Carità e potere: representing the Medici grand dukes as ‘fathers of the Innocenti’ (Renaissance Studies, 2010)

Carità e potere: representing the Medici granddukes as ‘fathers of the Innocenti’

Diana Bullen Presciutti

In May of 1601, the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando de’ Medici, namedRoberto Antinori prior of the Innocenti foundling hospital in Florence(Fig. 1).1 In the years that followed, Antinori, himself a former ward of theinstitution, commissioned a number of sculptures and paintings for the hos-pital complex that honoured his patron Ferdinando and his ducal predeces-sors. He began with the commission to the sculptor Giovanni Battista Sermeifor marble busts of the first three Medici grand dukes: Cosimo, Francesco andFerdinando.2 The busts were installed in the hospital loggia: the bust ofCosimo (Fig. 2) in the centre, above the main entrance to the institution, andthose of Francesco and Ferdinando (Fig. 3) at the north and south ends,above the now walled-in side doors, the ‘porticciule piccholine’ (‘littledoors’).3 Following the death of Ferdinando in 1609, Antinori ordered furtherdecorations for the loggia, including a series of frescoes from the painterBernardino Poccetti. During the same period, Poccetti executed anotherfresco, described as an ‘Istoria degl’Innocenti’ (Fig. 4), for the girls’ refectory.The ‘Istoria’, which includes a portrait of Grand Duke Cosimo II, has not beencarefully considered in relationship to the ducal imagery in the loggia. This

I would like to thank Angela Ho, Megan Holmes, Timothy McCall, Elizabeth Namack, Heather Nolin, KatherinePoole, Ivano Presciutti, Lucia Sandri, Pat Simons, and the anonymous readers for their comments, suggestions,and assistance. The research for this article was first presented in a session organized by Sarah Blake McHamat the Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America, held 3–5 April 2008 in Chicago, Illinois. Fundingfor research in Italy was provided by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. Unless otherwise indicated, all transla-tions in this article are my own.

1 Antinori was raised and educated in the hospital and later became a canon of Florence Cathedral andmaestro di teologia: Luciano Bellosi, Il museo dello Spedale degli Innocenti a Firenze (Milan: Electa, 1977), 15. Heserved as prior of the hospital until 1617._ 234..259

2 The payment record for the busts was published in Guido Morozzi and Attilio Piccini, Il restauro dello spedaledi Santa Maria degli Innocenti, 1966–1970 (Florence: Giunti, 1971), 46. See also Karla Langedijk, The Portraits ofthe Medici: 15th–18th centuries, Vol. 1 (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte, 1981–1987), 482 and Langedijk,Portraits of the Medici, Vol. 2, 886.

3 The porticciula piccholina at the north end gave onto the garden and other unidentified areas. The porticciulaat the south end led to the women’s area of the hospital (the spedale delle donne). The porticciule also providedaccess, via the porta degli uomini and the porta delle donne, to the Piazza dei Servi. See Cornelius von Fabriczy,Filippo Brunelleschi: Sein Leben und seine Werke (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1892), 561; Manuel Cardoso MendesAtanásio and Giovanni Dallai, ‘Nuove indagini sullo Spedale degli Innocenti a Firenze’, Commentari 17 (1966),92; Howard Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi: The Buildings (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press,1993), 62.

Renaissance Studies Vol. 24 No. 2 DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2009.00596.x

© 2009 The AuthorJournal compilation © 2009 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Ltd

article investigates how these various decorative projects worked together toshape an image of the grand dukes as the paternal providers of nourishmentand protection for the abandoned children of the Innocenti.

COSIMO I AS ‘FATHER OF THE INNOCENTI’

The commission of the marble busts for the hospital loggia inaugurated asuccession of projects overseen by Prior Antinori to renovate and embellish thehospital complex.4 Antinori had spent his childhood years at the hospital underthe tutelage of then Prior Vincenzo Borghini, the noted philologist, courthistorian, and antiquarian.5 Borghini, an active patron of the arts, had encour-aged the young inmates of the hospital to develop artistic skills.6 Several of hisfoundling protégés went on to establish successful careers as painters, includ-ing Giovan Battista Naldini.7 Antinori seems to have modelled his priorate after

4 In addition to the projects discussed in this article, Antinori commissioned a sculpture of the Virgin fromSermei, a stone Bacchus for the hospital garden, and two large paintings of Saints Dominic and Antoninus forthe hospital church. See Laura Cavazzini, ‘Dipinti e sculture nelle chiese dell’Ospedale’, in Lucia Sandri (ed.),Gli Innocenti e Firenze nei secoli: un ospedale, un archivio, una città (Florence: Spes, 1996), 135–38. He also oversawa substantial reorganization of the hospital church.

5 See Zygmunt Wazbinski, ‘La prima mostra dell’Accademia del Disegno a Firenze’, Prospettiva 14 (1978),47–57.

6 Wazbinski, ‘La prima mostra’, 55.7 See Zygmunt Wazbinski, ‘Giorgio Vasari e Vincenzo Borghini come maestri accademici: Il caso di G. B.

Naldini’, in Gian Carlo Garfagnini (ed.), Giorgio Vasari tra decorazione ambientale e storiografia artistica (Florence:Leo S. Olschki, 1985), 285–99.

Fig. 1 Ospedale degli Innocenti, begun 1419, Florence (photo: author)

‘Fathers of the Innocenti’ 235

that of his mentor Borghini, cultivating relationships with artists like Sermeiand Poccetti and commissioning extensive decorative programmes.8

The marble busts of the three grand dukes loom above the entrances to thehospital from the loggia. Cosimo I, above the main door, is positioned as thegenerative father of the ruling dynasty, represented by the adjacent busts ofhis sons. This image of Cosimo as fecund paterfamilias – and heir to Cosimo ilVecchio and his honorific pater patriae – continued a representational tradi-tion initiated by the grand duke himself and carried on by his successors.9 Thecentral placement of the bust of Cosimo also suggests a close relationshipbetween the grand duke and the Innocenti hospital. Indeed, Cosimo hadrecognized early in his reign the importance of charitable institutions like theInnocenti to the rhetoric of a well-run state and he was quick to assert control

8 Wazbinski, ‘La prima mostra’; Cavazzini, ‘Dipinti e sculture’, 135.9 The literature on Cosimo I and his personal imagery is vast. See, in particular, Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty

and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), theessays collected in Konrad Eisenbichler, (ed.), The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (Aldershot andBurlington, VT: Ashgate, 2001), and, most recently, Henk Th. van Veen, Cosimo I de’ Medici and his Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Fig. 2 Giovanni Battista Sermei, Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1605–7, marble, Florence, Ospedale degli Innocenti, loggia(photo: Heather Nolin)

236 Diana Bullen Presciutti

over the hospital, its administration, and its public image.10 He took from theSilk Guild, the trade organization that had established the hospital in 1419,the right both to confirm hospital priors and to determine the length of theirtenure in office.11 The duke also transformed the post of hospital prior into alife position, naming his close friend Borghini priore in 1552.12 From a finan-cial standpoint, the hospital relied on an (always insufficient) annual subsidy

10 Cosimo I involved himself directly with the administration of Florentine hospitals that had previouslyenjoyed considerable autonomy. On the machinations through which Cosimo assumed control of the institu-tional framework of Tuscan charity, see Arnaldo D’Addario, Aspetti della controriforma a Firenze (Rome: Ministerodell’Interno, 1972), Carol Bresnahan Menning, ‘Loans and Favors, Kin and Clients: Cosimo de’ Medici and theMonte di Pieta’, The Journal of Modern History 61 (1989), 487–511, and Nicholas Terpstra, ‘Competing Visions ofthe State and Social Welfare: The Medici Dukes, the Bigallo Magistrates, and Local Hospitals in Sixteenth-Century Tuscany’, Renaissance Quarterly 54 (2001), 1319–55.

