Florence: the Bargello

In the year 1250 the city of Florence created the office of Capitano del Popolo. The Capitano was a kind of popular tribune who guarded the interests of the people. In 1255 a public palazzo was built for him, the first of its kind in Florence. The architect was Lapo di Cambio, the father of the more famous Arnolfo di Cambio. The palazzo did not remain the seat of the Capitano for long, as already in 1260 the building became the headquarters of the Podestà, a term that we may translate as “mayor” with some justification. In the first decades of the fourteenth century the palazzo was enlarged significantly. The expansion included the construction of the Cappella della Maddalena or Cappella del Podestà.

In 1574 the palazzo was turned into a prison. The head of police, or Bargello, made it his headquarters and gave the building the name under which it is still known today. The word bargello or barigello derives from Latin barigildus, a word that in its turn has Longobardic roots and originally meant something along the lines of “castle”. Until 1786 people were executed in the Bargello. In that year the enlightened grand duke Leopold I, who ruled from 1765 until 1790 and then became Holy Roman Emperor for another year and a half, abolished the death penalty and prohibited torture. In 1857 the city prison was moved to another building. The Bargello was then thoroughly remodelled, and in 1865 it reopened as a national museum, the first of its kind in a recently united Italy. At the time Florence was the capital of Italy, a position of honour the city soon lost again when Italian troops took Rome in September of 1870. Nowadays the Bargello is one of the best-known art museums of Florence, a museum that is rightfully proud of especially its impressive collection of sculptures. In this post I will discuss ten personal highlights.

I will dedicate a separate post to the aforementioned Cappella della Maddalena. It was there that, in 1840, frescoes were discovered which at the time were entirely attributed to the great painter Giotto (ca. 1266-1337). Nowadays experts assume that the frescoes were mostly painted by Giotto’s assistants, but they are nevertheless famous for containing a portrait of the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri (ca. 1265-1321), author of the Divine Comedy. It is certainly not a coincidence that the Bargello opened its doors in 1865, 600 years after Dante’s birth in – presumably – 1265. Of the first two exhibitions in the Bargello one was dedicated to the great poet.

1. Coronation of King Ferrante of Naples – Benedetto da Maiano

King Ferdinand I, better known to posterity as Ferrante, ruled over the kingdom of Naples from 1458 until 1494. Naples is basically a pars pro toto for Southern Italy. Together with the island of Sicily it constituted the so-called “Two Sicilies”. There had once been a single kingdom, founded by the Normans. When the Norman king William II “the Good” died in 1189, the throne passed to the German dynasty of the Hohenstaufen. The greatest monarch from this dynasty was Frederick II, also known as stupor mundi, “astonishment of the world”. The great king died in 1250, and his son and successor Conrad followed him to the grave four years later, just 26 years old. The crown then passed to Conrad’s two-year-old son, also called Conrad, but commonly known as Conradin. The real power in the kingdom was, however, in the hands of Manfred, the favourite illegitimate son of Frederick II. As of 1258 he began officially calling himself King of Sicily. Unfortunately Manfred was defeated and killed in 1266 by Charles of Anjou (ca. 1226-1285), the younger brother of the French king Louis IX. Two years later Charles also ordered the execution of Conradin.

With Charles of Anjou starts the Angevin period. The new king was more interested in Southern Italy than in Sicily and seldom visited the island. On Sicily there was great unrest about the king’s tax policy and his predilection for appointing French and Provençal noblemen in high positions. On 30 March 1282, Easter Monday, tensions boiled over at the church of Santo Spirito in Palermo: the famed Sicilian Vespers. The Sicilian people expelled the French, and through Constance II of Sicily, daughter of the slain Manfred, Sicily fell into the hands of her husband Peter III of Aragon. On 30 August 1282 King Peter landed on the island and quickly captured it. Charles for his part held on to the mainland, which he ruled from Naples. The war between Aragon and Anjou was temporarily ended in 1302 with the signing of the treaty of Caltabellotta, after which there were “Two Sicilies” for the next couple of centuries: the kingdom on the island of Sicily itself and the kingdom in Southern Italy with Naples as its capital. In 1442 Alfonso V of Aragon, who was already King of Sicily, also became King of Naples. Ferrante was his illegitimate son. For a brief moment the Two Sicilies were united again, but upon Alfonso’s death in 1458 the kingdom was once again split. Alfonso’s younger brother John II became King of Sicily and Ferrante ascended the throne of Naples.

