Magnifico (8 page)

HUNDREDS OF TORCHES BLAZED FROM SCONCES LINING
the Via Larga, their flames shimmering on the fine white sand that had been layered over the paving stones, muffling the sharp clatter of hooves. As the sun sank behind the hills the benches along the palaces began to fill with people. Every window was crowded with men and women craning their necks to get a better view. Bright banners were draped over somber facades of rough stone: the red lily of the Florentine Republic, the gold crescents of the Piccolomini of Siena (now with the added keys and crown showing the elevation to the papal throne of one of their own, Aeneas Silvius, as Pius II), the greyhound stretched beneath a pine tree representing the Sforza of Milan, and, above all, the golden shield emblazoned with the red balls of the Medici.

The torchlight cavalcade and ceremonial clash of arms was to be the crowning event of what had already been a memorable day. The city’s guest list on April 29, 1459, included not only Pope Pius II, surrounded by an entourage of scarlet-robed cardinals, but also the lords of Faenza, Forlì, and Rimini. Most important politically for Florence was the gracious attendance of the fifteen-year-old Galeazzo Maria Sforza, count of Pavia and eldest son of the duke of Milan. Hoping to project a mood of confidence and to astonish their visitors with an unparalleled display of wealth and refinement, the
Signoria
had arranged a variety of entertainments. The festivities had begun that morning with a joust at the Piazza Santa Croce, featuring the sons of Florence’s best families decked out in full ceremonial armor. This had been followed by a ball at the New Market with “[s]ixty young Florentine gentlemen, who were expert dancers, richly adorned with pearls and jewels, and many pretty maidens and girls.” For those who preferred stronger stuff, the priors had arranged what promised to be a gory spectacle in the
Piazza della Signoria
. Here a wooden stockade had been erected and filled with horses, cows, a wild boar, and two young buffalo. As the crowd roared, two lions—symbolizing the martial valor of the Florentine people—were set loose in what was supposed to be a sanguinary spectacle worthy of the Roman Colosseum. Disappointment soon followed as the lions, frightened by the shouting multitude, wandered about in a daze. “The preparations had been great, and the expenses large,” grumbled one eyewitness, “but the pleasure given was small.” Pope Pius, on whose behalf the show had been staged, was even less impressed. “They spent very little on entertaining the Pope,” he complained, “nor did they lay out much on lavish spectacles, though they brought lions into the piazza to fight with horses and other animals and arranged tournaments in which more wine was drunk than blood spilled.”

For the Medici family it was important that the evening’s events compensate for the afternoon’s embarrassment. Not only was the setting, in the heart of the Golden Lion, meant to call attention to the family whose palace would form the backdrop to the nighttime parade, but the star of the whole affair was to be the ten-year-old Medici heir.

It began with the steady rumble of drums and blare of flutes and trumpets from the Piazza San Marco. Thirty musicians soon wheeled into view. Close on their heels were the bannermen, who raised the personal standard of Lorenzo de’ Medici depicting a golden falcon caught in a net. Next, riding in formation, came an advance guard, richly dressed and mounted, consisting of twelve youths from the best families—including the sons of Puccio Pucci and Averardo Portinari (both families involved in running the Medici bank), two members of the Pazzi clan, and Lorenzo Neroni, son of Dietisalvi. Each of these brave young knights, dressed in matching uniforms of the lord they served, was attended by an army of pages and servants, again in matching livery bearing the red balls of the Medici crest.
*

“Palle! Palle!”
A roar of approval from the crowd announced the arrival of Lorenzo himself, sumptuously attired and mounted proudly atop a snow-white charger. Behind him came the final treat, an elaborately decorated carriage symbolizing—in the best tradition of courtly chivalry—the Triumph of Love.

As the column made its way south along the Via Larga, each adolescent boy preened like a fashion model on a runway. “Every warrior wears a helmet surrounded by a headdress in the form of a garland, beautifully decorated with silver, and with golden feathers rising from it, shining like a star,” wrote one bedazzled spectator. They proceeded as far as the baptistery before reversing course and coming to a halt beneath the walls of the Medici palace. Here the assembled dignitaries were treated to a thrilling spectacle as the young men, their armor gleaming in the torchlight, demonstrated their equestrian skill, charging with gold-tipped lances like fierce warriors. At least for this one night, these sons of bankers and merchants were transformed into daring knights who, judging by the splendor of their outfits if not their martial prowess, seemed fit to take their place alongside Charlemagne, Roland, and their brave companions. As always, the Medici had spared no expense, outfitting the entire entourage in the costliest garments and providing the riders with the finest mounts. There was no doubt among the assembled crowd to whom this night belonged: “He for many reasons has great power,” wrote one eyewitness,

There is something faintly ridiculous about these merchants’ sons dressing up as chivalrous knights, but beneath the empty pomp more important business was being transacted. On the most obvious level, those who belonged to Lorenzo’s brigade and who wore the livery of his family were declaring their fealty as surely as any knight kneeling before his king. Lorenzo, holding high the baton of the
signore,
accepted their declaration of loyalty with a calm sense of superiority as befitted a feudal lord.

Indeed, the festivities of April 1459 capped a decade-long public relations campaign that had begun with Lorenzo’s baptism on the Feast of the Epiphany. From the moment of Lorenzo’s birth the Medici were engaged in a continual and delicate process of seduction in which the young boy was presented to the people as both the paragon of the virtuous citizen, a Florentine born and bred of a respectable merchant family, and as a charismatic leader, destined to hold the fate of a nation in his hands. Finding precisely the right balance between the two was difficult, since, as Francesco Guicciardini noted, “In Florence the citizens love equality by nature, and yield unwillingly when they should acknowledge anyone as their superior.” To a people steeped in republican traditions, jealous of rank and ready to cut down to size anyone who sought to raise himself too high above his fellow citizens, Lorenzo was something new. He was, to use an anachronistic term, a celebrity, a child star paraded about the city in fine clothes and the center of attention on many public occasions.

