Cappelle Medicee

The Medici Chapels are two structures at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy, dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, and built as extensions to Brunelleschi's 15th-century church, with the purpose of celebrating the Medici family, patrons of the church and Grand Dukes of Tuscany. The Sagrestia Nuova was designed by Michelangelo. The larger Cappella dei Principi, though proposed in the 16th century, was not begun until the early 17th century, its design being a collaboration between the family and architects. These are not to be confused with the Magi Chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, then the main Medici home. This houses a famous cycle of frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli, painted around 1459.

The Sagrestia Nuova

The Sagrestia Nuova[1] was intended by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X as a mausoleum or mortuary chapel for members of the Medici family. It balances Brunelleschi's Sagrestia Vecchia, the "Old Sacristy" nestled between the left transept of San Lorenzo, with which it consciously competes, and shares its format of a cubical space surmounted by a dome, of gray pietra serena and whitewashed walls. It was the first essay in architecture (1519–24) of Michelangelo, who also designed its monuments dedicated to certain members of the Medici family, with sculptural figures of the four times of day[3] that were destined to influence sculptural figures reclining on architraves for many generations to come. The Sagrestia Nuova was entered by a discreet entrance in a corner of San Lorenzo's right transept, now closed.

Though it was vaulted over by 1524, the ambitious projects of its sculpture and the intervention of events, such as the temporary exile of the Medici (1527), the death of Giulio, now Pope Clement VII and the permanent departure of Michelangelo for Rome in 1534, meant that Michelangelo never finished it. Though most of the statues had been carved by the time of Michelangelo's departure, they had not been put in place, being left in disarray across the chapel, and later installed by Niccolò Tribolo in 1545. By order of Cosimo I, Giorgio Vasari and Bartolomeo Ammannati finished the work by 1555.

There were intended to be four Medici tombs, but those of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano (modestly buried beneath the altar at the entrance wall) were never begun. The result is that the two magnificent existing tombs are those of comparatively insignificant Medici: Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino and Giuliano di Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours. Their architectural components are similar; their sculptures offer contrast. On an unfinished wall, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child flanked by the Medici patron saints Cosmas and Damian,[7] executed by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo respectively, to Michelangelo's models, are set over their plain rectangular tomb.

In a statement in the Michelangelo's biography published in 1553 by his disciple, Ascanio Condivi, and largely based on Michelangelo own recollections, Condivi gives the following description: "The statues are four in number, placed in a sacristy . . . the sarcophagi are placed before the side walls, and on the lids of each there recline two big figures, larger than life, to wit, a man and a woman; they signify Day and Night and, in conjunction, Time which devours all things… And in order to signify Time he planned to make a mouse, having left a bit of marble upon the work (which [plan] he subsequently did not carry out because he was prevented by circumstances), because this little animal ceaselessly gnaws and consumes just as time devours everything”. In 1976,a concealed corridor with drawings on the walls by Michelangelo was discovered under the New Sacristy.

Located in: Basilica di San Lorenzo
Address: Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini, 6, 50123 Firenze FI, Italy
Hours: Closed ⋅ Opens 2PM
Phone: +39 055 064 9430
Architect: Michelangelo
Burials: Giuliano de' Medici