The Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici

The Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi is one of those places in Italy – there are a certain number of them, though not an enormous number – in which history and art combine to bear witness to the past in a way that is absolutely exceptional. In this case we are dealing with a period in the past that has been extraordinarily celebrated, studied and loved, so as to achieve an almost mythic status: the age of the Renaissance in Medicean Florence. Ten years after the conclusion of restoration work, Franco Cardini distils the essence of countless scholarly studies on the subject in this richly illustrated volume. His synthesis is completed by Lucia Ricciardi’s essay, full of useful information on the heraldic, symbolic and allegorical imagery related to the Medici family.