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Appropriating the Instruments of Worship: The 1512 Medici Restoration and the Florentine Cathedral Choirbooks*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Abstract
This study examines the impact of the 1512 Medici restoration on the antiphonaries and graduals of the Florentine cathedral. Seven choirhooks are recognizably Medicean in their artistic and, in one significant case, in their liturgical and musical content. Whether through depictions of the family's most distinguished members — notably Lorenzo il Magnifico and Pope Leo X — or the detailed representations of contemporary events in which the Medici were the protagonists, or whether through the creation of a new Office for Florentine bishop-saint Zenobius, these lavish manuscripts reflect the themes of control and propaganda central to the years of the Medici restoration.
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- Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2003
Footnotes
The research for this study was made possible by a grant from the Pennsylvania State University Institute for the Arts and Humanities, which provided the support for research in Florence in the summer of 2001. The final draft of the article was written in the first months of my year as a 2002-03 Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation Fellow at Villa I Tatti - the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. The section of this article devoted to antiphonary Cod. M n. 25 (‘Antiphonary Cod. M n. 25: A New Office for St. Zenobius’) was first presented at the Sixty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society in Atlanta, Georgia (18 November 2001). I am particularly indebted to Margaret Haines, Jessie Ann Owens, Sherry Roush, and Craig Wright for reading early drafts of this study and for providing valuable comments and suggestions. Moreover, I thankfully acknowledge the constructive criticism of the anonymous readers who reviewed the manuscript for RQ. Salvatore Camporeale, David Crawford, Lorenzo Fabbri, Paul B. Harvey, Yolanda Plumley, Ruth Steiner, and the staff of the Biblioteca and Fototeca Berenson at Villa I Tatti also have my gratitude for their expert assistance and support. The following abbreviations are used in this article: AOSMF = Archivio dell'Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence; ASF = Archivio di Stato, Florence; BML = Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted.
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