The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici (50 page)

13. Girolamo Savonarola, 1452–1498, by Fra Bartolommeo.

14. The cloister of San Marco. Michelozzo was commissioned to rebuild this monastery by Cosimo de’ Medici. Savonarola became Prior here in 1491.

15. King Charles VIII’s army entering Florence on 17 November 1494. by Granacci. A corner of the Medici Palace can be seen on the left.

16. The execution of Savonarola in the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498, by an unknown artist.

17. The Medici villa il Trebbio by Giusto Utens. Cosimo retreated to this villa during the anti-Medicean plot of 1433. It later passed into the hands of Giovanni delle Bande Nere.

18. The Medici villa at Cafaggiolo by Giusto Utens. It was rebuilt for Cosimo by Michelozzo on an estate which the family had owned for generations. One of the towers has since been demolished

19. The Ponte Santa Trinità was rebuilt by Bartolommeo Ammanati between 1567 and 1569. Beyond it may be seen the Ponte Vecchio and the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria, by this time known as the Palazzo Vecchio.

20. The villa of Poggio a Caiano by Giusto Utens. It was converted by Giuliano da Sangallo for Lorenzo the Magnificent. The loggia and pediment were added in the time of his son, Pope Leo X.

21. Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Pope Leo X, portrayed by Raphael with the Pope’s cousin, Giulio, the future Pope Clement VII, on his right and Cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi standing behind the chair.

22. Florence at the time of the siege of 1529–30 as depicted by Giorgio Vasari. The Prince of Orange’s camp sprawls across the foreground. It was on Michelangelo’s advice that the defences were extended to circumvallate the hill of San Miniato on the right. The belfry of its church was protected from artillery fire by mattresses. Starved into surrender, the citizens were forced to accept the return of the Medici who had fled from Florence after the Sack of Rome.

23. Ajoust in the Piazza Santa Croce where chariot races and games
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were also traditionally held. The church of Santa Croce in the background contains the tombs of Michelangelo and of several of Cosimo de’ Medici’s friends, including Leonardo Bruni. The present marble façade, though built to a seventeenth-century design, was not added until 1863.