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Jerusalem lost: crusade, myth, and historical imagination in grand ducal Florence

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Jerusalem lost: crusade, myth, and historical imagination in grand ducal Florence

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Jerusalem Lost:
Crusade, Myth, and Historical Imagination in Grand Ducal Florence

Sean A. Nelson

University of Southern California
Ph.D. Art History
December 2015

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments i

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 16
Visualizing Crusade and Ottoman Conflict
in Florentine Historical Imagination

Chapter 2 73
Remapping the Periphery:
Elba and the Argonauts

Chapter 3 125
Perseus in Africa and Asia

Chapter 4 177
Collecting the Crusade in Grand Ducal Tuscany

Conclusion 219

Illustrations 223

Bibliography 310

i
Acknowledgments

This dissertation could not have been completed without the generous intellectual,
emotional, and financial support of several different people and organizations, spanning
nearly a decade and several countries. While the project will be filed under the auspices
of the University of Southern California as my dissertation, it began in earnest as my first
graduate paper in the Master’s program in Renaissance Art History at Syracuse
University. In a course called “Courts and Courtly Art” I managed to convince Gary
Radke that islands like Elba had much to teach us about the interpretive geographies of
Florentine art in the mid-sixteenth century. Without Gary’s initial excitement for the
fundamental parameters of this study, despite its naiveté, it is safe to say that none of this
would have been possible. At Syracuse I also had the benefit of several other sources of
intellectual support including Denis Romano, Jonathan Nelson, and Rab Hatfield. Rab, in
particular, has always been a model of academic rigor for my work, as he has been for
generations of Syracuse students like me. His constant reminder to return to the work in
question, without assumptions, has guided me more often than not.
At the University of Southern California, I found a second life and a second home
to expand upon ideas which at the time I thought were well worked out. With the
generous help of Sean Roberts, this study has become sophisticated in ways that would
have been impossible for me to complete on my own. He took ample time out of his own
fellowship year at Villa I Tatti to help me with faulty logic and bad writing. He supported
the direction of my study at every turn while at the same time illustrating its weaknesses.
For both, I am eternally grateful. While Alexander Marr has moved on to a position at
Cambridge University, he has not forgotten those students at USC that he promised to

ii
help. While juggling the challenges of a new position, he showed definitively that we
remain part of his extended intellectual family and for that incredible dedication I truly
thank him. I also thank Eunice Howe for much needed reminders of the value of
returning to foundational thinkers like Jacob Burckhardt. Peter Mancall and the Early
Modern Studies Institute have both been vital to the completion of this project. He has
singlehandedly made USC a center of early modern studies and an ideal place to
complete my work. My fellow graduate student Ellen Dooley has helped me in more
ways than she knows. She consistently led the way through this long and difficult process
sharing her hard won knowledge, but in the end her friendship reached well outside of
these pages.
I have also had the incredible luck of meeting several people that have helped
shape this project outside these contexts. Gerhard Wolf invited me to spend two and a
half wonderful years at the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florenz as a pre-doctoral fellow.
The KHI has been an amazing place to grow as an art historian and to continue to push
the boundaries of my study. From Bosnia to Manila, he has shown me that the
fundamental questions of our discipline reach well beyond where we often assume they
end. Hannah Baader also provided many insightful comments on how Florence can and
should be seen as Mediterranean city. Christine Göttler has also been an important source
of intellectual support for this study and a true model of a gracious scholar.
In the end, however, all roads return to the support of one’s family. My
grandparents Sam and Dave Bell have always made my education a priority. Without
them, my first trips to Italy as a young college student never would have taken place. My
mother and father, Jon and Kathryn Nelson, have long encouraged my interest in history
and travel. Their decision to move our family to Hawai’i when I was a child has certainly

iii
shown me the value of islands as important spaces of contact. While my father passed
away without the chance to read this study cover to cover, I know that he would have
done so with the critical eye of an historian interested in life’s stranger tales. My wife,
Kellin Nelson, has been more than a loving spouse in these difficult years. She has been
my most critical editor, my most faithful traveling partner, and my most proud supporter.
Few people have read this study from page to page, footnotes and all, with the love and
care that she has. Whatever virtue there is in these pages, she helped foster and cultivate.
This study is dedicated to my father in spirit, but in every word, to my wife, who
labored over each and every one of them with me.

1
Introduction

From 1563 to 1565, artist and writer, Giorgio Vasari oversaw the completion of a
series of painted ceiling panels for his patron, the Florentine duke, Cosimo I de’ Medici.
The works decorated the newly remodeled reception hall of the Sala dei Cinquecento
within the Palazzo Vecchio, the duke’s central seat of rule. Here, Vasari and his
workshop depicted significant events from the extended history of the city of Florence,
including a recent military victory known as the “Defense of Piombino.” Some ten years
earlier, in 1555, an Ottoman flotilla laid siege to the Tuscan port of Piombino under
orders from Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent. With help from imperial cavalry loyal to
Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, Duke Cosimo’s troops repelled the attack. Applying his
brush to the gessoed panel, Vasari rendered the defeat of Turkish forces on the Tuscan
coast in striking form and vivid color (fig. 1.13). In the painting, Ottoman janissaries,
sailors, and soldiers flee the shore, routed by imperial troops; in the foreground of the
composition, several Turks wade into the water where they are swept up by the
Tyrrhenian Sea, while others, in the mid-ground, attempt to escape on foot. Vasari fixed
in oil paint a specific historical event with a defined place and time intending to
commemorate it. Yet, the image’s representation of Christian and Islamic conflict once
drew upon an historical imaginary that extended well beyond the spatio-temporal bounds
of this single scene. Although Vasari visualized conflict with Ottoman forces in
Piombino, the very meaning of the image was once fashioned in relation to a space not
pictured and built upon history unseen: Jerusalem and the crusades to the Holy Land.

2
While Ottoman-Florentine conflict in Piombino may seem both geographically
and historically distant from Jerusalem for a modern reader, in the sixteenth century the
defense of Christendom and the liberation of the Holy Land formed part of the very same
agenda. The duke’s own words attest to this fact. In 1548, Duke Cosimo sent a letter to
the Bishop of Forli discussing concerns over the defense of Piombino from the Turks,
nearly a decade before Süleyman’s siege. The duke desperately sought imperial approval
from Charles V to secure the territory from Ottoman and Barbary flotillas who had
sacked the coast of Tuscany only a few years earlier. At the end of the letter, the duke
included a short postscript written in cipher regarding his anticipation of additional news
from the emperor: decoded the note ends “As far as all of that which has been written for
some time now, we maintain in that account and that esteem we will hear some news of
Jerusalem.”
1
Among the open discussions of the defense of Italy from the Turks, the duke
wrote in secret of ongoing plans to launch a crusade to retake the Holy Land.
While Jerusalem had previously been under the control of the Mamluks whose
power base centered in Egypt, in 1517 Sultan Selim I absorbed the city into the
expanding Ottoman Empire.
2
Claiming to be the rightful king of Jerusalem, Charles V
intended take the city back from the Turks, and Cosimo, as an imperial servant,
anticipated a request to aid this endeavor. However, as imperial wars with the Ottomans

1
Cosimo discusses Don Diego Mendoza’s efforts to ask Charles V for the right to secure
Piombino. The last section reads “A tale ché di tutto quel che ce ne vien scritto da
qualche tempo in qua, tegnamo quell conto e quella stima che facciamo delle nuove di
Jherusalem,” Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Mediceo del Principato 12, fol. 154r, from
here on abbreviated as ASF MdP. For a full transcription see Giuseppe Battaglini,
Giuseppe Battaglini, Cosmopolis: Portoferraio medicea storia urbana 1548-1737 (Rome:
Multigrafica Editrice, 1978), 244.
2
On the historical conflicts between the Ottomans and Mamluks see Shai Har-El,
Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-Mamluk War, 1485-91
(Leiden: Brill, 1995).

3
continued in the Mediterranean in the second half of the sixteenth century, Jerusalem
remained lost to Christendom. Though the emperor made preparations for a crusade for
nearly a decade, his plans ultimately went unrealized.
3
Cosimo’s letter, however, presents
a significant example of how entangled the liberation of Jerusalem was with the defense
of Christendom in early modern imagination. The liberation of the historical center of
Christianity offered an ideal, propelling Christian and Islamic conflict well beyond the
Holy Land. Vasari’s Defense of Piombino, installed in the ceiling of the duke’s reception
hall, appealed to this extended historical imaginary, recalling centuries of conflict with
Islamic forces.
Undeniably, crusade is a concept rarely associated with the city of Florence, and
even less frequently with Florentine artistic production. Yet, in the early years of his rule
Duke Cosimo began a concentrated program of artistic patronage, visualizing these
themes in painting, sculpture, architecture, and print. Artists like Agnolo Bronzino and
Benvenuto Cellini created artwork that engaged crusading themes, later facilitated by
Giorgio Vasari. After Cosimo’s death, the painter Bernardino Poccetti and the printmaker
Jacques Callot continued this tradition. Such a visually antagonistic approach to the
expanding power base of the Turks was means for the Medici to express their new role as
Christian princes. With the transition of the city of Florence from a republic to an
imperial duchy in 1530, Cosimo adopted the Ottomans as a longstanding imperial enemy.
Art offered a means to memorialize, promote, and imagine the duchy’s role as Christian
crusaders in North Africa and the Levant, presenting themselves as actors in a

3
See Harold Kleinschmidt, Charles V: The World Emperor (Gloucestershire: Sutton
Publishing, 2004), 167.

4
Mediterranean world. At the center of much of this media was the imagined liberation of
Jerusalem.
The duke of Florence was not alone in this conflation. Efforts to combat a Turkish
presence throughout the West were often positioned in the context of crusade. For men
like the duke, to fight the Turks was, in essence, to fight for the recovery of the Holy
Land. Scholars have long understood this fact. In 1919 the Dutch historian Johan
Huizinga cited the continuation of crusader ideals as one of the many themes that
problematizes a firm division between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In The
Autumn of the Middle Ages he writes:
“Christendom of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries faced an Oriental question
of the highest urgency: defense against the Turks…But Europe’s first and most
imperative political task could not be separated from the idea of crusade. The
Turkish question could only be viewed as part of the great holy task that earlier
times had failed to accomplish: the liberation of Jerusalem.”
4

The crusades served as an historical ideal inspiring efforts against Islamic powers of the
Mediterranean in adjacent spaces in the Maghreb and the Levant. Huizinga’s interest in
the continuation of a crusader ideology was later taken up the Annales historian Alphonse
Dupront in his Le mythe de Croisade, as his doctoral thesis in 1957.
5
Locating a
continued “rêve de croisade,” or a dream of crusade, in the “collective unconscious,”

4
Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1996), 105. The work was originally published in Dutch in 1919 and translated into
English by Huizinga in a heavily revised edition in 1924. I cite here the most recent
English translation more directly based upon his original Dutch version.
5
Dupront’s assertion that crusade exists as a myth within a larger Christian imagination
has been a fundamental basis for this study. While his thesis was submitted in 1957, it
was only published posthumously in 1997. However, similar themes can be found in his
earlier publication La chrétienté et l’idée de croisade written with Paul Alphandéry. See
Alphonse Dupront, Le mythe de Croisade, vol. 1-4 (Paris: Gallimard, 1997) and La
chrétienté et l’idée de croisade (Paris: A. Michel, 1954-1959).

5
Dupront asserted that the medieval framework of Christian-Islamic conflict had no end,
existing as an eternal myth traceable from the Middle Ages through modern day.
More recently, scholars like Jonathan Riley-Smith and Norman Housley have
argued for the longevity of crusade in Europe.
6
Contending that crusade was more than a
medieval phenomenon, they have overturned the notion that the first crusades to
Jerusalem created a strict model for later efforts. Instead, they maintain that crusade had a
broad temporal and geographical influence, aiding the Spanish Reconquista and the
Battle of Lepanto in 1571. While crusade writ large required sponsorship from the
papacy, Housley argues that these efforts did not always lead to the Holy Land. Earlier
medieval pasaggia also inspired fringe efforts not directly supported by the pope: raids
on Ottoman ports, privateering in the Levant, and the defense of Christian territories from
the encroaching Turks.
Crusade was also a powerful ideological framework for the colonization of the
New World. As Stephen Greenblatt discusses in Marvelous Possessions, from Columbus’
dream of the liberation of Jerusalem to his assertions that the gold of the Indies would
finance a new crusade to the Holy Land, old paradigms fueled new endeavors.
7
While the
geographical centrality of Jerusalem remained relevant for Christendom, the New World

6
For examples of their work where they most clearly explicate this pluralist methodology
see Jonathan Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002) and
Norman Housley, Contesting the Crusades (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006). On the
lack of a codified medieval definition of crusade, and its many possible permutations see
Giles Constable “The Terminology of Crusading,” in Crusaders and Crusading in the
Twelfth Century (Burlington: Ashgate, 2008), 349-352. See also Norman Housley,
Crusading and Warfare in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2001); Norman Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453-1505. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013; Norman Housley, The Later Crusades, 1274-1580: From Lyons
to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); and Norman Housley, Religious
Warfare in Europe: 1400-1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
7
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2003), 48-51.

6
became the New Holy Land. These crusade themes also had a particular Italian quality to
them. As Barbara Fuchs has argued, chivalric romances like Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando
Furioso (1532) and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (1581) provided literary
models that supported these dreams of conquest in an era of Counter-Reformation.
8
In
romances centered on Christian-Islamic conflict, Charlemagne’s paladins and Godfrey’s
knights are given prophetic glimpses of the Americas under imperial rule. The
Amerindians became the Moors and Turks of old, in need of conversion. If Columbus’
imagined wealth could not help liberate Jerusalem, Mediterranean models of conflict at
the very least supported them. By the mid-sixteenth century, crusade was a global
phenomenon that inspired conflict with Islam in a variety of forms and spaces.
By the late seventeenth century, the very word crusade had a geographically
broad definition with no compulsory connection to Jerusalem. In John Florio’s Italian-
English dictionary, first published in 1598 but expanded in 1611, the word crusade
(crociata) is defined as “a generall league of christians against infidels.”
9
Crusading is
defined simply, using terms most frequently associated with Islam. In the first vernacular
dictionary produced by the Accademia della Crusca, Vocabolario della Crusca (1612),
the term crusade is given a broader meaning. Under the heading “Crociera,” which can be
loosely defined as cross-bearer, the entry defines the term as “The multitude of crusaders,
that is, marked with the cross.” The entry clarifies a related term “Crociata”: “We
mention also CRUSADE, which in this manner they have called the army which has gone
to fight against the infidels, and schismatics, with a cross on their breast: and for said

8
Barbara Fuchs, Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13-34.
9
John Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, or Dictionarie of the Italian and
English Tongues (London: 1611), 131.

7
expedition it was declared a crusade.”
10
The definition expands to include, for example,
Protestants and Cathars. Yet, the definition had no spatial parameters; it required only
that the participant take the cross to fight for the church with no temporal or geographic
constraints.
While crusade occupied the thoughts and actions of popes including Pope Pius II
in the fifteenth century, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V continued to utilize these
ideological forms of conflict to organize support for wars against the Turks, inspiring
cities like Florence to follow suit. In a letter to Cosimo from 1542, papal legate Averardo
Serristori writes of Charles V that “no prince among the Christians is found which is
more powerful in virtue and generosity to combat the Turks than that of his Majesty
Caesar…and the others notwithstanding, Florence should be an example to all of the
world.”
11
More than simply rhetoric, Charles was known for galvanizing collective
action. The emperor used crusade rhetoric to fund and launch efforts against the Turks in
North Africa, including the siege of Tunis and Goleta in 1535, the Battle of Preveza in
1538, the failed siege of Algiers in 1541, and the siege of Mahdia in 1550. After losing
large sections of Hungary to the Turks in the mid-sixteenth century, the emperor also
waged war with the Ottomans in Central Europe. Charles’ efforts, however, relied upon
papal support. A papal bull of 1542 convening the Council of Trent declared the need for

10
“Crociera. Moltitudine di crociati, cioè contrassegnati con croce. Lat. Crucibus
insignitorum caetus. / G.V. 7.37.2. Il quale stuolo, e crociera, fu quivi d’innumerabil
gente a cavallo. / Diciamo anche CROCIATA, che così chiamavano quell’esercito, che
andava a combattere contro agli’infideli, e scismatici, con la croce in petto: e per tale
spedizione si bandiva la crociata,” Vocabolario della Crusca (Florence: 1612), 239. See
also the entry on “Crociato,” or crusader described as “contrassegnato di croce,” Ibid.
11
“nessuno Principe fra i Cristiani si trovava che fosse di più potere virtù e bontà per
battere il Turco che la Maestà Cesarea,…che non ostante li altri, Fiorenze dovrebbe
essere esempio a tutto il mondo.” Giuseppe Canestrini ed., Legazioni di Averardo
Serristori, ambascitore di Cosimo I, a Carlo Quinto e in Corte di Roma (1537-1568)
(Florence: Felice le Monnier,1853), 126.

8
a united effort against the Turks, calling on Christian princes like Charles to set aside
their differences to pursue a common threat.
12
As extremely costly naval and land based
efforts, these collective Christian endeavors, referred to as Christian or Holy leagues,
often relied on financial support from the papacy in the form of taxation of the clergy
(decima), as well as crusade indulgences and taxation of the laity (cruzada / cruciata).
13

In preparation for the siege of Algiers in 1539, Charles V expected to collect 470,000
florins in decime from Spain alone.
14
Evolving from their earlier medieval origins,
crusade taxes continued to support wars with Islam. In turn, Charles’ son, King Philip II
of Spain, continued the tradition in the 1560s, organizing the failed siege of Tripoli in
1560, the defense of Malta in 1565, and the Holy League, which led to the Battle of
Lepanto in 1571. If Jerusalem remained under the control of the Ottomans, imperial and
papal support saw to it that Mediterranean spaces in North Africa, Greece, and the
Balkans became new sites of conflict between Christendom and Islam.
The notion that the duchy of Florence, and later the grand duchy of Tuscany,
played an active role in early modern crusade efforts has been well documented by
historians of the Mediterranean. Beginning with the likes of Fernand Braudel and
continuing in the work of Kenneth Setton, Duke Cosimo has been portrayed as a man
invested in conflict with the Turks, supporting major offensives including the Battle of

12
Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), vol. 3 (Philadelphia: The
American Philosophical Society, 1984), 462-463.
13
For a review of the various funding sources for early modern crusades see Norman
Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat, 1453-1505 (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 100-135.
14
The negotiations over who controlled the decime in Italy was a constant debate as
Charles maintained the he should collect the revenue streams from imperial territories
like Florence, while Pope Paul III instead maintained that he should control all of Italy.
On the complex politics of decime see Sean Perrone, Charles V and the Castilian
Assembly of the Clergy (Leiden: Brill, 2008),141-246; on the amount of money that
Charles V from Spanish decime, 233.

9
Lepanto in 1571.
15
While grand ducal centers like Pisa have received some notable
historical study in relation to these affairs, for example Franco Angiolini’s work on the
Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen, these issues often fail to reach beyond these
cities.
16
Art historians in particular remain reluctant to embrace the idea that the
geographical center of the Renaissance embraced crusade in the mid-sixteenth century as
more than mere geo-politics.
Florence’s historiographical role as an artistic center, beginning with Giorgio
Vasari’s Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori (1568), through Jacob
Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), until today, has created
an insular and self-referential hermeneutical schema which encourages its major artistic
commissions to be interpreted in relation to local matters.
17
This insular artistic
geography privileges Renaissance imagery, from mythological sculpture to historical
battle painting, as a strictly Florentine dialogue intended to address Florentine issues.
Anything outside of this purview receives scant attention or is constrained to fit this
narrow scope. This model is particularly problematic during the era of the Duchy of
Florence, which controlled territories well beyond its own city and used artistic
production to unite these centers. Nonetheless, Duke Cosimo, in particular, is often
positioned as a provincial ruler more fixated on commissioning works that express his

15
For the duchy’s role in efforts like the defense of Malta and the Battle of Lepanto see
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip
II, vol. 2 (London: Collins, 1973), 1088-1124. On Cosimo’s provision of twelve galleys
for Lepanto see also Kenneth Setton, Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), vol. 4
(Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1984), 1024.
16
See Franco Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe: l’ordine di Santo Stefano e la società
Toscana in età moderna (Florence: EDIFIR, 1996).
17
For a recent review of Florence’s historical role as “center” in the artistic geographies
of Renaissance art see Stephen Campbell, “Artistic Geographies,” in The Cambridge
Companion to the Italian Renaissance, ed. Michael Wyatt (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2014), 17-39.

10
defeat of Florence’s republican past than a man with broader aspirations for the city. This
framework has suffocated artwork that once addressed issues beyond Florentine borders.
Crusade as a concept presumes that a cultural center like Florence was concerned with its
own Mediterranean peripheries and dared to imagine centers beyond its own.
Outside of art history, Florence’s relationship with crusade has received some
attention from scholars, though it has generally been limited to the field of Italian
literature. In his article, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age
of Mehmed II,” from 1995, James Hankins catalogues crusade rhetoric written by men
like Marsilio Ficino, Benedetto Accolti, and Aeneus Silvius Piccolomini.
18
Hankins
highlights the manner in which Renaissance intellectuals, invested in a classical tradition,
attempted to rally support for the defense of Europe using ancient rhetorical precedents,
for instance, deploying the term “barbarian” to spatially and imaginatively distance the
Turks from a Greco-Roman center. This initial study has been expanded upon by Nancy
Bisaha’s Creating East and West, published in 2004, and Margaret Meserve’s Empires of
Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought, published in 2008.
19
While these works focus
on the fifteenth century and address a limited genre of literature, the crusade-rich
chivalric romances of the sixteenth century have received less attention in this regard. In
an era best characterized by the writings of Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso, writers
who fused crusade with medieval and classical history, these themes have generally
failed to impact our perception of the visual culture of that same period in Florence. The

18
James Hankins, "Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of
Mehmed II," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995): 111-207.
19
Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman
Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Margaret Meserve,
Empires of Islam in Renaissance Historical Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2008).

11
Renaissance, in a certain sense, has continued to keep the medieval concepts of crusade
and chivalry at a distance.
When crusade has been a point of interest within the visual culture of the Grand
Duchy of Tuscany, it has largely been interpreted through a political lens. Katherine
Poole presents a compelling addition to standard studies of the grand dukes.
20
Observing
grand ducal artwork from Florence, Pisa, and Livorno she argues that the Medici used
crusade imagery to empower their new dynastic claim as a Tuscan state. For Poole,
Cosimo’s patronage of organizations like the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen
functioned purely as a means for the Medici Dukes to rhetorically present their global
political aspirations. The painting, sculpture, and print which visualized these themes in
turn allowed them to draw political connections to the Kingdoms of France, Spain, and
the Holy Roman Empire, all the while maintaining their own hegemony.
While I fundamentally agree with these claims, I investigate these themes as more
than rhetorical tropes to promote a new political power or as mere means to demonstrate
diplomatic and familial ties. In the 1540s, Cosimo created a ducal navy, began to fortify
the Italian coastline, and in 1561 founded a papal knighthood, the Order of the Knights of
Saint Stephen, all in order to combat the Turks. By the 1550s the Florentines had
participated in sieges in North Africa and by the year of Cosimo’s death, 1574, the grand
duchy could be counted among the most influential naval powers combating Turkish
presence in the Western Mediterranean. In subsequent decades, his sons and grandsons
would follow this agenda sending Florentine forces, along with the Knights of Saint
Stephen, to fight for Christendom throughout the Mediterranean. These financially and

20
Katherine M. Poole, “The Medici Grand Dukes and the Art of Conquest: Ruling
Identity and the Formation of a Tuscan Empire, 1537-1609,” (PhD diss., Rutgers
University, 2007).

12
politically complex endeavors suggest that the duchy’s new role as crusaders was more
than mere rhetoric.
In this study I argue that Florentine art, and in particular the art of the
Renaissance, offered a means to draw boundaries between Christian and Islamic spaces
that were increasingly connected in the sixteenth century. I propose that, by the era of the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany, Florentines considered themselves as part of a larger
Mediterranean world in eternal conflict and in turn allowed central artistic commissions
within the city the interpretative leeway to address these issues. Moving beyond political
propaganda, my dissertation introduces crusade as an operative term that allows for a
broader understanding of the spatio-temporal parameters of artistic interpretation in the
period. In doing so, this study focuses on the layered complexities of historical
imagination in the mid-sixteenth century; crusade was visualized in classical, biblical,
medieval and early modern scenes that did not distinguish themselves through such rigid
temporal terms, nor did they create meaning independently. In this study, I propose that
crusade was such a predominant theme in early modern historical imagination that it was
read through a multitude of historical lenses offering examples of what I often refer to as
“typological crusaders.” Many of the historical figures used to promote these ideals, from
Charlemagne, Godfrey of Bouillon, Augustus Caesar, to the heroes of ancient myth are
presented as paragons of Christian virtue in the defense of Christendom. For early
modern men and women, the origins of Christian and Islamic conflict predated the lives
of Christ and Muhammad. This history located its origins in the earliest myths of the
creation of the world. To them, crusade existed throughout all time. And if historical time
provided crusade with a multitude of temporal valences, such an idea also existed in the

13
future, predicting the inevitable return of the Turks and coming conflict at end of the
world. Within this flexible temporal view, however, I argue that space was the more rigid
component in this spatio-temporal mixture. Historical enemies once located in Africa,
Anatolia, or Jerusalem could act as early modern parallels for conflict in those very same
regions as new threats. While time was unbound, space was grounded, defining the
fundamental boundaries and relationships that continued into the early modern era.
This dissertation is divided into four chapters that each grapple with the
continuation of crusade themes and their treatment in the visual culture of grand ducal
Florence. Chapter One, “Visualizing Crusade and Ottoman Conflict in Florentine
Historical Imagination,” lays out the basic geographic and temporal parameters of
crusade in early modern historical imagination and its visualization under the grand
dukes. Focusing largely on painting and print that represent conflicts with the Ottoman
Empire, I attempt to illustrate the wide variety of periods mobilized to communicate these
themes. Investigating works like Agnolo Bronzino’s The Israelites Crossing the Red Sea,
prints within Panfilo di Renaldini’s Innamoramento di Ruggeretto, and Ludovico Cigoli’s
The Liberation of Jerusalem, I illustrate how time operated as a flexible parameter that
allowed artists to anachronistically visualize conflict with the Ottomans before they
existed. In turn, I attempt to bring these spatio-temporal themes back to the images that
memorialize Florentine victories over the Turks, including Giorgio Vasari’s Defense of
Piombino and Bernardino Poccetti’s Victory at Preveza, arguing against the predominant
narrative of battle painting as one of historical documentation. Instead I maintain that
early modern historical imagination, while temporally flexible, was geographically
bound. Thus Medicean victory in Preveza, Greece was imagined alongside the victories

14
of Augustus in the very same space and cast as a kind of Renaissance of crusade,
reestablishing ancient imperial boundaries.
Chapter Two is entitled “Remapping the Periphery: Elba and the Argonauts.” In
this chapter I investigate the portrait bust of Cosimo I sent to Elba in 1557. Placed above
the Forte Stella, the bust decorated a Medicean fortress constructed to defend the Tuscan
coast from Ottoman flotillas preying on the coastline. Long considered stylistically “out
of key” in Florence, I argue that the bust was intended to commemorate Cosimo’s
induction in the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1545, founded by Duke of Burgundy,
Philip the Good, to launch a crusade against the Turks in 1430. I situate Cosimo’s image
within chivalric rhetoric as a New Argonaut, set within larger framework of mythological
crusaders. Then utilizing mytho-geography found in Strabo’s Geographica, and Latin
panegyric celebrating Cosimo’s deeds at the time of his death, I show how both ancient
geographers and Florentines believed the Argonauts landed at the same very same port
the duke installed his image.
Chapter Three, “Perseus in Africa and Asia,” attempts to bring these interests in
the periphery to the center of the city of Florence, the Piazza Signoria, and to the
monumental bronze sculpture of Perseus by Benvenuto Cellini, created between 1545-
1554. Using classical accounts of Perseus’ battle with Medusa, I illustrate how ancient
geographers located Medusa’s origins in Africa, considering her the “Libyan Terror,” and
describing her as the historical leader of an African tribe near Lake Tritonis. In the
Cinquecento and Seicento, the most frequent space where the Florentines attempted to
combat the spread of Ottoman interests was in North Africa. Already in 1550, the
Florentines participated in the siege of Mahdia (called “la città d’Affrica,” at the time), a

15
port controlled by the Bey of Algiers, Turgut Reis. Observing sonnets recorded by Cellini
that connect the work to Perseus’ conflict in Africa and Asia, I argue that the Perseus
addressed Florentine interests in the Maghreb and the Levant.
Chapter Four instead turns to material collecting practices and their relationship
with crusade. In “Collecting the Crusade in Grand Ducal Tuscany,” my final chapter, I
discuss how the Medici used the materials of Ottoman spolia to venerate their victories
over the Turks. My central questions arise from the ambiguous position of these objects
as both relics of Christian victory as well as Islamic objects. I investigate how the body of
the victor and the vanquished, Christian and Muslim, united in the memory of a single
material, were presented to Florentines in a variety of venues, from the guardaroba of the
Palazzo Vecchio to the later armory housed in the Uffizi. Here these works allowed for
the grand dukes to fashion “object narratives.” By placing, for example, the captured
spoils of the Ottomans next to the relics of Charlemagne, the Medici encouraged viewers
to connect their victories to earlier medieval efforts to protect Christendom from the
Moors, appealing again to a multi-temporal historical imaginary. I also investigate how
these objects traveled to spaces beyond Florence, to Pisa and Siena in triumphal
processions, and as diplomatic gifts to Spain and the Holy Roman Empire. Taking this
theme of translation further, I investigate how a selection of flags, temporarily stored in
the Medici Palazzo Reale in Pisa, were linguistically translated to investigate the heretical
messages present in objects destined for Christian churches. Through these methods of
spatial and linguistic translation I illustrate how collecting and display formed a
fundamental means for the grand dukes to present themselves as crusaders.

16
Chapter 1:
Visualizing Crusade and Ottoman Conflict
in Florentine Historical Imagination

Between the years 1614-1620, the French printmaker Jacques Callot produced a
series of engravings to commemorate the life of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici.
21

Ferdinando’s son, Grand Duke Cosimo II, commissioned the print series. The scenes
depict the ruler’s varied accomplishments, from his architectural patronage to his support
of imperial wars. The majority of the images of Ferdinando’s military exploits, however,
visualize victories sponsored by the Grand Duchy of Tuscany over the Ottoman Empire
in Greece and North Africa.
22
Among these sixteen prints of early modern warfare, a
single work stands curiously apart from the rest. The print depicts a Roman general,
turned away from the viewer, dressed all’antica (fig. 1.1). He points forward with a
baton-of-command, ordering his men to assault a coastal fortress adorned with a minaret
topped with a crescent moon. The nearest soldiers are dressed similarly: one man wears
scaled armor and an ornate helm. But as the viewer follows the scene deep into the
background, the dress of the soldiers shifts to early modern military garb. First a pair of
pantaloons replaces a loincloth, and then a simple metal helmet substitutes a more ornate

21
The images also expanded upon existing series of prints which visualized the deeds of
the Medici dukes. The majority of these scenes were designed by Matteo Rosselli and
engraved by Callot. Two were designed by Bernardino Poccetti. On the print series
referred to as Life of Ferdinando I and also as The Medici Battles see Paulette Choné, ed.
Jacques Callot 1592-1635, exh. cat. (Paris: Réunion des Musées Nationaux, 1992), 173-
179.
22
Callot had a history of representing Turks in his engraving and etchings. For example
he created a frontispiece for plays like Il Solimano written by Prospero Baronelli for
Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici. For more on Callot’s approach to representing Turks
see Pierre Béhar, “La Représentation du Turc,” in Jacques Callot (1592-1635): actes du
colloque organize par la Service culturel du Musée du Louvre et la ville de Nancy, ed.
Daniel Ternois (Paris: Klincksieck, 1993), 307-330.

17
classicized helm. While the antique figures in the foreground appear to hold spears and
wear classically inspired swords, in the distance a group of soldiers fire harquebuses
upward at a mass of turbaned defenders atop the fortress. The print is often called Assault
of the City of Bona, in reference to a siege the grand duchy led in 1607 against the
Ottoman-controlled city, now modern day Annaba in Algeria.
23
Contrary to the
implications of the title, the soldiers carry no identifiable symbols of the Medici family,
nor the grand duchy. The print, included among the accomplishments of Ferdinando, acts
not as a memorial of a specific Medicean victory, but rather as the affirmation of an idea;
it visualizes an early modern historical imagination that conflated classical conflicts in
North Africa with imperial efforts against the Ottoman Empire in the Mediterranean. The
extended chronology of the print asserts the temporal pervasiveness of crusade, which
could be traced back to antiquity.
24

Callot’s print visualizes themes which began to flourish in Florence decades
earlier, during the rule of Ferdinando’s father, Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici.
25

23
The work of Gino Guarnieri, originally published in 1928 and a source for Fernand
Braudel’s history of the Mediterranean, still stands as one of the most thorough studies of
both the naval efforts of the grand dukes in the Mediterranean and Order of the Knights
of Saint Stephen. On the siege of Bona see Gino Guarnieri, I cavalieri di Santo Stefano
nella storia della Marina Italiana (1562-1859) (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1960), 141-147.
24
The work of Christopher Wood and Alexander Nagel has most recently brought the
issue of the temporality of artwork back into vogue in early modern studies. Their
conceptualization of the “anachronic” as the ability of an object to “hesitate” or exist
outside of standard chronic structures builds upon the earlier scholarship of medievalists
like Hans Belting and Gerhard Wolf. My intention in the following chapter is to examine
the visualization of a variety of temporalities to understand the ways in which they were
manipulated within images of Ottoman conflict to express its presence as a temporal
constant and to investigate time’s potential to erect spatial boundaries for Florentines. See
Alexander Nagel and Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone
Books, 2010).
25
For biographical sources on Cosimo see the early work of Cecily Booth, Cosimo I:
Duke of Florence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), Furio Diaz, Il
Granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin: UTET, 1976), 66-83, and Roberto Cantagalli,

18
Cosimo’s role as second duke of Florence, beginning in 1537, and subsequently the first
grand duke of Tuscany in 1569, obligated him to adopt one of the central enemies of the
Holy Roman Empire, the Ottoman Turks. The Turks continued to conquer imperial
territory in Eastern Europe and North Africa in the Cinquecento. Ottoman and Barbary
flotillas sailed throughout the western Mediterranean sacking Christian ports and seizing
ships and cargo. In the first decade of his rule, Cosimo began to found state apparatuses
to defend Christendom from the rapid expansion of the Ottomans westward; the
development of a ducal navy; the fortification of the Tuscan coast; and the foundation of
the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen. Temporally flexible images promoting conflict
with the Ottomans appeared early in Cosimo’s rule, signaling this new Mediterranean
perspective. In 1540, Agnolo Bronzino completed a series of frescoes in the Palazzo
Vecchio, the new home of the duke and his wife Eleonora di Toledo.
26
Among a series of
Old Testament scenes, decorating the duchess’ private chapel, Bronzino painted the
Israelites Crossing the Red Sea (fig. 1.2). Here, Pharaoh’s soldiers, cast about in the

Cosimo I: Granduca di Toscana (Milan: Mursia Editore, 1985). For a more recent take
on the providential and spiritual rhetoric behind Cosimo’s rule see Gregory Murry, The
Medicean Succession: Monarchy and Sacral Politics in Duke Cosimo dei Medici’s
Florence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014).
26
The most comprehensive study on Bronzino’s decoration of the chapel is Janet Cox-
Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora in the Palazzo Vecchio (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993). See also her article Janet Cox-Rearick, “Bronzino’s ‘Crossing’ of
the Red Sea and Moses Appointing Joshua: Prolegomena to the Chapel of Eleonora di
Toledo,” Art Bulletin 69 (1987): 45-67. Bruce Edelstein provides an important
counterpoint to Cox-Rearick’s over emphasis of Cosimo’s role in the decoration of the
chapel. See Bruce Edelstein, “Bronzino in the Service of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo
I de’ Medici: Conjugal Patronage and the Painter-Courtier,” in Beyond Isabella: Secular
Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy, ed. Sheryl Reiss and David Wilkins
(Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 225-262. Bronzino has also been the
subject of a number of recent exhibitions expanding scholarship on the chapel. On the
chapel in particular see Antonio Natali, “I duchi e l’eucaristia. La cappella d’Eleonora di
Toledo” in Bronzino. Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici, ed. Carlo Falciani and
Antonio Natali, exh. cat. (Florence: Mandragora, 2010), 101-111.

19
water, are reimagined as an Ottoman army. The Egyptians carry a red flag with a white
crescent moon, the symbol of the Turks, and dress in a variety of orientalized armor; a
cavalryman struggling to reach the shore wears a capped turban-helmet and just out of
reach a shield decorated with a crescent moon floats in the water. Like Callot decades
after him, Bronzino projects conflict with the Ottoman Empire and Islam across a much
longer timeline, in this case to the original settlement of the Holy Land. Crusade was not
only found in the ancient Roman world, but at the very origins of the Israelites arriving to
the Holy Land. As an eternal form of conflict, crusade functioned as recurring event,
visible in the past, present, and the future.
The works of Callot and Bronzino share what the structural anthropologist Claude
Lévi-Strauss termed a mytheme, a common narrative element that reflexively signifies its
role as myth.
27
In this case, the chosen scenes are not mythological narratives, what
someone in Bronzino’s day would have termed a favola, generated by imagination,
fantasia, or ingegno.
28
Instead these are historical events, istorie, inspired by the Roman

27
The mytheme is a concept developed by the structural anthropologist Claude Lévi-
Strauss, defined as an element within a myth that is irreducible, which reflexively signals
its status as a myth. Lévi-Strauss developed the concept to compare mythological
narratives across temporal and geographic registers in order to come to a better
understanding of the essential nature of certain narrative themes fundamental to human
civilization. While Lévi-Strauss intended such structural thinking to allow for cross
cultural comparisons of myths, I take it as a useful framework for thinking about
typological thinking in the early modern period and more broadly the layered
chronologies of historical imagination at play during the time. See Claude Lévi-Strauss,
“The Structural Study of Myth,” The Journal of American Folklore, 68 (1955): 428-444.
28
Early modern writers employed the term favola, rather than the modern equivalent mito,
for myth. The term is related to narratives that have been invented by fantasia, a loose
translation of imagination. The Accademia della Crusca defined favola in 1612 as “Dal
latino fabula, trovato non vero, ma talora verisimile, talora nò, come gli ápologi, e le
trasformazioni d’Ovvidio.” Fantasia was a broadly used term in the early modern period,
encompassing both imagination and inspiration. Art historians have frequently
investigated the word in its relation to artistic inspiration but here I employ it to
investigate the overlap between istoria and favola. For fantasia see E. Ruth Harvey, The

20
siege of Hippo Regius and the flight of the Israelites described in Exodus.
29
Yet these
histories operate in early modern historical imagination much like Lévi-Strauss’
description of myth:
“On the one hand, a myth always refers to events alleged to have taken place in
time: before the world was created, or during its first stages—anyway, long ago.
But what gives myth an operative value is that the specific pattern described is
everlasting; it explains the present and the past as well as the future.”
30

The images of Callot and Bronzino consciously move beyond the historical content of the
narrative to tell us something more: past conflict with African armies becomes an
allegorical or exegetical impetus to connect ancient and biblical history to modern
conflicts with the Ottoman Turks.
31
Contrary to the temporal flexibility of these images,
early modern art theorists like Leon Battista Alberti, Ludovico Dolce, and Gian Paolo
Lomazzo, stressed a rigid adherence to period clothing and accurate historical settings

Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (London:
The Warburg Institute, 1975). On fantasia in artistic practice see Martin Kemp, “From
‘mimesis’ to ‘fantasia’: the Quattrocento Vocabulary of Creation, Inspiration and Genius
in the Visual Arts,” Viator 8 (1977): 347-398. See also Murray W. Bundy, The Theory of
Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought (Urbana: The University of Illinois,
1927).
29
Istoria was instead the chosen term in use by men like Leon Battista Alberti to describe
the visualization of narrative scenes, often storia or history, but not always. For Alberti
the term also incorporated mythology and poetry. On the various usages of istoria and
storia by Alberti see Anthony Grafton, “Historia and Istoria: Alberti’s Terminology in
Context,” I Tatti Studies 8 (1999): 37-68.
30
Lévi-Strauss, 430.
31
Myth and mythmaking played a continual role in narrative of the Turks and their
reception in Early Modern Europe. While the temporal flexibility of the images I discuss
here suggests a manipulation of particular histories, this phenomenon spread to other
narratives and their visualizations, like the supposed connection between the Turks and
ancient Troy. For an introduction to the myriad ways myths regarding the Turks were
manipulated visually see James Harper’s Introduction to The Turk and Islam in the
Western Eye, 1450-1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011),
1-18.

21
gathered from ancient texts.
32
As Dolce maintains in his Dialogo della pittura (1557), “it
is impossible that the painter be in good command of the elements related to [artistic]
invention, in regards to the story [storia] as well as its appropriateness, if he is not
learned in histories [istorie] as well as myths [favole] of the poets.”
33
Both Bronzino and
Callot depart from this proscription. Their images, however, do not intend to reimagine
history or portray it inaccurately by anachronistically including the Turks. Instead, the
print and fresco frame these events as typologically related, predicting future conflict
with Islam, and stepping beyond the strict bounds of historical time. As such, the artists’
works offer evidence of a Florentine historical imagination which freely visualized
conflict with the Turks through a multitude of temporal lenses; classical, biblical,
medieval, and contemporary. They approached crusade as a kind of typology, traceable in
every epoch, every age, in contemporary conflicts, and even prophesized its return.
34

32
See Anton Boschloo, “The Representation of History in Artistic Theory” in Recreating
Ancient History: Episodes from the Greek and Roman Past in the Arts and Literatures of
the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl Enenkel, Jan L. de Long, and Jeanine De Landtsheer
(Leiden: Brill, 2001), 1-25.
33
“Et è impossible che ‘l pittore possega bene le parti che convengono alla invenzione, sì
per conto della istoria come della convenevolezza, se non è pratico delle istorie e delle
favole de’ poeti.” Lodovico Dolce, Dialogo della Pittura in Trattati d’arte del
Cinquecento fra Manierismo e Controriforma, ed. Paola Barocchi, vol. 1 (Bari: Gius
Laterza e figli, 1960), 170.
34
Typology is a Judeo-Christian exegetical practice in which figures and events from the
Old Testament are believed to prophesize, foretell, or parallel figures and events from the
New Testament as typoi or figurae. Within the Christian tradition the events of the life of
Christ are often taken as the hermeneutic key to determine the teleological direction of
any narrative in question. Crusade, as a Christian practice, existed within this temporal
structure, finding parallels in the Old and New Testaments. While the concepts of
typology and mytheme are related as structural methods to analyze narrative, the former
maintains a strict Christological basis while the latter exists outside of the constraints of
scriptural exegesis. On medieval typology between text and image see Christopher
Hughes, “Typology and its Uses in the Moralized Bible,” in The Mind’s Eye: Art and
Theological Argument in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Hamburger (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2006), 133-150. On the correlations between Old and New Testaments

22
While these scenes of Ottoman conflict have on occasion been the focus of art
historical study, they are rarely considered as a group. Within modern investigations of
the grand duchy, their fabrication is often viewed in relation to local political struggles
between ruling parties of Florence, generalized as French or Spanish proto-nationalism,
or their meanings are located beyond the Florentine center.
35
In this chapter, my aim is to
discuss the genesis of crusade images within the Duchy of Florence and their
proliferation under the later Grand Duchy of Tuscany. I will argue that the images of
Bronzino and Callot must be associated with Florentine interest in crusade, a topic often
disassociated with the historiographical center of the Renaissance.
36
While such themes
have been studied in imperial centers like the Holy Roman Empire, temporal prejudices
abound. Scholars of imperial imagery, like Roy Strong, once argued that the reuse of
classical allegory under the empire was decidedly anti-chivalric and thus by implication
incompatible with crusade. In his discussions of the visualization of Charles V’s siege of
Tunis in 1535, for example, Strong writes, “Unlike the North there were no allusions to
knightly chivalry, only to the imperator; the victories were of valiant Romans over
Carthaginians, not of invading knights over infidel Turks.”
37
In this chapter I will attempt
to dissolve these period divisions between classical antiquity and the Middle Ages, to

see Henri de Lubac, Exégèse mediévale: les quatre sens de l’écriture, vol. 1 (Paris:
Aubier, 1959), 305-363.
35
Most recently Catherine Poole has addressed Florentine interest in crusade imagery in
her dissertation “The Medici Grand Dukes and the Art of Conquest: Ruling Identity and
the Formation of a Tuscan Empire, 1537-1609” (PhD diss., Rutgers University, 2007). In
her work she argues largely that these images attempt to fashion a new image of an
imperial duchy, presenting a ruling power with global political aspirations and ties to
France and Spain.
36
For an example of interest in the concept of crusade in Florentine literature see James
Hankins, “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of Mehmed II”
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 49 (1995):111-207.
37
Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450-1650 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1984), 86.

23
argue for the perceived continuity of holy war in early modern Florence. The works of
Bronzino and Callot visualized crusade rhetoric through a temporal lens, which traversed
all recorded history, imaging Romans as knights and Turks as Carthaginians. These more
capacious historical imaginations were also brought to bear on images that memorialized
early modern victories over the Turks. Artists like Giorgio Vasari, Ludovico Cigoli, and
Bernardino Poccetti, were tasked with visualizing victories over the Ottoman Empire and
they actively played on knowledge of this extended history of crusade. By turning to the
visualization of conflict with the Ottomans in Grand Ducal Florence, crusade reveals the
multi-temporality of historical imagination in the period and offers a means to investigate
the city’s attempts to reposition itself within a broader history of strife in the
Mediterranean world.

The Grand Duchy of Tuscany and the Ottoman Empire

The seeds of conflict between the Ottoman Empire and the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany were sewn with the transition of the city of Florence from a republic to an
imperial duchy. While the Republic of Florence was pragmatically invested in relations
with the Ottoman Empire as a mercantile center, the shift in governmental structures
altered this approach. Under the rule of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, Florence established
a more concentrated military program to combat Turkish presence in the Mediterranean.
38

Following the overthrow of the last Republic in 1530, the Medici dukes maintained

38
For a recent review of the development of the Florentine navy under Duke Cosimo and
his sons see Marco Gemignani, “The Navies of the Medici: The Florentine Navy and the
Navy of the Sacred Military Order of the Knights of St Stephen, 1547-1648,” in War at
Sea in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. John B. Hattendorf and Richard W.
Unger (Woodbridge: The Boybell Press, 2003), 169-186.

24
control of Florence and its many provinces under the auspices of the Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V. Following imperial assistance in the siege of Florence that year,
Charles oversaw the installation of the Medici family as dukes, beginning with
Alessandro de’ Medici. With the assassination of Alessandro in 1537, Spanish troops
were deployed to key tactical positions located throughout Tuscany, including the ports
of Livorno and Porto Pisano, in order to maintain control of the region. Charles then
assisted the rise of a relatively unknown young man to the throne, Cosimo I de’ Medici.
In the first decade of his rule, Duke Cosimo, departed from his cousin’s lax approach the
city’s role in imperial politics. As the second duke of Florence, Cosimo set his sights on
the expansion of the Duchy of Florence, which necessitated regaining control over the
Tyrrhenian ports. In 1543, Cosimo negotiated with Charles V for the empire to cede
control of Livorno and Porto Pisano to the duchy. Shortly thereafter, Cosimo initiated
efforts to construct a ducal navy.
39
Relying largely on existing infrastructure in the ducal
territory of Pisa, Cosimo began to build a small fleet.
40
In 1547, the duke launched the
Pisana, the first galley built under Medici rule, and soon thereafter four other galleys
followed, the Capitana, the Elbigina, the Toscana, and the Fiorenza. While a modest
start, the five ships, all at sea by the late 1540s, began to suggest, even in their very

39
On the Florentine purchase of Livorno and Porto Pisano from the Genoese, and the
capture of Pisa, see Michael Edward Mallett, The Florentine Galleys in the Fifteenth
Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 10-11. For a review of Cosimo’s politicking to
regain control of these spaces see Gino Guarnieri, Da Porto Pisano a Livorno Città:
attraverso le tappe della storia e della evoluzione geografica (Pisa: Giardini, 1967), 162-
170.
40
Cosimo also brought in ship makers from Genoa. For a thorough history of Cosimo’s
refoundation of the Arsenale at Pisa at its later problems due to its location on the Arno
see Franco Angiolini “Arsenali e costruzioni navali nella Toscana dei Medici,” in Rotte e
porti del Mediterraneo dopo la caduta dell’Impero Romano d’Occidente: continuità e
innovazioni technologiche e funzionali, Lorenza de Maria and Rita Turchetti ed., (Rome:
Rubettino Editore, 2004), 363-378.

25
names, Cosimo’s broader maritime vision for the landlocked city of Florence and the
coastal regions of Tuscany. By 1548, Cosimo had obtained control of the island of Elba,
inspiring the name of the ship Elbigina. That year he also negotiated the contested control
of the port of Piombino, though he would at various times be required to return it the
rightful rulers, the Appiano family.
41
Later, Cosimo added the Isola del Giglio as another
ducal territory.
42
The duke even attempted to gain control of Corsica, though negotiations
failed.
43
Little more than a decade into his rule of the duchy, the second duke of Florence
had substantially increased the reach of the duchy into the Tyrrhenian Sea and furnished
it with a small fleet to protect its new territories.
Historically, the coastal waters off the coast of Tuscany operated as sites of
contest between the ruling Mediterranean powers of Christendom and fleets from Islamic
lands, the Maghreb, and the Levant. The Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas offered Muslim
pirates and privateers from distant coasts the chance to intercept trade ships in transit to
Pisa, Genoa, and Livorno. Seizing Christian ships also offered the opportunity to sell
captured sailors and passengers as slaves in Tripoli, Algiers, and at various times Tunis,
for a considerable profit. While pirate and slave economies formed an integral part of
maritime life on both sides of the religious divide, unsecured coastal spaces like Corsica,

41
Cosimo controlled Piombino at various points between 1548 and 1557 before being
required to return the port to its previous ruler, Jacopo d’Appiano VI. See Cesare Ciano, I
primi Medici e il mare: note sulla politica marinara Toscana da Cosimo I a Ferdinando I
(Pisa: Arti Grafiche Pacini Martiotti), 12-19.
42
Cosimo gained control of the island in 1558 along with another Tuscan port-town,
Castiglione della Pescaia. Ibid, 25.
43
In 1553 Cosimo offered to help the Genoese secure Corsica from a semi-permanent
occupation of Algerian corsairs, Ibid, 20. Fernand Braduel maintians that the Corsicans
did not take kindly to Genoese rule and sought other protectors including the duke,
leading eventually to French rule, Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 1, 160. On Cosimo’s
attempts to become ruler of Corsica see also Giovanni Livi, La Corsica e Cosimo I
(Florence: Bencini, 1885).

26
Elba, and the Isola del Giglio offered fleets from the Maghreb and the Levant sheltered
points of access to the Tuscan coast. Efforts to purge these liminal spaces of pirates
reached back from antiquity to the Middle Ages.
44
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas
Purcell in The Corrupting Sea reveal medieval efforts to secure these spaces reaching
back to the Franks search of Corsica for pirates from the Maghreb in 828.
45
In his
seminal study on the Mediterranean, Fernand Braudel maintains that this tradition of
piracy formed a fundamental aspect of intertwined economies, continuing to act as a
mainstay in the early modern period. Conflict with Islamic powers became an inevitable
consequence of the duchy’s territorial expansion into the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Duke Cosimo’s desire to secure coastal spaces and build a Florentine navy likely
followed the model of one of the empire’s most successful Italian servants, Prince Andrea
Doria.
46
Doria was the de-facto ruler of the Republic of Genoa and one of the most
famous admirals of the sixteenth century. Ludovico Ariosto praised Doria in his famous
epic poem Orlando Furioso (1532), citing his efforts to render the sea free of piracy for
the emperor. Doria was also one of Charles’ closest confidants and, according to many, a
kind of father figure to the emperor. While the Genoese had a long history as a naval
power in the medieval Mediterranean, in the early modern period, which largely saw
Venice as the ruling maritime power, Doria continued to exercise tremendous financial
and military influence. Beginning in 1528, Doria began to use the Republic’s navy to aid

44
Ironically in antiquity the Tyrrhenian coast was renowned as a haven for pirates who
preyed on passing ships and ventured into the Aegean. For the classic study on the
subject see Henry Omerod’s work, originally printed in 1921, Piracy in the Ancient
World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 127-132.
45
See Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of
Mediterranean History, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), 153-160.
46
On Doria and Charles V see Arturo Pacini, La Genova di Andrea Doria nell’impero di
Carlo V (Florence: Olschki, 1999).

27
the empire, at a tremendous cost, garnering substantial wealth and notoriety.
47
Doria
fought against Charles’ most steadfast enemies, the Kings of France, Francois I, his son
Henry II, and their chief ally, the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent. Doria was in
fact a crucial part of the emperor’s military success in Tunis in 1535, and personally led
imperial flotillas against the Turks until his death in 1560. Following his election in 1537
as the second duke of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici likely saw Doria as an exceptional
model of success within a new imperial system of patronage. Expanding Florentine
ambitions into the Tyrrhenian Sea offered the duke a clear way to insure his usefulness in
an expanding imperial world increasingly concerned with the Turkish threat and the
powers of a broader maritime empire.
With the launching of the first Florentine ships in the late 1540s, the duchy began
to participate in imperial flotillas aimed at interrupting Ottoman strongholds principally
in the Maghreb. The first crusade effort against the Turks came in 1550. That year the
duchy participated in the imperial siege of the port-town called “la città d’Affrica,”
modern day Mahdia in Tunisia. Andrea Doria led the siege, which also included the
Knights of Malta and Spanish soldiers under the Viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro di
Toledo. The Florentines made up only a small portion of the fleet, providing four ships
for a larger collective flotilla as well as a thousand soldiers for the effort.
48
With the
support of Pope Julius III it bore considerable religious overtones. Avvisi described the
battle as a “public victory for Saint Peter” and that it was “for the public benefit of

47
For this transition from French to imperial patronage see Steven A. Epstein, Genoa and
the Genoese 958-1528 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1996), 313-316.
48
On the siege of Mahdia see Ciano, 16-17; Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the
Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, vol. II (London: Collins, 1973), 907-911;
Kenneth Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571), vol. 3 (Philadelphia: The
American Philosophical Society, 1984), 533-536.

28
Christians,” leaving little doubt as to the nature of the conflict.
49
With both financial and
spiritual support, participation in the siege offered monetary and spiritual benefices to its
participants. The successful capture of the port opened new financial markets for the
duchy, in particular the large scale buying and selling of North African slaves. Avvisi sent
to Naples record that 700 men, women, and children were captured from Mahdia by the
imperial fleet. Letters to and from the duchy of Florence regarding their growing need for
men to row their new galleys, describe purchases and trades made to secure slaves from
Mahdia.
50
Duke Cosimo’s desire to crusade in North Africa, like Charles V, required
participation in slave trade. While slavery certainly existed in Renaissance Florence
before the duchy, the duke’s increased need for new forms of labor expanded these
systems of subjugation, ushering in Florence’s new role as an early modern colonial
power.
51

Crusade efforts were, however, often more localized. In 1555, the majority of
Duke Cosimo’s military attention was focused on the seizure of the Republic of Siena. A
longtime rival of Florence, Siena had established alliances with the King of France,

49
In avvisi describing the victory the battle is described as “la bella publico victorum per
Sancto pectrii” and “per il benefito publico di Christiani.” ASF MdP 397a, fol. 990-997.
50
In a letter sent to the duke, a servant describes how Paolo Giordano Orsini, the captain
of the Florentine ships, has tasked him with buying slaves from the Marquis of
Terranova; “Il Signor Giordano mi ha comesso ch’ io procure di haver’ buon numero
delli schiavi della Galera che ando atraverso sotto Affrica del Marchesa di Terranova che
ha inteso volerli vender et havendomi ordinate ch’ io scriva a Vostro Signor Eccellentia
l’ho fatto quella si degnera di farmi rispondere et darmi la comessione di quanto havro
aseguir et spettra al meno del prezzo di essi schiavi e facendo fine resto humilti…” ASF
MdP 397a, fol. 990.
51
On fifteenth-century slavery see Sergio Tognetti, “The trade in black African slaves in
fifteenth-century Florence,” in Black Africans in Renaissance Europe, ed. T.F. Earle and
K.J.P Lowe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 213-224. See also Steven A.
Epstein, Speaking of Slavery: color, ethnicity, and human bondage in Italy (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2001). For a recent study of the visualization of slavery under
the grand duchy see Mark Rosen, “Pietro Tacca’s ‘Quattro Mori’ and the Conditions of
Slavery in Early Seicento Tuscany,” Art Bulletin 97 (2015): 34-57.

