papacy and experiencing civil unrest.1 The figures included in Ghirlandiao’s ensemble, this chapter suggests, are united be references to Christian primacy, Roman lineage, and divine intervention, connected through the ideas of the Council of Ferrara and Florence, redressed in the guise of contemporary issues. In an era of instability between Florence and the

Roman Catholic Church, these themes were fundamental to contemporary Florentines. The intense civic pride of Florentines, as discussed in the previous chapter, created an atmosphere of belief that they could, in fact, be the new Roman Republic.2

I. The Cycle and Literature

In 1482 Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494) received a commission from the city government of Florence to produce decorations in the Sala dei Gigli, or the Room of the Lilies, in the Palazzo Vecchio [figure 24].3 Today, the Sala dei Gigli is distinguished as one of the only rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio that has not been altered since the Renaissance.4 The Sala was formed in the 1470s during a renovation of the Palazzo Vecchio, a building constructed beginning in 1299 [figure 25].5 At the time of Ghirlandaio’s commission the second-story room was primarily used by the government officials as a meeting room in which they received the public [figure 26].6

Ghirlandaio’s frescoes adorn the east wall of the room [figure 24]. The wall is divided by four pilasters with three arches of frescoed garland between them. Together, the three arches form a majestic triumphal arch covering the entire wall. The outer two arches are placed over a door, on the left, and a blind window, on the right. In 1589 another doorway was created in the east wall, connecting the adjoining room, the Room of the Maps; this renovation destroyed a

73 section of the right-hand central portion of the fresco [figure 80].7 The north wall of the Sala dei

Gigli contains monumental windows that overlook the Florentine Cathedral, or the Duomo

[figure 81]. Both the south and west walls of the Sala dei Gigli, painted a vibrant blue hue with gold fleur-de-lis, have doorways leading into other rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio. The corner of the west and south wall of the room, at the time of Ghirlandaio’s fresco commission, was the location of Donatello’s marble David (c. 1408-1409) [figure 82]; today it is the location of

Donatello’s bronze Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1455-1460) [figure 83].

Two distinct figural groupings comprise the east wall decoration: a central triad of religious figures and, flanking them, two groups of ancient Roman republicans. The program, as a whole, is organized around the central figure of Saint Zenobius, a patron saint of Florence. The saint is definitively identified through documents produced by the Signoria between 1482 and

1484 that required his inclusion within the decorative program.8 St. Zenobius flanked by St.

Eugenius [figure 84] and St. Crescentius [figure 85] On either side of the three saints are two

Marzocco lions bearing the arms of the people and of the city of Florence. Above the central figure of St. Zenobius is a tympanum containing a fictive terracotta relief of the Madonna and

Christ Child situated between two angels [figure 28]. To the left of the three saints, Ghirlandaio included the illusion of recession into the background through a thin depiction of the identifiable structure, the Florence Cathedral [figures 84 and 86]. To the right of the figures, Ghirlandaio included a contemporary view of the Palazzo Vecchio [figure 85]. The remaining six figures, depicted in two triads on either side of the saint, are ancient Roman republicans. They are identified through inscriptions beneath their feet and in the the frieze of the entablature. The men, shown in chronological order and read from left to right are: Lucius Junius Brutus, Gaius

Mucius Scaevola, and Marcus Furius Camillus under the left archway [figure 29]; Publius

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Decius Mus, Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus, and Marcus Tullus Cicero under the right archway [figure 30].9

Government documents regarding the commission and inscriptions identifying the figures leave little room for debate among scholars regarding the attribution, patronage, cost, dating, or individuals depicted within the monumental frescoes.10 Most recent literature dedicated to the

Sala dei Gigli centers on interpretation of the central religious figures. Notably, in a dissertation dedicated to the Sala, Melinda Hegarty (1980) suggested the cycle was a response to Lorenzo de’

Medici’s (1449-1492) survival of the Pazzi conspiracy. His subsequent rise in public support resulted in his constitutional consolidation of power within the Florentine government. Hegarty views the six Romans represented in the Sala dei Gigli as an afterthought to the central figures of

St. Zenobius and the deacons. She identifies each figure with descriptions in ancient texts, such as Virgil and Livy, and proposes possible visual prototypes for their attire and stances.11 As a result, Hegarty does not address the six Romans as politically valuable characters in relation to the overall program of the Sala dei Gigli or provide a synthetic statement regarding their possible connection to the central religious figures of the frescoes.12

In the pages that follow, an introduction to the relationship between the papacy and the

Medici in the 1460s-80s provides essential background to understanding the political and religious climate surrounding the fresco commission and the meaning that, it is suggested here, the cycle bore. Through an examination of each figure in Ghirlandaio's cycle, I suggest that the

Sala dei Gigli program represented, like Castagno’s earlier one, numerous innovations in the uomini famosi tradition, primarily in the choice of figures included and the moment that each represents. To support this reading, I first address the central section of Ghirlandaio’s frescoes, depicting St. Zenobius, St. Eugenius, and St. Crestentius. Ghirlandaio’s combination of Roman

75 heroes and Christian saints within the same pictorial setting on one wall was unprecedented in

Renaissance Florence.13 Those central figures, along with the Madonna and Christ Child depicted in the lunette above them were, I suggest, chosen to recall the Council. Finally, I provide a revised analysis of the cycle of uomini famosi at either side of the saintly triad. An examination of each figure’s life, how they were understood during the Renaissance, and visual precedents for each in previous uomini famosi cycles demonstrates that, as in the Villa Carducci cycle, each historical exemplar had his or her own story but when assembled the group suggests an entirely new narrative. I suggest that the eastern wall of the Sala dei Gigli was intended to speak to the learned individuals that frequented the opulent room, reiterating the aims of a re- organized Florentine government under the control of Lorenzo de Medici.

II. Relationship Between the Florentine Government and the Church

In order to understand the imagery in Ghirlandaio’s fresco as a recollection of the

Council of Ferrara and Florence, which closed more than forty years earlier, a brief history of the political events surrounding the Sala dei Gigli commission is necessary. On 10 April 1480

Lorenzo de’ Medici successfully and constitutionally reorganized the Florentine government, creating a powerful central council of seventy men in support of his unofficial position as de facto ruler of the city. This occurred after eight years of incredible tension between the papacy of

Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484) and Lorenzo.14

The animosity began in 1472 when a condottiere hired by the Florentine government attacked the town of Volterra and killed innocent civilians three days after their surrender. The papacy, as an ally of Florence, viewed this action as blood on the hands of the Church.15 Another source of tension was the mutual desire of the pope and the Florentine’s to expand territories and influence while hindering the other from achieving the same.16 As the pope tried to exert more

76 control over small towns within the Papal States it became increasingly obvious that they were under Florentine patronage. Sixtus IV blamed Lorenzo de Medici personally for the resistance of those smaller principalities to papal authority.17 The hostility between the two powerful states and their leaders affected both economically, socially, and politically and bled from the secular to the religious sphere. Both parties appointed and blocked positions within local bisophrics with obvious disregard for the other party's opinion.18

Easter Sunday 1478 marked the darkest point in the relationship between the papacy and the Medici. While attending mass at the Florentine Cathedral, Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother, Giuliano (1452-1478), were both stabbed; Lorenzo survived, but Giuliano did not. Pope

Sixtus IV, with the aid of anti-Medicean factions within Florence, orchestrated the assassination plot in an attempt to undermine Medicean authority. The Bishop of Pisa, an ally of Sixtus IV, was killed as he fled the Cathedral and attempted to take control of the Palazzo della Signoria.19

Sixtus, outraged by the murder of the Cardinal, excommunicated Lorenzo and placed interdicts on the entire city of Florence. The Pope’s reputation was damaged in the eyes of Florentine citizens when they discovered his role in the assassination plot, while Lorenzo’s survival bolstered public support for his leadership of the Republic.20 A Florentine alliance with Naples in

1480, formerly the papacy's strongest ally, deepened tensions further.21 One month later, while the Florentine opinion of the papacy was low, Lorenzo, whose survival from the Pazzi conspiracy and successful peace negotiations with Naples had transformed public opinion of him from unwanted ruler to the triumphant hero, creating the Council of Seventy, capitalizing on the public faith in his abilities, and constitutionally reorganized the Florentine government,.22 The large Council required a meeting hall—the Sala dei Gigli.

