The Provisions of Cosimo I

By order of Grand Duke Cosimo I, the Duomo soon housed the choir by Baccio Bandinelli, and Bartolomeo Ammannati embellished the nave and aisles of the Cathedral, especially the octagon around the choir.

Immediately after came the decoration of the intrados of the enormous cupola: 3600 square meters of frescoes painted between 1572 and 1579 by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari.
The iconographic plan centered on the Last Judgment, as it had three centuries before in the Baptistery. In the central bay, alongside the merciful Christ (who refuses the sword an angel offers, because “the Son of God has not come to condemn the world but to save it”), we see Mary and Saint John the Baptist interceding for the Florentines. Above Christ – at the top of this center bay – we read the words of Pontius Pilate, “Ecce homo,” “Behold the man”: words which will reveal their full sense only when Christ returns in glory. On the altar below stood the colossal statue of the Dead Christ, sculpted by Baccio Bandinelli in 1551 and transferred to Santa Croce in 1843. Thus from humiliation below, to glory above; from the “victim” on the altar to the Resurrected in the heavens: here lies the sense of the Christian peregrination, the meaning of the “holy journey” which from Baptism leads man to share the defeat of Christ, and then take part in his victory. “Behold the man”: this is the profound sense of his life, his true dignity, revealed in Christ. By the end of the XVI century, the Cathedral shone in all of its splendor in the beautiful square of Florence.
The Catholic Counter-Reformation found fertile terrain in Florence due to the religious and conservative cultural character of the Florentines, as well as for the Medici ties with the papacy and Spain. Numerous old churches were adapted to the Baroque taste, as both Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistery of San Giovanni would have their modern touchups, losing a bit of their austere beauty.