Maria de’ Medici

Exhibition catalogue, Florence, Pitti Palace, Museo degli Argenti (19 March-4 September 2005)

Texts by Marc Fumaroli, Antonio Paolucci, Caterina Caneva, Francesco Solinas, Roberto Contini, Paola Bassani Pacht, Nicolas Sainte Faire Garnot, Dominique Brême, Maria Sfarmeli, Laura Baldini Giusti, Roberta Orsi Landini, Riccardo Spinelli, Maria Adelaide Bartoli Bacherini, Isabelle de Conihout.

The catalogue and the exhibition are dedicated to Maria de' Medici, wife of Enrico IV of France, and her role spreading the medicean model in French art in the first decade of the 17th century, when figurative arts served ambitious cultural projects.

The florentine queen, though widowed and reigning and indefinitely banned from France, had foreseen how the arts could support politics, specifically the power of her husband Henry IV. She became the symbol of this connection between the French monarchy and the Italian mecenatism. The exhibition features Rubens, Van Dyck, Empoli, Santi di Tito, Cristofano Allori, Alessandro Allori, Bilivert, Giambologna. Additionally precious goldsmith and other so called "minor arts" show how the florentine style was quickly expanding throughtout the European courts through the Medici family.