Marzocco

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Marzocco

is a replica.]] The Marzocco is the heraldic

Heraldry

Heraldry is the profession, study, or art of devising, granting, and blazoning Coat of arms and ruling on questions of rank or protocol, as exercised by an officer of arms....
lion, sculpted by Donatello

Donatello

Donatello was a famous early Renaissance Italy artist and sculpture from Florence. He is, in part, known for his work in bas-relief, a form of shallow relief sculpture that, in Donatello's case, incorporated significant 15th-century developments in perspectival illusionism....
in 1418–20, that is a symbol of Florence

Florence

Florence is the Capital city of the Italy Regions of Italy of Tuscany and of the provinces of Italy Province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany and has a population of 364,779 ....
.

It was commissioned by the Republic of Florence for the apartment of Pope Martin V

Pope Martin V

Pope Martin V , born Odo Colonna was Pope from 1417 to 1431. His election effectively ended the Western Schism ....
at Santa Maria Novella, where this traditional insegna of communal republican defense stood guard atop a column at the foot of the stairs that led to the sale del papa ("Papal apartments") in the convent.

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is a replica.]] The Marzocco is the heraldic

Heraldry

Donatello

Florence

Pope Martin V

Council of Constance

In the Roman Catholic Church, the Council of Constance is the 16th ecumenical council. It was held from 1414 to 1418. The council resolved the Western Schism, in which three men simultaneously claimed to be pope....
during the Western Schism

Western Schism

The Great Schism of Western Christianity or Papal Schism was a split within the Roman Catholic Church from 1378 to 1417. By its end, three men simultaneously claimed to be the true pope....
. The Donatello Marzocco was moved to its present location in Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria is an L-shaped square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. It was named after the Palazzo della Signoria, also called Palazzo Vecchio....
in 1812, the ancient original that had stood since 1377 in this spot at the end of the bench called the ringhiera, upon which speakers traditionally harangued the crowd, having weathered with time to an unrecognizable mass of stone. The ringhiera, once a platform from which the Signoria addressed the people, then a focus for popular tumult, was removed at the same time. , 1851]] The obscure name Marzocco, unfathomable to some scholars, would by others derive from Marte (Mars

Mars (mythology)

Mars was the Roman mythology warrior God , the son of Juno and Jupiter , husband of Bellona , and the lover of Venus . He was the most prominent of the military gods that were worshipped by the Roman legions....
), whose Roman statue, carried away by a flood of the Arno

Arno

Arno may refer to:...
in 1333, had previously been Florence’s emblem. The lion is seated and with one paw supports the coat-of-arms of Florence, the fleur de lys

Fleur de Lys

Fleur de Lys is a superheroine from Quebec and an ally of Northguard, created in 1984 by Mark Shainblum and Gabriel Morrissette. The name of the character is inspired by the heraldry of the fleur de lys....
called il giglio, the lily. Marzocco was` invoked in the Florentine battle cry

Battle Cry

Battle Cry is a novel by United States writer Leon Uris, published in 1953. Many of the events in the book are based on Uris's own World War II experience with the 6th Marine Regiment ....
and figures in Gentile Aretino's poem "Alla battaglia":

San Giorgio
Saint George

Saint George of Lydda was according to tradition, a Roman soldier in the Guard of Emperor Diocletian, venerated as a Christian martyr.In Hagiography Saint George is one of the most venerated saints in the Anglican Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Eastern Catholic Churches....
, Marzoccho Marzoccho
suona percuoti, forbocta rintoccho
Palle palle, Marzoccho Marzoccho
legagli strecti e pon lor buona taglia!"

