Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio: the Renaissance propaganda in Palazzo Vecchio

The Chapel of the Priors in the Palazzo Vecchio, in Florence, is a mixture of art, form and information, architecture and ethics. And it is an example of how all these categories, in the art of the past, were not disconnected from reality, but closely related to politics, to the good governance of the city, to the moral and spiritual principles that were to guide administrators.

 

Gonfaloniere Piero Soderini commissioned Baccio d’Agnolo to build the chapel at the time of the first Republic in 1511, though building work continued after the return of the Medici in 1512. Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio, son of the better known Domenico, decorated it with religious themes, scrolls, Florentine emblems and ornamental motifs on a gold background imitating mosaic work. The vaults echo the ceiling of Raphael’s Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Thirty-two Latin inscriptions from the Bible and Classical or early Christian writers declaim the moral and religious principles that were supposed to guide the decisions of the government officials who gathered here to pray. The chapel was also home to Treasury of the Signoria’s archives and the most treasured possessions, including the famous Digest of Justinian codex (533), which was removed from the city of Pisa and is kept, along with a rare Greek evangelistary (9th century), in the aumbry on the right of the altar, as recorded by an inscription in the grille painted on the aumbry doors (now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana in Florence).

July 26, 2015