Florence from dawn to dusk

                FLORENCE — FROM DAWN TO DUSK


               The Triptych of the Medici Golden Age

                Author: Thomas Djerak (Djerbetian)



Genre: A cycle of three autonomous historical dramas

Format: Three one-act plays — performed as a continuous evening or separately

Overall cast: 4 to 5 actors, with opportunities for multiple roles



I. AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Florence of the Quattrocento is not approached here as a museum fresco, but as a human, political, and artistic experience whose questions still resonate today.

Like the Athens of Pericles, Florence was one of those rare moments in history when political power, artistic creation, and intellectual thought worked together to create a cultural memory destined to outlive the people who carried it.

This triptych follows the arc of that humanist experience across nearly forty years, through three moments, three theatrical forms, and three different relationships between the individual, power, and creation:

The audacity of the beginning: the body, love, and creative freedom confronting dogma — 1456.
The aesthetic summit: the search for harmony confronting the fragility of beauty and the passage of time — the 1470s.
Disillusionment: political reason and attempts at compromise confronting the rise of another conception of power, grounded in faith and in a break with Florentine humanism — 1492.

The theater deliberately enters the spaces between the historical documents.

The purpose is not to reconstruct the archives, but to make audible what archives do not always tell us: the private motives, fears, desires, calculations, and silences of those who lived through these moments.

Some scenes are grounded in documented facts, people, and events; others are dramatic reconstructions where history leaves a silent space.

The theater does not claim to fill that silence with certainty. It attempts to give it a voice.

II. THE DRAMATIC ARCHITECTURE OF THE TRIPTYCH

The cycle forms a complete dramatic organism through three deliberately contrasting theatrical registers.

I. DAWN
Setting & date: Prato / Florence, 1456
Genre: Tuscan farce
Key figures: Fra Filippo Lippi, Lucrezia Buti, Cosimo de’ Medici
Dramatic conflict: The flesh against dogma. Political power intervenes to protect an artist whose genius has exceeded the boundaries of convention.
II. ZENITH
Setting & date: Florence, c. 1475–1476
Genre: Poetic elegy
Key figures: Sandro Botticelli, Simonetta Vespucci, Lorenzo de’ Medici
Dramatic conflict: The impossibility of stopping time. Painted beauty survives mortal flesh, but already carries within it the premonition of loss.
III. DUSK
Setting & date: Villa of Careggi, 1492
Genre: Political and religious drama
Key figures: Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, Savonarola, Burlamacchi
Dramatic conflict: The illusion of compromise. In the shadow of Lorenzo’s death, a secret agreement is imagined in an attempt to preserve peace and the Medici political legacy.
III. DETAILED SYNOPSES
1. THIS COULD HAPPEN EVEN IN FLORENCE
DAWN — 1456
The Premise

The scandal erupts in Prato.

Brother Filippo Lippi, a Carmelite friar and a painter protected by the Medici, has used a commission as an opportunity to approach a young novice, Lucrezia Buti.

Brought before the authorities, Lippi denies nothing. To paint the divine, he argues, an artist must know the beauty of the living.

The Dramatic Nerve

The intervention of Cosimo de’ Medici.

The patriarch does not moralize: he acts as a politician. He seeks a solution that will preserve the honor of the Church, the freedom of the painter, and above all the genius of an artist Florence cannot afford to lose.

In this first play, the Renaissance appears first as an eruption of the living: the body, desire, insolence, and laughter begin to crack an older order.

2. SANDRO AND SIMONETTA
ZENITH — c. 1475–1476
The Premise

At the heart of Medici Florence, Simonetta Vespucci, celebrated throughout the city and admired by Giuliano de’ Medici, poses in Sandro Botticelli’s studio.

A dialogue develops between painter and model about beauty, time, illness, and the fear of disappearing.

Simonetta is young.

She is already condemned by illness.

Sandro, meanwhile, is searching for what painting might wrest from time.

