Magnifico (72 page)

† Within Tuscany the most significant holdouts against Florentine expansion were Siena, not conquered until the sixteenth century, and the ancient imperial capital of Lucca. Pisa, Florence’s greatest rival throughout the Middle Ages had finally succumbed in 1406. The conquest of Pisa provided landlocked Florence with an outlet to the sea.

* The fact that the mine in Castelnuovo never yielded significant profits is irrelevant to the state of mind of those involved. In 1471 the newly discovered deposits seemed to promise lucrative rewards.

* The most famous version of this shield-wielding mascot, symbol of Florentine martial prowess, is by Donatello. For many years it stood outside the
Palazzo della Signoria
. It is now in the Bargello Museum.

* Rinaldo degli Albizzi’s fall from grace in 1434 came not when he urged his countrymen to wage war against Lucca but only when the war began to go badly.

* Despite his lack of business acumen, Tommaso Portinari was an important patron of the arts. The magnificent
Adoration of the Shepherds
by Hugo van der Goes and the fine portraits of him and his wife by Hans Memling are among the Flemish masterpieces that found their way to Florence and helped influence the course of painting in his native city.

* “While [Michelangelo] was working on this statue [of Hercules], a great quantity of snow fell in Florence, and Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s eldest son, who had taken his father’s place but lacked the grace of his father, being young, wanted a statue of snow made in the middle of his courtyard.”(Condivi,
The Life of Michelangelo,
chapter 1)

† Lorenzo was reputed to have said, “I have three sons: one dumb [Piero], one smart [Giovanni], one sweet [Giuliano]” (Parks, 243), a description that accurately reflects their later careers.

* Angelo Poliziano’s real name was Angelo Ambrogini. The name Poliziano comes from his hometown, Montepulciano,
Mons Politanus
in Latin, of which Poliziano is the Italianized version. Born in 1454, his father, a local adherent of the Medici party, had been killed in a local political quarrel, leaving the precocious ten-year-old to fend for himself. He made his way to Florence where he impressed Cristoforo Landino with his intelligence and literary gifts.

* One of the best contemporary portraits of Poliziano shows him in just this role. It appears in the series of frescoes Ghirlandaio painted for the Sassetti family in Santa Trinità. Here the swarthy, hawk-nosed poet is seen, book in hand, with two of his charges, Giuliano and Piero. Lorenzo himself is depicted standing next to the painting’s donor, Francesco Sassetti, general manager of the Medici bank.

* The Medici palace has, over the centuries, come to symbolize the life of the cultured gentleman, a perfect blend of wealth, learning, and art. One can find echoes in the nineteenth-century mansions in Newport and, more surprisingly, in civic buildings like the main branch of the Boston Public Library, where the rich man’s home has now been converted into the people’s palace. The choice makes sense when one recalls that Cosimo established the first public library in Europe at his favorite monastery of San Marco.

* Matteo Franco, one of Lorenzo’s new favorites, had taken over the role of court buffoon from Luigi Pulci. In a bitter contest for Lorenzo’s favor, Franco had bested the companion of his earlier days.

* The university, which probably dates to the fourteenth century, had fallen into decay after the conquest of the city in 1405 by Florence and the economic stagnation that followed. Lorenzo revived what was, in effect, a moribund institution.

* Lorenzo is probably the caped figure just below and to the left of Cosimo who kneels next to the Christ child. Directly below are the kneeling figures of his sons, Piero and Giovanni, while Giuliano stands with bowed head just to the right. Botticelli has included his self-portrait in the figure on the far right, staring confidently back at the viewer.

* Corrupt political bargaining was nothing new in the election of popes. Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini (Pius II) recalls in his memoirs being accosted in the privy by cardinals demanding his vote.

* The Roman branch of the Medici bank continued to be the most important, but under the direction of Giovanni Tornabuoni it, too, began to suffer reverses. Maintaining good relations with the reigning pontiff required generous loans that were easier to make than to collect on. The accumulation of bad debts troubled the Roman branch no less than the others.

* Apparently the pope’s benevolence did not extend to the Turks, an inconsistency that bothered few Christian rulers. In fact the zeal with which the newly crowned pope set about organizing a Crusade against the Ottomans was seen as further evidence of his integrity. As infidels, the Turks were fair game for even the most irenic of popes. Given the Turkish advances in the eastern Mediterranean—including, most ominous, the conquest of the Venetian colony of Negroponte in 1470—that were now threatening the Italian mainland, Sixtus’s initial belligerence on this front seemed amply justified.

† Like most recent campaigns against the infidels, this one ended in disappointment. The expedition that went out with high hopes in 1471–72 under Cardinal Caraffa achieved little. Quarrels between Venetian and Neapolitan factions contributed to the futility.

* Tornabuoni took up the position of depositor general reluctantly, believing it would lead to no end of difficulties. The pope was financially overextended and Tornabuoni feared that he would borrow money he could not repay. Lorenzo’s willingness to accept the deal may have been based on political rather than financial considerations.

† There is no doubt that Lorenzo felt he had assurances from Sixtus on this point, though it is not certain that these date from the initial meetings.

‡ Florence was in fact founded by Roman imperial legions, though Florentines made rather more of this birth than is warranted by the archaeological record, which suggests that in classical times it was little more than an obscure military outpost.

