Gozzoli's Medici Chapel frescoes

GOZZOLI's Medici Chapel Frescoes

Benozzo Gozzoli considered himself blessed when he
was given the commission to paint the interior walls
of the Medici Palace private chapel between 1459-60.

He had been hired to paint the wealthiest Florentine family's sacred room within the Medici Palace on Via Larga, now Via Cavour.

Because the Medici Family were members of a society that celebrated the three Magi, the Confraternita dei Magi, the subject chosen for their private chapel decoration was the Journey of the Magi to see the Christ Child. The fresco journey winds its way around the chapel and ends with the altar painting of Mary adoring the Christ Child (not by Gozzoli but by Filippo Lippi, this one a copy of the original that is now in Berlin.)

Since the chapel had three main walls and then two smaller walls near the altar, Gozzoli decided to
paint one King or Magus on each of the main walls.

The three kings are depicted in the traditional roles as the the three ages of man: Youngest, Middle-aged, and Oldest, here from right to left:

 The procession begins with the Youngest King, who is a portrait of Lorenzo the Magnificent, aged 10, on a white horse:

 
 
 
We know it is Lorenzo because his nickname was "Lauro" or "Bay-leaf"and the plant behind his head is the "Lauro" or laurel plant from which we get bay leaves.
He also has balls on his crown and tunic, and balls decorate the trappings of his horse. Balls are the
symbols of the Medici family as they appear in their coat-of-arms:

  and the chapel walls are encased with balls - inlay marble balls on the walls and on the floor,

gilded wooden balls in the ceiling,

and balls in the chapel seats and architectural decoration (yellow arrows mine):

The balls on Lorenzo's person stamp him with the insignia of the family:

The journey continues around the corner of his wall to the back wall that features the middle-aged king or magus on a white horse, a portrait of Byzantine emperor, John Paleologus VIII, who had visited Florence ten years earlier for the Conference of the Two Churches. (Note ball to let in light above his head.)
 

 

 
The third wall, which had the Oldest King on a donkey, was cut into in a later century to make room
for another entrance door:

At the corner one can see the white beard of the old king and the front half of his donkey. The donkey is cut in half and the rear is recast on the wall nearer the middle-age king. Some of Gozzoli's original fresco was transposed to the newly extended wall, but some overpaint was applied to damaged sections.)
The Old King is thought to be a portrait of Joseph, the Patriarch of Constantinople.


Gozzoli is so proud of his work that he includes himself in the procession behind Lorenzo (see yellow arrow,)
and even signs his hat in gold leaf :  OPUS BENOTII G   (the WORK OF BENOZZO G(ozzoli)

 

He frowns to show his seriousness as part of the Medici entourage.

Below him he has painted his patrons:

Cosimo the Elder, the patriarch of the family:

 Piero the Gouty (Piero il Gottoso), Cosimo's son, and Lorenzo's father:

 and other family portraits and portraits of servants.

How much of the procession imitates the actual processions that the society for the Magi would put

on display in the streets of Florence we cannot know precisely, but we do know that members of

the Medici family who participated in these parades did sometimes take the roles of the three kings,

as civic authorities do when the procession is reenacted in Florence today.

Gozzoli's representation of the journey is not of a trip through the streets of the city, however, but of a cavalcade of horsemen and other animals through the countryside of Italy. The back wall, that of the middle-aged king, has a large villa in the background which can be identified as a Medici villa, suggesting that the countryside the kings move through belongs to the Medici and their allies.

        The villa behind the middle-aged king is the Villa Caffaggiolo, north of Florence, a villa built for the Medici (photo on right also shows extensions made later.)

 

No major villa is presented behind the Old King, but as the procession nears the Nativity scene,

the villa in the background is the Medici villa of Petraia, closer to Florence than Caffaggiolo.

Utens' view of Petraia:

 

What is being pretended, then, is that the magi and their entourage move from the East towards

Bethlehem, presumed to be Florence. Matthew 2: 1 says,  "there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem." But then from Jerusalem they had to travel further west to the actual birthing place of Christ, Bethlehem. What grand white fortress represents the East, then, on the
East wall of the youngest King, Lorenzo? The procession seems to emerge from this fortress:

High up in the background of that scene this huge fortress is a central tower that is encircled with battlements and guard towers at the corners. It does not resemble any of the Medici villas that had been built up to the time of the painting, but it does resemble a fortress that was being built by one of the guests whose portrait is painted on the wall in the group behind Lorenzo. In fact, it is similar to the ideation of a fortress built in Rimini for Sigismundo Malatesta painted into a fresco in Rimini by Piero della Francesco:

Both are white buildings with central towers and
battlements and guard towers or turrets at corners of the
crenellated walls.
Piero's painted fortress appears in a 1461 fresco
portrait of Sigismundo Malatesta in the temple
Malatesta had built for his mistress, Isotta degli Atti:



And the fortress was such an important project for Sigismundo that he included it on the back of
the medallion portrait of himself cast in 1461.
:
Sigismundo also appears in the Gozzoli fresco just below and to the left of this white fortress up on the hill.


He is in a prominent position on this wall, the first person starting on the left, riding a brown horse and looking towards the Medici family.  Next to him is a younger Medici ally, Galeazzo Maria Sforza
from Milan.


Since Rimini is directly East of Florence, the implication is that the wise men came from the part of the country where Sigismundo is building his impressive fortress. The Medici are paying a compliment to this important condottiere who arrived in Florence in 1459 on his way to the Council of Mantua, when churchmen, politicians, and armed warriors were all discussing how to end the occupation of Constantinople made by the Turks in 1453. The Florentines are very cagey, however, because, just as Cosimo dei Medici promotes the ostentation of his guest's fortress in the fresco, privately he had rejected a model for his own house to be built like a fortress. He is said to have said to Brunelleschi, whose model he turned down for being too ostentatious, "Envy is a plant one should never water." So while outwardly appearing to praise Sigismundo, the condottiere from the East, for his wealth and architectural taste, secretly the family was critical of his show, and they knew that outside the private chapel, the house enclosing the frescoes was a simple, large town house that Cosimo had commissioned from Michelozzo after rejecting Brunelleschi for the job. The Florentines would not have accepted any residence as huge and powerful as the fortress which Sigismundo tried to build in Rimini, parts of which still stand, and are overwhelming:

While Sigismundo is given pride of place in the family chapel, his very own aspirations are
also put on display as warning for future visitors to the site.

Of course, a veiled criticism of Sigismundo is ironic in a fresco cycle where Cosimo's grandson is
painted as one of the three wise men and members of his family are part of the entourage on their way to visit the holy baby Jesus.

No ostentation there!