29
Henry II, and the capture of the powerful Tuscan town promised to expand both the
territory of the Duchy of Florence as well as imperial influence in the region. In 1554,
Cosimo began a protracted fifteen-month siege to destroy Siena, one of the final vestiges
of French influence in Tuscany. The Sienese were led by the fuoruscito Piero Strozzi, the
same family the duke had previously defeated at the battle of Montemurlo in 1537 to
secure his initial rule of Florence. Such seemingly local efforts might yet be understood
to fall within the broader purview of crusade. As the French were allied with the Ottoman
sultan, Süleyman the Magnificent, after Siena had fallen, the Turks attempted to aid the
effort by sieging the port of Piombino in November 1555.
52
An Ottoman fleet led by
Turgut Reis, sanjakbey under Süleyman, sieged the port-town, taking advantage of the
diverted troops still stationed in Siena. Turgut’s assault on the coastal town was repulsed
by imperial and Florentine troops stationed there to prevent such an opportunistic attack.
Repelling the Ottoman armada, Cosimo and his forces positioned themselves as
defenders of Christendom against the allies of the Sienese.
By 1559, the duchy had also pledged to participate in the assault on Tripoli, an
effort which was delayed nearly a year.
53
In 1560, the duchy provided four ships for the
siege. Because of bad weather, the effort was eventually diverted to the island of Djerba.
Easily containing the undefended coastal space, imperial forces quickly erected a fortress
to hold the position from Ottoman forces. However, due to the result of collective
disorganization and lack of reinforcements, imperial forces were compelled to surrender
the island only a few months after taking it. The sudden abandonment of imperial support
for the effort left many involved without supplies. The failed effort cost the duchy four of

52
See Setton for the skirmish at Piombino and the capture of Siena, Setton, vol. 4, 623-
624.
53
Ciano, 27.

30
its five ships, an exceptionally costly loss for a budding navy. For the duchy, crusade had
become an unexpected financial strain, requiring Duke Cosimo to come up with a new
approach to funding these endeavors.

Pisa and the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen

In 1561, Duke Cosimo founded the Order of the Knights of Saint Stephen, a papal
knighthood granted official status by Pope Pius IV the following year.
54
It was modeled
on the crusader Order of the Knights of Malta, also known as the Knights of Saint John of
Jerusalem.
55
Like earlier crusader knighthoods, Cosimo’s creation of the Knights of Saint
Stephen was intended to provide a more organized and less costly means to fund efforts
to combat Turkish presence in the Mediterranean. The order accepted members from all
over Christendom, who, as confirmed Catholics, offered their financial support and labor
to continue the crusade. As the head of an organization that was intended to raise funds
for naval flotillas, Cosimo no longer had to rely solely on the financial resources of the
duchy. The order, in turn, provided men of various social classes, often wealthy
merchants, the means to either elevate their social status to knights or endear themselves
to the grand dukes of Tuscany.
56
Like other papal knighthoods, the Order of the Knights
of Saint Stephen was founded as a Benedictine order, composed of priests and knights,

54
There have been several key studies on the Knights of Saint Stephen, sometimes called
the Knights of Santo Stefano or the Order of Santo Stefano in English language literature.
Early studies by Gino Guarnieri, ibid., have been more recently expanded by the work of
Franco Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe. L’ordine di Santo Stefano e la società Toscana
in età moderna (Pisa: Edifir, 1996).
55
On the Knights of Malta, previously called the Knights of Rhodes, and before then the
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, see H.J.A. Sire, The Knights of Malta (New Haven:
Yale University, 1996).
56
On the social mobility of new knights see Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe, 67-82.

31
the former to operate hospitals and the latter to fight against the Turks. Each took of vows
of celibacy (to refrain from extra-marital affairs), obedience, and charity.
57
As its
founder, Cosimo I de’ Medici held the title of grand master, a position passed down to the
sitting duke of Florence, his sons and grandsons. Utilizing this new military arm
sponsored by the church, Cosimo ensured Florence’s role in the continued defense of
Christendom through the seventeenth century.
Much of the current literature on the foundation of the Knights of Saint Stephen
argues that the creation of the order was part of Cosimo’s efforts to erase his family’s
mercantile past by creating a new caste of nobility in a city that once outlawed such
designations.
58
This notion is taken directly from Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of
the Renaissance in Italy (1860), and is itself an idea that is profoundly wrapped up in the
notion of a secular Renaissance founded by Republican merchants. Burckhardt writes that
in Italy there was:
“a social transformation in obedience to Spanish ideas, of which the chief features
were the contempt for work and the passion for titles….In Florence an analogous
change appears to have taken place by the time of Cosimo, the first grand duke;
he is thanked for adopting the young people, who now despise trade and
commerce, as knights of his Order of Saint Stephen. This goes straight in the teeth
of good old Florentine custom, by which fathers left property to their children on
the condition that they should have some occupation. But a mania of titles of a
ludicrous sort sometimes crossed and thwarted, especially among the Florentines,
the leveling influence of art and culture. This was the passion for knighthood,

57
Guarnieri, 50.
58
Franco Angiolini writes “L’Ordine di Santo Stefano nacque per scopi politici e military,
ma anche con intendimenti dichiaramente sociali (che in breve tempo finirono per
prevalere sugli altri). La necessità di garantire un’attiva presenza della Toscana medicea
nelle acque mediteranee sulle quali avveniva lo scontro ispano-turco…non eranno
disgiunte dal desiderio explicito di creare nello Stato toscano un’istituzione nuova, e
squisamente medicea, che fosse in grado di accogliere nel suo seno tutti coloro che
venivano a costituire il ceto dominante,” Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe, 67. Earlier
Furio Diaz, the noted historian of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, agreed with nineteenth-
century authors that the order was intended to remove the grand dukes from the daily
business of trade, Il Granducato di Toscana: i Medici (Turin: UTET, 1976), 193.

32
which became one of the striking follies of the day, at a time when it had lost
every shadow of significance.”
59

Following this criticism of the anachronisms of early modern knighthood, recent
scholarship on the order has largely followed suit. Scholars like Franco Angiolini argue
that the Knights of Saint Stephen were merely a means to place the grand duke at the
pinnacle of an artificial social class, commensurate with other princes of Christendom.
60

Angiolini, following the path laid out by Burckhardt, sees the order as, at best, an effort
to rewrite Florence’s past as a merchant Republic.
My intention here is not to wholly revise this argument, but to suggest that
Cosimo’s creation of a crusader knighthood was part of a much longer historical
approach to a Mediterranean world in conflict. While a new class of nobility was
certainly an outcome of its creation, this diversion of wealth funded papal and imperial
efforts throughout the Maghreb and the Levant. The knighthood was indeed highly
active. Fernand Braudel maintained that the Florentines were second only to the Knights
of Malta in their privateering efforts against the Ottomans, findings reinforced in the
work of Kenneth Setton.
61
Crusade was not merely rhetoric but a reality and the
Florentines saw to it that they were seen publicly as its central facilitators.
To understand Cosimo’s desire to create the Knights of Saint Stephen we must
investigate the duke’s manipulation of an extended historical imaginary. The knighthood
actively played on a medieval historical imagination, a notion that scholars have often

59
Jacob Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, S.G.C. Middlemore,
trans. (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 233.
60
See Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe, 67.
61
On the privateering efforts of the knights of Saint Stephen, Braudel writes that “Second
place in those days went to the Florentines, who were presently to challenge the Knights
of St. John,” Braudel, The Mediterranean, vol. 2, 876.

33
failed to consider in relation to the foundation of the Knights of Saint Stephen. While the
duke initially considered stationing the knighthood on the island of Elba, he instead
settled them in the ducal territory of Pisa.
62
This decision was in some ways practical.
The knights were predominantly occupied with launching naval flotillas to combat the
Turks. Pisa was the location of Cosimo’s Arsenal, where he constructed the vast majority
of the duchy’s ships, which then sailed up the Arno River to the port of Livorno. Yet the
city also evoked memories of historical efforts from centuries past, including the
launching of the very first Christian ships to Jerusalem. What Pisa lacked in direct
accessibility to the Tyrrhenian Sea, it made up for in the very ideas it conjured within an
early modern historical imaginary, reinforcing the knights’ status and crusade message.
The Knights of Saint Stephen, who, as crusaders, bore a red knights cross on their chest,
saw the return of these historical themes to the city of Pisa in the 1560s. To facilitate this
rebirth, Cosimo redesigned the urban infrastructure of Pisa to accommodate the knights,
situating their headquarters in the very piazza from which the Pisan Republic once
ruled.
63
In 1565, the duke built the Church of Santo Stefano and, shortly thereafter, the
Palazzo della Carovana, building atop the powerful memories of Pisan history. The
Florentines thus relied on an established historical tradition to reinforce their new status,
manipulating the history of Pisa to reinforce their own role as crusaders.
Beginning in the 1560s, the Knights of Saint Stephen began to contest the
presence of Ottoman and Barbary flotillas in the Mediterranean. While initial efforts were
disastrous, by the mid-1560s the knights had become a valuable resource for

62
For a review of the shift between Elba and Pisa see Angiolini, “Arsenali e costruzioni
navali nella Toscana dei Medici,” 363-378.
63
On the reconstruction of the urban center of Pisa to make room for the knights see Ewa
Karwacka Codini, Piazza dei Cavalieri: urbinistica e architettura dal Medioveo al
Novecento (Florence: Eurografica, 1989).

34
Christendom. In 1565, Cosimo sent the knights to help defend the island of Malta, then
under siege by Turgut Reis. In 1571, they were also sent as part of the Holy League to
fight in the Battle of Lepanto, where they aided Don Juan of Austria in the defeat of
Müezzinzade Ali Pasha.
64
After the death of Cosimo I in 1574, Grand Duke Francesco I
oversaw continued efforts in North Africa and Eastern Europe, returning to spaces like
Goleta and the Dalmatian coast. By the rise of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de’ Medici in
1588, both the ducal navy and the Knights of Saint Stephen participated together in the
Siege of Preveza in 1605 and the siege of Bona in 1607.
65
If these crusade efforts
reached a pinnacle under the rule of Cosimo’s sons, their origins began with his new
vision for Florentine interests in the Mediterranean decades earlier.
Like earlier generations, Jerusalem remained a central ideal for the Knights of
Saint Stephen, acting as a foil for their efforts against the Turks. The memory of the holy
land was apparent in their very identity. Cosimo’s choice for patron saint of the order,
Pope Stephen, saint and martyr, has often been connected with the saint’s day, August 2,
with the day of the duke’s military victories at Montemurlo (1537) and Marciano
(1554).
66
While these temporal correlations were likely important to the duke, larger
implications related to the history of Saint Stephen, the proto-martyr, and Pope Stephen’s

64
On their efforts at Lepanto see Guarnieri, 89-105. Although the artist worked on a large
fresco cycles for Pope Paul V in Rome celebrating the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, no such
works exist in Florence from this period. For the grand dukes, the memory of the victory
was well enough celebrated in procession and spolia, but never visualized as istoria on
such a permanent scale. See Chapter 4.
65
See Ciano and Guarnieri.
66
For a discussion of the understudied work in relation to Vasari’s oeuvre see Paola
Barocchi, Vasari pittore (Florence: Barbèra, 1964), 66-67. Vasari also mentions the
work in a letter to Jacopo Accolti. See also Umberto Baldini, Giorgio Vasari. Pittore
(Florence, Edizioni d’Arte Il Fiorino, 1994), 194. On the recent restoration of Vasari’s
work in the Church of Santo Stefano see Alba Macripò, “La ‘Lapidazione di Santo
Stefano’ di Giorgio Vasari’ nella Chiesa dei Cavalieri a Pisa,” Critica d’arte 74 (2014):
83-97.

35
namesake, appear to have also played a role in the selection. Images of Pope Stephen
were strangely infrequent in the Church of Santo Stefano, in Pisa. Instead images of Saint
Stephen, the first Christian martyr stoned to death outside of the gates of Jerusalem,
appear much more regularly. Saint Stephen’s holy day was celebrated on August 3,
commemorating the rediscovery of his bones outside of the city.
In 1571, Giorgio Vasari finished an altarpiece installed in the church of Santo
Stefano in Pisa that visualized the stoning of the saint, dressed in his deacon’s robes,
outside of the walls of the city (fig. 1.3). Saint Stephen’s death outside one of Jerusalem’s
gates draws attention back to the central site of historical conflict for crusaders. In his
painting, however, Vasari frames this history within a longer historical trajectory. Among
the group of men set to stone Saint Stephen, a man on the far left of the scene wears a
Phrygian cap. The distinctive hat materially signals his association with the region of
ancient Phrygia, in Anatolia, the early modern domain of the Turks.
67
Like the flag of
Bronzino and the armor of Callot, this simple detail draws conflict with the Ottomans
across time and space to the death of the first Christian martyr outside the gates of
Jerusalem at the hands of the ancestors of the Turks.

67
James Harper notes that the Phrygian cap was a generic symbol of the Orient in ancient
Rome and used in the Middle Ages to associate the Turks with the Trojans, who were
popularly believed to have been their ancestors. See James Harper, “Turks as Trojans;
Trojans as Turks: Visual Imagery of the Trojan War and the Politics of Cultural Identity
in Fifteenth-Century Europe” in Translating Cultures: Postcolonial Approaches to the
European Middle Ages, ed. Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2005), 154-157.

36
Bronzino and Scriptural Exegesis

Vasari’s use of Saint Stephen’s martyrdom to communicate crusade rhetoric
relied on the most essential vehicle to convey these themes, Holy Scripture, accessed by
him through texts like the Golden Legend. Scriptural exegesis, and its various
commentaries, operated as the primary format to present crusade rhetoric in Christendom,
and Florence was no exception. One of the earliest images to address Ottoman conflict
under the rule of Cosimo I appears to have been Agnolo Bronzino’s fresco, generally
referred to as The Israelites Crossing the Red Sea. In 1539, Duke Cosimo married Leonor
Álvarez de Toledo y Osorio, known in Italian Eleonora di Toledo.
68
The following year a
chapel was built for her in the Palazzo Vecchio, their new ducal residence. Bronzino’s
fresco, painted on the southern wall, presents a synthesis of scenes from Exodus
imagined in an alternate historical framework. In the background of a risen Red Sea, the
painter depicts several Egyptian soldiers as Ottomans, wearing turban-helmets and
carrying a red flag with a white crescent moon (fig. 1.4). To be certain, this background
detail is not the focus of the fresco, which instead clearly treats the figure of Moses
passing the rule to Joshua as its central composition. This subtle inclusion, however,
suggests the manner in which crusade was interwoven with Biblical and hagiographic
narrative by artists like Bronzino and Vasari.
Scholars like Janet Cox-Rearick have read this image as an illustration of
Florentine hegemony over warring political factions attempting to control the city, in
particular Medicean conflict with the Strozzi family, who used the crescent moon in their

68
For Eleonora’s life leading up to her marriage to Cosimo I see Konrad Eisenbichler’s
Introduction to The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004 ), 1-
17.

37
family coat-of-arms.
69
Cox-Rearick calls attention to a specific passage from the Vita di
Cosimo Medici (1578), which compares the defeat of the Strozzi at the Battle of
Montemurlo to Moses crushing the Egyptians with the Red Sea.
70
By the era of this
publication, however, the Strozzi were already easily associated with the Turks, due to
their shared political alliance through the French. Moreover, typological readings can
have more than one fixed referent. For the Spanish duchess who relocated from Toledo to
Naples as a young girl, and finally to Florence in 1539, Moses’ struggle with the
Ottomans likely had broader typological meanings. Robert Gaston has rightly argued that
the sources for the chapel probably skewed towards Eleonora’s Spanish origins and that
the inclusion of the defeat of the Turks derived from longstanding conflicts with the
Kingdom of Spain.
71
In a rich comparative study, Gaston relates the message of the scene
to Castillo inexpugnable (1528), which calls on Charles V to “mobilize against the Turks
and the Moors so that they might be ‘submerged with Pharaoh.’”
72
He also suggests that
the power of prayer was considered central to the victories over Islamic forces,
compelling the young duchess to take part in the larger spiritual crusade.
73
While Gaston
is right to draw attention to Eleonora’s origins, Moses had much broader resonances in
Christendom that reached beyond Spain. Moses’ various military exploits had long been
a symbol of crusade.

69
For the political reading of this fresco see Cox-Rearick, Bronzino’s Chapel of Eleonora
in the Palazzo Vecchio, 294-319. While scholars like Cox-Rearick have interpreted the
banner as a symbol of the Strozzi family, their own use of the heraldic image of three
crescent moons on red ground likely descended from their participation in crusade efforts.
70
Ibid., 305.
71
Robert Gaston, “Eleonora di Toledo’s Chapel: Lineage, Salvation and the War Against
the Turks,” in The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, 157-180.
72
Ibid., 164.
73
Ibid., 165.

38
Scriptural exegesis on passages from Exodus allowed crusade preachers to locate
the typologies of Islamic conflict in events that preceded the lives of Christ and
Muhammad. Indeed for Eleonora’s fellow countryman, the Spanish Pope Alexander VI,
Moses was employed to promote crusade only a few decades earlier. In 1495, the crusade
preacher Leonardo Chiericati claimed that Pope Alexander would accompany crusader
forces against the Turks as a “second Moses,” raising his hands in prayer against the
Amalekites to usher in their destruction and conquer the Holy Land.
74
The preacher read
in Latin, that Moses was a sign of the future conflict with the Turks given by the Lord.
75

Reaching beyond narrow Florentine and Spanish political frameworks thus suggests the
manner in which the image likely projected past, present, and future conflict with the
Islamic world.
In the fifteenth century, Italian crusade preachers like the Franciscan Fra Roberto
Caracciolo relied on exegetical readings of Exodus to inspire Christians in Italy to
crusade against the Turks.
76
Caracciolo traveled throughout the peninsula preaching in
cities like Florence in an attempt to raise awareness of the growing threat of the Turks
and in subsequent decades his printed sermons spread throughout the peninsula.
77
In

74
Norman Housley, Crusading and the Ottoman Threat (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2013), 99.
75
“Pugnabunt alii contra salutiferae crucis inimicos, tu vero, pater clemetissime, secutus
Moysen, quem nobis auctoritate refers, elevates minibus cum sacerdotibus tuis Deum
patrem omnipotentem, fietque ita populao christiano, te orante, victoria, sicut, levanter
manus Moyse, victim Israel Amalechitas. Quod ita futurum, evidentissimum datum est
nobis signum a Domino.” Sigismondo de’ Conti, Le storie dei suoi tempi dal 1475 al
1510, vol. 2 (Rome: Tipografia Babèra, 1883), 443-444.
76
On Caracciolo, also called Fra Roberto da Lecce, see Steven J. McMichael, “Roberto
Caracciolo da Lecce and his sermons on Muhammad and the Muslims (c.1480),” in
Franciscans and Preaching: Every Miracle from the Beginning of the World Came about
through Words, ed. Timothy Johnson (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 327-352.
77
Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman
Turks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 142-143.

39
these sermons he emphasizes the atrocities wrought by the Turks on Christendom after
the fall of Constantinople, stressing the evils of rape, slavery, and the destruction of holy
spaces. In his Specchio della Fede, first printed in 1495, and again in 1537 and 1555,
Caracciolo describes the destruction of Europe by the Ottomans, tracing their origins
back to the control of Egypt by the “Saracens”:
“in these travails of Christians and the lord of tyrants, the Saracens, who were in
Egypt, organized a large armada and seized a large section of Africa: and the
island of Rhodes and Sicily: like this slowly but surely with the strength of arms it
elevated their accursed thirst. And to leave all of these things from a long time
ago without paining the soul, one must speak about that which Mehmed [II] has
done in our times, son of Murat of the family of Ottomans, Lord Turk…he
conquered many parts of Greece with a large army and by land and sea assailed
Constantinople…”
78

For Caracciolo, Egypt was the central source of Islamic avarice that fueled the appetite of
later men like Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II. Yet Egypt was also the very first enemy to be
defeated by the “cross,” that is by Moses. In a later sermon, Caracciolo marshals Moses
as a symbol of holy war similar to Chiericati before him. Caracciolo cites Moses’ staff as
a typological symbol of the cross, and the element that allowed liberation from the
persecution of the Egyptians:

“the children of Israel arrived at the Red Sea. Exodus.xv.c. Pharaoh followed
them, those frightened Jews, with an army & God said to Moses. Loquere filiis
Israel ut profiscantur. Say to the children of Israel that they will escape and you
will raise your staff & extending your hand over the sea & with that staff you will
part the waters pulled from one side to the other in the manner of a wall, and those
were saved who passed through the middle, as we still write of it in the sermons

78
“in queste travaglie di christiani e di signor tiranni li Saraceni li quali erano in egytto
fecero una grande aramta e pigliaro una grand parte del Affrica: e la isula de Rhod e la
Sicilia: cosi de tempo in tempo con la forza delle arme si viene augmentando quella
damnata seta. E per lassare tutte le cose anticheno senza dolore di animo si deve parlare
quello che ha fatto alli nostri tempi Macometh figluol de Amurato della famiglia
Ottomani signor turcho…hebbi conquistate molte parte della grecia con grande essercito
per mare e per terra assedio Constantinopoli e con molte battaglie…” Fra Roberto
Caracciolo, Specchio della Fede, (Venice: 1537), 15v.

40
of the magnificence of the faith when we speak of miracles. Where we presently
conclude that which is noted at .xyvii.c. of Exodus. When it was necessary to
battle with the Amalekites, Moses went to pray with that staff in hand, and
according to Augustine he says in .x.lib.de civi.dei.al.viii.ca. holding that staff in
hand, he extended his arms in the manner of a cross, and praying in that manner,
Moses made the Jews victorious. That staff thus signified in many signs and
fulfilled prophecies the cross of Christ by the virtue of god even in this victory
with which have been realized many miracles...”
79

For Caracciolo, Moses is often positioned as an invocation of God’s call to fight for
Christendom, and his staff a symbol of the cross. In his De Prediche Vulgare from 1515,
reprinted in 1543, Caracciolo cites scripture that reinforced these themes for Moses, such
as Job 7:1:
“Militia est vita hominis super terram. Life of man on earth is a battle. [This is]
the prayer of victors in these wars: [For] we have the model of Moses leading his
people against their enemies to reach the promised land.”
80

79
“li figlioli di Israel arrivati al mare Rosso. Exodi.xv.c. perseguitandoli Pharone con
l’essercito & impaguriti quelli iudei disse dio a Moyse. Loquere filiis Israel ut
profiscantur. Di alli figlioli di Israel che vadino via e tu levarai la virga & estendoli la
mano sopra il mare & con quella virga sparti l’acqua setiro da una parte e da l’alrra a
modo de muro passato quelli salvi per il mezzo come anchora scrissimo ne sermone delle
magnificentie della fede quando parlamo da miraculis. Dove noi al presente concludemo
quello che si nota al.xyvii.c.del Exodo. Quando bisogno combattere con li Amelecchite
che Moyse ando adorare con quella virga in mano, e secondo dice August. Al.x.lib. de
civi.dei.al.viii.ca. tenendo quella virga in mano estendia le braze a modo de croce, e
orando in quella maniera Moyse, furo quelli iudei vittoriosi. Quella virga dunque intanti
signi e prodigii operati per la virtu di dio insino questa vittoria figurava la croce di
Christo con la quale sono operati tanti miraculi come dichiararemo nella terza eccellentia
& sono vinti e confuse li demonii.” Ibid., 133r.
80
“Militia est vita hominis super terram. La vita del homo è combatimento sopra la terra.
La oratione ne vincitori in queste guerre: habbiamo lo exempio di Moyses il quale
menando il populo contra li soi inimici per andare in terra de promessione: li iudei
combatevano contra gli malachite: & con tra il suo re. Moyses essendo vecchio stave da
largo reposato in terra: & la lingua muta. Vedendo questo Moyses chiamo doi goiveni
forti & si se faceva sostentare le brazie in alto: & le mane distese, or vedi come sto io; &
tanto orava di continuo chel suo inimico fu vincto: morti li loro cavalla: & tagliati iin pezi
tutti li homoni darme.” Fra Roberto Caracciolo, De Prediche Vulgare (Venice: 1543),
16v. This work was originally printed in 1515 in Venice.

41
In this same work Caracciolo identifies on whom Christians should focus these efforts,
exclaiming, “Oh Christians if only you remained strong in the faith you would be angered
by the Turks…”
81
In the very same work Caracciolo discusses further prophecies for the
end of the world in which the Turks conquer all. The rise of the Turks acted as a
prophecy of a coming conflict in which Christian victory could be read in the historical
victories of Moses. He argues that while many claim the Turks are a sign of the end of
days, he does not know for sure. He writes that many claim
“that the end of the world will be soon and that it is because of the sins and
abundant iniquities, as seen in the corrupt world & that it is for the most part
infidel men & the worship of Mehmed, and of very few Christians or that it is
found that they very rarely serve god in truth….But I say that as much as there is
something to fear that god did not send the great flail [Mehmed II] to the world
for these sins, nonetheless we cannot know regarding this conjecture if we are at
the end of the world.”
82

For crusade preachers like Fra Roberto, Moses thus operated as a typological crusader, a
model for the delivery of the Holy Land and for taking of the cross against the Turks.
Scripture, like that found in Exodus and Job, gave men a model to follow into battle and
women, like Eleonora, the power to participate in the crusade effort through prayer.

81
“Qui amat animam suam plusquam me non est me dingus. Chi ama piu el piacere del
vivere corporale che me: e indengo dela mia gratia. O christiani como stareti voi ben forti
ala fede essendo cruciate da turchi & cetera: dirai a tuo modo.” Ibid., 56v.
82
“Ve prophetis insipientibus qui sequuntur spirituum suum & hihil vident loquuntur
vana & docent mendacium dicentes, ait d’ns non miserit eos. Guai alli profeti insipienti li
quali seguitano suoi fantasie & non videndo niente per lume profetico parlano cose vane
& insignano bugie, menzogne, e dicono cosi ne ha rivelato dio, e dio non li a mandate, ne
si impaza con loro. La terza conietura per la quale molti dicono che presto sara la fine del
mondo e delli peccati labundante iniquita, vedesi elmondo corotto & essere la piu parte
delli huomini infideli & adorare Macometh, e di christiani pochu o rarissimi si trovano
che servano a dio inverita. Achora del batesmo in fuora regnano piu utlili in christiani che
in turchi & saraceni donde pare che ormai dio non volera piu supportare. Ma io dico che
quantunque sia da timere che dio non manda grandi flagella al mondo per li peccati
niente dimeno non possemo sapere per tale coniectura c’habbia a finire il mondo.”
Fra Roberto Carraciolo, Specchio della Fede Christian Volgare (Venice: 1537), 72r.

42
Bronzino’s fresco engages visually with these themes, incorporating the idea that
Moses prophesized crusade against the Turks. By visualizing the Egyptians as Ottoman
soldiers, Bronzino signals their break from historical time. While several of Pharaoh’s
soldiers wear classically inspired armor, in the background three men wear turban-
helmets, a typical Mamluk or Ottoman piece of armor (fig. 1.5).
83
A white shield also
bears the same crescent moon, but with two stars, and without the red ground; these are
clear symbols of the Turks and imagery not easily conflated with the Strozzi. Two
banners in the background instead identify the army as Ottoman; the red flags bears a
white crescent moon, a symbol which frequently identifies a Muslim army in early
modern visual culture. Significantly, this was the same flag used by the cavalry of Selim I
in the defeat of Egypt, described as “so numerous that their reflection turned the waters of
the Nile red.”
84
Bronzino clearly depicts the forward cavalry of Pharaoh’s army,
struggling through the water on their horses, populated with Turkish cavalrymen as
“barbarians.”
In Time and the Other, Johannes Fabian argues that temporal registers (i.e. the use
of the term archaic, pagan, or savage to describe something) act as one of the primary
means to create an other. He maintains that by temporalizing certain geographies we
construct temporal hierarchies in which the “modern” West prevails as the dominant
observer, while peripheral spaces in Africa and Asia fail to attain “coevalness”.
85

83
Several examples of these types of helmets can be found in the Museo Nazionale del
Bargello. See entries 1-3 in Islam. Specchio d’Oriente (Livorno: Sillabe, 2002), 48-50.
84
Jane Fortune, A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt
and Yemen (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 100-101.
85
In his work Fabian argues that medieval temporal ceonceptions differed from time in
the Enlightenment. He considers “Judeo-Christian time” as more inclusive, a moment in
which non-Christian peoples were considered part of a potential whole through
conversion and thus salvation. Instead the Enlightenment approached non-western people

43
Examining linguistic tropes, he maintains that certain spatio-temporal discourses exist in
order to create distance between an observer and their ethnographic subject, drawing this
practice back to the Enlightenment. Yet as scholars like Nancy Bisaha have pointed out,
terms like “barbaric” had a much longer use to deny foreign peoples spatial equality, and
indeed it was one of the key terms associated with the Turks in the early modern period.
86

Bisaha has shown that, broadly speaking, these terminologies were adapted from classical
sources in the early modern early modern period to associate barbarism, or a kind of
extra-European origin, with the Turks. Following Fabian, the term intended to deny the
Turks spatio-temporal coevalness with European society, distancing them geographically
and temporally. It also allowed Christians to play up their supposedly brutal and
uncivilized behavior. These themes were also visualized. Bronzino renders the Ottomans’
alterity by making the Turks Egyptians in modern Turkish garb. He associates them with
an extra-Christian form of pagan antiquity, renowned for the brutal treatment of the Jews.
While members of the Medici household are visualized in Moses’ retinue, as privileged
followers in antique clothing, the Turks are rendered as a pagan other in their early
modern form. Here “modernity” is not at issue, but rather adherence to the true faith.
Bronzino employs temporal accuracy as spiritual currency to distance Christian from
infidel. While the Medici temporally align with Moses, the Turks stand out as
anachronistic additions, emphasizing their temporal otherness.

as savage, and not prepared to coexist with the West. This view is however over
simplistic in my estimation, at the very least by the early modern period. The very idea of
the Renaissance is one that temporally privileges Greco-Roman spaces at the expense of
others. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology makes its Object (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2002).
86
See Bisaha, 181-187.

44
While Moses’ role as a typological crusader cannot be isolated to Iberian sources,
Bronzino’s representation of Muslim and Christian conflict within the Chapel of
Eleonora certainly played upon the duchess’ Spanish descent. Her very surname, “di
Toledo,” evoked memories of the Spanish kingdom’s conflict with the Moors over one of
the ruling centers of the Kingdom of Spain. Taken in the year 711, Toledo remained
under Islamic rule until 1085 when it was re-conquered by Alfonso VI.
87
In the Middle
Ages the city was famous as a site of religious tolerance, until the expulsion of the Moors
in 1492 when it became instead a site of heated religious conflict. Eleonora’s identity lay
wrapped up in these religious tensions. These themes were commemorated in her coat-of-
arms, visible just outside of her chapel in the adjacent camera verde, painted by Ridolfo
di Ghirlandaio. Among the flags that frame her new Medici-Toledo stemma on the right
hand side, a single red banner, bearing pseudo-Arabic script, is a visual reminder of the
defeated Moors (fig. 1.6). The same red banner visible in the image of the Israelites
Crossing the Red Sea is no longer a symbol of the Strozzi, but unmistakably an image of
the defeat of the Ottomans by her ancestors and extended family (fig. 1.7).
88

Eleonora’s own family was also deeply involved in the conflicts between
Christendom and the Islamic lands. The duchess was the daughter of the Spanish Viceroy
of Naples, Don Pedro Alvarez de Toledo, who was second cousin to Charles V.
89
Don

87
On the shifting Islamic and Christian power structures ruling Toledo in the Middle
Ages and its later influence on the visual culture of the city see Lynette Bosch, Art,
Liturgy, and Legend in Renaissance Toledo: The Mendoza and the Iglesia (University
Park, Pennsylvania State University, 2000), 21-32.
88
For a detailed study of the duchess’ private apartments in the Palazzo Vecchio
including the camera verde see Ilaria Hope, “A Duchess’ Place at Court: The Quartiere di
Eleonora in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence,” in The Cultural World of Eleonora di
Toledo (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 98-118.
89
On Don Pedro and his role as viceroy of Naples see Giuseppe Coniglio, Il viceregno di
don Pietro di Toledo (Naples: Giannini, 1984) and on his extended conflict with the

45
Pedro’s interests in the crusade against Islam also went beyond familial connections. He
was a member of the Order of the Knights of Saint James, a medieval crusading order, in
many ways the Spanish counterpart to the Knights of Malta. Don Pedro’s sons,
Eleonora’s brothers, fought the Turks in Tunis in 1535 and in 1537; and he defended
Naples from the attempted invasion of the city by the troops of Suleiman I.
90
Don Pedro
was also put in charge of organizing several flotillas launched against the Turks in later
years, including the siege of Mahdia in 1550 which was staged from Naples.
91
In all
likelihood, the duke’s marriage to Eleonora, and his connection to his new father-in-law,
precipitated concerns over the increasing power of the Ottoman Empire. His marriage in
1539 certainly coincides with the movement of the Turks to the forefront of his agenda.
Cosimo’s own growing interests in combating the Turks in the 1540s thus played a role
in the generation of Bronzino’s image, which cannot be ascribed to a purely Spanish or
Italian source. The fresco of Moses as a crusader thus marks an important turning point in
the duchy’s relationship with the Turks, an issue critical to both Eleonora and Cosimo.
These crusading themes would also have been pertinent to the children of the
duke and the duchess, in particular the future duke of Florence, Francesco I. Janet Cox-
Rearick has argued that the scene of Moses passing the rule to Joshua related directly the
birth of prince Francesco on March 25, 1541.
92
Just as Caracciolo stressed in his sermons,
the artist renders Moses holding the staff, surrounded by the Israelites after they have
reached the Holy Land. Bronzino depicts Moses in the act of passing the leadership of the

Turks see José María del Moral y Perez de Zayas, El Virrey de Nápoles: Don Pedro de
Toledo y la guerra contro el Turco (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones
Cientificas, 1966).
90
Gaston, 166.
91
Setton, vol. 3, 533-536.
92
Cox-Rearick, 314-319.

46
Israelites to his young follower, preparing to hand over his staff; the prophet holds his
arm outward pointing at a young blond boy who turns away in astonishment (fig. 1.8).
Cox-Rearick maintains that the image suggests Cosimo’s intentions to pass the duchy to
Francesco when he came of age. Indeed the young Francesco may have used the space
with his mother while still a child. The greater implications of the young prince’s
obligation to rule can also be related to his future duty to protect Christendom. As the
next duke of Florence, and the descendant of a line of crusaders like Don Pedro de
Toledo, Francesco would not only inherit the city but the responsibility to defend it from
the Turks and return his people to Jerusalem as a new Moses.

Panfilo di Renaldini and Chivalric Epic

If exegesis created the foundation for crusade rhetoric in the early modern period,
chivalric literature built heavily upon these religious themes. For the young Prince
Francesco, the significance of Moses’ labors reached well beyond his mother’s chapel
and local preachers’ crusade sermons, into the pages of epic poetry. Writers like Panfilo
di Renaldini appealed to the young prince’s historical imagination to connect chivalry
and crusade to the Israelites escape from Egypt. In the concluding canto of a text
dedicated to Francesco in 1555, Charlemagne leads the Franks in a solemn mass after
successfully defeating a Turkish invasion of Paris with the help of a young knight,
Ruggeretto. The Holy Roman Emperor gathers his people in the church of San Denis,
“thanking god for the grateful concession of having liberated the populace from the cruel

47
hands of Pharaoh and leading them to the promised land.”
93
Charlemagne is cast as a new
Moses, delivering the Franks from the “Grand Sultan” of Anatolia, that is the Seljuk
Turks. Such was the fluid nature of early modern historical imagination that reimagined
Francesco as a young Christian paladin, the Turks as the enemy of Charlemagne, and
Charlemagne a second Moses.
As a prince of Christendom, Prince Francesco received texts dedicated in his
honor, including one of the prime literary forms of the period, chivalric romance. In
1555, Panfilo di Renaldini published his Innamoramento di Ruggeretto, a chivalric
romance written in imitation of the great poet of early modern Italy, Ludovico Ariosto,
and his Orlando Furioso (1532). Panfilo dedicated the text to Duke Cosimo’s son, who at
the time was only fourteen years old.
94
Innamoramento di Ruggeretto initially presents
itself as a “mirror of princes,” set to the tales of Ruggeretto, the son of Ruggiero, King of
Bulgaria. Ruggiero was well known in chivalric literature from Ariosto’s Orlando
Furioso and Matteo Boiardo’s earlier Orlando Innamorato (1495). He was the half-
Christian half-Saracen son of the Knight Ruggiero II, lost at sea and raised in the
Maghreb as an orphan. In Ariosto’s romance, after being kept hostage by the magician
Atalante in Mauritania and raised as a Muslim, Ruggiero is freed to help Saracen forces
siege Paris and take over Charlemagne’s empire. But upon learning of his true Christian
descent, Ruggiero helps save Paris from the Saracens, subsequently converting to

93
“ringratiando Iddio de la concessa gratia d’haver il popol liberato de la mani crudel di
Faraone e scorti in terra di promissione.” Panfilo di Renaldini, Innamoramento di
Ruggeretto figluolo di Ruggero Rè di Bulgaria (Venice: 1555), 240r.
94
Very little appears to have been written on this text beyond catalogues of early modern
chivalric literature. For a recent article regarding the theme of cupid and love in canto
seventeen see Francesco Lucioli, “Amore alla Forca. Una giostra nell’Innamoramento di
Ruggeretto di Panfilo de’ Renaldini” Rivista di letteratura italiana 30 (2012): 9-28.

48
Christianity. In return for his earlier virtuous aid of the people of Bulgaria, Charlemagne
makes Ruggiero king of the region.
Panfilo continues this storyline with the tales of Ruggiero’s son, Ruggeretto. In
this sequel to Orlando Furioso, Ruggeretto is required to come to the aid of Charlemagne
when the “Grand Sultan” of Anatolia attacks Paris while the emperor’s great paladins,
Orlando and Ruggiero, are off in Spain. The young paladin, of course, acts as an apt
parallel for Prince Francesco, son of Duke Cosimo. In the introduction, Panfilo makes it
evident that the story aspires to teach the young prince “to come to great excellence in
government, with everything from serious to prudent actions, from which you can easily
learn of the great Cosimo, your father.”
95
Moreover, while the Medici family as a whole
often eludes associations with chivalric literature like Orlando Furioso, Panfilo’s text
speaks directly to Francesco in a number of cantos. The author also makes concerted
effort to draw historical connections between the Medici and Charlemagne. In the second
canto, Panfilo makes an aside to discuss briefly a Medici family member, Averardo de’
Medici, who was reportedly a paladin of Charlemagne. Here the author describes how
this ancestor of Cosimo and Francesco once defended Tuscany from a giant named
Mugello:
But because I hear someone desires to hear / With the grandness and pomp of the
world / Of the Medici, of love, of courtesy / First I will tell you with a pleasurable
turn / Of Averardo, of whom I think, his fame / Has spread everywhere around, /
Then I will follow in order and measure, / How much of the highest nature is in
him.

And you will see in arms a valorous Mars, / A Caesar benevolent in love, and
pious, / and how many graces the wide heavens share / in his great courage, and
the site of his home. / Then how he splits the head of the prideful Muggello / The

95
“venire à tanta eccellenza di governo, con tutto che dalle attioni gravi, et prudenti del
gran Cosmo vostro padre possiate agevolmente apprendere.” Panfilo di Renaldini, found
in the unpaginated dedication “All’illustrissimo, et invittissimo principe di Firenze,” ii.

49
giant, haughty, horrendous, and wicked, / an obvious thief, and of proud
appearance, / who held the road to the Alps closed.
96

Panfilo then continues explaining how, to defend himself from the giant’s club, Averardo
raises his shield, which takes several large dents before he slays the giant. The dented
shield becomes Averardo’s coat-of-arms, a chivalric interpretation for the famous Medici
palle or balls (fig. 1.9).
97
More importantly, in appreciation of his defense of the region,
Charlemagne declares Averardo the duke of Tuscany. Renaldini takes this image, which
is often associated with the family’s history as bankers or doctors and turns it into a
symbol of their historical connection with the Holy Roman Empire. This relationship is
also visualized. The text includes a print of the cavalcade of Charlemagne’s knights; in
the background, on the left, a mounted knight carries a shield decorated with six round

96
“Ma perche sento chi sentir desia / Con la grandezza la pompa del mondo / De Medici,
l’amor, la cortesia / Prima dirovvi con volto giocondo / D’Averardo, di cui penso, che sia
/ La fama sparsa da pertutto à tondo, / Poi seguirò con ordine, e misura, / Quant’hebbe in
lui poter alta natura. / Et vedrà in l’arme un valaroso Marte, / Un Cesare in amore
clemente, e pio, / Et quante gratie il ciel largo comparte / Ne’l gran coraggio, e loco suo
nation. / Poi come ‘l teschio al fier Muggello sparte / Gigante altiero, paventoso, e rio, /
Ladron palese, e d’orgoglioso aspetto, / Che de l’Alpi teneva il passo stretto.”
Panfilo di Rinaldini, 7v.
97
This chivalric reinterpretation of one of the most famous Medici symbols likely had an
earlier origin under Catherine de’ Medici. Cosimo Baroncelli (1569-1626) later
popularized the myth, which can be found in his undated treatise entitled “Origine e
descendenza della casa dei Medici.” Florentines also largely believed the city had
undergone a Carolinigian rebirth, deepening imperial ties. See Massimo Tarassi “Il
committente: La famigila Medici dalle origine al quattrocento,” in Il palazzo Medici
Riccardi di Firenze, ed. Giovanni Cherubini and Giovanni Fanelli (Florence: Giunti,
1990), 2-8; see also Gonzague Truc, Florence et les Médicis (Paris: Grasset, 1936), 46.
Benedetto Varchi, in his Storia fiorentina (1547) patronized by Cosimo I, maintained that
Florence was refounded by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne in the 9
th
century,
following Longobard invasions which left the city in ruins. This followed earlier histories
like Giovanni Villani’s Nuova Cronica. And while later historians under the Duke,
notably Vincenzo Borghini, disagreed that Charlemagne completely rebuilt Florence, the
Holy Roman Emperor’s former rule of the city was largely accepted and used to bolster
the its identity as a duchy. Pietro Mareno claimed in his Compendio della Stirpe di Carlo
Magno et Carlo V (1545) that Charlemagne’s earlier rule of Florence acted as historical
precedence for the city’s later assumption under Charles V.

50
balls, identifiable as the knight Averardo (fig. 1.10). In image and text the Medici are
remade as Christian knights, subjects of the Holy Roman Empire.
Panfilo’s work also more broadly addresses the defense of Christendom,
presenting the paladins of Charlemagne as early Christian crusaders fighting the Islamic
forces of Asia and Africa. While earlier works of the genre pitted the paladins of
Christendom against the Kings of Africa, Asia, and Spain, Panfilo’s text replaces these
men with a single protagonist, the “Grand Sultan,” who rules from Anatolia. Engravings
of the cantos illustrate the sultan and his viziers in large turbans and decorative kaftans
leaving little doubt that image reinforced their interpretation as Turks (fig. 1.11). The
anonymous engravers of these scenes appear to have relied on images of Ottoman dress
from other printed sources in their desire to render geographically specific garb.
98
Just
like Bronzino’s fresco, these images reinforce a typological reading of crusade that
imagines an alternate historical time, with the Turks as the aggressor. For example, in the
print preceding canto forty-two, Charlemagne is shown returning victorious from the
field. Captured men drag a flag behind them in the mud, decorated with two stars and a
crescent moon (fig. 1.12). This epic poem visually and textually reinterprets
Charlemagne’s conflicts with the Moors, events that had some historical veracity, in the
light of the Turkish wars, calling on princes like Francesco to take up the early modern
defense of Christendom. At various points the author also draws parallels to conflicts
within the early modern period, leaving little doubt that Charlemagne acts as a parallel

98
By 1555 a variety of sources would have been available including the new genre of
costume book. On the variety of printed images that may have informed these prints see
Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002), 166-170. On the advent of the costume book and
the collecting of Ottoman miniatures see Bronwen Wilson, “Foggie diverse di vestire de’
Turchi: Turkish Costume Illustration and Cultural Translation,” Journal of Medieval and
Early Modern Studies 37 (2007): 97-140.

51
for Charles V. For example, Panfilo addresses the spread of the Ottomans throughout the
Mediterranean, including descriptions of Suleiman’s siege of Vienna in 1529, a clear
parallel for Charlemagne’s defense of Paris form the Turks.
99
Charles’ title as Holy
Roman Emperor made such connections relatively easy. Thus conflict with the Turks
stretched back, from Moses’ conflicts with Pharaoh, to the ninth century of Charlemagne,
and continued in the era of Charles V.
Such reflections on the early modern military successes of the Turks, who “have
got Asia and Africa at their mercy,” give the author pause to reflect on the earlier
successes of Christendom.
100
Here, Jerusalem again returns as a foil. Panfilo focuses in
particular on the crusades to the holy land as model of Christian success. He writes in
canto thirty-three:

Beginning with the spiritual ruler / Godfrey of Bouillon, who with many / peoples
and lords, for the glorious Christ / Freely took up arms / crossed the famous
Hellespont / Forever defeating these foolish people, / Since for sometime they
have had as almost a wet-nurse / All of the domain of Anatolia.

Seized Jerusalem, and Judea / And the many locations subordinate to them, /
Those countries with those royal people. / For many pleasurable and merry years
they were in the possession, / Of various lords, but they fought / With the pagans,
nor did they ever cease, / And the Christians sent them soldiers, / Indeed, they
went there in person.

As did the Emperor Conrad, / Frederick Barbarossa, the two Louis’ / King of
England Richard the honorable, / King Philippe Lord of Paris, / Andrew, King of
Hungary, full of valor / Theobald of Navarre, King Denis, / The Duke of
Burgundy, Otto the mighty, / And infinite lords of the west.

The lords of Venice, and Genoa, / They sent, and the Pisans (oh holy times) /
Many and large armadas, to those lands / And they went continually to destroy
Acre, / And many of their fortresses, and same places / They left, and weakened,
drained and exhausted / Against the forces and high and empty valor / of Saladin,
and other grand Sultans.

99
It is mentioned throughout but see in particular canto twenty seven, Ibid., 140r.
100
“C’hebbero l’Asia e l’Affrica in balia.” Panfilo di Renaldini, 171r.

52

And to this end all is lost, / And the Sepulchre of Christ one more time / In our
eternal infamy, and shame / given back into the hands of the infidels. / But the
pain, and shame is tiring / Being that it has already happened, and causes us much
pain. / But leaving aside Asia, / It is that of Europe we now speak.
101

Panfilo presents figures like Godfrey of Bouillon and Richard the Lionheart not as
proto-nationalistic icons, that is as French or English propaganda, but instead as the
collective defenders of Christendom for the young Medici prince. He also continually
brings these typological ramifications back to the Turkish wars. When Panfilo writes that
Godfrey “freely took up arms [and] crossed the famous Hellespont forever defeating
these foolish people for since for sometime they had almost as a wet-nurse all the domain
of Anatolia” he casts the heroes traversal from into Turkey as a victory. The author
makes an oblique reference to Godfrey’s conflicts with the Byzantine Emperor Alexius I
in Constantinople and the hero’s contested crossing of the Hellespont into Anatolia to
begin the crusades.
102
This geographic parallel between Godfrey’s conflict with an

101
“Cominciando da quel Rege animoso / Gotifredo Boglione, che con molte / Genti, e
signor per Christo glorioso/ Han volontariamente l’arme tolte / Passato l’Elesponto si
famoso / Sempre battendo queste genti stolte, / Che sin’ al’hor havean quasi in balia/
Tutto il dominio de la Natalia. / Prese Gerusalemme, a la Giudea / E luochi sottoposti à
loro assai, / Iquai paesi con tal gente rea / Molti’anni fur possessi lieti, e gai / Da diversi
signor, ma combattea / Con lor pagani, ne cessò giamai, / E Christiani gli mandavan
gente, / Anzi, che ve n’andar personalmente. / Come fece Corado Imperadore, / Federico
Barbarossa, i duo Luigi / Re d’Inghliterra Ricardo d’honore, / Il Re Filippo Signor di
Parigi, / Andrea Rè d’Ongaria pien di valore / Tebaldo di Novara, Rè dionigi, / Il Duca di
Borgogna, Otton possente, / E Signori infiniti di Ponente. / Signor Vinitiani, e Genoesi, /
E Pisani mandaro (o tempi sacri) / Diverse armate, e grosse in quei paesi / E ad un
continuo andar disfecer Acri, / E molte lor foretezze, e luochi stesi / Lasciaro, ed
indebiliti, asciutti e macri / Contra le forze ed alti valor vani / Di Saladino, ed altri gran
Soldani. / E pur fine si perdè ogni cosa, / E’l sepulcro di Christo un’altra volta /Con
nostra infamia eterna, e vergognosa / Ne le man d’infideli diede volta. / Ma il danno, e la
vergogna si noiosa / Stata è si inanzi anchor, ch’in pena molta / A’ noi con l’Asia da parte
lasciamo, / E di quello d’Europa hora parliamo.” Ibid.
102
On this contested crossing and their initial victories against Turkish forces in Anatolia
see Kenneth Setton, A History of the Crusades: The first hundred years, vol. 1, ed.
Marshall Baldwin, (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1969), 284-304.

53
Anatolian power offers the author a moment to comment again on Christendom’s passage
through the homeland of the Turks. The crusades and their memory, as captured in the
epic poetry of the era, created a powerful foil to remind young readers like Prince
Francesco of the successes of a collective Christendom in Constantinople and Jerusalem.

Vasari and the Defense of Christendom

Ruggeretto’s supposed defense of Paris, imagined by Panfilo with Turkish
antagonists, offered an imaginative historical model for men like Duke Cosimo and his
son Francesco. While such themes are often presented as rhetorical, by the time of the
publication of Innamoramento di Ruggeretto in 1555, the protection of Europe from the
Turks was more than merely chivalric imaginings for the Medici. That same year, in
November, Turkish forces attempted to land at the Tuscan port town of Piombino, which
provided access to the island of Elba. The siege, led by the pirate Turgut Reis, played a
part in the larger Mediterranean conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire.
Siena, allied with the French, had fallen to the Medici family only seven months earlier.
Ottoman attempts to seize Piombino from the Florentines were retribution for this act.
Chiappino Vitelli captained Cosimo’s troops, garrisoned at the fortress of Piombino.
103

As Kenneth Setton has noted the Turkish armada at the skirmish of Piombino “left no
small impression on contemporary sources.”
104
In a letter sent by the Venetian Senate to
the Republic’s ambassador in Istanbul, the battle is summarized thus:

103
Chiappino was a skilled condottiero often employed by Cosimo to combat the Turks.
He had previously fought in the siege of Mahdia in North Africa in 1550 and would later
fight in Mauritania in 1564. Made a knight of Saint Stephen in 1562, he would also
participate in the defense of Malta in 1565.
104
Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 4, 623.

54
“at Piombino the armada put ashore some Moslems, who skirmished with the
German infantry [stationed] in the region, and thereafter. They weighed anchor,
and proceeded to the island of Elba, to Porto Longone [now called Porto Azzuro],
to await the galleys of the Most Christian King [Henry II], which according to
reports from Rome came from Marseille to the number of twenty-three. On the
25
th
of the past month [25 July] they joined with the armada of the most serene
lord [the sultan] at Elba…It was also said that two or three thousand infantry had
come aboard the French galleys and that the armada would make an attempt on
Portoferagio [i.e. Portoferraio], on the island of Elba. A good many infantry were
also raised, in the name of the most Christian king, in the region of Siena to assist
in the venture…”
105

The Venetians however fail to mention Florentine forces or Cosimo’s intervention in the
affair, making it an entirely imperial effort. Baccio Baldini, instead, in his biography of
Duke Cosimo, published in 1578, leaves a more descriptive record of the event, rectifying
this whitewashing:
“doubting that the Turkish armada had reached those seas and would not assault
the state of Piombino, he [Cosimo] sent German troops…, who along with the
Italian troops were in Piombino in order to defend the said state from the
aforementioned armada if they were to assault it. These troops had arrived to
Piombino before the galleys of the Turks were discovered at Populonia, which is
one of the twelve ancient cities of Tuscany, and located on the coast of the
Tyrrhenian sea. In so doing, he sent horseman to Signor Chiappino Vitelli whom
the duke had placed in charge of the protection of Piombino…[A]lmost at the
very same time the galleys of the Turks reached Piombino and landed many of
their men, who happened upon the coast at the same time as the Germans who had
come together with their light horseman from Port’Ercole. And they began to
fight them and after the tumult had lasted a little while, the sound of the battle
being heard by the light horseman which I mentioned before, who were sent by
Signor Chiappino to aid Populonia, they began to return towards Piombino. Ten
or twelve of them having the best horses and not having their companies, they
arrived together with their trumpets before the others to the location of the battle,
and being seen by the Turks, they sounded their trumpets loudly. The Turks
believing that many horseman were arriving to attack them, they began to flee
towards the sea to get back on their galleys, and in their retreat they came up
against the Germans and the few light horseman who had arrived to the location
of the battle and they killed many. The others who remained alive climbed aboard
their galleys and putting their oars in the water took off. This victory was more
welcome to the duke than that which he had had at Marciano [over Siena] a little

105
Translated in Ibid., 623.

55
while before, for the reason that he had had the victory over the infidel. He
showed this great enthusiasm in his words and with other manifest signs.”
106

This battle, however brief, would become an important element in the fashioning a
lasting memory of the grand dukes as crusaders. In the 1560s, Giorgio Vasari
reconstructed the Sala dei Cinquecento in the duke’s palace, renamed the Sala Grande, to
be more in line with reception halls befitting rulers of Cosimo’s import. After nearly
doubling the height of the roof level, Vasari installed a new wooden ceiling decorated
with painted panels, following the model of the Venetian senate hall in the Palazzo
Ducale.
107
Among forty-three paintings for the ceiling, Vasari included a scene of the
Defense of Piombino in 1555 (fig. 1.13). The painting presents the viewer with a standard

106
“dubitando pure che se l’armata Turchesca perveniva in questi mari che ella non
assalisse lo stato di Piombino, gli mandò quelle genti Tedesche…, i quali insieme con
quelle genti Italiane che erano in Piombino difendessero dall’armata di sopra detta quello
stato se ella l’assaliva, ne prima furono arrivate queste genti à Piombino che la galee de i
Turchi furono scoperte da Populonia, la quale è una dei dodici città antiche di Toscana, &
posta in sul lito del mar Tirreno, la onde il Signor Chiappin Vitegli al quale il Duca
haveva commesso la guardia di Piombino, mandò quei cavagli…& le galee de I Turchi
quasi in quell medesimo tempo afferrarono à Piombino & messero in terra molta della lor
gente, la quale s’avvenne in campagna à quei Tedeschi che eran venuti insieme con I
cavagli leggieri da Port’Ercole, & cominciò à combattere con essi & durò la mischia
qualche poco di tempo, ma essendosi sentito il rumore di questa battaglia da quegli
cavagli leggieri che io dissi poco di sopra, che erono stati mandate dal Signor Chiappino
à soccorrer Populonia, essi cominciarono à ritoranare verso Piombino, dieci ò dodici de i
quali havendo miglior cavagli che non havevano I lor compagni arrivarono insieme con i
trombetti innanzi à gl’altri al luogo dove si faceva la battaglia, & essendo veduti da i
Turchi, & sonando i trombetti le lor trombe fortissimamente, credettero i Turchi che
qualche gran moltitudine di cavagli venisse ad assalirgli, per la qual cosa eglino
comincairono à fuggire verso il mare per salire sopra le loro galee, & in questa lor ritirata
ne furono da i Tedeschi & da quei pochi cavagli leggieri che erano pervenuti al luogo
dove si favceva la battaglia uccisi molti, & gl’altri che rimassero vivi salirono sopra le lor’
galee & dato de remi in acqua andiron via. Fù questa vittoria più grata al Duca che non
era stata quella ch’egli haveva havuta à Marciano poco avanti, percioche gli’haveva
havuta sopra gl’infideli, & ne mostrò si con le parole si con altri manifesti segni
allegrezza grandissima.” Baccio Baldini, Vita di Cosimo (Florence: Sermatelli, 1578), 53-
54.
107
On Vasari’s decoration of the Sala Grande, or Sala Ducale, see Ugo Muccini, The
Salone dei Cinquecento of Palazzo Vecchio, ed. Antonio Paolucci (Florence: Le Lettere,
1990), 77-130.