The Marzocco was such a powerful symbol of the Florentine Republic that the republican Florentine troops in the Siege of Florence (1529–1530) were known as marzoccheschi, "sons of the Marzocco", and pro-Medici besiegers of the city in 1530 held a funeral and ritually buried a representation of it, with bells tolling. At Anghiari

Anghiari

Anghiari is a town and comune with c. 5,850 inhabitants in the Province of Arezzo ....
, subject to Florence from 1385, the 15th-century Palazzo del Marzocco faces the church; at Montepulciano

Montepulciano

Montepulciano, a medieval and Renaissance hill town and commune in the province of Siena in southern Tuscany, . Montepulciano, with an elevation of 605 m, sits on a high limestone ridge....
stands the Marzocco column; at Volterra

Volterra

file:Volterra san francesco 003.JPGVolterra is a town in the Tuscany region of Italy....
the Marzocco stands against the Palazzo dei Priori, seat of government; at Livorno

Livorno

Livorno or Leghorn is a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea on the western edge of Tuscany, Italy. It is the Capital of the Province of Livorno and the third-largest port on the western coast of Italy, having a population of approximately 170,000 residents as of the year 2007....
the 15th-century Torre del Marzocco guards the harbor entrance; and at Pietrasanta

Pietrasanta

Pietrasanta is a town and comune on the coast of northern Tuscany in Italy, in the province of Lucca. Pietrasanta straddles the last foothills of the Apuan Alps....
there are a 16th-century Marzocco fountain and the Marzocco column, erected in 1513 when Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X

Pope Leo X, born Giovanni de' Medici was Pope from 1513 to his death. He was the last non-priest to be elected Pope. He is known primarily for the sale of indulgences to reconstruct St....
awarded the commune to Florence. In the subjected territory of Pisa, when Charles VIII of France

Charles VIII of France

Charles VIII, called the Affable, , was List of French monarchs from 1483 to his death. Charles was a member of the House of Valois. His invasion of Italy initiated the long series of Italian Wars which characterized the first half of the 16th century....
entered Sarzana in 1494, the Pisans took the Marzocco, emblem of their subjugation to Florence, and cast it into the Arno. Live lions were kept at the commune's expense from the Middle Ages until they were banished in 1771.

At times the Marzocco would be crowned according to a motto by the writer of novelle

Novella

A novella is a writing, fictional, prose narrative longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. While there is disagreement as to what length defines a novella, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000....
Franco Sacchetti
Franco Sacchetti

Franco Sacchetti was a Republic of Ragusa Italy poet and novelist.He was the son of Benci di Uguccione, surnamed Buono, of the noble and ancient Florentine family of the Sacchetti and was born in Dubrovnik , Dalmatia or in Florence about the year 1335....
:

Corona porto, per la patria degna,
Acciochè libertà ciascun mantegna.
The crown, emphasizing the independence of Tuscany
Tuscany

Tuscany is a region in Italy. It has an area of and a population of about 3.6 million inhabitants. The regional capital is Florence.Tuscany is known for its landscapes and its artistic legacy....
, appears on the Marzocco in Tuscany's first issue of postage stamps
Postage stamps and postal history of Tuscany

This is a survey of the postage stamps and postal history of Tuscany. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was an independent Italian state from 1569 to 1859, but was occupied by France from 1808 to 1814....
, 1851.

A richly sculptural socle
Socle

Socle may refer to:* Socle * Socle ...
with double baluster
Baluster

A baluster is a moulded shaft, square or of lathe-turned form, in stone or wood and sometimes in metal, standing on a unifying footing and supporting the coping of a parapet or the handrail of a stairway....
-like motifs at the corners was provided for the Marzocco about 1460.

Donatello’s original, sculpted in the fine-grained gray sandstone of Tuscany called pietra serena, has been conserved in the Bargello
Bargello

The Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence, Italy....
since 1855. The version still exposed to weather in Piazza della Signoria
Piazza della Signoria

Piazza della Signoria is an L-shaped square in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, Italy. It was named after the Palazzo della Signoria, also called Palazzo Vecchio....
is a copy.

Il Marzocco was adopted for the name of a progressive weekly literary review in broadsheet format published in Florence, 1896–1932.

Further reading

Del Meglio, A., M. Carchio, R. Manescalchi, Il Marzocco The Lion of Florence (Edizioni Grafica European Center of Fine Arts) 2005
McHam, Sarah Blake, Looking at Italian Renaissance, ch. "Public Sculpture in Renaissance Florence" (Cambridge University Press, 1998; paperback edition, 2000)

it:Marzocco (Donatello)