Personal blog for M. Alice LeGrow, freelance comics artist and full-time ambassador to the Snake People.
I’ve been fascinated by the Medici family since the first word I read about them in my first Art History class. I don’t know why, but I have a strange affinity for the whole family, an almost unearthly obsession. I have just loads and loads of books about them that I’ve collected. If I were the type to believe in reincarnation (which I adamantly don’t), I would believe that I was formerly someone from their time who knew the family and admired them just as much in person as I do now, hundreds of years later. They almost single-handedly bankrolled the Italian renaissance. Machiavelli, violently anti-Medici, later exclusively wrote for and dedicated his famous novel “The Prince” to a Medici patriarch, in hopes of currying favor. Their patronage created some of my favorite works of art, including “The Adoration of the Magi” and Brunelleschi’s entire architectural career. I literally know more about the Medici family than I do about my own extended family (which isn’t difficult really, as my parents both had more than six siblings each and I have about a billion first cousins, second cousins, step-cousins, etc).
This portrait has nothing to do with the family, but is from the same era and very reminiscent of similar paintings of Medici family members. I always somehow connect it in my mind with the family itself. Early on in college, I painted a picture of myself in the same clothes and pose.
I wish someday I could do a graphic novel about the Medici. That would pretty much be the highlight of my life!
