ACC 557 – Homework 2 Chapters 4, 5, and 6 Due Week 4 and wo.docx

ACC 557 – Homework 2: Chapters 4, 5, and 6
Due Week 4 and worth 105 points
Directions: Answer the following questions on a separate
Microsoft Word or Excel document. Explain how you reached
the answer or show your work if a mathematical calculation is
needed, or both. Submit your assignment using the assignment
link in Blackboard.
Exercises
E4-7. Kay Magill Company had the following adjusted trial
balance.
Instructions
a) Prepare closing entries at June 30, 2015.
b) Prepare a post-closing trial balance.
E4-13. Keenan Company has an inexperienced accountant.
During the ﬁrst 2 weeks on the job, the accountant made the
following errors in journalizing transactions. All entries were
posted as made.
1. A payment on account of $840 to a creditor was debited to
Accounts Payable $480 and credited to Cash $480.
2. The purchase of supplies on account for $560 was debited to
Equipment $56 and credited to Accounts Payable $56.
3. A $500 cash dividend was debited to Salaries and Wages
Expense $500 and credited to Cash $500.
Instructions

Prepare the correcting entries.
E5-4. On June 10, Tuzun Company purchased $8,000 of
merchandise from Epps Company, FOB shipping point, terms
2/10, n/30. Tuzun pays the freight costs of $400 on June 11.
Damaged goods totaling $300 are returned to Epps for credit on
June 12. The fair value of these goods is $70. On June 19,
Tuzun pays Epps Company in full, less the purchase discount.
Both companies use a perpetual inventory system.
Instructions
a) Prepare separate entries for each transaction on the books of
Tuzun Company.
b) Prepare separate entries for each transaction for Epps
Company. The merchandise purchased by Tuzun on June 10 had
cost Epps $4,800.
E5-7. Juan Morales Company had the following account
balances at year-end: Cost of Goods Sold $60,000, Inventory
$15,000, Operating Expenses $29,000, Sales Revenue $115,000,
Sales Discounts $1,200, and Sales Returns and Allowances
$1,700. A physical count of inventory determines that
merchandise inventory on hand is $13,900.
Instructions
a) Prepare the adjusting entry necessary as a result of the
physical count.
b) Prepare closing entries.
E6-1. Tri-State Bank and Trust is considering giving Josef
Company a loan. Before doing so, management decides that
further discussions with Josef’s accountant may be desirable.
One area of particular concern is the inventory account, which
has a year-end balance of $297,000. Discussions with the
accountant reveal the following.

1. Josef sold goods costing $38,000 to Sorci Company, FOB
shipping point, on December 28. The goods are not expected to
arrive at Sorci until January 12. The goods were not included in
the physical inventory because they were not in the warehouse.
2. The physical count of the inventory did not include goods
costing $95,000 that were shipped to Josef FOB destination on
December 27 and were still in transit at year-end.
3. Josef received goods costing $22,000 on January 2. The
goods were shipped FOB shipping point on December 26 by
Solita Co. The goods were not included in the physical count.
4. Josef sold goods costing $35,000 to Natali Co., FOB
destination, on December 30. The goods were received at Natali
on January 8. They were not included in Josef’s physical
inventory.
5. Josef received goods costing $44,000 on January 2 that were
shipped FOB destination on December 29. The shipment was a
rush order that was supposed to arrive December 31. This
purchase was included in the ending inventory of $297,000.
Instructions
Determine the correct inventory amount on December 31.
E6-6. Kaleta Company reports the following for the month of
June.
Instructions
a) Compute the cost of the ending inventory and the cost of
goods sold under (1) FIFO and (2) LIFO.
b) Which costing method gives the higher ending inventory?
Why?
c) Which method results in the higher cost of goods sold? Why?
Problems
P4-3A. The completed ﬁnancial statement columns of the
worksheet for Fleming Company are shown on below.

Instructions
a) Prepare an income statement, a retained earnings statement,
and a classiﬁed balance sheet.
b) Prepare the closing entries.
c) Post the closing entries and underline and balance the
accounts. (Use T-accounts.) Income Summary is account No.
350.
d) Prepare a post-closing trial balance.
P5-2A. Latona Hardware Store completed the following
merchandising transactions in the month of May. At the
beginning of May, the ledger of Latona showed Cash of $5,000
and Common Stock of $5,000.
May 1 Purchased merchandise on account from Gray’s
Wholesale Supply $4,200, terms 2/10, n/30.
2 Sold merchandise on account $2,100, terms 1/10, n/30. The
cost of the merchandise sold was $1,300.
5 Received credit from Gray’s Wholesale Supply for
merchandise returned $300.
9 Received collections in full, less discounts, from customers
billed on sales of $2,100 on May 2.
10 Paid Gray’s Wholesale Supply in full, less discount.
11 Purchased supplies for cash $400.
12 Purchased merchandise for cash $1,400.
15 Received refund for poor quality merchandise from supplier
on cash purchase $150.
17 Purchased merchandise from Amland Distributors $1,300,
FOB shipping point, terms 2/10, n/30.
19 Paid freight on May 17 purchase $130.
24 Sold merchandise for cash $3,200. The merchandise sold had
a cost of $2,000.
25 Purchased merchandise from Horvath, Inc. $620, FOB

destination, terms 2/10, n/30.
27 Paid Amland Distributors in full, less discount.
29 Made refunds to cash customers for defective merchandise
$70. The returned merchandise had a fair value of $30.
31 Sold merchandise on account $1,000 terms n/30. The cost of
the merchandise sold was $560.
Latona Hardware’s chart of accounts includes the following:
No. 101 Cash, No. 112 Accounts Receivable, No. 120
Inventory, No. 126 Supplies, No. 201 Accounts Payable, No.
311 Common Stock, No. 401 Sales Revenue, No. 412 Sales
Returns and Allowances, No. 414 Sales Discounts, and No. 505
Cost of Goods Sold.
Instructions
a) Journalize the transactions using a perpetual inventory
system.
b) Enter the beginning cash and common stock balances and
post the transactions. (Use J1 for the journal reference.)
c) Prepare an income statement through gross proﬁt for the
month of May 2015.
P6-3A. Ziad Company had a beginning inventory on January 1
of 150 units of Product 4-18-15 at a cost of $20 per unit. During
the year, the following purchases were made.
Mar. 15 400 units at $23 Sept. 4 350 units at $26
July 20 250 units at $24 Dec. 2 100 units at $29
1,000 units were sold. Ziad Company uses a periodic inventory
system.
Instructions
a) Determine the cost of goods available for sale.
b) Determine (1) the ending inventory, and (2) the cost of goods
sold under each of the assumed cost ﬂow methods (FIFO, LIFO,

and average-cost). Prove the accuracy of the cost of goods sold
under the FIFO and LIFO methods.
c) Which cost ﬂow method results in (1) the highest inventory
amount for the balance sheet, and (2) the highest cost of goods
sold for the income statement?
© 2015 Strayer University. All Rights Reserved. This document
contains Strayer University Confidential and Proprietary
information and may not be copied, further distributed, or
otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed
written permission of Strayer University.
ACC 557 Homework 2: Chapters 4, 5, and 6 (4-22-2015)Page 1
of 5
Donatello's Bronze "David" and "Judith" as Metaphors of
Medici Rule in Florence
Author(s): Sarah Blake McHam
Source: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 2001), pp. 32-47
Published by: College Art Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177189
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Donatello's Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors
of Medici Rule in Florence
Sarah Blake McHam
For all the individual analyses of Donatello's bronze David
and Judith and Holofernes, these sculptures have rarely been
considered jointly, despite the fact that they were displayed in
coordinated outdoor spaces of the Medici Palace for about
thirty years. I argue here that their iconography was meant to
evoke republican themes, well known to the Florentine elite,

that the Medici aimed to embrace and co-opt.l The associated
meanings of the David and the Judith and Holofernes were
signaled by their related inscriptions. As I shall demonstrate
by reference to Greek and Roman authors, particularly Pliny
the Elder, these two works drew on descriptions of the
Athenian statue group called the Tyrannicides, and on
the writings of the twelfth-century English theologian John
of Salisbury, all well known in fifteenth-century Florence, for
the purpose of creating a visual rhetoric insinuating that the
Medici were defenders of Florentine liberty. These literary
and artistic sources combine with the two sculptures' related
size and material to strengthen the likelihood that the David
and the Judith and Holofernes were intended as pendants.
Together the sculptures conveyed the controversial, self-
serving message that the family's role in Florence was akin to
that of venerable Old Testament tyrant slayers and saviors
of their people, symbolically inverting the growing chorus of
accusations that the Medici had become tyrants who had
sucked all real power out of the city's republican institutions.
The Statues' Setting
Donatello's bronze sculptures of Judith and Holofernes (Fig. 1)
and David (Fig. 2), according to evidence recently uncovered
in contemporary sources, stood respectively in the Medici
Palace garden and courtyard by 1469, possibly even as early as
1464-66.2 They remained in these adjoining locations until
1495, after the Medici were expelled from Florence in the
previous year.3 We know that the palace was constructed for
Cosimo de' Medici, between 1445 and the mid-1450s, but
both sculptures are undocumented commissions.4 They were

installed in the palace within a decade after 1457, the
approximate date when Cosimo, his two sons, and their
families moved into the recently completed residence. The
sculptures' status as two of the earliest freestanding Renais-
sance statues makes the uncertainties of their dates and
patronage particularly tantalizing, because these pieces are
crucial to the reconstruction of the history of Italian Renais-
sance art.5 Nevertheless, their existence in the Medici Palace
courtyard and garden for about thirty years allows them to be
studied jointly in the context of their placement within the
most public spaces of the palace that served as the de facto
seat of Florentine political power. Investigation of the sculp-
tures reveals a prime and largely unexplored example of how
Cosimo and Piero de' Medici contributed to the creation of a
family imagery in the secular context most closely identified
with it, the newly constructed palace on the Via Larga.6
The bronzes were focal points of the two connected open
spaces, the courtyard and garden (Fig. 3). The axial arrange-
ment of the palace's main entrance and courtyard means that
the David, which was raised on a high base at the center of the
courtyard, was visible even from the street when the main
portal of the palace was open.7 Although there is no certainty
about the precise position of the Judith and Holofernes in the
garden,8 since the garden was just behind the courtyard, the
sculpture could have been visible from the courtyard if it was
situated on the garden-courtyard axis. Nevertheless, as the

courtyard was open to palace visitors and the garden to an
invited group, the two statues were readily accessible to the
desired audience.9
The family's suites were grouped around the palace's most
striking innovation all'antica, the first colonnaded courtyard
of the Renaissance, in which the David was positioned
centrally. The courtyard, whose proportions and regular
shape determined the impressive symmetry of the palace's
plan, established a new type of interior formal space that
came to supplant the exterior loggia on the Medici and other
Florentine palaces as the site of formal receptions and family
rituals. Behind it, the walled garden, with arcaded loggias at
its north and south sides, provided a more private outdoor
area, which was sometimes open to guests to the palace and
used in conjunction with the central court when magnificent
occasions, such as the wedding of Lorenzo de' Medici and
Clarice Orsini in 1469, demanded additional space.'0
The Medici family expended considerable attention on the
decorative program for the courtyard and garden. Comple-
menting the classicizing columns in the courtyard were
sgraffito decoration of garlands and shields decorated with the
Medici palle (or balls), as well as a series of roundels above
the arcade of the courtyard. These stone roundels, of uncer-
tain date and attribution, seem like large-scale sculptures
derived from ancient gems and incised precious stones
acquired by the Medici. Perhaps they were intended to
remind the visitor of the family's prestigious collection and
interest in antiquity.11 There were ancient sculptures flanking
the interior portals of the garden, notably, two of Marsyas on

