Garzia de' Medici
5th July, 1547
This cherubic little bastard is Garzia de' Medici, born in Florence, Italy on this day in 1547/ The son of Cosimo I de' Medici, the second Duke of Florence and later the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and the Spanish Noblewoman Eleanor of Toledo, little Garzia obviously had something of a luxurious upbringing as you can see.
No stranger to hearty breakfast, even at the age of 3, little Garzia is captured by the artist Bronzino in all the weird, undefined, doughy, melted Winston Churchill way that infants who have yet to grow into their skin usually possess.
The disconcerting thing is the way that Garzia is depicted in an utterly unchildlike manner. Normally trying to eat their own feet, or smiling at you only to then projectile vomit down their tunics, little kids don’t normally sit there with the impassive, 1,000-yard stare of Tuscan Duke who finds everything - and everyone - beneath him.
But Garzia is, or at least will be, one day a Tuscan Duke and so he needs to look like one, even though he’s probably still shitting himself as this picture was painted. Bronzino has very carefully painted out any suggestion that this child is, well, a child. There is no warmth in his eyes, no laughter on those cheeks and no joy in the air. He painted him with the same distant aloofness reserved for adults of Florentine court.
His expensive braided tunic is spotlessly clean and the trinket he holds in his hand, which any other 3-year-old would be trying to eat, is instead displayed as sign of fuck-you-look-at-me wealth and power. It takes the form of a harpy resting on a horn from which hangs a precious stone. Trinkets with harpies were used by Neapolitan women for protection against the evil eye. In his other hand, he holds a freshly flowered orange blossom, a sign of purity and innocence.
Being a miserable little rich kid, he was, of course, destined for a military life and by the age of 13 his parents had made him the Supreme Commander of the Tuscan Navy, which must have instilled great confidence in the men below him.
In 1562, as is often the case among rich, power-hungry Mediterranean demagogues, everyone in the family suddenly started dying in mysterious circumstances and Garzia himself died, aged only 15, allegedly after murdering his own brother, Giovanni. His father, understandably quite pissed about this, wrestled Garzia to the ground, took his sword, and stabbed the little bastard in the throat. Like other important members of the Medici dynasty, he was buried in the Medici Chapels at the Basilica di San Lorenzo.
Well, that was the rumor. Because in 1857, that period in time when antiquarians became so interested in the physical remains of the past that they decided to destroy most of them looking for shiny things, the bodies of the Medici clan were dug up and examined.
The remains of Garzia were described as:
The corpse of the unfortunate young man is now purely skeletal, with a velvet cap on his skull. He is dressed in a red satin doublet embellished with thin stripes in gold thread, over which he wears a surcoat with sleeves in the same fabric and adorned with velvet in the same color. The stockings are made in the Spanish tradition, but the stripes, which would once have been connected, have become unstitched
The bodies, however, showed no sign of any sort of violence and the death of Garzia, Giovanni and all the other Medicis, including his mother who died at the same time were probably due to malaria and a flu epidemic.
Fortunately for us, and unfortunately for him, the remains of his clothing were kept and in 1983 underwent a 10-year restoration process.
The doublet, surcoat and breeches the 15-year-old Garzia was buried in are remarkably similar to the ones he was painted in whilst an infant.
With the rise of Medici influence across Europe, fashions of the court became ostentatious symbols of power. Masculine fashion was characterized by theatrical and flamboyant embellishments, particularly in the fabric cuts that facilitated a display of colors through the layering of different materials and shades. The exhibition of military power also served as a symbol of prestige at the court, necessitating its prominent display.
While it was possible to reconstruct the doublet, his other items of clothing could only be partly restored.
Including the codpiece.