56
composition seen throughout battle scenes of the mid-sixteenth century and indeed
visible elsewhere in the Sala Grande, for example in The Capture of the Fortress at
Monastero. A figure stands with his back to the viewer in the foreground, in this case a
rower standing upright in a skiff, while the composition develops deep into the
background in the upper register of the work. Vasari’s break from tradition comes with
the chosen focus of his istoria. The painter creates a composition that is oriented from the
point of view of the Turks, who occupy the foreground of the work. Dozens of troops
dressed in white turbans and colored kaftans carry shields decorated with crescent moons,
again signaling a Turkish presence. Several figures appear taken from period costume
books or possibly studied from life, in particular a soldier who wears the headpiece of a
janissary on the far right (fig. 1.14). Vasari makes every effort to ensure that the defeat of
the Turks is clearly shown and is visible from the floor of the Sala Grande.
Vasari, however, also emphasizes something not recorded in Baldini’s description
of the event, the drowning of the Turks in the Tyrrhenian. In his Ragionamenti, written in
1567, but published posthumously in 1588, Vasari explains the details of the scene.
Vasari wrote this work as a textual explication of nearly every addition he made to the
decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio beginning in 1563, but it was not published before his
death. The text is written in dialogue form, presenting the new decorations to the young
Prince Francesco:
“Prince Francesco: Now, continuing on to the other painting to the side of Borgo
San Sepolcro, I see many people put to flight, many of which drown in the sea.

Giorgio Vasari: In this I have painted the rout of the Turks by the troops of the
lord duke, which were demolished at Piombino, and I have shown them in flight
towards their galleys.

57
Prince Francesco: Every tiny detail is visible, many of them are seen drowned,
while others who are swimming attack the rowboats in various ways. I recognize
again all of the territory of Piombino, which you have painted together with the
marina, but I don’t know what that large figure signifies who is visible in the
middle of the lowest section.

Giorgio Vasari: A sea-god [Mare] is made here who hearing this noise, comes
forth with a branch of coral in his hand. I have finished the majority of the
decoration, and because this history [storia] is known I have inscribed here,
Publici hostes terra arcentur.

Prince Francesco: As you mean to say that the Turks are a public enemy, this
pleases me…”
108

Vasari’s fictionalized dialogue with the prince describes a scene that maintains a certain
fidelity to period descriptions of the event; in the background of the painting the Medici
flag flies above the fortress in the distance. German troops carrying flags marked with the
cross of Saint Andrew push the Ottoman soldiers back towards the shore. The closest
German troops are horseman, one mounted, the other two dismounted, and each strike at
fleeing Turks. Vasari’s decision to emphasize the drowning of the Turks, however
departs from Baldini’s account, drawing together the shared mytheme of Moses at the
Red Sea. Just as the waters of the Red Sea crushed the troops of Pharaoh, who carry the
crescent moon, so to do the Ottomans drown in the Tyrrhenian, represented by a sea god.
Above the sea-god’s empty hand the waves of the water appear to suffocate a turbaned
moor and generally menace the other figures afloat in the water.

108
“P: Or seguitate l’altro quadro allato al Borgo San Sepolcro, nel quale veggo tanti
messi in fuga, molti di quali affogano in mare. G: In questo ho dipinto la rotta data à
Turchi dalle gente del Signor Duca, quali erano smontati à Piombino, & ho fatto la fuga
loro verso le Galere. P: Si vede ogni cosa minutamente, molti se ne veggono affogati,
altriche notando s’attacano à i battelli in diverse attitudini, riconosco ancora tutto il paese
di Piombino, che avete ritratto insieme con la marina: ma non sò che si voglia dire quella
figura grande che si vede da mezo in sù. G: E fatta un Mare il quale sentendo questo
romore, esce fuori un ramo di corallo in mano, e ce l’ho fatto per maggiore ornament, e
perche questa storia si conosca ci ho scritto, Publici hostes terra arcentur. P: Per publici
nimici volete intendere i Turchi mi piace…” Giorgio Vasari, Ragionamenti del Signore
Cavaliere Giorgio Vasari pittore et architetto Aretino (Florence: Giunti, 1588), 181.

58
The inclusion of the Greco-Roman gods was not uncommon in early modern
crusade rhetoric. An engraving by Philip Galle, printed in Arcus Aliquot Triumphalis
(1572), which ostensibly celebrates the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 and illustrates this
theme more directly, was presented to Grand Duke Cosimo by Piero Vettori (fig. 1.15).
109

Here, Neptune stands above a captured Turk, trident in hand, poised to destroy his
enemy. The framing of the scene includes the inscription Publici hostes terra arcentur,
“the public enemy are kept from the land.” Vasari’s decision to emphasize the
intervention of the Tyrrhenian sea-god creates a similar effect, illustrating the gods
joining forces with the Christian effort and turning on the Turks. If Bronzino’s fresco
illustrates the drowning of the Egyptians at God’s hands, Vasari’s the defeat of the Turks
at Piombino is made with reference to aid from Greco-Roman antiquity.
110

109
After the book was printed, Sambucus sent it to three men: Maximilian II, Don Juan of
Austria and Cosimo I de’ Medici. See Gabor Almasi, The Uses of Humanism: Johannes
Sambucus (1531-1584), Andreas Dudith (1533-1589), and the Republic of Letters in East
Central Europe (Boston: Brill, 2009), 176 n127. Where the first two recipients may seem
obvious, the last probably stems from Sambucus’s expansive intellectual circle. The
presentation of Arcus aliquot triumphalis to the Grand Duke was largely due to
Sambucus’s friendship with Vettori, a prominent intellectual at the Florentine court. After
visiting Vienna in 1572, Vettori returned with a copy of the completed work. Presenting
the text to Cosimo, Vettori wrote in an accompanying letter that the book was by “a
Hungarian intellectual,” and that he presented it to the duke as if it were his own. For a
transcription of the letter Vettori wrote to accompany the text given to Cosimo I de’
Medici see Istvan Varaday, “Realazioni di Giovanni Zsamboky col’umanesimo Italiano,”
Corvina 15 (1935), 39.
110
The defense of Piombino was represented a second time in the Palazzo Vecchio,
within the Sala di Cosimo I. The small scene was painted by Jan van der Straet and
presents a very different take on the scene. The painter renders the image from a birds-
eye perspective, creating a battle scene that is at a distance. Again German troops push
the invading Turkish forces back into their rowboats. Vasari also describes these scenes
in his Ragionamenti. See Ettore Allegri and Alessandro Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i
Medici: guida storica (Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1980), 149-150.

59
Cigoli and the Return to Jerusalem

Vasari’s depiction of the Defense of Piombino illustrated Cosimo’s role in the
defense of Christendom, following the models of Charlemagne and Moses. In subsequent
decades, however, these themes were not only visualized with memorialization of
victories over the Turks, but through istoria of the first crusades to Jerusalem. Following
the model of writers like Panfilo di Renaldini, Florentine artists began to reimagine the
medieval liberation of the Holy Sepulchre as a response to the Turks.
Sometime around 1600, Ludovico Cigoli painted a battle scene, now in the
National Gallery of Ireland (fig. 1.16) and often identified as the Liberation of Jerusalem.
This attribution derives its resemblance to an earlier painting by Santi di Tito, surviving
only in a reproductive print (fig. 1.17).
111
In both images, the forces of Godfrey of
Bouillon siege the holy city as the final task of the crusades. Several figure groups appear
compositionally similar in both images, most notably the men on the right side raising a
ladder to the city’s walls. Cigoli’s work, however, presents several departures from the
earlier composition, most notably, the inclusion of an allegorical female figure reclining
in the foreground. Rendered as a fictive sculpture, she holds three symbols, a sheaf of
wheat and a triangle, attributes both associated with Christ, and a conch shell, symbol of
the virgin birth. Cigoli further departs from the earlier work by including a rearing horse
with a mounted figure at the extreme left of the image, turned away from the viewer and
holding a baton-of-command. Behind him, a soldier holds a red gonfalone. While

111
The reproductive print can be found in the description of the event, Della descrizione
del regale apparato fatto nella nobile città di Firenze per la venuta, e per le nozze della
serenissima madama Christina di Loreno del Serenissimo don Ferdinando Medici terzo
gran duca di Toscana (Florence: 1589), 92. For the compositional similarities see Charles
H. Carman, “An Early Interpretation of Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata,” Renaissance
Quarterly 31 (1978): 30-38.

60
scholars like Charles Carman have argued that this scene is an early illustration of
Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), the painting is in many ways
too general to be directly connected to any particular text.
112
The image instead takes
part in a broader dialogue on Florentine crusade interests. In so doing, the image not only
acts as istoria, but also as an invective to deliver the Holy Land from the Turks.
While Cigoli’s painting probably does not visualize Tasso’s poem, it certainly
participates in a revival of interest to Godfrey’s labors ushered in by this work. In the
mid-1570s, the success of Gerusalemme Liberata facilitated an important literary and
visual transition. Like Matteo Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto, and Panfilo di Renaldini, Tasso
took up the task of writing a chivalric epic for the ages. Yet Tasso did not, like those
before him, return to the tales of Charlemagne, instead he turned to Godfrey of Bouillon
and the first crusaders. Like Ariosto, however, the text included crusade rhetoric calling
on Christian princes to reclaim Christ’s tomb.
113
Though his text was circulated in
manuscript form by 1575, the first editions would not be published until 1580 and 1581.
And although Gerusalemme Liberata was dedicated to the Este family, the Medici
courted Tasso to produce material in their honor. By 1586, the Grand Duchess Bianca
Cappello, Francesco’s second wife, had been in correspondence with Tasso regarding his
writing and had received several poems from him.
114
This visual and literary interest in
the crusades culminated with the rise of Francesco’s brother to the throne, Grand Duke
Ferdinando de’ Medici. As the third grand duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando initially had a

112
See Ibid.
113
On the crusade rhetoric within Orlando Furioso see Albert Russell Ascoli, “Ariosto
and the ‘Fier Pastor’: Form and History in Orlando Furioso,” Renaissance Quarterly 54
(2001): 487-522.
114
See in particular the document from August 10, 1586 which details the relationship
between Tasso and Bianca Cappello in Romina Gerace, Fasti, amore, magia e guerra.
Immagini di un poema (Rome: Il Filo, 2008), 161.

61
life in the church. The untimely death of Francesco in 1587 necessitated Ferdinando’s
return home from Rome to claim the throne.
115
With the help of Don Giovanni de’
Medici, Ferdinando attempted to convince Tasso to reprint his texts under their
patronage.
116
The grand duke’s marriage to Christine of Lorraine in 1589, a descendant of
Godfrey of Bouillon, has long been cited as the primary reason for this return of interest
in the Holy Land.
117
Yet, as suggested earlier, figures like Godfrey remained exemplars
for many Christian princes through the middle ages into the early modern era and
Gerusalemme Liberata is a perfect example of this fact. The text was written by an Italian
and dedicated to the prominent Este family, who had no historical relation with Godfrey.
Although Tasso’s promise to publish material for the Medici would be left unfulfilled,
Jerusalem and the istoria of the first crusades had officially become favola, open for
reinterpretation and elaboration in an effort to call for a united Christian front.
Cigoli’s work could be derived from other textual sources. While Tasso did not
ultimately dedicate any future epics to the Medici, men like Pietro Angeli da Barga
attempted to correct this oversight. In 1591 he published his extended poem written in
twelve books dedicated to Ferdinando’s wife, Christine of Lorraine, Syrias hoc est

115
At the time of his acceptance of the rule of Florence, Ferdinando still remained a very
powerful cardinal in Rome, a position he was forced to resign from a few years later.
116
See the document from March 13, 1590. Ibid., 162. See also the document from the
“Libro di donative diversi, 1587-1593” which details Ferdinando’s offer to cover Tasso’s
medical expenses while he had a fever in Rome, dated December 1589, Ibid., 160.
117
Massimiliano Rossi argues this nationalized viewpoint most forcefully. See
Massimiliano Rossi, “Emuli di Goffredo: epica granducale e propaganda figurativa” in
L’arme e gli amore: la poesia di Ariosto, tasso e Guarini nell’arte fiorentina del
Seicento, ed. Elena Fumagalli, Massimiliano Rossi, Riccardo Spinelli (Livorno: Sillabe,
2001), 32-42.

62
expeditio illa celeberrima Christianorum Principum qua Heirosolyma (1591).
118
Da
Barga follows the model of the “carmen,” or victory song, moving away from the canto
structure of Ariosto and Tasso. Furthermore, Da Barga’s work presents the epic as
history, in the vein of Homer and Virgil. Focusing on the deeds of Godfrey, Tancred, and
Bohemond, and eschewing the desire to invent new characters like Tasso, he claims a
certain “truth” to the work. In his dedication to the work the author explains why he
wrote it:
“Firstly, that one does not have this kind of a poem based upon the complete
history. Second, such actions, which I describe undertaken, are of such high
principles and, as they say, I rejoice in the repetition of truth, but I propose not yet
before Homer and Virgil that it surpasses each of their poems, as another ten
books on the Trojan wars, as another seven books on travels [of Aeneas], would
take another year.”
119

In his dedication, the author compares his text to those of Homer and Virgil, citing the
Trojan war as model. Nowhere is Tasso’s work mentioned. Yet similar to the chivalric
works that preceded him, Da Barga’s text also galvanizes his readers to continue the wars
against the Turks:
But if a soldier who refused to labor
Of this import, for the cities under the cruel yoke of suppression,
Of that of Libya, or that of Asia, and the Holy Sepulchre
Where our lord lay pierced of cruel wounds
Our Lord savior, the only way to eternal salvation,
And be delivered from the hands of the Turks and their neglect, of our father,
they deserve to be driven to dreadful ghosts of the dead,
and the black seat of the rough wastes

118
Pietro Angeli da Barga, Syrias hoc est expeditio illa celeberrima Christianorum
Principum qua Heirosolyma ductu Goffredi Bulionis Lotharangiae Ducis à Turcarum
tyrannide liberata est., (Florence: Giunti, 1591).
119
“Unam, quod huismodi argumentum iam non Poema ex Historia confici. Alteram,
quod huiusmodi actioni, quam ego describendam susceperam, nimis altè principim, &, ut
ipsi dicunt, ab ouo repetitum adhiverim, neq; ante oculos Homerum, ac Virgilium mihi
proposurim, quorum uterque ita poema suum confecerit, ut alter à decimo belli Troiani,
alter à septimo navigationis anno exorsus fuerit.” Ibid., fol. 6 of the dedication.

63
or they may feel resentment, from all the living and the seeing.
120

This reflection on the age-old call to deliver the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of the
Turks is a means to draw attention to Ferdinando’s continued efforts to follow the model
of men like Godfrey in his efforts against the Turks. Yet such ideas are also meant to
appeal to Ferdinando’s descendants, in particular his son Cosimo II, born in 1590. Da
Barga leaves no doubt of this when he writes:

In fact, lest you may think, oh my son, to be afraid,
From that of Asia and Libya, whom these books above
Look down upon, a counter levels and balances all,
He aids the lonely once deprived
As a storm he comes forth born from Tuscany
Born of the most famous of high rulers
Ferdinando de’ Medici, as the affairs of hope and faith collapse,
After years of immense victory, and great attention,
The flower of youth, and the light of the nation of Italy
and a new age of glory, do not doubt the virtue of this ward.
121

Like the earlier appeals to Prince Francesco, Da Barga looks forward to the virtue of the
ward Cosimo II, then less than a year old. Da Barga’s Syrias, also follows other familiar
tropes return as mythemes, including Moses’ flight from Pharaoh, the emphasis on

120
“Sed si militia quis detrectare laborem / Huius amet, pressasque iugo crudeliter urbes,
/ Seu Libyae, seu sint Asiae, sanctumque Sepulchrum, / Noster ubi plagis iacuit confossus
iniquis / Servator Deus, aeternaes via sola salutis, / Eripere è minibus Turcarum negligat;
ille / Ille, Pater, manes diris defixus ad imos, / Atque ad nigrantum sedes, loca senta,
meretur / Sentiat ut trudi vel se vivensque, vidensque.” Ibid., 54.
121
“Immo etiam, ne fortè putes, ò nate, verendum, / Ne, qui Asiam, Libyamque colunt,
quos Libra supernè / Despicit, aequatis atque aera temperat horis, / Deserti auxiliis olim
spolientur; eadem / Tempestate inter procures nascentur Hetruscos / Altorum soboles
longè clarissima regum / Fernandus Medices, rerum spes fida labantum, / Ante annos
animoque ingens, curaque virile, / Flos iuvenum, atque Italae gentis lux, & nova secli /
Gloria, nec dubius priscae virtutis alumnus.” Ibid., 178.

64
Godfrey’s crossing the Hellespont into of Anatolia, as well as the reference to the Turks
as the “common enemy.”
122

With texts like Da Barga’s in circulation, it appears that Cigoli may not have
drawn his image from a single source, but from the continued use of Jerusalem as foil for
crusade efforts across the Mediterranean. The Turkish wars in Greece and North Africa
were ideologically underwritten in late cinquecento Florence by visual and textual
celebrations of the crusades to the Holy Land. Cigoli’s work is not an isolated case. In
1590, Cosimo Daddi was commissioned by Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici to paint a
sequence of historical frescos in a Medici villa outside of Florence called Villa della
Petraia, depicting scenes from Godfrey’s siege of Jerusalem (fig. 1.18).
123
Again the
tendency of scholars has been to associate the images with Gerusalemme Liberata, yet no
clear associations can be made in the images themselves to the text. Moreover, like
Cigoli’s painting, Daddi’s images present no pro-French or even pro-Florentine rhetoric.
Within the various battle scenes, Godfrey does not carry the French flag, he carries the
banner of Jerusalem (fig. 1.19). In both the painting by Cigoli and the fresco cycle by
Daddi, it is the liberation of the city that remains the focus of these works, not the labors
of individual men or countries.

122
For Da Barga’s allegory of the “flight from Pharaoh,” Ibid., 29; for the description of
Godfrey’s encounter with Alexius, Ibid., 121; and for the mention of the Turks as
“communem hostem” see, Ibid., 435.
123
On Daddi see Christina Acidini Luchinat and Giorgio Galletti, La villa e il giardino
della Petraia a Firenze (Florence: EDIFIR, 1995), 78-83.

65
Poccetti and the Renaissance of Crusade

While the dream of a liberated Jerusalem fueled efforts against the Turks, Grand
Duke Ferdinando continued to battle the Ottomans in North Africa and Greece. Yet not
until 1607 was a full cycle of images commemorating Florentine victories over the Turks
realized. That year the grand duke commissioned Bernardino Poccetti to decorate an
entire room in fresco, in preparation for the marriage celebrations of his son Cosimo II
de’ Medici.
124
The cycle decorates a reception room in the grand ducal palace known
today as the Palazzo Pitti. Here, Poccettti visualizes two separate victories won against
the Turks, the grand ducal victory at Preveza in Greece in 1605, and the siege of Bona in
1607 in the Maghreb (fig. 1.20 and 1.21). Ferdinando’s former life as a cardinal certainly
influenced his approach to the Ottomans, though his program was substantially based
upon the systems put in place by his father.
Current scholarship on the Sala di Bona, as it is often referred to, emphasizes the
elaborate iconographic program laid out by Ferdinando’s court and rendered by
Poccetti.
125
The room includes not only two large scenes of victories, but also classical
victory rhetoric, allegorical virtues, and Old Testament imagery. However, I want to draw
attention back to the two battle scenes and the temporal structures upon which they are
based. Although these images act as the central visual elements of the room, their
meaning is often overlooked in favor of the allegorical iconography. These battle scenes,
however, are important markers of the varied approaches to the Florentine historical
imagination of crusade, the first in Greece and the second in North Africa. They offer

124
On the room and its iconographic program see Stefania Vasetti “I fasti granducali
della Sala di Bona: sintesi politica e culturale del principato di Ferdinando,” in Palazzo
Pitti: La reggia rivelata (Florence: Giunti, 2003), 229-239.
125
Ibid.

66
differing spatio-temporal perspectives that in fact play off one another. Poccetti’s scenes
of Bona and Preveza are placed on opposite walls of the room and are roughly the same
size and dimension. In this arrangement, the scenes are intended to be compared in theme
and design. In each, time is visualized differently: in the victory at Bona, Medici forces
are depicted as contemporary crusaders, in modern armor; in its compliment, the victory
at Preveza, grand ducal forces are led by several figures dressed all’antica, illustrating
the Renaissance of crusade.
The Sala di Bona takes its name from the scene of the siege of Bona.
126
The battle
was a highly orchestrated affair arranged by Grand Duke Ferdinando to interrupt a
supposed haven of piracy in Algeria. The siege, led by the Knights of Saint Stephen,
would continue to be celebrated a century later as the most successful victory in the
order’s history.
127
Poccetti’s rendering of the siege presents a style of image very similar
to Vasari’s Defense of Piombino, but from the standard perspective of the victor. In the
lower left-hand corner of the foreground the artist presents a figure dressed as a Knight of
Saint Stephen, the admiral Jacopo Inghirami. He raises his sword above his head,
gesturing towards his men to advance. Across from him, on the right side of the scene,
another regiment of knights approach with banners and drums preparing to assault the
fortress shown in the distance. As the central antagonists of the scene, the Turks are not
especially visible. While they can be seen falling from the bulwarks, and firing their
harquebuses from the top of the fortress, they appear as a distant mass punctuated by
white turbans, bereft of individual specificity. The Knights of Saint Stephen are instead

126
Guarnieri, 141-147. Grand Ducal forces had planned earlier assaults on Bona, as early
as 1568, but they were continually plagued by difficult weather. Ciano, 54.
127
Poetry celebrating the Siege of Bona continued for decades afterward. See in
particular the work of Gabriello Chiabrera, Canzoni di Gabriello Chiabrera per le galere
della religione di Santo Stefano (Florence: Zanobi Pignoni, 1619), cansone VII.

67
given individualized features; they wear metal corselets marked with the red knight’s
cross. Like Vasari, in the lower right hand corner of the foreground, Poccetti has also
included a sea-god. The inscription above the scene, held aloft by two putti, makes clear
that this image intends to commemorate a contemporary event, giving the date and place
of the assault: “Impresa della città e fortezza di Bona in Barberia, esequita il dì XVI di
settembre MDCVII,”—the siege of the city and fortress of Bona on the Barbary coast,
which occurred on September 16, 1607.
The compliment to the Siege of Bona, however, presents an altogether different
temporal narrative, one that emphasizes the classical foundations of the conflict it
commemorates. Two years before Bona, in 1605, the Grand Duchy led an impromptu
siege of the city of Preveza in Greece.
128
Sailing past the Ottoman harbor, the Knights of
Saint Stephen recognized that the typically well-defended port lay more or less
unprotected. Taking advantage of the defensive oversight of the Turks, the knights sacked
the city, a task that proved impossible for earlier rulers, including Charles V. Here,
Poccetti presents a more intimate composition than the Siege of Bona. The opposing
forces of the Turks and Medicean troops, are placed directly in the foreground, on the left
and on the right, respectively (fig. 1.22). In the deep background, the city of Preveza
burns and further afield the knights’ ships assault a lone Turkish galley left to protect the
coast. This compositional focus on the Ottomans and the ducal troops allows the artist to
represent the struggle more directly.
Observing the Ottoman and grand ducal forces side by side introduces key
differences in how they are temporally rendered. While the Ottomans wear white turbans
and kaftans, the grand ducal troops are dressed in a variety of period clothing. While

128
Guarnieri, 141-147.

68
soldiers in the deep background wear metal helmets and corselets, the two closest figures
wear brightly colored shirts (pink and yellow) that emphasize their musculature, with the
sleeves drawn up to their shoulder; the two soldiers leading the vanguard are dressed
all’antica, as romans. While the first wears a classical helm with feather embellishments,
the other wears a feather pinned in his hair. Each appears temporally out of place. At
center, the figure in pink raises his sword as he stands over a fallen Turk, painted in the
act of striking; the all’antica soldier appears to slay an early modern Ottoman soldier.
Visualizing antiquity in battle scenes was a means for artists like Poccetti to
illustrate their historical nature. In his Ragionamenti Vasari explains that in his mural of
The Defeat of the Pisans at the Tower of San Vincenzo, a battle that took place in 1505,
he presents both forces all’antica because it was “più antica” (fig. 1.23).
129
Yet in
Vasari’s image both forces are made temporally equal. The Florentines and Pisans are
each presented in a classicized manner. Poccetti instead shows only Medicean forces led
by antique soldiers, rendering the Ottomans in contemporary clothing. This temporal
distancing is purposeful. Poccetti uses different temporal registers to create distance
between the troops of the grand duke and the Ottomans, denying them coevalness pace
Fabian. The painter uses classical antiquity as a privileged temporal space, reserved for
the Medici. While the Ottomans claimed to the inheritors of a Greco-Roman antiquity
(much like the Florentines), reinforced by their capture of Constantinople in 1453,
Poccetti does not imagine them all’antica. The Ottomans are instead separated, relegated
to contemporary time, as the temporal other. In drawing attention to two completely
different temporal fields present in the painting of the battle of Preveza, Poccetti
visualizes time as a means to create distance between antagonist and protagonist.

129
Vasari, Ragionamenti, 175-178.

69
This emphasis on grand ducal forces as classical soldiers reborn also played upon
the very geography of the location of the battle. Preveza was the site of a previous
conflict between Ottoman and Christian forces in 1538, when a flotilla organized by
Charles V, and captained by Andrea Doria, attempted to siege the city. The effort was a
disaster for Christendom, and would instead be celebrated in the Ottoman Empire for
centuries as a great victory. Nonetheless, Charles’ determination to take Preveza may
have been motivated by more than military desires; it was a means of drawing parallels
between himself and Augustus. Preveza was a port town built exceptionally close to the
ancient foundations of another city, Nicopolis. This was the city built by Augustus after
his defeat of Marc Anthony at the battle of Actium. The very name of the city, Nicopolis,
in Greek means “the city of victory.” As was well known at the time, Marc Anthony had
allied himself with the ruling power in Egypt, namely Cleopatra. Augustus’ victory over
his former ally thus had geographic and cultural undertones, associated with the defeat of
“barbarian” forces. Poccetti’s fresco draws clear attention to this fact in his inscription
above the siege of Preveza, which reads “formerly called Nicopolis.”
130
Moreover,
printed victory rhetoric celebrating the battle presented the grand duke’s victory within
these temporally loaded terms and geographical spaces; an anonymous pamphlet
detailing the victory begins:

“The most serene Grand Duke of Tuscany, always retaining from a long time ago
[nell’antico] that desire to put to use with great effect his knights of the religion of
Saint Stephen with his other subjects of professional arms in the service of the
Catholic faith against the common enemy. Considering that no middling disaster
could have brought to him the surprise of the fortress of Preveza located on the
sea at the border of Albania, & Morea, a fortress reputed for its walls, large
towers, moat, and for the garrison of 300 Janissaries with thirty bombardments,

130
The inscription reads “S’acquista il dì III di Maggio MDCV la Prevesa in Albania
città già detta Nicopoli da Augusto.”

70
and more than sixty pieces of artillery, which at the moment was under the
command of Mamut Agà, the location which was previously famous for the
meeting before of the Caesar Augustus & Marc Anthony, & more recently the
Holy League of Paul III, Charles V, & the Venetians, with that of the Turks in
1538 which proceeds from the same view.”
131

Citing his desire to serve the Catholic faith against the “common enemy,” the anonymous
writer draws attention back to this space as a site of struggle between forces of east and
west, from the era of Charles V to Augustus. Poccetti’s decision to render the Medici
populated led by classically dressed soldiers thus draws crusade once again along an
extended timeline of conflict. Using the siege of Bona as a foil to present a much more
temporally textured image in the battle of Preveza, in essence, Poccetti strives to illustrate
the Renaissance of crusade under the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Yet these themes of
Ottoman conflict were forever brought back to the rule of Duke Cosimo I. In the center of
the ceiling, above the frescoes of Bona and Preveza, Poccetti painted an image of Cosimo
I, raised to heavens (fig. 1.24). He holds the measuring devices of the square and the
compass, both used in military affairs, but also symbols of just measure. To his left and
right, personifications of victory and glory leave little doubt in the mind of any viewer of
the historical source of these Florentine crusade efforts.

131
“Il Serenissimo Gran Duca di Toscana perseverando sempre nell’antico suo desiderio
di esercitare con efficaci effetti li suoi Cavalieri della Religione di Santo Stefano con altri
sudditi suoi della professione d’arme nel servigio della fede Cattolica contro il comune
suo inimico. Conseriderato che non mediocre disastro harebbe potuto apportargli la
soppresa della fortezza della Prevesa situate sul Mare a i confine dell’Albania, & Morea,
reputata forte per muraglie, torroni, fosso, e per il presidio di 300 Giannizzeri con trenta
bombardieri, e piu di sessanta pezzi d’Artigliera, che al presente era sotto commando di
Mamut Agà, luogo ancora assai famoso per gl’incontri dell’armate già di Cesare Agusto
& Marc’Antonio, & ultimamente della Lega Christiana di Paolo Terzo, Carlo Quinto, &
Veneziani, con quella del Turco nel 1538 che seguirono a sua vista.” Anonymous,
Relazione dell’impresa della Prevesa (Florence: Sermartelli, 1605), 1.

71
Conclusion

When Jacques Callot was commissioned by Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici to
create the series of prints commemorating the life of his father, Ferdinando, crusade
themes had already been visualized in a variety of manners in Florence. They relied on
scriptural exegesis, classical victory rhetoric, chivalric romance, medieval history, and
the memorialization of early modern victories over the Turks to present the grand dukes
as crusaders. Each projected a unique temporal perspective onto a conflict perceived to
traverse all time, separate yet connected through shared histories. Through these varied
temporal structures the Florentines pushed a broader Mediterranean agenda, positioning
themselves against Islamic powers that ruled from Africa and Asia. These histories, often
reimagined, connected them to potent Christian predecessors, including Charlemagne and
Godfrey of Bouillon. But most importantly, these istorie visualized their continual efforts
to defend Christendom from the Ottoman Turks, efforts begun under Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V and continued in later eras. Callot’s print of the Assault of Bona
illustrates a complex mix of these themes; the viewer is presented with both classical and
contemporary crusaders sieging the port of Bona, once the former Hippo Regius and the
former seat of Saint Augustine. The men appear to traverse all time and assault an
unidentifiable walled city, topped with a single identifying element, the crescent moon.
This symbol, used by Pharaoh’s army in Bronzino’s fresco, the Seljuk Turks in the
engravings in Panfilo di Renaldini’s chivalric epic, and the Ottomans who landed at
Piombino in Vasari’s panel painting, acts as a single unifying emblem. It designates the
“common enemy.” Historical imagination in the early modern period allowed crusade to

72
coexist across all eras, presenting a rich message. Through shared mythemes, like the
drowning of Pharaoh’s army, to shared geographical enemies, like the Egyptians, crusade
themes traversed all recorded time unifying the history of the world under Christian and
Islamic conflict. Within the city of Florence these themes, however, traced back to the
initial actions of one man, Duke Cosimo de’ Medici.

73
Chapter 2:
Remapping the Periphery:
Elba and the Argonauts

Sometime in the mid-November of 1557, a Florentine ship crossed the Tyrrhenian
Sea headed for the island of Elba.
132
Amongst arms and winter provisions, a colossal
bronze portrait bust of Duke Cosimo I sat in the ship’s hull (fig. 2.1). Sculpted by
Benvenuto Cellini between 1545-48, the bust was subsequently installed in a niche atop
the central entrance of the newly completed Forte Stella, overlooking the island’s main
harbor, Portoferraio.
133
Here, Cosimo’s portrait marked the edge of Florentine dominion,
drawing a border between the fortified ducal frontier and the open stretches of the
Tyrrhenian Sea. For centuries unsecured islands like Elba allowed Barbary and Levantine
ships respite during raids on the Tuscan coast.
134
One year before Cellini began work on
the bust, the Bey of Algiers, Khayr al-Dīn, also known as Barbarossa, sacked Portoferraio
before continuing up the Italian coastline, threatening Tuscan port-towns like

132
Cellini notes the month of the shipment of the bust in his personal records, and though
he does not cite the specific day he writes that he gave the work to “Giovanni detto il
Camerino” who brought the bust to Elba “fino a dì 15 di Novembre.” For the entry see
Francesco Tassi, ed. Ricordi, Prose, e Poesie di Benvenuto Cellini, vol. 3 (Florence:
Guglielmo Piatti, 1829), 79.
133
Cesare Ciano, I primi Medici e il mare: Nota sulla politica marinara Toscana da
Cosimo I a Ferdinando I (Pisa: Pacini Editore, 1980), 24 n.52.
134
Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell address Muslim piracy in the Mediterranean in
the early Middle Ages, mentioning the search of unsecured islands such as Corsica by the
Franks in 828 for pirates from the Maghreb. See Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell,
The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers,
2001), 153-160. Ironically in antiquity the Tyrrhenian coast was renowned as a haven for
pirates who preyed on passing ships and ventured into the Aegean. For the classic study
on the subject see Henry Omerod’s work, originally printed in 1921, Piracy in the
Ancient World (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 127-132.

74
Piombino.
135
Cosimo’s newly finished fortifications intended to secure these spaces from
encroaching Ottoman fleets whose territorial ambitions expanded further west with each
passing day. The portrait bust, however, did not present Cosimo as a modern ruler
dressed in a breastplate, robe, or tunic. Instead, Cellini depicted the duke all’antica,
wearing a decorative roman cuirass. Over the antique armor, the sculptor included a
singular anachronistic detail unseen in all extant all’antica images of Cosimo; Cellini
depicted the duke wearing the pendant of the Order of the Golden Fleece over his antique
cuirass (fig. 2.2).
136
Awarded to the duke in 1545, investiture in the Quattrocento
knighthood bound Cosimo by oath to defend Christendom in the name of Holy Roman
Emperor Charles V.
137
The symbol of the stolen Fleece of Phrixus recalled the collective
journey of the Argonauts, led by the hero Jason, to raid the Eastern Kingdom of Colchis.
By including a an early modern symbol of Cosimo’s imperial status on a bust rendered in

135
Khayr al-Dīn sieged the town of Piombino after taking Elba in 1544 in order to free
the son of one of his captains, Sīnam “the Jew.” The boy had been kept hostage at the
court of the Appiani family. See Rinaldo Panetta, Pirati e corsari turchi e barbareschi
nel mare nostrum (Milan: Gruppo Ugo Mursia Editore, 1981), 145-154. In a letter from
the 14
th
of January 1548, Duke Cosimo writes to Don Diego di Mendozza of Elba’s
inability to defend itself from Barbarossa—Khayr al Dīn—in the battle some four years
earlier. “Et perché Barbarossa venne nell’Elba, la quale per non aver modo da difendersi,
la prese, perché, solo la terra di Piombino con gran fatica si poteva difendere, come si
difese.” For a transcription of the letter see Giuseppe Battaglini, Cosmopolis:
Portoferraio medicea storia urbana 1548-1737 (Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1978),
244-245. Earlier in March of 1530, Captain Scolaio Ciacchi informed the besieged
Florentine Republic that twenty four ships of “Moors” had sacked Elba. See Ciano, 11.
136
Karla Langedijk’s survey of the portraits of Cosimo I lists several busts of the duke
wearing the medal of the Order of the Golden Fleece and several all’antica versions, but
only Cellini’s bronze work, and the subsequent marble copy, display the two together.
Other works, such as the small agate cameo by Giovanni Antonio de’ Rossi show the
duke in all’antica armor and include the fleece as a separate iconographical element, but
Cosimo is never shown wearing it while in classical garb. See Karla Langedijk, The
Portraits of the Medici, 15
th
-18
th
Centuries vol. 1 (Florence: SPES, 1981), 407-530.
137
For the passage of the Order to Charles V see D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The
Knights of the Crown: The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in later Medieval Europe
1325-1520 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1987), 360-363.

75
classical style, Cellini portrayed the duke as a new Argonaut. The work illustrates the
Renaissance of crusade, threading together medieval, early modern, and classical eras.
The multi-temporality of the bust reflects a typological correlation between the labors of
the Argonauts to best the Eastern Kingdom of Colchis and the efforts of the Order of the
Golden Fleece to protect Europe from the Turks with fortresses like the Forte Stella.
Indeed, placement of the bust above the Forte Stella fulfilled a classical prophecy
centuries in the making, telling of a coming rebirth; ancient geographers maintained that,
after their theft of the Golden Fleece, the Argonauts landed at Portoferraio, the very same
port which Cosimo’s image surveyed. Cellini’s bronze portrait bust, placed above the
ancient harbor of the Argonauts, united these layered temporalities through shared
geography.
These site-specific and spatio-temporal connotations of the bust, however, have
been lost to time. Following the work’s return to Florence in 1781, the shipment of
Cellini’s portrait to Elba has frequently been interpreted by modern scholars as a visible
act of exile and evidence of its stylistic failings.
138
In 1985, John Pope-Hennessy
published Cellini, a comprehensive survey of the artist which included a discussion of the
bronze portrait bust, now on display in the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Reading
Cosimo’s installation of the work far outside of the urban center of the duchy as an
expression of his distaste for the work, Pope-Hennessy concluded that its “excessive
belligerence” as “out of key in Florence,” claiming that the duke dispatched the work to
his island fortress to be rid of it.
139
The bust has, following Pope-Hennessy’s suggestion,
often been considered as evidence of Cellini’s unsuccessful attempts at court portraiture,

138
John Pope-Hennessy, Cellini (London: Macmillan, 1985), 308 n.8
139
Ibid., 217.

76
a contest instead won more frequently by Baccio Bandinelli, whose sculptures invariably
remained in Florence.
140
Some of this confusion stems from Cellini himself, who defers
an explanation of the bust in his autobiography, favoring a discussion of his more
celebrated Perseus. Greater issues arise from authors like Giorgio Vasari, who, in his
Vite, positions Cellini in the shadow of Bandinelli’s success.
141
However, the vast
majority of the prejudice regarding the bust’s installation on Elba derives from deeply
engrained historiographical notions of Florentine art, which perceives coastal spaces as

140
Scholars like Paul Richelson anticipated Pope-Hennessy’s claim writing that the duke
disapproved of the “aggressive psychological manner” of the work in his book Studies in
the Personal Imagery of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Florence (New York: Garland
Publishing, 1978). For a review of the literature regarding the bust as a failure see Mary
Wetzel Gibbons, “Cosimo’s Cavallo: a Study in Imperial Imagery,” in The Cultural
Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 82, n.27. Recent
scholarship has attempted to revise the stylistic failings of the work but largely follows
Pope-Hennessy’s conclusions regarding its relationship with Elba. Most recently Anne
Lange Malanger argues for the work’s later association with the island writing “Cellini’s
bust, however, has a more intimate and direct impact, which probably accounts for it
being intended for the duke’s personal collection and thus for a display in a relatively
private setting. As Cosimo’s pretensions as a ruler increased and the fortifications on
Elba were completed, the duke probably recognised the great propagandistic value of
locating the monumental bronze bust at Portoferraio, or Cosmopolis as he had now
renamed it.” See Anna Lange Malmanger, “Some Observations on Cellini’s Bust of
Cosimo I,” in Imitation, Representation, and Printing in the Italian Renaissance, Roy
Erikson and Magne Malmanger ed. (Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2009), 262. The notable
exception to those agreeing with Pope-Hennessy’s narrative is Victoria Gardner Coates
who suggests that the work could have been intended to decorate Portoferraio due to its
military guise, large size, and imperial iconography. She associates the Hapsburg imagery
present on the bust, including the Order of the Golden Fleece, as connections to the island
controlled by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. While I agree with the fundamental basis
of this argument, Gardner Coates offers little evidence beyond revising Pope-Hennessy’s
obvious Florentine prejudice in rereading the work. See Victoria Gardner Coates,
“Cellini’s Bust of Cosimo I and Vita,” in Benvenuto Cellini. Sculptor, Goldsmith, Writer,
Margaret A. Gallucci ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 151-158.
141
Vasari writes in is Vite for instance that Duke Cosimo placed Bandinelli and Cellini in
a competition in which the victor’s bust would be cast in bronze. He writes “Per la qual
cosa il Duca, perche molti mesi ebbe preso spasso del fatto loro, gli pose silenzio,
temendo di qualche mal fine, e fece far loro un ritratto grande della sua testa fino alla
cintura, che l’uno e l’altro si gettassi di bronzo, acciò che chi facesse meglio avesse
l’onore,” Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti, pittori, scultori, ed architettori,
Gaetano Milanesi ed., vol. 4 (Florence: G.C. Sansoni Editore, 1881), 184.

77
peripheral, mapping aesthetic success in relation to proximity to urban center. Ignoring
the value of the island’s position in the Tyrrhenian sea, Medici concern over Ottoman
raids on the Tuscan coast, as well as the mytho-geographical connotations of
Portoferraio, current scholarship has interpreted the success of Cellini’s bronze portrait
bust in relation to a myopic model bound to a Florentine center.
The aim of this chapter is to geographically and temporally broaden the
interpretive parameters of the portrait bust to include an oft-neglected Ottoman
counterpart to the work’s strict Florentine history. By revisiting the sculpture’s
relationship with the Elba and the harbor of Portoferraio, we come to a better
understanding of the greater ideological implications of Cellini’s work in defining the
boundaries of a new imperial duchy. Approaching the creation of the bust as mythopoeia,
the writing of a new ducal mythology, I argue that the all’antica work looked forward in
time to Tuscany’s impending efforts against the Turks in the Mediterranean, events
which culminated shortly after the bust’s creation.
142
As a new Argonaut, Cosimo
synthesized the classical virtues of Jason and Hercules with the hopes of defending the
name of Christ from the avarice of the Ottomans, just as the heroes of old battled the
Kingdom of Colchis. In this manner, the bust acted as both a marker of past

142
Mythopoeia should be taken as the active crafting of a new mythological narrative
relying on tropes from ancient texts like the Agronautica. In this case the individual
narratives of Jason, Hercules, and Orpheus, as well as their collective efforts as
Argonauts, are taken up, manipulated, and elaborated upon in the artistic practice of
Cellini and in the subsequent court literature of the Duchy of Florence. In this manner,
Duke Cosimo is written into a historical tradition, that previously, neither he nor Florence,
played any role in. The use of mythopoeia in literary and linguistic studies is often
attributed to J.R.R. Tolkien, taken from his poem “Mythopoeia” written to C.S. Lewis
which argues for the contemporary value of myth in society. See “Mythopoeia,” in Tree
and Leaf (London: Harper Collins, 2001), 83-90. For mythopoeia in an anthropological
discourse see Philip Wheelwright, “Notes on Mythopoeia” The Sewanee Review 59
(1951): 574-592.

78
accomplishment and as a statement of future intent. Examining the writings of classical
geographers and early modern poets, I illustrate how Cellini’s bronze portrait bust
projected meaning beyond Florence, to Elba, Constantinople, and to the eastern edges of
the Black Sea. Observing shared mythemes present in the Argonautica, the Punica,
Orlando Furioso and other chivalric court poetry written for the grand duchy, I situate
the work in a greater Mediterranean memory of the earliest conflicts between Europe,
Asia, and Africa.
143
All too often the interpretive limits of Florentine monuments require
them to look backward in time and to address local events. Cellini’s bust was once much
more temporally and geographically complex. The portrait of Duke Cosimo I not only
marked a past and present moment, but it looked forward in time, as a prophetic symbol
of the rebirth of crusade.

Remapping the Aesthetics of Cellini’s Portrait Bust

In order to revise these long held spatial and temporal prejudices, we must first
remap the aesthetic success of Cellini’s work and its relationship to periphery and center
of the duchy. The dominant narrative of the bust’s expulsion relies upon a small selection
of Cellini’s writings, and a review of this material directly problematizes this conclusion,
instead offering insight into how the bust was intended to travel physically and
narratively beyond a Florentine center. Cellini began work on the portrait bust in August
of 1545, shortly after arriving to Florence from Fontainebleau.
144
As is the case with

143
See Claude Lévi-Strauss, “The Structural Study of Myth,” Journal of American
Folklore 68 (1955): 428-444.
144
Pope-Hennessy offers an overview of Cellini’s first meeting with Cosimo and his
initial projects based largely on the artist’s autobiography, see Pope-Hennessy, 163-165.

79
nearly all of Cellini’s projects under Duke Cosimo, no documents survive which stipulate
the details of the commission, making it difficult to determine the original intentions
behind the bust’s creation. In his autobiography Cellini mentions the work only briefly,
writing,
“and the first bronze work I cast was the large head, a portrait of his Excellency,
which I had already made in clay in the goldsmith’s shop while I had those pains
in my back. This was a work which pleased me, and I would not have made it for
any other reason than to obtain experience of clays in order to cast bronze.”
145

These statements have left many, including Pope-Hennessy, to view the creation of the
bust as a technical exercise with little intentionality beyond its material process. Cellini’s
statement, however, smacks of a certain narrative sprezzatura, an emphasis on his own
role in the artistic creation of the work. The narrative or commemorative insignificance of
the portrait bust allowed the artist to appear as a technically savvy craftsman proficient in
casting large-scale bronze, a build up for the central focus of his book, the creation of the
Perseus.
Contrary to Cellini’s claims, the financial history of the work suggests that it was
much more than a mere technical experiment or afterthought. While it is unclear exactly
how much Cellini received for the bust, Pope-Hennessy estimates the artist received 750
scudi for the bust over the course of his life, which would make it an exceptionally costly
experiment.
146
The artist also consistently requested payment for the bust separate from

145
“E la prima opera, che io gittai di bronzo, fu quella testa grande, ritratto di Sua
Eccellenza, che io avevo fatto di terra nell’oreficeria, mentre che io avevo male alle
stiene. Questa fu un’opera, che piaque, ed io non la feci per altra causa, se non per fare
sperienza delle terre da gittare il bronzo.” Ferdinando Tassi ed., La Vita di Benvenuto
Cellini orefice e scultore fiorentino, vol. 2 (Florence: Guglielmo Piatti, 1829), 363.
146
While the artist agreed to be paid a stipend of 200 scudi per year, he later requested
additional payment depending on the proposed success of his productions. Pope-
Hennessy makes two different claims for the total that the artist received, one in the text
of his book and another in a footnote. In the text he states that Cosimo paid Cellini 300

80
the Perseus, illustrating that it was, for the artist, a separate commission. Initially the
sculptor requested 500 scudi for the bust in 1548.
147
Less than ten years later Cellini
requested additional payment following the work’s arrival to Elba in 1557. A document
dated February 5
th
, 1557 [1558] details the shipment of the bust to Portoferraio in which
Cellini notes that Duke Cosimo owes him a further 800 scudi. The timing of the request
suggests that the bust’s transfer outside of Florence may have been an integral part of the
original commission. The last mention of payment for the bust occurs in 1570 when
Cellini, attempting to clear his outstanding debts before his death, requested an additional
400 scudi for the work. After the artists Vincenzo de’ Rossi and Bartolommeo
Ammannati consulted on the request, the ailing Cellini received 150 scudi, a sizeable sum
for work completed twenty-two years earlier, especially one which the duke supposedly
disliked.
148
Though the total amount he ultimately received is uncertain, over the course
of his life, Cellini requested 1700 scudi for the bust. The duke’s final payment of 150
scudi for the work in 1570 suggests that he continued to be prize the bust following its
departure from Florence twelve years earlier.

scudi when the bust was finished in 1547, another 300 in 1557, and a final amount for
150 shortly before his death, totaling 750 scudi. Instead in the attached footnote he writes
that he asked for and received 500 scudi upon the bust’s completion and a final 150 scudi
shortly before his death, totaling 650 scudi. It is unclear why the two explanations differ.
Further complicating the matter is a document from 1570, in which the artist claimed that
he received nothing for the bust (“della quale non ho avuto nulla”), though again this
would simply be additional funds added to his yearly stipend. See Pope-Hennessy, 307
n.4. For a discussion of the artist’s stipend see also Dario Trento, Benvenuto Cellini:
opere non esposte e documenti notarili (Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello, 1984),
69.
147
Trento, 57.
148
These two documents are transcribed as docs. 135-137 in Ferdinando Tassi ed.,
Ricordi, Prose e Poesie di Benvenuto Cellini, vol. 3 (Florence: Guglielmo Piatti, 1829),
192-202.

81
Certainly one of the most perplexing and complicated aspects of the bust’s history
is the near decade it spent in Florence before being sent to Elba. Though begun in 1545
and finished in 1548, the work remained in the guardaroba in Florence until 1557 before
being sent to the harbor city of Portoferraio. Documents confirm that Cellini originally
installed the bust on a blue painted pedestal in the wardrobe shortly after its completion.
The work was recorded there as late as 1553.
149
Yet this location must not have been its
intended destination. In a letter to Duke Cosimo dated the 20
th
of May 1548, Cellini
defends his artistic skill against his detractors, suggesting that the work still needed to be
moved: “Where if your Excellency will put it (metterà) in the place which is suitable for
this head, and it being seen, I am certain you will hear that which is said of good
works…”
150
The artist’s statement suggests that the work still awaited final installation.
The notoriously opinionated artist also appears to have shown no shame in the
fact that the bust was sent to Elba in 1557 in his later writings. Rather, he made frequent
efforts to highlight its location. Writing in his autobiography sometime after 1558, Cellini
described a conversation between himself and Duke Cosimo some ten years earlier. The
artist describes his attempt to convince his patron of the feasibility of large-scale bronze
casting, and for his first piece of evidence he offered the success of the bronze work
already completed, referring to it as “the colossal bust of your excellency, which is now

149
Trento, 57.
150
“Dove se Vostra Eccellentia la metterà nel luogo che a tal testa si conviene, e che la
sia veduta, io son certo ch’ella sentirà quello che si dice delle opere buone, quale sarà il
contrariodi quello che si dice del cavagliorani, il quale ha così favorite stella a torto, in
grazia di Vostra Eccellenza, che la mia non gli appare nè con lustro, o grazia alcuna.” For
the transcription see Tassi, Ricordi, Prose e Poesie, vol. 3, 323-324. Victoria Gardner
Coates also notes Cellini’s assertion that the work needed to be moved, arguing that it
was intended to be viewed from below. See Gardner Coates, 158.

82
in Elba.”
151
The artist readily mentions its shipment to the Tyrrhenian island in a manner
completely unnecessary to the narrative. Furthermore, he freely raises the location in his
letters to the duke, with no apparent contest.
152
Presumably Cellini could have
deemphasized his supposed failure, as he was known to neglect to record other aspects of
his life and career which were perceived as shameful.
153

Although Cellini expressed no remorse in the shipment of his bronze bust to Elba
and showed no reluctance in continually requesting payment for the work, most scholars
have followed Pope-Hennessy’s assessment judging it a stylistic failure. Because the
Florentine object was purposefully distanced from its native city, its aesthetic success has
been questioned. To remap this aesthetic valuation of the bust, it is important to come to
terms with the peculiarities of the format of the portrait bust as well as the reception
history of this particular work.
A bust is a particular type of sculpture; it is a format that readily embraces
movement. Typically placed above doorways, portrait busts were designed as visual
markers to designate the control of domestic spaces. A portrait, above a door, told a
viewer whose room they were stepping into. Their temporary installation was required to
follow the fluid nature of interior spaces, which shifted from bedrooms, to reception
halls, to storage rooms with relative ease. Because of their need to shift due to changing

151
“la bella testa di bronzo, che io le ho fatto, così grande, ritratto di Vostra Eccellenza
Illustrissima, che s’è mandato all’Elba,” Tassi, La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, vol. 2, 405.
152
For example see Cellini’s letter to the secretary of the duke, Bartolommeo Concino,
dated 22
nd
of April, 1561, in which he describes the bust freely as “il Ritratto della Testa
di Sua Eccellenza Illustrissima di bronzo, quale è oggi all’Elba,” Tassi, Ricordi, Prose e
Poesie, vol. 3, 336.
153
Cellini left out his various incarcerations for sodomy in Florence, avoiding discussions
of events that may have portrayed him in a less favorable light to his readers. On Cellini’s
trial for sodomy see Margaret Ann Gallucci, “Cellini’s trial for sodomy: power and
patronage at the court of Cosimo I,” in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici,
ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), 37-46.

83
needs, busts alternated between being viewed on pedestals and above doorways.
154
This
movement between locations required them to have a certain formal flexibility,
alternating between raised and lowered locations. They included both details, meant for
close inspection, as well as large formal features intended to be read from a distance.
Cellini’s bust is an over life-sized work, making it one of just a few large-scale versions
from the period. Its size suggests that it was not of the typical domestic type.
Additionally, while earlier medieval and Renaissance busts were made in terracotta, later
variants were frequently commissioned in marble and bronze. By the mid-sixteenth
century sculptors largely favored the all’antica style, a type revived in Florence in the
fifteenth century.
155
Its colossal size and general military theme would not have been out
of place above one of his fortresses.
156

Additional material evidence suggests that the bust was aesthetically prized.
Before the duke sent the bust to Elba, Cellini began working on a marble copy of the
sculpture (fig. 2.3).
157
As Michael Cole mentions in a footnote of his Cellini and the

154
On the evolution of the portrait bust as a marker of domestic space in Florence see
Jane Schuyler, Florentine Busts: Sculpted Portraiture in the Fifteenth Century (New
York: Garland, 1976).
155
Ibid.
156
Cellini also made a colossal bust while in France at the court of Francis I, see Pope-
Hennessy, 216. Bandinelli would later create large scale bronze busts in a similar vein,
such as the work now stored in the Palazzo Pitti from 1554-1558. On Bandinelli’s
production of portrait busts at the Florentine court in relation to Cellini see Nicole
Hegener, Divi Iacobus Eques: Selbdarstellung im Werk des Florentiner Bildhauers
Baccio Bandinelli (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2008),105-108.
157
Walter Heil attributes the work to Cellini suggesting that the duke commissioned the
artist to create the marble bust, which is now in the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in
San Francisco, as a copy of the earlier bronze work. See Walter Heil “A Rediscovered
Marble Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici by Cellini” The Burlington Magazine 766 (1967):
4-13. Pope-Hennessy states that the work was likely finished by Antonio Lorenzi,
believing that it was referred to as “non finite” in the inventory of Cellini’s works at the
time of his death, Pope-Hennessy, 218. Cole instead suggests that the marble bust
belongs to a group of works which Cellini began of his own volition to practice marble

84
Principles of Sculpture, the existence of the marble version, now in the De Young
Museum in San Francisco, questions Pope-Hennessy’s narrative of distaste.
158
While the
work may not have been finished in the artist’s lifetime, the marble bust remains a
faithful replica of the bronze original, preserving even the supposed belligerence that
Pope-Hennessy described as inappropriate for the ducal center. Rather than a copy, the
second bust is a marble version of the bronze original. It is, for example, only an
approximate size of the bronze work. Instead the marble bust appears to have acted as a
physical reminder of the bronze original, a work more technically complex and
expensive. Surely the marble version must have been the work that de’ Rossi and
Ammannati consulted on in 1570 when they were asked to judge the bust’s worth, as the
bronze original had taken up residence in Elba twelve years earlier.
Literary evidence further reinforces the bronze bust’s aesthetic success. Two
sonnets dedicated to the work recorded by Cellini in his autobiography describe his skill
as a sculptor, as well as Cosimo’s virtues captured in the work. Both poems are by
Bernardo Vecchietti, a Florentine banker and patron of the arts, later a major supporter of
Giambologna.
159
In the first sonnet, the writer imagines Duke Cosimo praising the artist
and the bust, describing how the work honors him:

carving. See Michael Cole, Cellini and the Principles of Sculpture (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 196 n.8.
158
Cole suggests that the marble bust could question Pope-Hennessy’s claim that the
bronze bust was “out of key in Florence.” See Ibid.
159
On Bernardo Vecchietti see Francesca Carrara, “Il magnifico Bernardo Vecchietti,
cortigiano e committente in un inedito epistolario private,” in Giambologna: Gli dei, gli
eroi, ed. Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi and Dimitrios Zikos (Florence : Giunti, 2006,) 302-
314. For Vecchietti’s efforts to help Cosimo raise money for the siege of Siena in 1554-
1555 see Richard Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2009), 503.