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Understanding the animosity and frustration that existed between Lorenzo and Pope

Sixtus IV at the date of the Sala dei Gigli commission and the function of the space as a meeting hall aids in understanding why the Signoria commissioned a large fresco cycle in the meeting room that might recall times of peace, prosperity, and success on multiple levels. It is also important to note that Florentine animosity was directed towards Pope Sixtus IV and his circle, not towards the sacred institution of the Church.

III. St. Zenobius, St. Eugenius, St. Crescentius

In 1478, four years before Ghirlandaio’s commission, the political contest between

Lorenzo de’ Medici and Pope Sixtus IV (r. 1471-1484) climaxed with the pope’s involvement in the Pazzi Conspiracy. The rift between the papacy and Lorenzo stood in direct opposition to the unity that existed between Lorenzo’s grandfather, Cosimo, and Pope Eugenius IV during the

Council period. I argue that the inclusion of St. Eugenius, a deacon of St. Zenobius, in

Ghirlandaio’s cycle recalled that past, beneficial relationship. Representations of St. Zenobius with Saints Eugenius and Crescentius were uncommon; Ghirlandaio’s is the only painting of the three men executed in the quattrocento.23 At the conclusion of a decade dominated by tension with the papacy, Ghirlandaio’s uomini famosi cycle recalled, I suggest, the political harmony between the Medici and the papacy that surrounded the successful Council. As such, it might be viewed as an advantageous political move on the part of the Florentine Signoria, under the influence of Lorenzo de’ Medici and designed to lead to reconciliation with the papacy of Pope

Sixtus IV, to remind its citizens of prior, successful unions.24

. Existing studies of Ghirlandaio’s cycle rarely discuss the group of three saints. This is perhaps because representations of St. Zenobius with Saints Eugenius and Crescentius were uncommon. Indeed, Ghirlandaio’s is the only painting of the three men executed in quattrocento

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Florence. Importantly, as was noted earlier, the commission documents contained explicit instructions that Saint Zenobius, Eugenius and Crestentius be included.25 The inclusion of the trio in the space was, then, a pointed one. Hegarty briefly addresses the Signoria’s decision to include St. Zenobius in the Sala dei Gigli, suggesting it was in honor of Lorenzo’s survival of the

Pazzi Conspiracy.26 Not coincidentally, a representation of St. Zenobius with two unidentified deacons was present in the North Sacristy of the Cathedral, where Lorenzo took refuge on that fateful day, via an intarsia panel executed by Giuliano da Maiano (1463-1470) [figures 87-90].27

But, I suggest here, Ghirlandaio’s frescoed representation of the triad served as much more than a straightforward recollection of that incident. Indeed, the holy trio appears to have functioned as a reminder of St. Zenobius's historical protection of the city of Florence; the revival of his cult during the Council; and a time of cooperation between the Medici and the papacy.

According to fifteenth-century hagiographical accounts, St. Zenobius (335-424 AD) was born in to a prominent Florentine family, the Girolami. After converting to Christianity he was pronounced a deacon of the Florentine diocese and served as a representative of the church on missions to combat heresy in Constantinople. Legend holds that Zenobius was selected as bishop with the unanimous support of the Florentine people.28 St. Zenobius was, along with St. John the

Baptist, one of two original patron saints of Florence and renowned during his lifetime for performing miracles, in particular resurrection of the dead. Chancellor of Florence, Bartolomeo

Scala, included in his early 1480’s text, Historia Florentinorum, an account of St. Zenobius’s role in the defense of Florence against the Goths in 405. Scala established the tradition of euhemeristic treatment of the legend of St. Zenobius. Zenobius’s relationship with God protected

Florence from the Goth’s during his lifetime and, many in the quattrocento believed, protected them still.29

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The popularity of St. Zenobius was by no means constant throughout the centuries following his death. From the eleventh to the fourteenth century, St. Zenobius’s cult was linked to the Florentine bishopric, while the communal government of Florence adopted John the

Baptist as its patron.30 The fifteenth-century renewal of the cult of Zenobius coincided with the transfer of his relics on April 26, 1439, at the height of the Church Council, to the Cathedral of

Florence.31 The parade was a public event of great civic and religious significance because it took place during the Council of Florence, during which Pope Eugenius IV also consecrated the

Cathedral.32 Because St. Zenobius had traveled to Constantinople as a papal emissary, his relics were seen as a powerful symbol of the potential for a successful union, reinforced with the presence of Pope Eugenius IV who, after years of conciliarism and disputes over papal claims, had been chosen as the rightful Pontiff.33

St. Zenobius’ historical protection of Florence in times of invasion is important to considering the strategic timing of the transfer of the saint’s relics during the Council, overwhelmingly concerned with invasion from the East by the Turks. Further, at the date of the

Sala dei Gigli decoration, Pope Sixtus IV was acquiring new territory for the papacy and

Florence was on the verge of being surrounded. The inclusion of Zenobius in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes, then, may well have been intended to ignite conversations centered on the legend of St.

Zenobius and Florence’s need, again, for such a protector, as well as the civic and religious unity achieved, though temporarily, during the Council proceedings and the revival of the saint’s cult at that time. Florentines in the 1480s would likely have recalled, too, St. Zenobius’s traditional alignment with the Florentine bishopric, and the Council’s unwavering attempts to establish peace within the factions of the Catholic Church. As such, the saint’s effigy evoked a time of peace and concord between Florence and the papacy – when Cosimo de’ Medici and Pope

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Eugenius IV worked together to move the Council from Ferrara to Florence – an honor bestowed upon the city by the papacy.34

What has not been considered before is that there was no Florentine visual precedent for the identification of St. Zenobius with St. Eugenius, who is depicted at his side as in the Sala dei

Gigli.35 In light of the political and religious concerns outlined here, it seems possible that the

Florentines’ admiration for Pope Eugenius IV and his leadership during the Council period inspired the inclusion of his namesake in the Sala dei Gigli. While reminding Florentines of their current political conflicts, the image of Saint Zenobius also, as we have seen, likely harkened back to the papacy of Eugenius IV and to Zenobius’s position as bishop of Florence, reminders of moments of accord within the Italian states.

There is a formal and iconographic connection between the fictive terracotta relief of the

Madonna and Christ Child with angels located in the tympanum above the heads of saints St.

