Florence is celebrating! On April 21, 2024, the city commemorates the 450th anniversary of the death of Cosimo I de’ Medici. It will be a year filled with celebratory events, starting with the inauguration, also on the 21st, of an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi Sacrati, headquarters of the Regional Presidency in Piazza Duomo.
Among the initiatives is a super-secret one, scheduled for August 27 of this year, precisely the day when Cosimo was appointed Magnus Dux Etruriae, in 1569, and became, thanks to the bull of Pius V, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The third announced initiative is a concert in homage to the great affirmation of musical culture that occurred in Florence at that time.
Who was Cosimo I de’ Medici
Cosimo de’ Medici was born in 1519 to the leader Giovanni dalle Bande Nere and Maria Salviati, grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent and descendant of the secondary branch of the Medici family.
He spent much of his childhood and adolescence at Villa del Trebbio, located in Mugello, and at Villa di Castello, both properties of his father at the time, enjoying a free life dedicated to outdoor activities such as hunting, falconry, wrestling, and horseback riding.
Cosimo took power in 1537, at only 17 years old, after the assassination of the Duke of Florence Alessandro de’ Medici. Given his young age and habits, many influential figures of Florence at the time expected to deal with a young man easy to influence, but Cosimo had inherited the fighting spirit of his father and paternal grandmother Caterina Sforza and, as soon as he took power, he dismissed the counselors and assumed absolute authority.
The power of the Medici became so firm that from that moment they ruled Florence and much of present-day Tuscany until the end of the dynasty, with the death without heirs of the last Medici grand duke, Gian Gastone, in 1737.
Cosimo married Eleonora di Toledo (1522-1562) in 1539, daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples. They met for the first time at Villa di Poggio a Caiano, and got married with great pomp in the church of San Lorenzo. With Cosimo, Eleonora had eleven children and died in 1562, at the age of forty, due to tuberculosis.
Cosimo I abdicated in 1574 in favor of his son Francesco, retiring definitively to Villa di Castello. In the same year, he died on April 21, at the age of fifty-five, already severely debilitated by a stroke that limited his mobility and took away his speech.
Promoter of art
Cosimo also knew how to take advantage of the political role of art, promoting numerous works that changed the face of Florence, giving his government the image of wise and enlightened power, bearer of economic and cultural prestige in the city.
Among the various architectural works promoted by him, the Uffizi Gallery stands out, originally intended for the administrative offices of the State and today one of the most important museums in the world.
Cosimo’s personal affection for Villa di Castello led him to spend part of his free time from commitments in the city. In a few years, Villa and the Garden di Castello were transformed into an allegory of the affirmation of Cosimo’s government and his territorial expansions.
Cosimo’s passion for hunting gave impetus, starting in 1566, to the construction of Villa di Cerreto Guidi. The villa was built according to a very simple layout but rich in symbolic value as a territorial stronghold of the new Florentine power.