Italian and Americans experts to study what Medicis ate, what illnesses they suffered, chart a thorough medical history, resulting in a veritable looking at the "Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous".
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ITALIAN, AMERICAN EXPERTS TO UNEARTH 49 MEDICIS

Associated Press
The Globe Mail
Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2003

Rome — A team of Italian and American scientists will exhume the remains of 49 members of the Medici clan, the powerful Renaissance merchant family that ruled Tuscany, to study what they ate and what illnesses they suffered.

The two-year project is unusual because it concerns an elite group of people for whom there already is a vast amount of documentation. That information can be compared with any new scientific findings, researchers say.

"Studies have been done on crypts of monks, hundreds of Capuchin friars in southern Italy ... but nobody has ever worked on a royal population," said renowned mummy expert Bob Brier of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University, one of the study's lead researchers.

"In a sense, we're looking at the lifestyle of the rich and famous."

The project, to be filmed by The Learning Channel, will provide researchers with a better look at the lives of the Medicis, who ruled Tuscany during the Renaissance and sponsored much of its most famous art.

Also, paleopathologists, who study diseases in ancient times, will be able to chart a thorough medical history of one of the most renowned families in European history, said Dr. Gino Fornaciari, a history of medicine professor at the University of Pisa and the project leader.

Researchers "can do a complete archive of their illnesses" by studying the germs, viruses, cancers and other ailments that afflicted them, he said.

For example, the Medicis were known to have suffered from the painful arthritic disease gout, apparently because of a genetic predisposition compounded by a meat-based diet, Fornaciari wrote in the study proposal.

But the documentation is incomplete, so researchers say they will be able to "write the medical history of the family again" with new technology.

In July, the scientists will exhume 49 bodies buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence, take DNA samples from hair and skeletons, perform CAT scans and X-rays of intact mummies, and sample whatever soft tissues remain.

The most well-known Medicis, including Lorenzo the Magnificent, will not be unearthed. Their remains lie in the chapel's New Sacristy, beneath lovely Michelangelo tombstones considered too fragile to move, Mr. Brier said.

The most prominent Medicis to be unearthed include Giovanni delle Bande Nere (1498-1526), Duchess Eleonora di Toledo (1522-1562), Grand Duke Cosimo I (1519-1574) and Grand Duke Francesco I (1541-1587).

The tests might help resolve some enduring mysteries about the clan, such as whether Francesco I died of malaria, as is commonly believed, or was murdered, Dr. Fornaciari said.

The researchers also will assess what needs to be done to preserve the remains, said Mr. Brier, an Egyptologist known for his theory about King Tut's violent death.

"It's not necessarily true that to leave them alone is the best possible answer. We don't know the humidity (inside the crypts) and humidity is the enemy of soft tissue."

The crypts have remained undisturbed for centuries, except for one known excavation in 1948, when the tombs of Cosimo I and Eleonora di Toledo were opened, Dr. Fornaciari said.

Many of the Medicis were believed to have been naturally mummified without any embalming process — partly because the high temperatures inside the crypts dried out their tissues, said Dr. Arthur Aufderheide, a paleopathologist at the University of Minnesota School of Medicine.

There was, however, a great flood in Florence in 1966 that could have damaged the bodies.

The Globe and Mail
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