85
My Lysippus, my Praxiteles, it could only be he the good Cellini---And Him: “To
so much honor / your excellence elevates me, most high Sir, / Which appears is
not seen in one or the other poles. / This your image, which to time I take flight, /
prized in high esteem to whom will come for your worth, / just as today to us that
[image] is of the victor, / which races through the world as a young man in
flight.”--- / Like this the great Cosimo discusses together / with the skilled artist,
fame quickly / flying to the heavens which a thousand tongues brings. / Thence
my good Duke showing that he shepherds / the mind to whom at work craves high
praise, / the fruit, he declares, which here yields every good beginning.
160

The second sonnet, by Bernardo Vecchietti, equally praises the quality of the portrait, and
its ability to appear both kind (benigno) and proud (fiero) in the same work:

Welcomed from heaven, you say well the truth, / Varchi, my Benvenuto; it shines,
/ With others of his, the work which renders eternal / The beautiful stirred
resemblance of our Signore. / What’s more, the power to appear kind and proud /
Similar to the real portrait of whom he [Cellini] truly intends; / Such that in this
moment of honor it ignites envy / This not only, but also in the other hemisphere.
/ So that after a thousand years, in this art is made clear, / Held for he [Cellini]
who is noted in high praise the worthy visage, / The only honor and terror of his
[Cosimo] times. / But the divine aspect, due to you [Cosimo] / Allows [it] to take
form, that such metals and sheets / Are only worthy of such a grand subject.
161

The sonnets affirm that not only was the portrait praised as a “beautiful stirred
resemblance” of Cosimo and similar to the “true portrait,” but Vecchietti went so far as to
put those words in the duke’s mouth. The “high praise” imagined by the author

160
“Il mio Lisippo, il mio Prigotel, solo / Sia ‘l buon Cellino.---Et egli: A tanto onore /
M’erge la tua bontate, alto Signore, / Cui par non vede l’un nè l’altro polo. / Quest’
immagine tua, ch’ al tempo io involo, / Fia in pregio a chi verrà per tuo valore, / Com’
oggi è quella a noi del vincitore, / Che l’mondo corse giovinetto a volo.--- / Cosi ‘l gran
Cosmo ragionare insieme / Col dotto Artista, la veloce fama / Volando al ciel con mille
lingue apporta. / Indi il buon Duca mio mostrando scorta / Mente a chi pregio bene
oprando brama, / Frutto, grida, qui rende ogni buon seme.” Tassi, Ricrodi, Prose e Poesie,
vol. 3, 479.
161
“Benvenuto è dal ciel, ben dite il vero, / Varchi, il mio Benvenuto; si risplende, / Con
altre sue, l’opra ch’eterno rende / Del Signore nostro il bel sembiante altero. / Nè più il
potria di par benigno e fiero / Simile al ver ritrar chi ‘l vero intende; / Tal, ch’ omai
d’onorata invidia accende / Questo non pur, ma ancor l’altro emispero. / Cosi dopo mille
anni, in sì Chiara arte, / Fia per lui noto e’n pregio il degno aspetto, / Onor solo e terror
de’tempi suoi. / Ma la divina parte, in parte a voi / Resta formar, che tai metalli e carte /
Son degne sole di sì gran soggetto.” Tassi, Ricorde, Prose e Poesie, vol. 3, 478.

86
comfortably presumes that the patron valued the bust as it sat in the guardaroba, and that
the poet could safely speak for the duke’s pride in the work. Moreover, the very pride or
belligerence (fiero) of the portrait, seen as a fault by Pope-Hennessy, is here cited as a
virtue. In the document detailing the bronze bust’s departure to Elba, Cellini noted that
the work “was seen and esteemed by many people,” and these sonnets provide evidence
for his claim.
162

Cosimo the Argonaut

Setting aside this misplaced emphasis on aesthetic failure, the peculiar
iconography and events surrounding the date of the bust’s creation suggest that the work
presented Duke Cosimo as a mythological crusader, guarding the periphery of the Duchy
of Florence. When Cellini returned from France in August of 1545, his arrival to Florence
coincided with the celebration of Duke Cosimo’s investiture into the Order of the Golden
Fleece. News of the duke’s elevation arrived in July, and the ceremony took place a
month later on August, 11 in the duomo, on the feast day of Saint Andrew.
163
A painted
roundel in the Sala di Cosimo in the Palazzo Vecchio depicts the event (fig. 2.4).
164
The
fact that Cellini entered the duke’s service only a few days before the investiture suggests

162
“fu vista e stimata da più persone,” Tassi, Ricorde, Prose e Poesie, vol. 3, 79.
163
News of the award was received by Cosimo on July 29 and the ceremony of his
investiture was held less than a month later in the duomo of Florence. This chronology is
reconstructed by Karla Langedijk, De Portretten Van De Medici (Amsterdam:
Academisch Proefschrift, 1968), 60,121 n.21; See also Richelson, 5 n.9.
164
On the roundel painted by Giovanni Stradano of duke receiving the award see Ettore
Allegri and Alessandro Cecchi, Palazzo Vecchio e i Medici: guida storica (Florence:
Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1980), 150.

87
that the bust may have been intended as commemorative work. The artist’s language
regarding the bust supports this claim. Referring to the sculpture in his journal in
February of 1548 [1547], Cellini described the bust as “armed with a spoil” and in the
same journal of 1557, he wrote that it was “armed with the richest spoil.”
165
Cellini’s use
of the term spoglia in the singular, suggests that referred specifically to the pendant of the
Golden Fleece, an ancient prize often described as the great spoil of the Argonauts.
The bronze portrait bust is the earliest extant representation of the duke wearing
the chain of the order in sculpture. Indeed this is the only antique style bust to show the
duke as a member of the Order, with the exception of the later marble copy. It is unique.
Although the pendant of the fleece is quite small, decorative elements surrounding it
provide visual emphasis. The fleece of Phrixus hangs conspicuously at the center of
Cosimo’s all’antica cuirass, framed by two images of fame blowing trumpets. While the
pendant and cord are rather unassuming compared to later images of the duke wearing the
full collar, the simple chain follows the rules of decorum of the armored knight. In Della
origine de’ cavalieri (1566), written by Francesco Sansovino and dedicated to Cosimo I,
the author outlines the requirements of dress for a member of the Order of the Golden
Fleece; “In times of war & great negotiation it is enough to wear only the Golden Fleece
around the neck & in this case dropping the chain.”
166
Later depictions appear to have
ignored this prescription, favoring images of the duke with the larger decorative chain
over armor.

165
In the entry of 1548 Cellini writes “armato d’una spoglia,” see Trento, 57; and for the
1557 document Cellini describes the bust as “armato con richissima spoglia,” Tassi,
Ricorde, Prose e Poesie, vol. 3, 79.
166
“Ne tempi di guerra, & di gran negoci basterà senza catena portar solamente al collo il
Toson d’oro, & cadendogli a caso la catena.” Francesco Sansovino, Della Origine de
Cavalieri (Venice: 1566), 45v. See also Boulton, 369.

88
As a commemoration of his new title as catholic knight, the bust would have been
one of a very small selection of artistic commissions marking his elevation in title. The
only other work from the period that even suggests its association with the Golden Fleece
appears to be a small bronze figurine of Jason attributed to Baccio Bandinelli (fig. 2.5).
167

Certainly the most visible display of investiture would have been the addition of the
fleece to the duke’s coat-of-arms (fig. 2.6).
168
Aside from this, few objects address
Cosimo’s new knighthood. The only other image created was a roundel in the Sala di
Cosimo I in the Palazzo Vecchio, painted some years later by the workshop of Giorgio
Vasari.
169
The significance of the event, however, suggests that a commission, like the
bust, may have been conventional. When Charles V knighted Andrea Doria, the defacto
leader of the Genoese Republic, he commissioned a fresco cycle to grace the entire
façade of his suburban villa depicting the narrative of the Argonauts.
170
Cellini’s bronze
portrait bust would have been modest in comparison, but an ideal method to similarly
commemorate the investiture.
Cosimo’s elevation to the title of catholic knight raised his socio-political status,
marking him as an integral member of the imperial agenda within the Italian peninsula.
The order focused on combatting the Turks and renewing discussions of crusade. Created
in honor of Philippe the Good’s marriage to the Portuguese princess Isabella of Aviz in
1429, the Burgundian duke founded the order to defend the church, ostensibly from the

167
The small bronze figurine may have been created as a model, much like the bronze
figurines of Perseus created by Cellini. See Pope-Hennessy, 178-179.
168
On the beginnings of the practice of including the collar of the Golden Fleece on
coats-of-arms see Boulton, 370.
169
For the roundel painted by Jan van der Straet see Allegri and Cecchi, 150.
170
On Doria’s award of the Golden Fleece in 1531 and the fresco cycle on the southern
façade of his villa outside of Genoa see Piero Boccardo, Andrea Doria e le arti:
commitenza e mecenatismo a Genova (Rome: Palombi, 1989), 41-45.

89
Turks, and according to several accounts to liberate the Holy Land.
171
Though they never
participated in any military actions in the East, the order did form part of Pius II’s failed
crusade against the Ottomans in 1464 and consistently heard orations amongst their
members supporting the idea of a crusade, increasing in popularity after the fall of
Constantinople.
172
Later inherited by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, ancestor of Philip,
the knighthood evolved into a profoundly Catholic order in an age of reformation and
counter-reformation and the honor of knighthood came with significant responsibilities.
As Sansovino’s Della origine de’ cavalieri explains, Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy,
founded the order under the motto “Pour mantenir l’Eglise qui est de Dieu maison. L’ai
mis su le noble ordie qu’on nomme la Toison.”
173
In the 1540s Cosimo began sustained
efforts to support imperial wars in Eastern Europe and Africa against the Turks, which
continued throughout the duke’s lifetime (See Chapter 1). But membership also came
with distinct advantages. For example, members of the order could only be tried in a
court of law by another member of the order, essentially making them accountable only

171
For a review of the early decades of the Order of the Golden Fleece and its foundation
under Philippe the Good, see Christiane Van der Bergen-Pantens ed. l’ordre de la Toison
d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430-1505): idéal ou reflet d’un société?
(Turnhout: Brepols, 1996). On the crusade ideals of the order see Jacques Paviot,
“L’ordre de la Toison d’or et la Croisade” in Ibid.
172
For the effects of the fall of Constantinople in Burgundy and its influence on the
crusade efforts of the Order of the Golden Fleece see Guglielmo de’ Giovanni-Centelles,
“La proiezione mediterranea del Toson d’oro,” Annali della Pontificia insigne accademia
di belle arti e lettere dei virtuosi al pantheon, 7 (2007): 59-62. Earl E. Rosenthal argues
that Charles V’s revival of the emblem of the flint and fire-steel associated with the
House of Burgundy derived from his ancestor, Jean the Fearless, who invented the
symbol after his capture by the Turks in 1396 and his subsequent vow to liberate the Holy
Land. The symbol also forms part of the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Earl
Rosenthal “The Invention of the Columnar Device of Emperor Charles V at the Court of
Burgundy in Flanders in 1516” The Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 36
(1973): 198-230.
173
Sansovino, 61v.

90
to the emperor. As a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Cosimo moved in a
Catholic sphere of an elite few.

Ammon and the Spoil of the Argonauts

Cellini’s portrait bust depicts Duke Cosimo as a new Argonaut, a revival of the
likes of Jason and Hercules. Wearing the ram of Phrixus over his all’antica cuirass, the
patron is presented as one of the many heroes who despoiled the Kingdom of Colchis,
once located at the far Eastern edge of the Black Sea. Yet, the Golden Fleece is not the
only spoil Cellini depicted on Cosimo’s cuirass. Given the apparent Argonautic theme of
the work, certain visual elements on the bust are brought to new light, namely two large
animal heads on the upper right shoulder of the duke’s armor (fig. 2.7). In the past,
scholars have struggled to identify the exact iconographic source of these beasts. Peter
Meller identified the animal heads as Hercules’ two Nemean lion skins described in
Cristoforo Landino’s De vera nobilitate, one the embodiment of fury (ira) and the other
wrath (iracundia).
174
Landino suggests that Hercules retains the skins to illustrate how
strength, or rationality, gives men the ability to overcome these vices.
175
Kurt Forester

174
Peter Meller, “Physiognomical Theory in Renaissance Heroic Portraits,” in The
Renaissance and Mannerism: Studies in Western Art, The Acts of the Twentieth
International Congress of the History of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1963), 67-68.
175
“Leonum tamen caesorum spolia retinet Hercules, quia vir fortis ita iram superat, ut
semina illa a natura homini summa cum utilitate data ad Omnia iniusta / comprimenda
convertat.” Cristoforo Landino, De Vera Nobilitate, ed. Maria Teresa Liaci (Leo S.
Olschki, Florence: 1970), 108. Pope-Hennessy defers to both Meller’s and Forster’s
interpretations and subsequent scholarship has largely followed suit including Gardner
Coates, 153. Malmanger suggests the image may be a satyr, see Malmanger 260 n.2.

91
likewise suggested a Herculean theme for the bust, following Bandinelli’s print.
176
But he
instead suggested that the largest beast was a Capricorn-Lion, synthesizing the
astrological symbol of Cosimo and the animal associated with Hercules. He proposed that
the general iconographic scheme of the work derived from an engraving by Niccolò della
Casa after a design by Baccio Bandinelli, created in 1544 (fig. 2.8). The image depicts
Duke Cosimo in armor decorated with the labors of Hercules. While both Meller and
Forester appear to be correct regarding the smaller animal on the bust, which clearly
represents the Nemean lion skin, the larger beast is something altogether different.
While both Meller and Forster considered a Herculean connotation for the image
of the hybrid animals, neither looked beyond Bandinelli’s print. Yet the beasts as spoils
could have been intended to reinforce the broader reading of Cosimo as a Herculean
Argonaut. The hero, sacred to the city of Florence, joined the mariners on their journey
for the fleece and was often included in depictions of their exploits. Lorenzo Costa and
Bartolomeo di Giovanni were just a few of the artists that included the hero in their
depictions of the Argonautica (fig. 2.9 and 2.10).
177
However, according to many
versions of the narrative, Hercules did not return to Greece with the heroes. When the
Argonauts were on the return leg of their trip they found themselves cast ashore off of the
coast of Africa, near lake Tritonis. Here Hercules left the group in search of a missing
comrade, a choice which began his own adventures in the region. While in Africa,
Hercules was visited by his father Zeus in the guise of a ram, believed to have been the
god Ammon sacred to Egyptians and Libyans. The god Ammon often appears as a

176
Kurt Forster, “Metaphors of Rule. Political Ideology in the Portraits of Cosimo I de’
Medici” Mitteilungen des Kunshistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15 (1971): 78-79.
177
For an analysis of these narrative works see Dennis Geronimus, Piero di Cosimo:
Visions Beautiful and Strange (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006),150- 159.

92
bearded man with a ram’s curved horns, similar to the image present on Cellini’s bust
(fig. 2.11). The sculptor could have known the image of Ammon through antique coins
which circulated during the period that were also later recorded in print (fig. 2.12).
178

Other authors, however, cited Ammon as an Egyptian general who Hercules defeated in
combat. Within his Delle Imprese (1592), Giulio Cesare Capaccio described the various
interpretations of the image of the ram in relation to Ammon. Capaccio writes,
“frequently in antique sculpture, this animal signifies the god Ammon. This is
commonly called Jupiter; the Egyptians contend that it was the sun. But in this
manner the ancients called Ammon the god of blessing….Others say that the head
of the ram is the Hieroglyph of Ammon, whom as the king of Egypt, wore this
head of the ram as a crest. Others say that having been visited by Hercules, he was
covered in the skin of the ram, who at the time had killed [him].”
179

Cellini’s prominent placement of the image of Ammon likely intended to draw
typological parallels between Hercules’ encounter with or defeat of the ram-god Ammon
and the ram of Phrixus, the Golden Fleece.
180
The ram was a common theme that linked
Hercules with the search for the Golden Fleece.

178
Alexander Nagel discusses the knowledge of the Egyptian god Ammon in the
Renaissance and his occasional visual association with Moses who was also shown
horned, in particular in a sculpture of Andrea Riccio from 1513. See Alexander Nagel,
The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2011),
156-162.
179
“spese volte nell’antiche Scolture, quest’animale, significa il Dio Ammone. Questo il
volgo chiama Giove; gli Egittij conte[n]deano che fusse il Sole. Ma cosi gli antichi
chiamavano Ammone Dio della Salute, come I Latini Giove; e col capo d’Ariete per
questo effetto di Salute il pingeano. Anzi quando trà ghirlandette di frondi, e di fiori, per
segno di buono augurio, e di Salute. Altri dicono che’l capo d’Ariete è Ieroglifico di
Ammone, per che essendo egli Re d’Egitto, questo capo d’Ariete portava per Cimiero.
Altri, ch’essendo visitato da Hercole, si copri con la pelle d’Ariete che all’hora ucciso
havea.” Giulio Cesare Capaccio, Delle Imprese trattato di Giulio Cesare Capaccio
(Naples: 1592), 76r.
180
In the myth of the Argonauts, the Golden Fleece was significant to both Zeus and
Aries, both associated with the animal of the ram: when Phrixus first sacrificed the
golden ram, he offered it to Zeus, but placed it in the garden sacred to Aries in Colchis.
Furthermore, Aries and Ammon were frequently conflated because of their associations
with the ram and were also occasionally presented together in classical antiquity. On the

93
Indeed it appears as the ferocity of the ram-man is a reflection on the astrological
attributes of the animal, sacred to both Aries and Jupiter. The image appears to be
Cellini’s visualization of the astrological nature of the ram. Giulio Cesare Capaccio
describes the notorious anger of the ram, while analyzing its use as hieroglyph. The
author writes,
“the ram has as much ferocity as the sheep has meekness; and as quickly as the
horns are grown, he provokes his companion to battle, and runs alongside man.
And for this maybe celestial Aries is consecrated to Mars; & the gall, the
astrologers say, is that [body part] which is governed by Mars, & in that settles
anger [iracundia]; so that Adamantio says, that when it is read that rams are
sacrificed by the Jews it is intended as a symbol of the driving out of anger
[ira].”
181

Suggestively Capaccio concludes his description of the emblem of the ram, writing of the
animal as a symbol of war; “War was declared by the ram, which were sent by the
fetiales to the borders of their enemies, when they wanted to declare that they wanted to
fight challengers.”
182
Yet the emblematist Capaccio also situates the ram in relation to the
Order of the Golden Fleece, writing that the “Duke of Burgundy ancestor of Charles the
Fifth gave for a sign the golden fleece, called the Tosone, with which the king, our most

conflation of Aries and Ammon in classical antiquity see Anna Maria Bisi, “Origine e
diffusione del culto cirenaico di Zeus Ammon,” in Cernaica in Antiquity, ed. Graeme
Barker, John Lloyd, and Joyce Reynolds (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1985),
307-308.
181
“L’Ariete tanto hà di feroce, quanto di mansueto hà la pecora; e tosto che gli sono nate
le Corna, provoca a battaglia il compagno, e corre adosso all’huomo. E per questo forse a
Marte è consecrato l’Ariete celeste; & il fiele, dicono gli Astrologi, ch’è governato da
Marte, & in quello siede l’iracondia; onde Adamantio dice, che quando si legge she siano
sacrificati gli Arieti da gli Hebrei s’intenda che sia Simbolo di scacciar l’ira.” Giulio
Cesare Capaccio, 75v.
182
“La guerra era dimostrata per l’Ariete, il quale per il Feciale mandauano a i confine de
gli inimici, qua[n]do dimostrar voleano volean combattere provocati.” Ibid.

94
happy Philip [II, King of Spain], today honors his knights.”
183
Thus the image of a
bellicose Ammon becomes a rumination on the nature of the animal, defeated by
Hercules, and typologically related to spoil of the Golden Fleece.
This conflation of Ammon and the Golden Fleece of the Colchians would also
have allowed for the projection of a particular kind of geographic polemic. Ammon is
specifically mentioned in the Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus, noted in relation to the
oracle located at the temple at Siwa, Egypt.
184
Moreover, he is cited as the oracle that
required the sacrifice of the young woman Hesione off of the coast of Troy, an event
which Hercules interrupts while journeying to gain the Golden Fleece. Ammon was also
considered Egyptian or more generally Libyan, and thus Hercules capture of the god as a
spoil would have visually suggested the defeat of Africa.
185
In his epic poem Punica,

183
The author mistakenly records the founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece as
Charles the Bold, the father of Philip the Good, the actual founder. Giulio Cesare
Capaccio, 76r.
184
Valerius Flaccus writes “Lo! Of a sudden there rose from the sea a beast, of monstrous
bulk: not by any mountain, not by the sea we know couldst thou measure it. A band of
young maidens is sacrificed to its rage amid the tears and embraces of their parents. This
the lot, this doth horned Ammon command—that a maiden’s life and her body that drew
death’s lot be doomed.” J.H. Mozley trans., Argonautica (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1934) ,108-110.
185
So too were the Colchians, the protectors of the Golden Fleece, of African descent.
While their kingdom resided at the eastern edge of the Black Sea, historians like
Herodotus and Pliny maintained that the Colchians were originally descended from the
Egyptians, through the general Sesostris, who, after marching abroad, left troops in the
region to found a civilization. The Egyptian origins of Colchis were picked up by
Apollonius Rhodius. Apollonius even claimed that pillars still marked the shores of
Colchis, which depicted the various sea-routes of the world charted by the Egyptians.
“…in the days when Egypt, mother of men of long ago, was called grain-rich, Eërie, and
the wide flowing river was called Triton, by which all of Eërie is watered, for Zeus’ rain
never wets it, but thanks to its streams the fields bears bountiful crops. For here they say
a man traveled all around Europe and Asia, relying on the strength, might, and courage of
his soldiers. He founded countless cities on his way, some of which are perhaps still
inhabited, others not, for a great stretch of time has since passed. Aea [in Colchis] at least,
has continued to exist to this day, along with the descendants of those men whom the
king settled to dwell in Aea [in Colchis]. They, in fact, preserve their forefathers’

95
which describes the clash of the Romans and Carthaginians, Silvius Italicus describes the
final battle between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal at Carthage, an event in which the
gods intervened. In the text Silvius explains how Ammon, the god of Africa, fought on
the side of the Carthaginians, while Hercules fought on the side of the Romans. He writes
“Nor was this trouble confined to earth, when this crack of doom was
heard: the madness of strife invaded heaven and forced the gods to fight. On the
one side fought Apollo and Mars with him, and the Ruler of the stormy sea; and
with them was Venus in despair, and Vesta and Hercules, and the slaughter of
captured Saguntum, and likewise worshipful Cybele; and the native gods of
Italy—Faunus and father Quirinus; and Pollux who takes turns of life with his
brother Castor. On the other was Juno, daughter of Saturn, with her sword girt
round her, and Pallas who sprang from the Libyan waters of Lake Tritonis; and
Ammon, the native god of Africa, whose brow bears curving horns, and a great
company of lesser deities as well.”
186

If Hercules fought for Rome against the native god of Africa, Ammon, the great spoil of
the god, draped on the hero’s armor, likely signified the defeat of the region. Thus the
great Colchian spoil hanging around Cosimo’s neck, sculpted with the spoil of Ammon
on his shoulder, illustrates the duke as knight and victor over the Turks.

The Argonautica and the Renaissance of Crusade

Cellini’s depiction of the duke as Herculean Argonaut not only portrays Cosimo
as the victor over the Eastern Colchians and over Africa, but as a defender of
Christendom and victor over the Ottoman Turks. The bust illustrates the Renaissance of

writings, pillars on which are found all the routes and the boundaries of the sea and land
for those who travel around them.” William H. Race, trans., Argonautica (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2009), 348-351.
186
J.D. Duff, trans. Punica, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1934), 22-25.

96
crusade. This theme is evident in a selection of Latin poetry and epigrams written during
the duke’s years of rule recorded by Sebsatiano Sanleolini in Serenissimi Cosmi Medycis
Primi Hetruriae Magni Ducis Actiones (1578). Cosimo’s investiture into the Order of the
Golden Fleece was celebrated in a selection of poetry that demonstrates how the duke
perceived himself to be a part of a longer historical tradition, which was not only
classical, but also medieval. One such poem was printed after the grand duke’s death:

And noble achievements and eminent deeds of daring by Jason / son of Aeson,
with a group chosen under the leadership of the Greek, / who tamed the fiery
bulls, and the body of the fiery dragon, / And killed the serpentine brothers / in
their homeland, the first that traveled the sea, by the Argo / That bore out of
Colchis the Golden Fleece, / Philip the Gaul famously known for his piety, /
which as heir Caesar [Charles V] holds his ancestral kingdom, / from the
remarkable love of striking Grecian renown, / by the new Thessalian deeds of the
coming generation, / he said to the men assembled: “Kings and princes arisen /
this worthy title is here proposed: / The new power will rival the power of the
old,” / Then he gave the symbol of the stolen spoil to bear. / On the breast the
Golden ram hangs: / From a gold chain which adorns the necks of the royal dukes.
/ COSIMO Here your favor from Caesar [Charles V] grows: / Your descent and
merits, and illustrious faith, / And for the golden necklace, he gives the fleece of
Phrixus: / Receive the traditional gifts from the hand of the emperor: / And
following the footsteps of the champion of Thessaly, / With a high stretched hand
tame the earthly monster and the sea.
187

187
“Nobilusque ausis, clarisque ab Iasone gestis, / Graia sub Aesonio cùm Duce lecta
cohors / Igniuomis Tuaris domitis, stratoque Dracone / Igniuomo, & caesis Fratribus
angue satis / In patriam, Pelagus quae prima cucurrerat, Argo / Auratae è Colcho vellera
vexit ovis, / Haeduus illustri notus pietate Philippus, / Cuius regna haeres Caesar avita
tenet, / Ingenti Graiae laudis perculsus amore, / Venturis saeclis Thessala facta novans, /
Militiam dixit: Reges, & Regibus ortos / Dumtaxàt dignos censuit his Titulus: / Quo nova
Virtutis priscae foret aemula Virtus, / Tùm rapti spolii signa ferenda dedit. / Aureus hinc
Aries dependet pectore: Torques / Aureus hinc ornat regia colla Ducum. / Caesaris hos
inter te gratia COSME recenset: / Te genere, & meritis, conspicuumque fide / Auratoque
monili, & Phrixi vellere donat: / Accipe Caesarea tradita dona manu: / Thessalicique
sequens vestigia Vindicis, alta / Sterne manus Terra Monstra, Saloque doma.” Sebastiano
Sanleolini, Serenissimi Cosmi Medycis Primi Hetruriae Magni Ducis Actiones (Florence:
1578), 4r-4v.

97
In the Latin poem written in heroic hexameter, the Order of the Golden Fleece is
positioned as a revival of the Greek heroes of Thessaly, the seat of Jason’s kingdom. The
sonnet chastens members like Cosimo to bear the stolen spoil (rapti spolii), reaffirming
Cellini’s use of the term in reference to the bust, as a reminder to tame both earthly
monsters and the sea. However, the poem also acknowledges the origins of the Order of
the Golden Fleece at the court of Burgundy, under Philip the Good.
Knights like Cosimo were the inheritors of a mythological framework generated
in the fifteenth-century, and more correctly, centuries earlier in medieval France. Philip’s
Burgandian court did not rediscover the myth of the Argonauts as classical text directly
from sources like Valerius Flaccus or Apollonius Rhodius. As historians such as Johan
Huizinga pointed out decades ago, there was no rebirth of interest in mythology in
Burgundy, but instead the continuation of Greco-Roman myth as chivalric romance, that
is, deeply embedded within extant court literature originating in medieval France. The
narrative of the Argonauts spread in the Middle Ages within texts like the Histoire
ancienne jusqu’à César and Le Roman de Troie which were essentially chivalric
romances. These were copied piecemeal and removed from the original classical
versions.
188
In this manner Jason became a knight-errant, struggling with the love of the
Colchian princess Medea and the claim for his rightful kingdom of Thessaly. He was
largely indistinguishable from the likes of the knight Orlando from the Chanson de
Roland. This chivalric perception of Jason continued well into the late fifteenth century
under the Duke of Burgundy; Philip’s chaplain, Raoul Léfevre, wrote L’histoire de
Jason, printed in 1485, which embraced these chivalric tendencies. Jason was described

188
For the medieval transmission of the Argonautica see also de’ Giovanni-Centelles,
“La proiezione mediterranea del Toson d’oro,” 71-81.

98
as a physical and moral exemplar, who excelled at jousting, and who fell in love with
Medea and married her. Jason’s moral errors, such as his infidelity, were completely
washed over. Léfevre manipulated and rewrote sections of Jason’s tale to align him with
the chanson de geste, something that had been done for centuries previous.
189

The selection of a mythological theme for a knighthood was in many ways out of
character for the period; earlier knighthoods generally favored more Christianized figures
such as saints, like Saint John or Saint George. The adoption of the myth as the unifying
theme for a Christian knighthood was not without its critics, largely because of the
infidelity of Jason that the Burgundian court had so easily dismissed. As Huizinga
maintained in The Autumn of the Middle Ages, “Jason as a hero of legend was suspect; he
had broken his vow of fidelity.”
190
For this reason, Dante placed Jason in the eighth circle
of hell. To solve this problem “Jean Germain, the learned bishop of Chalons and
chancellor of the order, brought to Philip’s attention that fleece that Gideon had spread on
the ground on which the heavenly dew fell. This was an especially good idea because this
Fleece of Gideon was one of the most fitting symbols of fertilization of Mary’s
womb.”
191
Philip was provided with an Old Testament alternative for the symbol,
allowing it interpretive leeway to avoid outright criticism. Yet few read the fleece as
anything other than its mythological counterpart. The journey of the heroes was instead
perceived through a similar Christianized lens. By the Middle Ages the story of the
Argonauts had been interpreted as a typological journey eastward to liberate Christ and
thus could be situated within a Christian paradigm. Through a kind of emblematic

189
See Ruth Morse, “Problems of Early Fiction: Raoul Lefèvre’s ‘Histoire de Jason’” The
Modern Language Review 78 (1983): 34-45.
190
Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, trans. Rodney J. Payton and Ulrich
Mammitzsch (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 95.
191
Huizinga, 95-96.

99
displacement the fleece was believed to represent the sacrifice of Christ, the agnus dei.
192

The interpretation derived from manuscripts like l’histoire de la Toison d’or by Guillame
Fillastre from the fifteenth century, in turn influenced by the L’Ovide moralisé
tradition.
193
The manuscript illustrates a scene of Jason’s capture of the Golden Fleece,
below a triptych of Christ’s crucifixion, descent into hell, and ascent into heaven (fig.
2.13). Each scene is in turn paired with a Jasonian interpretation; Christ’s retrieval of
unbaptized souls from the mouth of hell is, for example, compared to Jason’s slaying of
the dragon. The chivalric mutation of the classical story by Philippe the Good further cast
the myth as proto-crusade. In this Christianized interpretation, the liberation of the fleece
from Colchis aligned with the crusading ethos, as the liberation of Christ, or by extension
Christ’s tomb. As Ruth Morse states regarding the selection of the Argonautic theme by
Philippe, “in an allegorically-minded age the model of the first quest was convenient as a
symbol for the recapture of Jerusalem by crusade to be led by a modern-day premier
prince...”
194
Such themes appear to have spread in the fifteenth century to the Republic of
Florence as well. A cassone panel in the Bargello illustrates the Argonautica in a similar
chivalric vein (fig. 2.14). As the heroes prepare to leave Thessaly for Colchis they carry
the flag of Jerusalem, the centralized Greek cross with four smaller crosses at each
corner. The Argonauts set out, not only to seize the Golden Fleece, but also to liberate the
Holy Land.

192
Later emblematists like Capaccio support this reading suggesting that the ram
represented Christ, the apostles, and the cross, as Hesychius of Jerusalem interpreted the
appearance of the ram to Abraham. Giulio Cesare Capaccio, 77r.
193
On the l’histoire de la Toison d’or by Guillame Fillastre see Claudine Lemaire “La
Toison d’or, sa legend, ses symbols, son influence sur l’histoire littéraire” in l’ordre de la
Toison d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430-1505): idéal ou reflet d’un
société? ed. Christiane Van der Bergen-Pantens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 84-90.
194
Morse, 36.

100
While well preceding the Ottoman capture of Jerusalem in 1517, these crusading
ideals, however, slide further into early modern concern for the defense of Christianity.
Jason and the Argonauts not only fought to take back the kingdom of Thessaly by
capturing the Golden Fleece, they prophesized the coming efforts to liberate Christ’s
tomb, later to be associated with defense of Christendom against the avarice of the
Ottoman Empire. This transformation was pervasive by the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries; an emblem of Assiduitate of Duke Albert of Burgundy showing
Jason holding the Golden Fleece from Jacob Typot’s Symbola Divina et Humana (1601-
03), remains one of many such examples (fig. 2.15). In the explanation Typot specifically
interprets Jason’s labors of slaying the dragon and harnessing the bulls as a parallel for
Christian princes fighting the Turks over land and sea, not only in Colchis, but in all of
Asia.
195

By Cosimo’s era, manuscripts containing the original Argonautica spread
throughout Europe and proliferated in print. The most widely available versions in the
Cinquecento were written by Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus, but many

195
“Nam memor infaustae expeditionis Hungariae, jam rum posteris ostendebat viam,
non in Colchidem, sed in universam Asiam, recepta Europa, transcundi, cujus opes Turca,
veluti Draco, praereptas & praeclusas nobis servat. Nam, ut Iason, non solus, at sociis
totius Graeciae Principibus in Colchidem pervenit; ita Duci expeditionis arduae, & jam
necessariae; non enim in Colchide quaerendus est hic Draco, sed foribus nostris
propulsandis; opus est subsidio & societate Principum, civitatum, totius Christiani
nominis, omnium, ut pluribus Paulus Jovius, ne quidquam docet. Et que madmodum
Iason, non mari tantùm, sed & terra jacatus ferrut; haud alitet Turca terra marique, ne
habeat, quo se vertat, incusso & illato undique terrore, oppugnandus est.” “Ac ne consilio
aliquid desit; Symbolum (Assiduitate) as Hieroglypton accredit. Nam consilio quidem
opus est antè factum; sed à facto non cunctandum; studio, assidutate, diligentia, potiùs
maturandum. Horum, si fidem Christianis facere, Christianus Princeps posset; Turcas,
verè Tauros: Sunt enim nostrorum multi, qui in bellumam degenerarunt naturam, qui
Turcae ancillantur; imò hoc est robut, haec vires, (hoc praesidium Draconis) etiamsi
ignem & Martem spirarent, nullo negotio subjugaremus, & frangeremus spiritus.” Jacob
Typot, Symbola Divina et Humana (Prague: 1601-1603), book II, 107-108.

101
alternate versions of the favola could be found including in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and
the writings of Hyginus, Apollodorus, and Diodorus Siculus. By the time these versions
became available, certain geographic parallels in the voyage of the Argonauts continued
to promote the myth’s role as a typological crusade, in particular the heroes stop over at
Troy before arriving to Colchis. This connection with Troy was central to the reworking
of the narrative under men like Raoul Léfevre.
196
Morse notes, “Not only did classical
sources report that the rape of Medea was one of those local brush-fire wars that preceded
the global involvement at Troy, but that they also reported that the Argonauts were the
fathers or grandfathers of many of the heroes of that war...”
197
They positioned the
Argonauts as the initiators of the war of Troy generations before Achilles and Hector.
Diodorus Siculus, a skeptic of classical myth, writes a rather lengthy passage on the
Argonauts stop at Troy in which he claims that Hercules saved the daughter of the King
Laomedon, named Hesione, from a sea-dragon. After aiding the family, the hero was
promised gifts, namely the woman he saved and some exceptional horses, but upon
returning to Troy to claim his prizes, Laomedon denied him these spoils and tried to kill
him. Diodorus writes
“…after sailing through the Propontis and Hellespont they landed at the
Troad [Troy]. Here, when Heracles dispatched to the city his brother Iphiclus and
Telamon to demand back both mares and Hesione, Laomedon, it is said, threw the
ambassadors in prison and planned to lay an ambush for the other Argonauts and
encompass their death. He had the rest of his sons as willing aids in the deed, but
Priam alone opposed it; for he declared that Laomedon should observe justice in
his dealings with the strangers…”
198

196
On the connection between the Argonauts and Troy see also Danielle Quéruel, “La
Toison d’or, sa legend, ses symbols, son influence sur l’histoire littéraire” in l’ordre de la
Toison d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430-1505): idéal ou reflet d’un
société? ed. Christiane Van der Bergen-Pantens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 91-98.
197
Morse, 36.
198
C.H. Oldfather trans., The Library of History, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1935), 496-497.

102

Discussing Hercules’ retribution, Diodorus continues,
“There was a sharp battle, but their courage gave the chieftains the upper
hand, and Hercacles, the myths report, performed the bravest feats of them all; for
he slew Laomedon, and taking the city at the first assault he punished those who
were parties with the king to the plot, but to Priam, because of the spirit of justice
he had shown, he gave the kingship, entered into a league of friendship with him,
and then sailed away in company with the Argonauts.”
199

Thus the Argonauts, led by Hercules, became the first to sack Troy, and acted as
arbiters of Priam’s rise to the throne. These narratives still retained the chivalric roots
grafted on to them in the Middle Ages in the Cinquecento, falling in line with the
Renaissance of crusade rhetoric. As James Hankins and Nancy Bisaha have shown, links
were frequently drawn between the Ottomans and Trojans because of a shared Anatolian
geography.
200
By the mid-fifteenth century crusade rhetoric often discussed the Turks as
descendants of the Trojans, seeking revenge on those who sacked their ancient city of
Ilium. Invectives called on Christians to assail the city once more, replaying the Homeric
myth of the siege by the Greeks. Such ideas were propagated by the likes of Montaigne
through the sixteenth century.
201
Jason’s victory over Colchis with the help of the
Argonauts foretold the victories of a united Christendom against the barbarian East, in the
sack of Troy and the besting of Colchis. These efforts foretold future endeavors of new
Argonauts like Cosimo I who once again set out to sack Troy and best Colchis.

199
Ibid., 498-499.
200
James Hankins “Renaissance Crusaders: Humanist Crusade Literature in the Age of
Mehmed II” Dumbarton Oaks Papers (1995): 111-207. Nancy Bisaha, Creating East and
West: Renaissance Humanists and the Ottoman Turks (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 56. On belief in the shared origins of the Turks and the
Trojans see also Michael Heath, “Renaissance Scholars and the Origins of the Turks”
Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance (1979): 453-471.
201
On Montaigne and the Trojan-Turk debate see Terence Spencer, “Turks and Trojans
in the Renaissance,” The Modern Language Review 47 (1952): 332.

103
For Philip and knights like Cosimo, the appeal of the Argonautic theme likely
derived, not from its antiquity alone, but from the myth’s status as a prime history, the
earliest chronological precedent of a sequence of related events to follow. The myth of
the Argonauts could not be reduced to a historical precursor (as could the vast majority of
the Homeric myths), acting as a foundational event, which became the model for all
reflections in later periods. From the battle of Troy to the medieval crusades, all
collective war efforts fought between Europe and Asia derived from the men who set out
under Jason as the result of later geographic parallels. Jason’s men started the wars
between Europe and Asia by sacking Troy, and stealing Medea from Colchis, events that
lead directly to the rape of Helen and the arrival of the Achaeans to return her to Greece.
For Herodotus in the opening chapters of his Histories, this rift between continents was
born from the likes of the Argonauts rape of Medea; “They sailed in a long ship in to Aea
of the Colchians and to the river Phasis: and when they had done the rest of the business
for which they came, they carried off the king’s daughter Medea.”
202
The sprawling
narrative operated as the spark that set the actors of a future world in motion, returning
again to Troy and carrying into the later literary worlds of Orlando Furioso and Piero
Angeli da Barga’s Syrias.
If Cosimo felt himself to be a part of Thessaly reborn, it had much to do with
early modern literary rhetoric upholding the Order of the Golden Fleece. The concept of
the “new Argonaut” appeared in Italian chivalric literature of the sixteenth century,
including Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, written for the Ferrarese court. As a
veiled ode to Charles V, Ariosto made sure to include plays on imperial identity,

202
A.D. Godley, trans. The Persian Wars, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1920), 4-5.

104
discussing the merits of several seaman as parallels to the mythological mariners.
Although the heroes of old acted as paragon, modern men did much to challenge their
monopoly over the chivalric virtue of fortitude. In Orlando Furioso the enchantress
Adronica and Duke Astolfo, a knight of Charlemagne, discuss the possibility of
circumnavigating the world by sea. The enchantress replies in the affirmative, and states
“But with the passage of time I see new Argonauts, new Tiphyses hailing from lands
which lie furthest to the West, who shall open routes unknown to this day.”
203
Moving on
to discuss various discoverers of the New World, Adronica arrives last to the Genoese
admiral Andrea Doria, which she describes as
“the same Doria who makes your sea everywhere safe from pirates. Pompey for
all that he made a clean sweep of the pirates, was not as excellent as he; for
Pompey’s pirates had the most powerful empire of all time ravaged against them,
while this Doria shall purge the seas of their presence by his unaided strength and
skill. From Gibraltar to the Nile I see every shore tremble at the mention of his
name.”
204

Although Doria was no explorer, his efforts to protect the Mediterranean from North
African pirates like Khayr al-Dīn, elevated him to the level of new Argonaut, alongside
Hernan Cortez and others. Doria, and his sons, fought in significant imperial battles
against the Turks, including the siege of Tunis in 1535, the Battle of Preveza in 1538, and
the siege of Mahdia in 1550. Cosimo’s visit to Genoa in 1530s as a youth may have
impressed upon him the importance of naval prowess, but certainly Doria’s
immortalization by Ariosto set a high standard. For the Florentines, Doria acted as model,
collaborator, and rival in the Florentine duchy’s efforts to expand its reach into the
Mediterranean.

203
Guido Waldman trans., Orlando Furioso (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
155.
204
Ibid.,157.

105
Like Ferrara, the Tuscan court showed similar literary interest in the theme of the
new Argonaut, evidenced by another undated sonnet recorded by Sanleolini in his
publication dedicated to Cosimo, printed in 1578. The Latin sonnet addresses Cosimo’s
efforts to clean up the piracy of the Mediterranean, calling on the Duke to pursue the
enemy to the Black Sea. It appears, in many ways, as a response to Arisoto’s declarations
of the virtues of Doria. The anonymous hand writes:

As quickly as possible Neptune calls to the fleet of Tuscany, / far off with the
spiral sounding conches, / to sail in the Tyrrhenian near Vada [South of Pisa], and
to break the marble of foam, / and for the Medici Palle to fly on the waves / of the
seas; so he extinguished all of the curled waves, / and of the seven Zephyrs none
were blowing to the east, / so upon hearing the uproar of the lesser gods he played
his song. / “The fated ship, the bright new Argo merrily hewn by the axe, returns
again through the azure, the chosen heroes, as Jason, as Theseus the great, / to the
invincible Hercules, either one on the breast of COSIMO, / make haste to follow
them, to bring favor to my realms: / now that safety stands up and flowers on the
sea; and fear / is lifted for the sailors, the nymphs, and the divine mariners, /
where Amphitrite extends her profound arms. / The Cyclops run: Polyphemus is
hidden in his cave, / and so a secure Galatea plays safely in the water. / The
terrifying plunderers of Asia, make haste to join the pirates of Libya in distant
Bactria: / And hence guarding there, the slave ships for which Tuscany / longs;
having stolen booty which adorns their shores: / Being now victor from the defeat
of the victorious, / Pompey asks for heads to place wreaths. / Surrender your sails
to the winds and in so desiring to raise high / the divine PALLE; You will be the
victor; and victorious you will return to the ARNO.” / Do not send off Neptune’s
voice yet, for as an omen it befell / the blood red waters of the Black sea /
henceforth in our day. The Thracian slaves LIVORNO / witnessed: How many
times in the name of CHRIST, / will TUSCANY eagerly fight, they who must be
conquered.
205

205
“CLASSI HETRUSCAE A M. COSMO PRIMUM / Instructae & in mare diductae/
QUAMPRIMUM classem se’sit Neptunus Hetrusca’, / Tortilibus longe’ resonantibus
conchis, / Tyrrhenis innare vadis & frangere marmor / Spumosum, Medycasq; PILAS
volitare per vndas / Aequoras, Curuu totum sese extulit vndis, / Soptis Zephyris, nullisque
efflantibus Euris, / Sic cecinit Diuum turba auscultante minorum. / Fortunata Abies,
foelici caesa secure / Clara novella argo, rehuens per Coerula rursum / Delectos Heroas,
Iasona, Thesea magnum, / Inuictum Alciden, vel in uno pectore COSMI, / Curre secunda,
meis foelixque illabere regnis: / Nunc Pelago secura quies stat parta: metusque / Sublatus
nautis, Nymphis, Diuisque marinis, / Brachia qua late sua porrigit Amphitrite. / Cyclopes
fugiant: lateat Polyphemus in antris / Tutaque securas ludat Galatea per vndas. /
Praedones Asiae pauidi, Lybicique Piratae / Extremis sese festinent condore Bactris: /

106

The concept of the new Argonaut underlies the poem; in the sonnet the author refers to
the “new argo” (novella argo), and Cosimo is presented in the manner of the heroes
Jason, Theseus, and Hercules, variously considered members of the Argonauts. While
Theseus was not included in either Apollonius’ or Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica, he was
accepted as a member by Apollodorus and Hyginus.
206
In his Lives, Plutarch mentions
that several sources confirmed that Theseus took part in the journey; “but others say that
he was not only with Jason at Colchis, but helped Meleager to slay the Calydonian boar;

Indeque nec tutos Captiuos Pinus Hetrusca / Auehat; raptis ornet sua littoral praedis: /
Iam nouus ex illis victis Victrica victor / Tempora pompeius petit exornare Coronis. /
Carbasa da Zephyris; Diuisque volentibus Alto / Pande PILAS: vinces: Vitrixque redibis
ad ARNVM. / Nec sua Neptunum vox missa, omenque fefellit / Aequora nam Getico
rubuerunt sanguine posthac / Nostra diu: & Thracum captiuas LABRO carinas / Vidit:
aeturnum, quoties pro nomine CHRISTI / Pugnabunt alacres THUSCI, vincamus oportet.”
Sanleolini, 41v-42r.
206
The figure of Theseus was frequently seen as a parallel for the figure of Jason, as the
narratives of each intertwined. Both Theseus and Jason were the lost sons of Greek kings,
prophesized to return to take their rightful place upon the throne. Theseus was identified
by the gifts of his father, including a pair of slippers, while Jason was identified by
emerging from a river wearing a single slipper. Each is sent off via ship on a quest to
conquer the beasts of a formidable empire, Theseus the Minoans and Jason the Colchians.
Most importantly though, each becomes involved with the sorceress Medea. Jason first
meets Medea in Colchis, where she immediately falls in love with him and aids him in
defeating the fiery bulls and dragon guarding the Golden Fleece. Returning with him to
Greece, Medea is later left by Jason for another woman. Theseus instead encounters
Medea as his fathers wife, now as his step-mother, who attempts to have him killed upon
realizing his true identity as descendant of the throne of Athens. When her plot is foiled,
she flees back to Colchis. Later Theseus will use the help of Ariadne to defeat the
Minotaur, later abandoning her for another woman, again following the model of Jason.
These similarities were known even to the original authors of the Argonautica. Though
Valerius Flaccus states that Theseus was not among the members of the Argonauts he
incorporates the narrative within the myth as a “story within a story.” Jason tells Medea
that if he helps him in defeating the beasts of Colchis, she will be raised to the stars like
Ariadne who helped Theseus in defeating the Minotaur. Flaccus’ use of the myth makes
Theseus the model for Jason and reverses the established chronology of the events, where
Jason is typically the model for Theseus.

107
and that hence arose the proverb, ‘Not without Theseus.’”
207
Following Plutarch,
historians such as Giovanni Tarcagnota in the sixteenth century also confirm that,
“Several write that Theseus sailed to Colchis with Jason…[and] was for the excellence of
his valor called another Hercules.”
208
The hero’s later decision to volunteer as one of the
Athenian tributes to be sent to the island of Crete to slay the Minotaur and free Athens of
its subservient status to the navy of Knossos would also have resonated with this call to
combat piracy. The island of Crete had a long history of association as a den of pirates.
After Minos fell, according to Strabo, Crete fell further under the control of pirates:
“But later it changed very much for the worse; for after the Tyrrhenians, who
more than any other people ravaged Our Sea, the Cretans succeeded to the
business of piracy; their piracy was later broken up by the Cilicians; but all piracy
was broken up by the Romans, who reduced Crete by war and also the piratical
strongholds of the Cilicians.”
209

Before the Romans recaptured Crete, the island functioned as a home for pirates to assail
the coasts of the Mediterranean. Some interpretations of the Argonauts efforts fall in line
with the ongoing fight against piracy in the Mediterranean in a similar vein to Theseus.
After discussing the defeat of the Minotaur and the remission of tribute, Plutarch writes
in the Life of Theseus that “There was, he says, a general Hellenic decree that no trireme

207
Bernadotte Perrin trans., Lives. Theseus, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1914), 66-67.
208
“Scrivono alcuni, che Teseo navigasse in Colco con Iasone…ò che fosse per
l’eccelenzia del suo valore chiamato un altro Ercole.” Giovanni Tarcagnota, Delle Istorie
del Mondo, vol. 1 (Venice: 1562), 78.
209
Horace Leonard Jones trans., Geography, vol. 4 (Cambridge: Harvard Univeristy
Press, 1917), 132-133. Crete would in later years fall to the Emirate of Egypt from the
820s to 961, which it used to ravage the coastlines of the Byzantine Empire. Again, this
was a fact mentioned by Tarcagnota in his universal history dedicated to Duke Cosimo;
“Havendo in questo mezzo i Saraceni di Egitto l’isola di Candia occupata, ne passarano
in questi tempi nel mare Adriatico co’ legni loro; e posto a sacco, e in ruina quanto e da
Otranto fino in Ancona, passando a dare il medesimo nella riviera della Dalmatia, e dell’
Illirio, dove havevano presa Ragugia a forza, fin’ sopra a Grado ne vennero.” Tarcagnota,
vol. 4, 230r.

108
should sail from any port with a larger crew than five men, and the only exception was
Jason, the commander of the Argo, commended by Jason, who sailed about scouring the
sea of pirates.”
210
Early modern historians also picked up on this sentiment claiming
Jason to be a reformer of the sea similar to Pompey; “Cleidemus was a writer, who spoke
of the galleys of the Greeks; & he wrote that Jason Captain of the ship of the Argo,
liberated the sea from corsairs.”
211
Within the life of Theseus, mentioned by Plutarch as
an Argonaut, Jason and his crew are described as combating the piracy of the seas.
As a visual representation of this layered historical imagination of the Argonauts,
Cellini’s bronze portrait bust connected the heroes of the Golden Fleece to a crusading
tradition that dreamed of a liberated Jerusalem, but focused its efforts on eradicating
Ottoman piracy in the Mediterranean. The placement of the bronze bust of Cosimo as
new Argonaut above the Forte Stella, reinforced this site-specific message.

Locating Elba in Florentine History

From its very inception, Cellini’s bronze portrait bust manipulated early modern
geographical imagination to fashion the duke as a mythological crusader. For Pope-
Hennessy, the bust’s seemingly ad hoc relationship with the Elba, paired with the limited
viewership of the bust’s eventual placement on the island, compelled him to find the
work a stylistic failure. However, reexamining both Elba’s pride of place in Cosimo’s
visual rhetoric and his larger plan vision for the defense of the Tuscan coast, illustrates

210
Perrin, Lives, 38-39.
211
“Clidemo fù uno scrittore, che parlò delle Galee de Greci; & che scrisse Giasone
Capitano della nave d’Argo, haver liberato il mare da Corsali.” Orazio Toscanella, Gioie
historiche, aggiunte alla prima parte delle vite di Plutarco I (Venice: 1567), 235.

109
that the duke valued the island as a strategic position in the Tyrrhenian sea; instead
Cosimo likely conceived of the portrait bust as the final piece of a decade long struggle to
secure the port of Portoferraio from Barbary and Ottoman pirates.
Years before Cellini’s arrival to the Florentine court, Duke Cosimo began to show
interest in Elba’s possibilities as a location to fortify the Tyrrhenian Sea. Prior to the mid-
1540s, the entire island fell under the rule of the Prince of Piombino, Jacopo d’Appiano,
Cosimo’s uncle from his aunt Elena Salviati.
212
The Prince of Piombino, however, left
Elba unfortified during his rule as a result of lack of funds. A small medieval structure
appears to have been built above Portoferraio, but it provided little protection.
Consequently the island provided Ottoman and Barbary flotillas a convenient location to
port in the spring and summer during extended attacks on the Italian coastline. Beginning
as early as 1543, Cosimo began to commission surveys of the port of Portoferraio. Lelio
Torelli, writing to the Duke on the 5
th
of December 1543, said:
“if your Excellency were to grab for yourself the custody of that island, where
rebuilding a ruined fortress above Portoferraio, would have here the most secure
port in all of Christendom…which in little time with the layout [provided] they
would be safeguarded from corsairs, and the inhabitants and workers would
multiply…”
213

Following these surveys the duke criticized d’Appiano’s negligence, expressing concerns
to both his father-in-law, Don Pedro di Toledo, the viceroy of Naples, as well as directly

212
Battaglini, 15.
213
“che V.Exc.tia pigliasse in sè la custodia di quella isola, dove rifacendo una fortezza
guasta sopra porto ferraio, avrebbe quivi sicurissimo il più bel porto della
Christianità…che in poco tempo con l’ordine ci assicurebbono da’ corsari et
multiplicherebbono li habitatori et li operatori et V. Exc.tia a poco a poco diverebbe
patrona di quella isola, e di que’ canale,” ASF MdP 34, fol. 33. For a transcription see
part III in Alberto Riparbelli, La fondazione medicea di Portoferraio: regesto dei
documenti dell’archivio di stato di Firenze (Florence: 1979).

110
to Charles V.
214
Negotiations over control of the island proved a diplomatic quagmire,
angering not only the Prince of Piombino but the Genoese as well, led by Andrea Doria,
who feared Cosimo’s territorial expansion into the Tyrrhenian sea.
215
Because of this
imperial infighting, Charles V wavered on the request, postponing the final decision.
After five years of negotiations, in 1548, the emperor ceded Elba’s defensive
responsibilities to Duke Cosimo temporarily and at his own cost, but with the caveat that
Florentine control would be rescinded at a later date.
216
Within less than a year, Giovanni
Camerini, the duke’s primary architect, erected the walls of dual fortifications, Il Falcone
and the Forte Stella, above Portoferraio. A dedicatory plaque above the entrance of the
Forte Stella cites the date of the creation of the walls as 1548 (fig. 2.16), however,
construction on the fortress’ infrastructure continued for nearly a decade. Further
defensive additions to the port continued through the mid-1550s, including walls around
the harbor, an extended harbor-chain, as well as more permanent urban infrastructure,
including churches, bakeries, and homes. By the mid-1550s, Portoferraio had taken on a
new unofficial name, Cosmopolis.
Throughout Cosimo’s tenure as protector of Elba, the Florentines kept watch over
the Tuscan coast, frequently noting the passage of Ottoman flotillas, and occasionally
entering into skirmishes with corsairs. As early as 1549, the Florentines aided several
merchants, including a Genoese ship put to chase by the Bey of Algeria, Turgut Reis,

214
See Battaglini, 15-17.
215
Cosimo writes frequently to Don Diego di Mendozza in 1548 of the backlash from the
Genoese. See ASF MdP 11, fol. 58 and 74r for example.
216
Cosimo signed a document, sent to the imperial legate Don Diego di Mendoza in
which he agreed to give back control of the island to either Charles V or to one of his
ministers writing “la commissione…per la fortificazione di quel sito dell’Elba…firmata
da mio mano—scrive Cosimo—di dovere…et guardare quel forte per S.M. per renderlo
et consegnarlo a V.S. o ad altro Ministero di S.M. a ogni beneplacito di quella,” Ibid., 16.

111
known also as Dragut.
217
Turgut Reis featured frequently as a key antagonist in
Tyrrhenian piracy in the mid-sixteenth century; both the Genoese and the Florentines
pursued him throughout the Eastern Mediterranean until his death in the siege of Malta in
1565.
218
In 1555, Turgut Reis launched a small scale assault on the city of Portoferraio,
encouraged by the King of France, to test the Florentine defenses on Elba. After only half
a day, they called off the assault. The new fortifications withstood the Ottoman fleet.
Within the visual rhetoric of Cosimo’s dominion, Elba played an important role.
In 1555, after successively repelling Turgut’s assault, Cosimo commissioned a medal to
commemorate the near completion of Portoferraio (fig. 2.17); with a portrait of Cosimo
on the obverse, the reverse shows an image of Elba with a fleet of ships protected by the
shelter of the harbor. A Latin inscription reads “Thuscorum et Ligurum Sercuritati,” or
“the security of Tuscany and Liguria.” Below this it reads, “Ilva Renascens,” or Elba
reborn. A half-century later, Jacob Typot included the design of the medal of Elba in his
book of emblems, Symbola Divina et Humana (1601-03), suggesting that pride in the
Elban fortifications circulated widely throughout Europe (fig. 2.18). The medal also
became the inspired later images, including the small roundel painted by Giorgio Vasari
in the Sala di Cosimo I in the Palazzo Vecchio in the early 1560s (fig. 2.19). The painting
shows Cosimo, with a plan of Portoferraio in hand, gesturing towards the finished
fortifications. Vasari in his Ragionamenti describes the image; “In this second roundel is
the island of Elba, with Portoferraio, and the fortresses la Stella, & il Falcone, built by his
Excellency which I have depicted there from afar, with all of the streets and the wall

217
ASF MdP 14, fol. 158; See Battaglini, 246.
218
In fact, the Genoese once captured him, only to be forced under threat of siege to
release him back to the Ottomans.

