Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei (Budapest, 2008)
ANNUAL REPORT • A 2008. ÉV - AXEL VÉCSEY: The Splendour of the Medici: Art and Life in Renaissance Florence
! INTERIOR VIEW OF THE EXHIBITION five" arts. To facilitate this approach, the exhibition presented several works on the boundary of the two branches of art, including the altar front from the Corbinelli chapel of the Church of Santo Spirito, on which the image of the Magdalene, surrounded by an illusionistic feigned frame, is set before a backdrop of painted silk brocade imitation. The two main units of the exhibition w r ere the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which represent fundamentally divergent periods in the Medici patronage of the arts and in the history of the family. The quattrocento was a period of subtle insinuation, hidden messages and aspirations for power under the guise of republicanism, while in the sixteenth century, after the family attained absolutist rule, visual representation became courtly in its style as well as its symbolism of power. The quattrocento part was divided into three chapters. The first, entitled A Family of Merchants and Bankers, outlined the history of the city and the family, palpably showing to what Florence ow r ed its wealth. Interesting artefacts demonstrated the advanced Florentine culture of trade and its system of international relations, such as a bill of exchange from the Medici Bank, a remarkable exemplar of the famous florin, and two manuscripts of treatises on the practice of trade and arithmetic illuminated to high artistic standards. Some splendid products from the textile industry, which played a fundamental role in the creation of wealth for Florence and the House of Medici, were displayed in the same section. It is not just the beauty of the fabrics that was striking, but the fine quality of their patterns too, which clearly demonstrate that in Florence the task of designing textile patterns was allocated to the painters' guild, i.e. the city's most outstanding draughtsmen. A masterpiece by Piero Pollaiuolo was also included in this chapter: a profile portrait of a young woman, in which the artist devoted even more attention to the splendid brocade ornamentation of the dress than to the face.