11 D’Addario, Aspetti, 78.12 Bellosi, Il museo, 14.

Fig. 3 Giovanni Battista Sermei, Ferdinando de’ Medici, 1605–7, marble, Florence, Ospedale degli Innocenti,loggia (photo: author)


from the ducal treasury to cover its operating expenses.13 Although the SilkGuild retained its position as patron of the hospital, these shifts effectivelymade the prior of the Innocenti part of the ruling apparatus of the duke.14

The placement of a sculpted bust of the current grand duke on the exteriorof a building had also become, particularly during the reign of Ferdinando I,an established mode of signifying grand-ducal affiliation and protection.15 InFlorence, most of these busts featured abbreviated inscriptions that identified

13 Philip Gavitt, ‘An Experimental Culture: the Art of the Economy and the Economy of Art of Cosimo I andFrancesco I’, in Eisenbichler (ed.), Cultural Politics, 205. This arrangment constituted a shift from the system ofassorted subsidies and taxes used to fund the hospital during the communal period.

14 The relationship between the Silk Guild and the grand dukes was complex. Cosimo I took a strong interestin the silk industry, which was governed by the guild. He mandated that guild leaders report to the ducalbureaucracy and he enacted changes to systems of taxation and finance in an effort to position the Florentinesilk industry as a strong competitor to its Netherlandish counterpart: Gavitt, ‘An Experimental Culture’, 209.See also Candace Adelson, ‘Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Foundation of Tapestry Production in Florence’, inGian Carlo Garfagnini (ed.), Firenze e la Toscana dei Medici dell’Europa del �500 (Florence: L. S. Olschki Editore,1983), 899–924. Both Cosimo and, in particular, Francesco were also closely involved in the establishment at theInnocenti of a tapestry workshop staffed by foundlings. See Gavitt, ‘An Experimental Culture’, 205–22.

15 Francesco Bigazzi, Iscrizioni e memorie della città di Firenze (Florence: Tipi dell’Arte della Stampa, 1886), 10.On the sculpture busts of Ferdinando and their proliferation in Florence, see Langedijk, Portraits of the Medici,Vol. 2, 742–4.

Fig. 4 Bernardino Poccetti, Istoria degl’Innocenti, 1610, fresco, Florence, Ospedale degli Innocenti, former girls’refectory (photo: author)


the grand duke and described him as ‘MAGNUS DUX ETRURIAE’ (‘GrandDuke of Tuscany’). Indeed, the letters ‘C.M.F.M.D.’ (‘COSMUS MEDICIFLORENTIAE MAGNUS DUX’) accompany the bust of Cosimo at the Inno-centi. However, an additional inscription, also placed beneath the bust,ascribes a related but distinct title to the grand duke: ‘PATER ET BENEFAC-TOR HOSPITALIS I[N]NOCE[N]TIVM’ (‘Father and Benefactor of the Hos-pital of the Innocents’). In his description of the Innocenti written eightyyears later, Ferdinando Del Migliore took note of the atypical inscription:

. . . non esser virtù più potente, ne atta a dilatare il nome d’un Monarca, d’unGrande, quanto il porger aiuto a chi cade, e la mano a’desiderosi d’alzarsi; e perquesto si nota esser paruto più conveniente, e più giusto in quel luogo, scriver sottoalla Testa del Gran Duca Cosimo I. PATER ET BENEFACTOR HOSPITALISINNOCENTIUM, in vece del titolo, dovutogli, benchè divulgato, e di sommo onore,di MAGNUS DUX ETRURIAE. [Ferdinando Leopoldo Del Migliore, Firenze cittànobilissima illustrata (Florence: Stamp. della Stella, 1684), 310.]16

[. . . there is no virtue more powerful, nor more effective in spreading the name ofa Monarch, of a great man, as much as the extending of assistance to those who falland a hand to those desiring to raise themselves up; and for this [reason] it seemedmore appropriate, and more correct, in that place, to write under the bust of GrandDuke Cosimo I Father and Benefactor of the Hospital of the Innocents, instead of hisrightful title, due him and of highest honour, although well established, of GrandDuke of Tuscany.]

This characterization of Cosimo as ‘Father of the Innocenti’ echoed thewords of Prior Borghini, who in 1553 termed him the ‘vero padrone di questacasa et padre di questi poveri innocenti’ (‘true patron of this house and thefather of these poor innocents’) in a written request for aid from the duke.17

By deploying the paternal metaphor, Borghini was participating in a long-standing tradition of using the language of family (particularly fatherhood) todescribe the charitable work performed by the Innocenti. Hospitals for aban-doned children, like the Innocenti, were in effect their legal ‘parents’, obligedby their written constitutions, practical necessity, and cultural expectations toprovide nourishment, protection, and guardianship for the children theyaccepted. The Silk Guild’s patronage of the Innocenti was often characterizedin paternal terms; for example, the guild consuls were identified in an internalrecord of 1466 as ‘padri e protetori del nostro spedale’ (‘fathers and protec-

16 Del Migliore seems not to have noticed the ‘C.M.F.M.D.’. This is not suprising, as the lettering, which ismuch smaller than that of the second inscription, appears to blend into both the signature of Sermei and thedate of execution.

17 Archivio dell’Ospedale degli Innocenti (hereafter AOIF), Serie VI (Suppliche e Sovrani Rescritti), 1, fol.243r. The supplica, dated November 4, 1553, was written by Borghini to Duke Cosimo. This passage is also citedin Philip Gavitt, ‘Charity and State-Building in Cinquecento Florence: Vincenzio Borghini as Administrator ofthe Ospedale degli Innocenti’, The Journal of Modern History 69 (1997), 262.


tors of our hospital’).18 Within the hospital, familial language was also regu-larly used to describe both the community as a whole and the relationshipsbetween members of the staff and the residential population.19

Borghini’s use of the sobriquet ‘Father of the Innocenti’ served the interestsof the hospital as much as those of Cosimo, by articulating an image of theduke (and, after 1569, grand duke) in which the hospital and its younginmates played a constitutive role. This construction of ruling authority, then,functioned not as an instrument of absolutist self-aggrandisement, nor as anoppositional strategy, but, instead, as a negotiating tool.20 The designationimplied that Cosimo had a paternal duty to provide for the children of thehospital, a message Borghini took care to reinforce in his numerous writtensuppliche. Indeed, in the same report quoted above, Borghini explicitly lever-aged the obligations of paternity while lamenting the desperate financial stateof the hospital:

sono ricorso alla bonta sua et per la premessa et speranza datami, non havendomodo, ne via ordinaria di riparare à questo male, o, provedere alla conservatione diquesta santa opera et nutrimento di questi poveri figli et figliuole . . . Nell’ultimoluogo con tutto il cuore raccomando a V.E. questi poveri innocenti che gittati viadal padre e dalla madre propria: Doppo Dio non hanno altro padre et benefattoreche V.E. [AOIF, Serie VI, 1, fols. 243r and 244v.]