Ferrante had a rough start. Pope Callixtus III and the French king Louis XI did not support his claim to the throne and sided with John of Anjou from the Angevin dynasty. The Pazzi from Florence, a rich bankers family, also chose John’s side, while their rivals the Medici supported Ferrante. Ferrante managed to withstand the pressure, and after the death of Pope Callixtus on 6 August 1458 things began to look bright again for him. On 4 February 1459 he was formally crowned King of Naples in the cathedral of Barletta. The coronation was not performed by the new pope Pius II, but by cardinal Latino Orsini (1411-1477), whom we have met previously on this website. In honour of the coronation the sculptor Benedetto da Maiano (1442-1497), an artist from a village near Florence, crafted a sculpture group composed of the king, the cardinal and at least six musicians. The group was probably even larger once, but the statues never reached the Porta Capuana in Naples, for which they were intended. The king and cardinal have been in the Bargello since 1870, the musicians since 1970. King Ferrante of Naples died at the beginning of 1494 and was remembered as a patron of the arts. He was also a talented general, who had the bodies of executed enemies embalmed and put on display in a mummy museum in his palace.

2. Christ Pantocrator

A Byzantine mosaic of Christ as the “Ruler of Everything” is my second highlight. The small mosaic comes from the private collection of the Medici family and dates from ca. 1150-1175. Unfortunately the caption does not tell us how the Medici acquired the little gem. On either side of the head of Christ we see the Greek letters IC XC (Iesous Christos; Ἰησοῦς Χριστός). The text of the book that Christ holds is also Greek. Unfortunately some of the tesserae are lost, but it is clear that we read the text of John 8:12 here (“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness”). The complex hand gesture of the Saviour and the two locks of hair on his forehead no doubt refer to the two inseparable natures of Christ and to the Holy Trinity. All in all the small mosaic strongly reminded me of the large apse mosaics on Sicily, especially those of Monreale and Cefalù.

3. Ivory diptych

At some point during the Late Roman Empire it became common for Roman consuls to have ivory diptychs with their own image made during their terms of office. I have previously discussed two such diptychs, i.e. the one issued by the consul of 487 Manlius Boethius (in the Italian city of Brescia) and the one issued by the consul of 506 Flavius Areobindus Dagalaiphus Areobindus (in the French city of Besançon). The Bargello possesses the left part of a diptych that is a bit younger. In this case the consul involved is Anicius Faustus Albinus Basilius, who served as consul in 541.

The upper part of the diptych features the name of the consul, accompanied by the letters VC, vir clarissimus. The right part of the diptych is not in Florence, but in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan. This part contains the rest of the titles that Basilius held. On the left part the consul is depicted in consular attire. He is holding a mappa, a piece of linen that was used during the circus games. Once the magistrate had dropped the mappa from his lodge, the charioteers and their chariots were allowed to leave their starting gates or carceres. The circus games can be seen in the lower part of the diptych: four chariots drawn by four horses race around a spina. The figure next to the consul is Roma, the personification of the city of Rome. This is actually a bit ironic: when Basilius served as consul, the emperors had long since moved to Constantinople (and we may assume the consuls as well).

4. Saint George – Donatello

Donatello (1386-1466) was about thirty years old when the guild of armourers and swordsmiths commissioned him to make his famous statue of Saint George the dragon slayer (1416-1417). The statue once adorned the exterior of the church of Orsanmichele in Florence, but it has been one of the top pieces of the Bargello for ages. The church nowadays has to content itself with a replica. Donatello sculpted Saint George as a young man wearing Renaissance armour. The hero is leaning on a large kite-shaped shield (a product sold by the armourers), but otherwise he appears to be unarmed. Below the statue of the saint we see a relief that depicts the legend of the killing of the dragon.

5. David – Donatello

Let us stick with Donatello for a moment and admire his David, a bronze statue from ca. 1440 that is even more famous than Saint George. The David is widely considered to be the first fully naked statue since Antiquity, which makes it a poster boy of the Renaissance. The biblical hero looks more like a figure from Greek mythology, his helmet reminding us of the winged helmet worn by Mercury/Hermes. David has just defeated Goliath: the severed head of the Philistine lies at David’s feet. Donatello made the statue for Cosimo the Elder, Medici ruler of Florence between 1429 and 1464. For a long time this David stood in the courtyard of the Palazzo Medici, the headquarters of the family. When the Medici were expelled from Florence in 1494, it was moved to the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio. After that David was again moved several times, and ultimately the statue ended up in the Uffizi and then the Bargello.

