FLORENCE, ITALY – The President of the Republic and the Florence Municipality decided to reunite – for the first time in 150 years – the 20 tapestries commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici to Jacopo Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino and Francesco Salvati between 1545 and 1553.
These tapestries were destined to decorate the Sala de’ Dugento at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and they were made by the Flemish tapestry masters Ian Rost and Nicolas Karcher.
In the exhibition “Prince of Dreams: The Medici’s Joseph Tapestries by Pontormo and Bronzino” the restored tapestries are going to be featured at the Salone dei Corazzieri in the Quirinal Palace in Rome between January and April 2015; afterwards they are going to be displayed at the Hall of the Cariatidi in the Royal Palace of Milan, where it is going to remain from April to September 2015; eventually, they are going to be moved to the Sala de’ Dugento at the Palazzo Vecchio from September 2015 to January 2016.
The twenty tapestries go through the story of Joseph as it is told in the Genesis (37-50). In the 13th century b.C. the Jews – as Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi reminds us – suddenly found themselves forced to hard labour in Egypt. From that moment on, they started the great epopee of their own liberation.
«The Prince of Dreams: Giuseppe into Medici tapestries by Pontormo and Bronzino» is opened in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, until February 15, 2016.
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