either side of the exit to the Via de' Ginori.12
David as a Tyrant Slayer
The recent discovery of the inscription once on the David
("The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes
the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! A boy overcame a
great tyrant. Conquer, o citizens!")'3 seems to calm the con-
troversy as to whether the sculpture indeed represents the
young giant slayer, at least on a primary level.14 The inscrip-
tion does not, however, narrow the range of dates for the
sculpture, which different historians have placed as early as
about 1428-30 and as late as after 1460.15 Most scholars agree,
however, that the Judith and Holofernes probably dates after
DONATELLO'S DAVID AND JUDITH: METAPHORS OF
MEDICI RULE 33
1 Donatello,Judith and Holofernes, bronze. Florence, Palazzo
Vecchio (photo: Scala/Art Resource, New York)
Donatello's return to Florence from Padua, in 1453. Since the
statue was recorded in the garden of the Medici Palace by
1469, possibly as early as 1464, it was most likely executed in
the late 1450s or early 1460s and commissioned by Cosimo or
Piero de' Medici.16 If the late dating of the David proves
2 Donatello, David, bronze. Florence, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello (photo: Erich Lessing/Art Resource)

34 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2001 VOLUME LXXXIII
NUMBER 1
3 Attributed to Michelozzo, Medici Palace courtyard, Florence,
view toward garden (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
correct, then it could have been commissioned by the Medici
together with the Judith, but at this point there is insufficient
evidence to confirm the theory.
The historical context of the bronze David provides some
necessary background. Although very different in material
and style from Donatello's earlier marble David (Fig. 4), it
repeats the theme of David triumphantly standing with one
foot on Goliath's decapitated head. Because David's identity
as a victorious warrior has become so familiar to us through
such later sculptures as Michelangelo's colossal David, we
overlook that before Donatello's marble sculpture almost
every representation of David interpreted him in other ways,
as a king, prophet, writer of the Psalms, or ancestor of
Christ.17
Documents indicate that in 1416 the marble David was
transferred from the workshop at the cathedral of Florence
and installed in the Palazzo della Signoria before a pattern of
heraldic lilies painted expressly to complement it.18 Its site at
the seat of government against a backdrop of symbolic lilies,
the emblems of Florence's alliance with the Angevin dynasty,
argues that the theme was interpreted in political terms.

Supporting evidence was recently found by Maria Monica
Donato, who discovered two manuscript accounts that de-
scribe the Palazzo della Signoria in the early fifteenth century.
They allude to an inscription, "To those who bravely fight for
the fatherland god will offer victory even against the most
terrible foes."19 The manuscripts validate H. W. Janson's
earlier, unproved speculation that this inscription might have
been added to the sculpture by 1416, and that Donatello then
recut the figure to emphasize a new political role for David as
a defender of Florence by baring his left leg and removing the
scroll formerly used to identify David as a prophet.20
The placement of the bronze David in the courtyard of the
Medici Palace with an inscription of patriotic exhortation
should be seen as a self-conscious allusion to the earlier
marble analogue and its inscription. The marble David was at
the time still standing in the priors' meeting hall in the
Palazzo della Signoria, which made the Medici's identifica-
tion with a symbol of the Florentine Republic all the more
potent. The decision to situate an emblem of Florentine
4 Donatello, David, marble. Florence, Museo Nazionale del
Bargello (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
republican government in their palace could be understood
as a sign that the Medici were closely connected to that regime
and continued its ideals. Nevertheless, at the same time it
represented an unprecedented appropriation by a single
family of a corporate symbol of the state and informed the
cognoscenti that true power resided several hundred meters
north of the Palazzo della Signoria.

Judith as a Tyrant Slayer
David and Judith are partners in meaning, which provides a
rationale for their pairing. Both were Old Testament heroes
and traditionally linked as saviors of the Jewish people in
MEDICI RULE 35
Jewish and Christian imagery (as in an early medieval fresco at
the church of S. Maria Antiqua, Rome, or on Lorenzo
Ghiberti's East Doors for the Baptistery, where the statuette of
Judith is placed in a niche next to the relief of David Killing
Goliath).21 This partially explains their choice for the public
spaces of the Medici Palace, but there were additional reasons
for linking the two.
Unlike David, Judith had not been politically associated
with Florence, but the textual source, the apocryphal Old
Testament Book of Judith, certainly lent itself to a political
interpretation and was written to inspire Jewish patriotism.22
In the medieval period Jewish and Christian writers alike
interpreted Judith as a moral, religious, and political heroine.
In Christian symbolic thought her victory over Holofernes
was elaborated as the triumph of virtue, specified variously as
self-control, chastity, or humility, over the vices of licentious-
ness and pride. In visual representations of Judith and
Holofernes, which are usually found among manuscript
illustrations of cycles of the virtues, she stands powerful over
Holofernes, holding his sword in one hand and his head by

the hair in the other. Associations with these virtues meant
thatJudith even came to be regarded as a type of the Virgin
and of the Church.23
In the bronze by Donatello, the depiction of Judith and
Holofernes continues these traditions. Judith's virtue is indi-
cated by the demure clothing and veil that cover her from
head to toe while Holofernes, in contrast, is almost naked.24
His nudity and drunkenness and the cushion on which he is
propped identify Holofernes as a figure of Lust and Licentious-
ness, whereas Judith represents Chastity.25 The medallion
Holofernes wears, which has swung around to his slumping
bare back, depicts a galloping horse, symbolic of Pride or
Superbia, the vice traditionally defeated by Humility, repre-
sented byJudith.26
Judith's valiant act of decapitating Holofernes is dramati-
cally emphasized by Donatello, who created the first (and
only) representation in monumental sculpture of this mo-
ment. Equally unprecedented is Donatello's narration of the
actual killing. Rather than interpreting the confrontation
betweenJudith and Holofernes in the traditional emblematic
language of Judith standing motionless over the fallen Ho-

lofernes, Donatello for the first time depicted the grisly detail
of Judith's delivering a second blow to Holofernes, the one
that results in his decapitation. The canopy she has ripped
from Holofernes' bed (and later triumphantly presents in the
Temple atJerusalem) is wound through his hair in her hand
and around her upper back and thighs (Figs. 5, 6).27 The
visual effect of these features encourages the spectator to
circle the sculpture in order to appreciate gradually how the
complex intertwining of the protagonists' bodies connotes
their physical intimacy, and finally to confront the psychologi-
cal nuances of Judith's expression of horrifying calm and
steadfast resolve (Fig. 7). Judith raises Holofernes' scimitar
high over her head and is poised to attack again. Vestiges on
the weapon indicate that it was entirely gilded, and so this
dramatic fulcrum of the sculpture must have shone in the
garden sunlight at the statue's pinnacle, emphasizing the
impending movement of Judith's arm.28 To ensure a deadly
5 Donatello,Judith, side view (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
cut, Judith steadies Holofernes' unconscious form by strad-
dling his bare chest, bracing his head against her thigh,
standing on his wrist, and grabbing his hair tightly. She has
already opened a huge gash in his neck, and his head is
collapsed unnaturally on his shoulders.

NUMBER 1
7 Donatello,Judith, detail: head ofJudith (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
( i?! The inscription recorded on the base-"Kingdoms fall
through luxury [sin], cities rise through virtues. Behold the
neck of pride severed by the hand of humility"-underscores
the moral meaning of the decapitation.29 The exhortation to
the viewer to focus on the physical evidence of the truncated
neck is unusual and important (this will be explored later). A
second inscription connects its reference to contemporary
_-
,.
~ z , ~-_ *Florence, "The salvation of the state. Piero de' Medici
son of
Cosimo dedicated this statue of a woman both to liberty and
_:,- _ _or=f ..... ISto fortitude, whereby the citizens with
unvanquished and
constant heart might return to the republic."30 Together they
echo the rallying cry for liberty against the evils of tyrannical
rule carved on the base of the David.
Relationship to the Athenian Tyrannicides
The Judith and Holofernes and the David evoke references to
tyrannicide well known to the Medici and to other members
of the educated elite in Florence through ancient and
contemporary texts. The fifteenth-century audience was famil-
iar with accounts of two celebrated instances of tyrannicide in

"_lis;~*- , -the ancient world: the first, the attempted murder of
Hippias
in Athens, was hailed as establishing democracy in the west;
the second, the assassination of Julius Caesar in Rome, was a
', > .~subject of continuing controversy. Considered a
treacherous
murder by some-for example, Dante31-others, like Boccac-
cio, viewed Caesar's killing by Brutus and Cassius as a
Donatello,Judith, back view (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
legitimate tyrannicide.32 6
.'
-
I "
MEDICI RULE 37
8 Tyrannicide: Harmodios, Roman copy in marble of original
Greek bronze. Naples, Museo Nazionale (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
The antityrannical inscriptions on the base of both sculp-
tures by Donatello suggest a link to these renowned historical
episodes and to the statue that became the most famous
monument to tyrannicide in the West. The Tyrannicides (Figs.
8, 9), the monumental bronze group of Harmodios and

9 Tyrannicide: Aristogeiton, Roman copy in marble of original
Greek bronze. Naples, Museo Nazionale (photo: Alinari/Art
Resource)
Aristogeiton, heroically nude and advancing forward, ready
to strike, was erected at public expense in the Agora to honor
them for overthrowing the tyrannical regime that led to the
establishment of democracy in Athens (despite the fact that
they botched the attempt).33 The pair was given full honors as
heroes, and their statue was considered such a symbol of the
city and its liberty that the Athenians legislated that no other
sculptures could be erected near it in the Agora. When the
Persians conquered Athens in 480-79 B.C.E., they acknowl-
edged the statue's symbolic importance to the city by carrying
it off as a trophy. The Athenians immediately commissioned a
replacement to stand in the Agora, and when the original
Tyrannicides group was recaptured more than a century later
and returned to Athens, it was placed alongside the second
version of the theme in Athens's civic center.34
Only after Athens had been conquered by Rome was an
exception made to the edict honoring the Athenian tyranni-
cides by solitary prominence in the Agora: in 44 B.C.E.
Athenian citizens voted to erect statues of Brutus and Cassius
next to the Tyrannicides, thereby paying tribute to their slaying
of Caesar in the same terms as the commemoration of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton.35 General descriptions of the
sculpture of Harmodios and Aristogeiton survived into the

