ABSTRACT
On 15 May 1540, just about a year after their marriage, Duke Cosimo de' Medici and Eleonora ofT oledo took up residence at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. At the age of twenty, the Duke had already weathered the intrigues of a scramble for power following the murder of Alessandro de' Medici, and had chosen his own bride, in spite of several politically motivated offers. His decision to remake the ancient fortification of the Palazzo Vecchio into a gracious home for his dynasty reflected artistically his own consolidation of power in Tuscany. The responsibility for organising and carrying out this grand plan was given in 1555 to the artist/writer Giorgio Vasari. Part of the rebuilding involved the addition of a chapel, study, and suite of four rooms for Eleonora, which unfortunately were not quite completed at the time of her death in 1562. Nevertheless, the programme for Eleonora's rooms, like the design for the rest of the building, is an attempt to read myth and history within the context of Medician power. While the stories of Penelope, the Sabine women, Queen Esther, and the virtuous Gualdrada painted on the ceilings and walls of these rooms all depict the politics of female virtue, it is the designs for the Sala di Penelope which will form the focus of this discussion.1
