Medici Family Murders Debunked in Italy

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Scientists now exhuming the remains of several members of the Medicis, the family that dominated the Florentine Renaissance, have conclusively dismissed the theory of family murders, putting to an end to more than four centuries of speculation about a series of mysterious deaths in the clan.

Since 1562, when Cosimo I's sons Garcia and Giovanni died five weeks apart, it has been rumored that Garcia stabbed the other and was himself run through with a sword by his furious father.

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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