27 giugno 2015

The Salone dei Cinquecento is the largest and most important room in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. This impressive hall has a length of 54 meters, a width of 23 meters and a height of 18 meters. In terms of volume, it is the largest room in Italy built for the management of civil power. The last restoration dates back to 2000-2001. The room is located on the first floor of the Palace and is part of a body added later, adjacent to the original part of the time of Arnolfo di Cambio.

It was built in just one year, 1494, by Simone del Pollaiolo, known as the Cronaca, and Francesco di Domenico on commission from Girolamo Savonarola. The friar from Ferrara was in fact the de facto lord of Florence, after the expulsion of Piero il Fatuo in 1492, and he was the promoter of a reform in a popular and plebiscitary sense of the institutions of the Florentine Republic, so that no one else could centralize power in his hands through trusted men, as Cosimo the Elder had done, Lorenzo the Magnificent and as his son Piero had tried to do without success. Savonarola then ordered the creation of the Council of Five Hundred or Great Council, made up of 500 citizens, so that decision-making power would be "spread" over the population, making it more difficult to control by an individual, on the model of the Major Council of Venice.

The tangible result of these reforms was the creation of the Salone dei Cinquecento in the government building, which for the time was a remarkable engineering effort. The room was much lower than the current one, and reached the level of the large stone cornices that can still be seen today, much more similar than today to the Sala del Maggior Consiglio in Venice from which it was inspired both in form and function. The slightly splayed shape of the north and south walls was also due to the shape of the oldest buildings of which he exploited the ancient walls, which in turn rested on the remains of the Roman theater of Florence.

It was the gonfalonier for life Pier Soderini who was the first to take care of the decoration of the room, managing to agree with the two greatest Florentine artists of the time, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti, for the creation of two large frescoes (about 17x7 meters) to decorate the walls of the room, with battle scenes celebrating the victories of the Republic (1503). Leonardo began to create the Battle of Anghiari, while Michelangelo was assigned another portion of the wall for the Battle of Cascina. The two monumental frescoes (we are talking about measures ranging from 5 to 7 meters in height and from 18 to 17.5 in width) must have been located on the longer side to the east, on the sides of the gonfaloniere's seat, Michelangelo on the left and Leonardo on the right, while on the opposite side there must have been an altar, therefore unsuitable for profane representation.

The two geniuses of the Renaissance would thus have had the opportunity to work face to face for a time, but none of their works was ever completed: Leonardo experimented with the encaustic technique, which proved disastrous, irreparably ruining the work, while Michelangelo stopped at cardboard alone, before leaving for Rome called by Pope Julius II. Both original works have been lost, but at least copies and preparatory drawings have survived.