Palazzo Medici Riccardi
Florence, Italy
Architectural style: Renaissance
Artworks
Procession of the Magi
Series of murals in the Magi Chapel depicting festive, vibrant processions with fine attention to detail. The Company of the Magi was a religious organization to which the Medici belonged. The procession of the three Magi unfolds with a mixture of exotic, oriental splendor and stately, bourgeois respectability. A glittering cavalcade of men and animals winds through a rocky landscape under an azure sky, with men dressed in all the luxury of Italian 15th-century fashions, in brilliant colors, damask, and gold brocade. They ride horses and camels with various creatures to amuse them—dogs, cheetahs, and monkeys. The religious theme was combined with a depiction of several members of the Medici family, their allies, and important figures who arrived in Florence for the Council of Florence (1438-1439). The fresco includes 32 realistic portraits, including Gozzoli himself, whose head is turned with his eye looking out toward the observer.
Magi Chapel Self-researched
A chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi whose walls are almost entirely covered by a famous cycle of frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, painted around 1459 for the Medici family. The chapel was built by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo between 1446 and 1449 and dedicated to the Holy Trinity. It comprises an almost square main room and, one step higher, an equally nearly square chancel, with the two separated from each other by two Corinthian pillars. The frescoes feature the Angels in Adoration in the rectangular apse and the Journey of the Magi in the large hall. Each of the three large frescoes shows the procession of one of the Three Magi on their way to Bethlehem to see the Nativity of Jesus. Given the chapel's small size, entrance is limited to groups of up to 10 people at a time.
