Their mother, Eleonora of Toledo, died soon afterwards of a broken
heart, it was said.
"The murder story was probably spread by the Medici rivals, who accused the
family of the most horrible crimes. We can now put this murder theory to
rest. We have been able to reconstitute the skeletons and there are no
cut marks," project leader Gino Fornaciari, professor of forensic
anthropology and director of the Pathology Museum at the University of
Pisa, told Discovery News.
Fornaciari believes that malaria is the most likely cause of death for all four members of the family.
"We are waiting a confirmation from the DNA results. Malaria would be consistent
with accounts of the time reporting the two brothers suffering from
high fevers before they died," Fornaciari said.
Begun last June, The Medici Project, which will air on Oct. 17, 2004
from 9-10 p.m. on The Learning Channel, aims to exhume 49 Medicis and reconstruct any possible aspect of the dynasty, including genetic make-up, eating habits, lifestyles and diseases.
Overall, the researchers will investigate 19 mummies, two skeletal mummies,
23 skeletons, and bones from other five individuals.
"I expect this study will help enormously to expand the potential for the
emerging scientific discipline of mummy studies," Arthur Aufderheide,
professor of pathology at the University of Minnesota and author of "The
Scientific Study of Mummies," told Discovery News.
The exhumations of Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574), responsible for the
expansion of Florence to control most of Tuscany and for the creation of
the Uffizi Gallery, now one of the world's greatest art galleries, his wife
Eleonora (1522-1562), and two of their eleven children, Garcia
(1547-1562) and Giovanni (1543-1562), are the first in the two-year project.
The skeletons were dug up from the Medici Chapels at Michelangelo's church
of San Lorenzo in Florence, where the Medici family is buried. Here the
researchers found a secret crypt containing the remains of the last Grand
Duke Gian Gastone, who probably died from obesity and kidney stones, as
well as those of an unknown adult and seven children.
"Finding out as much as possible about these bodies will be the next step.
We have just begun," Fornaciari said.
The researchers have already made interesting discoveries. Cosimo I's
bones show that he did not suffer from gout, a disease widely described as
an affliction of the Medicis, but from a form of arthritis.
His wife Eleonora da Toledo, beautifully portrayed by Agnolo Bronzino in a
painting on display at the Uffizi, was five feet tall (1.58 meter), had
twisted legs, suffered from toothache and had shin splints caused by an
inflammation of the outer layer of the bone that occurs often during the
later stages of syphilis.
Multiple hairline fractures of her pelvis are the
results of numerous births before she died at 40.
The healthiest in the family was Cardinal Giovanni, though arrested growth
in Garcia's bones show that he suffered from various illnesses as a child.
The most well-known Medicis, such as Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492)
and Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464), founder of the Medici political dynasty,
will not be exhumed, since they rest beneath beautiful Michelangelo tombstones
too fragile to move.
However, the project involves other prominent figures, including Giovanni
dalle Bande Nere (1498-1526), Grand Duke Francesco I (1541-1587) and Anna
Maria Luisa (1667-1743), the last of the Medicis, who on her deathbed from
breast cancer willed all the art treasures belonging to her family to the
city of Florence.
In the next months, new forensic tests are expected to solve another
mystery about the family — whether Francesco I died of malaria or was
poisoned.
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