4.4 Visual Arts
Arts: Italian Renaissance
How to Recognize Italian Renaissance Art
Video URL: https://youtu.be/6YiL9MNyGKE?si=z12OTwG8uO_1oGto
Understanding Linear Perspective
Video URL: https://youtu.be/eOksHhQ8TLM?si=XbT7E2pElNqrMYLr
Masaccio’s Holy Trinity and Linear Perspective
Video URL: https://youtu.be/mdd7LhVx00o?si=Y_0XjPlBrJ99gwEW
Benozzo Gozzoli, The Medici Palace Chapel frescoes
Inside the Medici Palace, just off the palace’s central courtyard at street-level, is the Medici Chapel (or Magi Chapel). Completed in the mid-fifteenth century, this intimate room still dazzles its visitors with its vividly painted frescoes and gold leaf which is in stark contrast to the palace’s rather modest exterior. One can easily imagine the glittering effect of flickering candlelight in the opulent space of the Medici Chapel.
The Medici family was a wealthy and powerful Florentine family, whose fortune was built on their banking industry. The Medici Bank was initiated in the late 14th century under Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, but the family’s economic power ultimately helped them garner increased political power, and they became the rulers of Florence (and later Tuscany) for much of the fifteenth through early eighteenth centuries. While the patron of the Palazzo, Cosimo de’ Medici (“il Vecchio”), wanted his family home to have an austere, geometric public face (so as not to be perceived as ostentatious), the family’s wealth and influence was strategically displayed throughout the interior, including in the Medici Chapel. This balance reflects Cosimo’s calculated efforts to maintain power and favor in Florence while avoiding conspicuous outward displays of the family’s wealth. This was especially important in the fifteenth century when power in Florence was constantly oscillating between the Medici and the Florentine Republic. So, it was beneficial for the Medici to avoid appearing too pretentious and greedy in their public displays of wealth.
The small Medici Chapel was meant to function as a space of private worship for the family. For the space’s fresco decoration, the Medici chose the painter Benozzo Gozzoli, who had trained under the Florentine Fra Angelico (known for his frescoes in the monastery of San Marco, a decorative program which was also funded by Cosimo il Vecchio).
Such private spaces for worship—whether in a public setting, such as a local church, or in one’s family home—were quite common for rulers and the wealthy in early modern Italy. However, papal permission for the construction of a private family chapel inside a residence was required, and the Medici had obtained this through Pope Martin V by 1442.
A feast for the eyes, Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes cover every wall of the small chapel, enveloping the viewer from all sides. Said to have been painted in about 150 days in 1459, the theme centers around three biblical kings from far-reaching lands, commonly known as the Magi or wisemen. According to Christian tradition, these men vis