Magnifico (11 page)

Sinning together with his friends offered Lorenzo some release from the rigors of his life as the Medici heir. His sense of duty was constantly at war with his natural zest for life, his desire to live up to the expectations of those whose approbation he craved in conflict with his taste for sensual pleasures. In the end he pursued all things to the point of near exhaustion. Machiavelli sensed in him a man divided against himself. “Thus,” he concluded in his summation of Lorenzo’s life, “considering both his voluptuous life and his grave life, one might see in him two different persons, joined in an almost impossible conjunction.” More psychologically perceptive than the political theorists who remained perplexed by Lorenzo’s irresponsible side is the playwright William Shakespeare, whose portrait of the young Prince Hal wasting his days in the tavern with Falstaff and Bardolph uncannily resembles Lorenzo and his friends at the baths of Macerato or Bagno a Morba.

Burdened by high expectations and struggling to emerge from the shadow of his famous forebears, Lorenzo’s urge to lash out and behave irresponsibly is understandable. Exploring the more sordid neighborhoods of town—the brothel district between the
Mercato Vecchio
and the archbishop’s palace, or the Chiasso de’ Buoi near the public baths—allowed Lorenzo to escape the formality of palace life and the false flattery of courtiers. But could any friend of Lorenzo ever entirely escape the suspicion of ulterior motives? To be known as a “friend of Lorenzo” was automatically to wield great influence in the city, and much of his time was consumed seeking sinecures for those whose attachment to him was as much a product of ambition as affection. In his poem “On the Supreme Good,” Lorenzo despairs of life in the city where “he who lies the best is happiest” and “friendship’s measured by expediency.”

One of the main constraints on the free play of emotion was that friendship blurred uneasily into clientage, a relationship of unequal partners that could get in the way of genuine affection. Even as a teenager, Lorenzo was a magnet for hungry literati and talented young artists who knew they would get a sympathetic reception. “Our Maeceneas,” he was called, referring to the advisor of Augustus and patron of Virgil and Horace. The ambiguities were particularly pronounced in his relations with poets like Angelo Poliziano and Luigi Pulci, who were both literary mentors to Lorenzo and clients of the Medici family. The poet ranked higher on the social scale than those who worked with their hands (a group that included painters and sculptors); literature was even considered a fit avocation for a gentleman. Lorenzo, after all, was a fine poet but one cannot imagine him picking up a brush or chisel, no matter how much he appreciated such skill in others. But for Lorenzo poetry was a passion, not a means of earning a living. The orphaned Poliziano, by contrast, had been rescued from poverty by Cosimo, and the often impecunious Pulci (though a Bardi on his mother’s side) was dependent on crumbs from the Medici table. “As I have not had money to spend for some time here [at Pisa] I have spent your reputation,” the poet wrote, only half in jest. “Here, as I pass, I am pointed at: ‘There goes Lorenzo’s great friend,’ they say.” Pulci’s self-deprecating humor cannot conceal the fact, ruefully acknowledged, that he was merely an insignificant satellite in the great man’s orbit. In short, no friendship for the Medici heir was free from economic calculation or political consideration.

One client who largely escaped from the bonds of dependence was the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, a man whom Lorenzo revered as a spiritual and intellectual father. As Cosimo’s great friend and intellectual mentor he continued to offer guidance to Lorenzo after Cosimo’s death. This kindly, mild-mannered man was the foremost philosopher of the age, leader of a movement that sought to reconcile Plato’s idealism with Christian notions of the immortality of the soul. “Short in stature, slim, and slightly hunched in both shoulders,” of ruddy complexion and his head covered in blond curls, he was a physically unprepossessing figure. In conversation he was little more impressive, hampered as he was by a stammer. Nonetheless he was one of those people whose conviviality makes them the natural center of things.
*
Lorenzo himself was completely at ease with him, and when they were separated for long periods their letters were frequent and intimate. Chiding the philosopher for his failure to write, Lorenzo teased, “Now if you are not sorry for this—and I seek no other sign of repentance than your letters—know that you will undergo judgment at the court of our mutual love, for it is right that the case should be tried by such a judge. We shall find nobody fairer or more just, or anyone who could be a truer witness to our own soul. This judge gives you only the space of three days to write to me, and if these go by without doing so, he promises you will be condemned.” Here we catch a glimpse of the humor that charmed Lorenzo’s contemporaries but that is largely absent from the remainder of his extant correspondence. “Who would have believed it?” Lorenzo wrote Ficino in mock despair. “Indeed, I can scarcely believe my own eyes. I sent two letters to you; you sent scarcely one to me, and it was so sparing in words that if you leave out the greetings at the start, the farewell at the end, the date and address, there is almost nothing left. Should a philosopher be talkative, or should he be mute?”

With this man who had been an intimate of his family’s household from before his birth, Lorenzo could shed the formalities necessary to maintaining his dignity and authority. Ficino was one of the few people from whom Lorenzo would accept criticism because he was confident in Ficino’s love for him. “I was indeed delighted with your letter which reproved me for the waste of past time,” Lorenzo wrote, “in such a way that my idleness does not appear to have been entirely useless. For the result of my waste of this brief time is that directions have come from you which are not only for my benefit but for the benefit of all those who suffer from the same disease.”