[I am turning to your generosity because of the promise and hope that was given tome, as I have no other method, nor established way to remedy this bad situation, or,to provide for the conservation of this holy work and for the sustenance of thesepoor sons and daughters . . . Finally with all my heart I recommend to Your Excel-lency these poor innocents who have been tossed aside by their own father andmother: After God they do not have any father or benefactor other than YourExcellency.]

This image of Cosimo as ‘Father of the Innocents’ that Borghini cultivatedthus mediated between the rhetoric of legal fatherhood deployed by the SilkGuild, the familial language used within the hospital community, and theestablished image of the grand duke as pater patriae. More than just a paternalconfiguration of institutional patronage, the image of Medici ‘fatherhood’forged at the Innocenti imputed to the grand dukes a patriarchal munificence

18 AOIF, Serie XII (Ricordanze), 1, fol. 83r. Similarly, in December of 1451, the investments in the communaldowry fund, the Monte delle doti, made by the hospital on behalf of its female wards were described as having beendone ‘as the girls’ true and legitimate father’: Philip Gavitt, Charity and Children in Renaissance Florence: theOspedale degli Innocenti, 1410–1536 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1990), 258 (his translation).

19 For example, the census of ‘nostra famiglia di casa’ taken in 1482: AOIF, Serie XII, 2, fol. 5v. For the useof familial language in the hospital, see Gavitt, Charity and Children, 143–4.

20 Much of the scholarship on Cosimo I has focused on his use of visual imagery to achieve absolutist goals.See, for example, Kurt Forster, ‘Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo Ide’ Medici’, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15 (1971), 65–104. For the operation of art,specifically Mannerist painting, as a strategy of opposition to the duke, see Stephen J. Campbell, ‘CounterReformation Polemic and Mannerist Counter-Aesthetics: Bronzino’s Martyrdom of St. Lawrence in San Lorenzo’,Res 46 (2004): 96–119.


that was fundamentally contingent upon their provision of financial supportfor the foundlings of the hospital. The inscription placed by Prior Antinoriunder the bust of Cosimo I above the main entrance to the hospital codifiedthis distinct form of ducal authority, conveying the filial relationship betweenthe hospital and the grand duchy to all passers-by. The bust of Cosimo, inconjunction with those of Francesco and Ferdinando, proclaimed that thehospital enjoyed grand-ducal guardianship and that the ‘Fathers of the Inno-centi’, in turn, had a paternal obligation to provide for their ‘children’.21

COSIMO II AS ‘FATHER OF THE INNOCENTI’

The series of frescoes painted by Bernardino Poccetti in the years 1610–12further developed this visual rhetoric of the grand dukes as paternal guardiansof the Innocenti. Prior Antinori invited Poccetti to live at the hospital inJanuary of 1610, in exchange for painting frescoes for the institution.22 In thesummer of the same year, the painter, in the final stage of a long andsuccessful career as a favoured artist of the Medici grand dukes and otherelites in Florence and Rome, executed two ‘storie pinte a fresco’ to comple-ment the busts of Ferdinando and Francesco at both ends of the hospitalloggia.23 In early 1612, he began a series of frescoes ‘per onorare’ the bust ofCosimo I above the main entrance to the institution.24

During these years Antinori also continued his tradition of honouringthe grand dukes with marble busts in the hospital loggia. In April of 1612,the sculptor Francesco Gargiolli received payment for a bust of the reigninggrand duke, Cosimo II, to be placed in the frieze just above the arcade.25 Thissculpture probably replaced a red-and-white marble tondo with the arms ofthe Silk Guild that had been installed in the spring of 1439.26 The tondo would

21 This obligation was one the Medici grand dukes attended to with varying degrees of commitment. Thetenure of Prior Borghini has long been seen as a devastating one for the finances of the institution, largely dueto rapid increases in the population of the hospital. On this issue, see Luigi Passerini, Storia degli stabilimenti dibeneficenza e d’istruzione gratuita della città di Firenze (Florence: Le Monnier, 1853), 699–701; Gaetano Bruscoli, LoSpedale di Santa Maria degl’Innocenti di Firenze. Dalla sua fondazione ai giorni nostri (Florence: Tipi di Enrico Ariani,1900), 48–72; and Gavitt, ‘Charity and State-Building’, 230–70.

22 Poccetti arrived at the Innocenti on January 15, 1610. He was granted a living space and a studio at thehospital. See AOIF, Serie XIII (Giornale), 24, fols. 246v–247v.

23 AOIF, Serie CXX (Creditori e debitori), 21, fols. 208v; 218r. See also Serie XIII, 24, fol. 27v. Most of thedocuments related to Poccetti’s work at the Innocenti have been published in Gaetano Bruscoli, Le pitture delPoccetti nello Spedale degli Innocenti di Firenze (Florence: Tipografia E. Ariani, 1907), 20–28.

24 AOIF, Serie CXX, 21, fol. 208r. See also AOIF, Serie XIII, 24, fol. 35v. The narrative scenes representhighlights of the grand duke’s reign: the Coronation of Cosimo by Pius V, the Foundation of the Accademia del Disegno,the Fortifications of Elba Island, and the Foundation of the Order of Santo Stefano.

25 AOIF, Serie CXX, 21, fol. 208r. See also Langedijk, Portraits of the Medici, Vol. 1, 558. Two putti, one on eachside of the bust, hold a crown with the inscription: ‘NOMEN AVI COSMUS/ REFERENS ATQUE/ INCLYTAFACTA/ ANNO MDCXII’.

26 For the commission of the marble tondo from Buggiano, stepson of Filippo Brunelleschi, see Saalman,Filippo Brunelleschi, 55. Saalman speculates that the tondo, which is no longer extant, was placed in the centerof the frieze, above the main entrance to the hospital.


have explicitly designated the loggia, and, by extension, the hospital behind it,as the property of the Silk Guild. The bust of Cosimo II, and those of hispredecessors, served a similar function, denoting the Innocenti as part of thecharitable infrastructure of the grand duchy. The image of the institution asthe work of the corporate guild was thus subsumed by a new visual vocabulary,one that positioned the innocenti succoured within the hospital as the ‘chil-dren’ of the grand duke.

The authorizing agency of the Medici grand dukes articulated in the façadedecorations was also made manifest in the interior spaces of the institution.The ‘Istoria degl’Innocenti’, painted by Poccetti just after his arrival at thehospital, completely covers the south wall of the girls’ refectory.27 The refec-tory was part of the extension added to the hospital in 1528, in order to allowfor more capacious and ‘honourable’ housing for the Innocenti’s escalatingfemale population.28 The record of the payment to Poccetti describes thefresco as the ‘Istoria degl’Innocenti,’ which could mean the ‘story’ either ofthe Holy Innocents or the Innocenti hospital. In the fresco, we see both.Reading from left to right, the painting represents the Massacre of the Innocents,the Virgin and Child Welcoming the Holy Innocents to Paradise, and the Activities ofthe Hospital. This fresco, which has received little attention in the scholarlyliterature, elaborates upon the image of the grand dukes as ‘Fathers of theInnocenti’ articulated by Borghini and reaffirmed in the hospital loggia.29

At the right of the pictorial space stands Prior Antinori, along with GrandDuke Cosimo II, two unidentified courtiers, the painter Poccetti, and a groupof pious young girls (Fig. 5).30 Although access to the refectory would nor-mally have been limited to the girls of the hospital and their caregivers,distinguished guests – like the grand duke and his entourage – may have beengranted admission for special visits. The women’s wards of some foundlinghospitals, while customarily restricted to hospital personnel, were also

27 AOIF, Serie CXX, 21, fol. 208v: ‘yhs MDCVIIII [stilus florentinus] E a di XXIII di febraio [florins] cinquantadi m[one]ta si fanno buoni à M Bernardino Poccetti Pittore che tanti disse contentarsi di volere da Noi per lavaluta dell’Istoria degl’Innocenti fatta à fresco nel’ Refettorio delle n[ost]re Bambine . . .’. See also AOIF, SerieCXX, 21, fol. 218r and Serie XIII, 24, fol. 24v.

