Un novello Orfeo per una novella Atene: il ritratto di Antonio Squarcialupi in Santa Maria del Fiore e le strategie mitopoietiche dei Medici

In 1447, the sculptor Lazzaro Cavalcanti, known as “il Buggiano”, created the
commemorative monument dedicated to Filippo Brunelleschi, meant to be
set in Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence. It is a marble bust in clypeus with an
underlying epigraph whose inspiration from classical spirit and art is obvious.
It was used as a model by artists who, at a later time, created the additional
commemorative busts which are still decorating both southern and northern
aisles of Florence cathedral (even if their original placement was different).
Conceived to be tributes to some of the excellences of the arts in Florence, these
celebrating monuments span from the end of the 15th century to the end of the
19th century. Amongst them, the monument dedicated to Antonio Squarcialupi
(1416-1480), organist of the cathedral much appreciated by the Medici family,
stands out. In fact, sculpted by Benedetto da Maiano in 1489-1490, the portrait
in clypeus of this musician, formerly set under the dome and interplaying with
the Renaissance pipe organ of Santa Maria del Fiore, acts a major role in the
Medicis’ strategies (mainly Lorenzo the Magnificent’s ones) meant to build the
myth of Florence as a “new Athens” and of the Medicis as the main actors
of its splendour. These strategies implied that, apart from figurative arts and
philosophy, music too had to be strongly promoted. Squarcialupi – set between
real biography and sublimating legend – was chosen to be the champion of the
musical excellence of Renaissance Florence. In order to turn him into a “new
Orpheus“ still when living, the Medicis were careful to improve his style and his
official image (one evidence of this attention could be found in Squalcialupi’s
only identified two letters, proposed in their first critical transcription at the
end of this article). The mythmaking – of the city, of its rulers and of the
organist – was completed after Squarcialupi’s death through the creation of
the commemorative monument in Santa Maria del Fiore: a hapax in the genre
of the portrait in which, in order to celebrate a musician, music was in close
communication with the sculpted image and the written epigraph.