Zenobius with St. Eugenius and St. Crescentius in Ghirlandaio's fresco. The angels flanking the

Christ Child look towards the baby in the same manner in which the two deacons look toward

Zenobius [figure 91]. The position of Christ and Zenobius’s arms are the same, suggesting traditio legis and that may have recalled the role of St. Zenobius as Christ’s vicar in Florence

[figures 92 and 28].36 The Catholic Church follows the belief that when Jesus gave the keys to

His Church on earth to St. Peter, an apostolic succession was established. Peter was Christ’s vicar on earth and the first pope of the Catholic Church. It is through that lineage that all subsequent popes trace their authority. The issue of papal primacy was one of the five key issues debated at the Council of Ferrara and Florence.37 Here it becomes important that St. Zenobius is portrayed with an image of St. Peter holding the keys to the Church on his robe. This, along with a pose that mirrors the stance of the Christ Child above, amplifies Zenobius's saintly importance,

81 placing him above the actual religious station he occupied. The portrayal may also have been a further recognition of the western success regarding the issue at the Council.

As this reading suggests, the inclusion of St. Zenobius and his attendants in the Sala dei

Gigli may well have served a more nuanced role than simply serving as reminders to Florentines of the Pazzi conspiracy and assassination attempt of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The depiction of a

Florentine Bishop, Zenobius, blessing those within the Sala dei Gigli may have had even further implications. The Archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati (1443-1478), killed during the Pazzi conspiracy, was originally appointed by Sixtus IV as Archbishop of Florence, the position once held by St. Zenobius. The image of St. Zenobius and his deacons in the Sala dei Gigli may have served as a further reminder to Lorenzo as well as the Florentine public of the betrayal of Pope

Sixtus, the bishop of Pisa, and prominent Florentine citizens as well as the death of Lorenzo’s younger brother.38 Ghirlandaio’s frescoed representation of the holy triad, then, represents a combination of references to the tragic day in Florentine history that resulted in the survival of the Florentine Republic despite the efforts of Pope Sixtus IV to overthrow the government as well as the unity of the Council, decades earlier.. Situated beneath the Roman exemplars that, it will be demonstrated, were responsible for the survival of Rome, and located in the Council Hall of the governing body, the message would have been readily accessible to viewers.

IV. Uomini famosi

Medici art often had a dual meaning, as we have seen, did Gozzoli's Journey of the Magi

(DATE?) for the Medici Palace chapel. Recognizing that the iconography of the Sala dei Gigli bore a function of, ultimately, supporting Lorenzo de Medici’s authority as de facto ruler of

Florence suggests that the imagery in Castagno’s frescoes may, too, have born a complex web of significance. As was demonstrated in the previous chapters, monumental frescoes of Roman

82 figures of virtue were not uncommon decorations for city halls at the time of Ghirlandaio’s commission; the moment in which each character was depicted by Ghirlandaio, was however, unprecedented. Revised consideration of each figures suggests that, though their assembly, the

Florentine government underlined its political agenda and consolidation of power with a

Medecian slant, veiled with anti-tyrannical rhetoric that involved positive recollections of the

Council of Florence and Ferrara, evoked themes of Christian primacy, Roman lineage, and divine intervention. The revival of Roman superiority as epitomized in antiquity was a popular theme during the Council, and can be again seen in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes; now identifying the

Florentine Republic as the new Roman Republic.39

IVa. Lucius Junius Brutus

The figure farthest left on the east wall of the Sala dei Gigli is Lucius Junius Brutus,

Roman consul in 509 BCE [figure 29]. His titulus translates, “I am Brutus, the liberator of my country and the bane of my kings.”40 Historically, the story of Brutus can be found in Livy,

Virgil, and in various Roman plays.41 According to Livy's Ab Urbe Condita, Lucius Junius

Brutus witnessed the suicide a fellow Roman soldier’s wife, Lucretia, after she was brutally raped by the son of the King of Rome. After the tragic event, he swore vengeance on the entire royal family, eventually expelling them from Rome, thus initiating the era of the Roman

Republic.42 In the Sala dei Gigli, Ghirlandaio shows Lucius Junius Brutus with a blood-covered dagger in his left hand, his right hand pointing towards the heavens. This representation of

Brutus had no full-length visual precedent in uomini famosi cycles at the time, suggesting the image bore special significance in the Sala dei Gigli.43

The oath Brutus swore over the body of the deceased Lucretia initiated a chain of events that eventually liberated Rome from the tyrany of kings and led to the foundation of the

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Republic. That moment was the start of a new era in Roman history; similar, it might be argued, to the aspirations surrounding the initiation of the Council of Seventy in Florence. According to

Livy, Brutus’s rise to the most powerful position in Roman Republic, as first consul, was the fulfillment of a previous prophecy.44 His liberation of Rome would likely have aligned, for quattrocento Florentines, with the popular twelfth-century text Policraticus, by the theologian

John of Salisbury, regarding the lawful overthrow of a tyrant.45 Indeed, Sarah Blake McHam has suggested that Lorenzo de’Medici’s grandfather, Cosimo, pointedly referenced that text in the inscription that marked Donatello’s David when it was placed in the courtyard of the Palazzo

Medici, as a means of denying charges that Medici actions were anti-Republican. Lorenzo, like his grandfather, would have likely been concerned with similar issues.Interestingly, Donatello's marble David was showcased in the Sala dei Gigli after the completion of Ghirlandaio's frescoes.

This would have been an important issue for the Florentine government, especially Lorenzo de’

Medici, to present in terms that did not suggest tyrannical rule.

During a tumultuous era between the papacy and Florence, Brutus recalled the previous, successful union of the Council of Ferrara and Florence, specifically through the refiguring of concepts that were key issues at the Council proceedings. To Renaissance authors, such as

Petrarch, the fulfillment of the prophecy that identified Brutus as the next ruler of Rome demonstrated the hand of God in the life of the pagan Roman.46 Like David, with God on his side, Brutus defeated a tyrant, as had David. Combined with the understanding of Brutus as the founder of the Roman Republic, from which Florentine humanists claimed their own Republic originated, the figure of Brutus in the Sala dei Gigli might be read as signifying Florentine lineage and legitimacy; important concepts for the newly-established Council of Seventy that met in the Sala dei Gigli.47

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IVb. Gaius Mucius Scaevola

To the right of Lucius Junius Brutus is Gaius Mucius Scaevola (c. 509 BCE) [figure 29].

His titulus translates as, “I, Scaevola, burn my erring hand in flames I scorn.”48 The historical story of Scaevola can also be found in Livy’s Ab Urbe Condita, which recounts the Romans failed attempt to assassinate the Etruscan king, Porsinna, and his capture.49 While making a defiant speech to the king, Mucius Scaevola thrust the hand that had failed at its task into a sacrificial flame, making him the first Roman example of self-sacrifice for the Republic.50

Ghirlandaio’s Scaevola holds his right hand in flames and his left hand near his heart. The

Roman’s head is turned away from his burning hand and his face shows neither fear nor pain.

There was no precedent for his inclusion among prior examples of uomini famosi, reinforcing the idea that the Signoria chose this Roman exemplar because of his alignment with the goals of the new Council in a manner advantageous to the Republic.5152

Because he placed the freedom and honor of Rome before his own life, Mucius Scaevola was esteemed by early quattrocento humanists as the most ancient Roman example of self- sacrifice for the Republic.53 The notion of self-sacrifice also carried heavy Christian connotations as a prefiguration of the self-sacrificial act of Jesus Christ through his Crucifixion. Gaius Mucius

Scaevola may have recalled, in the Sala dei Gigli, both secular and religious aspects of the

Council of Ferrara and Florence that reinforced the current goals of the Florentine government.

Scaevola was released, unharmed by the Etruscans, demonstrating divine intervention and the will of God, concepts also illustrated through the subsequent peaceful surrender of the Etruscan army. That peaceful victory reinforced the idea of Roman superiority, and therefore Florentine superiority as understood through the peaceful success of the Council of Florence and then alluded to in the governance of Lorenzo de' Medici.

