Magnifico (49 page)

Rather than instilling in him a greater sense of responsibility, Piero’s Roman journey seems instead to have exaggerated his worst traits. This was confirmed on his return when he entered Florence so gaudily outfitted that he ran afoul of the city’s sumptuary laws. One contemporary declared disgustedly that Piero’s arrogant behavior “made the whole city want to throw up.” Lorenzo himself was no more pleased with his son’s tactlessness. Such displays of princely hauteur were exactly the wrong note to strike for a family already suspected of harboring dynastic ambitions. Lorenzo’s anxiety about his son’s character is attested to by the numerous queries he sent to Niccolò Michelozzi (from Bagno a Morba where he was taking the waters). Michelozzi was finally forced to admit, “Piero has not seemed to me the person he was before his departure. He has need of your authority and it is time that you returned to Florence.”

Michelozzi’s plea to Lorenzo to assert his paternal authority is a reminder of Lorenzo’s transformation over the past few years from the brash, irresponsible youth to the sober first citizen of the state—a man who could claim a place alongside his grandfather as not only pater familias but as
Pater Patriae.
The change was partly institutional, codified in the legislation of 1481 that increased his official role within the state, but also emotional and symbolic, expressed through visible signs and gestures that were always carefully scrutinized in the theatrical arena of Florentine politics. The transformation of his public persona also had deeper psychological roots. Lorenzo himself had returned from Naples a changed man. The anxiety and sorrow of that period had aged him both in mind and body. One of his assistants, Francesco di ser Barone, recorded an extended bout of depression in the summer of 1483 during which he could leave his house only through the greatest effort of will. As Lorenzo himself admitted, he never recovered from the trauma of the Pazzi conspiracy. He felt more isolated as even once trusted friends fell under a cloud of suspicion, and his natural enjoyment of life was often consumed in extended periods in which he preferred to wallow in self-pity.
*
“We promised in the prologue,” he wrote in his
Commento,

The strain of those years also seemed to have undermined his health. As an adolescent his robust, athletic physique had been proof against the family ills, but the physical ailments from which he had always suffered now threatened to overwhelm him. Gout, which had afflicted Cosimo as an elderly man and his father in middle age, seemed to be stealing from Lorenzo the prime of his life. When he returned from Naples in March of 1480, he was still only thirty-one. But already, excruciating pain in his lower joints forced Lorenzo to curtail the vigorous physical activity he loved, while chronic eczema and asthma added to the daily discomforts of life. When he traveled to the country, instead of rising early for the hunt he sat huddled by the fireplace to ward off the chill that aggravated the aches in his joints; even the palace in the city proved too drafty for comfort. His normal joie de vivre was replaced by stoic endurance, though even when he was laid up he found ways to pass the time. “[T]oday,” wrote one well-informed observer, “the Magnificent Lorenzo didn’t leave his house, since his gout assaulted him. But he gambled and amused himself in the usual way.” Letters from the most famous physicians of Europe attest to his ever more desperate attempts to find some relief. In addition to the conventional remedies—bleeding, purging, the consumption of various mineral waters, and the application of poultices—Lorenzo was willing to try ever more far-fetched solutions. “In order to prevent the return of these pains,” advised one physician, “you must get a stone called sapphire, and have it set in gold, so that it should touch the skin. This must be worn on the third finger of the left hand. If this is done the pains in the joints, or gouty pains, will cease, because that stone has occult virtues, and the specific one of preventing evil humors going to the joints.”

Apparently such bizarre remedies did little to ease his torment since Lorenzo continued to make more frequent and more extended trips to the medicinal spas that dotted the southern Tuscan countryside. Lorenzo’s poor health also had political consequences. His absences meant that legislation was often delayed and diplomatic correspondence left unattended. The government was frequently thrown into confusion while couriers fanned out across the landscape trying to track down the peripatetic lord of the city.
*
And even when his whereabouts were discovered he usually had little patience for conducting business. In 1485, while recovering at Bagno a Morba from a debilitating flare-up of gout, he chastised his secretary, Michelozzi, explaining “in order to cure himself and to restore his health he neither could nor would attend to any other matter.”

It is not surprising that these assorted ailments affected his mood. Sometimes he responded to these setbacks with self-deprecating humor, as in August 1489 when he wrote to Giovanni Lanfredini, “my having been ill these days with some leg pain means I have not written you; though the feet and tongue are far apart, one can still get in the way of the other.” More often, though, pain increased his natural irritability. Accustomed to vigorous exercise to improve his mood, Lorenzo now found himself betrayed by an unreliable and increasingly frail body. After 1480 he more often succumbed to his natural tendency to melancholy; the playfulness that had characterized him as a young man was less apparent while flashes of his always fearsome temper became more frequent. Victims of these withering attacks included not only his household intimates but his colleagues. His impatience with the foolishness of others and assumption that he always knew best meant that he was increasingly surrounded by yes-men who feared making decisions on their own. As Machiavelli noted, even as a young man “he wanted to have a say in everything, and he wanted everybody to acknowledge himself his debtor in almost every particular.” This characteristic only grew stronger with time.