112
exactly where they are.”
219
Vasari later clarifies the city as “la Città di Cosmopoli.”
220

While the city of Portoferraio may have been a peripheral space geographically, for
Cosimo the island played a key role in his efforts to secure the Tuscan coastline from
Ottoman piracy, the very corsairs mentioned by Torelli in 1543. Using images painted by
Vasari and minted in Florence, Cosimo attempted to bring Elba into the fold visually as
part of the imagined geography of the Tuscan duchy.
For almost a decade after the erection of Cosimo’s initial fortifications
surrounding Portoferraio, control of Elba remained in flux. While the Prince of Piombino
retained control in name, Cosimo acted as temporary protector for nearly a decade.
However, as Charles V stipulated, the duke’s role as sole ruler of Elba was not intended
to last. On March 18 of 1557 [1558], control of Elba returned the Prince of Piombino,
Jacopo d’Appiano. However, in consolation, Charles allowed Cosimo to keep the land he
had newly fortified. The emperor officially invested the duke with the title of
Portoferraio, which was added to his long list of territories. Though the official
declaration occurred on March 18, Cosimo likely became aware of the fate of Elba some
months before. Four months before the duke’s official investment as ruler of Portoferraio,
Cellini recorded the shipment of his bust to the port, sent directly to the head architect
Giovanni Camerini.
221
From period drawings and paintings of the Forte Stella, the bust

219
“In questo secondo tondo è l’Isola dell”Elba, con porto Ferraio, e le fortezze della
Stella, & del Falcone, edificare da S.E. che l’ho ritratte là nel lontano, con tutte quelle
strade è mura che per l’appunto vi sono,” later clarifying the city as “la Città di
Cosmopoli.” Giorgio Vasari, Ragionamenti del Signore Cavaliere Giorgio Vasari pittore
et architetto Aretino (Florence: 1588), 158. Earlier in describing the expanse of Cosimo’s
rule under Charles V, Vasari writes “per farlo crescere di Dominio, gli fà venire sotto il
governo l’Isola del Elba, e lo Stato di Siena” freely mentioning the two additions to the
duchy. Ibid., 27.
220
Ibid., 158.
221
See Tassi, vol. 3, 79.

113
appears to have been installed in an elevated niche, placed above the central entrance of
the fortress. A drawing of Portoferraio by Jacopo Ligozzi shows the structure, a space of
privilege in the fortifications (fig. 2.20). This niche appears to have been specifically
constructed for the duke’s portrait bust, possibly shortly before its shipment.
Furthermore, by 1570 Elba was geographically associated with Cosimo’s
knighthood, the Knights of Saint Stephen. In his work on the origins of knighthood
dedicated to the duke, Franscesco Sansovino includes a description of the island of Elba
directly after a description of the island of Malta, suggesting a parallel between the two.
At the end of his discussion of the classical sources on the island with refer to it as Ilva in
Latin and Aethalia in Greek the author writes
“Currently the Lord Cosimo, Duke of Florence and of Siena, builds here a city for
the beauty & security of this place called Cosmopoli, & in order to do so has adapted it &
however continues to adapt that island, as it is believed & hoped by everyone, that in a
short time he will be pleased & and delighted to designate it for the Knights of Saint
Stephen, & for travelers, who are & to whom the duke is very affectionate &
courteous.”
222

The islands association with the knights, who used Portoferraio as a key location to
defend the Tuscan coast, further suggests its strategic importance to combat the Turks.
Though the lengthy period between the busts completion and its shipment to Elba
has long convinced scholars of its tentative relationship to the space, Cosimo’s plans for
the bust anticipated his control of Portoferraio, a space which he had showed interest in
as early as 1543. While the bust’s completion in 1548 coincided with the completion of
the first fortress walls, it still predated any actual infrastructure, which as Sansovino’s

222
“Al presente il S. Cosimo Duca di Fiorenza et di Siena, vi fabrica una città per belleza,
& sicurezza del luogo chiamata Cosmopoli, & ha di modo ridutta, & va tuttavia
riducendo quell’Isola, che si crede & spera per ogniuno, ch’in breve tempo sarà lieta &
dilettevole stanza per li Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, & per li forestieri, de quali & a quali
il Duca è molto amorevole & coretese.” Sansovino, 158.

114
text reminds us, continued well into the duke’s life.

Only in October of 1558, seven
months after the shipment of the bust, had Camerini placed the finishing touches on a set
of rooms within the Forte Stella set aside for the duke.
223
The installation of the duke’s
portrait must be seen in relation to this late stage of construction. The portrait bust, placed
above the entrance of the completed space, designated control of the Forte Stella as the
duke’s private residence in the very city which took his name, Cosmopolis. This liminal
period of transition, where the bust sat in the guardaroba, reminded viewers of the
anticipated completion of a space very few would have the opportunity to see. And the
marble copy, acted as a local reminder of Cosimo’s patronage of the island port after the
bronze bust’s departure.

The Rebirth of Elba in Classical Mytho-Geography

The very idea of the “Ilva Renascens,” the rebirth of Elba, presented in a selection
of ducal media, begins to remap the portrait bust’s relationship with a narrowly defined
Florentine Renaissance. While the bust portrayed the duke as a new Argonaut during its
stay in the guardaroba, the final installation of the all’antica work clearly crystallized
these themes through its site specificity. Cellini’s work, installed above the entrance of
Forte Stella, signaled the completion of a fortified city that overlooked the very port
classical geographers maintained that the Argonauts visited. Within the Argonautica of
Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus, the two poets claimed that the heroes stopped
on an island of Aethalia, along the Tyrrhenian coast, to cleanse themselves and make

223
Amelio Fara, Portoferraio: architettura e urbanistica 1548-1877 (Torino: Fondazione
Giovanni Agnelli,1997), 17.

115
offerings to Jupiter, while searching out Circe’s cave on their return journey to Thessaly.
Aethalia has, since at least the time of Strabo, been associated with Elba. In the second
chapter of the fifth book of his Geographica, Strabo discusses the Tyrrhenian islands,
where he mentions the landing of the Argonauts:

“Again, there is at Aethalia a Portus Argous, from the ship “Argo,” as they say;
for when Jason, the story goes, was in quest of the abode of Circe, because Medea
wished to see the goddess, he sailed to this port; and, what is more, because the
scrapings, which the Argonauts formed when they used their strigils, became
congealed, the pebbles on the shore remain variegated to this day. Now mythical
stories of this sort are proof of what I have been saying: that Homer was not wont
to fabricate everything on his own account, but, because he heard many such
stories told over and over again, he was wont on his own account to add to them
by lengthening the distances and making the settings more remote; and that just as
he threw the setting of his Odysseus out into the ocean, so similarly he threw the
setting of his Jason there, because a wandering had actually taken place in the life
of Jason as well as in that of Odysseus—just as in that of Menelaus. So much,
then, for the island of Aethalia.”
224

Strabo’s discussion of the landing of the Argonauts at Aethalia falls very much in
line with the descriptions by both Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus.
225
In each,
the heroes remove their armor to cleanse themselves of the misdeeds required to obtain
the Golden Fleece, including the murder of Medea’s brother. The anecdote of the landing
follows the protocol of the Geographica, which uses mythology as a source of
explanation of geographic features, in this case the striated rocks of the island attributed

224
Jones, Geography, 356-357.
225
Apollonius Rhodius writes “Then, after leaving the Stoechades islands, they went on
to the island of Aethalia, where, wearied from their toil, they wiped off their abundant
sweat with pebbles, and these, like skin in color, are strewn along the beach. And there
too are throwing stones and wondrous equipment of theirs, where the place is named the
harbor of the Argo after them.” Race, Argonautica, 383. Diodorus Siculus writes “And
likewise the continent this side of Gadeira (Cadiz) contains visible tokens of the return
voyage of the Argonauts. So, for example, as they sailed about the Tyrrhenian Sea, when
they put in at an island called Athaleia they named its harbour, which is the fairest of any
in those regions, Argoon, after their ship, and such has remained its name to this day.”
Oldfather trans., Library of History, vol. 2, 524-525.

116
to the sweat of the heroes.
226
Strabo’s digression regarding Homer also suggests the
manner in which these narratives were mined for historical and geographical
observations, separating exaggeration from supposed fact. For Strabo, “mythical stories”
provided useful sources for mapping the features of the distant edges of the
Mediterranean. In turn, Strabo’s Mediterranean acted as a world model for men like Duke
Cosimo.
The Florentine court clearly knew this passage in Strabo’s work and specifically
visualized it on at least one occasion. During the entry procession of Francesco I and
Giovanna d’Austria, for their wedding festivities in 1565, Vasari and the greater
Accademia del disegno included a scene of the rebirth of Elba on an ephemeral arch,
ostensibly asserting Florentine naval power. A passage in the second edition of Vasari’s
Vite of 1568 describes the arch with images of mythological scenes paired with an image
of the island.
227
He writes of a painting paired with an image of Elba:

“ in a similar way corresponding to painting made above [the image of Elba], was
seen similarly that myth [favola] which was set there by Strabo, when he recounts that the
Argonauts returning from the capture of the Golden Fleece, arrived to Elba with Medea,
where they raised altars and made sacrifices to Jupiter, possibly preempting or foretelling
that at another time this glorious Duke for the Order of the Golden Fleece, almost obliged
as part of their crew [squadra], fortified it and protected traveling sailors, to renew their
antiquity and their glorious memory.”
228

226
For an account of the change of the rocks due to the sweat of the Argonauts on Elba
within the classical tradition see Erkinger Schwarzenberg, “Gli Argonauti all’Elba,”
Artista (1996): 58-63.
227
Elba is show both as a personification and as a vista: “…si vedeva in simil modo
dipinta la famosa, benchè piccola, Isola dell’Elba, sotto forma d’una armata guerriera,
sedere sopra un gran sasso, col tridente della destra mano, avendo dell’un de’ lati un
piccolo fanciuletto che con delfino pareva che vezzosamente shcrzasse, e dall’altro a quel
simile, che un’ancora reggeva con molte galee che d’intorno al sup porto…” Giorgio
Vasari, Le vite de’ più ecelenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, vol.
8 (Florence: Sansoni, 1882), 535-538.
228
“…in simil modo corrispondendo alla sopra dipinta faccia, si vedeva similmente
quella favola che da Strabone è messa, quando conta che tornando gl’Argonauti

117

The image also had an accompanying inscription:
There once came forth heroes who on this shore
Sought with high spirits gods in prayers. Behold Elba
Under the auspices of mighty Cosimo fortified with great works.
Race over the secure sea in confidence, sailors.
229

Citing Strabo as the central source, the description in the Vite begins to reveal the spatio-
temporal connectedness of Elba. The painting of the island, placed in direct comparison
with the visualization of the Argonauts landing reinforces the return of the harbor to its
former antiquity. Yet the author of the Vite takes the comparison a step further; by
connecting the Argonauts presence to Cosimo’s investiture in the Order of the Golden
Fleece, he uses the classical past as prophecy and proof of the coming efforts of Cosimo I
to fortify Portoferraio. Indeed his choice of language is highly suggestive. He writes that
the raising of altars and sacrifices to Jupiter on Elba anticipated (prevenendo) or foretold
(augurando), that at a future time the duke, as a knight of the Golden Fleece, would raise
fortresses to protect traveling sailors in the Tyrrhenian sea. Although not explicit, the
implication for this revival is the conflation of the Argonautic myth with the defense of
Christendom from the Turks. Strabo’s record of the landing of the Argonauts became a
prophetic event for the Florentines, foretelling Cosimo’s later efforts to secure the island
from Ottoman and Barbary corsairs.

dall’aquisto del Vello d’oro, all’Elba con Medea arrivati, vi rizzarono altar e vi fecero a
Giove sagrifizio, prevenendo forse o augurando che ad altro tempo questo glorioso Duca
per l’ordine del Tosone, quasi della loro squadra dovesse, fortificandola et assicurando i
travagliati naviganti, rinnovare l’antica di loro e gloriosa memoria.” Ibid.
229
Loren Patridge and Randolph Starn, Arts of Power: Three Halls of State in Italy,
1300-1600 (Berkeley: Unviersity of California Press, 1992), 278. For a breakdown of the
arch called “Arch of Martime Power” see Ibid., 277-278.

118
Again these themes can be found in extant court literature, and are similarly
wrapped up in the temporal notion of Elba’s antiquity and its later role in early modernity
under Cosimo. This language is continually couched in terms of prophecy, and the
revelation of prophecy. In Sanleolini’s text dedicated to Cosimo I, the author includes a
neo-Latin poem in heroic hexameter. The work is set as an elaborate prognostication by
Orpheus, a member of the Argonauts, during their brief stay at the harbor of Portus
Argous, or Portoferraio. With the ability of a seer, Orpheus tells of the future of the
harbor under the Magnanimous Tuscan who will arrive in time to secure the port;

In Cosmopolis on ELBA of Cosimo Magno / builder of the island in the
Tyrrhenian Sea, and Porto Ferraio / once Porto Argo, and the most superb protected
fortresses on the same island. /

Orpheus’ Prophecy.

Facing the estuaries of the Arno, in the vast sea of the Tyrrhenian rises / the island
of the eminent Calybes with inexhaustible metals / and ancient Elba the inhabitants say,
in our native lands, / was thus chosen by the brilliant group under Jason, / the
Stoechadian shore fading with the Golden Fleece stolen from the flock / on the so-called
Argo then known to have been the first on the sea. / Hence here the oldest Greeks took
the name of the Argo and the port. / I declare “Ferraio” of Iron [Porto Ferraio] afterwards
is the lesser [name]. / And now of the Mynians [Argonauts] released from the Colchian
fields. / Blowing and windy, while Typhis is preparing the sails / here Orpheus, born of
Calliope, ignites the harp / by the power of his mother before he offers a full song. / “The
daring Mynians, the most excellent hearts of the Greeks, / here I see nothing but lack of
civilization and emptiness by inhabitants, / the most untamed dwelling in horror and
sadness from brambles, / Journeying through the ages I recognize in the future, / By the
blossomed [Florentem] resources, and the iron pits / She will furnish generous vines in
every sort of field; /And her populated lands will sustain a wall on the island; / The study
of war will burn; and three hundred young auxiliaries of Aeneas will yield, of Latium /
introducing with just arms, commencing the pact of the consort of War. / And of the port,
here an enormous half horned moon, / from which it takes its image. Where a weak chain
/ Will not hold the ship; the strained hook no longer attached / and the fortresses laid
along the horns, those walls surrounding it, / which render no protection, vulnerable on
all sides from monsters. / O how much the virtue of the Tuscan hero rises under the star; /
And will he be encouraged after the passing of all those years? / In the heavens of the
twin from twins he will raise strongholds on the hills / And the port he will rule: and in
the middle he will have / COSMOPOLIS the said name of the patron surging / And from

119
burned ashes the bellicose war-machines driven out / (which at that time renewing there
the former Age) / How far away will he protect from dangerous enemies from above? /
And will they admit his friendly aid to the openings? / From our inferior excellence and
fleets, looking upon / Tuscany, and its boundary of Liguria, the sails throughout / the high
seas led by the soldier’s red cross; / and he will punish deserters, or to pirates deserved
death. / O’ what if time here brought the hastened prophecy / of the Magnanimous
Tuscan? And if we combined our strongest heroes who / strained traveling for the shores
of Aëtes [the King of Colchis]? / How much more intrepidly would the fiery dragon of
Mars be pursued? / And the bronze footed and fire breathing bulls / To ploughshare and
the earth shaking underneath our sighs? / The serpentine brothers fallen and created from
teeth? / The Golden Fleece and many battle prizes? / The victors returning our shores
again? / Viewing this their shared Etruscan plunder ? / But that time will arrive, when the
determined years themselves / Revive the beautiful favor nobly made / Which will
surround the many heroes of the great Fleece of Phrixus: / And will add amongst them so
great a name as COSIMO.” / So here said the seer. Typhis then surrendered the sails to
the wind.
230

230
“In Cosmopolim A M. Cosimo in ILVA / Maris Tyrrheni Insula aedificatem,
Portumque Ferrarium, / Olim Argoum, in eadem Insula superbissimis, / Arcibus
munitium. / Orphei Vaticinium. / Ostia contra ARNI Tyrrheno in gurgite surgit / Insula
inexhaustis Calybum generosa metallis: / Nostrates, priscique ILVAM dixere Coloni: /
Huc delecta Cohors claro sub Iasone, vellus / Auriferi raptura gregis de littore soluens /
Stoechadio; tum nota mari prior appulit Argo; / Portui & Argoo hinc nomen fecere
Pelasgi; / Ferratum a Ferro mox dicimus inde minores. / Iamque soluturis Myniis ad
Colchidos Arua, / Flantibus & Zephiris, & Typhi vela parante; / Calliope natus cytharam
Orpheus excitat; hosque; / Ante dedit plenus materno numine cantus. / Audentes Myniae,
lectissima pectora Graiûm, / Quam nunc incultam aspicimus, vacuamque Colonis, /
Tristibus horrentem dumis, stabula alta ferarum, / Transactis longis saeclis agnosco
futuram / Permagnis florentem opibus, ferrique Fodinis, / Omnigenas Segetes,
generosaque Vina daturam: / Et populosa suis Terris geret Insula muros: / Flagrabit Belli
studiis; iuuenesque trecentos / Auxilio dabit Aeneae, cum iusta Latino / Inferat arma,
movens pacta Coniuge Bellum. / Portus & hic ingens mediatae cornua Lunae / Sponte sua
effingens, quo fessas vincula naueis / Nulla tenant; vnco non alligat anchora morsu: /
Moenia quem circum, positaeque in cornibus Arces / Munitum reddunt nullae: at patet
vndique Monstris: / O’ quantum Thusci Herois virtute sub Astra / Surget; & auctus erit
posthac labentibus annis? / In Coelum geminae geminis è Collibus Arces / Tollentur:
portumque regent: mediamque tenebunt / COSMOPOLIM Auctoris surgentum è nomine
dictae / Bellicaque accensis tormenta explosa fauillis / (Quae tunc illa prius sollers
renouarit AEtas) / Quam procul infestos arcebunt desuper Hosteis? / Admittentque suos
subuenteis Ostia amicos? / Classis & haud nostrae inferior Virtute, tuendis / Thuscorum,
Lygurumque oris, hinc vela per altum / Oceanum solute Rubra Cruce Milite ducta; /
Multabitque fuga, meritos aut morte Piratas. / O’ si Tempus ad hoc properantia Fata
tulissent / Magnanimum Thuscum? & nobis permistus Oëtae / Littora contendens peteret
Fortissimus Heros? / Quam magis intrepido premeremus Marte Draconem / Igniuomum?
AEripedesque boues, Flammamque vometes / Vomere sub nostro gemitum, terramque
mouerent? / Vipereo Fratres caderent & dente creati? / Aurata & tantae raperemus
praemia pugnae / Vellera, Victores repetentes littora nostra? / Viseret ille suos praedam

120

In the very moments before the Argonauts depart the future Portoferraio, Orpheus
imagines the wondrous event of heroes from various eras brought together, Cosimo
fighting besides Jason and Hercules, to strengthen the already fortified crew. Similar to
the remark in the Vite, the poem manipulates classical and early modern time to assert
that Cosimo’s efforts on Portoferraio are temporally prophesized by the presence of the
Argonauts in antiquity.
231

The Greater Geography of the Argonauts

Much like the geographies present in the extant poetry which called on Cosimo to
set sail for the Black Sea, the itinerant travel of the Argonauts was explicitly visualized in

partitus Hetruscos? / At iam tempus erit, cum se voluentibus annis / Pulchra reuiuiscens
generous Gratia facti / Heroas tantum Phryxaeo vellere Magnos / Cinget: & ascribet tanta
inter nomina COSMUM. /Dixerat haec Vates. dat ventis carbasa Typhis.” Sanleolini, 69r-
70r.
231
Twelve years after Cosimo’s death these themes would be included in Aldo
Manuzio’s biography of the Grand Duke printed in 1586. While he does not mention the
Order of the Golden Fleece, Manuzio does relate Cosimo’s fortifications to the landing of
the Argonauts at Portoferraio. In his biography the author writes “Haveva ottenuto anche
prima il Duca di fortificare, & guardar nell’Elba Porto Ferraio, il quale soleva essere
commune à chiunque vi voleva andare: & vi haveva di terra in pochi giorni fabricate da
due bastion, & postovi guardia, acciò che non fosse occupato da altri, tornando molto
commodo alla sicurtà sua, & dello Stato di Siena & poi con più agio vi si fabricarano di
muraglia due fortezze, & ne fece sicuro porto, dove era prima ricetto di Corsali, Turchi &
Mori, con grandissimo, & continouo danno della Toscana, & delle Riviere di Genova, &
alcun tempo dopò fondovi la nuova Città, che dal suo nome chiamò Cosmopoli, E l’Isola
dell’Elba (quella, che da’ Greci Ethalia, & da’ Latini Ilva si disse) abbondante di metalli,
& viene di ferro copiosissima: onde il suo port oil nome trasse, che quivi se ne caricano
molte navi, come ch’egli ne’ più antichi tempi venisse chiamato Argoo, dalla prima nave
de gli Argonauti, che vi giunse, i quali quivi dismontarono per veder la nobile incantrice
Circe; & è dall’ antica Populonia, maritime città di Toscana, hoggi al tutto disfatta, non
più, che dieci miglia, lontana.” Aldo Manuzio, Vita di Cosimo de Medici primo gran
duca di Toscana (Bologna: 1586), 106.

121
the early modern period and viewed in relation to contemporaneous geo-politics.
232
The
clearest example is the work of the Flemish cartographer Abraham Ortelius who created a
series of historical maps in his Parergon (1579) charting the voyages of various figures,
from Aeneas to Saint Paul, illustrating the historical itinerary of men that traveled widely
throughout the Mediterranean.
233
A map, made in 1598, later included in this same series,
detailed the routes of the Argonauts as told in the various versions of the Argonautica
(fig. 2.21). Like the portrait bust, the map is dedicated to one of Ortelius’ patrons, Count
Charles of Arenberg, and his induction in the Order of the Golden Fleece. The cartouche
in the lower left cites Charles as “equiti aurei velleris,” or knight of the Golden Fleece, an
honor he received in 1586, as a result of his efforts to stamp out the Dutch revolt in the
Spanish Netherlands.
234
The map reflects both the desire to commemorate investiture in
the knighthood as well as to visualize the journey of the Argo spatially.

232
For a brief review of the spatialization of the Argonauts’ journey see Mauro Marrani
“La leggendaria impresa degli Argonauti” in Pagine nuove di storia dell’arte e
dell’architettura vol.5 (Florence: European Center of Fine Arts, 2012), 63-66. More
broadly Guglielmo de’ Giovanni-Centelles discusses the origins of the Order of the
Golden Fleece and its interconnectedness with a larger Mediterranean history. In
particular he stresses the early modern associations of Constantinople and the Black Sea
as spaces of Christian evangelical efforts and later crusades, linking this in turn to the
location of Colchis, modern-day Georgia, the destination of the Argonauts. See
Gugliemlo de’ Giovanni-Centelles, “La proiezione mediterranea del Toson d’oro,”
Annali della Pontificia insigne accademia di belle arti e lettere dei virtuosi al pantheon,
7 (2007): 41-84.
233
The Parergon was a later addition to Ortelius’ Theatri Orbis Terrarum. For Ortelius’
historical maps see Peter H. Meurer, “Ortelius as the Father of Historical Cartography” in
Abraham Ortelius and the First Atlas: Essays Commemorating the Quadricentennial of
his Death 1598-1998 (Utrecht, Netherlands: HES Publishers, 1998), 133-159.
234
For Arenberg’s role as knight, painter, and friend of Justus Lipsius see Nicolette Mout
“Justus Lipsius Between War and Peace. His Public Letter on Spanish Foreign Policy and
the Respective Merits of War, Peace, or Truce (1595),” in Public Opinion and Changing
Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands, ed. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), 146.

122
Ortelius’ map, titled “Argonautica,” is a collection of the routes proposed by
Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus, with significant ports mentioned in the
narratives labeled throughout the Mediterranean. While this charted the most accepted
route, Ortelius also includes a smaller inset map on the upper left, adapted from the
Argonautica of pseudo-Orpheus, which traces a more northern trajectory, proposing that
the Argonauts traveled to England and Scandinavia. The most accepted route of the
journey held that the Argonauts left from Thessaly, passed by Troy (labeled Ilium sive
Troia), traveling up through the Hellespont and Bosporus to the Black sea. After landing
at Colchis, located on the eastern edge of the coast, and capturing the fleece, the heroes
supposedly escaped up the Danube, fleeing from the Colchians who were in pursuit.
After reaching the end of the Danube, they then carried the Argo over land, setting sail in
the Adriatic Sea. Venturing to the future islands of Venice, they traveled up the Po river,
and then carried their ship over land again to the Tyrrhenian sea. It is here, where most
geographers believed that, after leaving the Stoechadian shores, or islands of the coast of
France, the group came to the island of Elba. The Flemish cartographer included the
inscription of “Argous Portus” located precisely at modern day Portoferraio, marking the
site of their landing (fig. 2.22). The inscription present on Ortelius’ production illustrates
how pervasive such knowledge was throughout Europe. Subsequently the crew traveled
south via the coast of Italy. Ortelius marks another significant stop at the island of Aeae,
off the Tyrrhenian coast, with the inscription “Aeae insula et portus ubi Circes
habitaculum.” This site marks the habitation of the sorceress Circe, in an area south of
Rome, today called Cape Circeo. As mentioned in Strabo’s passage describing Elba, the
Argonauts landed there while in search of Circe to cleanse themselves of their sins in

123
retrieving the fleece. Circe was Medea’s aunt, and intimately bound to the family that had
been wronged by the Argonauts. After ritually cleansing them of their misdeeds she
quickly asked them to depart.
235
Traveling to the tip of Italy the ship cut over to Corfu,
where the Argonauts were blown off course to Libya. Ortelius again follows the
narratives of Apollonius Rhodius and Valerius Flaccus, marking an Argous Portus near
Lake Tritonis, in North Africa. Aside from Elba, this is the only other Argous Portus
mentions. From here the here the heroes east to Crete, stopping to raise altars to Athena,
and then made their way back to Thessaly.
The geo-political implications of the Argonautica overlapped well with early
modern divisions of territorial control. Beginning with their voyage eastward, the
Argonauts journey penetrated spaces controlled predominantly by the Ottoman Empire.
As the heroes first ventured up through the Bosporus, past Troy, Jason and Hercules
sailed through some of the key sites of Turkish power, including Constantinople. Their
continuation into the Black sea led them to the ancient Kingdom of Colchis near Georgia.
The surrounding area included cities like Trebizon, which the Ottomans had taken from
Christian powers in the 1460s. Through this mytho-geographic correlation, the Ottomans
could easily be positioned as later figurations of the Colchians, occupying their former
seat of power that now extended well beyond Colchis and Troy to the greater part of the
Mediterranean. Mytho-geography created a bridge between antiquity and early modern
time, marking the Turks as the keepers of the Golden Fleece, and Cosimo, the new
Argonaut sailing east to capture the great spoil.

235
Circe’s presence along the Tyrrhenian coast bled into the belief that, with Odysseus
who later visited her, she bore three sons which ruled over the early Etruscans. As a result,
she was seen as a foundational figure in the pre-history of Tuscany.

124

Conclusion

Far from the object’s narrow Florentine origins once described by Pope-
Hennessy, the bronze portrait bust of Cosimo I projected a meaning well beyond the
urban center of the duchy to the Tyrrhenian coast and to the edges of the Black sea. By
presenting Duke Cosimo as a new Argonaut, the bronze portrait bust acted as prophetic
symbol, breaking rigid spatio-temporal boundaries once considered de rigueur in a
Florentine art history fixated upon a localized Renaissance. Cosimo’s investiture into the
Order of the Golden Fleece acted as evidence of the duke’s future control of Portoferraio,
predicting in turn his efforts to combat Turkish presence both locally and abroad.
Historical imagination threaded together past and present, creating an expectation of
future wars against the Turks. When the portrait bust was commissioned by Cosimo in
1545 the future of Elba was by no means secure.. Yet even in its early years, the work
seemed to do so with the full knowledge of its eventual shipment. The bust presented
Cosimo as a new Argonaut. In this manner, the bust, while stored in the guardaroba,
projected a future on the horizon, one that by 1547 appeared to have been written
centuries earlier in the events of antiquity; upon its installation above the Forte Stella in
1557, the portrait bust became part of a much vaster Mediterranean geography. As a new
Argonaut, Cosimo set out to sack Troy and reach the farthest shores of the Black Sea to
best the Kingdom of Colchis once again.

125
Chapter 3:
Perseus in Africa and Asia

When Benvenuto Cellini unveiled his Perseus in April 1554 in the Piazza Ducale,
the former Piazza Signoria, the sculpture quickly became the focus of poetic praise,
interpretation, and debate. Sonnets adorned the newly revealed bronze work
commissioned by Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici almost a decade earlier (fig. 3.1). Pitting the
beauty of Cellini’s gigante against other sculptures in the square, writers drew attention
to the virtuosity of his art and their own interpretive abilities as poets.
236
Extensive
attention has been devoted to this aesthetic contest and its textual remnants, most notably
by John Shearman. In his collected lectures Only Connect, Shearman addressed the early
Rezeptionsgeschichte of the statue in an attempt to work out its original meaning.
237

Arguing that Cosimo sought to shift the former Republican piazza to a space of artistic
contest, Shearman proposed that the beauty of Cellini’s work and its contingent “Medusa
effect” neutralized the political charge of Michelangelo’s David and Donatello’s Judith

236
John Shearman, Only Connect…: Art and the Spectator in the Italian Renaissance
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 44-58.
237
Shearman invokes the term in his introduction stating “no other critical technique has
changed my thinking as much as this has.” Ibid., 8. He later writes regarding the Perseus
“One of the most interesting and fruitful of recent developments in historiography is
known in Germany, where it has been codified, as Rezeptionsgeschichte. Because it plots
the life and meaning of works of art after their creation it is not quite our subject, for we
are concerned with the artist’s prior intentions, in the address of his work to the spectator,
and the spectator to his work. Nevertheless the Rezeptionsgeschichte of earlier public
sculpture in Florence, like that of Verrocchio’s group, is important insofar as it must
shape the intentions and aspirations of a sculptor like Benvenuto Cellini, such an aware
artist, when he is called upon in 1545 to add a great and much commented tradition.”
Ibid., 44. On Rezeptionsgeschichte see Wolfgang Kemp, “Kunstwerk und Betrachter: der
rezeptionsästhetische Ansatz” in Kunstgeschichte: Eine Einfürung, ed. Hans Belting,
Heinrich Dilly, Wolfgang Kemp, Willibald Sauerländer, and Martin Warnke (Berlin:
Reimer, 2003), 241-265. See also Kemp’s article on the complimentary
“Rezeptionsästhetik,” Kunsthistorische Arbeitsblätter 12 (2003): 51-60.

126
and Holofernes, both avowedly republican monuments.
238
Extant sonnets certainly
reinforce this reading. Yet within this body of writing, an alternate selection offers a
broader geographical and temporal understanding of the aesthetic engagement of the
Perseus. Among a sea of sheets written by both well-known and anonymous hands, one
verse begins: “Africa and Asia is completely overturned.”
239
While considerable attention
has been paid to the inter-sculptural dialogue present in these writings, little notice has
been given to those texts that set Cellini’s Perseus on a more global stage. Nor has this
rhetoric been allowed the same freedom to operate as representative of a new ideology of
the Florentine duchy whose interests began to stretch beyond Tuscany. More than simply
an anti-Republican image, documents like these illustrate that Cellini’s monument also
presented Cosimo as a Christian prince and defender of the Mediterranean, engaged in
both Africa and Asia. Perseus’ defeat of Medusa and the sea dragon allowed the hero to
operate as a typological crusader from classical mythology venturing well beyond
Florence.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the spatial connotations of mythology
continued to define boundaries of the world. Classical poets like Ovid set his
Metamorphoses within a known Mediterranean, while writers like Strabo collected these

238
Shearman, 52-53. Here Shearman builds this argument on the work of Thomas Hirthe
who maintains that Perseus represents the good of the state. See Thomas Hirthe, “Die
Perseus-und-Medusa-Gruppe des Benvento Cellini in Florenz” Jahrbuch der Berliner
Museen 29/30 (1987-88): 197. See also Wolfgang Braunfels for earlier iterations of this
argument, Perseus und Medusa (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1961).
239
The transcriptions of Cellini sonnets, several originally recorded only in manuscript
form, are unfortunately spread throughout several printed sources. For a transcription of
this sonnet which begins “L’Africa e L’Asia è tutta sottosopra” see Carlo Milanesi ed., I
trattati dell’oreficeria e della scultura di Benvenuto Cellini (Florence: Felice le Monnier,
1857), 413.

127
narratives into chorographic geographies.
240
Interest in these spatial dimensions of
mythology continued in early modernity. Recently scholars like Sean Roberts have begun
to trace the rebirth of classical mapping practices in Renaissance Florence, situating myth
within this discipline.
241
The early modern maps of men like Francesco Berlinghieri did
not differentiate between istoria and favola, overlapping mythological, biblical, and
political histories, creating unified temporal and spatial narratives.
242
Mytho-historical
events even had the potential to prophesize the future in early modernity. Aeneas’
departure from a lovelorn Queen Dido at Carthage, orchestrated by Jupiter and Venus,
led to Hannibal’s assault on Rome, the home of Aeneas’ descendants; the siege then
resulted in Scipio’s destruction of the North African monarchy at Carthage, which acted
as a prefiguration of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V’s later assault on Tunis, built on
the city’s ancient foundations. Aeneas’ actions incited a chain of events, bound to a
specific geographic location, which echoed in early modernity. Mythology, history, and
geography intertwined defining the continuities and boundaries of the world.
243

240
Paul Barolsky remarks in his survey of Ovid’s influence on artists from early
modernity to the modern era that the poet “evokes the geology of the Mediterranean
world, the hardness and austerity of its terrain: Altas, his bones turned into boulders, is
metamorphosed into a mountain that supports the star-filled heavens above; Medea, in all
her passion, soars over the giant petrified serpent near Pitane and Aeolia; Lichas, hurled
by Hercules toward the waters of Euboea, becomes a low-lying rock with human features
that rises out of the sea; Olenos and Lethaea, who share each other’s grief, are now two
rocks at Mount Ida; and stony Scylla, girdled by howling hounds, presides over the straits
of Messina and its menacing rocks.” See Paul Barolsky, Ovid and the Metamorphoses of
Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 11-12.
241
Sean Roberts, Printing a Mediterranean World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2013).
242
For example, Perseus’ journey to Jaffa is recorded among many other historical events.
Ibid, 1-14.
243
This synthetic historical approach led to the creation of “word histories,” popular in
the mid-sixteenth century, which synthesized myth and recorded history into grand
universal narratives of cause and effect. See for example Giovanni Tarcagnota, Delle
Istorie del Mondo (Venice: 1562).

128
This spatial thinking formed an important part of artistic interpretation in the
Cinquecento. As Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann argues in Towards a Geography of Art,
early modern thinkers saw geography as an all encompassing knowledge which played a
vital role in the “beholder’s share” of viewing works.
244
The visualization of mythology
brought to mind particular spaces and peoples. Maps, in fact, aided this transition
between narrative, imagination, and memory. As the early modern geographer Abraham
Ortelius claimed, readers frequently used maps as mnemonic aids to visualize and
remember important events, including mythology: “whatever we read accompanied with
maps placed in front of your eyes like mirrors, remains in our memory longer,” and
further that maps “bring in front of the eyes the actions and the places where the deeds
happened, as if they were present.”
245
The cognitive processes of recall in the early
modern period were presumed to be spatial, based upon the classical foundations of the
memory palace which stressed imagined space as the primary means for storing
information.
246
In visualizing mythologies, like the deeds of Perseus, this spatial residue
remained as a guide, helping viewers recall the details of events set in Africa and Asia.

244
Kaufmann’s scholarship builds on the work of Ernst Gombrich, whose writings
stressed the role of the viewer in interpreting a work of art, coining the term “beholder’s
share.” Kaufmann’s interest in the role of “geographical vision” within the imagination of
space, however, borrows from the more recent work of Denis Cosgrove. DaCosta
Kaufmann ultimately presses this spatially loaded point to offer a framework for studying
style and its diffusion in art history, looking to the nineteenth-century discipline of
kunstgeographie in which artistic production is seen as intimately related to local factors.
For his connection of geography and Ernst Gombrich’s concept of the “beholder’s share”
see Thomas DaCosta Kaufmann, Towards a Geography of Art (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004), 5-7.
245
For Ortelius’ thoughts on the relation between maps and bible reading, see Francesca
Fiorani, The Marvel of Maps: Art, Cartography, and Politics in Renaissance Italy (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 88.
246
For the foundational study on this topic see Frances Yates, The Art of Memory
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972). See also Lina Bolzoni Il teatro della
memoria: studi su Giulio Camillo (Padua: Liviana, 1984) and Lina Bolzoni ed., La

129
Most importantly, for early modern readers and viewers in Italy, mythological
narratives, as spatially bound systems, drew them through distant lands beyond their
immediate experience.
247
Classical myths formed some of the earliest “imagined
geographies,” in which notions of self and other were defined spatially.
248
Renaissance
mytho-geography allowed not only for a greater imagination of the world, but also
revived geographical polemic pervasive throughout classical antiquity. The Greek hero
adventuring through terra incognita, stretching from the unknown east to the shores of
North Africa, reified a civilized Greco-Roman center by defining a “barbaric” periphery.
In this manner, figures like Perseus charted the very contours of a much larger
Mediterranean world, and in some cases, spaces that stretched well beyond it.
My aim in this chapter is to bring Renaissance geographical thinking to bear on
the Perseus created by Benvenuto Cellini for Duke Cosimo I between 1545-1554. I
propose that Florentines imagined themselves as part of a greater Mediterranean world, in
turn giving license to central artistic commissions to play with this geo-historical
position. In this case the geography of the myth of Perseus, heightened by subsequent
recordings of the works’ reception, allowed the Duchy of Florence to promote its new
imperial status by using Perseus to revive former imperial boundaries. The hero’s journey
from Greece to the isole gorgoni off of Mauritania, and then to Jaffa, the site of the defeat
of the sea dragon Cetus, traced the edges of the far side of the Mediterranean, at least

fabbrica del pensiero: dall’arte della memora alle neuroscienze (Milan: Electa, 1989),
more recently Mary Carruthers, Machina memorialis: meditazione, retorica e costruzione
delle immagini (400-1200) (Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2006).
247
On maps as a means to experience distant spaces Giorgio Mangani, Cartografia
morale: geografia, persuasione, identità (Modena: Panini, 2006).
248
This is a concept developed by Edward Said in his work Orientalism, originally
published in 1978. While Said’s concern is largely with colonial and post-colonial
periods, as he notes such ideas influenced earlier writings from Herodotus to Dante. See
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 2003).

130
from an Italian perspective. This itinerary mapped spaces that also drew the attention of
the new imperial duchy of Florence. By 1550 Duke Cosimo had already provided ships
for the siege of the port of Mahdia in Tunisia, once the capital of the Fatimid dynasty in
North Africa and known in Italian as “la Città d’Affrica” and in Latin as “Aphrodisium.”
By manipulating geographies first codified in antiquity, the Perseus presented viewers in
Florence with a typological crusader engaged in the very spaces set within the duke’s
imperial sights. Unraveling the spatial charge of this mythological artwork, and
overlapping it with sixteenth-century geo-politics, I reveal how the sculpture presented
Duke Cosimo as venturing into the “barbaric” lands of Africa and Asia.

The Mytho-Geography of Perseus and Medusa

Art and text have often been presumed to be synonymous in the interpretation of
Renaissance art. To locate the meaning of a work like Cellini’s Perseus, scholars
typically search for the classical source narrating its visual exposition, often assumed to
be a single text. In the case of the Perseus, that source has regularly been believed to be
Ovid’s Metamorphoses, a popular mythological work during the Quattrocento and
Cinquecento.
249
Interpreted in the early modern period as everything from moralizing
tales to alchemical recipes, these stories of transformation are often marshaled as the

249
John-Pope Hennessy follows Ovid’s telling of the myth of Perseus in his attempt to
understand the narrative dimensions of Cellini’s sculpture and Michael Cole largely
follows suit. On the lasting influence of the Metamorphoses and its particular influence
on artists see Paul Barolsky, Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli
to Picasso (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014). On the many possible sources for
the narrative of Perseus beyond the Metamorphoses, see Daniel Ogden, Dragons,
Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013), 82-96.

131
central source for Renaissance mythological depictions. And though the Metamorphoses
certainly has elements of favola and allegory, it moves from the fantastic to the historic
with relative ease; the text culminates with the rise of the Roman Empire and the
apotheosis of Julius Caesar and Augustus. To begin to broaden the interpretive
parameters of Cellini’s gigante, I will reanalyze the mytho-geographic parameters of
Ovid’s writings on Perseus to suggest how the text operated as a kind of historical map of
power. While scholars like Michael Cole frequently utilize this source as the basis of
Cellini’s work, few have attended to its implicit spatial or historical assumptions, which
would have been well known in the early modern period. More importantly, I will move
beyond this singular text to take a broader survey of sources on the myth of Perseus in
order to redraw the spatial parameters of the rezeptionsgeschichte of Cellini’s work. To
understand the depth of the spatio-temporal associations that learned viewers brought to
bear on the Perseus, it will be necessary to review these texts, all of which were available
in Florence by 1545. In doing so, I illustrate how fully the myth was considered within
historical parameters and consequently used to narratively and visually map the world in
the Renaissance.
Perseus’ challenge to slay the Medusa, bestowed upon him by his uncle, King
Polydectes, was consistently described as geographically specific undertaking. As Ovid’s
Metamorphoses suggested, it pitted a Greek prince against an African gorgon. The
challenge dared the young hero to venture to the furthest edges of the known world to
complete a task believed to be impossible. For the Greeks and Romans the interior of
coastal Africa remained a space of myth and fiction and Perseus’ actions there helped

132
give it form. During the dinner celebrating Perseus’s liberation of Andromeda, the hero is
asked to explain how he came into possession of the gorgon’s head:
250

“‘Now tell us, pray oh Perseus, by what wonderous valour, by what arts you won
the Gorgon’s snaky head.’ The hero, answering, told how beneath cold Atlas there
was a place safe under the protection of the rocky mass. At the entrance to this
place two sisters dwelt, both daughters of old Phorcys, who shared one eye
between them. This eye by craft and stealth, while it was being passed from one
sister to the other, Perseus stole away, and travelling far through trackless and
secret ways, rough woods, and bristling rocks, he came at last to where the
Gorgons lived. On all sides through the fields and along the ways he saw the
forms of men and beasts changed into stone by one look at Medusa’s face. But he
himself had looked upon the image of that dread face reflected from the bright
bronze shield his left hand bore; and while deep sleep held fast both the snakes
and her who wore them, he smote her head clean from her neck, and from the
blood of his mother swift-wing Pegasus and his brother sprang.”
251

Ovid situates the initial event, that is the theft of the eye of the Graeae, in a cave beneath
“cold Atlas,” referring to Mons Atlas located in Mauritania. Although Ovid does not give
the exact location of Medusa’s home, Perseus’ travels through “rough woods, and
bristling rocks,” suggests a contiguous space. And while this reflection may not provide a
definitive site to locate the Gorgon, in his explanation of Perseus’ arrival to save
Andromeda, Ovid writes more specifically of the regions the hero passed over during his
journey:
“[Perseus] bearing the wonderful spoil of the snake-haired monster, was making
his way through the thin air on whirling wings. As he was flying over the sandy
wastes of Libya, bloody drops from the Gorgon’s head fell down; and the earth
received them as they fell and changed them into snakes of various kinds. And for
this cause the land of Libya is full of deadly serpents.”
252

250
Ovid’s narrative format of the Persean myth is somewhat unique in that the defeat of
Medusa, rather than described as a third person narrative, is told as a memory recounted
by Perseus.
251
Frank Justus Miller, trans. Metamorphoses, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1916), 233.
252
Ibid., 223.

133
Ovid cites the gorgon as the origin of the venomous serpents found in Africa, forever
connecting Medusa for classical and early modern audiences to the continent. After
circling the earth three times in flight, Perseus then returns to Atlas, though the mountain
is now in the form of a giant, given the responsibility of both bearing the world and
guarding the garden of Hesperides. After asking Atlas to rest in his garden, and being
denied this courtesy, Perseus’ turns the giant to stone with the head of the gorgon:
“He held out from his hand the ghastly Medusa-head. Straight away Atlas became
a mountain huge, as the giant had been; his beard and hair were changed to trees,
his shoulders and arms to spreading ridges; what had been his head was now the
mountain’s top, and his bones were changed to stones.”
253

While the account of Atlas’ metamorphosis makes little narrative sense, shifting from a
mountain into a colossal man, and then back into a mountain, the event can be located
with little difficulty in Mauritania, adjacent to central region of Africa, referred to as
Libya. Ovid’s description of Perseus’ encounter with Medusa maps the northern coast of
Africa, from Mons Atlas to the eastern deserts of Libya, and situates Perseus as an author
in its geographic features and wild life of the region. Both Atlas and Medusa are
connected explicitly to the coast of Africa.
Several classical texts reinforce these geographies in implicit ways, interweaving
spatial references into the Persean myth that were presumed to be established knowledge.
For instance, in Lucian’s Dialogue of the Sea Gods, the character Triton explains to
Iphianassa “[Perseus] was sent against the Gorgons, to carry out a task for the king. But
when he reached to Libya…” Iphianassa then interrupts, “How did he do it, Triton? By
himself? Did he take others to help him? Otherwise it’s a difficult journey.” And Triton
explains, “He went through the air. Athena had given him wings on his feet. Well, when

253
Ibid., 225.

134
he’d reached where they lived, they must have all been asleep, and Perseus cut off
Medusa’s head an flew away.”
254
Though Lucian’s writings are intended as satire, he too
notes the location of the Medusa and her death in Libya.
Ovid and Lucian were, however, merely referencing a wealth of literature that
detailed the spatial parameters of the mythology within geographies and histories of the
known world. For these writers, the challenge of these fantastic stories was to parse out
the true aspects of history and geography from imagined elements of the myth. For a
geographer like Strabo, the existence of the Gorgons remained a fantasy. He writes in his
book Geography that the Gorgons were an example of a story invented to inspire fear and
reinforce power structures:
“In the case of children we employ the pleasing myths to spur them on, and the
fear-inspiring myths to deter them; for instance, Lamia is a myth, and so are the
Gorgon….Most of those who live in the city are incited to emulation by the myths
that are pleasing, when they hear the poets narrate mythical deeds of heroism,
such as the Labours of Heracles or of Theseus, or hear of honours bestowed by
the gods, or indeed, when they see paintings or primitive images or works of
sculpture which suggest any similar happy issue of fortune in mythology….For
thunder-bolt, aegis, trident, torches, snakes, thyrsus-lances,--arms of the gods—
are myths, and so is the entire ancient theology.”
255

For Strabo the visualization of a narrative like Perseus’ conflict with Medusa, inspires
author and reader to follow in the hero’s foot steps. Yet for the geographer these stories
also offered the opportunity to gain knowledge of the distant spaces of Africa. According
to Strabo it was Homer who was the first geographer, and narratives such as the Odyssey
and the Iliad offered knowledge of the world:

254
M.D. MacLeod, trans. Dialogues of the Sea-Gods. (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1961), 228-229.
255
Horace Leonard Jones, trans. Geography, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1917), 68-71.

135
“[B]ecause Homer lays the scenes of his myths not only in non-fictitious places,
such as Ilion, Mt. Ida, and Mt. Pelion, but also in the fictitious places, such as
those in which the Gorgons and Greyon dwell, Eratosthenes says that the places
mentioned in the story of the wanderings of Odysseus, also, belong to the
category of fiction….yet, even so, we are not entitled to assume that Homer
composed the story of the wanderings without any inquiry at all, either say to
where or as to how they occurred.”
256

Within this geographical approach to mythology, figures like the Gorgons are seen as
invented, but the knowledge gained from descriptions of particular geographical or
climatological features of regions is not. Medusa was thus often associated with the
climate and features of her mythological home. In Lucan’s The Civil War, for instance,
he describes Medusa as the source of Africa’s harsh weather:
“In the furthest parts of Libya, where the hot earth admits the Ocean heated by the
sun when he sets, lay the broad untilled realm of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys, a
realm not shaded by the trees nor softened by the plough, but rugged with stones
which the eyes of their mistress had beheld. In her body malignant Nature first
bred these cruel plagues; from her throat were born the snakes that poured forth
shrill hissings with their forked tongues….[T]he maiden Pallas brought aid to her
winged brother. She bargained to have the monster’s head, and then bade Perseus
when he reached the border of the Libyan land, to turn towards the rising sun and
fly backwards through the Gorgon’s realm…”
257

For Lucan, Medusa is synonymous with the harsh natural elements found in Libya.
While these sources generalize the location of the gorgons, other classical
historians and geographers, from Pliny to Palaephaetus, to Diodorus Siculus, located
Medusa’s home more specifically. The exact location of her death, and her historical
home, of course, vary depending upon the author. The vast majority of sources, however,
tend to locate the gorgon’s origins in Mauritania, at the mythical lake Tritonis, sacred to

256
Ibid., 81.
257
J.D. Duff, trans., The Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1928), 552-555.

136
Athena, or alternatively within a set of islands located off the western coast of Africa,
sometimes called Cerne, the Gorgades, or the Gorgon Islands.
The collective desire by classical authors to locate this historical space is often to
reconcile favola and istoria. The historian Herodotus describes Perseus as the first of the
Greek kings. His victory in Libya over Medusa constitutes the establishment of the hero’s
kingdom, while Medusa in turn is associated with a tribe of nomadic Libyan warriors.
Herodotus maintains that the hero was sent “to bring the Gorgon’s head from Libya…,”
later describing the historical people associated its decorative abstraction, the aegis:
258

“It would seem that the robe and aegis of the images of Athene were copied by
the Greeks from the Libyan women; for save that the dress of the Libyan women
is leathern, and that the tassels of their goatskin corselets are not snakes but made
of thongs of hide, in all else their equipment is the same. Nay, the very name
betrays that the raiment of the statues of Pallas has come from Libya; for Libyan
women wear hairless tasseled goatskins over their dress, coloured with madder,
and the Greeks have changed the name of these goatskins into their ‘aegis.’”
259

Medusa’s head, as the inspiration of the aegis, derives its snaky hair from the garments of
Libyan women. The Gorgon is rendered here an anthropomorphic abstraction of Libyan
dress and its adoption a symbol of the subjugation of the region.
The Greek geographer Pausanias likewise attempts to historicize the story of
Medusa, omitting those details, which appeared to him too fantastic. He writes in his
Description of Greece
“I omit the miraculous, but give the rational parts of the story about her. After the
death of her father, Phorcus, [Medusa] reigned over those living around Lake
Tritonis, going out hunting and leading the Libyans to battle. On one such
occasion, when she was encamped with an army over against the forces of
Perseus, who was followed by picked troops from the Peloponnesus, she was
assassinated by night. Perseus, admiring her beauty even in death, cut off her head

258
A.D. Godley, trans. The Persian Wars, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press),
375.
259
Ibid., 391-393.

137
and carried it to show the Greeks. But Procles, the son of Eucrates, a
Carthaginian, thought a different account more plausible than the proceeding. It is
as follows. Among the incredible monsters to be found in the Libyan desert are
wild men and women. Procles affirmed that he has seen a man from them who
had been brought to Rome. So he guessed that a woman wandered from them,
reached Lake Tritonis, and harried the neighbours until Perseus killed her.”
260

Pausanias attempts to understand the fantastical myth as a simple battle between Greek
and African forces, ending in the death of a beautiful Libyan warrior. By offering an
alternate historical interpretation of Medusa as a “wild woman” of Libya. Pausanias, the
geographer, also defines the civilization of Greece against the barbarous stretches of the
African desert.
261

By far the most well-read classical source in the early modern period, aside from
the Metamorphoses, was Pliny’s Natural History, a text that men like both Benvenuto
Cellini and Duke Cosimo knew well. Within his compilation of the history of the world,
Pliny clarifies the geography of the Gorgons and their location near the coast of Africa,
locating them on the islands called the Gorgades, near both the island of Cenre and
Atlantis. He writes that,
“Polybius informs us that Cenre lies at the extremity of Mauretania, over against
Mount Atlas, a mile from the coast; Cornelius Nepos gives it as being nearly in
the same meridian as Carthage, and 10 miles from the mainland, and as measuring
not more than 2 miles in the round. There is also reported to be another island off
of Mount Atlas itself also called Atlantis, from which two days voyage along the

260
W.H.S. Jones, trans., Description of Greece, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1981), 358-359. This Greek text can still be found in manuscript form in the
Laurentian library, dated 1485, incorporated into the collection of Cosimo I from his
earlier ancestors, but soon thereafter found in printed editions.
261
While the Metamorphoses is often presumed to be the basis of Cellini’s sculpture,
Pausanias’ text also had a particularly strong connection to Florence; Niccolò Niccoli
owned one of the few remaining copies of this work by 1418 and upon his death it
entered the library of San Marco. It was later annotated by Cinquecento scholars under
Duke Cosimo like Piero Vettori. For the survival of Pausanias’ text in Renaissance
Florence see Aubrey Diller, “Pausanias in the Middle Ages” Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association 87 (1956): 84-97.

138
coast reaches the desert district in the neighborhood of the Western Ethiopians
and the cape mentioned above named the Horn of the West, the point at which the
coastline begins to curve westward in the direction of the Atlantic. Opposite this
cape also there are reported to be some islands, the Gorgades, which were
formerly the habitation of the Gorgons, and which according to the account of
Xenophon of Lampascus are at a distance of two days’ sail from the mainland.
These islands were reached by the Carthaginian general Hanno, who reported that
the women had hair all over their bodies…and he deposited the skins of two of
the female natives in the Temple of Juno as proof of the truth of his story and as
curiosities, where they were on show until Carthage was taken by Rome…and the
whole geography of this neighborhood is so uncertain that Statius Sebosus has
given the voyage along the coast from the Gorgons’ Islands past mount Atlas to
the Isles of the Ladies of the West as forty days’ sail and from the islands of the
Horn of the West as one day’s sail. Nor is there any less uncertainty with regard
to the report of the islands of Mauretania…”
262

In discussing the geography of the coastal islands of Africa, Pliny includes the home of
the Gorgons beyond the limits of the Mediterranean in the Atlantic Ocean. Yet he admits
that the geography of this region is not known for sure and that several sources differ on
the distances. For Pliny, the coast of North Africa remained a land that was still
unmapped.
Diodorus Siculus also attempted to find the “truth” within the narrative of Perseus
and Medusa. In his work The Library of History, he describes an island in the middle of
Lake Tritonis in Africa, supposedly the home of the Amazonians, enemies of the
Gorgons:
“As mythology relates, their home was on an island which, because it was in the
west, was called Hespera, and it lay in the marsh Tritonis….and this marsh was
also near Ethiopia and that mountain by the shore of the ocean which is the
highest of those in the vicinity and impinges upon the ocean and is called by the
Greek Atlas.”
263

262
Harris Rackham, trans. Pliny. Natural History, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1942) 486-489.
263
C.H. Oldfather, trans. The Library of History, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1935), 251.

139
These Amazonians, however, warred with another female band of warriors “the
Gorgons,” sponsored by the nearby Atlantians:
“But when the Gorgons drew up their forces to resist them a mighty battle took
place in which the Amazons, gaining the upper hand, slew great numbers of their
opponents and took no fewer than three thousand prisoners….But the Gorgons
grown strong again in later days, were subdued a second time by Perseus, the son
of Zeus, when Medusa was queen over them…”
264

Diodorus Siculus reads the narrative of Perseus as the history of conflict between the
people of Africa that only ends with the arrival of Perseus from Greece, sent to destroy
Queen Medusa. Like Pausanias’ “wild women,” Medusa represents the periphery of the
known world and barbaric peoples at its edges.
Few texts however appear as historicizing as Palaephatus’ Opusculum de non
credendis fabulosis narrationibus, already in print in Europe in 1517. The text is another
from the rationalist tradition attempting to locate historical truth in mythological
narratives. Perseus is interpreted here as a sailor and raider of the African coast who sets
his sights on the rich island of Cerne. After asserting the ridiculousness of the traditional
narrative of the hero, which presumes Medusa to have the ability to turn men to stone,
Palaephatus offers a more historical interpretation of the daughters of Phorcys:
“Phorcys was Cernaean—by race these are Ethiopians who live on the island of
Cerne outside the pillars of Heracles. The fields they till are Libyan by the river
Annon, straight across from Carthage; and a gold-rich people they are. Now
Phorcys was the king of the islands—there are three of them—beyond the pillars
of Heracles, and he made a statue of Athene that was six feet tall. The Cernaeans,
it should be noted, call Athene “Gorgon,”…Phorcys, however, died before
dedicating the statue in the temple, and was survived by his three daughters:
Stheno, Euryale and Medusa….Now Perseus, an exile from Argos, was making
piratical raids with ships and troops along the sea coast. When he found out that
there was a kingdom there in the hands of women—which was also rich in gold
and had only a few men—he approached. He first lay in ambush between Cerne
and Sarpendonia; then as the Eye was sailing across from one to the other,

264
Ibid., 255-257.

140
Perseus seized him. The Eye told Perseus that there was nothing worth taking
from the sisters but the Gorgon, and he also revealed how much gold was in
it….[W]hile they were all together, Perseus sailed against them. He announced
that he was holding the Eye and that he would not return him, unless they told
him where the Gorgon was. He threatened in addition to kill them, if they did not
tell him. Now Medusa refused to tell, but Stheno and Eyrale did; Perseus
therefore slew Medusa and returned the Eye to the other sisters. When he got his
hands on the Gorgon, Perseus cut it in pieces; then by way of fitting out his
trireme, he put the head of the gorgon on it and thereafter called the ship by the
name “Gorgon.” Sailing around in his ship he exacted money from the islanders
and slew those who refused to give.”
265

While each of the previous sources attempts to rationalize the fantastic qualities of
Medusa within anthropological or historical discourses, Palaphaetus rationalizes Perseus’
story as pure history. Instead of flying to Africa from Greece, Perseus sails to the islands
of the Gorgons to raid them of their wealth, returning it to his homeland with vast riches.
Within all of these narratives, however, Medusa is clearly understood to be Libyan.

