Once a set, the 20 Medici tapestries currently on display at the Palazzo Vecchio have been apart for nearly 150 years. Now a group of citizens and government officials is seeking to make Florence their permanent home once the exhibition closes on February 15, 2016.
ph. Andrea Paoletti
The travelling exhibition in the Sala dei Duecento, ‘The Prince of Dreams: Joseph in the Medici Tapestries of Bronzino and Pontormo,’ features 20 sixteenth-century tapestries, commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici specifically for the room. Ten of the ‘Joseph tapestries’ were moved to Rome in 1871 and have been housed in Rome’s Quirinale since 1882. This temporary exhibition, which had previous stops in Rome and Milan, marks the first time that all 20 tapestries have been displayed together since the unification of Italy—and in the space for which they were made.
City association Angeli del Bello recently launched a petition to keep the Medici tapestries in Florence, and five Tuscan senators have sent a letter to Italian president Sergio Mattarella to draw the state’s attention to the matter.
President of the Tuscan council Eugenio Giani has also voiced his support to keep the tapestries in the place for which they were intended and created: ‘If these sublime works were donated to the city, I believe the damage caused when the king decided to remove them to Rome would be repaired … It would be extraordinary if they could all stay here, equal to the effect of seeing them restored.
The public appears to agree as the number of signatures on the petition increases daily. The online petition can be found at theflr.net/arazzipersempre.
