Famous Men and Women

Andrea del Castagno was commissioned the Famous Men and Women cycle of the villa Carducci in Legnaia no later than June 1449, when Filippo Carducci, the owner of the villa and most probably the one who commissioned the frescoes, died. The frescoes were finished before the house was sold in October 1451.

The Legnaia cycle consists of nine portrayals (three Florentine military commanders, three famous women and three Tuscan poets), placed inside painted niches made to look like monumental marble recesses, separated by pilasters. On one of the room's short walls, between the figures of Adam and Eve, there was a lunette containing a Madonna and Child beneath a canopy supported by angels that was only discovered several years after the rest of the decoration. Above the frescoes there was a complex entablature and above that some putti holding festoons. The elaborate architectural decoration of the ceiling and the walls emphasizes the monumentality of the figures.

In these severe and monumental figures, clearly based on the models provided by Masaccio and Donatello, Andrea del Castagno gives us an exaltation of mankind seen as possessing physical strength, moral virtues and a keen intelligence: the qualities of Renaissance man. In this series of portrayal, he comes across as the spokesman for the fundamental principles of Humanism.