Medici Prince's Chapel | Michelangelo Sacristy | Location | Opening Hours Tickets | Authorizations
Chapel's Art Chapel | Dome Frescoes | Reliquaries
Marble and Stones' Art of the Chapel of the Princes in Florence
The Chapel of the Princes Medici
The Chapel of the Princes The Chapel of the Medici Princes is unique in its kind by the beauty and grandeur of its architecture, highlighted by the decorative richness of its marbles and polychrome stones.
It also represents a new way of organizing and seeing space in the European culture of that time.
The chapel of the Medici Princes' aesthetic success is intimately linked to the Florentine artistic culture, which relies here on traditional local know-how such as hard stone marquetry.
This chapel was also designed on the plans of Tuscan baptisteries, such as those of Pisa or Florence, with an octagonal central plan visually accentuated by the rhythm given by the two columns surrounding each of the Medici princes' sarcophagi.
The Sarcophagi of the Medici Dukes
By building this chapel of the Princes, the Grand Dukes of Tuscany wanted a place commensurate with the largest mausoleums and places of worship then known, and one cannot avoid thinking by seeing it in the Pantheon or many other Roman monuments.To this grandiose staging of their individual immortality and that of the Medici dynasty using the noblest and rarest materials are added the stone sarcophagi surmounted by the statue of each duke buried here.
Great bronze statues, masterpieces of Florentine sculpture, made by the brothers Tacca, Ferdinando and Pietro.
But most of the niches to accommodate the sovereigns are empty, and only two of them are honoured with a statue.
The finances of the Medici family have not allowed its descendants to continue the planned work.
These two statues are those of Cosimo II and Ferdinand I.
They are represented with the ermine cloak of the great masters of the order of St. Stephane (Santo Stefano) and the symbols of power, namely the sceptre and the crown.
The Tuscany Coats of Arms of the Prince's Chapel
The Chapel of the Princes is supported by the coats of arms of the sixteen main cities dependent on Florence, which are presented here as pledging allegiances to the Medici and a union of wealth from which the power of the State of Florence originates.The sumptuous marquetry of the coats of arms was made with marbles, quartz, mother-of-pearl, alabaster, jasper, lapis lazuli, coral, porphyry and various granites.
Pavements and Hard Stones work of art
The pavement of the Chapel of the Medici Princes is not only beautiful but it has also been designed to be visually linked to the walls that pursue the geometric figures of the floor by projecting them over the entire height of the chapel in a harmony of colours, lights and plays of mirrors and reflections taking their birth in the plan octagonal central of the chapel.
Chapel's Art Chapel | Dome Frescoes | Reliquaries
Medici Prince's Chapel | Michelangelo Sacristy | Location | Opening Hours Tickets | Authorizations
Back to Top of Page