Word: medici
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Lorenzo ("The Magnificent") de' Medici had cause to be restless in his grave: a go-getting U.S. real-estate agency took a full-page ad in Town & Country offering bourgeois buyers the sumptuous Villa Medici that he built overlooking Florence in 1460. Asking price...
...their elaborate efforts to provide a worthy council hall, the French finally abandoned their plan of installing a marble copy of the Medici Venus directly above the speaker's rostrum. Explained French Architect Bernard Monnet: "It would have shocked the British." Instead of Venus, he chose a discreetly robed Minerva. That was perhaps symbolic. The Council would not succeed through love; if it accomplished anything, it would do so in the ways of Minerva, a hardheaded and practical woman...
...Palazzo Rezzonico, which the Porters leased from 1925 to 1929, was the scene of parties that would have done the Medici proud. At one affair, 50 gondoliers stood like statues along a winding stairway, 600 guests frolicked in fancy-dress costumes provided by Porter, and floodlights played on tightrope walkers overhead. Once Sergei Diaghilev brought his ballet company to dance Les Sylphides at a Porter garden party. Diaghilev insisted on a few props: fireworks, a 50-foot statue of Venus (which was hauled through the canals by two barges and set up in the garden), and 20,000 candles...
Four from Hades. The lowest zone, next the floor, is Hades, where lie the sepulchers of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici (they were to be flanked by four figures representing the rivers of Hades, which Michelangelo never got around to). Lorenzo's tomb supports the famed outstretched figures of Dawn and Dusk, and atop Giuliano's sprawl Day and Night. Symbolizing earthly life, the stone nudes lie heavy as lead...
Four in Reply. De Tolnay's interpretation of the Medici Chapel is a contribution to art history, but no one will ever know for sure whether it corresponds to what Michelangelo had in mind. The master himself wrote four lines of poetry about the chapel-an answer to the poet who had praised his Night figure. His poem, speaking in the person of Night (and translated by John Addington Symonds...