Cosimo I de' Medici

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Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
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"Cosimo I" redirects here. For the founder of the Medici dynasty, see Cosimo de' Medici.
Cosimo I
Grand Duke of Tuscany
Reign21 August 1569 – 21 April 1574
SuccessorFrancesco I
Born12 June 1519
Florence, Republic of Florence
Died21 April 1574(1574-04-21) (aged 54)
Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1539; died 1562)​
​
​
(m. 1570)​
Catholicism
SignatureCosimo I's signature

Cosimo I de' Medici (12 June 1519 – 21 April 1574) was the second

grand duke of Tuscany
, a title he held until his death.

Life

Rise to power

Cosimo was born in

out-of-wedlock
and was only four years' old at the time of his father's death.

Cosimo I de' Medici at about 19 years of age (by Pontormo, c. 1538)

Up to the time of his

Medici family) and was almost unknown in Florence. However, many of the influential men in the city favoured him as the new duke. Several hoped to rule through him, thereby enriching themselves at the state's expense. However, as the Florentine literatus Benedetto Varchi famously put it, "The innkeeper's reckoning was different from the glutton's."[3]
Cosimo proved strong-willed, astute and ambitious and soon rejected the clause he had signed that entrusted much of the power of the Florentine duchy to a Council of Forty-Eight.

When the Florentine exiles heard of the death of Alessandro, they marshalled their forces with support from

Bia (1537 – 1542), who was portrayed shortly before her premature death in a painting[4] by Bronzino
.

Toward the end of July 1537, the exiles marched into Tuscany under the leadership of

Alessandro Vitelli to engage the enemy, which they did at Montemurlo.[5] After defeating the exiles' army, Vitelli stormed the fortress, where Strozzi and a few of his companions had retreated to safety. It fell after only a few hours, and Cosimo celebrated his first victory. The prominent prisoners were subsequently beheaded on the Piazza della Signoria or in the Bargello. Filippo Strozzi's body was found with a bloody sword next to it and a note quoting Virgil
, but many believe that his suicide was faked.

Rule of Tuscany

Cosimo I's coronation as Grand Duke of Tuscany, which happened in 1570, Rome.

In 1537, Cosimo sent

Gian Gastone de' Medici
, in 1737. The help granted to Charles V allowed him to free Tuscany from the Imperial garrisons and to increase as much as possible its independence from the overwhelming Spanish influence in Italy.

Official portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici as Grand Duke of Tuscany by Giovanni Battista Naldini

Cosimo next turned his attention to Siena. With the support of Charles V, he defeated the Sienese at the Battle of Marciano in 1554 and laid siege to their city. Despite the inhabitants' desperate resistance, the city fell on 17 April 1555 after a 15-month siege, its population diminished from forty thousand to eight thousand. In 1559, Montalcino, the last redoubt of Sienese independence, was annexed to Cosimo's territories. In 1569, Pope Pius V elevated him to the rank of Grand Duke of Tuscany.[6]

In the last 10 years of his reign, struck by the death of two of his sons by malaria, Cosimo gave up active rule of the Florentine state to his son and successor Francesco I. He retreated to live in his villa, the Villa di Castello, outside Florence.

Statesmanship

Portrait bust from the workshop of Benvenuto Cellini, ca. 1550

Cosimo was an authoritarian ruler and secured his position by employing a guard of Swiss mercenaries. In 1548, he managed to have his relative Lorenzino, the last Medici claimant to Florence who had earlier arranged the assassination of Cosimo's predecessor Alessandro, assassinated himself in Venice.[dubious – discuss] Cosimo also was an active builder of military structures,[7] as a part of his attempt to save the Florentine state from the frequent passage of foreign armies. Examples include the new fortresses of Siena, Arezzo, Sansepolcro, the new walls of Pisa and Fivizzano and the strongholds of Portoferraio on the island of Elba and Terra del Sole.

