Untold generations of Florentines and tourists have strolled through the Piazza della Signoria, the great municipal square that was for centuries that city’s locus of temporal power. A short walk away is the Piazza del Duomo, the religious heart of the community. These two squares are the poles that, since early medieval times, have defined the city’s character and its destiny. Sitting at an outdoor table at the venerable Caffè Rivoire, on the east corner of the Piazza della Signoria, one can savor the unparalleled sight of the massive thirteenth-century Palazzo Vecchio. The wider plaza stretches beyond on the left, and there one will spot a grand bronze equestrian statue of Grand Duke Cosimo I, erected in his memory by Jean de Boulogne, the genius immigrant sculptor whom the Florentines adopted as Giambologna. At the sides of the raised pedestal are bas-relief accounts of the duke’s military victories. He had lots to boast about.
It is Cosimo’s fearsome gaze that greets the visitor on entering “The Medici: Portraits & Politics, 1512–1570,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s sprawling exhibition of portraiture created before and during his reign, which lasted from 1537 to 1569.[1]Immediately, one encounters a magnificent, over-life-size bronze bust of the Duke by Benvenuto Cellini (1546–47). He is portrayed in antique Roman garb, no doubt in a nod to Augustus, the initiator of his own imperial dynasty. In an uncanny, virtuoso display of chasing, the artist convincingly conveys the material essence of every substance:
