Tuscany, Grand Duchy of

Vasari paints a self-portrait at fifty-six in 1567.

Cosimo I de' Medici has brought almost all of Tuscany under his rule; he is in 1569 created the first grand duke of Tuscany by Pope Pius V.

The Santa Trinita bridge built over the Arno by Bartolomeo Ammanati from 1567 to 1569, featuring three "basket-handled" arches that boast a rise-to-span ratio of only one to seven instead of the usual one to four, eclipses the mid-fourteenth century Ponte Vecchio still standing today.

The oldest elliptic arch bridge in the world, the three flattened ellipses give the structure its celebrated elegant appearance.

Its site, downstream of the equally remarkable Ponte Vecchio, is a major link in the medieval street plan of Florence, which has been bridged at this site since the thirteenth century.

The wooden bridge of 1252 had been swept away in a flood seven years later; rebuilt in stone, it was destroyed in a flood in 1333.

The bridge of five arches constructed by Taddeo Gaddi had been destroyed in the flood of 1557, which had occasioned Ammanati's replacement.

Cosimo I de' Medici', in exchange for his receipt of the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Pope in 1569, had bowed to Church pressure and in the following year established the ghetto in Florence, locking in eighty-six Jews at night.

The ghetto swells to five hundred in 1571, as Jews from all over Tuscany are compelled to live within the ghetto walls.

The Laurentian Library, or Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, the personal library of the Medici rulers of Florence, Italy, is begun with the manuscripts collected by Cosimo I de' Medici (and will later be enriched by his sons Giovanni and Piero and by his grandson Lorenzo).

Housed in the Michelangelo-designed building in the cloisters of San Lorenzo, the library is opened to the public in 1571.

Cosimo begins the construction of the Porto Mediceo (Medici Harbor) in Livorno in 1571, transforming the original fishing village into a busy trading town.

The Ottoman fleet, commanded by Ali Pasa, Muhammad Saulak (governor of Alexandria), and Uluj Ali (dey of Algiers), enters the Adriatic, and lies in the Gulf of Patras, near Lepanto (Návpaktos), Greece.

The combined Spanish, Venetian, and papal fleets—in alliance the numerical equals of the Turks—of more than two hundred ships sails for Corfu on September 15 and ...

...advances on October 7 in four squadrons against the Ottoman fleet.

Some galleys carry over two hundred oarsmen in what will prove to be the final naval engagement in which galleys are the principal vessels used.

Spanish admiral Don Álvaro de Bazán, marquis de Santa Cruz and the son of a naval officer, had in 1564 aided in the capture of Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera in Morocco and commanded the division of galleys employed to blockade Tetuan, and to suppress the piracy carried on from that port.

Bazán had earned the confidence of Philip II, who had appointed him to command the galleys of Naples in 1568 and in 1569 created him the Marqués de Santa Cruz in 1569.

During the Lepanto operations, Santa Cruz, always favoring the more energetic course, commands the reserve division, and his prompt energy averts a disaster when Uluj Ali, who commands the Turks’ left wing, outmaneuvers the commander of the Christian right, Giovanni Andrea Doria, and breaks the allied line.

Alessandro Farnese, raised at the Spanish court as the son of Ottavio Farnese, second duke of Parma, and Margaret of Austria, fights at Lepanto, as does twenty-four-year-old Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, who, born to a poor family in the university town of Alcalá de Henares and lacking the means for much formal education, has become a soldier: he loses the use of his left hand in the battle.

After about four hours of bloody fighting, the allies are victorious, capturing 117 galleys and thousands of men, and handing the Ottoman empire its first major defeat.

Although of little practical value, the battle has a great impact on Western European morale (and will become the subject of paintings by Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese).

It confirms the Spaniards in their chosen role as champions of Christendom and explains much of their continued willingness to support their king's religious and imperial policies, even in the face of ruinous costs and mounting disasters.

Vasari designs the Loggia in Arezzo, a huge office block.

Built as a speculative investment by a local guild, although he does not oversee its construction, the Loggia features a flat Mannerist façade on its north side.

Francesco de' Medici, second grand duke (granduca) of Tuscany, had been appointed head of government in 1564 while his father, Cosimo I, was still alive; and he had succeeded his father as grand duke in 1574.

The title is not precisely legitimate since it had been bestowed only on Cosimo by the pope in 1569, but Francis had obtained the grand ducal title from the emperor Maximilian II in November 1575.

By subservience to the Habsburgs, he has won recognition of his dynasty's hereditary right to all his possessions in Tuscany; and he had refused an invitation in 1575 to stand as a candidate for the Polish crown.

He sponsors Bernardo Buontalenti's plan for developing Livorno in 1577, which is to make it the greatest Tuscan port; he strengthens the fleet; and he opens several trading posts in the eastern Mediterranean.

A scholar and a keen student of chemistry, mechanics, and ballistics, Francis also continues his family's patronage of artists (notably Giovanni da Bologna) and is the first to house the Medici collection of paintings in the Uffizi Palace in Florence.

His reign is tarnished, however, by domestic scandals: his brother Pietro murders his own wife, the younger Eleanora de Toledo, on the night of July 9–10, 1576; his sister Isabella is murdered by her husband Paolo Giordano Orsini, duca di Bracciano on July 10 of the same year; and Francesco himself will largely live on in the romantic popular memory because of his love affair with Bianca Cappello.

Bianca, a Venetian noblewoman renowned for her beauty and intelligence, had run off against the will of her family and married a young Florentine named Pietro Buonaventuri.

She had soon become the mistress of Francesco while he was still heir presumptive, at first secretly and then openly after the murder of her husband in 1569.

Nothing could ever deflect Francis from this passion—neither the marriage with Joanna of Austria, nor the reproaches of his family and of the Emperor, nor public censure.

When Joanna dies in 1578, after giving him three children, Bianca succeeds in marrying Francesco in 1578 by means of a bizarre plot in which she feigns a pregnancy and presents him with the baby of a common woman as her own son.

Francesco has her solemnly crowned in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Only about fifty pieces survive of the soft-paste porcelain made in Florence at the time of the Medicis, and little is known of its actual production.

The earliest definite date for manufacture is 1581.

Painting is nearly always in blue with manganese outlines.

Most decorative motifs are derived from China, Persia, or Turkey, and the forms usually copy those of Urbino maiolica.