Cappelle Medicee
Chapel of Princes (La Cappella dei Principi, 1602-1743)
Michelangelo’s New Sacristy (Sacrestia Nuova)
The Medici Chapels contain tombs of Florence’s great ruling family, from Lorenzo the Magnificent to those less so. The highlight is a chapel designed by Michelangelo at the height of his creative powers. This is Renaissance Man’s greatest “installation,” a room completely under one artist’s control, featuring innovative architecture, tombs, and sculpture. His statues tell of a middle-aged man’s brooding meditation on mortality, the fall of the Medici Golden Age, and the relentless passage of time—from Dawn to Day to Dusk to Night.
(See “Heart of Florence” map, here.)
Cost: €6, €9 with mandatory temporary exhibits, covered by Firenze Card.
Hours: April-Oct Tue-Sat 8:15-16:50, Nov-March Tue-Sat 8:15-13:50; also open second and fourth Mon and first, third, and fifth Sun of each month; last entry 30 minutes before closing. Reservations are possible but unnecessary.
Crowd Alert: The bottleneck entrance (tickets and metal detector) can make for a slow entry, even with the Firenze Card.
Dress Code: No tank tops, short shorts, or short skirts.
Getting There: It’s in the Church of San Lorenzo—the one with the smaller dome on Florence’s skyline (five-minute walk northwest of Duomo). The bustling outdoor market almost obscures the chapel entrance at the back (west end) of the church. See here for more about the Church of San Lorenzo.
Information: Tel. 055-238-8602, www.polomuseale.firenze.it.
Audioguide: €6 (€10/2 people).
Length of This Tour: Allow 45 minutes. With limited time, make a beeline to Michelangelo’s New Sacristy.
Services: WCs are midway up the staircase that leads from the Crypt to the Chapel of Princes. Look for the camouflaged doorway.
Photography: Prohibited.
Starring: Michelangelo’s statues Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk.
Nearby Eateries: For restaurants near the Church of San Lorenzo, see here.
The Medici Chapels consist of three burial places: the unimpressive Crypt; the large and gaudy Chapel of Princes; and—the highlight—Michelangelo’s New Sacristy, a room completely designed by him to honor four Medici. Due to restoration work, scaffolding in the Chapel of Princes may obscure some (lesser) sights when you visit.
• Enter the Chapel and buy tickets. Immediately after you show your ticket, you’re in...
This gloomy, low-ceilinged room with gravestones underfoot reminds us that these “chapels” are really tombs. You’ll see a few Lorenzos buried in this room (after all, “Laurentius,” or Lawrence, was the family’s patron saint)...but none that is “Magnificent” (he’s later). The collection of ornate silver and gold reliquaries is appropriately macabre and worth a quick look.
• Head upstairs via the staircase on the right and into the large, domed, multicolored chapel, which is not by Michelangelo.
The impressive dome overhead (seen from outside, it’s the big, red-brick “mini-Duomo”) tops an octagonal room that echoes the Baptistery and Duomo drum. It’s lined with six tombs of Medici rulers and is decorated everywhere with the Medici coat of arms—a shield with six balls thought to represent the pills of doctors (medici), reputedly their original occupation. Along with many different-colored marbles, geologists will recognize jasper, porphyry, quartz, alabaster, coral, mother-of-pearl, and lapis lazuli.
Sixteen shields ring the room at eye level, each representing one of the Tuscan cities (“Civitas”) ruled by Florence’s dukes. Find Florence, with its fleur-de-lis (“Florentiae”), and Pisa (“Pisarum”), both just left of the altar.
The bronze statues honor two of the “later” Medici, the cultured but oppressive dukes who ruled Florence after the city’s glorious Renaissance. In the first niche to the right (as you face the altar) stands Ferdinando I (ruled 1587-1609), dressed in an ermine cape and jewels. He started the work on this Chapel of Princes and tore down the Duomo’s medieval facade. His son, Cosimo II (ruled 1609-1621, to the right), appointed Galileo “first professor” of science at Pisa U., inspiring him to label the moons of Jupiter “the Medici Stars.”
The altar was finished in 1939 for a visit from Hitler and Mussolini. The altar itself is the only Christian symbolism in this spacious but stifling temple to power, wealth, and mediocre Medici.
(Psst. A room behind the altar—though it may be blocked by scaffolding—displays relics and the pastoral staff of Pope Leo X, who was Lorenzo the Magnificent’s son and Michelangelo’s classmate.)
• Continue down the hall, passing statues of Roman armor with worms sprouting out, to Michelangelo’s New Sacristy.
(See “New Sacristy” map, here.)
The entire room—architecture, tombs, and statues—was designed by Michelangelo over a 14-year period (1520-1534) to house the bodies of four of the Medici family. Michelangelo, who spent his teen years in the Medici household and personally knew three of the four family members buried here, was emotionally attached to the project. This is the work of a middle-aged man (he started at age 45 and finished at 59) reflecting on his contemporaries dying around him, and on his own mortality.
• There are tombs decorated with statues against three of the walls, and an altar on the fourth. Start with the tomb on the left wall (as you enter and face the altar).
