Posted on 07/22/2004 5:22:54 PM PDT by blam
Medici Project Turns Up Mystery Bodies
By Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News
Grand Duke Cosimo I
July 21, 2004 — The project to exhume the remains of several members of the Medicis, the family that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, has taken a new turn this month as researchers discovered a secret crypt containing the mysterious bodies of seven children and an adult.
The vaulted chamber was found under a stone floor behind the main altar of the Medici Chapels at Michelangelo's church of San Lorenzo in Florence. The researchers stumbled across it while searching for the final resting place of the last Grand Duke Gian Gastone, who probably died from obesity and kidney stones.
“ We could have found the illegitimate children of Grand Duke Cosimo I. ”
"As we lifted the stone, we found seven steps leading to a crypt. We felt like we were entering a never-explored pyramid," Donatella Lippi, associate professor of the history of medicine at the University of Florence, told reporters.
In the crypt, the researchers found the remains of Gian Gastone, as well as those of an unknown adult and seven children. The experts don't know why Gian Gastone was in the crypt, since he should have been in the official tomb.
Though the tombs had been seriously damaged by the flood of 1966, the remains of a nine-year-old boy are still in good condition. Expertly embalmed, he wears red clothes and a small crown.
"We could have found the illegitimate children of Grand Duke Cosimo I. The genetic tests we will carry out in the following months will tell us more," Lippi said.
The reserachers believe that the children could be those of Cosimo I because several are newborn or small babies and they know that Cosimo I had Giovanni, Antonio and Pietro, who died at just a few months. Francesco I, son of Cosimo, had two daughters , Isabella-Romola and Lucrezia, who died at 12 days old and three years old, respectiively.
Since the bodies of these children had not been found, it could be that they are indeed the children and grandchildren of Cosimo I.
The Project
Begun last month, the Medici project, which will air on The Learning Channel in February 2005, aims to exhume 49 bodies of the Medici family and reconstruct the dynasty's genetic make-up and their real family tree.
"The paleopathological study of the bodies will increase considerably the knowledge currently available about the life habits and diseases, as well as personality traits, of the members of the dynasty," said project director Gino Fornaciari, professor of forensic anthropology and director of the Pathology Museum at the University of Pisa.
Originally a family of peasants from the Mugello valley north of Florence, the Medicis became one of Europe's most powerful dynasties and ruled Florence and Tuscany from 1434 to 1737.
No other family epitomizes the full glory of the Florentine Renaissance better than this dynasty. Fun-loving patrons of the arts, they were also governors of a dynamic city state and served as the model for popes, kings and emperors.
The most well-known Medicis, such as Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) and Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464), founder of the Medici political dynasty, will not be exhumed as they rest beneath beautiful Michelangelo tombstones too fragile to move.
However, the project involves prominent figures, including Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (1498-1526), Duchess Eleonora di Toledo (1522-1562), Grand Duke Francesco I (1541-1587) and Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), responsible for the expansion of Florence to control most of Tuscany and for the creation of the Uffizi, first intended to house the government, and now one of the world's greatest art galleries.
Also to be investigated are several children and Anna Maria Luisa (1667-1743), the last of the Medicis, who on her death from breast cancer willed all the art treasures belonging to her family to the city of Florence.
More Discoveries
The researchers have already made interesting discoveries. The family, including Piero, known as the Gouty, was not afflicted with gout but with a severe form of arthritis known as diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis (DISH).
Cosimo I's wife Eleonora da Toledo, beautifully portrayed by Agnolo Bronzino in a painting on display at the Uffizi, was five feet tall (1.58 meter), had twisted legs, suffered from toothache and had shin splints, caused by an inflammation of the outer layer of the bone that occurs often during the later stages of syphilis.
In the next months, new forensic tests are expected to solve another mystery about the family — whether Francesco I died of malaria or was poisoned.
"The Medici Project is a very important study. This field of study is so new that it desperately needs a firm database which can generate hypotheses that can then be scientifically tested to create new knowledge," Arthur Aufderheide, professor of pathology at University of Minnesota and author of "The Scientific Study of Mummies," told Discovery News.
GGG Ping.
Whenever I read about all the early deaths and painful diseases that people used to suffer with (and still do suffer with in most of the world today), it makes me more and more glad to be an American living here and now.
We owe such a huge debt to those who gave us our freedom and prosperity.
Me, too. I visited a historic cemetery this morning with my children, and one of the graves was of a woman who died in the 1890's at 32. She was predeceased by five of her young children. I have seven living children, at 38!
This is an interesting study on the Medicis. I hope they put a book out, along with the documentary!
Sis, history ping for when you get back on Monday.
Extra bodies are not appreciated in a tidy society.
"Donatella Lippi" is an appropriate if not fortuitous name for one studying the Medici.
Watch your back, though, for anyone named Pazzi or Savonarola...
Me Too!!
Here is a link to the Church Street Graveyard that was established in 1819 for the victims of Yellow Fever. A whole graveyard for one disease. BTW, Ol Joe Cain (father of modern Mardi Gras is buried there too.) Check out some of the pictures.
"Extra bodies are not appreciated in a tidy society."
I'm sure Jimmy Hoffa would agree.
What a lovely cemetery! I'll have to keep it in mind if we ever get through Mobile again. I've "done" three very interesting ones since we moved here - one Methodist, one Lutheran, and one Catholic. I guess that means Baptist or Presbyterian for my next excursion!
Yeah, I forgot to mention that -- of all the horrors of living in the past, suffering and death for women in childbirth should be near the top of any list.
The more I learn about other times and other places, the more thankful I am to be an American living today.
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read later bump
In the end, these scientists will proove that the bodies are dead.
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Medici Family Cold Case Finally Solved
http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/medici-mystery-cold-case.html
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