28 In his will, dated February 22, 1518, one Gianbattista di Ser Andrea Nacchianti left two thousand florins forthe construction of a ‘monistero per puellis’ at the Innocenti, where the vulnerable girls of the hospital couldbe housed in ‘clausuram’. The convent was intended for those female foundlings who were unable or unwillingto leave the hospital to marry or join a nunnery: AOIF, Serie IX (Testamenti), 2, fols. 133r–133v and Archiviodi Stato di Firenze, Diplomatico (Ospedale degli Innocenti), 22 Febbraio 1517. See also Gavitt, ‘Charity andState-Building’, 255. Further rooms ‘for the women and the wet nurses’ were built in 1544: Bruscoli, Lo Spedale,56. In 1612, 600 female foundlings resided at the hospital, down from a high of 968 in 1579. By contrast, therewere only 140 male foundlings in residence. See Maria Fubini Leuzzi, ‘ “Dell’allogare le fanciulle degliInnocenti”: un problema culturale ed economico, 1577–1652’, in Paolo Prodi (ed.), Disciplina dell’anima,disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioevo ed età moderna (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 1994),870.

29 On the fresco, see: Bruscoli, Le pitture, 11–12; Giovanna Weisz, ‘Bernardino Poccetti: un pittore Fiorentinodel tardo Rinascimento’ (Tesi di Laurea, Università di Roma, 1930), 57; Cavazzini, ‘Dipinti e sculture’, 136–7;and Erika Langmuir, Imagining Childhood (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 54.

30 For the identification of the portraits of Cosimo II and Antinori, see Bruscoli, Le pitture, 11–12.


accessed during the ecclesiastical visits authorized by the decrees of theCouncil of Trent. For example, the women’s ward of the Ospedale della Scalain Siena was visited and documented by an Apostolic Visit in 1575.31 Similarly,the cloistered convent for female foundlings at the Ospedale di Santo Spiritoin Rome was assessed in 1585 and again in 1592.32 It is unclear whether ornot the Innocenti was subject to these visits during the period in which thefresco was painted.33 However, the fresco itself can be taken as evidence forthe plausibility, if not the actuality, of carefully choreographed interactionsbetween the female foundlings and select groups of eminent visitors. Themembers of this type of restricted audience would have taken pleasure in

31 Maura Martellucci, ‘I bambini di nessuno. L’infanzia abbandonata al Santa Maria della Scala. SecoliXIII-XV’, Bullettino senese per la storia patria CVIII (2001 [printed 2003]), 32.

32 For the findings of the Apostolic Visit of 1585, see Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Vat. lat. 5521, fols.41r–41v. For the Apostolic Visit of 1592, see Archivio di Stato di Roma, Ospedale di Santo Spirito, 3098 (n.p.).

33 Fubini Leuzzi, ‘Dell’allogare le fanciulle’, 898. Fubini Leuzzi states that the first Apostolic Visit to take placeat the hospital after the Council of Trent did not occur until 1633. She does not, however, indicate a source forthis assessment. I have not been able to locate any records of visitations during the tenure of Prior Antinori.During a visit to the hospital in 1681 by representatives of Grand Duke Cosimo III, 758 female foundlings werereported to be in residence in the spedale delle donne: Bruscoli, Lo Spedale, 87–8 and Fubini Leuzzi, ‘Dell’allogarele fanciulle’, 894–5.

Fig. 5 Bernardino Poccetti, Istoria degl’Innocenti (detail of right side), 1610, fresco, Florence, Ospedale degliInnocenti, former girls’ refectory (photo: author)


seeing their social peers represented in the fresco as elegant courtiers sur-rounded by the bambine of the hospital.

In addition to serving as an embodied signature, the appearance of Poccettiamong the retinue of Cosimo would have reminded the viewer that thehospital had an esteemed painter of the grand ducal court in its employ. Thepainter had just finished his frescoes in the Sala di Bona in the Palazzo Pittiand was a favourite of both Ferdinando and Cosimo II.34 The modified lunettecomposition necessitated by the structure of the refectory was also ideallysuited to Poccetti, who had established himself as a lunette specialist throughhis work in the Chiostro Grande of Santa Maria Novella, the Chiostro diSant’Antonino at San Marco, and the Chiostro dei Morti at the SantissimaAnnunziata.35 His expertise with the lunette format enabled him to structurea complex composition in the Innocenti refectory that combined dramaticnarrative, precise architectural detail, and numerous trompe l’oeil elements thatentice the viewer to examine the fresco both from a distance and up close.

The presence in the fresco of Cosimo II served both to authenticateAntinori’s governance of the Innocenti and as part of a strategy to securefuture ducal patronage for the hospital during a time of transition. The duke,who was nineteen when the fresco was executed, had assumed control of thegrand duchy upon his father’s death only the year before. In the fresco, andin the marble bust sculpted by Gargiolli for the loggia two years later, CosimoII is constructed, like his father, uncle, and grandfather before him, as the‘padre di questi poveri innocenti’, with the concomitant obligation to providepaternal sustenance and protection to the hospital and its population ofabandoned children. The juxtaposition of the portrait of Cosimo with the restof the fresco also shapes a complex and multifaceted picture of this type ofgrand-ducal authority, a formulation specific to the cultural context of theInnocenti foundling hospital.

In the fresco, King Herod and Grand Duke Cosimo II are presented asopposing types of ruler, with the indolent savagery of the former countered bythe latter’s vigilant, paternal authority. Although the fresco is divided intotwo halves by the door below and the celestial group above, the representedbuildings on either side appear to be across the street from each other. Theplacement of the girls at the right side of the composition above the illusion-istic stairs further suggests that they have just entered the pictorial space fromtheir dining tables in the refectory (Fig. 6). The bloodied streets of Bethlehemand the residential areas of the Innocenti are thus presented as spacescontinuous with each other and with that of the girls’ refectory. The two sidesof the fresco are set up as pictorial antitheses, with the chaos and turmoil of

34 For Poccetti’s work in the Sala di Bona, see Stefania Vasetti, ‘I fasti granducali della Sala di Bona: sintesipolitica e culturale del principato di Ferdinando I’, in Gabriella Capecchi (ed.), Palazzo Pitti: la reggia rivelata(Florence: Giunti and Firenza Musei, 2003), 228–39.