Lorenzo II—the grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent—is shown as a Roman general, seated, arm resting on a Medici-bank money box, and bowing his head in contemplation. He had been the model for Machiavelli’s The Prince, and when he died at 27 (of tuberculosis and syphilis) without a male heir, the line of great princes stretching back to Cosimo the Elder died with him.
His sarcophagus, with a curved, scrolled lid, bears the reclining statues that Michelangelo named Dusk and Dawn. Dusk (the man), worn out after a long day, slumps his chin on his chest and reflects on the day’s events. Dawn (the woman) stirs restlessly after a long night, with an anguished face, as though waking from a bad dream. Dusk and Dawn, with their counterparts Day and Night (opposite wall), represented to Michelangelo the swift passage of time, which kills everyone and causes our glorious deeds on earth to quickly fade.
During the years he worked here, Michelangelo suffered the deaths of his father, his favorite brother, and his unofficial stepbrother, Pope Leo X Medici. In addition, plagues in 1522 and 1527 killed thousands in Florence. In 1527, his adopted city of Rome was looted by mercenaries. Michelangelo’s letters reveal that, upon turning 50, he was feeling old, tired (“If I work one day, I need four to recuperate”), and depressed (he called it mio pazzo, “my madness”). He was also facing up to the sad fact that the masterpiece of his youth—the grand tomb of Pope Julius II—was never going to be completed.
Overachievers in severe midlife crises may wish to avoid the Medici Chapels.
• On the opposite wall is the...
Overshadowed by his famous father (Lorenzo the Magnificent) and big brother (Pope Leo X), Giuliano led a wine-women-and-song life, dying young without a male heir. His statue as a Roman general, with scepter, powerful Moses-esque pose, and alert, intelligent face, looks in the direction of the Madonna statue, as though asking forgiveness for a wasted life. The likeness is not at all accurate. Michelangelo said, “In a thousand years, no one will know how they looked.”
Giuliano’s “active” pose complements the “contemplative” one of Lorenzo, showing the two elements (thought + action) that Plato and Michelangelo believed made up the soul of man.
Night (the woman) does a crossover sit-up in her sleep, toning the fleshy abs that look marvelously supple and waxlike, not like hard stone. She’s highly polished, shimmering, and finished with minute details. Michelangelo’s females—musclemen with coconut-shell breasts—are generally more complete and (some think) less interesting than his men.
Michelangelo was homosexual. While his private sex life (or lack thereof) remains a mystery, his public expressions of affection were clearly weighted toward men. Some say he was less interested in female bodies and felt he could easily sum them up in a statue.
Day (the man) works out a crick in his back, each limb twisting a different direction, turning away from us. He looks over his shoulder with an expression (suspicious? angry? arrogant?) forever veiled behind chisel marks suggestive of Impressionist brush strokes. In fact, none of the four reclining statues’ faces expresses a clear emotion, as all are turned inward, letting body language speak.
If, as some say, Michelangelo purposely left these statues “unfinished” while liberating them from their stone prison, it certainly adds mystery and a contrast in color and texture. Night’s moonlit clarity and Day’s rough-hewn grogginess may also reflect Michelangelo’s own work schedule—a notorious day-sleeper and guilt-ridden layabout (“Dear to me is sleep”) who, when inspired (as a friend wrote), “works much, eats little, and sleeps less.”
Among Night’s symbols (the crescent moon on her forehead, owl under knee, and poppies underfoot) is a grotesque mask with, perhaps, a self-portrait. Michelangelo, a serious poet (so much so that he almost considered sculpting his “day job”), has Night say in one of his poems: “As long as shame and sorrow exist / I’d rather not see or hear / So speak softly and let me sleep.”
Day, Night, Dawn, and Dusk—brought to life in this room where Michelangelo had his workshop, and where they’ve been ever since—meditate eternally on Death, squirming restlessly, unable to come to terms with it.
• On the entrance wall is the...
As the tomb was never completed, all that really marks where The Magnificent One’s body lies is a marble slab, now topped with a statue of the Madonna flanked by saints. Perhaps Michelangelo was working up to the grand finale to honor the man who not only was the greatest Medici, but who also plucked a poor 13-year-old Michelangelo from an obscure apprenticeship to dine at the Medici table with cardinals and kings.
Lorenzo’s beloved younger brother, Giuliano, died in 1478 in a “hit” by a rival family, stabbed to death before the altar of the Duomo during Easter Mass. (Lorenzo, wounded, drew his sword and backpedaled to safety. Enraged supporters grabbed the assassins—including two priests planted there by the pope—and literally tore them apart.)
The Medici Madonna, unlike many Michelangelo women, is thin, vertical, and elegant, her sad face veiled under chisel marks. Aware of the hard life her son has ahead of him, she tolerates the squirming, two-year-old Jesus, who seems to want to breast-feed. Mary’s right foot is still buried in stone, so this unfinished statue was certainly meant to be worked on more. The saints Cosmas and Damian were done by assistants.
The Chapel project (1520-1534) was plagued by delays: design changes, late shipments of Carrara marble, the death of patrons, Michelangelo’s other obligations (including the Laurentian Medici Library next door), his own depression, and...revolution.