His sense of isolation was magnified by the death of his mother in March of 1482. “Still burdened with tears and sorrow,” Lorenzo wrote to Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara, “I cannot but inform Your Excellency of the grievous death of my most beloved mother, Madonna Lucrezia, who today departed this life. I am more unhappy than I can say, because in addition to losing a mother, the mere thought of which breaks my heart, I have lost someone who lifted from me many a care.” Lorenzo had always thrived under the nurturing care of the women in his life, but with Lucrezia gone he lost a vital female presence in his life. Clarice, it was true, was a devoted wife—far more patient with him than he probably deserved—but she lacked the understanding of the ways of the world that could help Lorenzo significantly in his public role.

To both friends and enemies alike Lorenzo appeared a far different person than he had been only a few short years ago. Those who had worried that he was not ready to take over from his father had been reassured by his strong, steady hand at the rudder. Complaints, in fact, were now far more likely to come from those who felt his hand was all too firmly steering the ship of state. His evolving role required changes in the way he presented himself to the people, particularly given the fact that he was still a relatively young man in a society with an inborn mistrust of youth. Shortly after taking over from his father, Gentile Becchi had advised him “to seem older in appearance, in dress, and in habits,” and Lorenzo now put this advice into practice every day. He no longer tried to be the center of attention on ceremonial occasions, putting aside the armor, jewels, and silk brocade of his joust and adopting instead the less glamorous
lucco,
the crimson mantle denoting a man of substance.
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He also understood that behavior tolerated in an adolescent would not so easily be forgiven in the leading man of the republic, a role that required him to set an example for his fellow citizens.

Some of the change, however, was more apparent than real. As a young man of twenty-two his carousing had become such a scandal that his old tutor rebuked him for “behaving disgracefully with women and engaging in frivolities that shame those who must have dealings with you by day.” It is difficult to imagine Becchi or anyone else speaking to him this way after his return from Naples. This is not to say that Lorenzo had decided to deny himself the diversions to which he had grown accustomed, but only that he had learned to be more discreet. In fact he justified his philandering, and the poetry inspired by his sexual adventures, on the grounds that he needed to relieve the tensions brought on by the burdens under which he labored. “Being then placed by Fortune in this darkness, among such great shadows, sometimes the amorous ray, now of the eyes, now of the thought of my lady, brought light,” he confessed. That these amorous adventures were more than a literary conceit is suggested by Francesco Guicciardini, who passed along the common gossip of the time: “His last love, which lasted for many years, was for Bartolomea de’ Nasi, wife of Donato Benci. Though she was not beautiful, she was gracious and charming, and he was so obsessed with her that one winter when she was in the country he would leave Florence at the fifth or sixth hour of the night on horseback with several companions to go and see her, and would start back so early that he was in Florence again by morning.”

These nocturnal journeys added to his exhaustion, particularly since his daytime duties had not diminished with the return of peace.
*
Gone was the careless swagger of his youth when a misplaced faith in his own powers caused him to dismiss out of hand rumored plots against his life. Challenges to his authority that would once have been shrugged off were now met with savage force. Some of these fears were well founded: between October of 1481 and March of 1482 alone, three new plots on his life were uncovered with savage efficiency by the vigilant Eight of the Watch, the most serious of which involved two Florentines from well-known families armed with poisoned daggers.
†
The need for vigilance took its toll. He became wary of colleagues and more guarded in his friendships. The twelve-man bodyguard that now surrounded him as he made his way through the streets of the city was merely the outward manifestation of an inner darkness.

The easy give-and-take with the people of Florence that had been an important element in his charismatic rule was replaced by an increasing distance and formalized ritual. It is significant that at this time even his closest intimates, including Gentile Becchi and his uncle Giovanni Tornabuoni, stopped using the familiar
tu
and started employing the formal
voi
in their correspondence. This transformation, subtle as it was, ran against the grain of Florentine history. The people of the republic demanded that their leaders respect the forms of the city’s traditions even when they eviscerated the substance. Cosimo had recognized this and his apparent modesty in dress and habits was an important ingredient in his success. In his youth Lorenzo had been careful to maintain that delicate balance between his role as citizen and as the glamorous prince of the city, but after 1480 the need to avoid offending the sensibilities of his fellow Florentines diminished while his willingness to assert his authority in its rawest form increased.

While he remained attuned to Florentine sensibilities—as his displeasure with Piero’s tactlessness demonstrates—he was not shy about the blunt exercise of power. One particularly well-documented event that provides a glimpse into Lorenzo’s methods is the general scrutiny of 1484, the latest of those periodic surveys to determine which citizens were eligible for political office. Here Lorenzo’s fingerprints are clearly visible in almost every aspect of the complicated procedure. According to Piero Guicciardini (the historian’s father, who was a member of the scrutiny council), “the first list was drawn up by Lorenzo and
Ser
Giovanni [Giusti] alone,” and Lorenzo continued to pull strings to achieve the desired result at every step along the way. But Guicciardini’s account, for all that it reveals about the way Lorenzo was able to interject himself into the electoral process, does not support the claim that he was the tyrant of Florence in all but name. Lorenzo, in fact, had to tread carefully, balancing the claims of ancient, aristocratic families with those of the new men, members of the greater guilds with those of the lesser, even diluting the ranks of his supporters by including known opponents—and all the while keeping in mind the myriad political debts he had to repay. Though Florence was far from a perfect democracy, the constant horse-trading and negotiation involved in the scrutiny reveals the survival of a lively political process.