35 On Poccetti’s expertise with the lunette format, see Gauvin A. Bailey, ‘Catholic Reform and BernardinoPoccetti’s Chiostro dei Morti at the church of SS Annunziata in Florence’, Apollo 158 (2003), 23–31.


the massacre vividly contrasted with the order and tranquillity of the hospitalunder the watchful eyes of Cosimo.36 The blood that flows from the bodies ofthe dying young victims of Herod’s wrath on the left has its corollary in themilk that flows from hospital wet nurses into the bodies of thriving infants onthe right. Even the two dead babies that lie on the left side of the door findtheir echo in the more fortunate pair that appears on the right side safelyensconced in a little bed. These formal oppositions construct Cosimo as theideal charitable and magnanimous ruler, furnishing the least fortunate of hissubjects with spiritual and bodily nourishment.

36 For more on the concept of ‘antithesis’ in sixteenth-century discourses on poetry and painting, see CharlesBurroughs, ‘Michelangelo at the Campidoglio: Artistic Identity, Patronage, and Manufacture’, Artibus etHistoriae 14 (1993), 85–111.



Several features of the depiction of Cosimo in the fresco serve to connectthe grand duke with his late father, Ferdinando I. Identifying Cosimo with hisfather, who had ruled Tuscany successfully for twenty years, situated therepresentation of the newly crowned grand duke within an established picto-rial vocabulary of ruling authority. First, Cosimo is dressed in the Spanish style,with the red cross of the naval knighthood of Saint Stephen (the Cavalieri diSanto Stefano) on his chest.37 The Order of Saint Stephen had been foundedby Cosimo I de’ Medici in 1562 to combat the Ottoman Turks in theMediterranean and to accrue prestige to the house of Medici on the Europeanstage. Cosimo served as the first Grand Master of the Order, a role subse-quently assumed by his successors as Grand Duke, including Cosimo II.38 Theprominent inclusion of the cross of Santo Stefano ties the representation ofCosimo to two nearby portraits of Ferdinando, both of which featured thesymbol of the knighthood: the marble bust in the loggia and the equestrianstatue newly installed in the centre of the Piazza della Annunziata.39 Mostvisitors to the hospital would have passed by the equestrian sculpture – andsome of them also underneath the bust of Ferdinando, which is placed aboveone of the former entrances to the women’s area of the hospital – prior toviewing the representation of Cosimo in the Poccetti fresco.

In addition to the cross of Santo Stefano, Cosimo’s attire also connects himto a recognizable image of Ferdinando. His costume resembles closely theclothing worn by his father in the widely copied official portrait painted byScipione Pulzone in 1590 (Fig. 7).40 Both men wear belted black vests overmatching doublets and hose, and white shirts with elaborate ruffs and lacecuffs. In both portraits, black straps are shown connecting the belts of thegrand dukes to unseen swords, a pictorial strategy that suggests militaryprowess contained by courtly propriety. Ferdinando rests his arm on a helmet,a common representational convention in contemporary princely portraits.41

In the Innocenti fresco, however, Cosimo’s extended hand calls our attentionnot to a symbol of his military authority, but rather to the charitable work ofthe foundling hospital.

37 For the history of the Order and its relationship to the Medici grand dukes, see, most recently, KatherineM. Poole, ‘The Medici Grand Dukes and the Art of Conquest: Ruling Identity and the Formation of a TuscanEmpire, 1537–1609’ (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers: The State University of New Jersey, 2007).

38 While most portraits of Cosimo I and Francesco I executed during their lifetimes do not feature Cavalieriimagery, Ferdinando I regularly had himself represented wearing the red cross of Santo Stefano: Poole, ‘Art ofConquest’, 147–52.

39 In the colossal bronze sculpture, designed by Giambologna and executed largely by Pietro Tacca,Ferdinando is represented as a fusion of Roman emperor with Christian knight. On the sculpture, which wasinstalled in 1608, see Langedijk, Portraits of the Medici, Vol. 2, 749–50.

40 On the Pulzone portrait, see Langedijk, Portraits of the Medici, Vol. 2, 730–33 and Marco Chiarini, ‘cat. 35’,in Cristina Acidini Luchinat et al. (eds.), The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (NewHaven: Yale University Press, 2002), 169.

41 See, for example, the portraits of Duke Ranuccio I Farnese in the Palazzo Pitti (c. 1600), King Henry IV ofFrance by Frans Pourbus the Younger in the Louvre (c. 1610), and the six-year-old Cosimo II himself (1596) inthe Uffizi.


Cosimo also points in the direction of one of the two fictive plaques that arepainted on each of the illusionistic staircases. The inscriptions are placed at achild’s eye level and they are written in the vernacular, suggesting an audienceof literate young girls like those surrounding Cosimo at the right side of thecomposition.42 The plaque on the left evokes the pathos of the Massacre andpetitions for the intercession of Mary:

VERGINE SACRA ‘A CVI DEVON’ LOR’ VITA/ HUMIL’ ANCELLE E PARGO-LETTI INFANTI/ DI SANGVE ASPERSI IN DOLOROSI PIANTI/ GRIDANDO ‘INTERRA ‘A TE CHIEGGON AITA/ A.N.D. 1610.

[Sacred Virgin, to whom humble damsels and little infants bathed in blood owetheir life, in painful wails crying on Earth they ask for help from you. The year of ourLord 1610.]

42 The girls of the hospital were probably taught only the most basic reading skills. Not until the establish-ment of a Company of the Rosary in the hospital conservatory in 1622 did the religious education of theinnocentine become a priority: Fubini Leuzzi, ‘Dell’allogare le fanciulle’, 868–9.

Fig. 7 Scipione Pulzone, Ferdinando I de’ Medici, 1590, Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo: Scala/ArtResource, NY)


The inscription on the right is more enigmatic:

NODRI GIA IL MAGNO IDDIO CON PROVIDENZA/ DI PURA MANNA,NATIONE RETROSA/ MA TU GRAN SIRE CON GENTE AMOROSA/ PROCAC-CIE L’ESCA EL TUTTO ALL’INNOCENZA.

[The great God already nourished, with providence of pure manna, a waywardnation, but you, great Lord, for a loving people, provide the food that is everythingto innocence.]

The first half of the inscription alludes to the feeding of the Israelites withmanna in the Book of Exodus. God is established as the prototypical idealruler, providing miraculous nourishment to his people in their time of great-est need. The use of the ‘tu’ in the second part suggests that ‘gran sire’ refershere to the Christ Child, who appears at the apex of the composition in thearms of his mother.43 The ‘food that is everything to innocence’ can thereforebe identified with the Eucharist, typologically anticipated in the OldTestament by the manna.44 This allusion would have been in keeping withthe location of the fresco in a refectory, a common site for representations ofthe Last Supper.45

Because of the substitution of ‘sire’ for ‘Iddio’, however, the inscription alsoallows for an elision of the ruling authority of God with that of Cosimo II. Thisslippage is reinforced by the pictorial structure of the fresco, which situatesthis inscription below the figure of the grand duke. In this reading, it isCosimo who, ‘for a loving people’, procures ‘the food that is everything toinnocence’. In the hospital context, the phrase ‘loving people’ refers mostlogically to the children of the Innocenti, whose ‘innocence’ is enabled withthe nourishment Cosimo supplies. In the fresco, as the remainder of thisarticle will demonstrate, this sustenance takes many forms, constructing aruling identity for Cosimo that centres upon his ability to nurture the souls,bodies and minds of the children of the hospital as a father, like his namesakeand grandfather.