In 1527, Florence rose up against the Medici pope and declared itself an independent republic. Michelangelo, torn between his love of Florence and loyalty to the Medici of his youth, walked a fine line. He continued to work for the pope while simultaneously designing fortified city walls to defend Florence from the pope’s troops. In 1530, the besieged city fell, republicans were rounded up and executed, and Michelangelo went into hiding (perhaps in the chapel basement, down the steps to the left of the altar). Fortunately, his status as both an artist and a staunch Florentine spared him from reprisals.
The Medici family—part Sopranos, part Kennedys, part John-D-and-Catherine-T art patrons—dominated Florentine politics for 300 years (c. 1434-1737). Originally a hardworking, middle-class family in the cloth, silk, and banking businesses, they used their wealth, blue-collar popularity, and philanthropy to rise into Europe’s nobility, producing popes and queens.
1400s: The Princes
Lorenzo the Magnificent (ruled 1469-1492), Cosimo the Elder’s grandson, epitomized the Medici ruling style: publicly praising Florence’s constitution while privately holding the purse strings. A true Renaissance Man, Lorenzo’s personal charisma, public festivals, and support of Leonardo, Botticelli, and teenage Michelangelo made Florence Europe’s most enlightened city.
1494-1532: Exile in Rome
After Lorenzo’s early death, the family was exiled by the Florentines. The Medici became victims of bank failure, Savonarola’s reforms, and the Florentine tradition of democracy. They built a power base in Rome under Lorenzo’s son (Pope Leo X, who made forays into Florence) and nephew (Pope Clement VII, who finally invaded Florence and crushed the republic).
1537-1737: The Grand Duchy—Mediocre Medici
Backed by Europe’s popes and kings, the “later” Medici—descendants of Cosimo the Elder’s brother—ruled Florence and Tuscany as just another duchy. Grand Duke Cosimo I was politically repressive but a generous patron of the arts, leaving his mark on the Palazzo Vecchio, the Uffizi, and the Pitti Palace. Cosimo II supported Galileo. Famous throughout Europe, the Medici married into Europe’s royal families (Catherine and Marie de’ Medici were queens of France), even while Florence declined as a political and economic power.
In 1534, a new pope enticed Michelangelo to come back to Rome with a challenging new project: painting the Last Judgment over the altar in the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo left, never to return to the Medici Chapels. Assistants gathered up statues and fragments from the chapel floor (and the Madonna from Michelangelo’s house) and did their best to assemble the pieces according to Michelangelo’s designs.
• The apse is the area behind the altar. This has the best view of the chapel as a whole.
Michelangelo’s many design changes and improvisational style come to life in these (dimly lit and hard to see behind Plexiglas) black chalk and charcoal doodles, presumably by Michelangelo and assistants.
• Starting on the left wall and working clockwise at about eye level...
Look at all the marks: hash marks counting off days worked, a window frame for the Laurentian Medici Library, scribbles, a face, an arch, a bearded face, and (on the right wall) a horse, a nude figure crouching under an arch, a twisting female nude with her dog, and a tiny, wacky, cartoon Roman soldier with shield and spurs. You really do get a sense of Michelangelo and staff working, sweating, arguing, and just goofing off as the hammers pound and dust flies.
The New Sacristy was the first chance for Michelangelo to use his arsenal of talents—as sculptor, architect, and Thinker of Big Ideas—on a single multimedia project. The resulting “installation” (a 20th-century term) produces a powerful overall effect that’s different for everyone—“somber,” “meditative,” “redemptive,” “ugly.”
The room is a cube topped with a Pantheon-style dome, with three distinct stories—the heavy tombs at ground level, upper-level windows with simpler wall decoration, and the dome, better-lit and simpler still. The whole effect draws the eye upward, from dark and “busy” to light and airy. (It’s intensified by an optical illusion—Michelangelo made the dome’s coffers, the upper windows, and round lunettes all taper imperceptibly at the top so they’d look taller and higher.)
The white walls are lined in gray-brown-green stone. The half columns, arches, and triangular pediments are traditional Renaissance forms, but with no regard for the traditional “orders” of the time (matching the right capital with the right base, the correct width-to-height ratio of columns, upper story taller than lower, etc.). Michelangelo had Baroque-en the rules, baffling his contemporaries and pointing the way to a new, more ornate style that used old forms as mere decoration.
Finally, Michelangelo, a serious Neo-Platonist, wanted this room to symbolize the big philosophical questions that death presents to the living. Summing up these capital-letter concepts (far, far more crudely than was ever intended), the room might say:
Time (the four reclining statues) kills Mortal Men (statues of Lorenzo and Giuliano) and mocks their Glory (Roman power symbols). But if we Focus (Lorenzo and Giuliano’s gaze) on God’s Grace (Madonna and Child), our Souls (both Active and Contemplative parts) can be Resurrected (the Chapel was consecrated to this) and rise from this drab Earth (the dark, heavy ground floor) up into the Light (the windows and lantern) of Heaven (the geometrically perfect dome), where God and Plato’s Ideas are forever Immortal.
And that, folks, is a Mouthful.
