Villa Medici at Cafaggiolo - Architecture

Architecture

Unlike many of the Tuscan residences created by the Medici family, Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo does not adhere to ideals of Renaissance architecture. This cannot be attributed to its date of 1452, the year Michelozzo was charged with transforming the building from castle to villa. The first true Renaissance building, the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence, had been designed as early as 1419, and Michelozzo had proved his understanding of the new form in 1444 with his design for the ten-sided extension to Florence's Chiesa della SS. Annunziata inspired by a plan from the Roman temple of Minerva Medica. and between 1444 and 1460 he constructed the first of the 15th century Renaissance palazzos, the Medici-Riccardi for Cosimo de' Medici. This palazzo provides another possible reason for the conservative design of the castle - Cosimo had been heavily criticised in Florence by the Florentine nobility for what was considered the pretentious design of the more Renaissance Palazzo Medici-Riccardi.

The style of villas's architecture was a deliberate retrospective quattrocento - a style and period which combined both the Gothic and classical styles, and a period of transformation which was the birth of the Renaissance, perhaps best exemplified by Brunelleschi's dome of Florence Cathedral, begun in 1417. The dome, in itself, a classical feature, is Gothic in its use of the pointed arch, but rises to a classical oculus. or put simply "Gothic in form but Renaissance in detail". In style, the castle resembled the Palazzo Vecchio, the Medici's older Florentine residence, to which Michelozzo was also making alterations while the castle was being built.

Thus, at first glance, the architecture of Castello Mediceo di Cafaggiolo appears that of a medieval castle rather than a villa, with a crenellated tower at the front flanked by two battlemented wings, reinforced with bastions at each corner. These Gothic and Renaissance features were not included by Michelozzo to retain older features from the earlier fortress but, 33 years after the commencement of Brunelleschi's Ospedale degli Innocenti, as a deliberate motif intended to fulfil the humanist need that a villa should be "a place for the spirit to rest" which was compatible with the buildings intended use a country retreat and hunting lodge. Its machicolations and crenelations, in reality no more than a projecting crenelated pediment, supported by small arches and corbels, were only intended for decoration, not defence. That is not to say that the villas was completely undefended, and this is apparent in the architecture. The political climate of the period required all noble houses to be semi-fortified; so, just as in the design of the first great urban palazzi, the ground floor was "a defended courtyard surrounded by guardrooms and quarters for men at arms". This structure dictated the fenestration: the windows are few, small and high from the ground on the lower floor, while those on the upper floors, occupied by the household proper, were larger and more plentiful. Utens' 1599 painting shows nothing in the way of outer defences and fortifications: a moat is known to have existed, probably one of the few feature retained from the older fortress.

The view (above) painted by Giusto/Gustav Utens in 1599 shows the villa as completed by Michelozzo. Built around a courtyard, the front appears much as it is does today, but with a larger tower dominating the building at the rear. It is possible that this tower (now demolished) was retained from the older fortress. A similar tower exists at another Medici villa, Villa La Petraia, which Bernardo Buontalenti retained in 1575 when converting that villa from an earlier fortress, for Francesco de' Medici.