Renaissance in writings by authors such as Pliny, Pausanias,
and Philostratus. As one or more copies of each of these
NUMBER 1
relevant ancient author's texts were housed in the S. Marco
Library in the fifteenth century, the monument must have
been known to the Medici family.36
Pliny's Natural History, in one of its most detailed accounts
of any single Greek or Roman work of art, provided the fullest
commentary. Pliny called the heroes and their sculpture
symbols of Athenian democracy. He suggested that the
Tyrannicides were among the first recorded examples of
bronze sculpture, thus making them a landmark in the
invention of that artistic form.37 He further recounted how
the brave deeds of Harmodios and Aristogeiton were immor-
talized by an inscription on the sculpture's base. Pliny
specified that their portrait sculpture was installed at public
expense in the Agora so that the feats of the tyrant slayers
might live in the memory of Athenian citizens. He claimed
the precedent started the fashion in many municipalities of
decorating public squares with statues of heroes atop bases
inscribed with their identities. He related the precedent to a
subsequent practice of installing statuary in the private spaces
of residences.38 Pliny embellished the story of the tyranni-
cides with dramatic human interest by recounting the ancil-

lary episode of the harlot Laena, who was tortured to death
rather than reveal the identities of Harmodios and Aristo-
geiton, and of the monument of a tongueless lion erected in
her honor by the grateful Athenian state.39 Ghiberti summa-
rized Pliny's version of the story in his Commentarii, and Leon
Battista Alberti's treatise on architecture repeated all major
features of Pliny's description.40
In its own right, the epigram on the Athenian statue's base
was just as celebrated as the sculptures. Attributed to the
famous poet Simonides, it extolled the tyrannicides and their
liberation of Athens with the words, "A marvelous great light
shone upon Athens when Aristogeiton and Harmodios slew
Hipparchus."41 Several drinking songs (scholia) derived from
the inscription remained popular for centuries and were used
to encourage patriotic emulation of the heroism of the tyran-
nicides.42 The poetic inscriptions on the bases of the sculp-
tures by Donatello, which distinguish the figures as exempla
by invoking spectators' attention to their feats, may be
inspired by that precedent.43
The statue group was widely copied in later Greek and
Roman art; often, as in the case of the Brutus and Cassius
statues mentioned above, imitations of the Tyrannicides were
motivated by the goal of rallying patriotism in response to
some threat to political freedom.44 There are a number of
extant monumental variants, and renditions proliferated in
copies and in versions on coins and vases and in relief
sculpture. Characteristic aspects of the figures' gestures and
poses were transferred to other heroes, such as Theseus, as a

sign of their identification with the political import of the
Tyrannicides.45
The installation of the David and the Judith in the courtyard
and garden of the Medici Palace recalls Pliny's allusion to the
fashion of erecting sculptures in private residences that
derived from the fame of the Tyrannicides. The sequence of
these spaces in the palace suggests the atrium and peristyle of
Roman houses, basic features of domestic architecture empha-
sized by the Roman writer Vitruvius.46 In his treatise on
architecture completed by 1452, Alberti elaborated on Vitru-
vius's description and connected these spaces to the sort of
public civic area where the Tyrannicides had been installed:
... the principal member of the whole building is that
which I shall call the courtyard with its portico, to which all
the other members must correspond, as being in a manner
a public marketplace to the whole house.... (5.17)47
Places of public reception in houses ought to be like
squares and other open spaces in cities ... in the center
and most public place where all the other members may
readily meet. (5.2)48
The incriptions of the Judith and Holofernes were later effaced
and then recarved with pointed reference to the reinstated
republic when it was transferred from the Medici Palace to
the ringhiera, or rostrum once attached to the west side of the
Palazzo della Signoria. This history suggests the intensity of
the statue's political associations and may reflect awareness

of how the original Tyrannicides were carted off as spoils by
the
victorious Persians to be reinstalled as a symbol of triumph in
the public space of their capital.49
The sculptures in the Medici Palace repeat features of the
Athenian sculpture reflected in works of art and described in
the literary sources. Like it, they represent tyrannicide through
the medium of large-scale bronze sculpture of figures in
dramatic action. The correspondences between the David, a
bronze freestanding nude in the tradition of Greek heroic
statues, situated in the courtyard of the Medici Palace, the
analogous space in private residences to the public square of
cities, reinforce the association. Judith's gestures of raising
the sword over her head with one arm while thrusting forward
her other, drapery-covered arm to grab the hair of her victim
conflate the poses of the Athenians' arms as had the gestures
of earlier heroes like Theseus and may reflect a limited
knowledge of the Tyrannicides's actual physical appearance,
pieced together from literary references and imitations of the
group in the visual arts, or else fortuitously inspired by their
laconic evidence into a partial resemblance.
Historical Influence of John of Salisbury's Policraticus
Another equally famous precedent regarding tyrannicide
apparently influenced the fifteenth-century sculptures. Dona-
tello's unprecedented emphasis on the physical acts of mur-
der and decapitation seems to reflect the contemporary
impact ofJohn of Salisbury's Policraticus. The Policraticus was
a
treatise about government written in the twelfth century by an

English theologian who became bishop of Chartres. It stood
at the center of impassioned debate throughout Europe three
hundred years later because it provided the most notable
theoretical justification for the legitimacy of tyrannicide
written by a Christian authority.50 The Policraticus had long
enjoyed a special status as the earliest elaborate medieval
exposition of political theory. Since it was based extensively
on the Bible and patristic literature, the Policraticus was
construed to represent the viewpoint of the Church. The
treatise played a prominent role throughout the late Middle
Ages and Renaissance in the popular genre of literature
known as the "Mirror of Princes," that is, treatises written to
instruct rulers.51John of Salisbury's theories about the nature
MEDICI RULE 39
of the state directly engaged issues of political legitimacy and
made the Policraticus influential on legal theory, philosophy,
and political thought.52 For more than a century the treatise
was considered the most authoritative work on government
throughout Europe; it yielded its unchallenged supremacy to
Thomas Aquinas, who drew extensively onJohn of Salisbury's
theories and increased their circulation.53 After the mid-
thirteenth century, the constitutional and political problems
of legitimacy grew ever more urgent as new governmental
units coalesced, and more attention focused on the Policrati-
cus. Its influence was so significant in Italian legal and
political circles that a fourteenth-century Bolognese jurist

wrote a reference index to its contents.54
The Policraticus became widely known as its many moraliz-
ing stories proved a popular source for the teaching exempla
cited by friars in their sermons. Finally, because the treatise
drew extensively on ancient authors, interest in it was further
stimulated by the incorporation of pagan classical literature
into the curriculum of universities.55 In some circles the
authority of the Policraticus was further enhanced by the
misconception that the title represented the author's name
and he was Greek.56 An excerpt, which John of Salisbury
called the "Institutio Traiani" and claimed was written by
Plutarch, was widely diffused independently. Regarded as a
major ancient source on tyranny and tyrannicide, it was the
only text attributed to Plutarch known and taught during the
fourteenth and much of the fifteenth century.57
John of Salisbury's discussions of tyranny and tyrannicide
had enduring popularity in Italy for additional reasons. He
provided information and a theoretical context with which to
assess the rulers of ancient Greece and Rome, making his
work important to authors like Petrarch and Boccaccio.
Petrarch's De remediis utriusque fortunae contains several dia-
logues on the nature of tyranny.58 In the De casibus virorum
illustrium, published in 1371, Boccaccio devoted several chap-
ters to tyrants in the ancient world.
But John's commentary had more specific implications in

Florence, one of the few Italian cities that remained a
republic by the end of the fourteenth century, after most
other Italian communes had evolved into semimonarchical or
even tyrannical governments. Florentine claims for the city's
foundation during the Roman Republic and other associa-
tions to that venerable precedent were mainstays of civic pride
and propaganda. This made the assassination of Caesar and
arguments about whether tyrannicide was justified topics of
particular significance.
The Policraticus proposed the legitimacy of tyrannicide in a
series of explicit arguments unparalleled in Western thought,59
with a key book of the treatise headed "That by the authority
of the divine book it is lawful and glorious to kill public
tyrants, so long as the murderer is not obligated to the tyrant
by fealty...."60 When the Florentine chancellor Coluccio
Salutati wrote a treatise called De tyranno in 1400, he naturally
drew on the Policraticus. Salutati's text is the first by a major
Italian political figure to focus on tyrannical government and
the legitimacy of tyrannicide. His objective in writing it was to
defend the reputation of Dante, who, rather than according
immortality to Cassius and Brutus as tyrannicides, had deemed
them murderers and relegated them to the lowest circles of
the Inferno.61 Unlike John of Salisbury, who had considered
Caesar a tyrant, Salutati argued that Caesar was a benevolent
despot. Therefore, according to Salutati, Caesar's assassina-
tion was not a legitimate tyrannicide, and Dante was right to
put Cassius and Brutus in Hell.62
Not surprisingly, the numerous assassinations of contempo-

rary political leaders in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century
Europe and the tenuous hold on power of many more kept
attention focused on the Policraticus's justifications of tyranni-
cide. In 1407 the murder of Louis, duke of Orleans, brother
of Charles VI, king of France, by John the Fearless, duke of
Burgundy, thrustJohn of Salisbury's theories again into the
spotlight. In a move that galvanized all of Europe, the duke of
Burgundy denied that he had committed any crime, thereby
skirting the obvious charge that the killing enhanced his own
chance of succeeding to the throne of France. He contended
that, as a loyal servant of the crown, he had been honor-
bound to rid the country of a detestable tyrant who had
perverted French royal institutions. His stance had grave
theoretical consequences for rulers anywhere in Europe and
direct ramifications not only for France and Burgundy but
also for England and Italy. Henry V of England soon thereaf-
ter married Catherine, the daughter of the French king, and
the duke of Orleans left as his widow Valentina Visconti, the
daughter of the duke of Milan.
To argue his case, the duke of Burgundy hired Jean Petit, a
distinguished theologian at the University of Paris, who
argued on the duke's behalf that the murder of a tyrant was
the praiseworthy obligation of a good Christian citizen. To
buttress his stance that the Church sanctioned such assassina-
tions, Petit drew on Thomas Aquinas and other theologians,
but the defense rested onJohn of Salisbury's explicit theories

about the legitimacy of tyrannicide. Petit presented the
position in a series of tracts entitled Justificatio Ducis Burgun-
diae.63
The outraged son of the assassinated duke of Orl6ans
demanded that their validity be judged by a Council of the
Faith, attended by doctors and masters of the University of
Paris. This distinguished group vehemently debated the issues
throughout 1413 and 1414. The eminent theologian Jean
Gerson represented the duke of Orl&ans's position that his
father had been unjustly murdered.64 In 1414, the synod
condemned the ideas of Jean Petit and required that all
copies of the Justificatio be burned.65 Nevertheless, at the
Burgundian court it was preserved as a precious document,
recopied, and over the course of the century incorporated
into the manuscript and ultimately the printed histories of
Burgundy and of France.66
In response to the synod's decision, the duke of Burgundy
brought his case before John XXIII, the claimant to the papacy
not supported by the king of France. John first assigned a
committee of Italian cardinals to make a ruling; he named
them because of their experience, as Italians, with political
assassinations.67 John XXIII subsequently decided that the
matter should be put before the full-scale church council at
Constance. There it was debated at great length, with Gerson
again representing the position of the family of Louis of
Orleans.68 Nevertheless, the Council of Constance broke up