The Dramatic Nerve

The confrontation between a body destined to disappear and an image capable of surviving it.

Painting cannot save Simonetta from death.

But perhaps it can prevent her face from disappearing with her.

At the heart of this story of love and creation, a shadow already appears: a Dominican friar named Savonarola, who is beginning to denounce the corruption of Florence and its worship of beauty.

3. SORDID NEGOTIATIONS FOR A PURE SALVATION
DUSK — APRIL 1492
The Premise

At the Villa of Careggi, Lorenzo the Magnificent is living his final hours.

At the gates of Florence, Girolamo Savonarola electrifies the crowds and proclaims the ruin of a city he considers corrupt.

While Lorenzo lies dying, his secretaries and advisers search for a way forward.

They imagine a secret compromise with representatives of San Marco: preserving as much as possible of the political legacy of the young Piero de’ Medici in exchange for political, financial, and religious concessions.

The Dramatic Nerve

The confrontation between the lucidity of a man who sees his world disappearing and the fear of those still trying to save it.

An agreement is signed.

But can one negotiate with a force that no longer regards compromise as a value?

The paper promises peace.

History will give it less than two years.

IV. TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS & PERFORMANCE CONDITIONS
Staging

A spare, flexible performance space.

A shared scenic design allows the three parts to move successively through the studio, the convent, the palace, and finally the death chamber.

Cast

4 to 5 performers for the entire cycle.

The possibility of having certain actors return from one part to another is not merely a casting solution: it is also a dramaturgical principle.

The same face can cross forty years of history under another name.

Thus, the actor playing Cosimo in Dawn may return as Lorenzo in Dusk; the actress playing Lucrezia may become Simonetta.

The audience then sees not simply isolated individuals, but different figures of the same humanity confronting, across time, the same fundamental questions.

Running Time

Full cycle: approximately 1 hour 50 minutes

Each part: approximately 35–40 minutes

The three plays may be performed together or separately.

Texts

Full manuscripts are available upon request.

V. SYNOPSIS OF PART I
IN FLORENCE, SUCH THINGS HAPPENED TOO
A Tuscan Farce in One Act, with Historical Prologue

Setting: Florence and Prato, spring–summer 1456

Genre: Tuscan farce, humanist satire, and comedy of manners

Characters: Cosimo de’ Medici, Brother Filippo Lippi, Lucrezia Buti, Spinetta Buti, Sister Agnese, the Podest;, the Captain of the Guard, Abbess Bartolomea Bovacheesi.

The Premise and Plot
Prologue — The Patron’s Ruse and the Trap of Holiness

In Florence, at his palace on Via Larga, Cosimo de’ Medici is looking for a way to remove his favorite painter, the Carmelite friar Filippo Lippi.

A master of genius but an incorrigible libertine, Lippi has just received a commission to paint an altarpiece of the Virgin at the convent of Saint Margaret in Prato.

Cosimo believes he has found the perfect solution: Abbess Bartolomea rules her convent with an iron hand.

Under the protection of his trusted man, Cosimo sends Lippi to Prato, convinced that monastic enclosure will calm his passions and save the artist from scandal.

But Lippi soon overturns every precaution taken on his behalf.

At the convent, before the young novice Lucrezia Buti, the painter discovers what he considers the very condition of his art: to paint the Mother of God, he needs flesh, youth, and living beauty.

Scene I — The Night Tribunal and the Apology of the Flesh

Several weeks later, scandal erupts.

Lippi has left the convent with Lucrezia, followed by her sister Spinetta and several other nuns.

Brought before the secular tribunal of the Commune and accused of sacrilege and disorder, he makes no attempt to repent.

Instead, he turns the trial into theater.

His bad faith, insolence, and the unexpected answers of the women present gradually disarm the judge and cause the moral authority of the prosecution to waver.

Lippi is not merely defending his conduct.

He is defending a conception of art:

the divine cannot be represented without passing through the living.

