Portrait of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany

The building this portrait hangs in was Cosimo's own idea. In 1560 he set Giorgio Vasari to raise a long block of government offices beside the Arno, the uffizi, Italian for offices, to gather Florence's scattered magistracies under one roof. Cosimo had come to power at 17, after a cousin who ruled Florence was assassinated, and he spent the decades that followed welding Tuscany into a single state. In 1569 Pope Pius V rewarded him with a title no Medici had held before, Grand Duke of Tuscany. He died five years later. Naldini painted this official likeness around 1585 and dressed him for the rank, in an ermine-lined mantle and the closed grand-ducal crown that came with that promotion.