43 As the familiar (‘te’) is also used to refer to Mary in the first inscription, the use of ‘tu’ here suggests thatboth inscriptions function similarly as direct addresses to holy figures depicted within the composition. Thesedialogic inscriptions were probably intended to function in tandem with the pictorial imagery as visual promptsto aid the innocentine in their mealtime prayers.

44 See St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Volume 58 (3a. 73–78): The Eucharistic Presence, trans. WilliamBarden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 23. The phrase ‘procaccie l’esca el tuttoall’innocenza’, which is not clearly punctuated in the inscription, could also be translated as ‘provide the foodand everything to innocence’, but the typological correlation with the manna suggests that it is the ‘esca’ alonethat allows for the ‘innocence’. The atypical deployment of ‘esca’ would likely have recalled the Latin hymn ‘OEsca Viatorum’; the hymn, sometimes attributed to Aquinas, describes the Eucharist as the ‘food of travellers’(‘esca viatorum’), ‘bread of angels’ and ‘heavenly manna’: John Lord Hayes, Corolla Hymnorum Sacrorum: Beinga Selection of Latin Hymns of the Early and Middle Ages (Boston: Estes, 1887), 92.

45 The institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper was a standard subject for mural paintings in conventualrefectories. In Florence, see the frescoes of Andrea del Castagno at Sant’Apollonia, Domenico Ghirlandaio atOgnissanti and San Marco, Franciabigio at the Convento della Calza, and Andrea del Sarto at San Salvi.


Nourishing the soul

Building upon the typological construction of the inscription, the most fun-damental sustenance offered by the hospital – and, by extension, by Cosimo –was the provision of baptism for new entrants.46 At the Innocenti, the baptis-mal rite integrated the foundlings of the hospital into the Christian commu-nity and enabled them to partake in the spiritual nourishment of the Mass. Inthe fresco, the juxtaposition of the Massacre of the Innocents with the insti-tutional activities of the hospital would also have alluded to the widespreadperception that foundling hospitals served as an institutional remedy forinfanticide.47 The rhetoric of infanticide in the early modern period con-demned most virulently those perpetrators whose victims were deprived ofbaptism. By accepting an unwanted infant, then, the foundling hospital pre-served not only the body of the child but also his or her soul.

In the fresco, the image of the hospital as both a safeguard against infanti-cide and a protector of imperilled souls is evoked by the inclusion of twofigures that seem to participate in both the Massacre of the Innocents and theActivities of the Hospital (Fig. 8). These women cradle babies in their arms andappear to be seeking sanctuary from the carnage of the infanticidal Massacrein the serene spaces of the hospital. The woman in pink rushes away from theviolence, tightly clutching a swaddled infant. Her body language is difficult todecipher, as she could be mourning a child lost to the Massacre or sayinggoodbye to a living one before abandoning it to the care of the hospital. Theother woman turns her back to the viewer. Her movement suggests that shetoo is fleeing the massacre, yet she could also be a wet nurse, tending to twoyoung charges.

These ambiguous women call attention to the conflation, long establishedin the visual culture of the institution, between the biblical Holy Innocentsand the foundlings of the Innocenti.48 The hospital, dedicated to Saint Maryof the Innocents, preserved relics of the child-martyrs in the hospital church,and depictions of the Holy Innocents appeared in various locations within theinstitutional complex.49 The representation of the Virgin welcoming the HolyInnocents to Paradise in the centre of Poccetti’s fresco makes direct referenceto the hospital’s dedication. Her appearance also creates a pictorial parallelbetween the celestial reception she offers to the martyred Innocents and theterrestrial succour provided by her hospital, at the right side of the fresco, to

46 For the practice of baptising foundlings at the Innocenti, see Gavitt, Charity and Children, 187–8.47 On this issue, see Richard C. Trexler, ‘Infanticide in Florence: New Sources and First Results’, History of

Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974), 96–118, and Ingeborg Walter, ‘Die Sage der Gründung von Santo Spirito in Romeund das Problem des Kindesmordes’, Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome 97 (1985), 819–79.

48 On this conflation, see Diana Bullen Presciutti, ‘The Visual Culture of the Foundling Hospital in CentralItaly, 1400–1600’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2008), 179–223.

49 For example, two Holy Innocents kneel in the foreground of the Adoration of the Magi painted by DomenicoGhirlandaio in the late 1480s for the high altar of the hospital church. The Massacre appears in the backgroundof the painting. Similarly, numerous Holy Innocents surround God the Father in the fresco painted in 1459 byGiovanni di Francesco di Cervelleria above the entrance to the hospital church.


the ‘survivors’ of the Massacre. Both Saint Mary of the Innocents and thehospital of Santa Maria degli Innocenti embody here a kind of maternalauthority that serves as a significant counterbalance to the binary oppositioncreated between Herod and Cosimo II. The paternal authority accorded toCosimo in the fresco is thus constructed as inextricably linked with the inter-vention of the Virgin and the charitable work of her favoured hospital.

The children of the Innocenti were also conflated with the Holy Innocentsthrough language. By the Cinquecento, the foundlings were regularlyreferred to as ‘innocenti’ and ‘innocentine’. For example, in the 1570s, theadministrators of the Innocenti described the inmates of the hospital as‘referred to by some as gittatelli or trovatelli, and commonly by us as Innocenti’(‘sono da alcuni chiamati gittatelli o trovatelli e comunemente da noi Inno-centi’).50 The use of ‘innocenti’ as a term for the foundlings of the hospitalalso makes reference to the practice of baptism, which was conceived of as anecessary prerequisite to innocence. San Bernardino defined innocence as aquality imbued through baptism, imputing it only to those children who had

50 AOIF, Serie VI, 1, fol. 138r. Gittatello and trovatello were in wide circulation as terms for foundlings in earlymodern Italy.



been officially cleansed of original sin and welcomed into the corporate bodyof the Church.51 The hospital, acting as a patriarchal authority, arranged forthe baptism of its children, thus conferring upon them the quality of inno-cence. Without this rite, therefore, the abandoned children of the Innocenticould not be called ‘innocenti’.

Nourishing the body

In the fresco, the nourishment supplied by the hospital under the patronageof Cosimo II also comes in the form of breast milk. The young grand dukeengages the viewer with an intense stare and points to the wet nurses and theircharges gathered below. The tightly assembled group of women and childrenare pushed up close to the picture plane (Fig. 9), allowing the viewer to lingerover the intertwined cluster of bodies. At the centre is a child suckling avoluminous breast that reads as fairly brimming with milk. This image reso-nates with two other frescoes executed for hospitals that cared for foundlings,

51 San Bernardino da Siena, Le Prediche Volgari, ed. Ciro Cannarozzi, Vol. 4 (Firenze, 1940–1958), 412: ‘Gliinnocenti. Non di quegli che sono affogati né privai o uccisi in corpi per forza di medicine che non ànnol’anima, non s’intende per loro, ma per quegli ch’ànno l’anima pel santo battesimo; quegli sono gl’innocenti.’



one painted in the late 1570s in the Pellegrinaio of the Ospedale della Scalain Siena, the other around 1580 (Fig. 10) in the governor’s salone of theOspedale di Santo Spirito in Rome.52 All three frescoes purport to representaspects of life in their respective hospitals and in all three a group of wetnurses is given pride of place in the structure of the composition.