Lorenzo was precocious and self-assured from an early age and Cosimo and Piero realized that the boy would be an asset in the general struggle for power and prestige. At the age of five he was dressed up in the latest French fashions and bundled off to the gates of the city to greet the visiting Duke of Anjou “surrounded,” we are told, “by a crowd of children and adults.” Lisping formal greetings more suited to an adult’s mouth, Lorenzo charmed everyone.

Demands to play the part of the young
signore
were constant; not even illness could excuse him from the obligation to promote his family’s interests. Recuperating from a bout of eczema at the mineral springs at Macerato in 1455, the six-year-old was elected “Lord of the Baths,” a half-humorous title that seemed mostly to involve presiding over parties and picnics in which, sniffed Piero, there were “some gentlemen and more than enough of the other sort.” Even in such casual moments Lorenzo learned to play his part as a leader of men.

As Lorenzo matured and began to think for himself he tended to look upon such occasions with an increasingly jaundiced eye. Unlike his father he was naturally sociable, but the hypocrisy and scheming he encountered every day tended to encourage in him a cynical view of men and their motives. He often declared that he wished nothing better than to escape the stench and corruption of the city and lose himself in a simple rustic retreat. “I do not know of riches or honors sweeter than this life of yours—one free of all political intrigue,” declared Lorenzo to the country swain in his philosophical poem “The Supreme Good.” “Among you happy shepherds and you cowherds no hatred reigns or wicked treachery and in these pastures no ambition grows.” Later in life when he was unhappy in love or dispirited by the backstabbing of Florentine politics, Lorenzo would flee to “some solitary and shaded place or the comfort of a green meadow…where I could take my ease close by the clear and flowing water or in the shade of a small green tree.” In the fields, meadows, and forests of his beloved Tuscany he found an inner peace he could never know in the city.

By the age of eleven Lorenzo was hounded by office-seekers who viewed him as a likely source of patronage. Those who wished to get ahead in Florence knew he had the ear of the most influential men in the city. He was pestered with letters from Medici clients and could hardly leave his house without being mobbed by the petitioners, who crowded around the gates to the palace. Medici power, like that of a Chicago ward boss, rested on an ability to deliver the goods, even for the most humble petitioner. Lorenzo’s first extant letter, written in November of 1460, is a plea for special consideration on behalf of one Chalumato of Arezzo, whom he describes as “my most dear friend.” In his second, written in September of 1461, he attempts to put in a good word with his father on behalf of
ser
Griso, “who wishes to be named notary of the
Signoria
.” For someone in Lorenzo’s position, “dear friends” sprouted like mushrooms in the rain.

Travel was one way to escape the constant harrassment he experienced in his native land. Restless by nature, Lorenzo eagerly sought opportunities to escape and Piero often obliged by employing his son as an itinerant goodwill ambassador. Out on the road, surrounded by congenial companions, Lorenzo enjoyed a rare degree of freedom. In July of 1463, Piero arranged for Lorenzo a trip to Pistoia, an important client of Florence’s in western Tuscany. There, Lorenzo and his companions were received by the local bishop and presented to the people, all of whom, he recorded in a letter to his father, greeted them very warmly. Never one to allow business to get in the way of pleasure, he then begged his father to allow him a side trip to Lucca and Pisa “to look after our affairs there,” but also, he admitted, to try his hand at trout fishing. One can sense that Piero was none too keen on this detour since Lorenzo tried to bribe him by offering him a share of the catch, though in the end, he confessed, “it rained so heavily that few were caught.”

Most of these journeys were carefully planned by Piero, but sticking to an itinerary was difficult for someone like Lorenzo, who was always on the lookout for new sensations and experiences. But delays were not always his fault. “You have arrived at Milan later than I thought,” Piero complained to his son on one occasion, “and perhaps than you did wish, on account of the delay caused by the honors paid you by the Duke at Ferrara.” Poor weather or an outbreak of plague could create long detours, and even in the best of circumstances Lorenzo and his friends were obliged to make frequent stops. Along the way to paying a courtesy call on a provincial bishop or
Signoria
the band would be forced to pause in every hilltop village where the populace would insist they sit down to a dinner of pickled meats, boiled fowl, roast pigeon, and other rustic delicacies, all washed down with ample quantities of sweet trebbiano wine, to name but one menu. “Yesterday after leaving Florence we came as far as San Miniato, singing all the way,” wrote the poet Angelo Poliziano of one such journey, “and occasionally talking of holy things so as not to forget Lent. At Lastra we drank
zappolino,
which tasted much better than I had been told. Lorenzo is brilliant and makes the whole company gay.”

Not least of the attractions of travel was the opportunity to escape the watchful eyes of his parents, though Piero and Lucrezia were careful to surround him with older men—like his brother-in-law Guglielmo de’ Pazzi or his tutor, Gentile Becchi—who acted as both companions and chaperones. Unlike many of those born to privilege, Lorenzo did not surround himself with mediocrities whose dim light would allow him to shine more brightly, but preferred the company of those who could stimulate his appetite for knowledge and against whom he could test his own intellect. Topics were varied, ranging from the typically adolescent subjects of women and sport to religion and the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Trading barbs with the likes of Luigi Pulci or Angelo Poliziano was not a pastime for the intellectually bashful, but in such elevated company Lorenzo more than held his own.