Exterior The roof was modified when in 1575
Alfonso Parigi the Elder replaced the gutter, where there was a walkway and a crowning with a railing with fires, with a sloping roof, also obtaining an elevation of the prospect that altered significantly the proportions of Sangallo's initial project. The windows that were initially crossed, that is, divided into four parts with a kind of central stone cross, were modified, according to a late-fifteenth century model invented by
Baccio d'Agnolo. In the seventeenth century, however, the clock tower was added in axis with the central pediment.
Frieze The triangle (white, blue and green) frieze that today is seen on the tympanum mantel on the main façade of the villa is a copy made in 1986 by the manufacturer
Richard Ginori, while the original is in a room on the first floor of the villa. This work is 14 meters long and 22 feet long, 58 centimeters long, of uncertain attribution and dating. It is principally attributed to
Andrea Sansovino regarding the construction phase of
Lorenzo il Magnifico, as It refers to the theme of the return to the
Age of gold, or performed by
Giuliano da Sangallo or Bertoldo. Two phases, the second of which ended at the time of Leo X. The refined and emblematic theme could also represent the choice of souls according to Platonic myth. In any case, it is clear the nature of the expression of the complex initiatory climate, relating to the philosophical circle of Lorenzo, through a series of allegorical allegories, of evocative classicism.
Interior The interior of the villa has undergone several transformations that have changed its original appearance over the years.
Ground floor Behind the staircase, under the loggia surrounding the villa, where there are four Roman sarcophagi, you enter the apartments on the ground floor. This floor in the sixteenth century was considered still secondary to the
piano nobile, so the upgrading of these environments dates back mostly to the following centuries, with the exception of Bianca Cappello's apartments. The entrance hall is plastered in A light yellow color and contains some inscriptions on
Victor Emmanuel II and the plebiscite that united the
Grand Duchy of Tuscany to the nascent
Kingdom of Italy. The "Teatro delle Commedie" was first created by 1675
Marguerite Louise d'Orléans the little-known wife of
Cosimo III. It was in fact relegated to Poggio a Caiano, and to alleviate his reclusive life he thought to make a theater, of which we have the first mention in 1697. The use of the theater became more frequent with Prince
Ferdinand. The
Billiard Hall is in the Savoyard style, with a frescoed ceiling as a pergola from which overlook cherubs and cupids while a cloth painting displays real signs of the
House of Savoy.
Bianca Cappello Apartment 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 secret, their story was a topic of rumors from the beginning. They lived some of their most important moments at Poggio a Caiano. Bianca was relegated to the villa, hated by the family and the Medici court, who sided with the legitimate wife, 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 Church of Santa Maria Assunta at Bonistalloh. (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
Alfonso Parigi the Elder's work 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 Grand Duchess 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
Victor Emmanuel II and where it was probably that of
Francesco I.
Noble floor On the first floor is the most interesting environment of the villa: the Leo X saloon, placed in the middle of the building and finished around 1513. According to
Vasari the decoration of the vault belongs only in part to Sangallo, the rest would be the work of
Franciabigio and
Cosimo Feltrini. Fresco decoration is one of the most important pictorial cycles of the
Mannerism period. On the first floor is the entrance hall (with monochrome paintings of the eighteenth century, by
Luigi Catani, reproducing celebratory themes referring to the foundation of the Villa: the scenes depicted are ''Lorenzo the Magnificent who receives the villa's model from Giuliano da Sangallo
and Agnolo Poliziano who crowns with laurel the bust of
Homer''. On the ceiling of the so-called
Dining Room there is a large fresco, by
Anton Domenico Gabbiani, depicting the work of
Cosimo The Elder, father of the homeland. The painting dates back to 1698 and was commissioned by Prince
Ferdinando III de' Medici. This hall was also known as
Salone degli stucchi but the stuccos in question, with portraits of Medici within medallions and other decorations, were removed in 1812 because they were considered too redundant. Only in some periods of the year is decorated the table with the
table carp drawings designed by
Agnolo Bronzino between the 1533 and 1548, beautifully woven with silk and filaments of gold and silver. Completing the first floor is Victor Emmanuel II's apartment with four rooms: Cloakroom, Studio, Reception Room and Bedroom, and that of Countess of Mirafiori,
Rosa Vercellana, (the "Bella Rosina") consisting of three rooms with antique furniture. The Bella Rosina's room is decorated in particular with a four-poster bed and walls entirely covered with pink silk with floral motifs (1865), radiated draped so as to see a pre-existing neoclassical fresco at the center. The French bath, designed by the court architect Giuseppe Cacialli, was commissioned by
Elisa Bonaparte and involved the demolition of some of the older rooms. Today it is well preserved, with its marble basin with carvings and a sculpture of
Venus and Love in a niche, in addition to the original toiletries. The two mythological frescoes depict
Achilles immersed in the Lete River and
Teti attends the departure of Achilles. In 1807,
Pasquale Poccianti designed, in addition to the exterior stairs, the internal staircase connecting the ground floor to the remaining floors of the building, and was also commissioned for some restoration work on the upper floor of the villa. In the same period there are also fresco paintings in some saloons, of a strictly neoclassical style, with subjects drawn from ancient mythology.
