Leonor de Toledo

…who had been commissioned by Eleonora de Toledo, wife of Cosimo I, to create a setting that would be appropriate for vast pageants and Medici court entertainments.

Cosimo married Eleonora de Toledo in 1539. As the emperor’s protégé, he was able to withstand the hostility of Pope Paul III and Francis I of France. He was shrewd and unscrupulous, and, with Florence under his control, he turned his ambition to territorial aggrandizement. His plans…

Cosimo and his Spanish wife, Eleonora de Toledo, whose formal Iberian tastes influenced the artistic life of the court, shrewdly embarked on an ambitious series of propagandistic projects to consolidate his political position. Vasari became the “stage manager” for much Medicean propaganda. His success as a painter and architect after…