in 1418 without ruling against the duke of Burgundy.69
Burgundian partisans immediately retook control of the
NUMBER 1
royal government in Paris. Soon thereafter the University of
Paris published a long letter excusing itself for the Council
of the Faith's decision, on the basis that hardly any impressive
masters of theology remained in Paris during its tenure. Royal
letters were composed specifically disavowing the work of
Gerson. The assassination of the duke of Burgundy in 1419
made his culpability a moot point but intensified the contro-
versy about the succession of power in France and Burgundy,
as well as the theoretical basis of legitimate government and
citizens' rights to take action against unlawful rulers.
Practical repercussions continued to be felt in Italy. Charles
of Orleans, the son ofValentina Visconti and the assassinated
duke, laid claim to various territories in northwestern Italy,
including the duchy of Milan. Charles died in 1465, but the
title of the house of Orleans to Milan did not. The French
invasion of Italy at the end of the fifteenth century was
mounted to enforce it. During the fifteenth century, other
attempts to overthrow existing Italian governments sprang
from native soil. The most significant occurred in Rome,
Milan, and Florence; one plot achieved its goal of killing a
head of state.70 In 1476 the Olgiati Conspiracy in Milan
resulted in the murder of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza.71Just a

couple of years later the Pazzi Conspiracy in Florence suc-
ceeded in the assassination of Giovanni de' Medici, although
his brother, Lorenzo, the head of state, escaped. Unlike their
Milanese counterparts, the Pazzi conspirators did not justify
their deeds by rhetorical allusions to legitimate tyrannicide,
but other Florentines did so for them. In 1478-79, Alamanno
Rinuccini wrote the treatise "De libertate," in which he
likened the Pazzi conspirators to the heroic teams of Harmo-
dios and Aristogeiton, Cassius and Brutus, and the Milanese
conspirators.72
More than recurrent political crises, killings, and problems
of succession kept alive the themes with which John of
Salisbury had grappled. Riccardo Fubini has pointed out that
the theological and political interpretation of a state's legiti-
mate authority-the fundamental question left unresolved at
Paris and Constance-festered in Florentine fifteenth-
century political thought and led to successive crises such as
the rebellion against Piero de' Medici in 1466 and the Pazzi
Conspiracy. As he noted, the editorial debates leading to a
new Latin edition of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics in 1463
demonstrate the continuing importance of the controversy.73
The Sculptures in Relation to the Policraticus
Let us now return to the focus of this essay and examine how
the two sculptures by Donatello relate to John of Salisbury's
discussions of the state and tyrannicide. To begin with the
obvious: they both depict tyrannicides. Judith's killing of
Holofernes is made unprecedentedly dramatic. In addition to
being the first monumental depiction of the episode, it is
rendered as a freestanding sculpture whose physical tangibil-

ity heightens the explicit horror of the freeze-frame rendition
of a murder in progress. That the tyrannicides are legitimate
and morallyjustified is underscored by the inscriptions on the
David and the Judith.
The graphic aspect ofJudith's pause between two blows as
she decapitates Holofernes and the inscription's focus on the
severed head relate to the peculiarly precise anatomical
characterization that is John of Salisbury's original contribu-
tion to the long-standing analogy between the body and the
state. He made clear that the prince is the state's head, and
that it ineluctably followed that the tyrant, or prince who
misruled, must be killed so that the head is severed from the
body.74 Although he credited Plutarch's "Institutio Traiani"
as his authority, John of Salisbury seems to have invented the
details of the metaphor himself.75
John contended that tyrannicide was a duty if it set people
free for the service of God.76 In support of his position, he
cited various examples of the oppression of the Jews in the
Old Testament and their deliverance by the slayers of these
tyrants; by far the most important savior wasJudith, who killed
the general of an army threatening her people.77 In the same
chapter,John extolled David as a counter example. According
to John's philosophy of fealty, David was bound by oath as a
subject Saul, and so unlike Judith, who owed no allegiance to
Holofernes, David could not rightfully murder Saul, even
though he was a tyrant. John argued that David's patient,

passive resistance and decision to leave Saul's fate to God
represented the moral course of action in such cases.78
Nevertheless, John realized that not all tyrants could be
peaceably overcome and offered specific advice about depos-
ing them by force. According toJohn, the most expedient way
to destroy tyrants was to beseech God's retribution, but he
explicitly sanctioned human dissimulation and treachery
when they served the cause.79 In this regard, his most
prominent case was again that of Judith, whose beauty and
charms were enhanced by God,John tells us, so that she could
entice Holofernes into a drunken stupor and kill him:
Let me prove by another story that it is just for public
tyrants to be killed and the people thus set free for the
service of God. This story shows that even priests of God
repute the killing of tyrants as a pious act, and if it appears
to wear the semblance of treachery, they say it is conse-
crated to the Lord by a holy mystery. Thus Holofernes fell a
victim not to the valor of the enemy but to his own vices by
means of a sword in the hands of a woman; and he who had
been terrible to strong men was vanquished by luxury and
drink, and slain by a woman. Nor would the woman have
gained access to the tyrant had she not piously dissimu-
lated her hostile intention for that is not treachery which
serves the cause of the faith.... For this is shown by her
words ... "Bring to pass, Lord," she prayed, "that by his
own sword his pride may be cut off, and that he may be

caught in the net of his own eyes turned upon me....
Grant to me constancy of soul that I may despise him, and
fortitude that I may destroy him. For it will be a glorious
monument of Thy name when the hand of a woman strike
him down." . . . she who had not come to wanton, used a
borrowed wantonness as the instrument of her devotion
and courage.80
Donatello's bronze representsJudith as chaste and humble,
although the sensuous implications of her encounter with
Holofernes and the ways in which she guilefully ensnared him
are amply suggested by their intimate physical positioning:
she stands on his wrist and straddles his chest.81
The topicality of John's treatise helps to explain the
commission for the first monumental, three-dimensional
MEDICI RULE 41
statue of the story of Judith and Holofernes. The brutal
decapitation reflects his citation of Holofernes' murder as the
prime example of justified killing of an overlord who dis-
obeyed God's laws. John singled out the sword as the suitable
agent of retribution against a ruler who unlawfully used it
against his people: "For whosoever takes up the sword
deserves to perish by the sword."82 The unprecedented
portrayal of a decapitation in progress is the physical embodi-

ment ofJohn's theory about the actual separation of the head
from the body politic, that is, the severing of the tyrant from
his state in a whollyjustifiable murder.83 Even though David's
killing of Goliath was not cited as an example of tyrannicide in
the Policraticus, Donatello's depiction of the boy standing
victorious, sword in hand, over the decapitated head of
Goliath easily relates toJohn's ideas. Like Holofernes, Goliath
was the major warrior of an army menacing the Jews.
Holofernes' killing by a woman and Goliath's death at the
hands of a boy could only have been accomplished with God's
help. Despite the fact that David killed Goliath with a stone,
the sword, the meansJohn recommended to slay a tyrant, and
Goliath's severed head are emphasized. The inscription
originally on the statue's base and the statue's inevitable
association with the nearby Judith and Holofernes reinforced
the appropriateness of interpreting the killing of Goliath as
another illustration ofjustified tyrannicide.
The David and the Judith and Holofernes, sculptural center-
pieces of the two most public spaces in the Medici Palace, thus
seem to have been coordinated in a program that was
calculated to advertise to invited guests that Cosimo and his
family were protectors of liberty-in a period when that was
very much in question and in need of corroboration. Their
control of Florence was sufficiently threatened that in 1458
Cosimo secretly consulted with Duke Francesco Sforza of
Milan about sending troops to Florence should conspiring
against the regime explode into fighting. Cosimo next master-
minded a series of changes that weakened traditional republi-
can governmental structures. These were confirmed by a
sham parlamento, in which the intimidated citizenry sur-

rounded by armed soldiers voted to consolidate the family's
hold on power. Cosimo and then Piero ruled for the next
eight years, taking harsh measures to suppress any opposition.
In this period they had a great need to deflect charges of
tyranny from themselves. Donatello's statues conveyed that
message powerfully by suggesting instead that the Medici
family should be seen in the flattering light of celebrators,
even preservers, of Florentine liberty against any threat, a
self-serving political strategy that many Florentines would
have considered outrageous.84
Related Aspects of the Courtyard's Decoration
This reading of the statues is reinforced by their thematic and
formal links to the other aspects of the decoration of the
garden and the courtyard. Two ancient statues of Marsyas,
restored in the fifteenth century, flanked the doors leading
from the garden into the Via de' Ginori. One, now lost,
represented a seated Marsyas prior to his torture.85 The other,
depicting the torture of Marsyas, is presently in the Uffizi (Fig.
10). Recently Francesco Caglioti convincingly reattributed its
restoration to Mino da Fiesole.86 He also argued that these
two statues were included in the garden because the theme of
10 Marsyas, Roman sculpture with restorations attributed to
Mino da Fiesole, marble. Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi (photo:
Alinari)
Marsyas could be understood as representing liberty. In
support of that argument, he cited an unpublished commen-

tary by Giovanni Nesi on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which
NUMBER 1
11 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Centaur, stone. Medici
13 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Triumph ofBacchus,
Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource) stone. Medici
Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
12 Attributed to Donatello, roundel of Daedalus and Icarus,
stone. Medici Palace courtyard (photo: Alinari/Art Resource)
Nesi directed to the young Piero de' Medici, the son of
Lorenzo.87
The roundels of the courtyard's upper walls, which may
have been designed by Donatello, further develop the mean-
ing of the program.88 One depicts centaurs (Fig. 11), cited by
Dante as incapable of successfully governing because of their
supposed fault of pride.89 They therefore connect to the
statues' allusions to prideful tyrants overcome by virtuous
deliverers who restore liberty to their people. Another roun-
del represents Daedalus and Icarus (Fig. 12). The proud
Icarus is posed nude atop a high pedestal, recalling promi-
nent features of the statue of David below. According to
Francis Ames-Lewis, this similarity also establishes a link
between the interpretation of the David and the roundel. He
sees them together representing the results of contemplation
of truth in a Neoplatonic sense, as the soul rises from the

terrestrial state to the divine state personified by Icarus.90 In
this light, the statue and roundel together could be seen as
validating the "truth" of the cycle. A third roundel, often
considered to represent the Triumph of Eros, depicts a scene
very close to that on Goliath's helmet, relating the roundel to
the statue by Donatello (Fig. 13). Both the helmet decoration
and the roundel have been identified in this way because of
their compositional connections with a sardonyx cameo
traceable in the fifteenth century to the collections of Pietro
Barbo, and now in Naples.91 However, art historians had not
taken into account that the gem was also identified as a
Triumph of Bacchus, an interpretation applied by Patricia
Ann Leach to the roundel and helmet decoration both.92 She
argued that in this context the triumph suggested not only a
Christian meaning of salvation but also a political sense of
liberty, because of Boccaccio's description of how Bacchus or
Liber brought liberty (libertas) to mankind.93 Wendy Stedman
Sheard extended this line of interpretation by noting that
Bacchus can be considered a god of military triumph and as
such personifies the connection of peace and prosperity with
the reign of a legitimate ruler, in this case the Medici.94
Artistic Patronage Converted to Political Power
The interpretation of the statues and courtyard decoration
accords with the claims of humanists seeking Cosimo's favor,
such as the Sienese Francesco Patrizi. In his "Ad Cosimum
Medicem virum excellentissimum," written about 1434, Pa-

