The work was commissioned in the 1520s when the villa was being totally redecorated and redesigned. The earliest surviving frescoes in the villa such as the lunette
Vertumnus and Pomona by
Pontormo, elegiacally evoke rural life, but the building's main theme instead became the glorification of the Medici family after it acquired the titles of
Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours and
Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino in 1520. Andrea del Sarto's work shows a laurel-wreathed
Julius Caesar receiving ambassadors, with Caesar as a symbol or 'stand-in' for
Lorenzo de' Medici. The animals brought by the ambassadors include (left background) the famous
Medici giraffe, given to the family in 1487, possibly by
Qaitbay, Sultan of Egypt. The work was originally in a ''
trompe-l'œil'' loggia enclosed with columns, but by 1575 this scheme had begun to look limiting and other scenes had been added to most of the walls. del Sarto's fresco was thus extended by about a third on its right-hand side in 1582 by
Alessandro Allori, from the statue of Abundance to the child with a turkey on the steps. The other statues shown in the work are
Judith with the Head of Holofernes (alluding to
Donatello's
Judith and Holofernes, a symbol of Florentine civic power in the
Palazzo Vecchio) and
Justice (upper right). Allori expanded Del Sarto's fresco,
Tribute to Caesar, by adding new figures that he copied from Del Sarto's earlier works in the
Chiostro dello Scalzo in Florence. Allori signed the fresco in Latin and gave a history of its creation: Andrea del Sarto painted in 1520 and Allori followed him in 1581. In the same central hall Allori expanded
Franciabigio's fresco
Triumph of Cicero in the same way. ==References==