As Lorenzo entered his adolescence he had every reason to believe that his future was secure. The Medici continued to prosper as Cosimo, in the age-old Florentine way, used his considerable political influence to steer business to the family bank. The civil strife that had brought Cosimo to power lay two decades in the past and the republic thrived under his steady leadership.
*
True, his cavalier disregard for democratic institutions provoked grumbling that occasionally became serious enough to disrupt the normal functioning of the government (as in 1458 when Girolamo Machiavelli and his followers were arrested and sent into exile for fomenting discontent with the regime), but Cosimo was shrewd enough to use such moments of crisis to strengthen the hand of the
reggimento.
*
Medici prospects were also enhanced by a growing family. Giovanni had married late, but his young bride, Ginevra degli Alessandri, had already produced a male heir, named Cosimino (Little Cosimo), after his grandfather. Giovanni, more robust and outgoing than his older brother, was viewed by many as the likely candidate to inherit his father’s position. Were Giovanni to outlive Piero by a number of years, as seemed more than likely given Piero’s ill health, Cosimino might well have at least shared the leadership role in the family with his older cousin.

But this apparently solid structure was built on shaky foundations. A few years after the move to their new home, the Medici were struck by a series of painful blows that threatened the future of the family and subtly altered Lorenzo’s own prospects. The first was the sudden death in 1461 of young Cosimino. The death of a child was not uncommon in fifteenth-century Florence, but coupled with the unexpected death of Giovanni two years later, these tragic events shook the family to its core. “[I]n the last years of his life,[Cosimo] felt very grave sorrow because of the two sons he had, Piero and Giovanni,” wrote Niccolò Machiavelli. “The latter, in whom he had more confidence, died; the other was ill and, because of the weakness of his body, hardly fit for public or private affairs.” Now the palace that was meant to signal a vigorous and thriving dynasty seemed sadly depopulated; a once proud symbol of a vigorous lineage had become, at least to Cosimo, an empty shell. Among those trying to restore the grieving father to his accustomed vigor was Pope Pius II, who opined, “Mourning accords not with your age; it is contrary to your health, and we ourselves, your native city, and all Italy, require that your life should be as far as possible prolonged.” To which Cosimo responded: “I…strive to the best of my power, and so far as my weak spirit will permit, to bear this great calamity with calmness.”

Cosimo’s distress involved more than just the understandable feelings of a father losing a much beloved child. For the aging leader of Florence the death of his younger son threatened his dreams for the future of his family. He knew he had not long to live himself; at seventy-four he had already far surpassed the norm, and the family disease of gout had rendered him increasingly feeble. His former allies, once deferential, now circled like vultures around a dying animal. Agnolo Acciaiuoli, Dietisalvi Neroni, and Luca Pitti filled the ears of foreign ambassadors with complaints of Medici weakness and unreliability.

The death of his grandson, followed soon after by that of his son, sent the aging patriarch into a depression from which his aging body and flagging spirit never recovered. When his wife, Contessina, chided him for spending his hours in silent meditation, Cosimo responded, “When we are going to our country-house, you are busy for a fortnight preparing for the move, but since I have to go from this life to another, does it not seem to you that I ought to have something to think about?” In July of 1464 Cosimo left the palace on the Via Larga for the last time. As he was carried by litter through the gates of the city and up the hills to his beloved villa at Careggi, those who watched the procession knew he would never return to the city he had dominated for more than three decades. Among those summoned to the dying man’s bedside was Ficino. To ease his pain, Cosimo had his friend read him passages from Plato, whose writing had given him comfort on many trying occasions.

Piero, too, came to his father’s bedside, while Lorenzo and Giuliano were sent away to Cafaggiolo, perhaps to keep them from disturbing the dignitaries come to pay their last respects. In a letter to his sons, written during Cosimo’s final hours, Piero tried to prepare them for the trying times ahead. “[Cosimo] began to recount all his past life, then touched upon the government of the city and then on its commerce, and at last he spoke of the management of the private possessions of our family and of what concerns you two; taking comfort that you had good wits and bidding me educate you well so that you might be of help to me. Two things he deplored. First, that he had not done as much as he wished or could have accomplished; secondly that he left me in such poor health and with much irksome business.” Finally, he urged them to “take example and assume your share of care and trouble as God has ordained, and being boys, make up your minds to be men.”

Five days later Cosimo was dead. Not long after, Piero penned the following tribute to his father: “I record that on the 1st August 1464…Cosimo di Giovanni de’ Medici passed from this life, having suffered greatly from pains in his joints…. He was seventy-seven years old. A tall and handsome man, he was possessed of great wisdom and kindness…and for that reason was trusted and loved by the people.”

Cosimo’s death, though not unexpected, was a blow not only to Piero but to the extended Medici clan and to the
reggimento
that had depended for three decades on his wise counsel and forceful leadership. The exiles of 1434 continued to stir up trouble from abroad, while within the
reggimento
itself many feared that their former colleagues had set out on a path that would lead to the kind of despotism that had long since overtaken most of their neighbors.
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As early as 1458, a conspiracy led by Girolamo Machiavelli had sought the overthrow of Cosimo’s government. Though quickly discovered, it pointed to a festering discontent within the body politic. One of those approached by Machiavelli was Palla Strozzi, at one time the richest man in Florence.
†
Strozzi declined to join with the rash Machiavelli, but the reasons he gave could hardly have given comfort to Piero. He had refused, according to the Milanese ambassador (who certainly passed this information along to Piero), only because “these were vain hopes, since while Cosimo was yet living such a thing was impossible, but as soon as he was dead things would of their own accord and in few days turn in their favor.” Now that Strozzi’s wish had come to pass, many predicted the Medici government would not long outlive its preeminent leader.