Scene II — Cosimo de’ Medici’s Masterstroke

Just as the Podest; is about to surrender to panic, the doors of the tribunal open.

Cosimo de’ Medici enters.

He does not condemn.

He listens, observes, and searches for a way out.

Before Abbess Bartolomea, he brings to light an old story that has been forgotten: a scandal from her youth, carefully buried decades earlier.

Cosimo now possesses a weapon no one in the room can withstand:

memory.

The Florentine bargain is made without violence.

Cosimo offers silence and saves the Abbess’s honor.

In exchange, the proceedings are abandoned.

Through Medici intervention with Pope Pius II, Lippi and Lucrezia will eventually be released from their vows and allowed to live together.

Their union will produce Filippino Lippi.

The Dramatic Force of the Play

The Renaissance does not begin here in philosophical treatises.

It erupts through the living body, insolence, and laughter.

Against dogma, the artist’s unruly genius encounters the pragmatic realism of the prince.

The first gesture of this Renaissance may perhaps be this: accepting that human beings are made of flesh, weakness, desire — and creation.

VI. SYNOPSIS OF PART II
SANDRO AND SIMONETTA
When the Painter Takes His Prey from Death

Dramatic elegy in three acts and an epilogue

Setting: Botticelli’s studio, Florence, c. 1475–1476; epilogue at Ognissanti, 1510.

Cast: Two principal performers — Sandro Botticelli and Simonetta Vespucci — with a silent figure appearing in the epilogue.

Central Idea

Art becomes the instrument through which a human being attempts to resist disappearance.

It cannot defeat death.

But perhaps it can save a face from oblivion.

Act I — The Cut Rose

In the disorder of his Florentine studio, Sandro Botticelli tries to conceal a portrait.

Simonetta bursts in.

Far from being offended, she is amused by the painter’s terror and refuses to be transformed into an abstract icon.

She wants to be seen as a living woman.

Sandro then reveals his secret: if he paints only her flesh, she will disappear with it.

The image, by contrast, may offer her a second existence.

Simonetta accepts the duel.

She will return to pose.

Act II — The Birth of Venus

Several days later, an intimacy has developed between painter and model.

They speak of Florence, beauty, the changing century, and the Dominican friar whose name is beginning to circulate.

Then Simonetta offers Sandro an apparition that transforms his gaze.

He no longer sees simply a woman.

He sees an image that seems to belong to a time older than their own.

Sensuality becomes vision.

Sandro understands that his struggle will not merely be that of a painter in love with beauty.

It will be the struggle of a man seeking to make that beauty survive time.

Act III — The Balm and the Silence

Winter has come.

Simonetta is gravely ill.

Between bouts of coughing, she understands that those who claim to love her often love more what she represents than the woman she has become.

Only Sandro receives the truth of her decline.

Before a work by Masaccio, she understands that exile from Paradise may resemble what is happening to her: she is no longer cast out of heaven, but out of life.

Sandro promises that her face will not disappear.

She gives him her brush.

And makes one final request:

“May there never be winter in your paintings.”

Epilogue — The Final Request

Ognissanti, 1510.

An old man lies dying: Sandro Botticelli.

A young nun watches over him.

The painter confesses that he has spent his entire life pursuing one face.

Then he makes his final wish: to be buried at Ognissanti, beside Simonetta.

The painter dies.

But his gaze remains turned toward her.

The Dramatic Force of Part II

If Dawn affirmed the triumph of the living over dogma, Zenith transforms that living presence into a sanctuary against time and death.

And at the heart of this love story, the name of Savonarola already begins to appear.

A shadow has crossed the light.

VII. SYNOPSIS OF PART III
SORDID NEGOTIATIONS FOR A PURE SALVATION
Impure Bargains for a Salvific Peace

Dramatic chronicle in four tableaux with epilogue

Setting: Florence and the Villa of Careggi, early April 1492

Genre: Political drama, tragedy of state and conscience

Cast: 5 performers

Characters: Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Brother Pacifico Burlamacchi, Girolamo Savonarola.

