| On taking over the Republican Palazzo della Signoria of Florence for his court in 1540, Duke Cosimo I de' Medici initiated the palace's renovation and allegorical sculptured and frescoed decoration. In 1545 he began adding tapestries to this program, establishing in Florence the independent workshops of two Flemish master weavers, Jan Rost and Nicolas Karcher (or Carcher). Cosimo subsidized the weavers' ateliers, both because of the projected decorations and in hopes that they and their Tuscan trainees would make Florence the tapestry center of Italy.;From 1545 to 1553 forty-four luxury hangings, mainly for temporary formal use in the palace's public halls, were produced for Cosimo on cartoons by Agnolo Bronzino (aided by Raffaellino del Colle and Alessandro Allori), Francesco Bachiacca, Francesco Salviati, Jacopo Pontormo, and possibly Benedetto Pagni da Pescia. Forty-two survive. Though some are already well-known because of their cartoonists, this is the first overall study of the group, including a technical catalog, and commentaries on history, design, and symbolism. It discusses the establishment of the weavers, and the first trial commissions: Bronzino and Rost's three portiere (door tapestries), and four small Salviati altarpiece tapestries, two woven by Karcher for the duke, and two which entered the Medici collections later. Reconstructions of the two ensembles woven by both weavers, the twenty Joseph tapestries for the Sala dei Duecento, designed by Bronzino, Pontormo, and Salviati, and the ten Grotesque "Spalliere" for below Salviati's frescoes in the Sala dell'Udienza, on Bachiacca's cartoons, provide insight into contemporary decorative practice. Four tapestries of the Months after Bachiacca, two allegorical armorial portiere on a cartoon possibly by Pagni, and an unusual "moresque"-styled tapestry table carpet, perhaps designed by Bronzino, are also discussed, as are two missing additions woven for a Flemish Tobias series acquired from Margaret of Parma, and seventy-six missing armorial pack and wagon covers executed in coarser materials.;Transcriptions of over 300 documents, many unpublished, complement the text. The Appendex studies the tapestries of historian Paolo Giovio, whose seven Grotesques on an anonymous design, commissioned from Rost in 1549, were paid for by Duke Cosimo. |