MEDICI RULE 43
trizi flattered Cosimo as a new Brutus for his symbolic slaying
of the tyrant Rinaldo degli Albizzi, or Caesar:
Like Brutus, he, fearing for the Roman flower
of Freedom, struck, and broke the tyrant's power.95
Not many humanists adopted this rhetoric. But it served the
Medici well to create an imagery that advertised the family's
stance as defenders of Florence. The prominent precedent of
Donatello's marble David in the Palazzo della Signoria en-
sured that the bronze David would have been immediately
associated with the cause of Florentine liberty and the defeat
of enemies of the state. By erecting Donatello's bronze David
in the public space of their palace's courtyard and inscribing
its base with an antityrannical message, the Medici were
usurping this symbol of the republic and inverting its mean-
ing-making themselves, not the republic, tyrant slayers like
David. AlthoughJudith was a new symbol to Florence,John of
Salisbury's citation of her as a paradigmatic tyrannicide made
the Old Testament heroine a second exemplar. The bronze
sculpture's unprecedented stress on Judith's encounter with
Holofernes as a dramatic narrative of murder and decapita-
tion derives from John's famous metaphor of the tyrannical
prince as the head of the body politic who must be sundered
from it by decapitation.
The multiple connections among the Donatello sculptures,
John of Salisbury's Policraticus, and the famed ancient statues
of the Tyrannicides reveal another way in which Cosimo and

Piero created their family imagery, knowledgeably converting
to their own aggrandizement venerable historical precedents
in addressing a simmering contemporary controversy. By so
doing, the Medici manipulated republican imagery to estab-
lish the family's political propaganda, here subverting the
charge of tyranny often leveled against them to their own
purpose.96 The message was subtle and coexisted with more
obvious and conventional interpretations of David andJudith
as Old Testament heroes honored by Christian tradition.
Scholars have demonstrated many examples of how the
Medici employed a strategy of commissioning works of art
that veiled their political thrust in a context of acceptable
religious and moral themes. The program discussed here
provides another instance of the family's carefully calculated
and sophisticated use of artistic patronage to further its goal
of maintaining power in Florence.97
Sarah Blake McHam, professor of art history, Rutgers
University,
edited Looking at Italian Renaissance Sculpture and contributed
an essay on public sculpture to the volume. She is also the
author of
The Chapel of St. Anthony at the Santo and the Development
of Venetian Renaissance Sculpture [Department of Art History,
Voorhees Hall, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, N.J.
08901-
1248, mcham @rci.rutgers.edu].
Frequently Cited Sources
Ames-Lewis, Francis, 1989, "Donatello's Bronze David and the

Palazzo Medici
Courtyard," Renaissance Studies 3, no. 3: 235-51.
, ed., 1992, Cosimo "il Vecchio"de'Medici 1389-1464 (Oxford:
Clarendon
Press).
Coville, Alfred, Jean Petit: La question du tyrannicide au
commencement du xve siecle
(Paris: Auguste Picard, 1932).
Hyman, Isabelle, Fifteenth Century Florentine Studies: The
Palazzo Medici and a
Ledgerfor the Church of San Lorenzo (New York: Garland,
1977).
Janson, H. W., The Sculpture of Donatello, 2d ed. (Princeton:
Princeton
University Press, 1979).
The Statesman's Book of John of Salisbury, Being the Fourth,
Fifth, and Sixth Books,
and Selections from the Seventh and Eighth Books of the
Policraticus, trans. and ed.
John Dickinson (NewYork: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927).
Ullman, Berthold Louis, and Philip A. Stadter, The Public
Library of Renaissance
Florence: Niccoli Niccoli, Cosimo de' Medici and the Library of
San Marco,
Medievo e umanesimo, vol. 10 (Padua: Antenore, 1972).
Notes

Some of this research was first presented at the Wesleyan
Renaissance Seminar
in December 1994 and later revised in a paper given at the
annual meeting of
the Renaissance Society of America in Bloomington, Indiana, in
1996. I would
like to thank the participants at both for their comments. I want
to
acknowledge especially the assistance of Professor Susan
McKillop, who first
brought to my attention John of Salisbury's reference to Judith
in the
Policraticus and for encouraging my research. I would also like
to thank
Professors Roger Crum, Tod Marder,John Paoletti, and Debra
Pincus for their
many helpful comments about earlier drafts of this essay, and
Professors
Jocelyn Penny Small and John Kenfield for their bibliographic
assistance.
Unless otherwise noted, translations are mine.
1. This interpretation was first advanced by Bonnie A. Bennett
and David G.
Wilkins, Donatello (Oxford: Phaidon, 1984), 85. Roger Crum,
"Retrospection
and Response: The Medici Palace in the Service of the Medici,
c. 1420-1469,"
Ph.D. diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1992, considered the
sculptures and
paintings at the palace together, arguing that they should be
seen as
celebrations of the victory of humility over pride and of
concord over discord.
Crum argued more specifically that the David served to connect

the Medici to
a general message of liberty and antityranny in an article that he
brought to my
attention after reading an earlier draft of this essay; see his
"Donatello's
Bronze David and the Question of Foreign vs. Domestic
Tyranny," Renaissance
Studies 10, no. 4 (Dec. 1996): 440-50. I thank him for his
comments and the
citation. I believe that the David and the Judith share this
meaning and suggest
in this essay literary and artistic sources that support the
argument.
2. Christine M. Sperling, "Donatello's Bronze 'David' and the
Demands of
Medici Politics," Burlington Magazine 134 (1992): 218-24,
published a manu-
script she discovered in the Biblioteca Riccardiana, Florence,
which records an
inscription for the David as well as for the Judith and
Holofernes and specifies
that the Judith and Holofernes was located in the garden of the
palace. Sperling
argued that the manuscript could be dated between 1466 and
1469, and thus
offered the earliest terminus ante quem for the installation of
the Judith and
Holofernes there. Sperling is the first scholar to analyze these
points in relation
to Donatello's sculptures. However, she was unaware that Paul
Oskar Kristeller,
IterItalicum, 2d ed. (London: Warburg Institute, 1967), 115, had
earlier noted
the citation in another manuscript in the Biblioteca Corsini,
Rome, and that

Cecil Grayson, "Poesie latine di Gentile Becchi in un codice
bodleiano," in
Studi offerti a Roberto Ridolfi, ed. Berta Maracchi Biagiarelli
and Dennis E.
Rhodes (Florence: L. S. Olschki, 1973), 285-303, had published
still another
version of it that is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Grayson's
demonstration
that the manuscript was written by Gentile Becchi negates
Sperling's attempt
to argue that Filelfo was its author and, on that basis, date the
David ca. 1430.
Her other arguments, that the sculpture was commissioned in
response to the
Milanese threat to Florence at that time and that it relates in
style to other
sculptures by Donatello in the late 1420s and early 1430s, are
taken from H. W.
Janson, "La signification politique du David en bronze de
Donatello," Revue de
l'Art 39 (1978): 33-38, and are inconclusive. Crum, 1996 (as in
n. 1), makes a
more convincing case that, rather than alluding to a single threat
of tyrannical
aggression, the Medici disingenuously intended the David to
suggest their
defense of Florence from all danger of foreign or domestic
tyranny, despite
the reality that many considered their own rule tyrannical.
Following Sperling's article, Francesco Caglioti, "Donatello, i
Medici e
Gentile de' Becchi: Un po' d'ordine intorno alla 'Giuditta' (e al
'David') di Via
Larga," pt. 1, Prospettiva 75-76 (July-Oct. 1994): 14-22,
published several

more versions of the 15th-century manuscript citation of the
inscriptions on
the David and on the Judith. As Caglioti noted, a date as early
as 1464 is
suggested by the context in which the record is found, a letter
of condolence
on Cosimo de' Medici's death (1464) written to his son Piero on
Aug. 5, 1464. I
thank Professor Caglioti for sending me a copy of this article
and its sequels.
3. Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516, ed.
Iodoco Del Badia
(Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1883), 121.
4. On the palace's architecture, see Hyman; and Brenda Preyer,
"L'architettura del Palazzo Medici," in II Palazzo Medici-
Riccardi di Firenze, ed.
Giovanni Cherubini and Giovanni Fanelli (Florence: Giunti,
1990), 58-75.
NUMBER 1
5. Other noteworthy features include the total nudity of the
David, the
conception of the Judith and Holofernes as a group in dramatic
action, and the
installation of life-size statues in a residential setting. To my
knowledge, they
are the first Renaissance examples of these phenomena.
Caglioti (as in n. 2), 19-49, made the most recent contribution
to the

controversy about the date and patron of the Judith and
Holofernes. He argued
that Donatello began the commission for Cosimo by 1457, put it
aside during
his sojourn in Siena (1457-61), and then completed the
sculpture after his
return to Florence and before his death in 1466. Previous
historians divided
into two camps about the commission, some followingJanson,
202-5, who, on
the basis of Milanesi's reading of an elliptical reference
regarding the
purchase of bronze in Siena for Donatello in a document of
1457 (Siena,
Archivio dell'Opera Metropolitana), contended that Donatello
began the
Judith and Holofernes as a civic commission for that city and
then completed it
for the Medici. Others, led by Volker Herzner, who
retranscribed the
document and read it differently, argued that it alluded to
another commis-
sion entirely, namely, a reliquary bust of Saint Giuletta
("Donatello in Siena,"
Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15
[1971]: 178-85; and
"Die 'Judith' der Medici," ZeitschriftfirKunstgeschichte43
[1980]: 159-63), and
that the Judith and Holofernes commission had nothing to do
with Siena, but was
instead a Medici commission.
6. See Crum, 1992 (as in n. 1), for a comprehensive analysis of
the palace.
The frescoes by Benozzo Gozzoli in the Medici Palace Chapel
have received

much attention in regard to their political meaning; see the
recent discussion
and bibliography in Rab Hatfield, "Cosimo de' Medici and His
Chapel," in
Ames-Lewis, 1992, 221-44; Diane Cole Ahl, Benozzo Gozzoli
(New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1996), 81-119, 219-20; and Roger Crum,
"Roberto Martelli,
the Council of Florence, and the Medici Palace Chapel,"
Zeitschrift fur
Kunstgeschichte 59 (1996): 403-17.
7. The David stood at the center of the courtyard, which is on
axis with the
main portal of the palace and visible from the street. Its original
base by
Desiderio da Settignano has been lost, but it was described by
Giorgio Vasari.
Speculation has centered on its appearance and height, and how
these
affected spectators' view of the David from ground level in the
courtyard and
from the windows of the piano nobile of the palace. On these
issues, see
Ames-Lewis, 1989, 235-51, who first presented a reconstruction
of the base;
and Francesco Caglioti, "Donatello, i Medici e Gentile de'
Becchi .... ," pt. 3,
Prospettiva 80 (Oct. 1995): 15-58, where a more convincing
reconstruction is
offered.
8. Ames-Lewis, 1989, 240-41, first analyzed the uncertainties
surrounding
the original placement of the statue in the garden. Previously,
scholars had

assumed that it was located on axis with the David in the
courtyard; see Hyman,
195. Recently, Francesco Caglioti, "Donatello, i Medici e
Gentile de' Bec-
chi....," pt. 2, Prospettiva 78 (Apr. 1995): 22-55, expanded
Ames-Lewis's
arguments, contending that the Judith and Holofernes was
located at the north
end of the garden.
Caglioti also challenged the long-standing interpretation that
the Judith and
Holofernes functioned as a fountain in the Medici garden. He
argued that the
base of the statue, which had been considered a replacement
when the group
was transferred to the Palazzo della Signoria, had been its base
in the garden
of the Medici Palace. In addition, he contended that the location
of the Judith
and Holofernes in that garden was not on axis with the David
but instead at the
north end of the garden and that a fountain without statuary
stood on the site
on axis with the David that historians had traditionally assigned
to the Judith
and Holofernes. See his diagram, 31.
The recent restoration of the Judith and Holofernes revealed
that the
supposed waterspouts in the center of each relief of the three-
sided base had
never been opened, and confirmed the observation occasionally
made earlier
that the openings at the corners of the cushion on which
Holofernes is

propped could have been plugged with now-lost bronze tassels,
rather than
serving as waterspouts; see Antonio Natali, "Exemplum
salutatis publicae," in
Donatello e il restauro della Giuditta, ed. Loretta Dolcini
(Florence: Centro Di,
1988), 27.
9. On Cosimo's quasiofficial use of his palace as the site of
government
consultations, see Nicolai Rubinstein, "Cosimo optimus cives,"
in Ames-Lewis,
1992, 13, where the acerbic remarks of Giovanni Cavalcanti's
Istoriefiorentine,
ed. Guido di Pino (Milan: A. Martello, 1944), 20, are quoted:
"... the
governing of the city took place more at dinners and in private
studies than at
the town hall." The Terze rime, a panegyric written ca. 1459,
recounted how
Cosimo and Piero often entertained visitors at the palace; see
Rab Hatfield,
"Some Unknown Descriptions of the Medici Palace in 1459,"
Art Bulletin 52
(1970): 240, where fol. 26v is discussed.
10. On the wedding, see Hyman, 167. It was also available to
receive guests
after dinners, as for example when Galeazzo Maria Sforza
visited in 1459,
described in the Terze rime, 41v, in Hatfield (as in n. 9), 236;
and in a letter in
idem (as in n. 6), 227.
11. On these stone roundels, see Ursula Wester and Erika
Simon, "Die

Reliefmedallions im Hofe des Palazzo Medici zu Florenz,"
Jahrbuch der Berliner
Museen 7 (1965): 15-91; on their relation to gems in the Medici
collections, see
Gennaro Pesce, "Gemme medicee del Museo Nazionale di
Napoli," Rivista del
Reale Istituto d 'Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte 5 (1935-36): 50-
97.
12. On the two sculptures of Marsyas, see Francesco Caglioti,
"Due 'restaura-
tori' per le antichita dei primi Medici: Mino da Fiesole, Andrea
del Verrocchio
e il 'Marsia Rosso' degli Uffizi," pt. 1, Prospettiva 72 (Oct.
1993): 17-42, and pt.
2, 73-74 (Jan.-Apr. 1994): 74-96.
13. "Victor est quisquis patriam tuetur. / Frangit immanis Deus
hostis iras. /
En puer grandem domuit tiramnum. / Vincite, cives!" For
variant spellings,
see Caglioti (as in n. 2), 39 nn. 30, 31. Sperling (as in n. 2)
discovered the
inscription connected to the David recorded in a 15th-century
manuscript and
introduced it into the art historical literature.
14. Alessandro Parronchi, "Mercurio e non David," in Donatello
e il potere
(Bologna: Cappelli; Florence: Il Portolano, 1980), 101-15, first
suggested the
reidentification of the statue as Mercury, andJohn Pope-
Hennessy, "Donatel-
lo's Bronze David," in Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di
Federico Zeri (Milan:
Electa, 1984), vol. 1, 122-27, supported it. Ames-Lewis, 1989,

238-39, and
others have convincingly proposed that the identities of David
and Mercury
were instead conflated to create a multivalent image, different
features of
which could be seen from the ground and from the upper floor
of the Medici
Palace, thereby nuancing the sculpture's meaning to its
audience. Patricia
Ann Leach, "Images of Political Triumph: Donatello's
Iconography of
Heroes," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1984, 53-154, most
fully explored
the underlying motives for merging David and Mercury in 15th-
century
Florence.
15. On the vexed question of dating, see, for example, Janson
(as in n. 2),
33-38, who proposed a date of ca. 1430, seconded most recently
by Sperling
(as in n. 2). On the other hand, Francis Ames-Lewis, "Art
History or Stilkritik?
Donatello's Bronze David Reconsidered," Art History 2 (1979):
139-55,
presented a serious case for a date as late as ca. 1460. For a
convincing rebuttal
of the literary and political arguments made by Sperling in
favor of an early
date, see Crum, 1996 (as in n. 1), 440-50. Although the weight
of evidence
now favors the late dating, the issue is not yet definitively
resolved.
16. If, as some historians have argued, the purchase of bronze in
Siena in

1457 is connected with the Judith and Holofernes commission,
then the statue
was under way by that date. For further speculation about the
commissioner
and date, see n. 5 above.
17. Michelangelo's commission for the colossal David is the
fulfillment of a
project originally awarded in 1463 to Agostino di Duccio to
carve a statue of
the Old Testament figure for one of the buttresses of the Duomo
in Florence.
The contract was rescinded by the Opera del Duomo in late
1466, by which
time Agostino had completed little, if any, carving. Charles
Seymour, Michelan-
gelo's David: A Search for Identity (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press,
1967), 36-38, suggested that Donatello was providing the design
for Agosti-
no's execution and that Donatello's death in 1466 led to the
contract's
cancellation. If Donatello's bronze David dates as late as ca.
1460, then these
two commissions are roughly coincident, but we know nothing
useful about
the intended appearance of Agostino's sculpture and cannot
characterize its
interpretation of David.
18. For the documents, see Giovanni Poggi, II Duomo di
Firenze: Documenti
sulla decorazione della chiesa e del campanile tratti
dall'Archivio dell'Opera, ed.
Margaret Haines, rev. ed., 2 vols. (Florence: Medicea, 1988)
vol. 1, docs.

425-27. On the history of the sculpture, see Janson, 3-7.
19. See Maria Monica Donato, "Hercules and David in the Early
Decoration
of the Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence," Journal of the
Warburg and
Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 83-98. The inscription reads: ".
.. statua Davidis
marmorea cum funda in manu: cui adscriptum pro patria
dimicantibus etiam
adversus terribilissimos hostes deus prestat victoriam." This
inscription is very
similar to that in a late 16th-century guidebook by Laurentius
Schrader,
Monumentorum Italiae, quae hoc saeculo et a christianis posita
sunt, libri quatuor
(Helmstadt: Iacobus Lucius Transylvanus, 1592), fol. 78v,
earlier discovered by
Janson, 4. The difference lies in the last words, which in
Schrader's text read
"dii prestant auxilium." The pagan implications of the phrase in
Schrader
occasioned doubts among scholars that the inscription could
have dated from
the 15th century. The inscription uncovered by Donato refers to
one god and
removes that problem.
20. SeeJanson, 3-7. Other scholars have disputedJanson's
arguments about
the successive stages of David's identity and the statue's
recarving, arguing that
it was always intended for the Palazzo della Signoria and not
recut. For these
points and bibliography, see Luciano Bellosi, "I problemi

dell'attivita giova-
nile," in Donatello e i suoi: Scultura fiorentina del primo
Rinascimento, ed. Alan
Phipps Darr and Giorgio Bonsanti (Detroit: Founders Society,
Detroit Insti-
tute of Arts; Florence: La Casa Usher, 1986), 47-54.
21. On examples of Judith with David, see Herzner, 1980 (as in
n. 5),
164-69; and Mira Friedman, "The Metamorphoses of Judith,"
Jewish Art
Journal 12-13 (1986-87): 235-39.
22. Modern theologians analyzing the text have pointed out its
anachro-
nisms and historical inconsistencies and argued that it was
written as an
allegory of the Jewish people to spur pride in their sense of
identity. See The
Book of Judith: Greek Text with an English Translation,
Commentary, and Critical
Notes, ed., trans., and annotated Morton S. Enslin and Solomon
Zeitlin, Jewish
Apocryphal Literature, vol. 7 (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972), 1.
23.Judith's role as a paragon of Christian virtues such as
chastity, temper-
ance, justice, fortitude, wisdom, and humility was established in
the early
Middle Ages by the Psychomachia of Prudentius, the very
influential Christian
epic written in 405. This spurred a large number of literary and
visual
interpretations of the theme, and an equally extensive secondary
literature in

the modern period. For a brief synthesis of the Christian
interpretations of
Judith, see Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi: The Image of
the Female Hero in
Italian Baroque Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1989), 282-89; and
Frank Capozzi, "The Evolution and Transformation of the Judith
and
Holofernes Theme in Italian Drama and Art before 1627," Ph.D.
diss.,
MEDICI RULE 45
University of Wisconsin, 1975, 3-22. For the additional
connotations of
situating a sculpture of this theme in a garden setting, see
Matthew G. Looper,
"Political Messages in the Medici Palace Garden," Journal of
Garden History 12,
no. 4 (1992): 255-68. For an exploration of the popularity of the
theme, see
the recent study by Margarita Stocker, Judith: Sexual Warrior
Women and Power
in Western Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
24. The rim of roughly woven cloth, riding lower on her
forehead than her
veil, which has usually been discussed as an indication of
Donatello's
technique of casting from real cloth (see Bruno Bearzi,
"Considerazioni di
tecnica sul San Ludovico e la Giuditta di Donatello," Bollettino

d'Arte 16 [1950]:
119-23), is relevant to the tale ofJudith. It could hint at the
sackcloth in which
she and the otherJews of Bethulia dressed as they beseeched
God to deliver
them from Holofernes' siege of their town. It further indicates
the modesty
with which the widowed Judith typically dressed, disguised by
the finery and
jewels with which she covered herself to seduce Holofernes.
25. The three Bacchanalian reliefs on the statue's base reinforce
this
meaning; see Edgar Wind, "Donatello's Judith: A Symbol of
'Sanctimonia,'"
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 1 (1937): 62-
63.
26. The medallion is described inJanson, 203.
27. Book ofJudith, 13: 6-10, 16: 19-20 (as in n. 22), 153, 175-
76: "And going
to the bedpost which was at Holofernes's head, she took down
from it his
sword, and nearing the bed she seized hold of the hair of his
head and said,
'Give me strength this day, Adonai God of Israel.' And with all
her might she
smote him twice in the neck and took his head from him. And
she rolled his
body from the couch and took the canopy from the poles....
Judith dedicated
to God all Holofernes's possessions ... and the canopy which she
had taken
for herself from his bed, she presented to Adonai as a votive
offering."