He laid heavy tax burdens on his subjects. Despite his economic difficulties, Cosimo I was a lavish patron of the arts and also developed the Florentine navy, which eventually took part in the

Knights of St. Stephen.[8]

Patronage of the arts

Cosimo as Orpheus, by Bronzino

Cosimo is perhaps best known today for the creation of the Uffizi ("offices"). Originally intended as a means of consolidating his administrative control of the various committees, agencies, and guilds established in Florence's Republican past, it now houses one of the world's most important collections of art, much of it commissioned and/or owned by various members of the Medici family.

His gardens at Villa di Castello, designed by Niccolò Tribolo when Cosimo was only seventeen years old, were designed to announce a new golden age for Florence and to demonstrate the magnificence and virtues of the Medici. They were decorated with fountains, a labyrinth, a grotto and ingenious ornamental water features, and were a prototype for the Italian Renaissance garden. They had a profound influence on later Italian and French gardens through the eighteenth century.[9]

Cosimo also finished the Pitti Palace as a home for the Medici and created the magnificent Boboli Gardens behind the Pitti. As his more prominent ancestors had been, he was also an important patron of the arts, supporting, among others, Giorgio Vasari, Benvenuto Cellini, Pontormo, Bronzino, the architect Baldassarre Lanci, and the historians Scipione Ammirato and Benedetto Varchi.

A large bronze equestrian statue of Cosimo I by Giambologna, erected in 1598,[10] still stands today in the Piazza della Signoria, the main square of Florence.

Cosimo was also an enthusiast of alchemy, a passion he inherited from his grandmother Caterina Sforza.

Marriage and family

Medici
family.

In 1539, Cosimo married the Spanish noblewoman

Jesuit
order. The Duchess died with her sons Giovanni and Garzia in 1562, when she was only forty; all three of them were struck down by malaria while traveling to Pisa.

Cosimo and Eleanor had:

Before his first marriage, Cosimo fathered an illegitimate daughter with an unknown woman:

After Eleanor's death in 1562, Cosimo fathered two children with his mistress Eleonora degli Albizzi:

  • an unnamed daughter (born and died 1566) who died before baptism
  • Giovanni (1567 – 1621),[15] later legitimized by his father

In 1570, Cosimo married Camilla Martelli (died 1590)[16] and fathered one child with her:

References

  1. ^ a b c d Fossi 2001, p. 20.
  2. ^ Fletcher 2016, p. xvi.
  3. ^ "Ma un conto facea il ghiotto, e un altro il taverniere", B. Varchi, Storia Fiorentina, 15, 600.
  4. Uffizi Gallery
  5. ^ a b Landon 2013, p. 74.
  6. ^ Acidini 2002, p. 309.
  7. ^ Role, R.E., Fort 2008 (Fortress Study Group), (36), pp108-129
  8. ^ Mason 1989, p. 85-86.
  9. ISBN 978-88-09-76632-7
    ), pp. 30-41
  10. ^ McHam 2017, p. 195.
  11. ^ Crews 2008, p. 136-137.
  12. ^ a b Murphy 2008, p. 63.
  13. ^ Loffredo 2022, p. 176.
  14. ^ Langdon 2007, p. 99.
  15. ^ Clifton 2016, p. 174.
  16. ^ Bercusson 2017, p. 164.
  17. ^ Sherrill 2006, p. 136.
  18. ^ Davies 2009, p. 27.

Sources

Further reading

  • Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed. (2001). The Cultural Politics of Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici.
  • Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed. (2004). The Cultural World of Eleonora of Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena.
  • Henk Th. Van Veen, Cosimo I de' Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (Cambridge, CUP, 2006).
  • Gáldy, Andrea M. Cosimo I de'Medici as collector: antiquities and archaeology in sixteenth-century Florence (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009).

External links
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Duke of Florence

1537–1569 		Elevated to Grand Duchy of Tuscany
Elevated from Duchy of Florence
Grand Duke of Tuscany

1569–1574 		Succeeded by
Francesco I de' Medici
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