The Young Cicero Reading

The 'Young Cicero Reading' is the only surviving fresco from the Banco Mediceo in Milan. In 1455 Francesco Sforza gave the Palazzo to Cosimo de’Medici, who had it lavishly restyled. Foppa, the leading Lombard master of the quattrocento period, was commissioned to fresco the courtyard. The 'Young Cicero Reading' may have been intended to accompany the Virtues as an emblem of Rhetoric, one of the Liberal Arts. Set in the open courtyard for four hundred years, the fresco was removed, c.1863, framed and extensively retouched, which explains some of the compositional inconsistencies which are now apparent.