The Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi is one of those places
in Italy - there are a certain number of them, though not an enormous
number - in which history and art combine to bear witness to the past in
a way that is absolutely exceptional. In this case we are dealing with a
period in the past that has been extraordinarily celebrated, studied and
loved, so as to achieve an almost mythic status: the age of the
Renaissance in Medicean Florence. Ten years after the conclusion of
restoration work, Franco Cardini distils the essence of countless
scholarly studies on the subject in this richly illustrated volume. His
synthesis is completed by Lucia Ricciardi's essay, full of useful
information on the heraldic, symbolic and allegorical imagery related to
the Medici family.