Medici Tombs, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

Our second day was a long, five-sight day, starting with the Medici Tombs and then the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. The Medici--"Godfathers of the Renaissance" as a TV documentary aptly styled them--ruled Florence and then Tuscany, and more, for 300 years. They were the primary patrons of the arts, and sciences, too, in the Italian Renaissance. Two were popes. Much of what one sees in Florence is either about or funded by the Medicis.

The dome above the tombs; all this is part of the San Lorenzo 
church, the Medici family parish church; we'll see more of it, 
the church proper, the cloisters, the great library, another day

In the tombs below, sculpture by Michaelangelo, whom the family had raised 
as one of their own from his early youth

I said in an earlier post I thought most of M's sculpture was forgettable; this one, 
I have always thought, is unforgettably repulsive; Lorenzo the non-Magificent's 
tomb, with Dawn and Dusk

Party room at the Palazzo

Nice ceiling, Luca Giordano's Apothesis of the 2nd Medici Dynasty

A stray Botticelli Madonna con Bambino, from a distance, 
behind glass

And just a detail from the small but overwhelmingly beautiful chapel, 3 walls 
of which are Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, which, despite the Biblical 
subject, was populated with Florentine scenes and personages; this is often said
to be a young Lorenzo the Magnificent