ABSTRACT
Giovanni Cavalcanti's aphorism 'Whoever holds the piazza always is master of the city,' encapsulates the major proposition of this paper on Giambologna's equestrian monument of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (figures 7.1 and 7.2). * The following tale illuminates a more specific connection between the image projected by the monument, its audience, and Cavalcanti's aphorism. It demonstrates the attention to decorum, observation, and precise judgement possessed even by the popolo. This insistence on correctness, or having things right, in other words, permeated all levels of society and was a trait without which no duke could hope to control Florence and her territory. The story relates that one day in May 1594 a contadino, a man from the countryside, crossing the Piazza della Signoria and inspecting the recently completed equestrian monument of Cosimo I, exclaimed, 'he has made a beautiful horse, but he has not made all that the horse should have. He has not made the calluses on the legs.'2 Giambologna, who was hidden behind the fence enclosing his work, heard this. The next day he covered up the horse again and raised up the calluses. Although a familiar topos, directed to the most spectacular among the many statues to have been erected in the Piazza della Signoria over a period of more than 300 years,3 this story gives us an insight into the relationship between the work of art (Giambologna's horse and rider) and its contemporary audience. For the moment it is sufficient to note that the ordinary citizen was a close observer and active participant in Florentine civic and material environment. This equestrian monument of Cosimo I held cultural signs and prompted another popular legend about the horse that links it to the fabled Trojan Horse of antiquity. It seems that after Giambologna's horse had been cast in his studio on the Borgo Pinti, but before the figure of Cosimo had been positioned on its back, an experiment was conducted to see how many men could fit in the belly
275-277. 2 'Egli ha fatto un bel Cavallo, ma e' non gli ha fatto tutto quello, ch'egli ha di d'avere... e' non
gli ha fatti i calli delle gambe.' Baldinucci, Notizie dei professori del disegno, vol. 7, p. 109. 3 For a recent discussion on the statues erected in the piazza see McHam, 'Public Sculpture in
Renaissance Florence' and Fader, Sculpture in the Piazza della Signoria.
