NARRATOR:
Welcome to a podcast about an era when appearances meant everything.

JENNY TIRAMANI: This is real spectacle, both from far away and close to.

BISA BUTLER: I’m thinking of fabulosity, wealth, power...those statements that I want you all to see me and remember me looking the absolute best.

LINDA WOLK SIMON: But what you don’t see, is a penetrating glimpse of the sitter’s psyche; their interiority.

NARRATOR: Imagine 15th century Florence. One family – the Medici – has managed to dominate the city through their wealth and political acumen.

Then in 1494, they were exiled by those who opposed their power. But the Medici had no intention of abandoning their ambition to rule. In 1512, they seized the opportunity to return.

Over the ensuing two decades, through alliances with the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, they managed to overthrow the republic, rewrite its constitution, and establish a hereditary state ruled by a Medici duke. It is this period of political and social upheaval that is the focus of the exhibition, The Medici: Portraits and Politics: 1512-1570, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This podcast accompanies the exhibition to examine outstanding portraits of those who lived through this period of transformation.

JENNY TIRAMANI: In these Renaissance paintings people are showing the greatest things there were to wear, possess, in their world.

BISA BUTLER: I find in the Renaissance portraits that we’re looking at that person, but we’re looking at them at a very good moment. Every hair is in place.

NARRATOR: What none of them forgot was that they were Florentines with a proud and glorious past. The challenge that confronted them and the great artists who painted or sculpted them was how to reflect their political, social and cultural standing in this new, Medicean state.

Of particular focus on this podcast is the figure of Cosimo I de Medici, who ascended to power as a teenager.

LINDA WOLK-SIMON: He’s barely 18, a boy, but he has such shrewd political instincts that within a very few years he becomes the absolute authority and supreme ruler of the city. He is a hereditary ruler, all pretense of the republic are gone.

NARRATOR: Cosimo leveraged art to project power, employing Florence’s centuries old legacy as a cultural capital and promoting artistic institutions that drew the best and brightest artists and poets. The duke’s portraits became a kind of....social media, projecting influence and ensuring a degree of immortality. We may even think of Cosimo as the ultimate influencer.

On this podcast, you’ll hear from a costume designer, a fashion historian, a poetry scholar, a curator, and a contemporary artist, who will guide you in de-coding portraits from a moment in history when appearances meant everything. Welcome to an era when the Florentine elite commissioned portraits to attest to their power, wealth, and learning, embracing a style of enormous sophistication and artifice.

If you’re listening at the Museum, feel free to wander as you listen. (This isn’t a guided tour).

You can also visit metmuseum.org/ to learn more about the Medici, the portraits and see images of the art.

This podcast is sponsored by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Up next: What’s important to include in a portrait of a 16th century Florentine power player?