gems, jewelry, Medici, Renaissance

It is a well-acknowledged fact that the Medici family emerged from their initially unassuming beginnings as Florentine bankers to become the ruling family of their native city, and ultimately the most powerful dynasty of the Italian peninsula. It is equally well-known that the Medici shrewdly exploited the art of portraiture for propagandistic purposes during much of their dramatic ascent, with the most notable examples appearing in the sixteenth century after they achieved ducal status. The resulting images of ducal and grand ducal Medici, painted by a large and diverse array of artists, loudly trumpet Medici claims of legitimacy, dynasty, regality and Tuscan supremacy. Within sixteenth and seventeenth century portraits of Medici daughters and Grand Duchesses, wives and promised brides, these visual assertions of dynasty and power were carefully communicated through the overt Medicean symbolism of the female wearer’s jewelry. This study will suggest that these precious and priceless objects of personal adornment functioned as dynastic markers, “branding” or “marking” the female wearer as Medici, and as such are therefore comparable to the bold proprietary claims performed by the family’s ubiquitous coat-of-arms displayed on Medici-owned villas, palaces, works of art, and even family pets’ Although there can be no doubt that Renaissance jewelry was designed to proclaim the taste and wealth of the wearer, the present study will propose that the jewelry worn by Medici women in the majority of their state portraits from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also served a very particular, gendered purpose; namely, the orchestrated and overt dynastic marking of its bearer. Further, the practice of marking exhibited in these portraits visually testifies to the prevalent commodification of Renaissance women, which is a condition found not only within the Medici house, but across Renaissance Europe as families sought to consolidate power through unions of state. In portraits of their female family members, the Medici used jewelry to demonstrate family ties and new alliances, and, by implication, political obligations and expectations, dynastic strength and stability, and ultimately power.