Retrospection and response: The Medici Palace in the service of the Medici, c. 1420-1469

This dissertation interprets the Medici Palace and its contents through an examination of the political history of Cosimo de' Medici and his family from the 1420s through the 1460s. Although Cosimo de' Medici commissioned the palace, no study has addressed at length the relationship between the specific events of his political history and the architecture and contents of the palace. In the 1420s and early 1430s, Florentine politics became divided between political parties led by the Albizzi and Medici families. In 1433 Rinaldo degli Albizzi exiled Cosimo de' Medici and his partisans from Florence; one year later, forces loyal to Cosimo had him recalled to the city and in turn Cosimo exiled Rinaldo and his supporters. From 1434 to his death in 1464, Cosimo worked to secure the Medici regime in Florence. The most threatening challenge came from within the Medici party itself in the mid 1450s, when Cosimo's palace, begun in 1445, was well underway. In view of this history, this dissertation argues that the palace and its contents are best understood as a product of the formative years of the Medici regime and those years when the regime appeared on the verge of collapse. In addition to Florentine history, Dante's Divine Comedy and Neoplatonic thought of the mid fifteenth century are proposed as sources for the iconography of the palace's initial artistic embellishments: Donatello's David and Judith and Holofernes, Benozzo Gozzoli's Journey of the Magi frescoes, Filippo Lippi's Adoration of the Child, the Pollaiuoli Labors of Hercules, and Paolo Uccello's Battle of San Romano. In order to assess the political efficacy of the Medici Palace and its contents after Cosimo's death, the dissertation also includes the period of Piero di Cosimo's succession (1464-1469) and the public appropriation of palace property after the second expulsion of the Medici (1494).