Perseus in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

These classical geographic traditions continued on through the Middle Ages and
the Renaissance, maintaining a history that associated Medusa with the coastal regions of
North Africa. Tuscan poets like Giovanni Boccaccio maintained these spatial distinctions,
copying details from writers like Diodorus Siculus, but offering varied allegorical
interpretations based upon this spatialization of mythology. Within medieval and
Renaissance allegorical interpretation, however, it is important to keep in mind that
mythological narratives like Perseus’ journey in Africa had the potential to be interpreted
in multiple ways. Perseus, for instance, could be a symbol of Christ, the image of virtue,

265
Jacob Stern, trans. On Unbelievable Tales (Wauconda: Bolchazy-Carducci Publishers,
1996), 62-63.

141
and a historical figure, all at the very same time. As Boccaccio explains in his
introduction to the Genealogy of the Gods,
“[Y]ou must understand that there is no unique interpretation for these fictions;
rather one can say that they are polisenous, or, ‘of multiple interpretations’….And
let us offer an example so you can more easily understand the point. Perseus, the
son of Jupiter, killed the Gorgon in the poetic fiction, and, victorious he flies up
into the air. When one reads this in the literal sense, it offers historical meaning. If
one seeks a moral understanding from a reading, it reveals how the prudent
conquer vice and accede to virtue. If we wish to treat it allegorically, it means that
by spurning earthly delights the pious mind ascends to heavens. In addition, an
anagogical interpretation would say that the fable reconfigures the ascension of
Christ to the Father after overcoming the ruler of the world. These interpretations,
although labeled differently could all be called allegorical….But even so, I do not
intend to open up the following fables to every kind of interpretation; I think it
will be sufficient to offer one of many interpretations, although on occasion I
might offer several.”
266

Though Boccaccio offers multiple possibilities for the interpretation of the myth of
Perseus, I want to draw specific attention to his historical methodology, a concept that is
often lost in Renaissance interpretations of mythology: he offers the notion that myth
could function allegorical history. Just as Diodorus Siculus maintained, Perseus’ conflict
with Medusa had the potential to be read as historical truth, veiled in fiction. Within this
history the writer offers a geographically specific reading of the myth beginning with
Perseus’ encounter with Atlas:
“[A]tlas withdrew to the hinterlands of Mauritania and ruled the Ethiopians, who
inhabit the shores of the promontory of Ampelusia, and the islands adjacent to the
shore; therefore the Greeks called him Hesperus…”
267

He then explains that Atlas was first met by Hercules, who entered the gardens of
Hesperides through force and stole its golden apples. But he offers an alternative history

266
Jon Solomon, trans. Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2011) 51.
267
Ibid., 505.

142
for the sack of the region, “There are, moreover, those who want this Hercules to be
Perseus and the Hesperides to be the Gorgons; they are entitled to their opinion.”
268

Perseus thus becomes an alternate invader of the African coastline. But, writing further of
the allegorical history of Atlas and Perseus’ decision to turn him to stone, Boccaccio
clarifies Perseus’ historical role in North Africa:
“The ancients wanted history to be hidden under this fiction, for Fulgentius says
that when Perseus had conquered Medusa, who was a very wealthy queen, he
invaded the kingdom of Atlas, and relying on Medusa’s riches and resources, he
forced Atlas to flee into the mountains, and so the man who was chased by flight
from the palace to the mountains gave rise to the fable that he was a man
transformed into a mountain by the actions of a man who forced him into a
mountain by the actions of a man who used his riches to force him into the
mountains.”
269

Perseus, as a historical figure, invades North Africa to slay the rich Queen Medusa and
set King Atlas to flight. He is not a fictional character, but rather a historical actor veiled
in fiction.
270

These geographical notions, filtered through classical sources, and interpreted by
men like Giovanni Boccaccio, were then maintained by early modern Italian authors
reinterpreting the myth of Perseus within the chivalric tradition. In Matteo Boiardo’s
Orlando Innamorato from 1483, the author tells of the Baron Prasildo who sets out from
Babylonia to retrieve a golden branch from the “Garden of Medusa” located along the

268
Ibid., 507.
269
Ibid., 508-511.
270
Later commentators on Boccaccio’s Genealogy of the Pagan Gods also included the
writer’s more elaborate works on geography, which further localized these myths. For
instance Jakob Moltzer [Micyllus?] added annotations on the geographical features in
Boccaccio’s text in his edition of the Genealogy printed in 1532, including a section
entitled De Maribus, “On the Sea,” clarifying the home of the Gorgons’ on the islands of
the Hersperides. See Ioannis Bocatti Peri genealogies deorum (Basel: 1532), 492-493.

143
Barbary coast, somewhere west of Egypt.
271
By defeating the guardian of the garden, the
Gorgon, with a mirrored shield, the baron returns home to marry his true love Tisbina.
Here, Perseus’ journey is remodeled as chivalric romance. While the names and story
change, the location of Medusa’s home is maintained. Furthermore, the epic poem, set
during the reign of Charlemagne, situates the garden within the very regions of the
emperor’s enemies, the North African moors. Along with the Kings of Spain, these
Islamic forces attempted to siege France, necessitating the intervention of knights like
Orlando.
272
The baron’s journey through North Africa to conquer Medusa and retrieve
the golden branch thus overlays classical antiquity onto a space of Christian and Islamic
conflict.
Like Boiardo, the geographical parameters of Medusa’s origins were available to
a broad public to manipulate in the Renaissance, including artists like Michelangelo. In
an undated sonnet, likely written during Michelangelo’s tenure under Pope Julius II, the
artist references Medusa’s association with Africa, specifically associating her with
Mauritania. In the sonnet he criticizes the avarice and belligerence of the Romans, as a
critique against the failings of the papacy:
“Here they make helmets and swords out of chalices
and by the hand full sell the blood of Christ;
his cross and thorns are made into lances and shields;
yet even so Christ’s patience still rains down.

271
Boiardo writes in Canto 32 of the location of the garden, from Babylonia, as “Il
braccio de il mar Rosso in nave varca, E già tutto l’Egitto avea passato, Ed era gionto nei
monti di Barca, Dove un palmier canuto ebbe trovato” and then further clarifies in Canto
37 “Indi se parte, e passato il deserto, In trenta giorni gionse al bel verziero.” See Aldo
Scaglione ed., Orlando Innamorato (Torino: Letteratura Italiana Einaudi, 1974), 281-283.
272
In his attempt to complete the work of Boiardo, Ludovico Ariosto, in his Orlando
Furioso, would again rely on the Persean archetype to cast both Orlando and Ruggiero as
the quintessential knight. Indeed, Ruggiero frees the Princess Angelica from the Orc, here
the chosen name for a sea monster (a parallel for the sea monster Cetus in the Persean
myth) with the aid of a magical shield which blinds its opponent.

144
But let him come no more into these parts:
his blood would rise up as far as the stars,
since now in Rome his flesh is being sold,
and every road to virtue here is closed.
If ever I wished to shed my worldly treasures,
since no work is left me here, the man in the cope
can do as Medusa did in Mauretania.
But even if poverty’s welcomed up in heaven,
how can we learn the great reward of our state
if another banner weakens that other life?”
273

Michelangelo then signed the sonnet, appended to a letter sent to Giovanni di Benedetto
da Pistoia, “Your Michelangelo in Turkey.” In his annotation to the poem, the translator
James Saslow suggests Michelangelo’s signed the sonnet in this manner, making
“presumably an ironic comparison of the Romans to the Turkish infidel, whose
proverbial violence then menaced the Mediterranean.”
274
In referencing Medusa’s
association with North Africa, Michelangelo not only situates her geographically, he also
begins to suggest her association with a Turkish, and by extension, an Islamic other.
This very clear association of Medusa with coastal Africa, however, occasionally
saw her kingdom spread beyond the confines of a historical home to other liminal spaces
in the Mediterranean. As Jacopo Filippo da Bergamo explains in his Supplementum
Supplementi delle Croniche, printed in Venice in 1535, the Gorgon was occasionally
described as the queen of Sardinia, inherited from her father King Phorcys. This
interpretation derives from a fourth century commentary on the Aeneid by Servio Mauro
Onorato, which cites Phorcys as the ruler of Corsica and Sardinia, killed by the King of

273
James Saslow, trans. The Poetry of Michelangelo (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1991), 78-79.
274
Ibid., n.14.

145
Africa, Atalante.
275
This geographic location aligned the classical myth with the historical
spread of North African forces of Carthage to the coastal islands of Italy, which they
controlled before the First Punic War. Onorato writes that Perseus “killed Medusa called
by another name Gorgonia the most powerful and rich queen of the island of Sardinia:
removed all of her treasure, which was almost unending: & by sea took it to Persia. So
that the poets by this concluded that the head of the Gorgon was full of snake heads,
deadly if one took them as riches.”
276
As a liminal space in the Mediterranean, between
Italy and North Africa, Sardinia was associated with Carthaginian rule, before its
incorporation into the Roman Empire. Perseus’ defeat of an African Medusa, Queen of
Sardinia, thus fit well within the rhetoric of Mediterranean empire, labors which
anticipated historical conflicts between Carthage and Rome.
277

Perseus’ encounter with Medusa was thus consistently given a geographic charge,
from classical antiquity to the early modern period, in order to reinforce the gorgon’s
barbaric and peripheral nature. Her long standing connection with Africa, as well as with

275
Maurus Servius Honoratus comments on the Aeneid: “Phorcique exercitus omnis di
qui sub Phorco agunt. Hic autem Phorcus dicitur Thoosae nymphae et Neptuni filius. ut
autem Varro dicit, Rex fuit Corsicae et Sardiniae: qui cum ab Atlante rege navali
certamine cum magna exercitus parte fuisset victus et obrutus finxerunt socii eius eum in
deum marinum esse conversum,” In Vergilii carmina comentarii. Servii Gramatici qui
feruntur in Vergilii carmina commentarii, ed. Georgius Thilo and Hermannus Hagen
(Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1881), 824.
276
“uccise Medusa chiamata per per altro nome Gorgonia regina dell’Isola di Sardegna
potentissima & ricca: tolse ogni suo thesoro, che era quasi infinito: & per mare lo porto in
Persia. Onde li poeti per questo finsseno chel capo di Gorgona era peino di capi di
serpenti che mortalmente se piglia per le richezze,” Jacopo Filippo da Bergamo,
Supplementum Supplementi delle Croniche (Venice: 1535) fol. XLVIv.
277
These geographical readings of the rule of Medusa would be repeated by prominent
intellectuals at the Florentine court including Cosimo Bartoli in his commentary on Dante
published in 1567, a work dedicated to Duke Cosimo. In his Raggionamenti Accademici
Bartoli writes in dialogue form as the character Monsignore Ferrante Pandolfini
“Medusa fu figliuola di Forco Re di una delle Isole Dorcade, ancor che alcuni credino di
Sardigna; & dopo la Morte del padre, successe questa, nel Regno Paterno, & diventò
ricchissima.” (Venice: 1567), 24r-24v.

146
the historical spread of classical North African monarchies to islands like Sardinia,
allowed her in turn to be associated both with the Moors, by poets like Matteo Boiardo,
and the Ottomans, by Michelangelo. By the year of the unveiling of Cellini’s Perseus in
1554, learned viewers, staring upward a the image of a Perseus holding the head of
Medusa aloft, were not merely looking at a Florentine sculpture, an image of the end of
the republic, but also a monument of a Greek prince holding the head of a Libyan Queen.
This geographic polemic played directly into the political interests of Duke Cosimo in
those very same years.

Cellini’s Perseus and its Early Sources

To begin to define how these spatial parameters influenced readings of Cellini’s
Perseus it will be helpful to briefly review the commission of the statue and the
motivation behind its iconographic program. As is the case with nearly all of Cellini’s
works completed in Florence, little documentation remains to investigate the exact
parameters of the commission. As with other works made by the artist for the duke, an
informal agreement was made whereby the value of works would be judged after its
completion.
278
Therefore, we must rely instead on contextual evidence to recreate the
possible motivations for its commission and meanings of the work, beginning first with
the artist’s own writings. As Cellini claims in his Autobiography, he began work on the
Perseus in 1545 as his first work under the rule of Cosimo and the duke’s first major
public monument. In the account of his initial meeting with the duke at Poggio a Caiano,
Cellini writes that Cosimo had already settled on the idea of creating a Perseus statue to

278
Pope-Hennessy, 164-165.

147
decorate the central piazza of the city before his arrival.
279
Others, like Niccolò Martelli,
write during the period that the Perseus was commissioned “with the imagination on the
idea of our famous Duke,” clearly illustrating that the motivation behind the narrative
selected was Cosimo.
280
Cellini appears only to have lobbied for the material, that is, that
the work should be made not in marble but in bronze. Though Cellini has, of late, been
given the loudest voice in the construction of the Perseus, empowered by the excellent
scholarship of Michael Cole, the sculptor was merely fulfilling a request, even if he may
have elaborated on the subject matter later.
281
We must, therefore, return to the
motivations of the duke to uncover the probable meaning of the work.
Beginning with Wolfgang Braunfel’s reading of the Perseus as the liberation of
the Florentine state, allegorically rendered as Andromeda, the sculpture has long been
associated with the overthrow of the “tyranny” or mismanagement of the city.
282
Later

279
Cellini writes “…riposi al mio Duca, che volentieri o di marmo, o di bronzo, io gli
farei una statua grande in su quella sua bella Piazza. A questo mi ripose, che arebbe
voluto da me, per una prima opera, solo un Perseo: questo era quanto lui aveva di già
desiderato un pezzo; e mi pregò, che io gnene facessi un modelletto,” Francesco Tassi ed.,
La Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, vol. 2 (Florence: Guglielmo Piatti, 1829), 320.
280
“con l’invezione nell’idea del famoso Duca nostro.” Detlef Heikamp, “Rapporti fra
accademici ed artisti nella Firenze del’ 500,” Il Vasari, 15 (1957): 151.
281
by adding for instance the body of Medusa, the scene on the relief panel, or the
figurines in the marble base These sections were, however, suggested by Benedetto
Varchi including the inscriptions. See Ibid., 144-145.
282
“Mit Hilfe des gorogonhauptes, das den Gegner erstarren last, befreit er Andromeda
von dem Meerungeheuer, dem man sie zur Rettung der Stadt geopfert hatte. Es war vor
allem die Szene, die Phantasie der Renaissancekünstler anregte…Auch sonst kommt die
Gestalt des Perseus häufig in allegorischen Szenen des 16. Jahrhunderts vor. Bei den
triumphalen Einzügen hoher Herren in eine Stadt, die das Zeitalter reich und festlich
auszugestalten liebte, fehlte selten die Figur des Perseus als des Befreiers der Andromeda,
und man schmeichelte dem Fürsten, indem man ihn als einen solchen Retter aus der Not
begrüste. Wie den zu allen Zeiten das Volk niemand so stürmisch zu huldigen pflegte als
dem, der es unterdrückte. Auch Herzog Cosimo wollte als ein zweiter Perseus verstanden
werden, und vielleicht mag der Vorschlag Cellinis, statt des Andromedabefreiers den
Medusentöter darzustellen, als eine billige Umdeutung auch deren Sinngehalte am Hofe

148
scholars like John Pope-Hennessy, Thomas Hirthe, and, following them, John Shearman,
also aligned the sculpture with this self-reflexive political theme. Perseus, however, was
not a particularly popular figure in Florentine iconography of rule and the adoption of the
subject matter likely came from its earlier imperial associations. John-Pope Hennessey
rightly suggests in his monograph on Cellini that Cosimo likely based his selection of the
hero on a medal cast by his cousin, the first Duke of Florence Alessandro de’ Medici.
283

Alessandro employed Cellini at the Florentine mint in the late 1530s and the artist
certainly would have been familiar with the medal. In fact, early scholarship attributed
the work to Cellini before reattributing it to Francesco del Prato.
284
The medal depicts
Perseus crossing a turbulent sea with the head of Medusa in hand (fig. 3.2).
285
The
inscription on the medal reads “Sic Tute/ Optime Div(ino) Q(ue) Vivitur” or “thus in
safety the very best of the divine lived.”
286
As Pope-Hennessy has suggested, the image
illustrates Alessandro as “fundator quietis” who ushers in a new era of peace.
287
While
Pope-Hennessey does not clarify the exact geographic parameters of this peace, the
presumption is that this new protection is localized to the city of Florence. He implicitly
aligns this idea of protection with programs like the Fortezza da Basso, built on the
outskirts of the city at the request of Alessandro.
288
The image of Perseus walking on

beifällig begrüßt worden sein.“ Wolfgang Braunfels, Cellini: Perseus und Medusa
(Stuttgart: Reclam, 1961), 6-7.
283
Pope-Hennessy, 168. He builds this reading on Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the
Medici, 15
th
-18
th
Centuries, vol. 1 (Florence: SPES, 1981), 76.
284
See for instance Cellini’s medal of Alessandro which is paired with the image of
Cosmas and Damien made around 1535. Pope-Hennessy, 73.
285
Ibid., 168.
286
Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, vol. 1, 237.
287
Pope-Hennessy, 168.
288
On the architectural patronage of Alessandro including the Fortezza da Basso, the
Fortezza Vecchia, and the triumphal procession of Charles V see Mauro Gianneschi and
Carla Sodini, “Urbanistica e politica durante il principato di Alessandro de’ Medici,

149
water, however, suggests something much broader geographically. This seascape is
locatable, if only generally, within the narrative structure of the Perseus myth; the hero
crosses the vast liminal space of the Mediterranean, between Greece, Africa, and the
Levant, maintaining peace at a distance and returning home with his spoils. Who then is
Perseus protecting and from whom?
As we have seen, Alessandro’s use of the Persean allegory of protection could
have evoked events that stretched beyond the reach of the walls of Florence. In fact,
during Alessandro’s reign, the god-like figure of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
crossed the Mediterranean to do battle in Africa and returned home with spoils. In 1535,
the emperor sieged the Ottoman-controlled ports of Tunis and Goleta in North Africa. As
Alessandro was married to Charles’ illegitimate daughter, Margherita d’Austria, he was
politically allied with the emperor. His rule of Florence was also maintained under the
emperor’s support and thus after this important battle, Alessandro was expected to
welcome the emperor appropriately. An elaborate victory procession was held in the city
in Florence in 1536. Duke Alessandro employed a team of artists, headed by a young
Giorgio Vasari, to construct ephemeral arches and sculpture to celebrate the emperor
upon his return. The iconography of the procession celebrated both the union of
Margherita and Alessandro, as well as Charles’ recent victories in Africa. Vasari
decorated the church of San Felice, for example, with a painted scene of the emperor
defeating Barbarossa, the head admiral of the Ottoman fleet at Tunis. Above it read the
inscription “CAROLO AUGUSTO DOMINATORI AFRICAE.”
289
Vasari placed the

1532-37” Storia della città 10 (1979): 5-34. For a more in depth study of the Fortezza da
Basso in particular see Francesco Gurrieri and Paolo Mazzoni, La Fortezza da Basso: un
monument per la città (Florence: Ponte alle Grazie, 1990).
289
Gianneschi and Sodini, 23.

150
scene between two other images, one in sculpture of the siege of Goleta in North Africa,
and the other a painted image of a generic victory over Asia, made to inspire Charles to
continue his efforts to the east.
290
This defeat of Africa and Asia was echoed by
additional allegorical images of Victory above, with an inscription that read “TURCIS
ET AFRIS VICTIS.”
291
Several other ephemeral decorations were erected along the
itinerary of the entry procession, including one that celebrated the repulse of the siege of
Vienna by Charles’ brother Ferdinand.
292
By the mid-1530s, works fabricated almost
entirely by Tuscan artists like Vasari, depicted a broader geographical victory rhetoric
that identified the Turks, via Africa and Asia, as enemies of the empire.
Although Perseus did not appear in the decorative program of Charles’ triumphal
arches, the hero was one of the figures utilized on arms and armor celebrating the defeat
of the Turks in the 1540s. As Thomas Hirthe has suggested, the theme of Perseus had
broad imperial resonances in Florence and beyond, possibly inspired by these works.
293

In particular, Charles V owned two metal shields from the workshop of Filippo Negroli,
elaborately decorated with the head of Medusa, which he likely carried in victory
processions. The first shield was completed in 1541 and the second was probably
completed in the 1550s (fig. 3.3 and 3.4). The earlier shield was commissioned by the
emperor from the Negroli workshop and dates to around the time the emperor was
planning an assault on Algiers, several years after his victory at Tunis.
294
While the shield

290
Giorgio Vasari explains the iconography of the entire program in a series of letters
sent to Pietro Aretino, see Gianneschi and Sodini for transcriptions.
291
Ibid.
292
Ibid., 22-23.
293
Hirthe, “Die Perseus-und-Medusa,” 197-216.
294
On the 1541 Medusa shield see Stuart Pyhrr and José-A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the
Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries (New York: Abrams,
1999), 177-179.

151
illustrates no particular anti-African rhetoric, it bears an inscription “IS TERROR QUOD
VIRTUS ANIMO ET FORTUNA PARET” or “this object inspires terror, for valor is
shown through courage and fortune.”
295
The shield suggests the apotropaic power of the
Gorgoneion, an often overlooked detail. Negroli’s adoption of the Gorgoneion as the
central element for a decorative shield, a surprisingly novel innovation considering its
relative obviousness, likely illustrated Charles’ new title as “Cesare Africanus.” Classical
sources viewed the Gorgoneion as the symbol signifying African forces, most clearly
within narratives of the second Punic war fought between Hannibal and Scipio Africanus.
Silius Italicus, in his epic poem Punica, describes the warrior Phorcys, who fought in the
army of Hannibal, as carrying an image of the Medusa which identified his North African
origins;
“Among the thousands stands huge Phorcys, who came from the caves of Calpe
[the Rock of Gibraltar] sacred to Hercules, with a shield engraved with the
Gorgon’s head; he whose ancestry spread from the origins of this goddess. He
throws himself forward, proud of this ancient name and his descent from Medusa,
the petrifying monster. While striking violently at the left groin [of Paulus the
Aetolian], he deflected the blow and seized him by the crest of his tall helmet:
then thrusting him upon the ground, he drove his sword through him, where the
belt curves around the base of the spine and protects both the hips. A hot stream
of blood poured forth from the gaping entrails; and the Atlantean settler went
down beneath the soil of the Aetolian.”
296

295
Ibid., 177.
296
“Inter mille viros iacet ingens phorcus, ab antris Herculae calpes, caelatus gorgone
parmam, Unde genus tritisque deae manabat origo. Hunc obiectantem sese, atque antiqua
tomentum Nomina, saxificae monstrosa ex stripe medusa, Dum laeuum petit incumbens
violentius inguem Detrabit excelsi correptum vertice coni, Afflictumque premens, tergo
qua balteus imo Sinuatur, coaxque sedet munimen utraque Coniecto fodit ense,
supervomit ille calentem Sanguinis effundens per hiantia viscera rivum, Et subit atolos
athlanticus accola campos.” Silius Italicus, Opus de bello punico secundo (Florence:
Giunti, 1515), 113r-113v. Poggio Bracciolini rediscovered the text of the Punica in 1417
making it particularly significant for the city of Florence. See Peter Marshall and L.D.
Reynolds, Texts and Transmission: A Survey of Latin Classics (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1983), 389-391.

152
Within this passage, Silius Italicus offers significant geographical context to the image of
the Gorgon, the aegis, placed upon the shield of Phorcys. The warrior fighting for
Carthage is identified as a descendent of Medusa and likewise as an “Atlantean settler,”
that is originally from North Africa near Mons Atlas. Though Silius cites Phorcys as
“from the caves of Calpe,” or the Rock of Gibraltar, the later clarification suggests that
his true origins reside in Mauritania, the home of the Gorgon Medusa. The very name
Phorcys would have drawn clear gorgonian associations to mind, as it was also the name
of Medusa’s father. Charles’ adoption of the Gorgoneion on a parade shield, paired with
an inscription that invokes Medusa’s power, cannot be read merely as a decorative
element but rather as the very first image of African spoils. Bearing the shield in
procession suggested his new role as the ruler of Africa, as “Cesare Africanus” or “Tertio
Africanus.”
A second shield owned by Charles, also associated with the Negroli workshop,
more clearly connects this anti-African sentiment with the image of Medusa (fig. 3.4).
297

The shield designed with a raised head of Medusa at its center, bears a small roundel of
Scipio Africanus, along with several other images of Roman emperors and generals (fig.
3.5). Each can be associated with military campaigns in Africa, including Egypt,
Carthage, Ethiopia, and Mauritania.
298
In addition, an outer register shows captured
spoils, including Turkish slaves with flags decorated with crescent moons (fig. 3.6). A
partial inscription has traditionally been interpreted as associating the shield with the
failed siege of Algiers in 1541, however recent stylistic evidence suggests that the work

297
Ibid., 216-224.
298
Ibid., 222.

153
was made about a decade later.
299
While little attempt has been made to associate the
shield with the emperor’s later efforts in Africa, it may have commemorated the siege of
Mahdia, a successful incursion led by imperial forces in 1550, in which the Florentines
participated. Regardless, Medusa’s association with imperial victories over the Turks
throughout the mid-sixteenth century appears suggestive and would have been reinforced
in a range of media that portrayed the emperor as “Cesare Africanus” or the “Tertio
Africanus” standing victorious over the female allegory of Africa. A printed portrait of
Charles V by Niccolò della Casa, created between 1543-48, shows the image of the
emperor above a female allegory of Africa, bound, wearing a cap decorated with a
crescent moon (fig. 3.7).
Duke Alessandro’s selection of the image of Perseus carrying the head of
Medusa, paired with an inscription invoking safety, likely projected a similar sense of
imperial protection which stretched all the way to Africa. Although Alessandro is often
given little credit as a patron of art or architecture, or seen as a ruler interested in spaces
beyond Florence, specific programs finished during his reign helped associate him with
this type of Mediterranean rhetoric of safety, namely the completion of the Fortezza
Vecchia in Livorno (fig. 3.8).
300
Begun by the architect Antonio da Sangallo the Elder in
1519, under the patronage of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, future Pope Clement VII, the
fortress was completed by Duke Alessandro in 1534.
301
While the project had been begun

299
Ibid.
300
For a complete history of the Fortezza Vecchia from its medieval origins to its later
additions in the sixteenth century, see Giovanna Piancastelli Politi Nencini ed., La
Fortezza Vecchia: difesa e simbolo della città di Livorno (Milan: Amilcare Spizzi, 1995).
See also the more recent work by Mario Ferretti, La Fortezza Vecchia di Livorno
(Livorno: Debate Editore, 2006).
301
Giorgio Vasari mentions in the life of Antonio Sangallo in Le Vite that “avendosi poi a
fare la fortezza di Livorno, vi fu mandato dal cardinale de’ Medici a fare il disegno…” Le

154
decades earlier, the Florentine Republic suspended its construction during the siege of
Florence in 1530. The timing of its completion under Duke Alessandro allowed the new
ruler to take credit for an important addition to the protection of the Tuscan coastline
from North African pirates and foreign navies. The fortress still bears several
commemorative plaques and stemmi naming Alessandro as the patron (fig. 3.9 and
3.10).
302
The main entrance of the fortress in Livorno is decorated with Alessandro’s
coat-of-arms, paired with an inscription that reads “Sotto una fede et leggie Uno Signor
Solo.” Another coat-of-arms of the duke placed in the center of a bastion is paired with
an inscription that reads “Al[ex]ander Med. Dux. Florent. A.D. M.D.XXX IIII [1534],
Die primo Aprelis. Senper.”
303
While the medal of Perseus and the fortress at Livorno
have never been connected before, the image of the Greek hero carrying the head of the
gorgon likely helped illustrate themes of coastal protection from African forces. The
island directly off of the coast of Livorno was, and is still, called Gorgona, known by
classical geographers as Urgo, Gorgon, or Orgon. Though the island had no mythological
associations with the gorgoni, the name Gorgona likely drew philological associations in
the early modern period. Latin accounts of Perseus’ beheading of Medusa used the
nominative declension “gorgona” in texts.
304
Vernacular texts of the period also
occasionally used the Latin spelling as a result, instead of the traditional “gorgone” found

vite dei più ecellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi, vol. 4
(Florence: 1879), 288.
302
While the Fortezza da Basso does bear several Medici family coats-of-arms,
Alessandro is named only on the foundation stone of the fortress. See Gurrieri and Paolo
Mazzoni, 43.
303
On the various inscriptions and stemmi placed on the Fortezza Vecchia see Daniela
Stiaffini “Stemmi, iscrizioni e sculure” in La Fortezza Vecchia, 162-174.
304
For example the line “Parte alia caeli desecto Gorgona collo portabat multis redimitus
tempora flamis Perseus et nudo horrebat Tritonides ense,” in Ugolino di Vierino’s epic
poem in honor of Charlemagne Carliade composed in 1480. The declension of “gorgona”
can also be found in the Latin sonnets attached to the Perseus later recorded by Cellini.

155
in modern Italian.
305
Translations of Pliny’s Natural History by Cristoforo Landino,
printed in vernacular in 1534, also record both the “isola Gorgona,” in the Tyrrhenian
sea, and the “isole Gorgone,” off the coast of North Africa, next to one another in the
table of contents.
306
Verbal slippage between the names of the two islands likely
encouraged visual associations with Persean victory over Medusa right off the coast of
Livorno.
As mentioned in Chapter One, conflict over control of liminal spaces in the
Tyrrhenian sea, like Gorgona, was a source of historical tension between North African
forces and the Italian city-states. As discussed previously, Medusa was not only believed
to be from North Africa, but also associated generally with the rule of islands off of the
coast of Italy, in particular Sardinia, in part generated from its historical associations with
Carthage. But the island of Gorgona in the Tyrrhenian also had a long history as a site of
conflict between Saracen pirates and monastic settlers from Tuscany, much like
Sardinia.
307
By the sixth century, Gorgona supported a working Benedictine monastery
that was continually raided. Though the island was abandoned several times in the
Middle Ages as a result, by 1374 the Carthusian order maintained a consistent presence
on it. After the island fell to Florentine control with the seizure of Livorno in 1421, it was

305
See for example Jacopo Filippo da Bergamo who refers to her as “gorgona” in his
Supplementum Supplementi delle Croniche (Venice: 1535), fol. XLVIv.
306
See Historia Naturale di C. Plinio Secondo di Latino in volgare tradotta per
Christophoro Landino (Venice: 1534). The two islands are listed together under the
“Tavola dell’historia naturale” listed under the letter G, as “gorgona islola” and “gorgone
islola.”
307
For the medieval history of the island see also Anna Guarducci, Marco Piccardi, and
Leonardo Rombai, Altlante della Toscana Tirrenica: Cartografia, Storia, Paessagi,
Architetture (Livorno: Debate Otello, 2012), 172-174, as well as Jack la Bolina,
L’Arcipelago Toscano (Bergamo: Istituto Italiano d’Arti Grafiche, 1914), 121-129. On
the later history of Gorgona in the late sixteenth-century see Clara Errico and Michele
Montanelli, Gorgona: storia dell’isola dal XVI al XIX secolo (Pisa: Il Borghetto, 2000).

156
subsequently abandoned in 1424 by the Carthusians after a sack by North African pirates
that same year.
308
Gorgona remained largely uninhabited until Duke Cosimo passed its
control to the Basilian order in 1564 and began to improve the island’s defenses three
years later.
309
This however did not stop pirate raids, which are recorded throughout the
subsequent century.
310
Alessandro’s earlier patronage of the Fortezza Vecchia, built at the
mouth of the port of Livorno, thus provided protection from islands like Gorgona, which
operated as havens for pirates in the early modern period giving them easy access to
strike the coastline. The medal of Alessandro, shown in conjunction with the image of a
victorious Perseus over the gorgon at sea, illustrated the ruler as divine protector of the
coast.
311
Just as the image of the beheaded gorgon served Charles V to illustrate his
successes in North Africa, Alessandro’s use of the image would have evoked a similar
rhetoric of protection from Muslim pirates, inspired by programs like the completion of
the Fortezza Vecchia.
Other imperial servants like Prince Andrea Doria also utilized the image of
Perseus to project broader messages of Mediterranean protection. In particular, Doria
commissioned a fresco cycle dedicated to the hero in Genoa at the Villa Doria at Fassolo
(fig. 3.11). The building was constructed as a suburban villa to entertain Charles V during

308
Errico and Montanelli, 12.
309
Guardacci, Piccardi, and Rombai, 170.
310
For example Errico and Montanelli record a pirate raid in the 1580s, not long after
Duke Cosimo began a concentrated plan to increase the security of these spaces to insure
fewer raids on the Tyrrhenian coastline, Errico and Montanelli, 12.
311
The completion of the Fortezza Vecchia at Livorno formed part of a much longer
program of defenses built along the coastline in the subsequent centuries. While both
Cosimo I and Francesco I built palaces in the Fortezza Vecchia, they also completed
construction on the Fortezza Nuova, further improving the coastal protection of Livorno.
They also built a series of watch towers along the Tyrrhenian coast. For an introduction
to these structures beginning in the Middle Ages see Italo Baggiossi, Le torri costiere
della Toscana (Rome: Newton Compton, 1988).

157
his visit to Italy in 1530. In honor of the imperial reception, the rooms of Doria’s villa
were decorated with mythological scenes painted by Perino del Vaga, completed between
1528-1530. While the most famous scene remains del Vaga’s fresco of the Fall of the
Giants decorating the main reception hall, the villa contained several other private rooms,
one of which features the story of Perseus. As the first retaining room built off of the
main reception hall, the sala di Perseo likely functioned as a more private space, where
the defacto leader of the Republic met with guests.
312
Today the room is referred to by
the Museo del Villa del Principe as Doria’s former “Throne Room.” The Sala del Perseo
illustrates a sequence of scenes of the hero’s life in fourteen lunettes, several of which are
now destroyed due to exposure. While the lunettes illustrate a selection of typical scenes
from the story, including Perseus fighting the sea dragon, Perino also depicted a rather
rare image of the birth of the first serpents from the blood of Medusa in Libya (fig. 3.12).
In the frescoed lunette, Perseus holds the head of Medusa outward, while serpents spring
forth from her blood as it drips on the sand at his feet. This geographically specific
moment clearly played into both the historical perception that Medusa lived in Africa, as
well as correlating Perseus’ efforts within the region with Andrea Doria’s efforts to stamp
out Ottoman pirate havens in North Africa. Doria was indeed the leader of the imperial
navy during the siege of Tunis in 1535, accompanying Charles V; and his family would
continue to serve imperial interests at sea through the Battle of Lepanto in 1570.
Tapestries completed by 1591 to commemorate this later battle in fact prove that by this

312
On the decorative and spatial layout of the Villa del Principe, or Villa Doria, see Piero
Boccardo, Andrea Doria e le arti: commitenza e mecenatismo a Genova nel
Rinascimento (Rome: Fratelli Palombi, 1989), 51-75. For an analysis of the themes of the
individual rooms see Laura Stagno, Palazzo del Principe: Villa di Andrea Doria, Genova
(Genoa: Sagep Libri, 2003), 42-43.

158
period Medusa was associated with dominion over Ottoman forces (fig. 3.13).
313
On the
lower register of a tapestry depicting the engagement of the Ottoman fleet with the Holy
League off of the coast of Greece, a captured Turk, bound in chains, leans on the head of
Medusa, next to an emblem of a hand holding a snake (fig. 3.14). The spread of the first
serpents from Medusa’s blood in Africa clearly acted as a parallel for the expansion of
Ottoman power in North Africa, an idea founded upon the mytho-geography of the story
of Perseus.
Raised under the watchful eye of his older cousin Duke Alessandro, the young
Cosimo would have witnessed both the entry procession of Charles V and certainly
visited the Fortezza Vecchia by the time his own interests in Persean imagery emerged.
314

If the defeat of the gorgon can be associated generally with a rhetoric of imperial
protection, Cosimo likely derived this message not only from his cousin but from other
imperial servants like Andrea Doria. As a young duke, Cosimo visited Genoa in 1543,
where he was received at the Villa Doria in Fassolo and remarked at the decorative
schemes of the palazzo in a letter sent back to Florence. By 1545, when Cellini arrived to
the duke’s court seeking a new patron, both Perseus and the defeat of Medusa evoked
broader issues of imperial protection and victories in North Africa that by then had fallen
to Ottoman control. Cosimo’s desire to model himself after both Alessandro and Andrea

313
For a summary of the Lepanto tapestries see Stagno, 93-100.
314
In his Autobiography, Cellini specifically mentions a meeting with Duke Cosimo in
the 1560s which took place in Livorno, during the his efforts to fortify the harbor with an
additional fortress, the Fortezza Nuova; “Trovandosi il Duca a Livorno, io lo andai a
trovare, solo per chiedergli licenza: sentendomi ritornar le mie forze, e veduto, che io non
era adoperato a nulla, e’ m’incresceva di far tanto gran torto alli mia studii; di modo che
risolutomi, me ne andai a Livorno, e trovai il mio Duca, che mi fece gratissima
accoglienza; e perchè io vi stetti parecchi giorni, ogni giorno io cavalcavo con Sua
Eccellenza e avevo molto agio a poter dire tutto quello che io volevo, perchè usciva fuor
di Livorno, e andava quattro miglia rasente il mare, dove egli faceva fare un poco di
fortezza…” Tassi, vol. 2, 573.

159
Doria would have compelled him to select the myth of Perseus as his first major public
commission.

The Siege of Africa, Ancient Aphrodisium

While Andrea Doria was known widely for his efforts to protect Christendom
from the Turks throughout the Mediterranean, beginning in the 1540s, Duke Cosimo also
began a concentrated program to expand his own naval presence, modeled in large part
after the Genoese. By mid-century his plan had come to fruition; Genoa and Florence
fought alongside one another against the Turks in the name of the emperor in their first
imperial siege in the Maghreb. Four years before the unveiling of the Perseus, in
September of 1550, the Florentines celebrated an imperial military victory over Ottoman
forces in North Africa, the taking of “la Città d’Affrica,” known in Latin as Aphrodisium,
and today known as Mahdia, in Tunisia. Early modern Italians were, however, fond of
simply calling the city “Affrica,” a rather suggestive metonymic shortening for
understanding the reception of Cellini’s Perseus as African victory rhetoric.
315
The city
was the former capital of Ifriqiya, the medieval center of the Islamic Maghreb and the
focus of crusade efforts in 1087 and 1390.
316
The siege of 1550 was one of the earliest
anti-Ottoman efforts organized by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in which the
Florentines participated. The Christian flotilla was led by none other than Prince Andrea

315
See for example ASF MdP 397a fol. 911-917 which employs phrases like “in barberia
per far l’impresa d’affrica.”
316
The French chronicler Jean Froissart mentions the siege of Affrica, led by the Geonese
in 1390, a collective effort that included the French and the English. The crusade was
launched to reduce the power of pirates who, according to Froissart, had organized
attacks on Elba, Cyprus, Corsica, Bostan, Gorgona, Sardinia, Finesse, and Majorca. See
Setton, vol. 1, 334.

160
Doria, at the time eighty-three years old. The collective target of the siege was the
capture of Turgut Reis, who earlier in 1550 had been elevated to the title of sanjakbey
under Süleyman the Magnificent. Previously, Turgut Reis had acted as an independent
corsair, preying on Christian ships moving throughout the Levant, though often in the
employ of the sultan. By 1549, Turgut Reis was so feared that the Venetian Senate
requested from Pope Paul III the right to collect two church tithes from its citizens “to
maintain the security of the seas from the piracy and evil works of Dragut Rays, the
famous corsair.”
317
For decades Turgut Reis assisted corsairs like Khayr-al Dīn,
Barbarossa, in the capture of Christian ships and the looting of ports throughout the
Mediterranean. Although he had been captured by the Genoese early in his life, he had
been set free after a successful ransom.
318
With his elevation to official court status under
Süleyman, Turgut Reis gained the support of the entire Ottoman navy, increasing his
ability to do damage to Christian interests. By 1550, Turgut Reis had made the port of
Mahdia his base of operations owing to its proximity to Christian shipping lanes. In order
to sever this newly sponsored Ottoman naval force Prince Andrea Doria, Don Pedro de
Toledo, Duke Cosimo’s father-in-law, and Charles V organized a league sponsored by
Pope Julius III to capture both Mahdia and Turgut Reis. As a church sponsored flotilla,
the anti-Ottoman effort was an early modern crusade effort, supported financially by the
papacy.
319
Alongside the Florentines and the Genoese, the inclusion of both Spanish
troops and the Knights of Malta made it both an imperial and papal affair. Cosimo
selected Paolo Giordano Orsini as captain of his fleet, a skilled leader who would reprise

317
“per tenir li mari sicuri da corsair et del mal operar de Dragut Rays, corsaro famoso.”
Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant (1204-1571) vol. 3 (Philadelphia: The
American Philosophical Society, 1984), 532.
318
Ibid.
319
See Chapter 1.

161
his role for the duke several times in future battles, including at Lepanto.
320
The
collective flotilla set out in June of 1550 to Mahdia from Naples.
321
The siege lasted
throughout July and August, resupplied with soldiers and supplies via Genoa. On the 20
th

of September news arrived of the taking of Affrica. A small contingent of the flotilla had
returned to Naples with news that the Christian banner had been hoisted above the
fortress of Mahdia on September, 8.
322
Turgut Reis, however, had been at sea in June and
had taken the opportunity in the intervening months to prey on the Italian coast unabated.
On the 24
th
of that same month, Cosimo received confirmation of the victory from his
ambassador at the court of the Viceroy of Naples, with the suggestion that due to “the
very happy news, for the benefit of and the greatness of Christians, [Viceroy Don Pedro]
wants your excellency to render thanks in the temple of God and organize public
festivities for it, with fireworks and artillery in the manner which appears to your
Lordship to seem appropriate and according to that which is normally done for similar
news.”
323
Word of the victory in Affrica thus spread throughout the city in churches and
in the streets.

320
Paolo Giordano Orsini married Duke Cosimo’s daughter Isabella de’ Medici in 1558.
Her death in 1576, under suspicious circumstances, led to a distancing between the two
families. See Caroline Murphy, Isabella de’ Medici: The Glorious Life and Tragic End of
a Medici Princess (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
321
For an exceptional record of this lesser-known battle, and the duchy’s participation in
it, see Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, vol. 3, 533-536.
322
Ibid., 534.
323
“24 Settembre Reverendo Signor mio osservisimo, Le lettere del Vice Re’, fecion
quasi certe poco fa queste Eccellentie della felice, presa et aquisto d’Affrica, et per
l’aviso che vostri signori ha mandato da poi, ch’ pur hora e’ gionto per la confirmatione
datane’ co’ quei pochi particolri da Jua.o Osorio, ne restano certissime et consulate,
sendo massimamente, seguita la vittoria con salute di quei signori, ch’ erano all’impresa,
et come di nuova molto felice, a benefitio et per altalze de’ Christiani vuole sua
eccellentie ch’ ne temple di Dio sene renda gratie a sua divina Maesta, et sene faccia
allegrezza pubblica, co’ fuochi, et artiglierie, in quel modo ch’ a Vostro Signore parra ch’
convenga, et secondo ch’ e’ solito farsi quanto simili nuove’.” ASF MdP 1176, fol. 9.

162
While celebrations made this victory visible in the Florentine center, the influx of
new slaves from Mahdia also appears to have been noticeable. Lists of slaves for ducal
ships show that as late as 1555 ledgers continued to include the location of their seizure at
“la città d’Affrica.” For example, nine rowers of the ship Capitana Vecchia are recorded
as having come directly from the siege. The entries describe for example two rowers;
“Acamet, a moor, from Monastir, very brown, 40 years old with two wounds above his
front, acquired in the siege of Affrica” and “Ametto of Affrica, a white moor with red
skin, of 45 years of age, good stature, acquired in the siege of Affrica.”
324
This document
acts as a reminder that the duchy’s victory over the port was recorded in more than
simple festivities in the following years. Men and women from “la città d’Affrica”
arrived to the duchy as slave labor and living reminders of the geographic reach of
Florentine dominion.
The duchy’s participation in the siege was known well beyond the city and its
territories. Printed descriptions of the victory, which circulated throughout Europe,
include Duke Cosimo among the imperial heroes who supported the effort. Texts that
circulated in the years after the victory, such as Juan Cristoforo Calvetti Stella’s De
Aphrodisio Expungato (1551) and Horatio Nucula Intramante’s De Bello Aphrodisiensi
(1552), include Duke Cosimo as an integral member in the action against Affrica.
325

Celebrations of Cosimo’s participation in the victory in Mahdia would continue
throughout his life and were included in works printed in his honor after his death.

324
“Acamet moro di monisteri molto Bruno d’anni 40 con dua ferrite sopra la fronte,
compero nella presa d’Affrica. Ametto di affrica moro bianco di pel rosso, d’eta d’anni
45 buona statura comperato nella presa d’affrica,” ASF MdP 627, fol. 46v.
325
In each of the texts, much is also made of the duke’s control of the port of Livorno.
See Juan Cristoforo Calvetti Stella, De Aphrodisio Expungato (Antwerp: 1551), 12;
Horatio Nucula Intramante, De Bello Aphrodisiensi (Rome: 1552), 32.

163
Sebastiano Sanleolini includes a selection of short epigrams in celebration of the battle in
his Serenissimi Cosmi Medycis primi Hetruria (1578); the first commemorates the
landing of Florentine ships at Monastir, called Leptis Parva in antiquity, a siege which
lead to the taking of Mahdia:

“COSIMO’S TRIREMES with Caesar’s navy sailed to Leptis Parva, commonly
called Pignonem, today no longer, and destroyed it.

Sailor do not be afraid to tie your rope to the shore:
Behold your speedy journey from here, and your quick return.
Leptis Parva lies defeated; the Libyan robbers have fallen.
The Duke accomplished this together with Caesar accompanied by the Tuscan
fleet.”
326

The second epigram celebrates the leader of the Tuscan fleet, Giordano Orsini, who led
Cosimo’s troops in battle at Mahdia, again referred to as Affrica and Aphrodisium:
“COSIMO’s GALLEYS UNDER the Roman GIORDANO ORSINO destroyed
Aphrodisium with the imperial fleet, today called Affrica,”

“Giordano Orsino leader of the Tuscan galleys and Caesar
captured and overthrew Aphrodisium.”
327

A biography of Cosmo I, written in 1580 by Filippo Cabriano, which appears to have
only remained in manuscript form, also includes a description of the event as an integral
moment in the duke’s life:

326
“COSMIANAE TRIREMES CUM CESARIANA / classe ad Leptim parvam, hodie
non nullis vulgò pignonem delendam. / Navita nen paueas appellere littore funem: / Tutus
iter curre hinc, atq; recurre tuum. / Leptis parua iacet: Lybici cecidere latrones: / Dux
facti Caesar: classis Hetrusca comes,” Sebastiano Sanleolini, Serenissimi Cosmi Medycis
Primi Hetruriae (Florence: 1578), 5v.
327
“COSMIANAE TRIREMES SVB IORDANO VRSINO Romano cum Caesariana /
classe ad Aphrodisium, hodie Aphricam delendum. / Iordano Vrsino Thuscas ductante
Triremis, Cepit; & evertit Caesar Aphrodisium,” Ibid.

164
“Caesar was preparing an expedition to Africa to expunge the fortress in Numidia,
named Aphrodisium, whose structure and surrounding were well fortified.
Cosimo sent his triremes to war, and several banners of infantry under Giordano
Orsini, the strongest of men, whose gunfire punished and cannonballs fired
offering an opportune course of aid. For whatever the subject, Doria had to lead as
admiral of the fleet, he was consumed by the constant bombardment of the
extended walls. In this assault as always in other wars Cosimo’s troops worked
and labored excellently. And all the while during the expedition the Tuscan
soldiers of Cosimo aided Caesar, men who under the greatest emperor were well
prepared, as it is not a small thing that foreign soldiers were faithful, as in this
protection many principates were missing, as is seen, nor had the virtue or ease of
Tuscany weakened.”
328

While no visual productions remain that were specifically inspired by the victory,
Cellini’s Perseus, unveiled in 1554, certainly could have been the focal point of similar
African victory rhetoric. The sculptural depiction of a Greek prince victorious over a
Libyan Gorgon, whose ancestral home was frequently located near modern day Mahdia,
would have provided ample opportunity to draw geographic parallels. Sonnets attached to
the sculpture at the time of its unveiling appear to have drawn similar comparisons,
framing Cellini’s work within a broader aesthetic contest that reached to the edges of the
Mediterranean.

328
“Caesar tum expeditionem in Africam parabat ad expugnandum opidum Numidiae,
nomine Aphrodisium, natura et opera valde munitum. Ad id bellum Cosmus suas triremes
misit, et peditum aliquot signa sub Iordano Ursino, fortissimo viro, pulveremque
tormentarium et pilas ferreas per opportunum sane auxilium. Nam quicquid utriusque rei
habuerat Auria, classis praefectus, diutura assiduaque murorum quassatione
consumpserat. In ea oppugnatione ut semper ceteris in bellis cosminarium cohortium
Caesar egregia usus et opera. Ac dum omnibus in expeditionibus Caesarem hetrusco
milite Cosmus adiuvat, suos homines sub tanto imperatore sic assuefacit, ut neque
externo milite, plerumque parum fido, ad tutandum principatum multum egere videretur,
neque hetrusca virtus domestico otio enervaretur.” Transcribed from the original text of
Filippo Cabriano’s Cosmi Medicis Magni Hetruriae Ducis Vita et Res Gestae in Carmen
Menchini, ed., Panegirici e vite di Cosimo I de’ Medici. Tra storia e propaganda
(Florence: Leo S. Olschki ed.), 229.

165
Locating Cellini’s Perseus in “Affrica”

Within the selection of sonnets recorded by Cellini in his notebooks, some of
which were later printed in his Due trattati (1568), poets and artists alike give geographic
dimension to the Perseus. Several poets describe Perseus’ journey along the edges of the
Mediterranean Sea and others frame the aesthetic success of Cellini’s work within a
broader global perspective. These writings often intentionally oscillate between global
and local victories, moving freely from the defeat of entire continents to Cellini’s ability
to surpass other Florentine artists. Several sonnets address Duke Cosimo’s emerging role
in victories like the siege of “la Città d’Affrica” through the aesthetic success of Cellini’s
work:

Affrica and Asia is completely overturned,
and someone from every part of Europe,
is launched to the sea, to ships, oars and rigging
to come see the divine work;
for me it appears is heard every tomb unearth itself;
the spirit, which is apart from the body,
wants in that [form] to return, to see the art
of the beautiful Perseus, which stands above Medusa.
Celebrate yourself Florence, that which is owed,
Of the immortal gods, which are seen today,
divine Michelangelo and Benvenuto.
These have made a legacy of their fame;
that is the treasure, that is the tribute
which lives and reigns as long as faith lives.
329

329
“L’Affrica e L’Asia è tutta sottosopra / E dell’Europa ciascuna sua parte / Al mar
s’acconcia, a’ legni, reme e sarte, / Per venire a veder la divin’ opra; / Parmi sentire,
ch’ogni tomba si scuopra; / Lo spirto, che dal corpo è in disparate / Voglia in quello
tornar, per veder l’arte / Del bel Perseo ch’ a Medusa sta sopra. / Rallegrisi Fiorenza, ch’
è dovuto, / Delli Iddii immortali, ch’ oggi vede / Michelangol divino e Benvenuto. /
Questi l’han fatta di lor fama erede; / Quello è il tesoro, quello è il tribute / Che vive e
regna fin che vive fede.” For a transcription see Milanesi, I trattati, 413.

166
This sonnet engages in a similar victory rhetoric as that seen in the triumphal procession
of Charles V in Florence after his taking of Tunis in which the defeat of Africa and Asia
was visualized. For the anonymous poet, the victory of Cellini’s Perseus reaches well
beyond the Piazza Ducale to defeat distant continents, both spaces of conflict for the city
of Florence. The maritime focus of this sonnet reinforces the connection of these themes
to imperial sieges on the North African coast; the city is rendered the center of the world,
where the desire to see Cellini’s work necessitates a ship. It is of course the spelling of
“Affrica” which draws a very suggestive parallel with Cosimo’s victory at “la città
d’Affrica” some four years earlier. Though two alternate spellings were common through
the mid-sixteenth century, “Affrica” and “Africa,” to refer to the continent, the
metonymic shift between the two would have been available for a clever poet to
manipulate. The structure of the sonnet reinforces the reading of Perseus’ as victorious
over Africa, using the rhyming scheme of the sonnet to mirror the first line “l’Affrica e
l’Asia è tutta sottosopra” with line eight, “del bel Perseo, ch’ a Medusa sta sopra.”
Perseus, the Greek, stands above (“sta sopra”) Medusa, the Libyan, who is herself
compositionally arranged upside down (“sottosopra”). The sculptor shows Medusa as
Africa “overturned” and the poet plays directly on this idea in his sonnet.
The final section of the poem departs from Asia and Africa, turning instead to the
afterlife. Spirits rise up from their graves to journey to see Cellini’s Perseus in Florence.
Their return to see the artwork presents the unending reach of the artist’s fame, compared
to Michelangelo’s, as the treasure and tribute to the city. Yet the conclusion of the sonnet
leaves the reader with a caveat for the lasting immortality of their art; that it can only be
maintained “so long as faith lives.” Here the term “fede” cannot be disassociated with a

167
beleaguered Catholic Europe, beset on all sides by its enemies. The opening of the poem
with the Perseus’ aesthetic defeat of “Affrica” and Asia, concluded in turn with the
stipulation that the Catholic faith maintains the fame of this work, embeds its victory
within the tenuous reign of Christendom over the world. With the fall of one, comes the
destruction of the other.
Another sonnet by Niccolò Mochi follows a similar global victory rhetoric,
situating the beauty of Cellini’s work as superior to Africa. The poet writes,
Cellini you have no need to work yourself anymore
To shun the infamy of the misguided world,
Or that you are made with the loving knowledge
Of princes, lords, and illustrious men.
Only with your work, more lustrous
Than that which honors the Moor, the Bears, or the Levant;
Your fame spreads to the others ahead
A thousand and a thousand years later and a thousand half-centuries.
With the polish, the casting, and with the chisel
The statues you made, are more than immortal
And it stupefies every man who merely looks at it.
You are the only one I know that has no rival,
And you are the only sun in the middle of the stars
Of Michelangelo, Donatello, and Bandinelli.
330

While Mochi claims that Cellini surpasses the other sculptors with works installed in the
Piazza Ducale, the greater geography of the poem situates the beauty of Cellini’s
sculpture as superior to the entire world. Mochi uses an astronomical metaphor to
represent two of three cardinal directions, North and East, referencing “the Bears,” Ursa
Major and Ursa Minor to represent the North, and the Levant to as the East. In this line,

330
“Non bisogna, Cellin, che piu t’industri / Per l’infamia vitar del mondo errante, / Or
che sei fatto col sapere amante / Di principi, signor, uomini illustri. / Sol coll’opera tua
assai più lustri, / Che quel che innora il Mor, l’Orse e Levante; / La fama tua passa degli
altri innante / Mille e mill’anni poi e mille lustra. / Con la lima, col getto, e col scarpello /
Statue hai fatto assai, più che immortali / E ne stupisce ogni uom solo a vedello. / Te sol
conosco non aver rivali, / E sei qual sole in mezzo a queste stele / Di Michel, di Donato, e
Bandinello.” For a transcription see Milanesi, I trattati, 410, and Tassi, vol. 3, 470.