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IVc. Marcus Furius Camillus

The third figure to the left of the central group of St. Zenobius and deacons is Marcus

Furius Camillus (c. 446-365 BCE) [figure 29]. His titulus is translated as, “I, Camillus have cut down the enemy and now bear the victorious standards.”54 The story of Camillus is recounted in the works of Livy, Plutarch, and Virgil.55 Camillus was a Roman general who defeated the Gauls after the sack of Rome.56 Rome was subsequently rebuilt and Camillus was regarded the second founder of the city.57 Ghirlandaio’s Camillus is the triumphant general returning to Rome as depicted in Virgil’s Aeneid.58 Camillus stands with his right hand is on his hip; in his left hand he holds the Roman standard, bearing the eagle of his legion.59 The Romans associated the eagle with Jupiter, and an image of a golden eagle was the chief standard of the Roman military.60

During an era of papal tension and governmental reorganization, the figure of Marcus

Furius Camillus likely recalled key issues from the Council of Ferrara and Florence. The idea of

Camillus as the second founder and liberator of Rome was dear to the hearts of Florentine humanists and, quite plausibly, served as a model that Lorenzo de’ Medici would want to emulate.61 The concept of a contemporary revival of ancient Rome and the liberation of its lost lands was a prominent theme in art and literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Poets such as Dante and Petrarch refashioned images of pagan Roman heroes, with a Florentine connection, as divinely sanctioned warriors whom God prompted to expand the influence and rule of Rome, and therefore the influence and domination of the Roman Catholic Church.62 In Il convivio, Dante included Camillus in his list of exalted citizens who furthered Rome’s destiny, justifying Roman superiority as divinely sanctioned.63 In The Divine Comedy, Dante does not mention Camillus by name but does highlight the importance of the defeat of the Gauls for the survival of Rome.64 Renaissance humanist tradition explains this occurrence, as well as

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Camillus’s victory for Rome, within Christian terms as divine intervention sanctioning Roman superiority.

Camillus’ historic victory over the Gauls carried special significance for Florentines; the

Gauls were the barbarians that attacked Florence during the bishopric of Zenobius. As conqueror of the Gauls and savior of the city of Rome from further destruction, a Florentine alignment of

Camillus with St. Zenobius and his expulsion of the Gauls from their city in the fifth century is probable. The secular and religious dialogue surrounding the protection of one’s city and the justification of war was relevant throughout the Renaissance, notably in the form of crusading rhetoric that combined the two schools of thought.65 In the Sala dei Gigli, this issue is redressed in a contemporary Florentine fashion illustrating the role of the Florentine government in also protecting its city, this time from papal territorial expansions while also justifying the newly consolidated power of Lorenzo de’ Medici through the image of Camillus, who retained the title of “dictator” at the request of the Roman senate.66 The image again recalls the recurrent

Florentine emphasis on images of divine intervention, as in, for example, the competition panels by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti depicted the Sacrifice of Issac (c. 1402) Also, Verrocchio's David

(1473-1475) and Donatello's David (c.1408-1412) were both displayed within the Palazzo

Vecchio, near the Sala dei Gigli.67

IVd. Publius Decius Mus

Located to the right of Camillus is Ghirlandaio’s figure of Publius Decius Mus, Roman consul c. 340 BCE [figure 30]. His titulus reads, “I am Decius, an example to my son and a martyr for Rome.”68 The story of Publius Decius Mus comes primarily from the writings of

Cicero, Virgil, and Livy, as well as ancient Roman plays.69 During the Latin War (c. 340 BCE) both Publius Decius Mus and his co-consul, Titus Manlius Torquatus, dreamt that the

87 commander of one army was destined to sacrifice himself, ensuring the victory of his own troops.70 During the Battle of Veseris, Decius chose to sacrifice himself in the name of Rome through the ritual of devotio. The consul prayed to the gods and charged his horse directly into the enemy troops.71 The self-sacrificial act was again performed by the son, and namesake, of

Publius Decius Mus, in 295 BCE at the Battle of Sentinum, against the Gauls and the Samnites.72

The ritual of devotio was a rare occurrence in antiquity and even more so among members of the same family. Therefore Publius Decius Mus and his son are traditionally jointly remembered.73

Ghirlandaio’s Decius wears a red toga, draped to reveal armor underneath. Livy described the toga worn by Decius during the devotio in great detail and Ghirlandaio depicted Decuis’s toga as unique among the men in the Sala dei Gigli, likely signaling visual depiction of the moment immediately prior to the Roman’s self-sacrifice.74

There was no definitive visual precedent for a full-length depiction of Publius Decius Mus in contemporary uomini famosi cycles.75 I suggest Decius was included because he exemplified key religious tenants emphasized at the Council of Ferrara and Florence that the contemporary

Florentine government found to be beneficial in the justification of their recent reorganization. A humanistic understanding of the pagan Roman hero offers insights here. As a citizen and a soldier, Decius did not doubt that his decision was in the best interest of his people. Decius’s self-sacrifice is readily understood in a Christian context as a prefiguration to the similar self- sacrifice made by Jesus Christ through his Crucifixion.76 This connection between then sacrificial acts of Publius Decius Mus and of Christ connects the Roman hero to the Son of God and reiterating Christian primacy. Similar to the figures of Scaevola and Camillus, Decius Mus recalls the popularity of divine intervention and sacrifice as a favored Florentine subject type.

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IVe. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus

Scipio Africanus (c. 237 BCE-c. 183 BCE) [figure 30] is depicted to the right of Decius

Mus. His titulus reads: “I am Scipio; I conquered Hannibal and subdued the Carthaginians.”77

Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus was the legendary military leader (218-201 BCE) whose victory over Hannibal at the Battle of Zama (202 BCE) ended the Second Punic War.78 In Ab urbe condital Libri (The History of Rome), Livy wrote of rumors during Scipio’s lifetime regarding his descent from a divine race. Livy explains that the stories originated from belief that a serpent visited Scipio’s mother’s room and then miraculously disappeared, suggesting that

Scipio’s conception was traceable to a god on Earth.79 This same passage from Livy discusses

Scipio’s daily custom of praying in the temple. Petrarch interpreted the story as confirmation that

Scipio would have been a Christian had he lived after the time of Christ.80

I believe that Scipio was selected as one of the uomini famosi on the east wall of the Sala dei Gigli because of contemporary beliefs in his divine lineage and its implications for Roman superiority and the will of God. Petrarch’s interpretation of Scipio Africanus’s proto-Christianity melds secular and religious as well as pagan and Christian.81 Scipio, as the son of a god, preconfigured Jesus Christ as the Son of God. His military victories for Rome were won because

God had divinely sanctioned the superiority of the Romans. The superiority of Rome was again reiterated at the Council of Florence through the acceptance of the tenants proposed by the

Western half of the Church.

IVf. Marcus Tullius Cicero

The sixth and final Roman uomini famosi in the Sala dei Gigli is Marcus Tullius Cicero

(102-43 BCE) [figure 30]. His titulus reads, “I am Cicero; Catiline quaked at my authority.”82

The life of Cicero is known today through the writings of Plutarch. Cicero, a Roman consul and

89 orator, was credited for saving the Roman Republic from a coup by uncovering a conspiracy orchestrated by a Roman statesman named Catilline. In the Sala dei Gigli, Cicero wears a gray robe, open in the front, with armor beneath. At the height of the Catilline conspiracy, Plutarch writes of Cicero being escorted to his home and allowing his tunic to fall from his shoulders, revealing the breastplate he wore for protection against the conspirators.83 Cicero holds the faces, a symbol of his authority as consul. The hatchet attached to the faces signified the owner’s authority to distribute capital punishment.84

I believe that Cicero was included among the Sala dei Gigli uomini famosi because of the quattrocento appreciation of him as divine orator and his position against conspirators within the government. This idea would have resonated easily in the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy.

