Resumen de Power, Prophecy, and Dynastic Succession in Early Medici Florence: The Falcon Impresa of Piero di Cosimo de' Medici
The writer discusses the meaning of the falcon impresa of Piero di Medici that appeared for the first time in about 1448–49. The impresa adopted a new visual language that joined the Medici family's usual mode of self-identification on the public monuments that they sponsored in Florence. Impresas engaged to a greater degree in the world of conceit, riddle, and symbolic communication, and their meaning was typically veiled or ambiguous and often multivalent. The writer explores how the Medici impresa's themes of faithfulness, renewal, and authority might have worked jointly in a coordinated program, arguing that the imagery was closely linked with the dynastic concerns of the Medici family and their efforts to promote both the continuity and the legitimacy of their authority in republican Florence where it was, in fact, illegitimate.