These images are constitutive of a visual rhetoric of abundance that tookhold in sixteenth-century charitable discourses, evolving out of allegoricalrepresentations of the theological virtue of Charity. The nursing child hadbeen introduced into depictions of Caritas during the Trecento, and by theCinquecento a woman either breastfeeding or attending to two or moreinfants had become the standard iconography of this virtue.53 The allegorical

52 On these frescoes, see Presciutti, ‘Visual Culture’, 78–83; 130–32.53 See Edgar Wind, ‘Charity. The Case History of a Pattern’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 1

(1937–39), 324, and Robert Freyan, ‘The Evolution of the Caritas Figure in the Thirteenth and FourteenthCenturies’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 11 (1948), 68–86. The iconography of the Madonnalactans also contributed to the construction of breastfeeding as an act of charity. On the Madonna lactans, seeMegan Holmes, ‘Disrobing the Virgin: The Madonna lactans in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Art’, in Sara F.

Fig. 10 Lorenzo Sabatini (attr.), Activities of the Hospital (detail), c. 1580, fresco, Rome, Palazzo del Commen-datore, Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, salone (photo: author)


representation of Abundance had also become closely intertwined with that ofCharity during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with personifications ofAbundance playing a fundamental role in discursive constructions of thematerial wealth and fecundity of the civis.54 In the context of the early modernfoundling hospital, these depictions of institutional wet nursing as a fusion ofthe established personifications of Charity and Abundance established a newiconography of ‘charitable abundance’ that enabled the hospital – and, in thecase of the Innocenti, the ducal regime – to communicate its fiscal solvencythrough the fruitful bodies of its many wet nurses.

As a foundling of the Innocenti, Prior Antinori knew well the importance ofwet nurses to the successful operation of the hospital. However, the idealizedrepresentation of wet nursing as ‘charitable abundance’ in Poccetti’s frescoconceals the myriad economic and administrative difficulties that surroundedthe practice. The financial burden of wet nursing would remain a centralfocus of the Innocenti’s requests for government assistance throughout theearly modern period. An entry in the hospital diary of June 1577 tells ofthe ‘great dearth of wet nurses’ (‘gran’ charestia di balia’) endured by theInnocenti and of how Grand Duke Francesco, during an official visit, pro-posed using cows’ milk to feed the infants.55 Although a significant diminutionof the hospital’s residential population during the 1580s eased financialburdens somewhat, famines and the unremitting numbers of new entrantsconspired to keep the hospital in dire fiscal straits through Prior Antinori’stenure.56 While the ideological power of abundance obtained in good timesand in bad, during periods of famine such images had particular purchase. Inboth the Santo Spirito and Innocenti frescoes, the women are shown activelynursing their charges, thus making visually explicit the power of the hospitalto nourish charitably its population of foundlings.

Nourishing the mind

In the background of the fresco we see another form of nourishment providedby Cosimo in his role as ‘father and patron’ of the hospital: the education of

Matthews Grieco and Geraldine A. Johnson (eds.), Picturing Women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridgeand New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 167–95.

54 See David G. Wilkins, ‘Donatello’s Lost Dovizia for the Mercato Vecchio: Wealth and Charity as FlorentineCivic Virtues’, Art Bulletin 65 (1983), 401–23; Sarah Blake Wilk, ‘Donatello’s “Dovizia” as an Image of FlorentinePolitical Propaganda’, Artibus et Historiae 7 (1986), 9–28; Adrian W. B. Randolph, ‘Renaissance HouseholdGoddesses: Fertility, Politics, and the Gendering of Spectatorship’, in Anne L. McClanan and Karen RosoffEncarnación (eds.), The Material Culture of Sex, Procreation, and Marriage in Premodern Europe (New York: Palgrave,2002), 163–89.

55 AOIF, Serie XIII, 20, fol. 7r. See also Bruscoli, Lo Spedale, 70–71.56 Bruscoli, Lo Spedale, 79–80. Spikes in the cost of wheat are one of the key indicators of famine, and Florence

experienced such atypically high wheat prices throughout much of the 1590s: Richard A. Goldthwaite, TheBuilding of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980),439. On the impact of these economic troubles on the Innocenti, see also Gavitt, ‘Charity and State-Building’:246–7.


the boys of the Innocenti. The pedagogical methods of the hospital weredescribed by Borghini, Antinori’s patron, in a report written to Grand DukeFrancesco in the 1570s. In it he explained how

. . . le dette creature si danno à balia et divezzi che sono: si ricevono in Casa, et siallievano, insegnando à maschi secondo la dispositione della capacità loro, diversearti: et ci è scuola et maestro per chi è atto à leggere, et scrivere, et se si scuoprealcuno spirito ch’el vaglia; si fanno studiare, et ne sono usciti di buoni allievi etprelati infino à Vescovi. Et quando sono condotti in età di 14 o 15 anni o quanto siagiudicato convenissi: si acconciano à quelle arti che egli hanno prima imparate, osi dà loro altro avviamento, che l’occasione di mano in mano offerisce migliore.[AOIF, Serie VI, 1, fol. 138r.]

[. . . the aforementioned infants are placed with wet nurses and, having beenweaned, they are received in the hospital, and they are reared; teaching the boys,according to the inclination of their abilities, various trades; and there is a school anda teacher for whoever is suited to reading and writing, and if someone is found whois worthy of it, they are made to study, and from this there have emerged goodstudents and prelates, even bishops. And when they come to the age of 14 or 15 years,or when they are judged suitable, they are apprenticed in those skills that they havelearned earlier, or they are given the best opportunity that is available at the time.]57

An idealized depiction of this regimen of instruction appears in the back-ground of the fresco (Fig. 11), behind the grand duke and his retinue. Theactivities are distributed between the two levels of the abituro (residence), withthe fourth wall painted away so the viewer can see inside.

On the lower level, older boys dressed in grey coats with tall hats dinetogether, perhaps lunching at the hospital before returning to their labour inartisan workshops scattered throughout the city. The emphasis on feedingcontinues with the isolation of the mensa for representation, making visiblethe hospital’s ongoing role as provider even after the boys had begun workingoutside of the institution. On the upper level of the building, younger boys insimilar uniforms kneel in two even rows in front of a large painting of anunidentifiable religious subject (Fig. 12).58 The beds positioned on either sideof the room indicate that this was the dormitory of the boys. Although theirmaestro, who is just entering the space from the stairs, appears prepared tomete out discipline with his raised rod, the children are represented as ideallywell governed in his absence.59 The actual dormentorio de fanciulli was locatedon the upper floor of the wing of the hospital that abutted the loggia southof the main entrance, indicating that Poccetti sought to make his painted

57 The document is also quoted from and cited in Gavitt, Charity and Children, 300 and Gavitt, ‘Charity andState-Building’, 248. While Gavitt dated the supplica to the 1530s in his monograph on the hospital, in his articleof 1997 he attributed it to the hand of Borghini and dated it to 1574.