Cicero killed all of the conspirators in the streets of Rome, similar to the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence.85

In his De casibus vivorun illustrium, Boccaccio maintained the traditional medieval depiction of Cicero as a “divine” orator. Another facet of Cicero’s life that gained prominence throughout the Middle Ages was his glorification of the Roman Republic.86 In Il convivo, Dante notes, “And was the hand of God not evident when a new citizen of small means, namely Tully, defended the liberty of Rome against so great a citizen as Catiline? Most certainly.”87 The

Renaissance understanding of Cicero as a pawn of God was a popular theme. Regarding wars,

Dante quotes Cicero, himself, in the former’s De monarchia, writing, “Tully well said: ‘Wars engaged in for the crown of Empire should be waged without bitterness’.”88 This line might have been read as sanctions the actions of the Council against the Turks as well as the Florentine governments under Lorenzo de’ Medici and their actions against Pope Sixtus IV. Each figure is shown for an exact reason that aids in themes that augment the central figures and Lorenzo’s

90 ideas; specifically Lorenzo as the heir of Cosimo and the figure that will continue his grandfather’s legacy.

V. Conclusion

During his lifetime, Cosimo de’ Medici was praised as a liberator, included among lists of illustrious ancients, had numerous poems dedicated to him, and awarded many honors.

Following his death, Cosimo was awarded the title Pater Patriae, which translates as "Father of the Country".89 A political genius, Cosimo used his patronage to ensure his legacy be remembered as he desired. Buildings were erected, sculptures carved and cast, and frescoes painted, all of which placed the Medici in a positive light. His penchant for adopting subject matter that might hold a double meaning – seemingly supporting the Republican ideals of

Florence while promoting Medici agendas – is well known. For example, the 1450’s were a time of instability within the Medici party. During that period, Cosimo likely commissioned Judith and Holofernes (c.1450) by Donatello. Crum (2001) identifies the sculpture as a veiled reminder to the Florentines of the negative traits of their previous leaders, the Albizzi, whose ascent to power during the 1420s, was accomplished through party discord. The association of current party discord with a previous Florentine traitor quickly reigned in party disparities, strengthening the political party of the Medici.90 Blake McHam expertly articulates what she refers to as the

“deliberate evocation of ancient precedents to embody the civic myth of Florence as the new

Rome” in her research centered around Florentine commissions, such as Donatello’s Judith and

Holofernes (c.1450) as having corollary meanings of virtuous ideals for the spectators to uphold as well as linking these virtues of Judith to the patrons, the Medici.91

In the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy, Lorenzo de’ Medici successfully exerted and veiled his power and unofficial position as the de facto ruler of Florence through his influence

91 over the body of government responsible for the decoration of the Sala dei Gigli. Just as his grandfather, Cosimo, commissioned works of art that sent multivalent, supposedly anti- tyrannical messages, so too, I suggest, did Lorenzo, via the new Council of Seventy, in the Sala dei Gigli. By tackling the understandably sensitive subjects of war with the papacy and government consolidation in the Sala dei Gigli frescoes, Lorenzo de’ Medici was able to present to the public a version of recent events, told through ancient exemplars favorable to his goals and those of his new government.

The central religious figures in the east wall frescoes are not, as we have seen, simply a solitary triad in the midst of the space, as has sometimes been assumed. In fact, they relate to the six Romans that flank them and aid in the understanding of the series. Linking the secular

Romans to Christian values legitimized their former actions, through God, and strengthened

Florence’s heritage to ancient Rome through divine will. The incorporation of St. Zenobius, St.

Eugenius, and St. Crescentius reiterated the idea of the protection of Florence through the uomini famosi. They also reminded the viewer of, both the current Pope’s role against the Medici in the

Pazzi Conspiracy, but of a previous Pope, Eugenius, and his prosperous relationship with

Cosimo de’ Medici, one that resulted in the transfer of the Council and the relics of St. Zenobius, both to the Cathedral of Florence. In the Sala dei Gigli, Lorenzo de’ Medici approved an artistic program that legitimized the actions of the uomini famosi as well as St. Zenobius, through the

Church. This clever guise justified Lorenzo’s own actions as sanctioned by God. This line of thought bolstered Florentine civic pride by promoting their perceived lineage from ancient Rome and divinely sanctioned statues. For the Medici, this lineage was also reiterated as a reminder of the family’s prominent place within contemporary Florentine society.

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The program of the Sala dei Gigli, as a whole, might best be viewed as promoting

Lorenzo de’ Medici’s efforts to establish Florence as the New Rome and himself as its rightful leader. Rome, seen as both the heart of the Republic and the city of the Apostles, appealed to the masses. Humanism and sociopolitical discontent throughout Italy propelled the desire for a revival of the perceived magnificence of ancient Rome. Viewing Ghirlandaio’s artistic program as guided by Lorenzo, via the Council of Seventy, aligns it with the propagandist techniques that had been successful for his grandfather, including the adoption of vague subjects, with potentially dual narratives. Lorenzo was also careful that his influence over artistic commissions, like his influence over the governing bodies of Florence, was removed from him enough that no direct links or accusations could be made. He was aware of his family's precarious position and of his grandfather's legacy and incorporated both of those factors in his position as the de facto ruler of Florence. Through his grandfather's genius, Lorenzo witnessed the benefits of political retrospection and manipulation. The Apotheosis of St. Zenobius of St. Zenobius and Famous Men visually recalled the one of the most successful civic and religious events in Florentine history, the Council of Ferrara and Florence.

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1 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble," 294-301.

2 Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors of Medici Rule in Florence,” The Art Bulletin 83, no.1 (March 2001): 32-47.

3 On October 5, 1482 the Florentine Operai submitted a contract for the north wall above the Dogana in the audience hall of the Signori; Dominic E. Colnaghi, Colnaghi’s Dictionary of Florentine Painters, From the 13th to the 17th Centuries, ed. Carlo E. Malvani, trans. Ursula Creagh, Christopher Evans, and Francesca Malvani (Florence: Archivi Colnaghi Firenze, 1986), 120; Wagernackle dates the commission to 1482 and states that Ghirlandaio was given a major portion of the program and assigned the long wall opposite the marble portal, Martin Wagernackle, The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artists, 160.

4 Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 35.

5 Instructions to decide on a location for the future Palazzo Vecchio were given on December 30, 1298. Documentation of government officials residing in the building began in March of 1302, Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 5.

6 Beginning in 1480 the room was used as an assembly hall for the council of seventy as well as a reception and dining hall; see Eckart Marchand, “Exemplary Gestures and ‘Authentic’ Physiognomies: Eckart Marchand Offers an Interpretation of Ghirlandaio’s Famous Men in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence,” Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 159 (April 2004): 3. The original function of the Sala dei Gigli was as a meeting place for the Signoria and as an anteroom to its audience chamber. Six times per year the government officials would convene in the Sala dei Gigli for the appointment of the new head of the Signoria, gonfaloniere di giustiza;Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble," 365-366. The Sala dei Gigli was also used by the Signoria as a dining room. Rubinstein distinguishes between “the council hall, the Sala Grande di sopra, that is the Sala dei Gigli, and the audience chamber,” and again, “…the Signoria ordered their sala magna, that is the Sala dei Gigli, and their audience chamber…,” creating confusion through the multiple identifications of the room and the disparity between its assigned function; see Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 58-59, 103.

