ELEONORA'S CLOSET

Eleonora di Toledo, daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples (himself a younger son of the Duke of Alba,) was 17 when she married 19-year-old Cosimo de’ Medici in 1537. A distant cousin who had succeeded when the original Medici line died out, Cosimo needed her lineage and connections to confirm his right to rule as royalty, supported by Emperor Charles V, not as a merchant prince like earlier Medicis. They lived in the Palazzo della Signoria, the old seat of city government, instead of the family’s old Palazzo Medici; Eleonora bought Palazzo Pitti in 1549, mainly for entertaining; her son Ferdinando I moved the court there in 1597, when the old palace became just that – Palazzo Vecchio. The Sala del 500, above, has a truly monumental ceiling by Vasari; interlocked diamond rings, a Medici emblem, form a bold tiled floor, below, with a bust of Cosimo in a round frame, and Bronzino’s famous portrait of Eleonora in one of her spectacular dresses.

The remaining decoration, especially ceilings like the above, is wonderfully rich, with endless, ancient Roman-inspired grotesques and stucco-work. On a staircase ceiling, below left, flying putti play with the red balls of the Medici arms. Eleonora’s small private chapel, below, is not a restful place, with Bronzino’s beautiful but intense, thrusting frescoes of the life of Moses, and a vengeful Archangel on the dome above.

The most charming room of all, below, was perhaps Eleonora’s private bedroom or closet, with a ceiling divided into panels, some apparently open to a blue sky filled with birds. Below this are beautifully, wittily painted cartouches with her name LEONORA, her birth town TOLLEDO and her new home FLORENTIA, on the letters of which putti climb and play although, I'm afraid, it’s hard to read in my very poor photographs.