Located between number 57 of via Cavour and via San Gallo
The Medici Casino of San Marco is a building in Florence located between via Cavour 55-57-59 and via San Gallo 50.
The first palace on this site, a chasa with courtyard and loggia bordering the garden of San Marco formerly of Lorenzo the Magnificent, belonged to Ottaviano de' Medici, descended from a junior branch of the family but married to Francesca Salviati, descended from the primary branch dei Medici "di Cafaggiolo" and sister of that Maria Salviati, mother of Cosimo I. Ottaviano, who was father of Pope Leo XI, had purchased the property from the Compagnia di Tessitori di Drappi, which had its headquarters in the nearby Loggia dei Tessitori and of which memory remains in the name of the nearby via degli Arazzieri. Following the contraction of a large debt with the state treasury, Ottaviano was forced to sell the palace, which was confiscated in the assets of Duke Cosimo I.
Passed to his son Francesco I de' Medici, he had the palace rebuilt
by Bernardo Buontalenti, according to the then dominant fashion of the
"casini" ("villas" of the city, surrounded by large gardens and
characterized by the noble floor on the ground floor instead of the
first floor).
The building was begun in 1570 and finished in
1574, in an area which, although within the walls and a few steps from
the ancient Palazzo Medici (later Medici-Riccardi), was still
characterized by low urbanization. Buontalenti created imaginative
decorations typical of the restless period of mannerism: grotesque masks
and zoomorphic elements appear unexpectedly from the architectural
elements, each with a precise symbolic meaning. Francesco's idea was to
have a place to devote himself to his passion for science and
experimentation (a kind of large version of the famous study in Palazzo
Vecchio), in addition to the natural vocation of the casino as a "place
of delights" . The decorations that can be seen today on via Cavour,
although some details are extremely refined, have rather distant
openings and a rather lackluster whole. After all, the villa was
intended for purely scientific, laboratory use, so it didn't need too
much embellishment.
In the villa, for example, Buontalenti
developed the Medici porcelain technique, the first "soft paste"
imitation of Chinese porcelain made in Europe.
Upon the death of Francesco I, this palace too was part of the appanage of Ferdinando I de' Medici and in 1588 it housed the Opificio delle Pietre Dure for a period. Later Ferdinando granted the property to his inconvenient nephew Don Antonio (son of Francesco and Bianca Cappello of dubious legitimacy, who could have claimed the grand ducal throne) in exchange for the renunciation of his dynastic rights. Don Antonio moved there in 1597, commissioning numerous internal and garden embellishments: a series of statues by Giambologna, today in various museums, date back to that period. A research cabinet was also created there, called the "Foundry": a typical place of knowledge of the time (still halfway between the experimental and occult sciences), it was frequented by various scholars and a rich library on the subject was established there. now merged into the National Central Library of Florence. At that time the garden was also taken care of, with statues, fountains and caves. A small private theater was also set up inside.
In 1623, after Antonio's death, it passed to Cardinal Carlo de'
Medici, who promoted a series of works based on a project by Gherardo
Silvani, and a cycle of decorative frescoes curated by a group of
Florentine artists. Anastasio Fontebuoni, Michelangelo Cinganelli,
Fabrizio Boschi, Matteo Rosselli, Ottavio Vannini and, among other
assistants, Bartolomeo Salvestrini, Giovanni Battista Vanni took part in
these painting works, begun in the autumn of 1621 and concluded in July
1623. , Jacopo Confortini, Domenico Pugliani and Jacopo Vignali.
Filippo Tarchiani, still within 1623, carried out the decoration of the
chapel with Stories from the life of Saint Joseph (restored in 1967).
Upon the death of Cardinal Carlo, the building passed to Cosimo III,
who lost interest in the building stripping it of its furnishings and
handing it over to an inexorable decline, as a warehouse.
During
the Lorraine era it was restored and modified to make it first the
headquarters of the Noble Guard barracks (until 1846) and then the
Customs offices. In the years of Florence Capital (1865-1871) the
factory, already affected by works directed in 1804 by Giuseppe Del
Rosso and in 1815 by Luigi de Cambray Digny, was adapted by the engineer
Cesare Fortini employed by the architect Paolo Comotto to house the
offices of the Ministry of Finance (and subsequently those of the
General Directorate of State Property and Taxes with direct work by the
engineer Vittorio Pistoi employed by the engineer Francesco Mazzei):
"this last destination completely removed all grandeur from the vast
rooms that could be admired before, since it was necessary to adapt a
large phalanx of employees, causing a very minute division of premises"
(Covoni), which does not mean that the factory is still present today
"in its substantial structural entirety" (Fara).
Subsequently it
became the seat of the Court of Appeal and, around 1908-1913, as part of
a project aimed at bringing together the judiciary in one place, the
architect Adolfo Coppedè drew up a project for the complete
reorganization of the building as the seat of the court civil and
criminal law of Florence, then not executed. After being the seat of the
Public Prosecutor's Office, with the transfer of the offices to the new
courthouse in Novoli (2012), the complex is currently the seat of the
School of Transnational Governance, an integral part of the European
University Institute.
As regards the interventions that have
affected the structure during the twentieth century, the following
construction sites are recalled: in 1906, for the restoration of the
stones of the windows on the ground floor, the portal and the terrace;
from 1911 for the restoration of the façade as a whole; of 1939-1942 for
further interventions on the front with particular reference to the
stone elements; of January 1941 for the restoration of the corbels. On
21 September 1942 is a bill for the transfer of the state-owned complex
to the Municipality of Florence. Dated 4 July 1962 is a documentation
relating to the control of the statics of the frescoed vaults on the
ground floor, an intervention on the roofs dated 1970-1971.
On
the facade, plastered and severe, stands out the beautiful central
complex formed by a door and terrace (since 2009 hidden from view by
scaffolding), an example in Buontalenti's figurative architectural
repertoire, despite appearing to Federico Fantozzi (1842) "too serious,
bizarrely decorated and with insignificant and graceless outlines".
Quite different is the judgment resulting from modern sensibility (amply
documented by the rich bibliography on the building), summarized as
follows in the words of Carlo Cresti (in Florence 1992): "A portal with
almost cartilaginous curls, kneeling shelves with animal-like heads and
paws, shells of stone and festoons hanging under the kneeling
balustrades, muzzles of rams placed at the end of the vertical displays
of windows, an ape emerging from under the valves of a wooden shell (to
represent the passage from the inanimate to the animate element) all
reflect the eccentric and saturnine inclinations of the prince, and to
symbolize the 'magical' activities that took place within this elitist
'workshop'".
In the courtyard is a fountain with a statue of
Diana attributed to the school of Giambologna.
The complex
appears in the list drawn up in 1901 by the Directorate General of
Antiquities and Fine Arts, as a monumental building to be considered a
national artistic heritage.