Florence, Medici Riccardi Palace dedicates exhibition to lost Grand Diamond of Tuscany

The Museo di Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence is hosting from November 26, 2021 to January 26, 2022 the exhibition Il Fiorentino. The Grand Diamond of Tuscany dedicated to the precious artifact of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, also known as"Il Fiorentino," among the rarest jewels of the Medici, unfortunately lost today. Promoted by the Metropolitan City of Florence, organized by MUS.E and curated by Carlo Francini and Valentina Zucchi, the exhibition is the second in the Cameo cycle dedicated to the enhancement of the works and stories linked to the Medici Riccardi Palace.

“The ’Grand Diamond’ or ’Block of Light,’ as it has been called, is not only a specimen of precious beauty, which exudes attraction and is easy to admire,” says Letizia Perini, Councillor of the Metropolitan City delegated to Culture. "The representation we are offering with the exhibition in Palazzo Medici Riccardi reconstructs its adventure: the path that makes it be present along the roads and paths of history. The setting that has been curated to exhibit ’The Florentine’ aims to make this mute but effective witness say something from Lisbon to Florence to Vienna. We owe gratitude to master Paolo Penko for the reconstruction of that jewel of rare splendor, which disappeared under mysterious circumstances, and which we can now somehow admire."

"With this small and precious exhibition on the ’Grand Diamond of Tuscany,’ well set in the museum’s itinerary, we share with the public a fascinating chapter of Medici history, which starts from the newly restored portrait of Grand Duke Cosimo II to present relevant archival documents and iconographic evidence up to the contemporary replica of the jewel, excellence of artistic craftsmanship. A truly shining exhibition," stresses Valentina Zucchi, scientific director of the museum for MUS.E.

The exhibition was created on the occasion of the recently completed restoration of one of the Medici portraits preserved in the museum’s halls, owned by the Uffizi Galleries: it is the portrait of Cosimo II Medici, painted by Domenico and Valore Casini as a full-length figure, dressed in gold damask and ermine mantle, scepter and grand ducal crown. The restoration, carried out by Rossella Lari, has given the canvas its original vivid colors once again and given the work the luminosity and celebratory tone that characterized it. The presentation of the restored painting finds its fulfillment on theanniversary of the death of Grand Duke Cosimo II (1621-2021), who had honored his consort Maria Magdalena von Hasburg, better known as Maria Magdalena of Austria, with the very Florentine Diamond: in fact, the jewel appears as an ornament in the Archduchess’s hairstyle in some of her famous portraits, including the one by Justus Sutstermans, completed in 1623, and the one painted in the Florentine setting a few years earlier, probably by the same Domenico and Valore Casini, both owned by the Florentine Galleries. The latter, exceptionally reproduced in the exhibition, thus offers the opportunity to admire the elegant garland placed on Mary Magdalene’s head, adorned with the diamond in its equally precious mount, which in the inventories is described as “a thin serpent all studded with small diamonds, which with its branches supports in the air the said Diamond.”

The exhibition also presents other documentary evidence of the jewel, including drawings, Medici inventories and various archival documents , to reconstruct the history and events, as well as the appearance and characteristics of one of the world’s most famous stones, the traces of which were lost in the early 20th century. The exhibition also features a reproduction of the Medici jewel, made of cubic zirconia by the goldsmith workshop of Paolo Penko. Thanks to painstaking research into iconography and ancient techniques, Penko has recreated, for the first time in the world, the precious serpentine mount in which Maria Magdalena of Austria used to sport the diamond. The snake was made using the sepia bone casting technique, perfectly shaped to accommodate the Florentine’s reproduction in cubic zirconia. The setting was embellished with the same number of diamonds as the original, as many as 182 antique rosette-cut stones, set with small fragments of silver leaf.

“We reconstructed the missing diamond with an attitude of experimental archaeology, making use of the sources in our possession, and put it back into its original historical context, together with the documents that mention it and the protagonists of this story, the Medici, in particular Cosimo II, whose centenary of death is also remembered in 2021,” explained Carlo Francini, curator of the exhibition.

“The Florentine,” an exceptionally large, citrine-yellow diamond was, in the seventeenth century, the second largest gemstone in the world, after that owned by the Mughal emperor Moghul. Purchased in 1601 by Ferdinando I de’ Medici, who bought it from the Portuguese Don Ludovico Castro, Count of Montesanto, it was entrusted while still rough to the cutter Pompeo Studendoli, a Venetian craftsman living in Florence, who worked on it until 1615. The result was a splendid almond-shaped jewel, with a nine-sided double rose cut and 127 facets, which was then inserted within an equally sumptuous pendant mount. A luxury artifact that remained in the hands of the Medici until Tuscany passed to the Lorraine, when it was taken to Vienna, where it remains until the early twentieth century. In 1918, with the collapse of the Habsburg empire, the crown jewels of Austria took the path of exile, to Switzerland: with them also departed the “Fiorentino,” and, since then, its traces have been lost.

The documents in the exhibition allow us to trace the history of this jewel, starting with the first letters in which the diamond was proposed to Grand Duke Francis I in June 1579. “La più bella cosa che venisse d’Asia giamai,” one reads, passing through the inventory drawn up in 1621 at the death of Cosimo II, buyer of the stone and commissioner of its workmanship, to the Inventory of the Jewels of the State of Tuscany that Anna Maria de’ Medici, Electress Palatina, had compiled in 1741, all kept at the Florence State Archives. These are flanked by graphic works that denote the interest and wonder aroused by the “Great Diamond of Tuscany.” among them a seventeenth-century engraving kept in the Marucelliana Library; the book Le six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier (1676), in which the French explorer published an account of the six long exotic voyages he made during his lifetime and where he did not fail to recall and reproduce the greatest diamonds he had seen in Europe and Asia; the printed table found in the Sunti del Tarpato (1740), the work of Andrea da Verrazzano and the only currently known depiction of the diamond in both rough and faceted form, thus inferred from an early seventeenth-century drawing before the stone was mounted, kept at the Accademia di scienze e lettere la Colombaria. Finally, as more recent evidence, a copy of Il Marzocco dated August 26, 1923, i.e., at the time when negotiations between Austria and Italy were under way and attention on the diamond was decidedly high, is on display, now housed in the Gabinetto G.P. Viesseux in Florence.

For info: http://www.palazzomediciriccardi.it/

Hours: Daily from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Closed Wednesdays.

Tickets: Full 7 euros, reduced 4 euros for 18- to 25-year-olds and university students. Free for ages 0 to 17.

Pictured is a reproduction of the Medici jewel made by Paolo Penko’s goldsmith workshop.

Florence, Medici Riccardi Palace dedicates exhibition to lost Grand Diamond of Tuscany

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