Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Another Florentine Masterpiece
Personally, I find those Florentine Cosimos confusing. The fact Cosimo I came along some 100 years later after Cosimo de Medici (the Elder) doesn’t help.
After doing well in banking and spreading his fingers into politics, Cosimo the Elder decided to build a palazzo to reflect his growing power. Begun in 1444, this family home was just around the corner form the Basilica di San Lorenzo — and hence the proximity of the Medici Chapels to the Basilica, the Medici local church.
From the outside, the building is one of rusticated stone, a style common to Florentine buildings of the time. This was also in keeping with the sumptuary laws which Cosimo the Elder helped establish to minimise display of personal wealth throughout the city. I still wonder if he had a sense of irony, or simply didn’t want others to rival his own growing powerbase.
The project was entrusted to the architect Michelozzo, after Cosimo rejected a design by Filippo Brunelleschi, for being “too bombastic and pretentious”, so much that “it might have aroused the envy of his fellow citizens instead of being an example of beauty and an ornament for…
