National Gallery of Art :: The Collection :: Giuliano de' Medici
  • Overview
  • Provenance
  • Exhibition History
  • Bibliography

Overview

Giuliano Medici, the younger brother of Lorenzo, was nursing a bad knee on Easter Day 1478 and had to be helped to the cathedral—by the very men who were plotting to kill him and his brother during mass. The assassins, members and supporters of the Pazzi family, banking rivals of the Medici, awaited their signal. As worshipers bowed their heads at the elevation of the host, Giuliano was brutally stabbed. Lorenzo escaped to the sacristy, remaining there while the Pazzi partisans attempted to seize the government. They soon failed, however, and Lorenzo resumed control.

The murder of Giuliano shocked Florence, and a number of portraits were ordered for public display to serve both as memorials and as warnings to other plotters. Botticelli's painting may have been the prototype for others, and lent symbolic gravity to Guiliano’s passing, showing him as an icon, almost a saint. The open window and mourning dove were familiar symbols of death, alluding to the flight of the soul and the deceased's passage to the afterlife. Some scholars, noting the lowered eyelids, suggest this portrait was painted posthumously from a death mask.

Inscription

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Marks and Labels

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Provenance

Grand Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici [1551-1609], Florence.[1] Marchese Alfonso Tacoli Canacci [1724-1801], Florence, by 1796;[2] by inheritance to his nephew, Pietro Tacoli [1773-1847], Modena; by inheritance to his daughter, Adelaide Tacoli; through her marriage into the Bellincini Bagnesi family, Modena; by descent to Marchesa Adele Bagnesi;[3] sold 1940 through (Zelindo Bonaccini [1890-1967], Modena)[4] to Count Vittorio Cini [1885-1977], Venice;[5] sold to (Wildenstein & Co., Inc., New York), probably in 1948;[6] sold June 1949 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[7] gift 1952 to NGA.

[1] The emblem of the queen bee surrounded by her subjects, visible on the reverse of the painting, appears also on the reverse of a medal made by Michele Mazzafirri for Grand Duke Ferdinand I de' Medici in 1588; see Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th-18th Centuries, Florence, 1983: 2:760-761. It is uncertain whether the NGA painting is the one described as "1o quadro colla testa di Giuliano de' Medici" ("one picture with the head of Giuliano de' Medici") in the 1503 inventory of the Cafaggiolo branch of the family collection (see John Shearman, "The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici," Burlington Magazine 117 [1975]: 26); in fact, several versions of Giuliano's portrait must have been painted, a number of which still exist today. No portrait of him is mentioned, however, in the 1492 inventory of the Medici Palace in Via Larga (see Libro d'inventario dei beni di Lorenzo di Magnifico, ed. by Marco Spallanzani and Giovanni Gaeta Bertelà, Florence, 1992; and Maria Grazia Ciardi Duprè Dal Poggetto, "I dipinti di Palazzo Medici nell'inventario di Simone de Stagio delle Pozze: Problemi di committenza e di arredo," in Toscana al temp di Lorenzo il Magnifico: Politica, economia, cultura, arte. Convegno di studi promosso dale Università di Firenze, Pisa e Siena, 5-8 novembre 1992, 3 vols., Pisa, 1996: 160-161) or in the 1560 inventory of the apartments of Cosimo I de' Medici in the Palazzo Vecchio (see James H. Beck, "The Medici Inventory of 1560," Antichità Viva 13 [1974]: no. 3, 64-66, and no. 5, 61-63). A "quadretto pittovi la testa di Giuliano di Piero de' Medici in carta pecora" ("a little picture with the head of Giuliano di Piero de' Medici painted on parchment"), certainly not identifiable with the NGA painting, is listed in inventories of 1553 and later (Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici. 15th-18th Centuries, 3 vols., Florence, 1981-1987: (1983):1063).

[2] The presence of a label with the inscription Etruria pittrice (see also note 5) suggests that by 1796 the painting belonged to marquis Alfonso Tacoli-Canacci, in whose catalogue it is registered under no. 444. As Dr. Vincenzo Buonocore informs Miklós Boskovits in a letter of 17 June 2002 (copy in NGA curatorial files), the painting was probably acquired by Tacoli Canacci after 1792, as it does not appear in the list of his paintings compiled in that year (now in the Real Biblioteca in Madrid, ms. II/574).