Generally, this more dramatic rendition is not common until the
17th century,
as in paintings by Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi; see
Garrard (as in n.
23), 290-91, 307-36. A rare early example is Guariento's
version for the chapel
of the Carrara Palace in Padua, now in the Musei Civici, Padua
(first cited by
Herzner, 1980 [as in n. 5], 144-45).
28. An anonymous early 16th-century painting of the Execution
of Savonarola
in the Museo di S. Marco, Florence, records the group on the
ringhiera, or
rostrum, outside the Palazzo della Signoria after 1495,
representing it as
entirely gilded. Conservation reports indicate that it was not,
but the
painting's exaggeration makes clear the brilliant impression it
must have had
in the sun; seeJanson, 201.
29. "Regna cadunt luxu, surgunt virtutibus urbes: / Caesa vides
humili colla
superba manu."
30. "Salus Publica. Petrus Medices. Cos. fi. Libertati simul et
fortitudini
hanc mulieris statuam, quo cives invicto constantique animo ad
rem publicam
redderent, dedicavit."
31. Dante, Inferno, canto 4, line 123, and canto 34; Paradiso,
canto 6.
32. In Boccaccio's unfinished commentary on Dante's
Commedia, he de-

scribed how Caesar seized control of the government against
Roman law and
made himself perpetual dictator. See Boccaccio, Il Comento alla
Divina
Commedia, ed. Domenico Guerri, Scrittori d'Italia, vols. 84-86
(Bari: Giuseppe
Laterza and Sons, 1918), vol. 1, 205, vol. 2, 49.
33. Harmodios and Aristogeiton succeeded in slaying only
Hipparchos, the
younger brother of the tyrant Hippias. The significance of the
date of the
killing was given additional resonance by Pliny in the Natural
History, who
claimed that it coincided with the day on which the kings were
expelled from
Rome. See the quotation of the passage in n. 38 below.
34. There are authoritative accounts of the group by Sture
Brunnsaker, The
Tyrant-Slayers of Kritios and Nesiotes (Lund: Hakan Ohlssons
Boktryckeri, 1955);
and Michael W. Taylor, The Tyrant Slayers: The Heroic Image
in Fifth Century BC
Athenian Art and Politics, Monographs in Classical Studies, 2d
ed. (Salem, N.H.:
Ayer, 1981). For a succinct analysis with bibliography, see
Sarah P. Morris,
Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton: Princeton
University Press,
1993), 297-308. For a recent account of the monument in
relation to its site,
see Ulf Kenzler, Studien zur Entwicklung und Struktur der
griechischen Agora in
archaischer und klassischer Zeit, Europaische

Hochschulschriften, ser. 38, vol. 72
(Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999).
35. The only contemporary source is Cassius Dio, Roman
History 47.20.4. For
further information, see Elizabeth Rawson, "Cassius and Brutus:
The Memory
of the Liberators," in Past Perspectives: Studies in Greek and
Roman Historical
Writing, ed. I. S. Moxon, J. D. Smart, and A. J. Woodman
(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1986), 107; and Antony E.
Raubitschek, "The
Brutus Statue in Athens," in Atti del terzo Congresso
Internazionale di Epigrafia
Greca e Latina (Rome: "L'Erma" di Bretschneider, 1959), 15-21.
No descrip-
tion of the statues of Brutus and Cassius appears to have been
preserved.
36. For the availability of these texts, see Ullman and Stadter,
216, nos.
791-92 (Pliny), 260, no. 1171 (Philostratus), 261, no. 1186
(Pausanias). See
Brunnsaker (as in n. 34), 33-39, for a complete list of ancient
authors who
allude to the sculptures of Harmodios and Aristogeiton. The
historical event
was described by many authors; the most important sources,
according to
ibid., 1-3, are Aristotle, Thucydides, Plutarch, Cicero, and
Seneca.
The most comprehensive text on the Tyrannicides is Pliny's
Natural History,
although even Pliny does not offer a complete physical

description of the
sculpture group. Cosimo owned a 13th-century manuscript of
the Natural
History procured for him by Niccolo Niccoli in Liibeck (listed
in Ullman and
Stadter as nos. 791-92). Cosimo's sons, Giovanni and Piero,
each commis-
sioned an illuminated version. All three manuscripts are now in
the Biblioteca
Laurenziana, Florence. Cosimo's manuscript is Plut. LXXXII.1;
those owned
by his sons are Plut. LXXXII.3 and Plut. LXXXII.4.
37. The citation of the Tyrannicides stands out in Pliny's
accounts of the
development of bronze sculpture because it is so early in date.
He otherwise
traced the first bronze sculptures and the first paintings no
earlier than the era
of Phidias, decades after the creation of the Tyrannicides
(Natural History
36.15).
38. According to the Natural History 34.17, from The Elder
Pliny's Chapters on
the History of Art, trans. KatherineJex-Blake and annot.
Eugenie Sellers, 2d ed.
(Chicago: Argonaut, 1968), 14-15: "The Athenians were, I
believe, introduc-
ing a new custom when they set up statues at the public expense
in honor of
Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who killed the tyrant. This
occurred in the very
year in which the kings were expelled from Rome. A refined
ambition led to

the universal adoption of the custom, and statues began to adorn
the public
places of every town; the memories of men were immortalized,
and their
honors were no longer merely graven on their tombstones, but
handed down
for posterity to read on the pedestals of statues. Later on the
rooms and halls
of private houses became so many public places, and clients
began to honor
patrons in this way"; and in the Natural History 34.70 (Jex-
Blake and Sellers,
55-57): "Praxiteles also, although more successful and
consequently better
known as a worker of marble, created admirable works in
bronze.... Other
works of his are ... statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the
Slayers of the
Tyrant. These were carried off by Xerxes, king of the Persians,
and restored to
Athens by Alexander the Great after his conquest of Persia."
39. Pliny particularly praised the ingenuity of Amphicrates'
sculpture of
Laena. He explained that the Athenians wanted to honor Laena's
bravery but
that they were unwilling to commemorate a harlot, so resorted
to a play on her
name and commissioned a statue of a lioness. They stipulated
that Amphi-
crates should carve the animal without a tongue so that Laena's
heroic choice
of silence would long be remembered (Natural History 34.72).
40. Lorenzo Ghiberti, I commentarii 1.6.8, ed. Lorenzo Bartoli
(Florence:

Giunti, 1998), 55-56, my translation: "I believe that the
Athenians were the
first to set up statues in public of the tyrannicides Harmodios
and Aristo-
geiton. It was done in the same Olympiad that the kings were
expelled from
Rome. From that point on very human ambitions led to the
practice of
installing statuary... as an ornament in all cities to
commemorate throughout
time the memory of men and of the honors they had gained, and
the practice
began of inscribing the bases [of the monuments] ...."
Commentarii 1.6.33
(62), again following Pliny, attributes the Tyrannicides to
Praxiteles: "Praxiteles
was very happy and famous, and created the most beautiful
works in bronze
... during the reign of Claudius he also made the Venus, which
was in marble
and of the most perfect art, and ... Harmodios and Aristogeiton
the Tyrannicides,
which was carried off by Xerxes and then returned to the
Athenians by
Alexander the Great, after he had conquered the [capital] city of
Persia."
Leon Battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria 7.16, in the context of
the invention
of statues, wrote, "According to Aristotle, the first statues to be
set up in the
Athenian forum were those of Hermodorus [sic] and
Aristogiton, who had
originally delivered that city from tyranny. Arrian the historian
recalls that
Alexander returned these statues to Athens, after they had been

removed to
Susa by Xerxes"; Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books,
trans. Joseph
Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press,
1988), 240. On 398 n. 184 discussing this passage, the authors
point out that
Alberti mistakenly claims Aristotle as his source instead of
Pliny, Natural History
34.17.
41. The inscription was recorded by Hephaestion, Handbook of
Meter; see
John Maxwell Edmonds, Lyra Graeca; Being the Remains of All
the Greek Lyric Poets
from Eumelus to Timotheus excepting Pindar, 3 vols. (London:
William Heine-
mann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1931), vol. 2, 377. On
the impact of the
tyrannicide in Greek history and literature, see Charles W.
Fornara, "The Cult
of Harmodios and Aristogeiton," Philologus 14 (1970): 155-80.
On reflections
of the event in folk tales, see M. Hirsch, "Die athenischen
Tyrannenm6rder in
Geschichtsschreibung und Volkslegende," Klio 20 (1926): 126-
67.
42. See Victor Ehrenberg, "Das Harmodioslied," in Polis und
Imperium:
Beitrage zur alten Geschichte, ed. Karl Friedrich Stroheker and
Alexander John
Graham (Zurich: Artemis, 1965), 253-64; and Taylor (as in n.
34), 51-77. Such
songs had so widespread an influence that, for example, in
performances of

Aristophanes' plays, characters who were meant to be identified
with the
tyrannicides sang the "Harmodios" and took the pose of his
statue. See ibid.,
195.
43. Donato (as in n. 19), 98, in her discussion of the marble
David pointed
out that this type of poetic verse was an innovation in
inscriptions on
15th-century works of art.
44. See Morris (as in n. 34), 301, for a number of examples that
seem
politically motivated.
45. For the popularity of the depiction of the Tyrannicides, see
Taylor (as in
n. 34), 147-97; and Morris (as in n. 34), 300-308, 349-50. For a
specific
discussion of copies of the group, see W.-H. Schuchhardt and
Charles
Landwehr, "Statuenkopien der Tyrannenmorder-Gruppe,"
Jahrbuch des Deut-
schen Archdologischen Instituts, Athen 101 (1986): 85-126.
Taylor (as in n. 34),
78-158; and Morris (as in n. 34), 301-2, discussed how the
poses of the
Tyrannicides were adapted in depictions of other mythological
heroes like
Herakles and Theseus and actual historical personages like
Kallimachos. The
association of Theseus with the tyrannicides is particularly
significant as
Theseus is the mythical founder of Athens and became a

personification of its
freedom. On Theseus, see Frank Brommer, Theseus: Die Taten
des griechischen
NUMBER 1
Helden in der antiken Kunst und Literatur (Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchge-
sellschaft, 1982).
46. See Hyman, 186-202.
47. Leon Battista Alberti, Ten Books on Architecture,
Translated into Italian by
Cosimo Bartoli and into English by James Leoni, Venetian
Architect, ed. Joseph Rykwert
(London: A. Tiranti, 1955), 105. Alberti's remarks were cited in
Hyman, 198.
48. Alberti (as in n. 47), 84, cited in Hyman, 198.
49. It also reflects a more general, frequently reiterated theme
of the Natural
History: that the proper site for statues was in the public realm,
where they
served their rightful purpose of edifying citizens by reminding
them of heroic
deeds. Pliny's anecdote (Natural History 34.93) about the
bronze sculpture of
Herakles near the Rostra stands as a paradigm for his position
that public
display of power and splendor must be reserved for the state.
Pliny described

