page_title: Villa di Poggio a Caiano
section_title: Bianca Cappello Apartment
hierarchical_section_title: Villa di Poggio a Caiano / Description / Interior / Bianca Cappello Apartment
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Villa medicea di Poggio a Caiano - MIBAC The making of this document was supported by Wikimedia CH. (Submit your project!) For all the files concerned, please see the category Supported by Wikimedia CH. العربية&#160;| বাংলা&#160;| čeština&#160;| Deutsch&#160;| English&#160;| Esperanto&#160;| español&#160;| français&#160;| magyar&#160;| italiano&#160;| македонски&#160;| Nederlands&#160;| rumantsch&#160;| sicilianu&#160;| українська&#160;| +/− This is a photo of a monument which is part of cultural heritage of Italy. This monument participates in the contest Wiki Loves Monuments Italia 2014. See authorisations. (wiki-ID: 100004578-MIBAC) Further authorizations required by the Italian "Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape" (Codice Urbani), under Legislative Decree No. 42, dated January 22, 2004, and its subsequent amendments, regarding the reuse of the picture.This image reproduces a property belonging to the Italian cultural heritage as entrusted to the Italian government. Such images are regulated by Articles 106 et seq. of the Italian Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape under Legislative Decree No. 42, dated January 22, 2004, and its subsequent amendments. These regulations, unrelated to copyright regulations, establish a system for the protection of Italy’s historic and artistic heritage and its standards of dignity. Among other things, these regulations provide for the payment of a concession fee by those who intend to benefit economically from reproductions of property belonging to the Italian cultural heritage. Reproduction of this image is permitted for personal use or study. A further authorization by the Italian Ministry of Heritage and Culture is required for reproduction for any other purpose, and particularly for commercial use. Such commercial use includes, but is not limited to, use in (a) any form of advertising, and (b) any company name, logo, trademark, image, activity, or product.
context_page_description: The Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano, also called Ambra, is one of the most famous Medici villas and is located in Poggio a Caiano. Today it is state owned and it houses two museums: one of the historic apartments and the Museum of Still Life.
  The villa is perhaps the best example of architecture commissioned by Lorenzo il Magnifico, in this case to Giuliano da Sangallo towards 1480. It is no coincidence that this is a private building, where there are elements that later modeled for the future developments of the type of villas: internal and external penetration through filters such as loggias, symmetrical distribution of environments around a central salon, dominant position in the landscape, conscious recovery of classical architectural elements.
context_section_description: To the right there is access to the Bianca Cappello apartments, where it is possible to perceive more clearly than elsewhere the Renaissance aspect of the villa. Bianca Cappello was a well-educated and sophisticated Venetian noblewoman who had a relationship with Grand Duke Francesco I. This secret relationship involving the ruler of the city, already married to Joanna of Austria, and a newly married woman, was one of the greatest scandals of the Renaissance and one of the most romantic pages of the Medici saga: even though the two lovers did everything to be covered, their story was a topic of rumors from the beginning.
  In Poggio a Caiano their history lived some of the most important moments, in fact here was relegated the woman, hated by the family and the Medici court all deployed with the legitimate bride, strategically removed from Florence. At first she was confined to a secondary villa on the heights of Poggio a Caiano called Il Cerretino, and on that occasion some popular fantasies arose, such as the existence of an underground corridor between the two villas that would allow the two lovers to meet secretly. With the death of Bianca's husband and Joanna, the two lovers could finally marry and spend at Poggio a Caiano some of the most beautiful moments of their married life. The Bianca Cappello apartments on the ground floor still testify to this connection with the villa. In the villa, the two of them also died in October 1587, one day away from the other: a 2004–2006 study speaks of arsenic intoxication in the tissues of the two, although it is not possible to understand whether it is a post-mortem treatment on some symbolic organs buried together in the Bonistallo Church. (The official chronicles speak of tertian fever.)
  In the first hall of these apartments, a simple anteroom, there are three paintings on a biblical subject attributed to Paolo Veronese: Moses and the Burning Bush, The Passage of the Red Sea and the Resurrection of Lazarus; Here after the restoration was also the Pietà of Giorgio Vasari, coming from the chapel of the villa that today belongs to the local mercy mission.
  Following is the "room of the Camino" of the apartments of Bianca Cappello. The room, although eclectically restored in the 19th century, still retains the beautiful white marble fireplace, with the floor supported by two telamons carved with remarkable plastic strength. The paternity of the work has not yet been clarified, but the scope of creation is surely close to Bernardo Buontalenti, as evidenced by the elusiveness of the torso and the imaginatively corrugated heads. Perhaps they are attributable to the Alfonso Parigi in the villa 1575, who was engaged by Cerreto Guidi at the Medici villa with Buontalenti during the same period.
  A door at the same level leads to Bedroom of the Duchessa Bianca, covered with pressed papermaking, imitating the coramas (decorated leather panels) and neo-Renaissance furniture, the result of a complete reconstruction of the 1865 style (non-visitable).
  The stone staircase in Pietra serena, connected to the fireplace, connect two upper openings in the same room, which communicate these rooms with the upper level, where today there is the room of King Vittorio Emanuele II and where it was probably that of Francesco I.
caption: The Buontalenti fireplace
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