Palazzo Vecchio: The Doctor and the Granduchess

In the Francesco I's Studio, there are several references to sciences and curative virtues of natural substances; furthermore, we know that in its wardrobes of this rare and precious things, Granduke kept remedies and medicines too, while in the roof and the upper part of the walls is wall painted the theory of the four elements that form the macrocosmos and the man: Air, Water, Earth and Fire.

In order to understand the civilization of the Renaissance, it is important to know the concept of Nature, health and sickness. Protagonist of this piece is Gerolamo Mercuriale, perhaps the most famous physic doctor of the second half of the 16th Century, that visits the Granduchess Cristina de Lorena, wife of Ferdinando I de Medici, sick. The diagnosis is "morbo de mal aere".

The piece - and the next confrontation of the public with Mercuriale - it is focused on how doctors of the modern era, without knowing the existence of bateria and viruses, and without the instruments for sophisticated diagnostic analysis we have now, were able to diagnostic in a very accurate way, and to know the curative virtues of hundreds of plants: almost the eighty percent of the active ingredients of current medicines.