Volume 49, Number 20 · December 19, 2002
The Cosimos
By Tim Parks
Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance
by Dale Kent
Yale University Press, 544 pp., $49.95
The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence
by Cristina Acidini Luchinat and eleven others
Yale University Press, 381 pp., $60.00
The tombs of the Medici, the family that with two brief interludes was the dominant force in Florence from 1434 to 1737, are to be found in the Church of San Lorenzo, a northerly stone's throw from the city's duomo. You pay about five dollars to get into the Chapel of Princes at the back of the building. The space is far larger and taller than you could have imagined. There are extravagantly bejeweled trophies in bright display cases and all around, high against walls of variously colored stone, the grand sarcophagi of the Tuscan dukes in gloomy granite, polished and preposterous. The impression is not of a people honoring its rulers, but of a family admiring itself.
Review, 4092 words
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