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Giorgio Vasari’s Chariots of the Sun and the Moon: Emblematic and Mythic Symbols of Cosmic Transit




Author(s)

Liana De Girolami Cheney

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DOI:10.17265/2328-2177/2025.07.001

University of Massachusetts (UMASS), Lowell, USA

In 1555, the Florentine Mannerist painter Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574) created two significant oil panels, the Chariot of the Sun and the Chariot of the Moon, on the ceiling of the Hall of the Elements in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence. Cosimo I de’ Medici, Duke of Tuscany (1519-1574), commissioned Vasari to renovate his apartments in the Palazzo Vecchio. Vasari restructured and painted the ceiling and walls of the Hall of the Elements on the second floor, named for its depicted subjects. The walls were painted using the fresco technique, while the ceiling was executed in oil on panels. The walls depicted the elements of Fire, Earth, and Water, whereas the ceiling illustrated the element of Air, containing the panels of the Chariots. Vasari began his education in classical culture in Arezzo under the Latin grammarian Antonio da Saccone and the ancient historian and literary scholar Giovanni Pollio Lappoli, known as Pollastra (1465-1540). He continued his studies within the Medici household under the humanist and hieroglyphologist Pierio Valeriano (1477-1558). In 1539, he met the Milanese law professor and emblematist Andrea Alciato (1492-1550) in Bologna, from whom he learned about the moral aspects of emblems. Through their historical, philosophical, mythographic, and emblematic symbolism, Vasari skillfully synthesized knowledge to construct intellectual programs that encompass the concepts of ekphrasis and history paintings in his decorative cycles, as revealed in the Chariots. In depicting the cosmic movement of stars and time in the Chariots, Vasari integrated the idea of the chariot illustrated in Baccio Baldini’s astrological engravings and the mythographic account of Apollo and Diana’s chariots in Vincenzo Cartari’s Le Imagini degli dei degli antichi (1547 and 1571). In the discourse regarding the physical and metaphysical movements of the cosmos, Vasari underscores the influence of Italian Neoplatonism, with particular emphasis on insights derived from Marsilio Ficino’s exploration of alchemical colors in nature, as articulated in Liber de Arte Chemica (Books 14 and 15), while also elucidating the importance of Plato’s Chariot of the Soul or Allegory of the Chariot (Jones, Litt, & Ormerod, 1918, p. 246).

Giorgio Vasari, Chariots, Apollo, Diana, Pegasus, Aurora, alchemy, emblems, mythography, Andrea Alciato, Vincenzo Cartari, Plato, Marsilio Ficino, Italian Neoplatonism, Hall of the Elements, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence