How do you influence, control or even manage a Grand Duke of Tuscany?
Very carefully.
Pierfrancesco Riccio (or da Riccio) was selected as the private secretary to Grand Duke Cosimo I of Tuscany. In the course of his tenure, one of the most important roles was the recommendation of, and support for, works of art to be presented to the Grand Duke his family and court.
By sending a letter to Cosimo de’ Medici on the 3rd of January of 1546 (Gaye 1839-1840, II, p. 347, n. CCXLII), Pietro Aretino aimed at starting a fight against Pierfrancesco Riccio, the highly esteemed secretary of the Medici court. One main cause for the occurring of this conflict, which was already expected, was a portrait painted by Titian; a portrait which Aretino had sent as a gift to Cosimo, in order to receive his favour, and that the secretary took care of hiding in order to limit communication between the duke and the writer (Mozzetti 1996).
The research project being proposed here starts-off from this episode, aiming at reviewing the artistic commissions promoted by Cosimo I de’ Medici during the first phase of his government – between his enthronement (1537) and the re-arrival of Giorgio Vasari in Florence (1554) – in the light of the many personalities forming his entourage and who supported him in this field. Even before the entry of Giorgio at court, Cosimo I de’ Medici tries, in fact, to create his own image as a protector and patron of the arts, yet only with the arrival of Aretino did his respective cultural programme, aiming at presenting himself as new Augusto, take an actual unified vision and a programmatic and coherent organization. The first artistic commissions promoted by the duke, while always leaning at the glorification of the house of the Medici, seem on the other hand as the result of more autonomous experiences, being also the result of the participation of the various collaborators by whom he surrounded himself in this phase, who participated in various levels of his projects, ending up becoming the actual promoters, curating the iconographic programmes while choosing the executors.