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Viewing report
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Death in Florence. Edition No. 1
VDM Publishing House, March 2009, Pages: 80
The story of the Medici in Renaissance Florence has
always polarized opinion, both in popular culture
and within academic circles. The family have been
seen as either ruthless political manipulators or
benign patrons of iconic artists, and the art
commissioned by the family, their friends and their
enemies, is still interrogated for signs of the
struggle for supremacy in the city and beyond. The
present volume seeks to challenge this Grand
Narrative view with a close investigation of the
tombs in San Lorenzo of Giovanni di Bicci,
(d.1429 ) , his son, Cosimo il Vecchio (d. 1464) and
Cosimo’s sons Piero (d.1469) and Giovanni (d. 1463).
By focusing on the three striking elements of these
tombs: form, material and location, and then more
widely into Florentine burial tradition, the
teleological evidence is weighed against other
possibilities, countering the traditional views of
the Medici name. The book will be of interest to
students of the period, especially those curious
about how narrative and history are forged into
cohesive and compelling versions of the past.
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