Een van de grootste verrassingen van het bezoek aan Florence. Palazzo Vecchio, The hall of geographical maps. Cosimo had het plan geval een ruimte helemaal te wijden aan de aarde en de sterrenhemel. De cosmos. De ruimte zou een instrument van studie en interesse maar ook van politiek worden.

India, Patagonië en Vuurland.

Een restauratie was in volle gang.

Ik kon mijn ogen niet geloven. Wat een werk, wat een kennis. Niet al die kennis kwam uit Italië. Zo zou werk van Ortelius geruikt zijn. Op de laatste foto Germania met links het gebied dat we nu Nederland noemen.

Ik vond achter een betaalmuur een artikel over de kaarten:

CHARISMATIC COSMOGRAPHY IN LATE CINQUECENTO FLORENCE (2009)
MARK ROSEN
University of Texas at Dallas
Arts & Humanities

One of the most significant projects of the Renaissance involving cosmographical decoration was the remarkably ambitious (and only partly completed) Guardaroba of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, begun in 1563. It is located in the Florentine ducal home and center of authority, the Palazzo Vecchio, and was described in contemporary correspondence as being the “cosmography of Duke Cosimo” – a lavishly decorated chamber expressing the duke’s interpretation of the physical universe. In creating a new state room to house the Medici collection of artworks and precious objects, Cosimo and his primary artistic advisor, Giorgio Vasari, assembled a team of artists, artisans, humanists, geographers, and scientists to give concrete shape to Cosimo’s cosmos (a pun which was widely acknowledged in his day). The ostensible aim of this room was to re-create the structure of the known universe in miniature, placing maps and astrological imagery at the center of its complex program. In its intended form, the Guardaroba was probably the most significant attempt in sixteenth-century Italy to visualize and demonstrate on a grand visual scale a sovereign’s cosmography.

The initial plans for the Guardaroba were only partly followed and ultimately were greatly scaled back after Cosimo died in 1574. A much abbreviated form of the room was completed by Cosimo’s two successors, his sons Francesco I (ruled 1574-1587) and Ferdinando I (ruled 1587-1609).

It was intended as a collecting area, with cabinets circling the four walls of the room; on those cabinets were to be painted 57 maps of the regions of the world, broken down according to the ancient Ptolemaic divisions as well as updated with more recently explored areas. The objects of the Medici collection would then be placed behind those maps inside the cabinets, according either to place of origin or perhaps according to type of object; in either case, a system designed to give order to the collection was keyed to the maps. Further fleshing out the program were antique portrait busts placed atop the cabinets, three hundred uniformly sized portraits of great leaders of recent centuries, images of plant and animal life, a preexisting planetary clock made in the early sixteenth century by Lorenzo della Volpaia, and, painted on the ceiling, a great astrological chart showing all the currently known constellations. Also planned for the room were two globes, one terrestrial and the other celestial, which would sit hidden in a compartment above the painted constellations until the duke or a courtier pulled a switch to open a panel in the ceiling that would then let the two globes slowly descend to the floor – clearly the most theatrical effect of the ensemble.
The fabrication of the space, however, encountered a number of setbacks primarily owing to changes in patronage.

De tekst in dit boekje sluit grotendeels aan op bovenstaande tekst van Mark Rosen.

De laatste foto geeft een overzicht van alle kaarten.

De volgende foto’s kun je rekenen bij de ruimte met de kaarten
maar ook bij een andere ruimte. Het gaat me om de deuren.

De deuren zijn prachtig ingelegd om zo afbeeldingen te maken. Zo zie je hier een soort van raam in de deur.

Zoals deze Dante door Giuliano da Maiano en Francesco de Giovanni ook Francione genoemd. Het ontwerp is van Sandro Botticelli, 1480.

De tekst is: ‘Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita (In het midden van onze levensweg)’, de beginregel van Inferno, het eerste deel uit de Goddelijke komedie.