* Often such projects could actually have the opposite of their intended effect. Giovanni Rucellai, for one, spent so much on his building projects, including his famous palace designed by Leon Battista Alberti, that he almost destroyed the family fortune. Still, Rucellai may have gotten his money’s worth, since his name is still best known for the palace that bears his name.

* Della Rovere was Sixtus’s own family name; Riario was the married name of his sister, whose children were among those whose fortunes were advanced by their uncle. From Sixtus’s own day, rumors have circulated that his many nephews were in fact his own children, but no firm evidence has ever been uncovered to support this contention. The only supporting evidence is his obvious affection for the boys and the assiduousness with which he advanced their careers, but this might well have been simply the transferal of the paternal instinct to the closest object. Savonarola, who lived during the reign of Alexander VI who openly acknowledged his children, wrote: “The priests used to call their sons nephews; now they are not nephews, but sons, sons plain and simple!” (Roeder,
Man of the Renaissance,
chapter 4.) Sixtus’s brother-in-law, Paolo Riario, had supported him early in career, inviting him to tutor his sons. Sixtus later wrote to him, “I well know that to you, after God, I owe it that I have become what I am; I will show myself grateful; let me have your son Pietro for my son: I will give him the best possible education, and make a notable man of him.” (Pastor chapter 12.) Sixtus’s vices, unlike those of his successor and many other Renaissance popes, did not seem to include excesses of the flesh. In addition to Pietro Riario, Giuliano della Rovere, and Raffaele Sansoni Riario, two other papal nephews were elevated to the Sacred College—Cristoforo and Girolamo Basso della Rovere.

* This fresco, with its magnificent architectural setting, also suggests a more constructive aspect of Pope Sixtus’s reign. Sixtus was one of the great builder popes of the Renaissance, who helped transform the decaying ciy into the glorious capital of Christendom it would become in the following centuries.

† Platina had every reason to be grateful to Sixtus. He had been imprisoned and tortured by Paul II, who suspected him and his fellow humanists of plotting against his authority. Sixtus had restored Platina to his former position and then appointed him to head his new library. Platina was also a great admirer of Lorenzo, dedicating his book
On the Best Citizen
to him.

* In 1477, the year of this painting, Sixtus appointed Girolamo burgher of the city of Rome and a member of the Roman nobility; the medal probably signifies his new rank.

† Gabriella Gonzaga angrily rejected the suggestion by her father, Lodovico, Marquis of Mantua, that the two “lie together without intercourse.”

* The match proved just the beginning of an eventful career for Caterina, whose sudden turns of fortune offer a fascinating glimpse into the violence and chaos of Renaissance Italy. Caterina would in time prove herself one of the truly remarkable women of the century, a survivor who negotiated the treacherous waters of Italian politics with skill and courage. To those who assumed that being a woman she was naturally weak and incapable, she declared, “I am not Duke Galeazzo’s daughter for nothing: I have his brains in my head.” (Pastor, 301) She was married at a tender age to a violent and insignificant man but managed to outlive her spouse and fight for her own rights and those of her children against powerful lords, even facing down the ferocious Cesare Borgia, an act of defiance that earned her the admiration of Machiavelli. When her sons had been taken hostage by an army besieging her fortress and the soldiers threatened to kill them before her eyes, she pulled up her skirt and taunted them, “Don’t you think, you fools, that I have the stuff to make others?”(Breisach, 104) The siege was soon lifted and her sons released.

* On January 26, 1472, the Florentine emissary declared that the rulers of Florence “would spare neither expense nor any effort in making themselves lord of that state.”(See
Lettere di Lorenzo de’ Medici
, i, 443.)

† The documents actually call the transfer a “gift” of the duke to the Florentine people; 50,000 ducats, however, went to defray the costs Sforza had supposedly incurred, while another 50,000 was to cover expenses associated with the transfer itself.

* Lorenzo did not immediately give up hope of buying off the pope. Indeed, his uncle Giovanni Tornabuoni assured him that with a few thousand ducats strategically scattered all could be arranged to Lorenzo’s satisfaction. He was also assured by those close to the duke that all would eventually be resolved in Florence’s favor (see
Lettere,
i, Epilogue).

* Critics rightly point out that the Medici, and Lorenzo in particular, illegally appropriated public money for their own use, but it is not at all certain that they took more than they spent. As private citizens, without salaries and without access to an efficient bureaucracy, they were often forced to dip into their personal fortune to further the interests of the republic. Lorenzo was by no means selfless in his pursuit of power, but neither was he the crook portrayed by his enemies. Lorenzo’s increasingly precarious financial position reveals that being the uncrowned ruler of Florence was no guarantee of prosperity.

* Many architectural historians trace the origins of the Renaissance
palazzo
to that built by Niccolò da Uzzano (designed by the artist Lorenzo di Bicci) in the 1420s. Though modest by later standards, with its spacious interior courtyard it was an advance over the formless private dwellings of the Middle Ages.

* The best account of Florentines’ traditional beliefs about her ancient history comes in Giovanni Villani’s fourteenth-century
Cronica Nuova
, Book I, where he recounts the story of Caesar’s destruction of Fiesole and the establishment of Florence in the valley below. Modern archaeologists have traced the city’s founding to soldiers of the imperial age. The oldest parts of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, though erected on Roman foundations, date to the fourth century
A.D
. The present octagonal building, with its distinctive exterior paneling of green and white marble, dates largely to the twelfth century. The statue of Mars remained at the foot of the Ponte Vecchio until it washed away during a particularly violent flood in 1333.