Frieze for the Portico of Villa Medici at Poggio a Caiano

This central section of the frieze would have aligned with the main entrance to the villa. Mars emerges from the Temple of Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings, who guards the temple doors and looks into both the future and the past. The section is seen to represent the Birth of the Year and may refer to Lorenzo de' Medici's birth on January 1, 1449 (although in Renaissance Florence the year began on March 25). The soldiers allude to war, as do the presence of Mars, god of war (but also of renewal and spring, the beginning of the agricultural year), and the open doors of the Temple of Janus, which were closed in times of peace. In the reading of the iconography as a depiction of the fate of just and unjust souls, this section is seen to represent the effects of injustice: war.