Cappelle Medicee

Florence buried its ruling family here. Michelangelo shaped the New Sacristy in architecture and sculpture alike, the Princes' Chapel sheathes a grand ducal mausoleum in polished hardstones, and the crypt below holds the dynasty's tombs, from Cosimo I to the last Grand Duke.

Why it matters

The Medici Chapels are the dynastic monument of the family that dominated Florence, declared a national monument and turned into a state museum in 1869 precisely because they condense the art and history of the newly united Italy. The museum joins three funerary spaces beside the Basilica di San Lorenzo: the Sagrestia Nuova, a unified work of architecture and sculpture by Michelangelo Buonarroti; the Cappella dei Principi, a baroque mausoleum of encrusted marble and pietre dure; and the crypts where the grand dukes and their families lie. The juxtaposition connects Michelangelo's allegories with the theatrical self-presentation of absolutist power; the walls record the Medici's taste, wealth and propagandist intent.

What to notice

In the Sagrestia Nuova, look first at the two ducal tombs: Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, each seated in a niche above a sarcophagus flanked by the celebrated allegories of Night, Day, Twilight and Dawn, powerful nudes that embody Michelangelo's grand conception of the human figure. On the tomb shared by Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano sits the Madonna and Child between Saints Cosmas and Damian, the family's patron saints. The room was designed and carved as one composition between 1519 and 1534, yet parts remain rough, and that incompleteness is part of its force. In the Princes' Chapel above, the grand ducal mausoleum glitters with marble revetments and pietre dure inlay produced by the grand-ducal workshops, and the dome carries frescoes by Pietro Benvenuti painted in 1828–37, under the Habsburg-Lorraine grand dukes who succeeded the Medici. The crypt below gathers the burials of the dynasty from Cosimo I to Gian Gastone, with whose death in 1737 the line ended. The so-called Stanza Segreta is a small room covered in wall drawings attributed by the museum to Michelangelo's hand.

Context and history

Two Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, wanted a fitting setting for the tombs of Lorenzo the Magnificent, his brother Giuliano and their descendants Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and Giuliano, Duke of Nemours, whose death in 1519 extinguished the legitimate line of that branch of the family. Michelangelo worked on the New Sacristy from 1519 until 1534, when he left Florence for good, and the project kept its unfinished state. Alessandro, first Duke of Florence, assassinated by his cousin Lorenzino, was later laid in the sarcophagus of the Duke of Urbino. The Princes' Chapel, begun much later as the burial stage for the grand-ducal line, was completed only under the Habsburg-Lorraine rulers, and their own burials are kept in a separate Lorraine crypt. In 1869 the two chapels, already declared a national monument, became a state museum, a role their art and history were judged to deserve in the newborn Kingdom of Italy.