Central Idea

Can a world buy its survival by negotiating with those who seek to transform it?

In this final play, culture and political reason attempt to preserve Florence through compromise.

But compromise is possible only when both sides still recognize the existence of common ground.

Tableau I — The Kitchen of Salvation

At the Medici palace, the April night of 1492 is oppressive.

At Careggi, Lorenzo the Magnificent lies dying.

Angelo Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola understand that the prince’s death may trigger a political crisis.

A figure is already rising within Florence: Girolamo Savonarola.

They decide to act.

A secret agreement might perhaps preserve the Medici political legacy and prevent confrontation.

Pico della Mirandola is sent to negotiate with representatives of San Marco.

Tableau II — Bargaining over the Lion’s Corpse

Brother Pacifico Burlamacchi receives the Florentine envoys.

The language of mysticism disappears.

A genuine bargain begins.

The Medici offer financial and political concessions.

Burlamacchi demands more:

Piero de’ Medici would retain no more than the status of an ordinary citizen;
a substantial sum would immediately be devoted to the poor;
San Marco would gain decisive influence over the political life of the city;
religious authority would exercise greater control over morals, books, works of art, and public speech.

In exchange, Savonarola would agree to visit the dying Lorenzo and help preserve peace at the time of the funeral.

Poliziano finally drafts the pact.

Tableau III — The Bridge over the Abyss

At Careggi, Poliziano presents the document to Lorenzo.

The prince understands what it entails.

But he also understands the danger of civil war.

He signs.

At San Marco, Savonarola learns the terms of the agreement.

Yet he does not seem to regard the document as an ending.

For him, the question is not one of money, status, or compromise.

It is the transformation of Florence.

Tableau IV — The Point in the Silence

In the twilight alcove of Careggi, Savonarola stands at Lorenzo’s bedside.

The prince asks him for peace for Florence and mercy for his children.

Savonarola answers him with divine justice.

The treaty is signed.

The witnesses withdraw.

Lorenzo remains alone.

His gaze settles upon an image of the Virgin.

Two tears run down his face.

Perhaps he already knows what the promises of men are worth.

The curtain falls on the final breath of the Magnificent.

VIII. EPILOGUE — HISTORY AND RECONSTRUCTION

History, meanwhile, continues on its course.

In 1494, Piero de’ Medici is driven out of Florence.

A few years later, Savonarola himself is arrested and burned in the Piazza della Signoria.

The world that seemed capable of being saved by compromise disappears.

But a doubt remains.

The secret agreement imagined in this play has not been found in the archives.

What the audience has just witnessed is therefore neither a reconstructed chronicle nor a newly established historical truth.

It is a dramatic reconstruction.

It begins with a simple question:

How did Florence move so quickly from a world shaped by Medici humanism to the world of Savonarola?

Between the known facts, there is a space of silence.

The theater ventures into it.

Not to claim that we know what happened there.

But to ask what might have been played out within that silence.

History has left us the events. We have attempted to hear the silence between them.

IX. THE OVERALL COHERENCE OF THE TRIPTYCH
DAWN — 1456

Cosimo de’ Medici uses political reason to preserve Lippi’s creative genius.

The world opens.

ZENITH — c. 1475–1476

Botticelli and Simonetta attempt to lift beauty above time and death.

The world reaches its height.

DUSK — 1492

Lorenzo the Magnificent discovers that politics, culture, and even compromise can become powerless when opposing forces no longer share the same conception of the world.

The world begins to unravel.

FLORENCE — FROM DAWN TO DUSK

Three plays.

Three forms.

Three moments in the same story.

Cosimo creates the space.

Sandro transforms it into beauty.

Lorenzo attempts to preserve it.

And behind them remains the same question:

What remains of a world when those who created it can no longer defend it?




T.D.