ABSTRACT
Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I de’ Medici undertook major juridical and economic reforms that are reflected in the way public spaces were shaped under his rule. The changes in the physical space of the city and of the landscape are telling about how Florence sought to play a prominent political and economic role in the era of European geographic explorations. While ephemeral works temporarily reshaped the city, celebratory sculptures were meant to leave a more permanent mark, and were erected in places with a highly evocative civic meaning. Ferdinando reshaped the traditional public spaces of Florence and Tuscany into places in which the Medici family coexisted with the civic identity of the city. The Palazzo Vecchio embodied the civic power of the city of Florence: a power that the Medici formally respected by maintaining Republican public offices, assigning them, however, to families they trusted in return for their loyalty.
