Floor tomb of Cosimo de' Medici

Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici, called “the Elder” (Italian: il Vecchio) and posthumously “Father of the Fatherland” (Latin: pater patriae) (1389-1464), was an Italian banker and politician, the first member of the Medici family which effectively ruled Florence during much of the Italian Renaissance. His tomb is located in a crypt below the Basilica di San Lorenzo in Florence.

Upon the death in 1464 of Cosimo il Vecchio, Verrocchio was commissioned to create his floor tomb in the church of San Lorenzo. The vast sepulcher, unprecedented in Florentine tomb sculpture for its scale and magnificence, consists of an abstract patterned floor slab in front of the high altar connecting to a burial chamber in the crypt beneath. The artist used valuable materials—bronze, marble, red porphyry and green serpentine stones—to suggest Cosimo’s prestige. Interlocking ellipses within a circle and square evoke medieval diagrams of the universe, associating the name of Cosimo with the cosmos.

Verrocchio was equally skilled in a variety of media and often approached one medium as he would another. His training as a goldsmith reveals itself in his love of polychromy, and the tomb of Cosimo de’ Medici in white marble and red and green porphyry is distinguished by the richness and colour of the materials. This was developed in the tomb of Piero I and Giovanni de’ Medici (San Lorenzo, Florence), where the combination of a variety of coloured stones with bronze decoration is strikingly original.

The picture shows the floor tomb of Cosimo il Vecchio in the nave of Basilica di San Lorenzo, Florence.