The Studiolo is a small painting-encrusted barrel-vaulted room in the

Palazzo Vecchio The ( "Old Palace") is the town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the , which holds a copy of Michelangelo's ''David'' statue, and the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the ''Palazzo della Signoria'', a ...

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

, Italy. It was commissioned by

Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany Francesco I (25 March 1541 – 19 October 1587) was the second Grand Duke of Tuscany, ruling from 1574 until his death in 1587. He was a member of the House of Medici. Biography Born in Florence, Francesco was the son of Cosimo I de' Med ...

. It was completed for the duke from 1570 to 1572, by teams of artists under the supervision of

Giorgio Vasari Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work ''Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideol ...

and the scholars Giovanni Batista Adriani and Vincenzo Borghini. This small room was part-office, part-laboratory, part-hiding place, and part-

cabinet of curiosities Cabinets of curiosities ( and ), also known as wonder-rooms ( ), were encyclopedic collections of objects whose categorical boundaries were, in Renaissance Europe, yet to be defined. Although more rudimentary collections had preceded them, t ...

. Here the prince tinkered with alchemy and kept his collection of small, precious, unusual or rare objects. The walls and ceiling were decorated with paintings showing a similar variety of subjects, some showing exotic forms of industry and others mythology. The inset paintings are now all that remains in the room of the original contents. They are rather larger than what is normally meant by the term

cabinet painting A cabinet painting (or cabinet picture) is a small painting, typically no larger than in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used for paintings that show full-length figures or landscapes at a small scale, rather th ...

. The late-

Mannerist Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it ...

decorative program of paintings and sculpture was based on items encompassed by the collection. The object collection itself was stored in ~ 20 cabinets. In the center is a fresco of

Prometheus In Greek mythology, Prometheus (; , , possibly meaning "forethought")Smith"Prometheus". is a Titans, Titan. He is best known for defying the Olympian gods by taking theft of fire, fire from them and giving it to humanity in the form of technol ...

receiving jewels from nature, commenting on the interplay of divine, nature, and humanity, that is the goal of both artistic and scientific interests.

Paintings

The walls were also covered with 34 paintings representing mythologic or religious subjects, or representing trades. The arrangement was such that paintings were somehow related to their neighbors, and emblematic of the objects in the cabinets below. The arrangement we see today is somewhat speculative; and the relationships are not always clear. For example, Tommaso d'Antonio Manzuoli's ''Diamond Mines'' hangs above Maso de Sanfriano's ''Fall of Icarus''. The painting by Giovanni Battista Naldini of the ''House of the Dreams'' emphasized the relationship with the adjacent bedroom of the Prince. In addition, originally a portrait of Francesco's mother, Eleonora of Toledo by

Bronzino Agnolo di Cosimo (; 17 November 150323 November 1572), usually known as Bronzino ( ) or Agnolo Bronzino, was an Italians, Italian Mannerism, Mannerist painter from Florence. His sobriquet, ''Bronzino'', may refer to his relatively dark skin or r ...

, kept vigil. While the Studiolo employed many of the best of contemporary Florentine painters, their work in this room, for most, does not represent their best efforts. The room itself is now more interesting as an example of an introverted and eccentric monarch; from an artistic viewpoint, the style of these paintings is the high point of Florentine

Mannerism Mannerism is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, when the Baroque style largely replaced it ...

, as reflected in the affected and contorted crowds in the canvases. The pseudo-allegiance to the sciences couple with the sense that they illuminated the educated monarch, suggest a prescient hint of the encyclopedic philosophy of Enlightenment. However, Francesco ultimately was a poor representative of the inquisitive mind; at best this room served as a tinkerer's closet, a place for this personally awkward monarch to find seclusion from his wife, family, and court. Not long after the death of the Grand Duke, it was neglected and dismantled by 1590, only to be partially reconstructed in the twentieth century as a

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

oddity within the medieval palace. Lacking furniture or a closed door, this reconstruction fails to accurately recreate the claustrophobic feel of the original. Johannes Stradanus, ''The Alchemists,'' c. 1570–73

Contributing artists to the Studiolo

* Alessandro Alloribr>(''Pearl Fisherman'')
*

Bartolomeo Ammannati Bartolomeo Ammannati (18 June 1511 – 13 April 1592) was an Italian architect and sculptor, born at Settignano, near Florence, Italy. He studied under Baccio Bandinelli and Jacopo Sansovino (assisting on the design of the Library of St. Mark ...

(''Ops'') * Niccolò Betti * Ludovico Buti (''The Armory'') * Giovanni Maria Butteri (''Francesco Visiting Glassworks'') * Elia Candido (''Aeolus'') * Vittore Casini ( ''The Forge of Vulcan'') * Mirabello Cavaloribr>(''Lavinia at the Altar'')
* Jacopo Coppi, called "il Meglio" (''The Invention of Gunpowder'')Schaefer S. The Invention of Gunpowder Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes. (1981) p209-211. * Francesco del Coscia * Giovanni Fedini * Alessandro Fei, called "il Barbiere" * Stoldo Lorenzi (''Galatea'') * Sebastiano Marsili * Girolamo Macchiettibr> (''Medea and Jason'')
* Andrea del Minga * Lorenzo dello Sciorino ( ''Hercules and Ladon'') * Francesco Morandini, called "il Poppi", and Jacopo Zucchi (ceiling paintings) * Giovanni Battista Naldini (''Allegory of Dreams'', ''Gathering of Ambergris'') * Carlo Portelli * Maso da Sanfrianobr> (''Flight of Icarus'')
* Stradanusbr>(''Francesco in his Laboratory'')
* Santi di Titobr>(''The Sisters of Phaethon''
''Hercules and Iole'') * Bartolomeo Traballesibr> (''Danae'')
*Lorenzo Vaiani, called "dello Sciorina" *Giorgio Vasari * Jacopo Zucchi

Gallery

References

*http://www.artic.edu/aic/exhibitions/medici/themes.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20060305135411/http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/parole_chiave/schede/studiolo.htm *https://web.archive.org/web/20040829205611/http://www.museoragazzi.it/MuseoRagazzi/db36cedt.nsf/pages/fr_studiolo *https://web.archive.org/web/20051113175416/http://mypage.bluewin.ch/schupposc/studio.htm

External links

*For excellent photos see http://www.abaxjp.com/gw04-studiolo/gw04-studiolo.html {{DEFAULTSORT:Studiolo Of Francesco I Palazzo Vecchio Renaissance art Studiolo de Francesco de Medici I painters Italian art Individual rooms Paintings in Florence