THE THREE GIANTS IN THE PIAZZA DELLA SIGNORIA IN FLORENCE: REPUBLICAN AND MONARCHICAL SYMBOLS IN THE SERVICE OF DUKE COSIMO I DE’ MEDICI

Throughout the early and high Renaissance, in the 15th and first half of the 16th century, the Piazza della Signoria in Florence served as a symbol of the Florentine commune and republican liberty. By the mid-16th century, however, its space had undergone radical transformation, as it became filled with numerous statues, impressive both in scale and in sculptural conception. The piazza was now integrated into the system of representation of the new ruler, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Out of the monuments erected there over the years, a complex visual programme gradually emerged, reflecting the ambitions of the young Medici regime and its understanding of its own achievements. In the 1560s the axis of the ensemble was formed by three marble “giants”: Michelangelo Buonarroti’s David , Baccio Bandinelli’s Hercules and Cacus , and Bartolomeo Ammannati’s Neptune , the centerpiece of a monumental fountain. They were complemented by sculpture in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi - above all Benvenuto Cellini’s PerseuswiththeHeadofMedusa , as well as the much earlier group JudithandHolofernes by Donatello. Taken together, the statues gathered in the Piazza della Signoria articulated both older republican ideals, which in the new context might be read as anti-Medicean, and explicitly monarchical images; yet in combination they formed a unified allegorical design aimed at glorifying the Florentine duke and his policies. The incorporation of republican symbols into the new imperial discourse of court culture proceeded along two lines: the integration of these figures into a gallery of allegorical personifications of Duke Cosimo himself, and a visual polemic by Florentine sculptors with the works of Donatello and Michelangelo. Republican images that had once symbolized the independence and freedom of the Florentine commune thus came to be subordinated to a system of representation and exaltation of Duke Cosimo. Alongside the works of Bandinelli, Cellini, and Ammannati, they articulated key elements of his political rhetoric: the divine origin of his power, the bestowal of peace and prosperity upon a Florence, and the construction of a new “golden age”.