Lorenzo Room
Sala Buia (Dark Hall)
The Roman passion for marble and semiprecious stones spread to Florence and particularly enthralled Lorenzo's father, Piero de'Medici, who began the collection of ancient vases, thus explaining the abundance of these objects combining exquisite execution with rare and varied materials (jasper, amethyst, sardonyx). Generally of classical Roman or Venetian manufacture, they were decorated in Lorenzo's time and stamped with his initials. After the fall of the Medici in 1494, Lorenzo's son Giovanni, later Pope Leo X, salvaged them and brought them to Rome. Clement VII then returned them to Florence, where they became reliquaries, conserved in the church of San Lorenzo in a cabinet designed by Michelangelo expressly for this purpose. In 1785, when the cult of relics was superseded by the advent of illuminism, they were emptied and transferred to the Gems Room at the Uffizi and thence, already emptied, moved to what is now the Treasure of the Grand Dukes at the beginning of the 20th century