7 The installation of Vasari’s portal in the sixteenth century greatly disrupted the frescoes in the Sala dei Gigli, Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 14.

8 Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 228. For original documents from the Opera del Palazzo that state that on May 22, 1482 members of this committee were given permission to commission a painting of St. Zenobius in the Sala dei Gigli, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 223.

9 The uomini famosi in the Sala dei Gigli are all Roman citizens from antiquity and are portrayed wearing variations of Roman armor. Their personal descriptions are written in first person accounts; see Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 226-27.

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10 Hegarty identifies the specification of figures to be included in the painting as well as the location of the painting through a primary document dated August 26, 1482 that state: “picture della imagine di nostra dona et di san zanobi con sui adornamenti,” and “nella faccia del muro che e sopra la doanna.” Through her research of the primary documents of the Opera del Palazzo that commissioned this painting we are able to see that St. Zenobius, his attendants, and the Virgin Mary were to be painted on the east wall of the Sala dei Gigli. In the same text Hegarty also states that scholarly opinion unanimously gives the design of the Sala dei Gigli fresco to Domenico Ghirlandaio but much of the application may have been completed by his workshop. For the preceding, Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 223-25.

11 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 280-360.

12 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 320.

13 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 281-82.

14 Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 33-34. The Council of Seventy, along with its committees, became the supreme authority concerning decisions within the Florentine government; see Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434 to 1494), (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 230.

15 See Ludwig Pastor, The History of the Popes, From the Close of the Middle Ages, ed. and trans. Frederick Ignatius Antrobus (St. Louis: B. Herder Book, 1923), 4: 292-293; also, John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200-1575, (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 348- 351.

16 See Pastor, The History of the Popes, 293. Papal influence over Imola was perceived in Florence as a security threat; see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 29.

17 One example of this type of resistance can be found in Umbria, see Najemy, A History of Florence, 353.

18 Najemy, A History of Florence, 354-55.

19 Pastor, The History of the Popes, 302-11.

20 Setton, Papacy and the Levant, 336.

21 Setton, Papacy and the Levant, 338.

22 Najemy, A History of Florence, 354-55.

23 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 300.

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24 The Sala dei Gigli is the only room in the Palazzo Vecchio that was renovated/completed while Lorenzo de’ Medici was officially holding a public office. Hegarty, “Laurentian Patronage,” 264.

25 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 294-301.

26 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 294.

27 The figure of St. Eugenius in the Sala dei Gigli may have come from the same cartoon as its companion figure in the intarsia panel, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 300.

28 Bloch, “The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti,” 18; Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 284.

29 St. Reparata, an early Christian martyr, was the other original patron saint of Florence; see Bloch, “The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti,” 23; and Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 289- 90.

30 Bloch, “The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti,” 23-25, 28-29, 31.

31 Bloch, “The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti,” 31.

32 On Thursday, February 26, 1439, the Council convened as the Council of Florence at S. Maria Novella; see Gill, The Council of Florence, 109; and Brown, “Laetentur Caeli," 179.

33 Bloch, “The Sculpture of Lorenzo Ghiberti,” 31.

34 Gill, The Council of Florence, 109, 185.

35 The deacons flanking St. Zenobius in the intarsiz panels in the Duomo are not definitively identified as Eugenius and Crescentius, only as the deacon to the left and the deacon tot the right. In the Sala dei Gigli, Eugenius's name has been revealed on the wall after restoration to the room. Crestentius's name, if it was present, was destroyed with the inclusion of a door on the wall in the seventeenth-century.

36 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 309.

37 Gill, The Council of Florence, 109.

38 Hegarty mentions that Lorenzo fled the Pazzi assassination attempt in the Duomo and found shelter in the North Sacristy. She notes that it is possible that because of the magnitude that day had on the life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, he may have attached a personal significance to the image of St. Zenobius and his deacons located on the intarsia panels in the room, Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 294.

39 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 95-118; Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art," 179-207.

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40 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 320.

41 Coulter, “Marcus Junius Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 460-70.

42 Coulter, “Marcus Junius Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 460-70.

43 Hegarty believes that Ghirlandaio’s Brutus is based on Livy’s account of Brutus and the oath of vengeance he exclaims as he holds the dagger pulled from the chest of the deceased Lucretia, the wife of his fellow soldier, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 320-21.

44 Coulter, “Marcus Junius Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 460-70.

45 McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith,” 32-43.

46 The heroism of Junius Brutus is noted in many other trecento works, such as Boccaccio’s De casibus vivorum illustrium, IX:xxii. See Joost-Gaugier, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune Part II,” 25-42.

47 Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art," 179-207.

48 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 324.

49 For the entire narrative of Gaius Muscius Scaevola, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita , Book 2, II.12- 13.

50 For Scaevola as the first Roman example of self-sacrifice for the Republic, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 320-25.

51 For the suggestion that Scaevola’s focused glance and his open mouth suggests that he making the speech to Porsinna, as recorded by Livy, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 324.

52 Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book 2, II.13, 1-5.

53 Joost-Gaugier, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune Part II,” 24.

54 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 326.

55 T.J. Luce, “Design and Structure in Livy: 5.32-55.” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 102 (1971): 265-302.

56 On Camillus’s speech to the senate, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book 5, 5:51-54; on the omen of the standard-bearer and ensign, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5:55; Joost-Gaugier, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune Part II,” 38-39; and Luce, “Design and Structure in Livy,” 268.

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57 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 326-327; and Lobell, “Emblems of Empire,” 34.

58 For Ghirlandaio’s Camillus in the Sala dei Gigli as combining ideas from texts by both Livy and Virgil, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 325-30.

59 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 327.

60 Lobell, “Emblems of Empire,” 36.

61 Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art," 179-207

62 Rubinstein, "Political Ideas in Sienese Art," 179-207; Wilkins, “Petrarch’s Exul ab Italia,” 453-460; and Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 95-118.

63 “Who will say of Camillus that, after being banished and cast into exile, he returned to free Rome from her enemies, and that after freeing her he went back into exile of his own accord in order not to offend the authority of the Senate, without divine influence?”, from Dante, The Convivo, trans. Richard Lansing (1998): IV: 5.17; see Joost-Gaugier, “Dante and the History of Art: The Case of a Tuscan Commune Part II,” 39.

64 “Thou knowest what it achieved, borne by the Romans/ Illustrious against Brennus, against Pyrrhus,/ Against the other princes and confederated.// Torquatus thence and Quinctius, who from locks/ Unkempt was named, Decii and Fabii,/ Receive the fae I willingly embalm”, from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Clive James, ( New York:Liveright, 2013) 274, Paradiso, VI: 40-45.

65 Cornelison, “Tales of Two Bishop Saints,” 627-29.

66 Luce, “Design and Structure in Livy,” 265-302.

67 McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David,” 32-47.

68 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 328.

69 For ancient literature on Publius Decius Mus, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Books 8 and 10, 8:5, 8:9, 10:28. On the ancient Roman plays and Q. Accius, see Coulter, “Marcus Junus Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 464.

70 On the dual dreams, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book 8, 8:5.7-8.

71 On the battle of Veseris, see n.1 above; On the self-sacrificial act of Publius Decius Mus, see Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book 8, 8:9.4-13.

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72 Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Book 10, 10:27, 10:28.9-18; Coulter, “Marcus Junius Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 464.