6. David – Verrocchio

In the rooms where we find Donatello’s David we can admire another David as well. This one was made by Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) and dates from ca. 1466-1469. Verrocchio’s David has a link with the Medici as well: it was commissioned from the sculptor by Piero the Gouty, son of Cosimo the Elder and ruler of Florence between 1464 and 1469. In 1476 the statue was placed in the Palazzo Vecchio and from the start of the seventeenth century onward it was part of the collection of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, who were from a different branch of the family (they were descendants of Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo the Elder). Since about 1870 Verrocchio’s David can be found in the Bargello. Unlike Donatello’s David this David is not naked: he is wearing a suit of armour that was originally heavily gilded. Judging by his appearance this David resembles a brat from the streets of Florence rather than a classical Greek hero.

7. Bronze panels by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi

The Baptistery of Florence has three entrances with three sets of bronze doors. The oldest set was made by Andrea Pisano (ca. 1290-1348), the two younger sets by Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455). Ghiberti made his first set between 1403 and 1424. Before he got the assignment a competition was held for which the participants had to send in a model. They were asked to make a bronze panel featuring the Sacrifice of Isaac. The panels that Ghiberti and his rival Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) presented before a jury have been preserved and can now be admired at the Bargello. I had always thought that Ghiberti won the competition, but the information panel of the Bargello claims that he and Brunelleschi were both declared winners by the jury. The latter then apparently lost his appetite for the assignment, as the set of bronze doors was subsequently made by Ghiberti and his assistants without participation of Brunelleschi.

8. Bacchus – Michelangelo

A popular Florentine museum without a statue of the great Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) is obviously unthinkable. Michelangelo made his Bacchus in 1496-1497 in Rome, which makes it a very early work by the master. The sculptor made it for cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521). Michelangelo had previously sold the cardinal a fake artefact that supposedly dated from Antiquity, the so-called Sleeping Cupid. Riario knew he was being tricked, but nevertheless decided to summon the talented young sculptor to Rome and stimulate his career. Unfortunately for Michelangelo the cardinal did not like his Bacchus because of the large amount of nudity. The statue was then sold to the banker Jacopo Galli, who placed it in his garden in Rome. The work consists of the wine god Bacchus and a satyr behind him. Bacchus has grapes in his hair and is holding a bunch of grapes, on which the satyr is nibbling. In his right hand the wine god is holding a cup. It should be noted that this right hand is not original. One detail that I did not notice until I studied my photos is that Bacchus no longer has a penis. Apparently the thing disappeared in the early sixteenth century. Grand Duke Cosimo I nevertheless considered the statue interesting enough to buy it in 1572, which explains why it can currently be admired in Florence instead of Rome.

9. Mercury – Giambologna

I already mentioned a David that looks like Mercury, but the Bargello also has a real Mercury. This bronze flying Mercury is a work of the Flemish sculptor Jean de Boulogne, more commonly known as Giambologna (ca. 1529-1608). The Greek god is instantly recognisable by his winged helmet and caduceus, the staff with the snakes wrapped around it. At his feet we see the head of Zephyrus, the storm god that blows Mercury through the air. We do not know when exactly Giambologna made his Mercury, but the work is first mentioned in 1580. It once embellished a fountain of the Villa Medici in Rome – now the seat of the Académie de France à Rome – and came to the Uffizi in 1780. Since about 1870 it can be admired at the Bargello.

10. Battista Sforza – Francesco Laurana

Of course we all know Battista Sforza (1446-1472) from the famous double portrait that Piero della Francesca painted of her and her husband Federico da Montefeltro (1422-1482). With regard to that double portrait the question is often raised whether Battista was perhaps portrayed posthumously. There will never be a definite answer to that question, but when it comes to her marble bust at the Bargello, there is no doubt whatsoever that it was only made after her death, somewhere between 1472 and 1475. The text below the bust reads:

DIVA BAPTISTA SFORTIA VRB RG

Diva is the Latin word for “divine” and people could only become divine when they were dead, at least in the pagan world. VRB RG probably means Urbinae regina, or “queen of Urbino”. That is quite an exaggeration. Federico da Montefeltro was lord and later duke of Urbino, but never king, so Battista was never a queen. The maker of the bust, Francesco Laurana (ca. 1430-1502), was born in the Croatian town of Vrana, which was then under Venetian rule. His name derives from this town: La Vrana; in Latin the letter U can be used as a vowel (u) and a consonant (v). It is plausible that the bust of Battista Sforza was painted once, but the paint has disintegrated long ago.

Much of the information on which this post is based came from the information panels of the Bargello. For King Ferrante see Ross King, The Bookseller of Florence.