168
however, the author defines the southern edge of the Mediterranean with an early modern
racial type, the Moor. In selecting the Moor as a southern geographic marker, the poet
draws attention back to Medusa’s connection with North Africa. Medusa’s association
with Mauretania, referenced in Michelangelo’s sonnet with the term “Mauro,” and Libya
more generally, would have proved a suggestive connection for an early modern reader.
Just as the beauty of Cellini’s Perseus surpasses the artwork of the Moors, the Greek hero
stands victorious over a Mauritanian Medusa.
A final sonnet, recorded by Cellini well after the unveiling of the Perseus,
explicitly continues this broader geographic interest in African victory rhetoric. The
poem, written by Ludovico Domenichini, begins again by citing Perseus’ victory over
Medusa in Africa:
That which was already accomplished in the African sand
With the help of Pallas, Perseus
When he brought to end the bitter and offensive
Medusa, hence he glorious and she having been punished,
With a right hand of valor and full of faith,
New material for the ancient Orpheus
At once we will see the splendor the demigod
Cosimo will make of the superb Siena;
And like that the shield of Minerva
Was a screen against the proud, horrible face,
Which is also preserved today in the artwork of Cellini,
In this manner with his commonsense he provides so much
These will liberate the ungrateful servant
Who then will have all of their pride taken.
331

331
“Quel già fe’ su l’africana arena / Con l’aiuta di Pallade Perseo / Quando condusse a
fine acerbo e reo / Medusa, ond’ esso gloria’ ell’ebbe pena, / Con destra di valore e fede
piena, / Nuova materia dell’antico Orfeo / Tosto vedrem ch’ il chiaro Semideo / Cosmo
farà della superba Siena; / E come a quel lo scudo di Minerva / Fu schermo contra ‘l
fiero, orrido volto, / Ch’anch’ oggi del Cellin l’arte conserva, / Cosi col senno suo
provido molto / Questi liberarà l’ingrata serva, / Poi che l’avrà tutto l’orgoglio tolto.”
This sonnet is probably one of the least well published because of its supposedly later
date and because of the fact that it does not directly praise Cellini. For a transcription see
Adolfo Mabellini, ed., Delle rime di Benvenuto Cellini (Rome: Paravia, 1885), 273.

169
This sonnet again opens referencing Perseus’ victory in the African desert over the
Gorgon Medusa, offering the most specific geographic parameters for the event yet seen
in the extant sonnets. Here the author uses the narrative to offer a vision of Cosimo’s
impending seizure of Siena in 1555. However this upcoming defeat of the Republic of
Siena is framed in relation to Perseus’ past victory in Africa, an event easily drawn back
to Cosimo’s own participation in the siege of Mahdia five years previous. Such a
comparison between a past African victory and a future Sienese victory would have been
highly suggestive in mid-sixteenth century Florence; the Republic of Siena had allied
with both the French and the Ottomans in order to maintain their independence from the
growing territorial ambitions of the Duchy of Florence. In 1555, a North African fleet led
by Turgut Reis, who had escaped from Mahdia, sieged Cosimo’s fortifications at
Piombino in retaliation for the taking of Siena.
332
Victory over the Ottoman admiral in
Africa years earlier thus formed part of the very same narrative of conflict, drawing
together the victory “already accomplished in the African sand” and the impeding victory
over “the superb Siena.” Concluding the sonnet, the poet appears to suggest this
relationship in describing Medusa as “the ungrateful servant” (“l’ingrata serva”). The
historical role of both Turks and Moors as slaves in early modern Europe would however
have been the likely reference for this. The African Gorgon becomes the ungrateful
servant of Siena who will be “liberated” from their tyranny. The poets geographic
oscillation from Perseus’ victory on the African coast to Cosimo’s aspirations for the city
of Siena thus trace the broader geographic lines of conflict with the Ottoman Empire.
If some viewers of the Perseus associated the image of Medusa with African
victory rhetoric in their sonnets, the formal and iconographic elements of the sculpture

332
See Chapter 1.

170
likely aided this reading. One of the most striking details of Cellini’s composition, often
overlooked, is the sculptor’s decision to place the body of the Gorgon on an oversized
pillow, wrapped in a fringed cloth or tapestry. This compositional decision plays no part
in the myth of the beheading of Medusa. Instead this artistic choice is inspired by
Donatello’s sculpture of Judith and Holofernes, which depicts the biblical heroine in the
act of slaying an Assyrian general seated on a pillow (fig. 3.15). Placed in the far right
bay of the Loggia dei Lanzi, Donatello’s bronze work communicated directly with
Cellini’s later sculpture because of their shared location, medium, and figural
composition. Unlike Cellini’s work, however, Donatello’s decision to depict Holofernes
seated on a pillow derives directly from the narrative; Judith cuts off the Assyrian
general’s head in his private tent. The sculptor’s placement of Holofernes on a pillow
locates him within this temporary domestic space, but also Orientalizes him, showing him
seated on the ground in the manner of an eastern ruler. I suggest that in turn, Cellini’s
decision to place Medusa on an oversized pillow, not only drew formal parallels between
the two sculptures, but also would have drawn from an early modern geographic
imaginary to cast similar Orientalizing associations on to Perseus. The “seat of power”
was for centuries a key method of distinguishing an Islamic ruler from a Christian king.
While thrones were in common use by rulers in Europe in the Middle Ages, both
Ottoman and North African rulers were typically received at their courts seated on a
raised dais, ottoman, or stool, often decorated with pillows. Sultan Süleyman I was the
first Ottoman ruler to adopt the use of the throne after his rise to power, though images of
Islamic rulers in Europe continued to follow the earlier conventions.
333
This distinction of

333
The Englishman Sir Nicholas Roberts wrote in his meeting with Süleyman that he “sat
in the pavilion, which chair was of fine gold.” See Roger Crowley, Empires of the Sea:

171
“seatedness” was used to draw boundaries in maps like portolan charts, suggesting
divisions between the vast stretches of Christendom and the Islamic lands. A portolan
chart from 1533, by Jacopo Russo di Messina, illustrates this division, showing for
instance the “Great Sultan” and the “King of Libya” seated, full bodied, cross-legged,
upon the floor, on a carpet, while the “King of Guinea” is shown seated on a series of
pillows inside a tent (fig. 3.16). Instead, the Holy Roman Emperor is depicted sitting
upright, as a portrait bust, framed by the arms of a chair or throne, a convention seen in
other images of European rulers (fig. 3.17). Images from an early seventeenth-century
costume books show similar fascinations with the Eastern predilection for sitting on the
floor. A sheet from a costume book by Jacopo Ligozzi depicts an image of a Turkish
woman seated cross-legged on a carpet (fig. 3.18). Above the image an inscription reads
“Turkish women sit in their homes in the manner drawn here and dressed.”
334
Cellini’s
decision to arrange the Libyan Gorgon seated on a pillow, draped in a tapestry which falls
off of the raised marble pedestal, likely gave early modern viewers similar geographical
associations. Like the King of Libya in Russo’s map or Ligozzi’s Turkish woman, Cellini
rendered Medusa seated in the manner of Islamic rulers and in Ottoman domestic spaces.
She is in turn Orientalized, visually suggesting her geographic association with a region
understood as Islamic. If viewers perceived the beauty of the Perseus overturning
“Affrica,” or praised the image as more lustrous than the arts of the Moors, the inclusion
of a damasked pillow likely grounded this geographic polemic.

The Final Battle for the Mediterranean 1521-1580 (London: Faber and Faber, 2003), 25.
334
The inscription reads “Le donne turche sedono nelle loro case nel modo qui dissegnato
et vestano.” On this image and Ligozzi’s other Turkish images see Lucilla Conigliello
“Jacopo Ligozzi tra turchi, fantolini e disegni d’architetture,” Paragone 84/85 (2009): 49-
57; see also the recent exhibition catalogue, Alessandro Cecchi, Lucilla Conigliello, and
Marzia Faietti ed., Jacopo Ligozzi “pittore universalissimo” (Livorno: Sillabe, 2014), 92-
93.

172

Perseus in Asia

Perseus’ victory in Africa comprised only one part of the hero’s journey along the
southern coast of the Mediterranean. After slaying Medusa and turning Atlantis to stone
the hero continued on to Asia where he rescued the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from
the sea-dragon, Cetus. At the base of the Perseus, Cellini included a bronze relief
illustrating the scene (fig. 3.19). On the left side of the relief, Perseus flies above Cetus,
striking downward at the beast with his sword. At the center, Andromeda, chained to a
rock, struggles to protect herself, as her parents and a crowd look on from the right.
Beginning with Wolfgang Braunfels, this image has consistently been interpreted as an
allegory of the liberation of the city of Florence from the mismanagement of the
Republic.
335
Sonnets attached to the Perseus, however, give a much broader geographic
interpretation of this scene. One in particular takes the voice of Perseus:
Already with double wings raised to flight,
Medusa I killed, and Atlantis I made stone,
I scoured Ethiopia, and the native Cepheus
his daughter I liberated from the final pain.
Phineus I turned to rock; now from the one to the other pole,
How much the grand ocean encircles, and how
many holy and saintly souls it encloses,
full of renown, and more quick to flight.
Thanked only by a rare bronze, obviously
today there is more of these works in which for eternity
I live, of which the Arno is the only one of merit and value.
Like this in front of his great father and god
said Perseus; and in this an inner joy,
moves the world to adore the holy image.
336

335
Braunfels, 6-7.
336
“Già con li ali fraterne alzato a volo / Medusa uccisi, e feci un sasso Atlante, / Scôrsi
Etiopia, et a Cefeo innante / Sua figlia liberai d’ultimo duolo. / Fineo fei pietra; or l’uno o
l’altro polo / Quanto ‘l grand’ ocean circonda, e quante / Anime serra ‘l ciel beate e santé,
/ Colmo di fama, e più spedito volo. / Sola mercè d’un raro bronzo, ov’io / Oggi viepiù

173

Similar to the writings discussed earlier, this sonnet gives a very broad sense of Perseus’
travels, locating the liberation of Andromeda in Ethiopia. Yet the location of this event
was mapped more specifically by classical geographers. According to Strabo the
liberation took place off of the coast of Jaffa, the ancient port to the city of Jerusalem.
Today, visitors to Jaffa can still see the supposed rock to which she was chained,
decorated with an Israeli flag (fig. 3.20). As Strabo states in Book XVL of his
Geography:
“Then one comes to Iope [Jaffa], where the seaboard from Aegypt, though at first
stretching towards the east, makes a significant bend towards the north. Here it
was, according to certain writers of myths, that Andromeda was exposed to the
sea-monster; for the place is situated at a rather high elevation—so high it is said,
that Jerusalem, the metropolis of the Judeans, is visible from it; indeed the
Judeans have used this place as a seaport when they have gone down as far as the
sea; but the seaport of robbers are obviously only robbers’ dens.”
337

In defeating the sea dragon and liberating Andromeda, Perseus defeats a beast associated
with Asia, realizing the geographical breadth of the statement “Africa and Asia is
completely overturned.” Yet he also liberates the path to the Holy Land.
Following his description of Andromeda’s “exposure,” Strabo draws a geographic
correlation between Jerusalem and the port of Jaffa, used by the Judeans. The two cities
are described almost as a pair, the one acting as the port to the other. To the right of
Cellini’s panel, the artist has imagined the classical architecture of the ancient city of
Jaffa, gateway to Jerusalem.

che ‘n l’opre proprie eterno / Vivo, onde l’Arno in un sol pregia e vanta. / Così dinanzi al
suo gran padre e dio / Disse Perseo; e ‘n questo un gaudio interno / Mosse ‘l mondo a
adorar l’immagin santa.” For a transcription see Milanesi, I tratatti, 407, or Tassi, vol. 3,
463.
337
Jones, Geography, vol. 7, 275.

174
In the final line of his description, this ideal of liberation is made more concrete.
Strabo suggests a common theme running throughout the classical description of eastern
ports, the correlation between Jaffa and piracy, a theme highly relevant to Duke Cosimo
during the years of the fabrication of the Perseus. The bronze relief was cast in April
1552, two years after the siege of Mahdia, which commenced the duke’s own efforts to
combat Turkish piracy around Italy.
338
Cellini appears to have included a detail in the
image that visualizes this theme; the artist presents a curious group of figures on
horseback, carrying a banner in the background of the relief. Two of them charge the
coastline, while the another rears his horse with flag in hand. As yet, no convincing
argument has been made for why Cellini integrated this detail.
339
Pope-Hennessy
describes these men with minimal comment, writing “To the left of the building…is a
riding figure confronted by two galloping horsemen, one of whom is evidently Perseus.
There is no explanation of this scene in the Metamorphoses…”
340
The rearing figure
however, turns toward the coastline, making the three men appear almost as a group, and
not in contest. Because no textual evidence exists to account for their presence in Ovid,
the three men on horseback have been left out of discussions of the relief.
Here I would like to suggest that the image is derived from classical sources like
Palaephatus’, Pausanias’, and Diodorus Siculus’. In each of these texts Perseus is
described, not as the lone Greek hero, but as a commander of troops, and the invader of
coastal spaces in Mauritania and Libya, the conqueror of the Queen Medusa and the King
Atlas. He acts as an apt parallel for the actions of Cosimo in Mahdia and his future

338
Pope-Hennessy, 181.
339
Hirthe relates the strange iconography to Cosimo’s victory over the Republic,
although the connection seems tenuous at best. See Hirthe, 212.
340
Pope-Hennessy, 183.

175
aspirations for the defeat of Asia and the liberation of Jerusalem. The detail of Perseus,
on horseback, charging the coast of Jaffa with his two companions, illustrates a hope; it
visualizes the very same ideals presented in the Florentine victory procession of Charles
V in 1535 which memorialized the defeat of Africa next to an imagined victory over
Asia. While Jerusalem remained lost to Ottoman control in the mid-sixteenth century, and
the Turkish support of piracy in the Maghreb impinged upon the free trade of
Christendom, men like Cosimo intended to act as a new Perseus. And although he had
defeated Africa, Asia still remained on the horizon.

Conclusion

While in the past scholars have interpreted Cellini’s Perseus as an expression of
internal Florentine politics, pitting the reign of Duke Cosimo against the previous rule of
the Republic, the narrative parameters of the myth of the Greek hero reached well beyond
these narrow spatial and historical limits. Duke Cosimo’s selection of a sculpture of
Perseus likely drew from earlier imperial associations with the hero, which allowed men
like Alessandro de’ Medici, Andrea Doria, and even Charles V, the ability to represent a
civilized Greco-Roman center and a barbaric Asian and African periphery. Extant sonnets
recorded by Cellini after the unveiling of the sculpture in 1554 suggest that Florentine
viewers allowed the work’s mythological connotations to surpass the rhetoric of the
Republic’s history in the former Piazza Signoria. From a Florentine center, they used the
narrative to trace the far edges of the Mediterranean, to imagine the defeat of spaces in
the Maghreb and the Levant. Following Duke Cosimo’s support of imperial sieges off the

176
African coast in 1550, and later skirmishes with the same Ottoman agent, Turgut Reis,
these broader Mediterranean valences of the sculpture would have allowed the duke to
fashion himself as the conqueror of Africa and the future liberator of Asia. The
implications for the work however also stretched to the Holy Land, imaging Perseus as
deliverer of the port of Jerusalem.

177

Chapter 4:
Collecting the Crusade in Grand Ducal Tuscany

In his biography of Grand Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, printed in 1578, Baccio
Baldini writes of the Florentine duke’s victory over Ottoman forces at the port of
Piombino in 1555. After successfully defending the Tuscan coast from the corsair Turgut
Reis, the author notes that the duke praised his troops’ success. Baldini writes that “this
victory was more welcome to the duke than that which he had at Marciano [over Siena] a
little while earlier, for the reason that he had the victory over the infidel. He showed this
great enthusiasm in his words and with other signs displayed [manifesti segni].”
341

Baldini suggests, in rather general terms, that the duke held the victory over the Turks in
greater esteem than that which had given him control of an entire Italian city-state, and
that he manifested this praise in undefined “signs.” Of course, much of this statement is
rhetorical. The author positions the duke’s victory within the obligations of a Christian
prince, espoused by writers like Ludovico Ariosto; valor gained in the defense of
Christendom surpassed efforts to despoil it. In his Vita di Cosimo I de’ Medici primo
gran duca di Toscana (1586), Aldo Manuzio, building upon Baldini’s description,
elaborates more clearly on a very specific act of commemoration. He writes, “It was the
first time that any sort of damage had been done to the Turks in Italy, the flags [insegne]
of which are seen suspended in the aforementioned Church of San Lorenzo in

341
“Fù questa vittoria più grata al Duca che non era stata quella ch’egli haveva havuta à
Marciano poco avanti, percioche gli’haveva havuta sopra gl’infideli, & ne mostrò si con
le parole si con altri manifesti segni allegrezza grandissima.” Baccio Baldini, Vita di
Cosimo (Florence: Sermatelli, 1578), 54.

178
Florence.”
342
While Baldini’s earlier description leaves some doubt as to how the duke
displayed the defeat of the Ottomans, Manuzio’s passage makes clear that Cosimo
followed established practices for celebrating military victory. The duke collected flags
and banners from the Turks and displayed them in the parish church of the Medici family,
San Lorenzo; Cosimo’s segni were in fact insegne. Such acts made it possible to
materialize the grand dukes’ role as defenders of Christendom within the duchy of
Florence and to preserve the memory of victory for decades to come.
Under the grand duchy sacred spaces like San Lorenzo acted as venues to
venerate Christian victory over Islamic powers, a practice that had a long history in
Europe. In the early modern period Turkish spoils continued to materialize the defeat of
Islam and affirm the primacy of Christianity. As such they shared much in common with
the Christian relic. Each followed the ancient Roman tradition of spolia opima, the
collection and display of war trophies; the seizure of flags, swords, and pieces of enemy
ships made it possible to transport remnants of the vanquished enemy body to ancient
Rome in triumph.
343
Likewise, the translation (translatio) of the first saintly relics,
allowed for pieces of the apostles to sanctify sites like Constantine’s Church of the
Apostles in Constantinople.
344
Both relics of saints and military spoils relied on the
material fragment to relocate the deceased and their connected historical memory. Islamic

342
“Et fu la prima volta che a’ Turchi fosse fatto danno di alcuna sorte in Italia.
L’insegne de’ quali si veggono sospese nella sopra detta Chiesa di San Lorenzo, in
Firenze.” Aldo Manuzio, Vita di Cosimo I de Medici primo gran duca di Toscana
(Bologna: 1586), 132. I thank Elizabeth Pilliod for drawing my attention to this passage.
343
On the invention of spolia opima and its reinvention under Augustus see Harriet
Flower, “The Tradition of Spolia Opima: M. Claudius Marcellus and Augustus”
Classical Antiquity (2000): 34-64.
344
For the connections between relics and spolia see Jaś Elsner, “From the culture of
Spolia to the Cult of Relics. The Arch of Constantine and the Genesis of Late Antique
Forms” Papers of the British School of Rome 68 (2000): 149-184.

179
spolia drew their venerative power from both the relic and military spolium. They
translated a physical metonym of the defeated Muslim, materializing victory won in the
name of Christ. While the collecting of Islamic spolia was a well-established practice by
the early modern period, these acts have long gone unremarked in the historiography of
the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Much of this is due to the lack of extant materials. San
Lorenzo no longer displays the banners captured from the Turks and it is uncertain when
they were removed. Few of these objects even remain in Florentine collections.
345

However, just as Manuzio claims, the display of spoils taken from Ottoman forces
formed an integral part of the duchy’s program to venerate, memorialize, and promote
their efforts as Christian crusaders. While few objects remain, textual sources, like the
various biographies of Duke Cosimo, detail these materials which once decorated the
grand duchy.
These sources further suggest that objects often travelled well beyond the grand
ducal center of Florence. For the grand dukes of Tuscany the material remnants of victory
offered a means to circulate these sites of veneration. Objects moved between grand
ducal territories, originating at the port of Livorno, and moving to Pisa, Siena, and
Florence. Materializing both the victor and vanquished as war trophy, these entangled
identities also moved to spaces well beyond their original Tuscan contexts. These goods
traveled to the Holy Roman Empire and Spain as diplomatic gifts, where their contested
provenance required clarification, an altogether different type of translation. Cosimo’s
initial display of Turkish flags in the Church of San Lorenzo appears to have been one of

345
For instance, very few Turkish flags can be found in Florence, though they appear to
once have decorated several church spaces. A rare example can be seen at the Museo
Bardini. On the flag see Giovanna Damiani, Nazan Ölçer, and Mario Scalini ed., From
the Medicis to the Savoias. Ottoman Splendour in the Florentine Collections (Istanbul:
MAS Matbaacilik A.S., 2003), 136.

180
the earliest instances of this practice under the duchy of Florence, which continued to
expand in later decades. Following the victory of 1555, Ottoman spoils became one of the
most visible reminders of the Medici defense of Christendom.
While writers like Manuzio describe Ottoman flags and their display, arms and
armor offered a separate means of materially symbolizing victory. Arms existed on an
alternate socio-economic level because of their greater commercial appeal. While the flag
of an enemy held little monetary value in early modernity, tools of war like Turkish
scimitars, turban-helmets, and saddles were actively traded. Turkish arms and armor in
particular were popular items to collect in the early modern period, bought and sold for
European armories, which grew in popularity in the late sixteenth century. These objects
allowed rulers like the Medici to collect global knowledge of distant places and peoples,
while at the same time emphasizing successful military encounters with the Turks as the
source of these new goods.
Following this early modern tradition, the Medici kept the vast majority of their
captured Ottoman spoils in their armory in Florence, a space that was under a continual
state of development in the late sixteenth century, shifting locations between the Palazzo
Vecchio, the Palazzo Pitti, and finally to the Uffizi.
346
While the Palazzo Vecchio in
Florence housed the earliest ducal armory, the construction of the first armeria in the
Uffizi in 1588, created a tailored venue for viewing these goods. By the mid-seventeenth
century the armory occupied four rooms on the upper floor of the Uffizi next to the

346
See Mario Scalini, “Il gusto internazionale ed esotico nelle armi della nuova Europa,”
in Armi e armati: arte e cultura delle armi nella Toscana e nell’Italia del tardo
rinascimento dal Museo Bardini e dalla Collezione Corsi, ed. Francesco Scalia and
Mario Scalini (Firenze: Centro Di, 1988), 95-105.

181
tribuna, complete with decorative frescoes.
347
Amid discussions of the great works of
Michelangelo and Caravaggio, visitors to the nearby galleries describe Turkish spoils
taken by the forces of the grand dukes. Inscriptions were appended to scimitars and suits
of armor so that their contested status could be signaled to visitors presented with an
assortment of diverse materials with very different origins.
With the construction of the Church of Santo Stefano in 1565, Pisa operated as the
second site for the collection and display of Ottoman spoils, largely flags and banners
taken from the Turks. While many churches in Italy cleared their collections of these
goods in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Church of Santo Stefano still
maintains over ninety captured Turkish flags, displayed along the nave (fig. 4.1).
Following its construction, this church displaced Florentine liturgical spaces like San
Lorenzo as the central site for the presentation of captured flags and banners.
348
Because
of the atypical nature of this collection, the flags in Pisa have received much attention by
scholars. Yet, while, among others, Barbara Karl and Franco Paliaga have written about
these objects and their influences on Pisan spectacle and procession, little research has
been done on how these goods extended beyond this space as more than rhetorical
materials of victory for the knights.

347
The tribuna has been the most popular venue for research into how the Medici grand
dukes collected and displayed exotica among the artwork of Bronzino and Andrea del
Sarto. On the collecting and display in the tribuna see Adriana Turpin, “The Display of
Exotica in the Uffizi Tribuna,” in Collecting East and West, ed. Susan Bracken, Andrea
M. Gáldy, and Adriana Turpin (New Castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing,
2013), 83-117.
348
For a study of the Church of Santo Stefano see Ewa Karwacka Codini, Piazza dei
Cavalieri: urbanistica e architettura dal Medioevo al Novecento (Florence: Eurografica,
1989). On the origins and afterlife of the flags see Barbara Karl, “The Ottoman flags of
Saint Stephen in Pisa as Tools of Medici Dynastic Propaganda,” in Thirteenth
International Congress of Turkish Art, ed. Géza Dávid and Ibolya Gerelyes (Budapest:
Hungarian National Museum, 2009), 345-357.

182
In this chapter I investigate how the collection of Ottoman spoils allowed the
grand dukes of Tuscany to celebrate their efforts as crusaders. Observing the use of the
Medici armory in Florence as a space to display Turkish arms and armor, as well as the
Church of Santo Stefano in Pisa as a central point for the broader circulation of flags and
banners, I argue that these goods offered the Medici the opportunity to materialize their
role as defenders of Christendom. For the grand dukes, text operated as an important
means to fix an object’s contested status; the addition of inscriptions allowed for captured
arms and armor to be identified from diplomatic gifts and materials that were purchased.
These objects also offered the opportunity for deeper linguistic translations, via inlayed
Arabic and Turkish inscriptions. In Tridentine Italy, a period increasingly concerned with
the status of relics and their place in devotional practice, these translations allowed the
Medici and the Knights of Saint Stephen to neutralize the heretical content of Islamic
spolia. Translation offered a means to reveal the true nature of a script, once visually
associated with the Holy Land and Christian antiquity, as the language of the “infidel.”
Furthermore, the display of spoils alongside key Christian objects in grand ducal
collections allowed the Medici the opportunity to fashion “object narratives,” creating
contrived contexts in which groups of goods created collective meaning; often this
message emphasized an apparent religious divide. Captured Ottoman arms and armor
displayed among the relics of legendary defenders of Christendom reinforced the
Medici’s status as Christian princes who actively defended Christendom. From the
Palazzo Vecchio to the Church of Sano Stefano in Pisa, the manipulation of text and
context allowed the grand dukes to frame spoils taken in their victories over the Turks,

183
allowing them to clearly communicate their roles as defenders of Christendom to viewers
in Florence, Pisa, and across the whole of Europe.

Materializing Ottoman Conflict in the Palazzo Vecchio

While the Church of San Lorenzo functioned as one of the first sacred spaces to
display Ottoman flags, the old palace in the former Piazza Signoria operated as a
concomitant space to display captured Islamic arms and armor. The guardaroba in the
Palazzo Vecchio was the first storehouse and display room for Turkish spoils captured in
battle.
349
While the vast majority of these goods no longer remain extant, inventories
allow us to recreate, in part, how the guardaroba was arranged as space to view these
objects. A 1574 inventory of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, taken shortly after Grand
Duke Cosimo’s death, lists a series of cabinets. At the time, Duke Francesco I de’ Medici
lived in the palace as regent of Florence, with his first wife Joanna of Austria. Within the
guardaroba, one particular cabinet was marked in large letters, “Arms and more
things.”
350
Here the inventory lists a selection of arms and armor, including Turkish
spoils. By the year 1574, grand ducal forces, along with the knights of Saint Stephen, had
participated in several major offensives against the Ottomans, but none as popular in
Christian imagination as the Battle of Lepanto in 1571. Fighting under the papal flag,
Grand Duke Cosimo de’ Medici provided twelve ships in honor of Pope Paul V. Two

349
On the evolution of the spaces the Medici used to collect and display arms and armor
see Lionello Boccia, “A due secoli dalla dispersione dell’armeria medicea,” in Palazzo
Vecchio: committenza e collezionismo medicei 1537-1610, ed. Candace Adelson and
Paola Barocchi (Florence: Electa, 1980), 117-118.
350
“Finito l’armario di numero 1 sopra il quale è scritto a lettere grande Arme et piu
cose” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 87, fol. 15v.

184
ships provided by the grand duke sailed in the central fleet of the Holy League, fighting
alongside Don Juan of Austria, ensuring the knights’ encounter with two of the most
famous Ottoman captains, Grand Admiral Müezzinzade Ali Pasha and Caracoza Ali.
Captured spoils attested to their central role in the battle.
While few images of the victory at Lepanto were commissioned by the Medici in
subsequent years, objects taken from the Ottoman leadership after the battle instead
provided a focal point for the veneration of this victory. This was not out of character for
the period. Celebrations of the battle of Lepanto in Venice and Rome similarly focused
upon spoils gathered by the Holy League, in the wake of the victory.
351
Because of their
central position in the naval flotilla, the grand dukes’ forces captured one of the most
prestigious pieces of spolia seized from the Turks, the sword of Grand Admiral Ali
Pasha. The inventory records a “Turkish short sword,” likely a one-handed scimitar or
kilij, carried by admiral at the time of his death. Like Barbarossa before him, Ali Pasha
was a well-known figure in the west and his death was well publicized. His beheading
was recorded in German broadsides and commemorated in papal victory processions,
making his possessions particularly prized as spoils (fig. 4.2). Visitors to the Florentine
guardaroba, however, needed to be able to recognize the provenance of his sword and to
map its origins amongst groups of unrelated weapons. Thus, to distinguish the object,
Medici agents appended an inscription to signal its status as spolia. The inventory
describes the sword as belonging to “the general pasha in the rout of the armada at

351
For the Holy League’s victory celebrations in Venice, the Rialto bridge was covered
with spolia. Gombrich cites Rocco Benedetti’s description of the bridge, “S’adornò poi
ciascuna bottega d’armi, di spoglie, e di trofei di nemici presi nella bataglia.” Ernst
Gombrich, “Celebrations in Venice of the Holy League and the Victory of Lepanto” in
Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Art, ed. Anthony Blunt and Jeanne Courtauld
(London: Phaidon, 1967), 63.

185
Lepanto with its epitaph of sheepskin and its cover of red leather, in the month of
October 1571.”
352
The sword, with the simple addition of an inscription, which included
the sword’s date and location of capture, contextualized its origins as spoils taken in
battle from Ali Pasha.
Not all of spoils in the 1574 inventory were given inscriptions, and indeed the text
highlighted Ali Pasha’s weapon as an exceptional item. The Medici also displayed in this
same cabinet a forearm guard captured from the battle that “they say came from the
[Pasha’s] cabin, for the joyous remembrance [memoria], [which] they say are those taken
from the naval battle, with a cover of black velvet [on bottom] and on top a cover of red
fabric.”
353
Another inventory from the same year describes this object as taken “for the
most joyous remembrance [memoria] they say that it was acquired from the naval
battle.”
354
In each entry emphasis is placed on the concept of memoria as the impetus
behind the objects’ seizure and its subsequent display in the ducal guardaroba, not its
exquisite manufacture or exotic origins. Similar forearm guards can be found extant in
the Real Armeria of Madrid, reportedly taken directly from the body of Ali Pasha at
Lepanto (fig. 4.3). Like the pieces in Spain, the forearm guard in the guardaroba of the
Palazzo Vecchio once materialized the memory of the defeat of Ali Pasha within the

352
“Spada overo meza spada turchesca, ed sua manichi et fodero di sagri la quale era del
bascia generale nella rotta dell’armata a lepàntò con suo epitaffio di carta pecora ed sua
sopra coperta di guoio rosso in mese di Ottobre 1571,” ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 87, fol.
14v.
353
“Manopola n
o
uno d’acciaîo germani venuta di camera dicono, della felice memoria
dissono essere stata aquistata dalla battaglia navale con fodero di velluto nero et sopra
fodero di pano rosso--------------------------n
o
1,” Ibid.
354
“Manopola n.o un ce d’acciaio germani venuta dalla felice memoria disono esere
stata aquistata dalla battaglia navale-----------n.o 1--------con fodero di velluto nero sopra
vesta rose,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 107bis, fol. 22r.

186
palace of the grand dukes, as a relic of Christian victory. The object made the memory
visible and tactile, allowing the victory to live on.
Objects belonging to Ali Pasha were accompanied by relics from lesser ranked
figures defeated at Lepanto. Next to the forearm guard the inventory records a steel knife
that “they say [was] found on the corsair Caracosa.”
355
A second entry further clarifies
that object as knife “of “germani” steel with an ivory handle with a sheath of rough
pointed leather and a glided ring with a cord of red silk with a crystal button, that they
maintain was found on Caracosa the corsair.”
356
The knife was presumed to belong to
Caracoza Ali, another well-known Ottoman corsair under the command of Ali Pasha
during the battle. According to accounts of the victory, the knights of Saint Stephen
aboard the Grifona and the Capitaina engaged Caracoza Ali, boarding his ship and
defeating him.
357
Unlike the sword of Ali Pasha, the dagger was not embellished with an
Italian inscription. In fact, the inventory frequently uses the term dissono, “they say,”
suggesting that this information was not confirmed, but instead was hearsay. Unlike the
sword of Ali Pasha, the knife could not assert its own provenance because its source was
unconfirmed. Yet it still maintained an association with the victory.
Within the same cabinet other spoils, likely captured in earlier battles with the
Ottomans, added additional context. The 1574 inventory records a “porta pennacio” from
a Janissary’s cap, a mounted metal element that held decorative feathers. The object is

355
“Coltello n
o
uno d’acciaio dissono, germani co’ manica d’avorio co’ fodero di sagni
puntale’ ghiera dorata co’ cordon’ di seta rossa et bottone di cristallo dissono t’ovato
adosso a caracoscia corsale---------------------n
o
1,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 87, fol. 14v.
356
“142/ > Cortello di n.o uno d’aciaio germani con manica lavorio con fodero di saghri
puntale et ghiera dorata con co’d.ne di seta rossa bottone di Cristallo danno trovato a
caracioscia corsale-----------n.o. 1,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 107bis, fol. 22r.
357
Gino Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano: nella storia della Marina Italiana (1562-
1859) (Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1960), 102.

187
described as “Portapenaccio, no. 1, from a Janissary [made] of gilded silver with false
stones with a written epitaph on sheep’s skin.”
358
Unlike Ali Pasha’s sword, the object
does not represent the defeat of a specific person, but rather acts as symbol of the defeat
of an elite regiment of Turkish troops. Yet again, like Ali Pasha’s sword, the spoil is
given a means to communicate its status, an epitaph of sheep’s skin; here the inscription
likely signals the provenance of the work and its rather specific decorative function,
knowledge that would have been easily lost on an Italian viewers unfamiliar with the
uniform of a Janissary. The “porta pennacio” appended with an inscription, signaled both
its contested status and the value of the object as spolia.
If the spoils captured from Lepanto offered a means for visitors to the guardaroba
to view the Christian victory at Lepanto in its material form, several other arms placed in
the very same cabinets likely contextualized the sacredness of these objects. Within the
cabinet labeled “Arms and more things,” the Medici also displayed holy swords gifted by
the papacy to the Medici family. Beginning in the mid-fourteenth century, popes began to
send blessed swords to select kings, emperors, and princes deemed defenders of the
church. The papacy blessed these arms annually on Christmas night, gifting them to
select Christian princes throughout Europe.
359
Typically these objects bore the name of
the pope in question, his coat-of-arms, the papal keys, and the date of the object’s
presentation as a gift. The very same inventory from 1574 lists three swords gifted to the
Medici family displayed along with the Ottoman spoils: “Long swords from the Captain

358
“137/y> Portapenaccio di n.o uno da ganerziro dargento dorato con pietre false con
suo pitaffio In carta pecora schrito---------n.o 1,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 107bis, 22r.
359
The first holy sword was reportedly given by Urban VI in 1386 to Fortiguerra
Fortiguerri while the final holy sword was presented by Leo to the Duke of Angouleme in
1825. For a description of the holy sword and a complete list of all known extant swords
see the entry number 219 in Lionello Giorgia Boccia ed., L’armeria del museo civico
medievale di Bologna (Bologna: Bramante Ed., 1991), 114-116.

188
of the Holy Church, three in number, with gold decoration and gilded silver, one
authorized by Pope Leo X, one by Pope Julius III, one by Pope Pius IV embellished in
red silk and fiber, with two belts.”
360
While these objects are no longer extant, an earlier
example of a holy sword gifted from Pope Nicholas V in 1454 to Ludovico Bentivoglio
in Bologna gives an idea of what these arms probably looked like (fig. 4.4). The blade
bears the name of Nicholas V and the hilt the papal keys. The Medici Pope Clement VII
gave a similar sword to Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1529, the blade of which is
still conserved in the Real Armeria in Madrid.
While these papal swords had obvious Christian associations, for a knight like
Duke Cosimo, every blade had the potential to represent the church and a knight’s
obligation to defend it. Allegorically the very shape of a sword held these suggestive
Christian connotations. In his text Della Origine de Cavalieri, dedicated to Grand Duke
Cosimo I, Francesco Sansovino describes the allegorical meanings of a knight’s sword.
Sansovino writes:
“The meaning of the sword which strikes in three ways, that is with two edges,
and with the point, signifies three things, that the knight defends the church
against pagans, defends against heretics, as well as pierces, (as that is how the
sword is made where all of them add up to it [three]), that is without mercy, to
ruin and send to their destruction, the enemies of the church…following the
profession according to the manner of the knights errant introduced accordingly
by the fabled romances, like the French and the Spanish.”
361

360
“147> Spadoni da cap.na di S.ta Chiesa di n.o tre con doro guarne dargen.to dorato
uno auto da papa Leone X. 1.o. d[a] [p]apa giulio 0/3. 1.o. da papa Pio 0/X ricamate. 1.o.
in seta rossa et fibre, con dua cinte Luno Luto verde et fibre darg.to dorato in N.o----------
------------------- n.o 3 n.o 2,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 107bis, fol. 19v.
361
“La significatione della spada che offende in tre modi, cioè con due tagli, & con la
punta, vuol dire anco tre cose, ch’il cavaliero difenda la chiesa contra pagani, che la
difenda contra gli heretici, & che fori (si come fa la spade tutto quello dove essa
aggiugne) cioè senza misericordia rovinni et mandi in preciptio, i nemici di santa
chiesa…facendone professione alla guisa de cavalieri errant introdotti a punto da favolosi
Romanzi cosi Francesi come Spagnuoli.” Franscesco Sansovino, Della Origine de
Cavalieri (Venice: 1566), 121r-v.

189

For a Christian knight like Cosimo, a sword was not just a sword, but also the very
representation of the Holy Church, and the three sides of its blade, a reminder of the
necessity to strike down the enemies who set out to destroy it. Placed in the very same
cabinet as Ali Pasha’s sword captured at Lepanto, and other Ottoman spoils, the holy
swords blessed by the likes of Medici Pope Leo X, framed these Turkish spoils as the
fulfillment of their role as defenders of Christendom.

Ottoman Spoils in the Uffizi

In 1588, Grand Duke Ferdinando de’ Medici oversaw the transition of the arms
and armor from the guardaroba of the Palazzo Vecchio to the Uffizi. Originally ordered
by Grand Duke Francesco I, but finished after his death, the armeria occupied four rooms
on the southeast side of the Uffizi, adjacent to the tribuna (fig. 4.5). These four cabinets,
or rooms, contained a wide range of weapons and armor, from suits of plate-mail gifted
by Charles V to firearms created by Florentine workshops. Though the rooms had no
fixed themes, from the armory’s inception the second room of the four contained
“weapons of diverse nations,” or non-European arms and armor. While the items in these
rooms were global in theme, the largest portion of the collection displayed in the second
room was made up of Turkish weaponry, a fact confirmed by visitors. Sometime after
1635, the Catholic Englishman Richard Lassels wrote that in the second room he saw “a
world of Cimetars, scabards, capps, saddles and other Turkish furniture set thick with

190
Turquoises in gold.”
362
While inventories of the armory often lacked designations of
spoils, seventeenth-century accounts illustrate the second room’s role as a site of Turkish
plunder captured by the forces of the grand dukes and the Knights of Saint Stephen. In
1664, Philip Skippon described the armory, stating that he saw:
rich prizes taken from the Turks; the queen of Tunis her saddle, taken by the great
duke’s galleys; another saddle, scimitars, knives and horse-harness set with
precious stones.
363

Later in 1677, Giovanni Cinelli described the second room of the armory writing:
the second room, is all of this, of various sorts of decorated arms of diverse
nations, such as Turkish, having been brought back from battles at various times
by the ships of [the Knights of] Saint Stephen…There one sees swords in various
manners from various arid nations, masks, and timpani in the Turkish style, bows,
arrows, quivers, Indian armor with the most strange and unused fashions, and
amongst the Turkish items several saddles with all of their ornament of beat
gold.
364

Skippon and Cinelli confirm that, though the room presented a variety of arms and armor,
a primary theme was Turkish booty seized by the knights over the course of various eras.
To contextualize the source of these objects, images also once aided visitors in
distinguishing the provenance of these groups of goods. In 1588, Ferdinando de’ Medici

362
Lassels’s account of the armory from A Voyage of Italy (1670) is reproduced in Paola
Barocchi and Giovanna Gaeta Bertelà, Collezionismo Mediceo e storia artistica, vol. 2
(Florence: Studio per Edizione Scelte ), 410-22.
363
For Skippon’s account of the armory see A journey through part of the low countries,
Germany, Italy, France (1665), reproduced in Ibid., vol. 2, 1073-1075.
364
“nella seconda stanza entrando, è tutta questa di varie sorte d’armi di diverse nazioni
ornate, come turchesche dalle galere di Santo Stefano in vari tempi nell’imprese fatte
riportate […] Quivi veggonsi spade in varie fogge da varie nazioni aduste, maschere, e
timpani alla turchescha, archi, frecce, carcassi, armadure indiane con stranissime e
disusate fogge, e fra le turchesche alcune selle con tutto il loro ornament d’oro
tempestato,” Cinelli’s description, intended for his revision of Bocchi’s Le bellezze della
città di Firenze, is still in manuscript form, BNCF, Magliabechiano XIII. 34, fols. 229r-
234v.

191
commissioned Ludovico Buti to paint the ceilings of the four rooms of the armeria.
365

The second room, which once contained the vast majority of Ottoman spoils, was
unfortunately repainted twice, once in the middle of the seventeenth century and again in
the middle of the eighteenth century after a fire. Nothing remains of this original work.
However, the adjacent two rooms still preserve images over the doorways of the north
and south entrances, which once provided viewers some context. A visitor passing
through the adjoining rooms encounters frescoes depicting conflict with Ottoman forces
on either entrance, preparing the attentive visitor for what was to follow.
Decorating the southern entrance to the second room of the armory in 1588,
Ludovico Buti depicted a scene of Medici cavalry charging victoriously over a bridge to
assault a group of Ottoman soldiers (fig. 4.6). The respective forces are clearly identified
by their flags; the grand ducal forces carry a banner with the Medici stemma, while the
Ottomans have dropped a white banner with a red crescent moon on the shore. The image
is quite generic. Nothing in the scene appears to locate it geographically or temporally. A
detail below the image, however, appears to add some additional context; Buti depicts
two Elephants on a black background, animals often associated with the region of Africa.
Allegorical figures of Italian victory over Africa often included the animal as a symbol of
the region; Giorgio Vasari’s allegorical image of Italy victorious over Africa in the Sala

365
Ludovico Buti’s frescoes of the New World within the armory have most frequently
been the focus of scholarly interest, leaving the Ottoman images aside. On the New
World images see Anthony Alan Shelton, “Renaissance Collections and the New World,”
in Cultures of Collecting, John Elsner and Roger Cardinal ed. (London: Reaktion Books,
1994), 188-189. See also Lia Markey, “The New World in Renaissance Italy: A
Vicarious Conquest of Art and Nature at the Medici Court,” (Ph.D. diss. The University
of Chicago, 2008). Buti also decorated several other spaces in the Uffizi including the
Sala delle Matematiche. For Buti’s work beyond the armory see Mark Rosen, The
Mapping of Power in Renaissance Italy: Painted Cartographic Cycles in Social and
Intellectual Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 160.

192
dei Cinquecento, for example, shows a woman lounging on the head of an Elephant (fig.
4.7). Buti’s addition of the animals below the fresco thus appears to commemorate the
defeat of the Ottomans in spaces like Mahdia, Tunis, and Algiers. This use of the
elephant to signal African victory also appears to have an established role in previous
iterations of the Medici armory. The earliest cabinet of spoils in the Palazzo Vecchio also
contained two Elephant tusks, described also as “teeth,” which were displayed with
objects taken from Lepanto. In the new armory in the Uffizi, image and object appear to
have aligned to fashion similar meanings of African victory.
366

Included among the grotesque decorations surrounding this central image of
African victory was also a depiction of an Ottoman Janissary (fig. 4.8). Buti renders the
solider reloading an harquebus, a standard weapon carried by this troop type. While
earlier visitors to the guardaroba of the Palazzo Vecchio were presented with inscriptions
to aid the visitor in distinguishing the costume of a Janissary, in the Uffizi armory images
appear to have reinforced this role. If a simple inscription once identified the “porta
petaccio” atop the cap of the Janissary in the Palazzo Vecchio, here Buti provides the
viewer a visual reference. Animals associated with the Turks flank the Janissary; a
winged serpent and a more fully formed dragon each act as allegorical doubles to the
Janissary.
367
These images of the defeat of Turkish cavalry and the figure of the

366
Listed within the cabinet labeled “Arms and More Things”; “156/ y> Dente di
Leofante piccolo anche di Corno sempre segato in vesta di quio rosso in dua pezzi---------
---n.o 1”; “156/y> Dente di Leofonte n.o Uno spuntato con dua ghiere d’arg.to-----------
n.o 1,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 107 bis, fol. 22v.
367
See for example the association of the Ottomans with the image of a dragon following
the formation of the Holy League at Lepanto in Giovanni Battista Nazari’s Discorso sulla
future et sperata vittoria contro il Turco, published in 1570. On these images see
Benjamin Paul, “‘And the moon has started to bleed’: Apocalypticism and religious
reform in Venetian art at the time of the Battle of Lepanto,” in The Turk and Islam in the

193
Janissary, encountered directly before entering the second room filled with spoils, acted
as a guide for the objects that awaited them.
The north entrance to the second room of the armory dates from a later period. In
1665, Agnolo Gori repainted the first room of the armory at the request of Grand Duke
Ferdinando II de’ Medici. Like Buti before him, Gori maintained a similar organizational
strategy, using images to orient the visitor, painting a scene of Medicean victory over the
Turks above the entrance to the second room. Above the north entrance, Gori painted a
scene of the triumphal procession in Pisa held by the Knights of Saint Stephen following
the siege of Bona in 1607 (fig. 4.9). While Buti avoided commemorating a precise
historical moment, Gori instead selected the celebrations of a specific engagement in
North Africa. Gori’s fresco is, in fact, a loose adaptation of a much larger fresco by Il
Volteranno in the Villa della Petraia from 1637-1646 (fig. 4.10).
368
The original image
depicts the procession in greater detail. Following Il Volteranno, Gori’s fresco includes
Prince Cosimo II, dressed in the robes of a knight of Saint Stephen, receiving a group of
Turkish captives taken from Bona. Before the young prince, Jacopo Inghirami, the
admiral of the fleet, bows while presenting his gifts. At the rear of the procession, a large
pile of spoils wrapped in cloth bundles also makes its way towards the church. The image
recalls Cinelli’s description of the second room made in 1677, and likely helped alert him
to the nature of the objects he was about to see; as the fresco depicted, they were
“brought back from battles at various times by the ships of [the Knights of] Saint
Stephen.” Just as with Buti’s earlier frescoes, this image painted above the north entrance

Western Eye, 1450-1750: Visual Imagery before Orientalism, ed. James Harper
(Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 76-77.
368
See Matthias Winner “Volterranos Fresken in der Villa della Petraia: Ein Beitrag zu
gemalten Zyklen der Medicigeschichte,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in
Florenz 4 (1963): 219-252.

194
prepared the visitor for the armory and contextualized the spoils found in the second
room.

Curating Charlemagne and the Crusade

If image helped clarify the presence of spoils in the armory, contextual objects
also highlighted their contested status. Within the second room of the armory, Ottoman
spoils were displayed among relics of legendary defenders of Christendom. Much like the
role of the holy swords within the earlier guardaroba, this placement adjacent to weapons
with overt Christian associations created a dialectical relationship in which the religious
associations of each became more evident. In the second room, amongst the Turkish
spolia, visitors mention seeing the sword of Charlemagne. Inventories of the Medici
armory record that the sword was placed in the second cabinet as early as 1599, eleven
years after its construction.
369
While grand dukes like Ferdinando I had a penchant for
highlighting Florentine connections to France, the prominent inscription on
Charlemagne’s sword offered a hermeneutic key to interpret the adjacent Turkish goods.
Cinelli writes:
There is still here the sword of Charlemagne, given as far as is said by him in the
act of the consecration of S. Apostolo… this is made in the manner of an antique
piercing sword: the blade is not very long as was accustomed of the old swords,
but rather is quite wide, and on which is inscribed these words: D’NE DA MIHI
VIRTUTEM CONTRA HOSTES TUOS
370

369
A 1598 inventory records the entrance of the sword: “E a dì 27 di gennaio [1598]
datoli per tenervi dentro la spade di Carlo Magnio come al quaderno B primo, 71: una
custodia di corame e legnio lunga e foderata dentro di velluto pagonazzo, 1.” See
Barocchi and Bertelà, Collezionsimo Mediceo, vol. 2, 360.
370
“Evvi ancora la spada di Carlo Magno donata per quanto si dice da lui nell’atto della
consegrazione di S. Apostolo come si disse nella prima parte: è questa fatta a foggia di
stucco antico: la lama non è molto lunga all’uso delle spade sveche, ma assai ben larga,

195

Cinelli’s description places emphasis on the weapons inscription, a Latin Marian prayer:
“Lord give me strength against your enemies.”
371
Such a juxtaposition of Christian and
Islamic arms and armor, framed by the inscription, would clearly have been suggestive
for an early modern viewer. Drawing an “object narrative” based on a larger network of
goods seen together, this narrative relied on chivalric interpretations of Charlemagne and
his associations with the city of Florence.
Florentines as far back as the medieval chronicler Giovanni Villani believed that
Charlemagne re-founded the city of Florence on his way to Rome to be crowned Holy
Roman Emperor in the year 800. Having suffered from the repeated invasions of the
Huns and the Longobards, the infrastructure of the city of Florence lay in ruins. As
Cinelli describes, the sword was believed to have been used by the emperor to found the
Church of Santi Apostoli, one of the oldest churches still extant in the city (fig. 4.11).
372

Plaques visible on the façade of the church claim that it was founded by Charlemagne in
the presence of the great paladins Orlando and Oliver (fig. 4.12). These historical
associations continued to draw the interests of the Medici in the Cinquecento and
Seicento; during the wedding procession of Ferdinando I, an image of Charlemagne
founding the Church of Santi Apostoli was included on a triumphal arch, later included as
a print in descriptions of the procession (fig. 4.13); a Seicento portrait bust of
Charlemagne by Giovanni Battista Caccini, installed above a door in the apse, also
visually asserts the buildings association with the Holy Roman Emperor (fig. 4.14). The

nella quale sono intagliate queste parole: DNE DA MIHI VIRTUTEM CONTRA
HOSTES TUOS,” Cinelli, BNCF, Magliabechiano XIII.34, fol. 230v.
371
DOMINE DA MIHI VIRTUTEM CONTRA HOSTES TUOS, the inscription is a line
from the Ave Regina Caelorum associated with the Liturgy of the Hours.
372
Ibid.

196
sword thus connected the history of the Duchy of Florence with one of the most revered
imperial Christian rulers.
More broadly, popular notions of Charlemagne in the early modern period
positioned him as the defender of Christendom against the forces of Islam, above all in
chivalric romances like Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. In the epic poem,
Charlemagne and his paladins defend France from the Muslim Kings of Africa and Spain.
While this work is not often read in relation to the interests of the Medici grand dukes,
the author included a call to crusade that would have drawn the attention of men like
Cosimo and his sons. In the second edition of his work, Ariosto included a call to defend
Christendom from the Turks directed, in part, at the Medici family.
373
Writing in canto
17, verse 75, Ariosto asked the rulers of Christendom:
If you wish to be called most Christian,
if you wish to be called Catholic,
why do you kill Christ’s men?
Why despoil them of their possessions?
Why do you not retake Jerusalem,
seized from you by the renegades?
Why is Constantinople and the better part of the world occupied by unclean
Turks?
374

Within tales of Charlemagne’s war against the Moors, the poet questions the
contemporary despoiling of Christians by other Christian princes, as the Turks occupy
Constantinople, Jerusalem, and the world. Redirecting this fixation on Christian spoils,
Ariosto remarks to them in verse 77, “The riches of the Turks are not far to seek: drive

373
For the manner in which Ariosto interlaces contemporary history and chivalric
romance see Albert Russell Ascoli “Ariosto and the ‘Fier Pastor’: Form and History in
Orlando Furioso,” Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001): 487-522.
374
All quotations from Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso are taken from the English translation
of the 1532 edition. Guido Waldman, trans., Orlando Furioso, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), 186.

197
them out of Europe or at least dislodge them from Greece.”
375
He writes further of
Turkey, “that is where the wealth is that Constantine brought from Rome—thither he
took the best, giving away what remained.”
376
Finally in verse 79, Ariosto concludes his
digression directing the remark at an ancestor of the Medici Grand Dukes, the Medici
Pope Leo X,

Great Leo, you shoulder the heavy burden of the keys of Heaven;
if you hold Italy by the hair, do not leave her submerged in slumber. You are the
shepherd: and if God gave you that staff to carry,
and chose your proud name it was so you could roar and stretch forth your hands
to defend your flock from the wolves.
377

With the lasting popularity of Ariosto’s work, this call to crusade, to deliver Jerusalem
and Constantinople from the Turks, was left to the descendants of Pope Leo to fulfill. The
holy sword, gifted by Pope Leo X to the family, and later displayed by Duke Cosimo
among the relics of Lepanto in the Palazzo Vecchio, certainly acted as a material
reminder of this obligation. Similarly, Charlemagne’s sword displayed amongst the
Ottoman spolia cast these goods as the fulfillment of the greater duties of the Medici as
Christian princes, righting the criticism of men like Ariosto. While later poets like Panfilo
di Renaldini attempted to highlight the Medici families supposed descent from one of
Charlemagne’s knights, Averardo de’ Medici, and their role in the defense of
Christendom against the Turks, this historical revisionism needed support. The sword of
Charlemagne, set among Turkish spoils, presented a material affirmation of this very
same idea.

375
Ibid.
376
Ibid.
377
Ibid.

198
This narrative reading of the collective display of these objects was reinforced by
additional swords mentioned by Lassels and Cinelli in the very same cabinet, including
the sword of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, leader of the siege of Tunis in 1535, and
the sword of George Kastrioti Skanderbeg, a mid-fifteenth century model of Christian
resistance against Ottomans. During his visit, Lassels described Skanderbeg as the man
“that made the Great Turk afrayd to fight with him,” an appropriate summary of the
Albanian leader who held the advance of the Ottomans at the Balkans.
378
Placed in
cabinets with the Turkish arms and armor captured by the knights, the concomitant
display of the swords of the defenders of Christendom fabricated a history of crusade
using Ottoman spoils captured in the Levant as an interpretive foil.

Ottoman Spoils in Translation

Within spaces like the guardroba and the armory, Ottoman spoils presented
visitors with material affirmations of grand ducal victories over Islam, framed by the
presence of relics from the legendary defenders of Christendom. Here their status as
spoils was also carefully explicated through text and image. Yet, Ottoman weapons also
often operated as diplomatic gifts to Christian rulers like the Protestant Electors of
Saxony in the Holy Roman Empire, where their context and interpretation was less easily
controlled. In 1587, Grand Duke Francesco I sent a number of items to Christian I von
Sachsen in Dresden via the ambassador Heinrich von Hagen, including a sixteenth-
century Ottoman turban-helmet and a selection of weapons, several of which are still

378
See Lassels in Barocchi and Gaeta Bertelà, Collezionismo Mediceo, vol. 2, 410.

199
present in the Türckische Cammer.
379
The original Florentine inventory of these items
made a concerted effort to separate spolia from purchased goods. It describes the
provenance of several objects purchased from Istanbul, the first “a ‘germanico’ sword
which comes from Constantinople” and the second “a hammer from Constantinople.”
380

However, a single sword is clearly designated as spoils. The entry reads: “a damascened
Scimitar which was [taken] from the Pasha which died in the armada, [with] a cover of
silver” (fig. 4.15).
381
Like the sword of Ali Pasha mentioned above, the inventory
presents the scimitar as spoils taken from a pasha during a naval encounter with the
Turks. Though the entry lacks the precision found in the 1574 inventory of the sword of
Ali Pasha previously discussed, it suggests that the scimitar was nonetheless presented by
von Hagen to the Electors of Saxony as spoils seized by the grand duke’s forces. Further
confirming this, the 1606 German inventory of the sword in Dresden records the scimitar
as taken from a Pasha by the “Florentiner Ordensherrn,” suggesting that the electors
understood that it was seized by the Knights of Saint Stephen.
382
Because of its inclusion
in a vast array of gifts, which included several other Ottoman weapons, the contested
nature of this silver damascened Scimitar had to be clarified for its recipient.
In her study of the diplomatic gifts sent to Dresden, Barbara Marx has argued that
Francesco I presented the items to the elector in an effort to persuade Christian to support

379
See Holger Schuckelt, Türckische Cammer: Orientalische Pracht in der Rüstkammer
Dresden, (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2010), 38-41.
380
Listed as “una Spada germani[co] venuta da Constantinopoli” and “una Martellina di
Constantinopoli.” For a transcription of the list see Barbara Marx, “Künstlermigration
und Kulturkonsum. Die Florentiener Kulturpolitik im 16. Jahrhundert und die
Formierung Dresdens als Elbflorenz” in Deutschland und Italien: in ihren wechselseitgen
Bezeihungen während der Renaissance. ed. Bodo Guthmüller (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz
Verlag, 2000), 286-289.
381
“una Scimitarra damaschina che era del bascia che morì sul armata coperta d’argento,”
Ibid., 287.
382
Ibid.