three inscriptions on the bronze. One said that it had been part
of the booty
taken by the general Lucius Lucullus, and another that it was
dedicated,
according to a decree of the Senate, by Lucullus's son while still
a ward, and
the third, that a public official had caused it to be restored to
the public from
private ownership. Pliny concluded the anecdote, "So many
were the rivalries
connected with this statue and so highly was it valued."
50. See Diane Bornstein, "Reflections of Political Theory and
Political Fact
in Fifteenth-Century Mirrors for the Prince," in Medieval
Studies for Lillian
Herlands Hornstein, ed. Jess B. BessingerJr. and Robert R.
Raymo (New York:
New York University Press, 1976), 77-85. On the presence of
John of
Salisbury's treatise in the library at S. Marco, see Ullman and
Stadter, 195, no.
625. I would like to thank Professor Susan McKillop for
bringing the treatise
and its presence in the library to my attention. For McKillop's
work on
Medicean imagery, see "Dante and Lumen Christi: A Proposal
for the
Meaning of the Tomb of Cosimo de' Medici," in Ames-Lewis,
1992, 245-301,
and her forthcoming book.
Cosimo himself owned a copy of "Epistula ad Traianum,"or
"Institutio
Traiani," the supposed letter to Trajan from Plutarch, whichJohn
of Salisbury

may have written himself but claimed as the ancient authority
for his theories
about the state as an organism. It is integrated into the prologue
and the first
chapter of the Policraticus, bk. 5, and provides the framework
for that book and
the following one, but it also circulated as an independent text.
On the
controversies about its authorship, see Tilman Struve, "The
Importance of the
Organism in the Political Theory of John of Salisbury," in The
World ofJohn of
Salisbury, ed. Michael Wilks (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984),
305-6. For
Cosimo's ownership of the "Institutio Traiani," see Ullman and
Stadter, 144,
no. 170, 310. For the history of the doctrine of Christ as the
head of the body
of the Church and its application to medieval theories of
kingship, see Ernst
H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval
Political Theology, 6th
ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 193-232. For
a cogent
summary of the history of the classical tradition of equating the
human body
with the commonwealth and the medieval identification of the
human
body with the Church as well as the state, see Leonard Barkan,
Nature's Work of
Art: The Human Body as Image of the World (New Haven: Yale
University Press,
1975), 63-79. John of Salisbury was the first to elaborate this
long-standing
analogy into a lengthy and full-scale anatomy of the
anthropomorphic state.

Although she did not explore the relationship, Susan L. Smith
cited the
Policraticus in connection with a Renaissance image ofJudith in
her article "A
Nude Judith from Padua and the Reception of Donatello's
Bronze David,"
Comitatus 25 (1994): 72.
51. On the popularity of this sort of literature throughout the
medieval
period, see Bornstein (as in n. 50), 77-85.
52. Ephraim Emerton, Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the
Italian Trecento
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925), 33-119,
analyzed its
impact on Italian political thought. W. Ullmann, "The Influence
of John of
Salisbury on Medieval Italian Jurists," in The Church and the
Law in the Earlier
Middle Ages: Selected Essays (London: Variorum Reprints,
1975), 383-92
(reprinted from English Historical Review 59 [1944]); and
idem, "John of
Salisbury's Policraticus in the Later Middle Ages," in
Geschichtsschreibung und
geistiges Leben im Mittelalter: Festschrift fur Heinz Lowe zum
65. Geburtstag ed. K.
Hauck and H. Mordek (Cologne: Bohlau, 1978), 519-45, traced
its impact on
legal theory.
53. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of
the Western Legal
Tradition (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983),

278-79. The
writings of Thomas Aquinas were thoroughly represented in the
Library of S.
Marco. They constituted the largest single block of manuscripts
donated to the
library by Cosimo de' Medici. See Ullman and Stadter, 21, 310-
13.
54. Ammon Linder, "The Knowledge of John of Salisbury in the
Late
Middle Ages," Studi Medievali, ser. 3, 18, no. 2 (1977): 900,
discussed the
Tabula, seu index rerum memorabilium quae sunt in
PolicraticoJohannis Sariberiensis
byJohn Calderini, which became enormously popular throughout
Europe.
55. Linder (as in n. 54), 893-94.
56. Ullmann, 1975 (as in n. 52), 385.
57. Linder (as in n. 54), 899. See n. 50 above.
58. In one of the dialogues, the "De occupata tyrannide,"
Petrarch, who
annotated his own manuscript of Pliny's Natural History
extensively, recounted
with approval the tyrannicide accomplished by Harmodios and
Aristogeiton.
On Petrarch's manuscript of Pliny, now in the Bibliotheque
Nationale de
France, Paris, see Pierre de Nolhac, Petrarque et l'humanisme,
rev. ed., 2 vols.
(Paris: Honore Champion, 1965), vol. 1, 51, vol. 2, 70-77.
59. R. Rouse and M. A. Rouse, "John of Salisbury and the
Doctrine of

Tyrannicide," Speculum 42 (1967): 693-709.
60. John of Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of
Courtiers and the Footprints
of Philosophers, 8.20, ed. and trans. Cary Nederman
(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990), 207-9.
61. Ronald G. Witt, Hercules at the Crossroads: The Life,
Works and Thought of
Coluccio Salutati (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1983),
368-69.
62. For further analysis and a translation of the De tyranno, see
Emerton (as
in n. 52), 49-116.
63. See Coville; and Bernard Guen6e, Un meurtre, une societe:
L'assassinat du
duc d'Orleans, 23 novembre 1407 (Paris: Gallimard, 1992).
64. The proceedings were published as Acta Concilii Parisiensis
in the edition
of Jean Gerson's Opera omnia, ed. Louis Ellies du Pin, 5 vols.
(Antwerp:
Sumptibus Societatis, 1706), vol. 5, 49-342. Petit'sJustificatio
Ducis Burgundiae
is included there, 15-42, as is the Acta in Concilio
Constantiensi, 341-1012.
65. Coville, 497.
66. Ibid., 135-77.
67. Guenee (as in n. 63), 258-60. The proximate cause of this
practical
experience and legal expertise was the assassination in 1412 of

Duke
Gianmaria of Milan, heir of Giangaleazzo Visconti, but equally
relevant was the
earlier Milanese history of acknowledged tyrants like Bernab6
Visconti, which
had already raised the issues of what persons and means were
authorized to
end a tyrant's reign.
68. Cosimo de' Medici and other Florentines attended the
Council of
Constance motivated by ardent support of John XXIII, who had
made the
Medici papal bankers. John was deposed at the Council of
Constance and
offered refuge in Florence. He was subsequently accorded the
rare honor of a
tomb in the Baptistery of Florence, created by Donatello. On
these issues, see
Sarah Blake McHam, "Donatello's Tomb of Pope John XXIII,"
in Life and
Death in Fifteenth-Century Florence, ed. Marcel Tetel, Ronald
G. Witt, and Rona
Goffen (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1989), 146-73,
232-42. In
addition, a record of the debates between Gerson and Petit in
Paris and
Constance is contained in the Opera omnia ofJohn Gerson, a
copy of which was
in the Library of S. Marco; see Ullman and Stadter, 175, nos.
435-37.
69. Bernhard Bess, "Die Lehre vom Tyrannenmord auf dem
Konstanzer
Konzil," ZeitschriftfiirKirchengeschichte 36 (1916): 1-61.

70. Ludwig Pastor, History of the Popes from the Close of the
Middle Ages, ed.
Frederick Ignatius Antrobus, 40 vols. (London: John Hodges,
1891), vol. 2,
216-37, provides a succinct account of Stefano Porcari's attempt
to kill Pope
Nicholas V and end papal rule in Rome. Porcari claimed that he
wanted to
reinstate a republic in the city of Rome modeled on that of
ancient Rome.
71. Bortolo Belotti, II dramma di Gerolamo Olgiati (Milan: L.
F. Cogliati del Dr.
Guido Martinelli, 1929), provides a detailed account of the
Milanese con-
spiracy. The three conspirators, Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani,
Gerolamo Olgiati,
and Carlo Visconti, were inspired by the teachings of the court
humanist Cola
Montano. They were convinced of their legitimate right to rid
Milan of Sforza,
whom they considered a tyrant, and invoked the model of heroic
Romans like
Cassius and Brutus who had also been willing to die for the
benefit of the state.
72. Rinuccini's treatise is translated in Renee Neu Watkins,
Humanism and
Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth-Century Florence
(Columbia, S.C.:
University of South Carolina Press, 1978), 193-224. Rinuccini
considered
Lorenzo de' Medici a tyrant. Tellingly, he has Alietheus, the
interlocutor called
"the Truthful," speak the following words: "In all Italy ... there

is no city
[Florence] that has so energetically and enduringly championed
the cause of
liberty.... Thus did they [acopo and Francesco dei Pazzi]
undertake a
glorious deed, an action worthy of the highest praise. They tried
to restore
their own liberty and that of the country.... Men of sound
judgment will
always rank them with Dion of Syracuse, Aristogiton and
Harmodius of
Athens, Brutus and Cassius of Rome, and in our own day,
Giovanni and
Geronimo Andrea of Milan" (195-96).
On the Pazzi Conspiracy, see Riccardo Fubini, "La congiura dei
Pazzi:
Radici politico-sociali e ragione di un fallimento," Lorenzo de'
Medici, New
Perspectives: An International Conference, April 30-May 2,
1992, ed. B. Toscani
(NewYork: Peter Lang, 1993), reprinted in Fubini, Italia
quattrocentesca: Politica
e diplomazia nell'ett di Lorenzo il Magnifico (Milan: Franco
Angeli, 1994), 87-106.
I thank ProfessorsJohn Najemy andJudith Brown for bringing
Fubini's essays
to my attention and Dr. Betsy Rosasco for discussing the
conspiracy with me.
73. Riccardo Fubini, Quattrocento fiorentino: Politica
diplomazia cultura (Pisa:
Pacini, 1996), 141-57, discusses the relationship of the
legitimacy issues
provoked by the assassination of the duke of Orleans to these
events in

15th-century Florence. According to him (149), the notes of
Donato Acciai-
uoli, largely based on the lectures at the University of Florence
given by the
Greek scholar John Argyropoulos, reveal that interpretations of
equitable
authority, and consequently legitimate rule, were debated as the
new edition
of Aristotle was prepared. Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics
continued to be of
direct concern in Florence; see n. 87 below.
74. Policraticus 5.2 (The Statesman's Book, 65): "The place of
the head in the
body of the commonwealth is filled by the prince who is subject
only to God
and to those who exercise his office and represent Him on earth,
even as in the
human body the head is quickened and governed by the soul...."
John
continued the biological metaphor by describing priests as the
soul of the
body politic, judges and provincial administrators as the eyes,
ears, and
tongue, knights as the body's hands, clerks of the treasury as its
bowels, and
the peasants and tradesmen of the state as its feet.
MEDICI RULE 47

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