Florence in the late Renaissance. (Current and Coming).

During the lifetime of Michelangelo, the patronage of all the arts in Florence revolved around members of the Medici family and their court. The fine arts flourished in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the decorative arts were considerably enriched through the foundation of workshops devoted to endeavors such as tapestry weaving, the making of ceramics and pietre dure inlays. A traveling exhibition devoted to this incredibly fertile period in the history of art opens at the Art Institute of Chicago on November 9, where it may be seen until February 2, 2003. It then will be on view in the Detroit Institute of Arts from March 16 to June 8. The show is entitled The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence, and includes two hundred objects. Many of the works are from the permanent holdings of the Galleria degli Uffizi, the Palazzo Pitti e Giardino di Boboli, and the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, all in Florence, and have never been loaned internationally.

The first of the line of Medici dukes considered in the exhibition is Cosimo I de' Medici, who began his rule in 1537 and was named grand duke of Tuscany in 1569. He was considered by many to have been a ruthless ruler, but he was nonetheless passionate about the arts. He and Michelangelo are largely credited with the foundation in 1563 of the first art academy in Europe, the Accademia del Disegno, on which all subsequent European art academies were modeled. Court painters such as Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo, Agnolo Bronzino, and Giorgio Vasari completed ambitious works under Cosimo's patronage. In 1545 Cosimo established a private ducal tapestry workshop, now referred to as the Arazzeria Medicea, for which the leading artists of the day were invited to design cartoons.

Francesco I de' Medici, Cosimo's son, took over at his father's death in 1574. Francesco was a recluse who was devoted to science, alchemy, medicine, and other intellectual pursuits that captured the interest of learned men ...