200
his contested title as grand duke, given to Cosimo I by Pope Pius V in 1569.
383
Although
Marx’s conclusions are certainly correct, the single Turkish spoil would have
communicated a very specific message amongst the diverse gifts, the collective unity of
Christians against the Turks. The presentation of this sword was likely inspired by its
ability to act as a relic of collective Christian victory, appropriate across confessional
boundaries, which often separated Catholic from Protestant. In subsequent decades the
electors would fight with the Florentines to stop the spread of the Ottomans in Central
Europe. In the attached letter sent with the objects from January 26, 1587, Francesco
explains to Christian I his desire to search the globe to fulfill the electors every material
desire, writing that “if I had known the taste of your highness previously then I would
have provided it, in the Levant, in Italy, and outside of Italy, to satisfy and to serve your
highness.”
384
While the letter reinforces the global reach of the Medici, their power is
defined in terms of two poles, Italy and the Levant. And though Francesco gifted a group
of Ottoman objects to satisfy the elector’s taste for Levantine goods, spolia was one of
the few items that had the potential to unite the two rulers as Christians.
Similar objects appear to have been gifted to the court of Spain by the grand
dukes. As mentioned previously, King Philip II of Spain collected and displayed objects
reportedly taken from the Grand Admiral Ali Pasha in the Real Armeria in Madrid
including forearm guards and his helmet (fig. 4.3). Some of these goods were originally
owned by the king’s half brother, Don Juan of Austria, and after his death in were

383
For this particular argument see Barbara Marx, “Medici Gifts to the Court of Dresden,”
Studies in the Decorative Arts 15/1 (2007/8): 48-49.
384
“Se avessi saputo prima il gusto di Vostra Altezza perche l’harei proviste in Levante,
in Italia et fuor d’Italia per satisfare et servire vostra Altezza,” Marx, Künstlermigration
und Kulturkonsum, 285.

201
integrated into the royal collection in 1582.
385
However, before 1594, the king was
missing the most prized item taken from the battle, the sword of Ali Pasha. That year, the
inventory of the armory records the addition of a sword fitting this description (fig. 4.16).
The sword is described in the Spanish inventory as “A Turkish cutlass, which was from
the Pasha from the naval battle, spine of gold, and a cross guard, and this is of gold, and
the pommel as well, and the hilt of brown velvet, placed in a case, lined with satin.”
386

While no document confirms the weapon came from the Florentines, contextual evidence
suggests that Francesco I, or possibly Ferdinando I, may have given the sword of Ali
Pasha to King Philip II as a diplomatic gift in subsequent years. While the sword
disappears from Florentine inventories after 1574, a very similar weapon appears two
decades later in Spain. Given the late date of the arrival of the weapon to Madrid, the
sword may have been a diplomatic gift sent by the Florentines to the Spanish court. The
scimitar sent by the Grand Duke to the King of Spain would have complimented the other
relics of Ali Pasha gathered by Don Juan d’Austria, including a helmet and forearm
guards still present in the Real Armeria.
Grand Duke Ferdinando I also retained Ottomans spoils that were later gifted to
collectors like Ferdinando Cospi of Bologna.
387
Cospi was a Medici familiar and a Knight
of Saint Stephen. He was also the inheritor of the vast collection of the naturalist Ulisse
Aldrovandi. Cospi in turn incorporated this earlier collection into his own museum in

385
For a brief review of the integration of Don Juan’s arms and armor into the royal
collection see Álvaro Soler del Campo ed., The Art of Power: Royal Armor and Portraits
from Imperial Spain (Madrid: TF Editores, 2009), 42-44.
386
“Un alfanje turquesco, que fué del baxá de la batalla nabal, dorado el recazo, y la
guarnicion una cruz, y es de oro, y el pomo también, y el puño de terciopelo pardo,
metido en su caxa, aforrada de raso.” See entry m.18 in Catálogo de la Real Armeria de
Madrid (Madrid: Hauser y Menet, 1898), 368-369.
387
On Cospi see Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific
Culture in Early Modern Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 26-31.

202
Bologna, which expanded beyond Aldrovandi’s obsession with the natural world to
include arms and armor. In 1677, Lorenzo Legati published a description of the museum.
Among the pieces he lists a sword gifted by Cosimo II de’ Medici, described as having a
decorative lion pommel and ivory inlay on the handle. At the end of the description
Legati writes that the sword “was from Cosimo [II] de’ Medici maternal relation of Sig.
Marchese [Ferdinando Cospi], obtained in the Hungarian wars against the Turks; to
which were sent by the most serene Grand Duke Ferdinando I, in the company of Signore
Don Giovanni Medici, a good number of soldiers to aid the Emperor, where he died in
year 1590.”
388
The sword retained from victories in Hungary against the Turks at the end
of the sixteenth century were later gifted to collectors like Cospi, where they retained
their status as spoils.

Islamic Flag as Christian Relic

If the gifting of Turkish arms and armor allowed the Medici to share their
victories throughout the extended geography of Christendom, flags and banners instead
offered materials to circulate knowledge of their efforts throughout Tuscany. While the
Turkish banners celebrating Duke Cosimo’s victory at Piombino appear to have only
hung in the Church of San Lorenzo, later objects gained more visibility by traveling
throughout the region. Flags, of course, had a long history as signifiers of victory, and for
Florentines they even recalled memories of medieval crusades to the Holy Land. In the

388
Fù di Cosmo Medici Avo Materno del Sig. Marchese, acquistata nelle Guerre
d’Ungerhia contro i Turchi; alle quale fù mandato dal Serenissimo Gran Duca Ferdinando
Primo, in compagnia del Sig. D. Giovanni Medici, con buon numero di soldati in aiuto di
Imperadore, ove mori l’anno 1590,” Lorenzo Legati, Museo Cospiano annesso a quello
del famoso Ulisse Aldrovandi (Bologna: 1677), 233.

203
Middle Ages, Florentines memorialized significant military victories with the
preservation of flags, a practice passed down from antiquity. After their own celebrated
crusade efforts in Damietta, Egypt, in 1219, the Florentines preserved a flag carried
during the campaign in the baptistery of San Giovanni. In his late thirteenth-century
Storia Fiorentina, Ricordano Malespini writes that the Florentine crusaders brought back
a red and white gonfalone, a heraldic banner supported by a horizontal crossbar, from the
siege of Damietta, Egypt, during the fifth crusade.
389
Giovanni Villani also confirms in
his Nuova Cronica that the Florentines returned with “a vermilion standard” after taking
the field against the forces of al-Malik al-Kamil.
390
An inventory from the Opera di San
Giovanni records the flag in 1314 as “a gonfalone of red and white from Damietta,”
codifying its geographic origins.
391

Banners like the gonfalone also give an idea of the very powerful civic and
religious connotations of flags in early modernity. Flags originally served an
organizational purpose on the battlefield, but their use later spread to guilds and
confraternities in cities like Florence. As both Richard Trexler and Frank Fehrenbach

389
Malespini writes “la insegna del Comune di Fiorenza, cioè, il campo rosso e ‘l giglio
bianco, fue la prima che si vedesse in sulle mura di Damiata per virtù de’ pelligrini
fiorentini.” Further he clarifies “E’ detti Fiorentini furono i primai combattendo a pigliare
la terra, e per ricordanza di questo, il detto gonfalone si mostra per la festa nella chiesa di
San Giovanni al Duomo.” See Ricordano Malespini and Giacotto Malespini, Storia
Fiorentina (Milan: Sonzogno, 1880), 100-101.
390
Giovanni Villani writes “E furono sì grande quantità i Fiorentini, che feciono oste
oltremare per loro, e furono al conquisto della città di Dammiata, e de’ primi che presono
la terra, e per insegna ne recarono uno stendale vermiglio che ancora è nella Chiesa di
San Giovanni,” Giovanni Villani: Nuova Cronica, ed. Giuseppe Porta, vol. 1 (Parma:
Fondazione Pietro Bembo, 1990), 242.
391
“Un Gonfalone bianco e rosso da Damiata,” is listed in Robert Davidsohn, Storia di
Firenze (Florence: Sansoni, 1956) 86, n.1. See also Rick Scorza, “Messina 1535 to
Lepanto 1571. Vasari, Borghini and the Imagery of Moors, Barbarians and Turks,” in The
Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed. Elizabeth
McGrath and Jean Michel Massing (London: The Warburg Institute, 2012), 123, n.11.

204
have shown, the use of the gonfaloni in medieval Florence were heavily regulated to
preserve their power as legal signs of group identity.
392
Once presented in public, by law
the bearer of the flag had the ability to represent the city, or group in question, making
them frequent objects of contention during uprisings. Furthermore, as Andreas Dehmer
has argued, for Catholics, flags such as confraternal banners had the potential to represent
Christ, becoming the site of worship.
393
Though the gonfalone from Damietta held these
powerful civic and possibly religious resonances, it was also preserved for its potential to
recall a significant historical memory. Stored in Florence’s Baptistery, it represented the
Florentine participation in the conquest of Fatimid Egypt, translated throughout the city
during the annual procession of Saint John the Baptist. For the grand dukes, the capture
and display of an Ottoman flag likewise had the potential to reach beyond its mere
materials to evoke the memory of a particular victory, to assert control of those who
claimed allegiance to the flag in question, and to claim defeat of Muhammad and Islam.
Though ephemeral celebratory practices in Europe often showed little regard for
the preservation spoils, the Medici grand dukes actively collected and preserved these
items in mass quantities.
394
Documents suggest that the flags hung in groups from the

392
For the use of the gonfalone di Giustizia see Richard Trexler. “Follow the Flag: The
Ciompi Revolt Seen from the Streets,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et renaissance 46
(1984): 357-392. See also Frank Fehrenbach. “Much Ado about Nothing: Leonardo’s
Fight for the Standard,” in Bild-Geschichte: Festschrift für Horst Bredekamp, ed. Philine
Helas (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2007), 407.
393
See Andreas Dehmer, Italienische Bruderschaftsbanner des Mittelalters und der
Renaissance (Munich: Deustcher Kunstverlag, 2004), 257-259, and see also Fehrenbach,
“Much Ado about Nothing,” 405.
394
For example, during Duke Marcantonio Colonna’s triumphal entry into Rome Turkish
banners were dragged along the ground, as well as during Venice’s celebrations. Colonna,
however, did dedicate a selection of Ottoman standards to the Church of Saint Peter’s in
Rome and a single flag from Lepanto still exists in the Doge’s palace. For the discussion
of the use of spolia in Lepanto celebrations see Scorza, “Messina 1535 to Lepanto 1571,”
142-145.

205
upper cornice of the central nave of the Church of Santo Stefano, draping down to the
floor like tapestries.
395
And though these objects were grouped together, individual flags
offered the knights a way to connect themselves to specific battles. Throughout the
seventeenth century, the pinnacle of victory over Ottoman forces remained the battle of
Lepanto. Of the ninety-two banners extant in the Church of Santo Stefano, only a single
flag remains associated with the battle (fig. 4.17). Spolia, like this flag, must have been
invaluable to the knights in subsequent years, as their participation at Lepanto was not
well known. The Jesuit priest Fulvio Fontana published one of the earliest histories of the
Order of Saint Stephen in 1701, I Pregi della Toscana nell’imprese più segnalate de’
cavalieri di Santo Stefano. As Fontana describes, at Lepanto the knights sailed “under the
pontifical standard, since the pope did not have a proper fleet.”
396
As a result Grand Duke
Cosimo I’s participation would later be conflated with papal support. Tuscan silk
merchants went so far as to include a portrait of Cosimo I in their celebrations in Venice
in order to remind others of grand ducal involvement in the victory.
397
Because the
knights could not display their own standard at Lepanto, captured flags from the battle
provided an important material connection to the most celebrated Christian victory in the
early modern period.
Similar to a saintly relic, spolia, like the flag taken from Lepanto, aided the
devotional practices of the knights. The surge of relic cults in post-Tridentine Italy
created an ideal atmosphere for the continued acceptance of these material practices.

395
Within the Registro delle Prede, compiled in the nineteenth century, the flags are
described as “attacate alla cornice della Chiesa” before they were removed and cleaned in
1822, Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, 469-470.
396
“sotto lo Stendardo Pontificio, giacchè il Pontefice non haveva squadra propria,”
Fulvio Fontana, I Pregi della Toscana nell’imprese più segnalate de’ Cavalieri di Santo
Stefano (Firenze: 1701), 41.
397
Ibid., 67.

206
While not the relic of a saint, Islamic spolia acted as ersatz relic as a result of its physical
connection to bodily sacrifice of Christian knights fighting in the name of Christ. In his
text, Fontana describes the sacred attributes of the spolia in the Church of Santo Stefano,
writing that they were:
all brought back at the cost of the sweat and wounds of the knights, and…thus
soaked no less in their blood, than in the blood of the enemies of the Holy Faith:
wherefore as everything on the interior exudes [spira] the generosity of the
ancestors, in this way everything serves as stimulation to the knights present, to
imitate them.
398

In this description, Fontana invokes the typology of saintly relics like Veronica’s veil, the
Sudarium. Collecting the sweat and blood of Christ, the object bore his physical
suffering, an action later mimicked by the spoils of the knights. As Islamic objects, the
flags were seen not only as a representation of the collective Turkish body, but also as an
extension of the Christian body, forever bound in blood. Fontana describes the actions of
the objects with the word spira, which can also signify the human breath, further
suggesting a bodily metaphor for the items. The spolia lived on the walls of the church,
forever impressing the historical memory of the sacrifice of the knights upon the faithful.
Though material representations of Islam, the Ottoman flags mimicked saintly relics as
objects that celebrated both victory and martyrdom in the defense of Christianity.

398
“tutti riportati a costo sudori, e di ferrite da’ Cavalieri, e […] così inzuppati non meno
del loro proprio sangue, che del sangue de’ Nemici della Santa Fede: laonde, come ogni
cosa d’intorno spira la generosità degli Antenati, così ogni cosa serve di stimolo a’
Cavalieri presenti, per imitarli, ” Ibid., 18.

207
Flags between Florence, Siena, and Pisa

While medieval Florentine’s relied upon the procession of the gonfalone from
Damietta to activate memories of Florentine participation in the fifth crusade, by the era
of the grand dukes Ottoman flags and banners instead functioned as a material means to
celebrate their own success as crusaders. With the foundation of the Knights of Saint
Stephen in 1561, the initial successes of the knights against the Turks needed to be
visualized. Documents detailing objects sent between the guardaroba of the Medici
palace in Siena and the guardaroba in Florence illustrate that in the early 1560s, Turkish
flags moved between these two cities. On March 2, 1563, five flags arrived to Siena sent
by Duke Cosimo to the Medici palace in the city. Reportedly the flags were captured by
Piero Machiavelli, “Cavaliere del Machiavello,” removed from several galleasses seized
in the Tyrrhenian. The flags are described as variously colored white, green, red, and
turquoise, with no other identifying descriptions.
399
These spoils did not remain in Siena
long. Twenty-six days later the flags are subsequently sent to the guardaroba in Florence
where they likely remained until the construction of the Church of Santo Stefano in
Pisa.
400
The movement of the banners from Livorno to Siena, and finally to Florence
allowed the materials of victory to travel throughout the grand duchy.
Within the Church of Santo Stefano in Pisa, ninety-two Turkish flags seized
between the years 1563 and 1692 still comprise the largest group of early modern

399
“a di 2 di marzo 1562, Le ricevuto da S.a M.ia Ill.ma le ba’dere delle galeote presse d’
via del del. Machievello cavalieri del la religion si sa’to Stefano ch’ sono banchi e ve’di e
rossi e turchini…..n.o 5,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 41, fol. 67v.
400
“adi 28 di Marzo 1563, Le mandatto a Firenze alla guardaroba di Firenze detto le
ba’diere aricontro dette cioe tutte le dette robe aricontro ch’ so’ cinque bandiere……..n.o
5,” ASF Guardaroba Medicea 41, fol. 68r.

208
Ottoman flags outside of Turkey (fig. 4.18).
401
The majority of the standards and banners
were taken from flagships of the Ottoman fleet. While the knights took advantage of print
to publicize descriptions of their victories, the flags, and their presentation in processions,
formed an integral part of publicly signaling both recent and past victories. Processions
regularly followed successful battles with the Turks and examples are recorded after
victories such as the siege of Annaba, in modern-day Algeria, in 1607.
402
Furthermore,
every three years the Knights of Saint Stephen staged a celebration in honor of the grand
duke: following a priest carrying the cross, the knights paraded the extant Turkish spoils
stored within the church through the streets of Pisa before ending at the Piazza dei
Cavalieri. Entering the Church of Santo Stefano, the men attended mass where the
victories of the past three years were recounted. Moving through the city, the flags
translated thousands of captured and defeated Ottomans as metonym.
403

In later decades these movements of captured Ottoman banners between cities
like Siena and Florence became more orchestrated. On June 3, 1619, one of a number of
such translations took place when one hundred and ninety-five liberated galley slaves
processed through the streets of Siena towards the Palazzo Medici with spoils in hand.
404

More than a month earlier, off of the coast of Greece, the military Order of the Knights of

401
Barbara Karl has suggested in her study of the flags that the vast majority of the
inexpensive cloth versions were sewn together in Algiers. Karl, “The Ottoman Flags of
Santo Stefano in Pisa,” 347.
402
Franco Paliaga, “Feste e ceremonie organizzate dall’Ordine nel periodo mediceo” in
Le imprese e i simboli: contributi alla storia del Sacro Militare Ordine di S. Stefano P.M.
(sec. XVI-XIX), (Pisa: Giardini, 1989), 245.
403
Paolo Liverani provides a thorough analysis of the historical use of the term spolia and
its role as metonym. See Paolo Liverani, “Reading Spolia in Late Antiquity and
Contemporary Perception,” in Reuse Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and
Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie Levine, ed. Richard Brilliant and Dale Kinney
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 33-51.
404
For a transcription of the entry see Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, 357.

209
Saint Stephen had freed the Spanish, Hungarian, and Polish captives from the Turkish
Admiral Mustafa Pasha.
405
Setting out from the port of Livorno, the men transported
several objects to Siena. At the head of the procession they carried the knights’ flag to
honor their liberators. Yet the men also carried items that had originally decorated the
pasha’s flagship: a red and white cloth flag decorated with three crescent moons, a red
ermesino flag, two cloth pennants, and a ship’s lantern.
406
Marching to the sound of
drums and trumpets, the group shouted, “Long live the Grand Duke of Tuscany,” praising
the grandmaster of the order, Grand Duke Cosimo II de’ Medici.
407
After arriving to the
duke’s palace, attendants hung the spolia from the windows.
408
Ottoman flags and
lanterns acted as material metonyms of the success of the knights. The physical
translation of spolia from the coast of Greece, to Livorno, and finally to Siena transported
relics of Christian victory to one of the central territories of the Grand Duchy, celebrating
the Medici as crusaders in the Levant.

Losing the Language of the Holy Land

The physical translation of Turkish flags and banners between grand ducal
territories, and within cities like Pisa, also gave way to linguistic translations. Documents
which record Turkish objects in grand ducal collections frequently mention inscriptions,

405
A description of the skirmish suggests the respect shown to Ottoman admirals,
“Comandava questa galera Mustafà Bashà, il quale mostrando cuore veramente di soldato,
e fatte prove di gran valore, morì combattendo,” Ibid., 359.
406
Ibid., 357.
407
“viva il Gran Duca di Toscana,” Ibid.
408
The procession then made its way to the Duomo and, finally, culminated at the Church
of Santa Maria di Provenzano. After their arrival to the city, Grand Duke Cosimo II paid
for the men to be housed at Santa Maria della Scalla and subsidized their return home
with the gift of a scudo, Ibid.

210
for example a dagger once displayed in the tribuna is recorded in 1589 as “con lettere
turchesche.”
409
Yet weapons and armor presented in grand ducal collections rarely appear
to have been investigated. Evidence remains, however, that illustrates that the inscriptions
on Turkish flags and banners were translated. In 1602, the Knights of Saint Stephen
captured an Alexandrian flagship off of the coast of Greece. After returning the flags and
banners to Pisa, the Grand Duke Ferdinando ordered the inscriptions on a small selection
of them to be translated. The different approaches to these types of goods appears to
suggest that their eventual location played a large part in how they were manipulated
linguistically. Translation of Arabic inscriptions on objects displayed in liturgical spaces
offered a means to fix spolia as representations of Islam, revealing content deemed
“heretical.” In all likelihood, this linguistic translation of the flags captured by the
Knights of Saint Stephen was practical. The presence of untranslated Arabic inscriptions
could be a source of anxiety for early modern Christians, often misidentified as bearing a
Christian message or signifying its relationship as a relic from the Holy Land.
As scholars such as Rosamond Mack have illustrated, through the sixteenth
century the visuality of Arabic text (or more often than not pseudo-Arabic text) was often
identified as the language the Holy Land.
410
Without the ability to read Arabic, Italian
viewers accepted the shape and form of the script as a visual signifier of Christian
antiquity. The painted altarpieces of Giotto, Duccio, and Andrea Mantegna included
Arabic inspired designs on the clothing of Mary, Christ, and other biblical figures, in
order to signal their ancient biblical origins in the East. These visual associations were
generated in part from confusion over the origins of relics believed to have come from

409
For a transcription of the entry see the Turpin, Appendix, 114.
410
Rosamond Mack, Bazaar to Piazza: Islamic Trade and Italian Art, 1300-1600
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 51-71.

211
the region. Relics like Saint Anne’s veil illustrate the dangerous permeability of a
Christian object and an Islamic spolium, and the importance of inscriptions in
distinguishing the origin of these works. The veil was originally housed in the treasury of
the Cathedral of Apt, in Provence, France, before its destruction in the early twentieth
century.
411
Though long believed to have been a relic of Saint Anne, it was in fact a
Fatimid cloth, produced in Damietta, Egypt around 1096. A Kufic inscription on the so-
called relic originally declared its site of production, offered praise for Ali—the son-in-
law and banner carrier of Muhammad—and named the ninth Caliph al-Musta lì.
412
The
spoil, likely taken during the first crusade, was brought back to Apt and later mistakenly
elevated to the level of a saintly relic. While a simple translation of the inscription would
have revealed its identity, little interest in its textual meaning appears to have arisen until
the seventeenth century.
413
Instead, for centuries the unread Arabic text offered visual
proof of the object’s origins in the Holy Land.
The historical confusion around the origins of the veil begins to illustrate the
potential dangers of untranslated Arabic inscriptions in Christian spaces. By signaling the
presence of Muhammad, or the Muslim patron of the item, relics once believed to be
exclusively Christian could be revealed as unknown agents of Islam. In his study on
pseudoscript, Alexander Nagel illustrates how gifts bearing untranslated Arabic text had

411
It was probably in disrepair by the 1930s as a copy was made in 1933. See Avinoam
Shalem, Islam Christianized: Islamic Portable Objects in the Medieval Church
Treasuries of the Latin West (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1998), 73.
412
For a discussion the inscription see H.A. Elsburg and R. Guest, “The Veil of Saint
Anne,” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs 68 (1936): 145, and Maria Vittoria
Fontana, “A 17
th
/18
th
– Century Manuscript (Vatican Library, MS. \ Barb. Or. 130)
Reproducing the Inscription on Roger’s Mantle and the Roundels of the Veil of St Anne,”
Oriente Moderno 84 (2004): 432-437.
413
By 1781, Jacob Georg Christian Adler’s translation of the inscription on the relic
definitively revealed the status of the object as Islamic. See Fontana, “A 17th/18th –
Century Manuscript,” 427-448.

212
the potential to disgrace the Christian gift-giver, as in the case of John XI Bekkos who
gave the emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos a bronze platter in 1279 that praised
Muhammad.
414
The text acted as a passive carrier of an unorthodox message. Relics like
Saint Anne’s veil posed a similar problem. While in the Middle Ages the dormant
inscription visually authenticated the object’s eastern origin, centuries later the text’s
translation placed the relic’s identity in crisis.
Much like the first Italian translation of the Qur’an in 1547 by Andrea Arrivabene,
which included an invective calling on the “sword of Christendom” to eradicate the
“tyranny of the Turks” and misrepresented aspects of Muhammad’s life, translations also
offered linguistic fodder to ideologically combat the Ottomans.
415
The practice of the
Italian translation of Arabic script on Turkish spolia appeared after Lepanto, when the
Venetians circulated a print of a captured finial, a decorative element placed atop a
flagpole (fig. 4.19). The image was included in Luigi Groto’s Trofeo della vittoria,
printed in 1572, and though the Arabic text on the finial was reversed in the print, this
translation allowed readers to read one of the Christian victors’ many spoils.
416
These
renderings were not merely about satisfying curiosity for Turkish objects or language.
Early modern translations of the texts on spolia offered a means to fix these objects as an

414
Alexander Nagel, “Twenty-five notes on pseudoscript in Italian art,” RES:
Anthropology and Aesthetics 59/60 (2011): 237.
415
On the possible authors of the translation based upon a grossly mistranslated Latin
version from 1143, typically attributed to Andrea Arrivabene, see Pier Mattia Tomasino
“Giovanni Battista Castrodardo Bellunese traduttore dell’Alcorano di Macometto
(Arrivabene, 1547)” Oriente Moderno 1 (2008): 15-40.
416
On Groto’s text and the inclusion of the image of the finial see Iain Fenlon, The
Ceremonial City: History, Memory and Myth in Renaissance Venice (New Haven: Yale
Unviersity Press, 2007), 264-265, and Palmira Johnson Brummett, “The Lepanto
Paradigm Revisited: Knowing the Ottomans in the Sixteenth Century” in The
Renaissance and the Ottoman World ed. Anna Contadini and Claire Norton (Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing Company, 2013), 90-91.

213
embodiment of Islam, and with its inscription now rendered accessible, to undermine its
efficacy as a true symbol of the holy faith.
In 1602, the Knights of Saint Stephen captured an Alexandrian flagship off of the
coast of Greece, seizing 102 banners.
417
Among the plethora of materials, an inventory
describes five flags with Arabic inscriptions kept at the Medici Palazzo Reale in Pisa
before being moved to the Church of Santo Stefano. To clarify their role as relics of
Christian victory, an extant inventory suggests that the grand dukes relied on the
translation of inscriptions of the flags to codify their origins and to alert viewers to its
heretical content. A partial copy of the Registro delle Prede in the archives of Pisa
illustrates that the spoils were translated by a “Turkish interpreter,” possibly one of
several Turkish slaves kept by the Medici.
418
At the end of the inventory, the notary
records a translation of the text of the first flag: “With Turkish letters which are
interpreted, those of the frieze of gold, God will help you soon, those inside the moon,
God will open the door for you, and above the moon, God.”
419
Though the entry provides
little in terms of analysis of the passage, the inscription identifies the flag as a sacred
object. Phrases, such as the one described inside of the crescent moon, derive from
passage 7:40 of the Qur’an, which states that those who reject the signs of Allah will not
have the gates of heaven opened for them.

417
For a full count of the banners collected in the battle, see ASF, Guardaroba Medicea
236, fol. 476v-478v.
418
See the record of the 1602 presa of the “Fanale di ramo d’orato […] con lettere in
cima interpretate dall’interpetre turchesco” in the Registro delle Prede 45v. in Guarnieri,
I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano, 470.
419
“Con lettere turchesche che s’interpetanno, quelle del fregio d’oro, Dio ti aiutera
presto presto, quelle intorno alla luna, Dio aprira la porta per te, et sopra la Luna, Dio.”
ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 236, fol. 478v.

214
The inventory includes the inscriptions of two other flags that more directly
establish the items’ Islamic context. The next entry reveals the potential for God to heal,
as well as naming the prophet Muhammad: “With letters embroidered in gold, interpreted
as, God removes illness […] and, made in the moon placed in the middle, the white field
of Turkish letters in gold which mean, God is great and Muhammad commands.”
420
The
very act of associating the central prophet of Islam to the banner forced it to act as more
effective metonym of the Muslim body. Much in the way that a confraternal banner could
present a Catholic with the body of Christ, the capture and subsequent identification of a
flag which names Muhammad likely represented a similar bodily capture of the prophet
of Islam. Moreover, the translation also ensured that subsequent generations of knights
could avoid the confusion surrounding objects like Saint Anne’s veil. The translated text
fixed the object as Islamic spolia and not a saintly relic.
The final inscription in the 1602 inventory adds insight into their potential to
represent both the collective Turkish body and the individual: “With Turkish letters noted
in the large red frieze […] are interpreted as God helps, and are noted in the small
turquoise frieze as Ahmet Bey, which is the name of the actual patron of the standard.”
421

Below a larger inscription regarding God’s help, this last standard carries the very name
of its owner. Again the presence of the name of a local ruler of Alexandria strengthens
the potential for the flag to operate as a metonymic representation of captured Turkish
identity. While the flag represented the collective identity of Islam and the Turks, the

420
“Con lettere richamate doro interpetrate Dio leva il male […] et da farsi nella luna
posta nel mezzo il Campo bianco di lettere turchesche in oro che significano Dio Grande
et Maometo Comanda.” Ibid.
421
“Con lettere Turchesche le notate nel fregio rosso grande […] s’interpretanno Dio
Aiutare et le notate nel fregio piccolo turchino Ametto Bei, ch’ è nome del proprio
Padrone dello Stendardo.” ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 236, fol. 478v.

215
names of patrons also had the potential to distinguish the individual and historicize their
singular defeat.
Despite the fact that the banners functioned as ephemeral decoration for flagships,
particular inscriptions reinforced their importance as sacred signs to Muslims. Another
banner in the collection of the Church of Santo Stefano of red silk and decorated with
gold lettering bears an inscription: “Whoever marches under this banner will have eternal
life and Muhammad is the prophet of God.”
422
The verse refers to the final Day of
Judgment in which the banner of the prophet will identify the faithful. As a banner
decorating an Ottoman ship, the inscription references the flag’s potential to designate
those deserving of eternal life. The text, in essence, affirms the object’s own power. Yet
through its spoliation and presentation in the Church of Santo Stefano, the inscription and
its translation instead illustrates the Islamic banner’s value as prized Christian booty,
neutralizing its power.
Aside from the inscriptions, the symbols found on the flags also interested the
knights. Though the image of the moon was most frequently identified, the inventory
records other symbols such as snakes (vipere), associated with the judgment of Allah.
Another entry describes a flag decorated with “a symbol (zifra) of gold thread.”
423
The
word used in the inventory, zifra – in modern Italian cifra – suggests an Arabic
inscription in the form of a seal. In his text, Trofeo della vittoria sacra, mentioned above,
Luigi Groto uses the word zifere to describe the Arabic script on the finial captured at

422
“Chi milita sotto questa bandiera avrà vita eterna e Maometto è profeta di Dio,”
translation provided in Franco Angiolini, Clara Baracchini, and Donata Devoti, Pisa dei
Cavalieri (Milano: Franco Maria Ricci, 1996), 72.
423
“Un stendardo di tapitta rosso con freggi a traverso d’oro filato et seta rosa e’ freggieti
da lato di seta gialla a Luna con in mezzo una Luna e’ una Zifra d’oro filato usato asai
long’ B
a
4 largo B
a
3,” ASF, Guardaroba Medicea 236, fol. 476v.

216
Lepanto.
424
It seems strange, however, that the Medicean inventory would leave this
particular inscription untranslated while they diligently deciphered the rest. Instead the
record might indicate a crest or simply a figure, other potential interpretations of the term
zifra. Though unclear, the term zifra is also phonetically similar to the Arabic word
Zulfiqar, the name of the two-pointed sword of Ali, given by Muhammad to his son-in-
law. The sword frequently adorned the flags found on Ottoman ships, and can be seen
throughout the extant works in the Church of Santo Stefano (fig. 4.20). In the complex
task of transliteration, modern Italian equivalents were often used for Turkish or Arabic
words, as in the name of the captain Uluj Ali, which was rendered as a rough phonetic
equivalent, Occhiali, the Italian word for glasses. Though it is uncertain if the knights or
the Medici understood the significance of the Zulfiqar, it was often included in
inscriptions on Ottoman swords suggesting that they may have also come across it in
other venues.
Flags were not the only objects with inscriptions. During the same battle of 1602,
the Knights of Saint Stephen captured a fanale, or stern lantern, the same type present in
the procession in Siena in 1619 (fig. 4.21). A small collection of these objects can still be
found in the Church of Santo Stefano in Pisa, mounted on the interior cornice of the nave.
Together with flags, lanterns visually distinguished the individual ships of a fleet. While
the admiral typically had three lanterns set above the stern of his ship, lower status
captains displayed only a single lantern at the rear of their vessel.
425
The same inventory

424
See Appendix VIII in Rick Scorza, “Vasari’s Lepanto Frescoes: apparati, medals,
prints in celebration of victory,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 75
(2012): 197.
425
For a summary of the function of stern lanterns see Martino Ferrari Bravo and Nick
Humphrey, “New light on a Venetian lantern at the V&A,” Renaissance Studies 24
(2010): 80-87.

217
describes the object as “gilded copper, of six sides with a cap, with letters on the top
interpreted by the Turkish interpreter that they say, God is great.”
426
Though a mere
lantern, the object bore a simple prayer, the Takbir, “Allahu Akbar.” Like the flags, the
stern lantern presented another opportunity to display the defeat of the Turkish fleet for
the knights.

Conclusion

Preserving diverse materials such as flags, lanterns, and swords, the Medici
followed an established tradition, displaying spoils in venues throughout the grand duchy.
While churches like San Lorenzo in Florence and Santo Stefano in Pisa displayed
Ottoman flags and banners, the Palazzo Vecchio and later the Uffizi instead housed the
vast majority of captured arms and armor. From these spaces, the translation of Ottoman
spolia throughout Tuscany and abroad allowed the grand dukes to celebrate their
contemporary victories over the Turks. Public celebrations which moved objects from
Livorno to Pisa and Siena, allowed the grand dukes to spread word of their successes,
while diplomatic gifts to Spain and the Holy Roman Empire reminded Christian rulers of
their collective efforts against a common enemy. Wary of the potential confusion over
the provenance of these objects, the Medici translated Arabic inscriptions of flags, added
epitaphs to Turkish swords, and displayed Ottoman arms and armor alongside relics of

426
“di rame d’orato a sei faccie con sua cupola con lettere in cima interpretate
dall’interpetre turchesco che dicono, Dio Grande.” A portion of the inventory, including
the translations of the Arabic text is transcribed in Guarnieri, I Cavalieri di Santo Stefano,
470.

218
the defenders of Christendom, all in order to encourage their correct reading as Islamic
spoils. These efforts were made to ensure the historical integrity of the objects, many of
them no longer remain. Apart from the ninety-two flags in Pisa, only a small selection of
arms and armor from the Medici armory are extant, now largely stored in the Museo
Nazionale del Bargello.
427
In 1776, the director of the Uffizi Galleries, Giuseppe Pelli
Bencivenni, reorganized the Uffizi in order to render it more suitable as a gallery. To do
so, he cleared the armeria of the Uffizi of the arms and armor in order to make space for
additional paintings. Bencivenni wrote in his account of the modifications, “In this way I
have freed myself of an embarrassment and I have acquired the space for other things.”
428

Auctioned off and melted down at the Florentine mint, centuries of spoils were unmade
by a change in fashion. Though the victories of the Knights of Saint Stephen and the
Medici grand dukes in the Levant may have been largely forgotten, in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries they continued to be venerated with spoils as relics of Christian
victory.

427
For the extant works see the catalogue entries after Boccia, 119-142.
428
“Cosi mi sono liberato di un imbarazzo, ed ho acquistato del luogo per altri generi.”
Fabia Borroni Salvadori, “A passo a passo dietro a Giuseppe Bencivenni Pelli al tempo
della Galleria,” Rassegna Storica Toscana 29 (1983): 16-17.

219
Conclusion

In grand ducal Florence, crusade was visualized in a variety of forms. Painting,
print, sculpture, and Turkish spoils memorialized, venerated, and promoted conflict with
the Ottoman Empire. Beginning with Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, the visual expression of
victory over the Turks offered a means for the grand dukes to portray themselves as
Christian princes actively defending Christendom in an era when the church was fraught
with internal divisions and self-doubt regarding its own potency. While writers like
Ludovico Ariosto once openly questioned Medici Pope Leo X’s desire to defend
Christendom from the Turks, Cosimo deployed the artists of his city to offer a clear
affirmation of his intentions; Agnolo Bronzino, Benvenuto Cellini, and Giorgio Vasari
fashioned the Duchy of Florence, and the later Grand Duchy of Tuscany, as an opponent
to the spread of Ottoman power by rendering Duke Cosimo and ducal forces as Christian
crusaders. Ludovico Cigoli, Bernardino Poccetti, and Jacques Callot in turn continued
this tradition under the rule of Cosimo’s sons. Art and object, displayed in the Palazzo
Vecchio, the Palazzo Pitti, and the Uffizi, mapped an extended historical imaginary of
Christian and Islamic conflict, reimagining Florence’s role within this tradition again and
again.
Throughout this dissertation I have argued that artwork acted as a primary means
for Florentines to visualize themselves as actors in a Mediterranean world in continual
strife. For the early modern Florentine viewer, this great corpus of work imagined
Christian and Islamic conflict along coastal spaces in the Tyrrhenian, the Maghreb, and
the Levant; yet each of their meanings inevitably came back to the spiritual center of

220
Christendom, the city of Jerusalem. Artists like Ludovico Cigoli made this connection
explicit. By the Seicento the recovery of the Holy Land was a prominent visual theme in
Florence, apparent in the artist’s painting of The Liberation of Jerusalem. Earlier works,
however, had the potential to project similar ideals. Bronzino’s Israelites Crossing the
Red Sea from the 1540s illustrates Medici familiars among the followers of Moses,
victorious over Turkish forces on their journey to the Holy Land. Benvenuto Cellini’s
Perseus, finished in 1554, also fashioned similar geographic connections. The sculptor’s
bronze relief imagined Perseus as the captain of mounted cavalry, rescuing Andromeda
and laying siege to Jaffa, the ancient port of Jerusalem. Cellini’s bronze bust of Cosimo
from the same period operated instead as a typology; the Argonauts were seen as an
antique parallel for a united Christendom recovering the Holy Land and Cosimo,
knighted as a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, set out to follow the path of
Hercules, Jason, and Orpheus. Even the translation by the Medici of Arabic and Turkish
script on Islamic spoils offered a textual microcosm of the early modern anxieties
regarding the loss of control of Jerusalem. What was once believed to be a visual signifier
of the Holy Land and Christian antiquity was now known to be the language of Islam.
Jerusalem was occupied physically and linguistically by the Turks and their religion.
The results of this study are far reaching, in particular for our knowledge of
Florentine visual culture. Tracing the theme of crusade in late Renaissance Florence
allows for us to read against the historiographic grain of a city that has rarely been
considered within such an interpretive scope. Long presumed as a temporally medieval
concept, the study of holy war in the visual culture of mid-sixteenth century Florence
continues to break down the interpretive circumscription of the city. As scholars like

221
Johan Huizinga, Alphonse Dupront, and Fernand Braudel have long recognized, the myth
of crusade lived on in early modernity and Florence actively embraced this myth. Indeed,
it was an important location for the visual continuation of these themes. The presence of
these ideals, not only in battle paintings and prints, but also in the sculptures of classical
heroes like the Argonauts and Perseus offers evidence that the dukes often relied on a
Renaissance visual language to promote these themes. Classical antiquity provided the
Medici a means to spatially fashion self from other, visually claiming rights to a Greco-
Roman tradition, while at the same time denying the Ottomans their claim as inheritors of
that very same antiquity and its connected spaces.
If these ideas allow us to expand the temporal parameters of Renaissance artwork
they also allow us to reconsider the spatial dynamics of Florentine visual culture.
Contested peripheral spaces, such as Elba and Piombino, empowered the relevance of
these themes in the very center of the duchy, bringing these issues to sculptures in the
Loggia dei Lanzi. Meaning did not always flow from the center outward, but also from
outer territories of the duchy inward. These notions also question the frequent
simplification of crusade as nationalized political rhetoric derived from a single country
to project dynastic connections. While much of the previous scholarship on crusade
imagery in Florence has attempted to tie images of Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon
to French national identities or to locate the impetus to engage in wars with the Turks as
Spanish political diplomacy, none of these simplifications accurately describes the
longevity of these ideas in grand ducal Florence. The hopes for the recovery of Jerusalem
reached beyond nationalities as a greater preoccupation of a collective Christendom.

222
This study suggests that future investigations of the visual culture of the Duchy of
Florence require greater attention to how the city fashioned its own Mediterranean
peripheries. While many of the objects presented here have been the focus of decades of
research, few of them have been given the interpretive leeway to address issues beyond a
Florentine center. Although research continues to emerge on international collecting
practices and cross-cultural gift giving in grand ducal Florence, much work still needs to
be done on the broader geographic dimensions of central artistic commissions and the
manner in which they addressed Christian and Islamic conflict. Mythological allegory in
particular was a primary means to engage the ideals of crusade in a manner that still too
often appears in modern scholarship as beyond the bounds of the Renaissance. Returning
to figures like Jason, Perseus, and Hercules with broader narrative limits in mind will
shed a brighter light on how classical artwork in Florence promoted crusade themes and
commemorated victories over the Ottoman Empire.

223
Illustrations

Figure 1.1

Jacques Callot, Assault of the City of Bona, from the series Life of Ferdinando I, 1614-
1620, engraving, 228 x 305 mm.

224

Figure 1.2

Agnolo Bronzino, Israelites Crossing the Red Sea, 1540-45, fresco and tempera, Chapel
of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

225

Figure 1.3

Giorgio Vasari, Martyrdom of St Stephen, 1569-1571, Church of Santo Stefano dei
Cavalieri, Pisa

226

Figure 1.4

Detail, Agnolo Bronzino, Israelites Crossing the Red Sea, 1540-45, fresco and tempera,
Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

227

Figure 1.5

Mamluk or Ottoman Turban Helmet, Museo Nazionale del Bargello

228

Figure 1.6

Ridolfo di Ghirlandaio, Medici-Toledo stemma, ca.1542, fresco, Sala Verde, Apartments
of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

229

Figure 1.7

Detail, Agnolo Bronzino, Israelites Crossing the Red Sea, 1540-45, fresco and tempera,
Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

230

Figure 1.8

Detail, Agnolo Bronzino, Israelites Crossing the Red Sea, 1540-45, fresco and tempera,
Chapel of Eleonora di Toledo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

231

Figure 1.9

Medici stemma, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

232

Figure 1.10

Anonymous, Charlemagne’s Knights, ca. 1554, engraving, from Panfilo di Renaldini,
Innamoramento di Ruggeretto (Venice: 1554)

233

Figure 1.11

Anonymous, Grand Sultan, ca. 1554, engraving, from Panfilo di Renaldini,
Innamoramento di Ruggeretto (Venice: 1554)

234

Figure 1.12

Anonymous, Charlemagne Victorious, ca. 1554, engraving, from Panfilo di Renaldini,
Innamoramento di Ruggeretto (Venice: 1554)

235

Figure 1.13

Giorgio Vasari and Jan van der Straet, Defense of Piombino, 1563-65, oil on wood, Sala
dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

236

Figure 1.14

Detail, Giorgio Vasari, Defense of Piombino, 1563-65, oil on wood, Sala dei
Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

237

Figure 1.15

Philip Galle, Neptune over a Captured Turk, 1572, engraving, in Arcus Aliquot
Triumphalis (Antwerp: 1572)

238

Figure 1.16

Ludovico Cigoli, Liberation of Jerusalem, ca.1600, oil on canvas, 151 x 201 cm,
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

239

Figure 1.17

After Santi di Tito, Liberation of Jerusalem, 1589, engraving, from Della descrizione del
regale apparato fatto nella nobile città di Firenze per la venuta, e per le nozze della
serenissima madama Christina di Loreno del Serenissimo don Ferdinando Medici terzo
gran duca di Toscana (Florence: 1589)

240

Figure 1.18

Cosimo Daddi, Deeds of Godfrey of Boullion during the siege of Jerusalem, 1590, fresco,
Villa della Petraia, Florence

241

Figure 1.19

Detail, Cosimo Daddi, Deeds of Godfrey of Boullion during the siege of Jerusalem, 1590,
fresco, Villa della Petraia, Florence

242

Figure 1.20

Bernardino Poccetti, Victory at Preveza, 1607, fresco, Sala di Bona, Palazzo Pitti,
Florence

243

Figure 1.21

Bernardino Poccetti, Siege of Bona, 1607, fresco, Sala di Bona, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

244

Figure 1.22

Detail, Bernardino Poccetti, Siege of Bona, 1607, fresco, Sala di Bona, Palazzo Pitti,
Florence

245

Figure 1.23

Giorgio Vasari, The Defeat of the Pisans at the Tower of San Vincenzo, 1567-1569,
fresco, Sala dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

246

Figure 1.24

Detail, Bernardino Poccetti, Apotheosis of Cosimo, 1607, fresco, Sala di Bona, Palazzo
Pitti, Florence

!
! !

247

Figure 2.1

Benvenuto Cellini, Bust of Cosimo I, 1546-47, bronze, height 110 cm, Museo Nazionale
del Bargello, Florence

248

Figure 2.2

Detail, Benvenuto Cellini, Bust of Cosimo I, 1545-48, bronze, height 110 cm, Museo
Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

249

Figure 2.3

Benvenuto Cellini, Bust of Cosimo I, before 1557, marble, (without the base) 30 x 28 in.,
M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco

250

Figure 2.4

Detail, Workshop of Giorgio Vasari, Cosimo Ordained into the Order of the Golden
Fleece, early 1560s, fresco, Sala di Cosimo, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

251

Figure 2.5

Baccio Bandinelli, Jason, ca. 1545, bronze, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

252

Figure 2.6

Duke Cosimo de Medici’s stemma with the inclusion of the Golden Fleece

253

Figure 2.7

Detail, Benvenuto Cellini, Bust of Cosimo I, 1545-48, bronze, height 110 cm, Museo
Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

254

Figure 2.8

Niccolò della Casa, After Baccio Bandinelli, Portrait of Duke Cosimo I, 1544, engraving,
435 x 301 mm, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis or Museum of Art,
Philadelphia

255

Figure 2.9

Lorenzo Costa, Argonauts in Colchis, 16th c., tempura on panel, 46 x 53 cm, Musei
Civici, Padova

256

Figure 2.10

Bartolomeo di Giovanni, The Departure of the Argonauts, 1487, oil on panel, 33 x 64.5
in. (83.8 x 163.8 cm), The Mari-Cha Collection Ltd.

257

Figure 2.11

Coin with image of God Ammon, Greek, Hellenistic period

258

Figure 2.12

(left) Detail of Ammon, from Giulio Cesare Capaccio’s Delle Imprese trattato di Giulio
Cesare Capaccio, (Naples: 1592)

(right) Detail of Ammon, from M. Sebastiano Erizzo’s Discorso di M. Sebastiano Erizzo
Sopra le Medaglie degli Antichi (Venice: 1568)

259

Figure 2.13

Guillame Fillastre, Jason capturing the Golden Fleece, from l’histoire de la Toison d’or,
1475-1485, illuminated manuscript, 465 x 340 mm, Bibliothèque Nationale de France,
Paris

260

Figure 2.14

Florentine School, Argonautica, wooden cassone, ca. 1450, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello, Florence

261

Figure 2.15

Aegidius Sadeler, Emblem of Assiduitate, from Jacob Typot’s Symbola Divina et
Humana, (Prague: 1601-1603), engraving

262

Figure 2.16

Dedicatory plaque above the entrance of the Forte Stella, 1548, marble, Fort Stella, Elba

263

Figure 2.17

Domenico Poggini, medal with image of the port of Portoferraio, 1555, bronze and gold

264

Figure 2.18

Aegidius Sadeler, Emblem of Elba, from Jacob Typot’s Symbola Divina et Humana,
(Prague: 1601-1603), engraving

265

Figure 2.19

Giorgio Vasari, Foundation of Portoferraio, ca. 1557, fresco, Sala di Cosimo I, Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence

266

Figure 2.20

Detail, Jacopo Ligozzi, View of Portoferraio, ca. 1580, pen and ink on paper, 270 x 823
mm, Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

267

Figure 2.21

Abraham Ortelius, Argonautica, 1598, engraving, 19.5 x 13.5 in., Antwerp

268

Figure 2.22

Detail, Abraham Ortelius, Argonautica, 1598, engraving, 19.5 x 13.5 in., Antwerp

269

Figure 3.1

Benvenuto Cellini, Perseus, 1545-54,
bronze, height 320 cm, Loggia dei Lanzi,
Florence

270

Figure 3.2

Francesco del Prato, Medal of Alessandro de’ Medici, 1535-36, bronze, cast, diameter 6
cm, British Museum, London

271

Figure 3.3

Filippo and Francesco Negroli, Medusa Shield for Charles V, 1541, steel, gold, and
silver, diameter 23 5/16 in (59.2 cm), Real Armería, Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid

272

Figure 3.4

Filippo Negroli, Medusa Shield for Charles V, ca. 1550-1555, steel and gold, diameter 24
in (61 cm), Hafjagd-und Rüstkammer des Kunsthistorischen Museums, Vienna

273

Figure 3.5

Detail, Filippo Negroli, Medusa Shield for Charles V, ca. 1550-1555, steel and gold,
diameter 24 in (61 cm), Hafjagd-und Rüstkammer des Kunsthistorischen Museums,
Vienna

274

Figure 3.6

Detail, Filippo Negroli, Medusa Shield for Charles V, ca. 1550-1555, steel and gold,
diameter 24 in (61 cm), Hafjagd-und Rüstkammer des Kunsthistorischen Museums,
Vienna

275

Figure 3.7

Niccolò della Casa, portrait of Charles V, ca. 1543-48, engraving, 50.5 cm x 36.2 cm,
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

276

Figure 3.8

Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, Fortezza Vecchia, 1519 - 1534, Livorno

277

Figure 3.9

Stemma di Alessandro de’ Medici, 1519-1534, marble, 1 x 0.5 meters, above the main
entrance, Fortezza Vecchia, Livorno

278

Figure 3.10

Stemma di Alessandro de’ Medici, 1519-1534, marble, 0.8 x 0.3 meters, on the bastion,
Fortezza Vecchia, Livorno

279

Figure 3.11

Villa Doria at Fassolo, Genoa

280

Figure 3.12

Perino del Vaga, Perseus with Medusa’s Head: Birth of the Snakes from Medusa’s Blood,
Sala di Perseo, 1528-1530, fresco, Villa Doria at Fassolo, Genoa

281

Figure 3.13

Anonymous, The Deployment of the Fleets, tapestry, completed by 1591, Villa Doria,
Genoa

282

Figure 3.14

Detail, The Deployment of the Fleets, tapestry, completed by 1591, Villa Doria, Genoa

283

Figure 3.15

Donatello, Judith and Holofernes, 1450s, bronze, height 236 cm (without base), Palazzo
Vecchio, Florence

284

Figure 3.16

Details, Jacopo Russo di Messina, Portolan Chart, 1533
!

285

Figure 3.17

Detail, Jacopo Russo di Messina, Portolan Chart, 1533

286

Figure 3.18

Jacopo Ligozzi, Turkish Woman, ca. 1577, charcoal and polychrome on paper, 280 x 214
mm, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Florence, inv. 2956 F

287

Figure 3.19

Benvenuto Cellini, The Liberation of Andromeda, 1550s, bronze, 82 x 90 cm, Museo
Nazionale del Bargello, Florence

288

Figure 3.20

Andromeda’s Rock decorated with an Israeli Flag, Jaffa, Israel

289

Figure 4.1

Giorgio Vasari, Church of Santo Stefano, Pisa, 1565-1569

290

Figure 4.2

Broadside celebrating the death of Ali Pasha, ca. 1571, Victoria and Albert Museum

291

Figure 4.3

Helmet and forearm guard of Ali Pasha, Turkish, c.1570, Patromonio Nacional, Armeria
Real, Madrid, cat. M.19 and M.20

292

Figure 4.4

Holy sword gifted from Pope Nicholas V to Ludovico Bentivoglio, 1454, Museo Civico,
Bologna

293

Figure 4.5

Plan of the Uffizi with armory numbered 14-18, from Benedetto Vincenzo de Greyss’
Pianta della Galleria degli Uffizi, ca. 1750 .

294

Figure 4.6

Ludovico Buti, Medici cavalry defeating Ottoman soldiers, 1588, fresco, Uffizi

295

Figure 4.7

Detail, Giorgio Vasari, Personification of Italy Victorious over Africa, from the panel of
Clement VII Crowning Charles V, 1563-65, Sala dei Cinquecento, Palazzo Vecchio

296

Figure 4.8

Ludovico Buti, Ottoman Janissary, 1588, fresco, Uffizi

297

Figure 4.9

Agnolo Gori, Return from the Siege of Bona, 1665, fresco, Uffizi

298

Figure 4.10

Il Volteranno, Return from the Siege of Bona, 1637-1646, fresco, Villa della Petraia

299

Figure 4.11

Santi Apostoli, Florence

300

Figure 4.12

Inscription naming the foundation of the church by Charlemagne with Orlando and
Oliver in attendance, Santi Apostoli, Florence.

301

Figure 4.13

After Pier Vieri, Charlemagne founding the church of Santi Apostoli, engraving, in Della
descrizione del regale apparato fatto nella nobile città di Firenze per la venuta e per le
nozze della serenissima madama Christina di Loreno moglie del serenissimo don
Ferdinando Medici terzo gran duca di Toscana (Florence: 1589)

302

Figure 4.14

Giovanni Battista Caccini, Portrait bust of Charlemagne, ca.1600, Santi Apostoli,
Florence

303

Figure 4.15

Damascened Scimitar, Türckische Cammer, Dresden

304

Figure 4.16

Blade from the sword of Ali Pasha, Turkish, c. 1570, Patromonio Nacional, Armeria
Real, Madrid, cat. M.18

305

Figure 4.17

Flag from the flagship of Ali Pasha at the battle of Lepanto, ca. 1570, Church of Santo
Stefano dei Cavalieri, Pisa

306

Figure 4.18

Interior of the Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri, Pisa

307

Figure 4.19

Paolo and Bernardino Lancia, Turkish cimiero taken from the flagship of Ali Pasha, from
Isole famose (Venice: 1572)

308

Figure 4.20

Ottoman flag with image of the Zulfiqar, Church of Santo Stefano dei Cavalieri, Pisa.

309

Figure 4.21

Captured fanali, or stern lanterns, displayed above the cornice, Church of Santo Stefano
dei Cavalieri, Pisa

310
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Abstract (if available)

Abstract This dissertation investigates artwork produced under the Medici grand dukes in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries that promoted conflict with the Ottoman Empire through the rhetoric of crusade. Examining sculpture, painting, and print produced by Benvenuto Cellini, Giorgio Vasari, and other court artists, it argues that the meanings of Florentine works ventured well beyond the walls of Florence to historically contested spaces like Jerusalem. Resituating these objects within the history of Florentine-Ottoman strife, from Cosimo I de’ Medici’s defense of the Tuscan coast to Ferdinando I de' Medici’s later incursions into North Africa, this project expands the interpretive parameters of grand ducal commissions both temporally and geographically revealing how the Medici fashioned themselves as crusaders. By placing central artistic commissions and collecting practices within larger Christian and Islamic worlds in conflict, this study addresses the ways in which the grand dukes manipulated Florentine historical imagination to support their interests throughout the Mediterranean.

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Representation, truth, and the metaphysics of propositions

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On the latent change score model in small samples

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The Samuel H. Kress Collection: a cultural legacy of Italian Renaissance art in midcentury America

Asset Metadata

Creator Nelson, Sean A. (author)

Core Title Jerusalem lost: crusade, myth, and historical imagination in grand ducal Florence

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Art History

Publication Date 09/01/2015

Defense Date 06/22/2015

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Callot,Cellini,Cigoli,Crusade,Florence,Jerusalem,Medici,OAI-PMH Harvest,Ottoman Empire,Poccetti,spoils,Vasari

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Howe, Eunice (committee chair), Malone, Carolyn (committee member), Mancall, Peter (committee member), Roberts, Sean (committee member)

Creator Email newrenaissance@gmail.com,sanelson@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-174507

Unique identifier UC11276172

Identifier etd-NelsonSean-3863.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-174507 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-NelsonSean-3863.pdf

Dmrecord 174507

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Nelson, Sean A.

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA