Benozzo Gozzoli, La Cavalcata dei Magi, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Firenze, 1459

Speranza



In their own palace a fresco by Gozzoli shows the Medicis in all their splendour.

The fersco supposedly represents the journey of the magi, but recalls, against a background of Tuscan countryside, the sumptuous processions that were held in Florence in 1439, when the Emperor Michael Paleologus arrived to take part in the council of the Roman church.

Paleologus and the Patriarch of Constaninople are shown as two of the Magi.

THE THIRD MAGUS is the young Lorenzo de' Medici.

Lorenzo is shown on the right at the head of the long procession, and dressed in the same clothes that he had worn for a tournament a short time before Gozzoli painted him.

Behind Lorenzo de' Medici, also on a white horse, we can see Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, the 'father of his country'.

Seen full face, an another white horse, is Giuliano, brother of Lorenzo.

Giuilano was murdered in Florence Cathedral in 1478, at the moment of the Elevation of the Host, by hired killers in the pay of conspirators acting at the instigation of Pope Sixtus IV.