73 Sources that mention the Decii include Virgil, The Aeneid, 224; Coulter, “Marcus Junius Brutus and the Brutus of Accius,” 464.

74 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 300.

75 Hegarty believes that that Decius is depicted in the Sala dei Gigli in the classical attitude of prayer with a toga, described by Livy as one worn into battle, draped over his arm. She emphasizes that she does not believe this toga to be the Gabinian cincture style, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 320-330.

76 Schildgen, “Dante and the Crusades,” 95-118.

77 “SCIPIO SUM, VICI HANNIBALEM, POENOSQ SUBEGI”; Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 331.

78 Knauer, “The Battle of Zama after Giulio Romano: A Tapestry in the American Academy in Rome, Part I,” 223; and Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 331.

79 Hegarty states that in the Sala dei Gigli, Ghirlandaio references Livy’s narrative of Scipio Africanus through the painting of a dragon on the Roman’s helmet, which also aligns the Roman general with Alexander the Great. Hegarty believes that the dragon on Scipio’s helmet by Ghirlandaio is due to a mistranstation in the QuattrocentoQuattrocento of Livy’s text, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 331-332.

80 Cosenza, Francesco Petrarcha and the Revolution of Cola di Rienzo, 56; and Petrarch, Africa, Book IV, ll. 115-22.

81 Dante, Il Convivo, 5:18; Inferno, 31:112-129: “Then we proceeded farther in advance,/ And to Antaeus came, who, full five ells/ Without the head, for issued from the cavern.// ‘O thou, who in the valley fortunate,/ Which Scipio the heir of glory made,/ When Hannibal turned back with all his hosts,// Once brought’st a thousand lions for thy prey,/ And who, hadst thou been at the mighty war/ Among thy brothers, some it seems still think// The sons of Earth the victory would have gained:/ Place us below, not be disdainful of it,/ There where the cold doth lock Cocytus up.// Make us not go to Tityus nor Typhoeus;/ This one can give of that which here is longed for;/ Therefore stoop down, and do not curl thy lip.// Still in the world can he restore thy fame;/ Because he lives, and still expects long life,/ If to itself Grace call him not untimely.’” Also, Purgatorio, 29:112-120: “So high they rose that they were lost to sight;/ His limbs were gold, so far as he was bird,/ And white the others with vermilion mingled.// Not only Rome with no such splendid car/ E’er gladdened Africanus, or Augustus,/ But poor to it that of the Sun would be,--// That of the Sun, which swerving was burnt up/ At the importunate orison of Earth,/ When Jove was so mysteriously just.” Paradiso, 6:46-51: “It struck to earth the pride of the Arabians,/ Who, following Hannibal, had passed across/ The Alpine ridges, Po, from which thou glidest;//

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Beneath it triumphed while they yet were young/ Pompey and Scipio, and to the kill/ Beneath which thou wast born it bitter seemed”; Paradiso, 27:61-63: “But the high Providence, that with Scipio/ At Rome the glory of the world defended,/ Will speedily bring aid, as I conceive;” see The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

82 “SUM CICERO, TREMUIT NOSTRAS CATILINA SECURES”; see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 337.

83 Fryde, Edmund. “The Beginnings of Italian Humanist Historiography: The ‘New Cicero’ of Leonardo Bruni.” The English Historical Review 95, no. 376 (July 1980): 533-52.

84 Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 390.

85 For Ghirlandaio’s interpretation of Cicero as derived not from Livy, but from Plutarch, see Hegarty, “The Decorative Ensemble,” 390.

86 . In the Inferno, Dante places Cicero in the company of ancient poets and singers, possibly an allusion to Rome’s eloquence: “Of qualities I saw the good collector,/ Hight Dioscorides; and Orpheus saw I,/ Tully and Livy, and moral Seneca,” Inferno, 6:139-141, see The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 21.

87 Dante’s Il convivo, 5:18.

88 Dante is referencing Cicero, 1.12.38, see The De Monarchia of Dante Alighieri, ed. and trans. Aurelia Henry, Book 2, Chap. 10.3, 117; Cicero is again mentioned by Dante in De monarchia, book 2, chap. 5.4: “Concerning corporate assemblies, in which individuals seem in a measure bound to the state, the solitary authority of Cicero in the second book of Moral Duties is sufficient. ‘So long,’ he says, ‘as the dominion of the Republic was upheld by benefits, not by injuries, war was waged in behalf either of allies or dominion, for a conclusion either beneficent or necessary. The Senate was a harbor of refuge for kings, peoples, and nations. Our magistrates and generals strove for praise in defending with equity and fidelity the provinces and the allies; so this government might rather have been called a defense than a dominion of the whole world.’ So wrote Cicero.”; see Cicero, 2.8.26, 27.

89 Alison M. Brown, "The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de' Medici, Pater Patriae," Journal of the Warburg and Courtlauld Institutes 24, n.3/4 (July-December 1961): 186.

90 Roger J. Crum, "Severing the Neck of Pride: Donatello's Judith and Holofernes and the Recollection of Albizzi Shame in Medicean Florence," Artibus et Historiae 22, no. 44 (2001): 23-29; McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith," 32-47.

91 McHam, “Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence,” 161-162.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

Andrea del Castagno’s Cycle of Famous Men and Women (1448-1451) and Dominico

Ghirlandaio’s Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Uomini Famosi (1482-1483) are important in the history of art for being the only extant fifteenth-century Florentine uomini famosi cycles. But the works, documented with only surface iconographic readings, have thus far been studied in isolation and outside of the political and cultural events surrounding their commissions.

References to quattrocento politics, this thesis demonstrates, offers new insights into the cycles' little-understood iconography. Recognizing references to the Council of Ferrara and Florence are, as Chapters Three and Four demonstrate, offers a more nuanced understanding of each cycle and its likely meaning. Addressing the cycles within the political and cultural context in which they were created, offers a clearer understanding of commissions that have hitherto been explained as strange anomalies.

In the second chapter of this thesis, I analyzed the evolution of uomini famosi as a genre in both literature and in art, concluding with earlier Italian cycles produced outside of Florence.

It is in these cycles that the artists, Castagno and Ghirlandaio, and their respective patrons,

Filippo Carducci and Lorenzo de' Medici would have known of and likely used as visual precedents for the Cycle of Famous Men and Women and Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Uomini

Famosi in Florence. Uomini famosi, as a genre, found a new and different voice in Florence.

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There was no visual precedent for the nine figures originally depicted in the Villa

Carducci by Andrea del Castagno. As we saw, Castagno’s figural grouping can be explained when each is understood in their role in the story of Rome, the Church, and God's chosen people, and amplified through their patron's prominent position at the Council of Florence, still considered a success at the time of the commission. The figures in the Sala dei Gigli follow in the same format. The six Romans were not unusual figures to adorn the walls of public buildings; the moment in which each character was depicted by Ghirlandaio, was however, unprecedented. This peculiarity is augmented by the decision to place St. Zenobius and his relatively unknown deacons at the center of this monumental fresco cycle. The most comprehensive explanation for this placement of figures involves the recollection of the Council of Ferrara and Florence as a point of civic pride for the Florentines under the regime of Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici's desire to attain that level of influence within the Florentine government.

Moving forward, additional research should be geared towards a more comprehensive study of uomini famosi cycles as a genre and the creation of an agreed-upon working definition of the term. In particular to Florence, further research devoted toward fresco cycles that are no longer extant would provide valuable insight and potentially broaden our understanding of this expansive and under-studied genre.

