Capolavori della Maiolica Rinascimentale

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The large building, Palazzo Corsini, on the Lungarno, to the right of Florence, is called “il Parione” because of its ample terraced spaces. A maiolica tiled flooring was laid to frame another undecorated floor (Berti 1999, p. 397 table 370) in the room known as “the Pope’s alcove”, a bedroom named in honour of Clement XII, formerly Lorenzo Corsini, who was pope from 1730-1740.

The flooring, however, is attributed to the previous owner of the Parione, Don Giovanni degli Albizzi (1567-1621).

Cosimo Ist and Eleonora degli Albizzi’s natural son, Giovanni could not use his father’s surname but nonetheless had a brilliant career at Court and was for a long time one of commanding army generals of the Granduchy. Undeterred by his army profession Giovanni cultivated a great passion for this Palazzo, which he transformed into an enormous majestic palace.

The small tiled floor can be found in a room near the main hall on the “noble floor” overlooking the Lungarno. It has a central rectangle in red and white undecorated terracotta where the bed stood in a way that the maiolica frame widened out at the sides to resemble a painted carpet completely encircling it.

Repeating the terracotta structure, the painted portion is made up of octagonal tiles laid in a horizontal line together with smaller tiles, in rhombus and triangular shapes and more smaller pieces in the outside finishing.

The reference to Don Giovanni is evident both in the small tiles containing gem stones and where the capital letter “A” (Idem, pp. 398-99, tables 373-75) alludes to the Albizzi surname and to the bolt of lightening held in a hand with the inscription “Iovi Uni” (Idem, p. 397, table 371) painted in a hexagonal, bringing to mind Cosimo’s son’s military profession.

zoom	Piastrella ottagonale con il motto “Iovi uni”, 1610-21 Firenze, Palazzo Corsini (“il Parione”)

The pictorial floor decoration has a naturalistic vegetation theme which could be called “botanical”. Added to this schematic composition, formed with wreaths of closed flowers in the four parts of the octagonal, (Idem, p. 398, table 373), are a series of flowering plants in the larger decorated tiles (Idem, pp. 399-400) depicting wild roses that seem to have come straight out of a painted herbarium. This decoration could be attributed to Jacopo Ligozzi, a Veronese artist, who was a painter in the Medici Court and one of the most famous botanical illustrators of that period.

The attribution of this floor covering to the Montelupo workshops comes from the discovery, in the Valdarno centre, of the finishing pieces and the triangles found inserted in the design (Idem, p. 213, fig. 91).

In this case the so called “Pope’s alcove” could be dated to the lifetime of Don Giovanni, who we know died in 1621.

The affinity between this room and the “tiled stove room” in Palazzo Pitti classifies the work to the first twenty years of the 17th century, the last years of Cosimo’s son.