Renaissance frescos '' by Pontormo The most ancient fresco of the villa, belonging to the period of Lorenzo the Magnificent, is the so-called
Sacrifice of Laocoön (according to Halm's interpretation) by
Filippino Lippi, kept under the loggia at the first floor, once detached for restoration and now relocated, though it is rather faded by weather. The fresco is quoted by
Vasari as "A sacrifice, fresh, in a loggia that remained imperfect" and which would go back to before Lorenzo's death, or in any case completed by 1494. The dominant theme of the first constructive phase Was the interpretation of the ancient in modern and decorative style and this fresco testifies to the kernel, as well as the frieze of the tympanum, maybe of
Andrea Sansovino and the first decorated lunette in the salon of Leo X, that of
Pontormo. Between 1519 and 1521, Depicts the Roman deities of
Vertumnus and
Pomona embedded in an unusual classical landscape. Afterwards, the theme of decoration changed, probably due to the arrival in the house of the first noble titles of
Lorenzo de' Medici, Duke of Urbino and
Giuliano de' Medici, Duke of Nemours, and became the illustrations of the glories of the Medici family, to which they clearly mentions the official themes of the paintings, that is, the
Stories of Roman History. Between 1519 and 1521
Andrea del Sarto worked at the villa, painting the
Tribute to Caesar, an allusion to the gifts received by Lorenzo the Magnificent from the Sultan of Egypt in 1487. The fresco finished about one-third of the surface of the wall where nearer to the outer wall there was a large column painted in the wall, which was later removed and the fresco painted by
Alessandro Allori, who appointed his signature with that of Andrea del Sarto near the boy with the turkey in the foreground. By the time the frame of the primitive fresco was re-emerged, cutting the scene in two, but was again hidden by recent restorations. More or less at the same time the
Franciabigio realized in the wall diagonally opposite the
Return of Cicero From Exile, a clear metaphor of
Cosimo the Elder and his expulsion with the subsequent triumphal return to Florence. This fresco is dominated at the top by fantastic architectures featured in a rich landscape in aerial perspective. This scene was also enlarged by Aldi, and the original border is hidden from the porphyry obelisk that rises unusually close to the center of the representation to the top of the painting. The painted column was partly preserved in the fresco, in fact, the Allori inserted it beside the obelisk. Allori added figures to both frescoes that he copied from both Andrea del Sarto's and Franciabigio's frescoes in the
Chiostro dello Scalzo, Florence. Alessandro Allori was the one who integrated the earlier paintings and completed the decorative program of the saloon, and worked there between 1578 And 1582, more than fifty years after the commencement of the decorations of the other painters. He was commissioned by
Francesco I de' Medici, who lived in the villa in particular with the Venetian noblewoman
Bianca Cappello. In addition to expanding the existing panels, he created two new ones: ''Numidia's Syphace Receiving Scipione
, alluding to the journey Lorenzo the Magnificent made to Naples to treat with Ferdinand I of Naples; The Consul Flaminio speaks to the council of the Achaeans'', in which he refers to the intervention of Lorenzo the Magnificent in the Dieta di Cremona. He also frescoed, with numerous aids, the two boxes above the portals, the second bezel With the
Garden of the Hesperides and the space between the lunettes and the windows and the lunettes. The elaborate and fantastic compositions with floral, zoomorphic and anthropomorphic figures are typical of the taste for the
whim that is typical of the time. Altori then created a magnificent architecture throughout the room, which almost contrasts with architecture realities, with figures that seem to be carved in their strong and crystalline colors typical of
manierism, creating a magnificent and virtuoso scenery. Completed the pictorial decoration a superb series of
tapestries wanted by
Cosimo I and his son Francesco, drawing on
Stradano before, and Allori then. There were numerous hunting scenes depicted, taking the inspiration from the real jumps that were held in the huge park around the villa (far bigger than today). However, it is not possible to admire them as a whole because the collection is now dispersed among some Florentine museums, deposits and embassies abroad.
Second floor On the second floor, the "Museum of Still Life" is set up, which is unique in its kind and exhibits about 200 paintings dating from the late sixteenth to the middle of the eighteenth century and coming from the Medici collections. Many of these paintings, up to the opening of the museum, were in the depots of the Polo Museale Fiorentino and other public bodies and thus largely visible to the general public for the first time. In a room there are 'papiers peints' of French manufacture, with an exotic theme of the early nineteenth century. The depicted views are wide-ranging with a line of low horizon and small characters depicting "Les sauvages de la Mer Pacifique" (1804).
The frieze room The room is dedicated to two important masterpieces of the Medici era recently restored: the imposing frieze that adorned the façade of the villa and was commissioned by Lorenzo himself, and the precious tapestry of the Hunting Swan, one of 36 tapestries designed by Giorgio Vasari on commission of
Cosimo I, especially for the Villa. Finally, though temporarily, the room is embellished with the 17th century painting of a family tree of the Medici family. == Buildings adjacent to the Villa and Gardens ==