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APPENDIX

Figure 1. Andrea del Castagno, Cycle of Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 3. Attributed to Giuliano Pesello, Astronomical Fresco, c.1433-1443, Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence.

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Figure 4. Old Sacristy, San Lorenzo, Florence.

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Figure 5. Benozzo Gozzoli, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Palazzo Medici, Florence.

Figure 6. Filippo Lippi, Adoration of the Child, 1463, Palazzo Medici, Florence.

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Figure 7. Chapel, Palazzo Medici, Florence.

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Figure 8. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Joseph II, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

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Figure 9. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of John VIII Palaiologos, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

Figure 10. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Cosimo de' Medici (left) and Piero de’ Medici (right), Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

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Figure 11. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Giuliano de’ Medici, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

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Figure 12. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

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Figure 13. Benozzo Gozzoli, detail of Sigismondo Malatesta, Journey of the Magi, 1459, Medici palace chapel, Florence.

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Figure 14. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Filippo Scolari, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 15. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Farinata degli Uberti, Famous Men and Women, 1448- 1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 16. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Niccolò Acciaiuoli, Famous Men and Women, 1448- 1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 17. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Cumaean Sibyl, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 18. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Esther, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 19. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Tomyris, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 20. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Dante, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 21. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Petrarch, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 22. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Boccaccio, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 23. Andrea del Castagno, Virgin Mary, Christ Child, Adam, and Eve, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 24. East and South Walls with Domenico Ghirlandaio’s St. The Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 25. Palazzo della Signoria, Florence.

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Figure 26. Plan of the second story, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 27. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of St. Zenobius with Sts. Eugenius and Crescentius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 28. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Madonna, Christ Child, and angels in a tympanum trompe l’oeil terracotta relief, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 29. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Brutus, Scaevola, and Camillus, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 30. Domenico Ghirlandaio, detail of Decius, Scipio, and Cicero, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 31. Nine Heroes Tapestry, c.1400-1410, today located in The Cloisters Collection in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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Figure 32. Master of La Manta, Male Worthies, c.1420, Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo.

Figure 33. Master of La Manta, Female Worthies, c.1420, Sala Bronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo.

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Figure 34. Master of La Manta, Male and Female Worthies, c.1420, Sala Bronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo.

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Figure 35. Master of La Manta, wall with Fountain of Love (opposite Male and Female Worthies), c.1420, Sala Baronale, Castello della Manta, Saluzzo.

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Figure 36. Detail of Petrarch, badly damaged and heavily repainted, c.1340-1370, originally located in the Sala Virorum Illustrium, today located in the Sala dei Giganti, Carrara palace, Padua.

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Figure 37. Domenico Campagnola and Stefano dall' Arzere, Sala dei Giganti, 1539-1540, Carrara palace, Padua.

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Figure 38. Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

Figure 39. Taddeo di Bartolo, Uomini famosi, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

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Figure 40. Taddeo di Bartolo, detail of right triad of uomini famosi: Cicero, M. Porcius Cato, and P. Scipio Nasica, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

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Figure 41. Taddeo di Bartolo, detail of left triad of uomini famosi: M. Curius Dentatus, M. Furius Camillus, and P. Scipio Africanus Major, 1413-1414, Salette ante Consistorium, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

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Figure 42. Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Effects of Good Government on Town and Country (c.1337- 1340), Council Chamber, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena.

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Figure 43. View of the Sala Imperatorium, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

Figure 44. Foundation of Rome, c.1417, loggia outside of the Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 45. Detail of Rhea Silvea, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

Figure 46. Detail of Ugolino Trinci and his two Sons, c.1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 47. View of the Sala Imperatorum, c. 1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 48. Tiberius and Furius Camillus (with verses), c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 49. Octavian, Tiberius, Furius Camillus, and Fabricus, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

Figure 50. Curius Dentatus, Manlius Torquatus, and Cincinnatus, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 51. Scipio Africanus, Scaevola, and balcony with onlookers (Ugolino Trinci and Costanza Orsini), c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

Figure 52. Cato, Gaius Marius, and Publius Decius, c. 1417, Sala Imperatorum, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 53. Corridor with the expanded Worthies and the Ages of Man, c. 1417, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 54. Corridor with Worthies and earlier series of the Ages of Man, Palazzo Trinci, Foligno.

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Figure 55. Julius Caesar, Constantine the Great, and Noah, c. 1438, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 56. Sala del Consiglio, c.1438-1473, Palazzo del Comune, Lucignano.

Figure 57. Sala del Consiglio, c.1438-1473, Palazzo del Comune, Lucignano.

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Figure 58. Detail of Janus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

Figure 59. Detail of Gaius Mutius Scaevola, Cicero, and Lucius Junius Brutus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 60. Detail of Pompey, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

Figure 61. Detail of St. Paul, Virgil, and Justinian I, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 62. Detail of Boethius, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

Figure 63. Detail of Judas Maccabeus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 64. Detail of Octavian, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 65. Detail of Metellus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 66. Detail of Samson, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

Figure 67. Detail of Cato Uticensis, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 68. Detail of Lucretia Romana, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

Figure 69. Detail of Aristotle, Judith, and King Solomon, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 70. Detail of Camillus and Hercules (?), Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 71. Detail of Camillus, Sala del Consiglio, Palazzo Comunale, Lucignano.

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Figure 72. Paolo Uccello, Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood, 1436, Duomo, Florence.

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Figure 73. Diagram of the loggia in the Villa Carducci.

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Figure 74. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Madonna and Christ Child, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 75. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Adam, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 76. Andrea del Castagno, detail of Eve, Famous Men and Women, 1448-1451, Villa Carducci, Florence.

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Figure 77. Esther in Orsanmichele, Florence.

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Figure 78. Manuscript from The Divine Comedy, 14th century, today located in the Bodleian Library, fol. 046v, University of Oxford. Virgil and Dante dream: Human dies on a cross, while Ahasuerus, Esther and Mordecai talk together. Canto XVII. Sequence of pen-and-ink drawings in lower margins which illustrate the progress of Dante and Virgil. This is one of the four Dante manuscripts fully illustrated in the 14th century.

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Figure 79. Jael Kills Sisera, Tomyris Kills Cyrus, Manuscript, Speculum humanae salvationis, c.1430-1450, Folio 30 verso, today located in the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.

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Figure 80. East Wall with Sixteenth-century Portal into the Room of the Maps, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 81. View of Duomo from North Wall, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 82. Donatello, David (marble), c.1408-1412, Florence.

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Figure 83. South and West walls, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Ceiling and entablature designs attributed to Benedetto da Maiano, c. 1472-1480; Benedetto da Maiano, West Wall Portal with St. John the Baptist, c. 1475; Donatello, Judith Beheading Holofernes, c. 1460.

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Figure 84. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Detail of St. Eugenius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 85. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Detail of St. Crescentius, Apotheosis of St. Zenobius and Famous Men, 1482-1483, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 86. Detail of the Duomo and the Baptistry of the Florence Cathedral, Sala dei Gigli fresco.

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Figure 87. Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence.

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Figure 88. Detail of St. Zenobius, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence.

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Figure 89. Detail of Saint to the Left, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence.

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Figure 90. Detail of Saint to the Right, Giuliano da Maiano and workshop, Zenobius Panel (before restoration), 1463-65, North Sacristy, Duomo, Florence.

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Figure 91. Dominico Ghirlandaio, Detail of the Central Arch, c.1482-83, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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Figure 92. Dominico Ghirlandaio, Detail of Zenobius’s torso, c.1482-83, Sala dei Gigli, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

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