[3] The Getty Provenance Index states that the painting used to belong to the Coccapani Imperiali family. A handwritten note on the back of a photograph in Bernard Berenson's photographic files at the Biblioteca Berenson, I Tatti, Florence, states that the painting was "found" in Modena and that it entered the Cini collection through a Modenese dealer (see following notes). According to Dr. Vincenzo Buonocore, who is preparing a detailed study on the history of the Tacoli-Canacci collection, after the death of marquese Alfonso, his paintings went to his nephew and heir, Pietro Tacoli, and subsequently to the daughter of the latter, Adelaide, wife of Alessandro Bellincini Bagnesi in Modena.

[4] The anonymous author of an article in the magazine Europeo (8 July 1951, translation in NGA curatorial files) states that the painting was acquired "before the war [World War II] [by] Count Vittorio Cini through Prof. Zelindo Bonaccini of Modena." Working also as a painter, Bonaccini was known mostly for his activity as a dealer (see Alberto Barbieri, Arte ed artisti a Modena, Modena, 1982: 407).

[5] A publication on the paintings and works of art belonging to the Cini collection (Nino Barbantini, Il Castello di Monselice, Venice, 1940) does not yet mention the painting. However, Dr. Buonocore owns a list of paintings sold in 1940 by Adele Bagnesi to Count Cini which includes the Giuliano de' Medici (communication to Miklós Boskovits).

[6] According to a handwritten note on a photograph owned by Bernard Berenson (see note 3), the painting was with Wildenstein's by 1948; it was offered by this firm to Rush H. Kress for acquisition on 30 March 1949 (copy of letter in NGA curatorial files).

[7] The Wildenstein invoice to the Kress Foundation for 16 items, including the Botticelli painting, is dated 23 June 1949 (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Exhibition History

1999
Renaissance Florence: The Art of the 1470s, The National Gallery, London, 1999-2000, no. 1, repro.
2001
Virtue and Beauty: Leonardo's 'Ginevra de' Benci' and Renaissance Portraits of Women, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 2001-2002, no. 27, color repro.
2009
Botticelli, Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, 2009-2010, no. 5, repro.
2011
The Portrait in Renaissance Italy: From Masaccio to Bellini, Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011-2012, no. 52, repro.

Bibliography

1942
Bettini, Sergio. Botticelli. Milan, 1942:25-26, repro. 46.
1956
Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Colllection Acquired by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation 1951-56. Introduction by John Walker, text by William E. Suida and Fern Rusk Shapley. National Gallery of Art. Washington, 1956: 36-39, no. 10, repro.
1957
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Comparisons in Art: A Companion to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. London, 1957 (reprinted 1959): pl. 62
1959
Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 68, repro.
1960
The National Gallery of Art and Its Collections. Foreword by Perry B. Cott and notes by Otto Stelzer. National Gallery of Art, Washington (undated, 1960s): 6.
1961
Seymour 1961 (Kress), 45, color repro. pl. 38
1962
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., Treasures from the National Gallery of Art, New York, 1962: 18, color repro.
1963
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 84, repro.
1965
Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 17
1966
Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds., A Pageant of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. 2 vols. New York, 1966: 1:46, color repro.
1966
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XIII-XV Century. London, 1966: 121-122, fig. 335.
1968
European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1968: 10, repro.
1975
European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 38, repro.
1979
Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1979: I:83-84, II:pl. 55
1984
Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 97, no. 59, color repro.
1985
European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 57, repro.
2003
Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 170-175, color repro.
2011
Johnson, Ken. “Getting Personal.” New York Times 161, no. 55,628 (December 23, 2011): C30, repro.
2011
Rubin, Patricia. "Understanding Renaissance Portraits." In The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini ed. Keith Christiansen and Stefan Weppelmann. Exh. cat. Berlin 2011. New York, 2011: 10.
2012
Luchs, Alison. "Verrocchio and the Bust of Albiera degli Albizzi: Portraits, Poetry and Commemoration." Artibus et historiae 66 (2012): 84, repro.

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