Studiolo of Francesco I

The Studiolo is a small painting-encrusted barrel-vaulted room in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.

It was commissioned by Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It was completed for the duke from 1570-1572, by teams of artists under the supervision of Giorgio Vasari and the scholars Giovanni Batista Adriani and Vincenzo Borghini. This small room was part-office, part-laboratory, part-hiding place, and part-cabinet of curiosities. Here the prince tinkered with alchemy and fingered his collection of small, precious, unusual or rare objects, under the organizing vista of thematic canvases, which are rather larger than most cabinet paintings.

The late-Mannerist decorative program of paintings and sculpture was based on items encompassed by the collection. The object collection itself was stored in ~ 20 cabinets. In the center is a fresco of Prometheus receiving jewels from nature, commenting on the interplay of divine, nature, and humanity, that is the goal of both artistic and scientific interests.

The walls were also covered with 34 paintings representing mythologic or religious subjects, or representing trades. The arrangement was such that paintings were somehow related to their neighbors, and emblematic of the objects in the cabinets below. The arrangement we see today is somewhat speculative; and the relationships are not always clear. For example, Tommaso d'Antonio Manzuoli's Diamond Mines hangs above the Maso de Sanfriano's Fall of Icarus. The painting by Giovanni Battista Naldini of the House of the Dreams emphasized the relationship with the adjacent bedroom of the Prince. The Studiolo is arrayed and visible through an arched opening and lacks cabinets, which fails to accurately recreate the claustrophobic feel of the original. In addition, originally a portrait of Francesco's mother, Eleonora of Toledo by Bronzino, kept vigil.

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