58 The altarpiece, which is sketched in with broad strokes, may represent an Assumption of the Virgin.59 For the agreements contracted with maestri hired to teach the foundlings of the Innocenti, see Gavitt,

‘Charity and State-Building’: 250–51.


spaces recognizable to viewers acquainted with the rest of the institutionalcomplex.60

A contract with two maestri from 1561 specified that the boys of theInnocenti were to be instructed to read, write, and whatever else was requiredfor them to be ‘ben creati’ (‘well brought up’).61 The boys were also to betaught to sing the Psalms, the liturgy, and the Mass.62 Several of the boys whokneel dutifully in the dormitory are represented with their mouths open(Fig. 13), suggesting that they have been captured singing psalms or recitingthe liturgy. The presence of the dove of the Holy Spirit entering through the

60 For the location of the boys’ dormitory in the fifteenth century, see Saalman, Filippo Brunelleschi, 40–50.Documents from the 1590s indicate that the ‘dormentorio de ragazzi’ was a separate space from the ‘dormen-torio de fanciulli’. Both rooms were accessed by stairs, like the dormentorio in Poccetti’s fresco. AOIF, Serie XIII,22, fols. 12v and 13r: in December of 1593, a stonemason named Piero di Giovanni Sermei was paid for theconstruction of two stairways ascending to the dormitory of the fanciulli (‘per li scaloni con la rivolta alla salitadell’altro dormentorio de fanciulli’). The spaces represented in the painting are also juxtaposed much as theywould have been in the areas of the hospital complex located behind the viewer. The loggia and abituro wouldhave to be reversed to make the mirror illusion complete. But a viewer could have turned away from thepainting and, reversing the southern progression of the perspectival space in the fresco, walked north throughthe areas of the wet nurses to the abituro and then turned west to exit the hospital through the loggia.

61 AOIF, Serie XIII, 18, fol. 90r: ‘con patti debbino insegnar’ a nostri fanciulli legger’, scriver’ et qualchebisogna a bene instruirli et far’ che sieno ben creati’. The document is also cited in Gavitt, ‘Charity andState-Building’, 250.

62 AOIF, Serie XIII, 18, fol. 90r. See also Gavitt, ‘Charity and State-Building’, 251.



window, sending spiritual gifts down to the boys, also alludes to the instructionof Christian Doctrine, the first step on the journey towards a religious voca-tion. In post-Tridentine Italy, the instruction of Christian Doctrine was per-ceived to be of critical importance to the preservation of the faith, leading tothe establishment of schools and confraternities dedicated to the transmissionof the authorized catechism.63

In the adjacent room, the boys receive their training in writing (Fig. 14).64

Two children crowd together around a broadsheet, with one marking theplace with his hand. To their right, a maestro tutors other boys in handwriting,with various children represented scribbling away in their respective compo-sition books. This emphasis on the instruction of older boys is indicative of ashift in charitable discourses over the second half of the sixteenth century,during which time the education of capable and deserving youths came to be

63 On schools of Christian Doctrine, see Paul F. Grendler, ‘The Schools of Christian Doctrine in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Church History 53 (1984), 319–31. On confraternities dedicated to the teaching of ChristianDoctrine, see Christopher F. Black, Italian Confraternities in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1989), 223–28.

64 For the teaching of writing skills in early modern Italy, see Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy:Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 323–9.



considered one of the most important duties of a foundling hospital.65 Thesedevelopments dovetailed with the reorientation of pedagogy brought about bythe Catholic Reform movement, wherein education came to be seen as a vitaltool in the preservation of religious orthodoxy. During this period, a new typeof charitable institution, the orphanage (orfanotrofio) began to proliferateacross Italy. These refuges were intended to ensure that boys of legitimatebirth and respectable family were not, for reasons of poverty, left to wanderthe city streets.66 Older and more traditional foundling hospitals, like theInnocenti, sought to align themselves with these new orphanages bypresenting the raising of disciplined Christian soldiers as central to their

65 See, for example, Camillo Fanucci, Trattato di tutte le opere pie dell’alma città di Roma (Rome: Lepido Facii &Stefano Paolini, 1601), 19, on the care of foundlings at the hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome: ‘In un’altro[palazzo] habitano i putti con ministri, & maestri, che gli governano, & imparano la dottrina Christiana,leggere, & scrivere, & arti alle quali si vedono inclinati.’ (‘In another [palace] live the putti with ministers andmasters, who govern them, and they learn the Christian Doctrine, to read and to write, and crafts to which theyappear inclined.’)

66 On these orphanages, see Nicholas Terpstra, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance: Orphan Care inFlorence and Bologna (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005).



mission.67 In the fresco, Prior Antinori becomes the personification of theprocess of betterment enacted at the hospital, as he himself at the Innocentitravelled the path from suckled infant to schoolboy and, finally, to priorand intimate of the grand duke. His active sponsorship of art within thehospital also speaks to this self-fashioning as discerning patron and ducalofficeholder.68

The visual juxtaposition of the nursing of the infants and the education ofthe older boys echoes the distinction made by St Paul between elementary andadvanced instruction in Christian Doctrine: ‘As unto little ones in Christ. Igave you milk to drink, not meat; for you were not able as yet.’69 The hospitalnourishes the infants with the milk of healthy wet nurses and the older boyswith a more substantial meal, as well as spiritual nourishment in ChristianDoctrine and instruction in reading and writing. Even more physically promi-nent in the composition are the girls of the hospital, who appear as embodied

67 On the importance of education to the Innocenti in the post-Tridentine period, see Gavitt, ‘Charity andState-Building’, 248–51. This strong emphasis on the education of ‘worthy’ male foundlings represents a shiftfrom the fifteenth-century discourse, which centred upon the hospital as, first and foremost, a bulwark againstinfanticide.

68 Prior Antinori seems to have embraced the ceremonial aspects of his appointment, commissioningnumerous liturgical vestments and furnishings emblazoned with his coat of arms. See AOIF, Serie LXII(Affari di direzione), 54, fols. 388r–399r. While it was typical by the time of Borghini for priors of theInnocenti to commission liturgical garments with their personal arms, Antinori pursued this policy withparticular enthusiasm.

69 1 Corinthians 3: 1–2 (Douay-Rheims translation).



subjects in the foreground of the painting. The representation of the girls asdiligent readers also suggests that the hospital viewed some level of femaleliteracy as an important component of an ideal childrearing regimen. Morecritically, the innocentine are depicted as pious virgins, their chastity stewardedby the paternal authority of both the hospital and the grand duke.70 Outsidethe pictorial space, the girls constituted the primary audience for the fresco,and their alimentary nourishment would have been referenced through theplacement of the fresco on the wall of their refectory.

Building on the representation of Cosimo’s predecessors in the marblebusts installed in the hospital loggia, the ‘Istoria degl’Innocenti’ thus makesvisible the effects of ducal authority through a carefully crafted and multiva-lent composition that collapses the space of the viewer with an idealized visionof the Innocenti as a nurturing refuge. The role of the grand dukes as ‘fathersand benefactors’ of the hospital cultivated by Vincenzo Borghini and codifiedin the loggia decorations is fleshed out in Poccetti’s representation of institu-tional life under the attentive supervision and munificent patronage ofCosimo II. Saved from the peril of infanticide, the picture tells us, the childrenof the Innocenti are able to flourish in the salubrious ambit of the ducalfoundling hospital: their souls made innocent through baptism, their bodiesnourished by breast milk, their minds honed through education, and theirhonour preserved by paternal stewardship.

Rice University

70 On the importance of female chastity to early modern conceptions of paternal honour, see Maria FubiniLeuzzi, Condurre a onore: famiglia, matrimonio e assistenza dotale a Firenze in età moderna (Florence: L. S. Olschki,1999). In January of 1591, Grand Duke Ferdinando I provided the hospital with dowries for 30 ‘innocentine’,to be distributed over a ten-year period: Fubini Leuzzi, ‘Dell’allogare le fanciulle’, 885.
