Machiavelli

by Miles J. Unger

  Unfortunately, the Cardinal was one of the few willing to go on record to defend the Second Chancellor. No one was more closely associated with Leonardo’s discredited project, and he was an easy target for those already unhappy with the regime. Even before the disaster, discontent with Piero Soderini had been growing, particularly within the “aristocratic” faction, led by Alammano Salviati. This was particularly awkward, since Salviati, Piero de’ Medici’s son-in-law, had been one of Machiavelli’s original patrons. Their close ties were evident when, during Machiavelli’s embassy to Imola, Salviati had tried unsuccessfully to secure his release from the onerous position. Commiserating with Machiavelli over the disappointing results of his efforts, he signed his letter “your devoted friend.” But by 1506, Salviati’s feelings had clearly changed, as Biagio Buonaccorsi, always an incorrigible gossip, reported to his friend. “ ‘I have never commissioned anything from that clown [Machiavelli] since I have been one of the Ten,’ ” a mutual friend overheard Salviati saying, to which Buonaccorsi added conspiratorially: “I could write you many other things, but more when we are together.”

  The growing friction between Machiavelli and Salviati reflected a widening split within Florence’s ruling elite between the aristocratic faction, led by men like Salviati—many of whom were associated with the old Medici regime—and the Gonfaloniere’s party, which was increasingly identified with the populists. Salviati had originally supported Soderini, but he had grown disenchanted with the head of state, whose policies—particularly when it came to taxes—he believed favored the popolani over magnate families like his. This meant that Machiavelli, who was increasingly seen as the Gonfaloniere’s man, was caught uncomfortably between old friends and his current boss. The collapse of the Arno diversion scheme enraged the aristocratic faction further against the head of government, in large part because the money lost on the project had once been in their pockets. Machiavelli, for his part, was fed up with his former patrons. His speech, “Some words to be spoken on the matter of raising revenue, after a brief preamble and a few words of excuse,” was directed at men like Salviati, whose patriotism waned as soon as their profits were threatened.

  Given the hardening divisions between rival factions within the government, it should be possible to determine where Machiavelli, the most political of men, stood. But in fact it is surprisingly difficult to pin him down. On the question of taxes and the prosecution of the war with Pisa, he certainly stood with the Gonfaloniere, but his dedication in 1504 of the poem The First Decennale to Alamanno Salviati reveals that he had not burned his bridges with the ottimati. In part this ambivalence can be attributed to his status as a client of powerful men whose favor he had to cultivate. He was the consummate bureaucrat, willing to serve whichever side had the upper hand regardless of ideology. But there was more to this than simple opportunism. He embodied the ethos of the civic functionary, dedicated to the abstract concept of the state whose interests he elevated above loyalty to any individual or party. His ideological slipperiness was a result of his ardent patriotism. As a servant of the republic, he remained as much as possible aloof from political infighting, and while his patrons owed their primary allegiance to powerful clans from which they sprang, Machiavelli favored those he believed put the interests of the nation first. Early on he embraced the ottimati when they offered the best chance of restoring the republic after the excesses of Savonarola, but he distanced himself when their selfish opposition to additional taxes threatened the war effort. For all his tactical flexibility, which has enraged generations of critics who see him as a man without principle, he never lost sight of the basic goal—to defend and promote the cause of the Florentine Republic and the Italian people.

  The perspective of the government functionary shaped in crucial ways the development of his thought. It allowed Machiavelli to break free from the intellectual framework established by Plato and Aristotle and adapted by philosophers like Thomas Aquinas for the Christian world. For the Greeks and their medieval followers, theories of government were based on the assumption that societies, no matter how corrupt they might be in practice, aspired to some sort of ideal—whether the aristocracy of the mind favored by Plato or the “City of God” imagined in different forms by Augustine and Aquinas. Machiavelli had little patience with such vague abstractions, as he makes clear in The Prince. “[I]t seems best to me to go straight to the actual truth of things rather than to dwell in dreams,” he declares in a stern rebuke to his predecessors. “Many have imagined republics and principalities that have never been seen nor known to exist. But there is such a chasm between how men actually live and how they ought to live that he who abandons what is for what should be will discover his ruin rather than his salvation.”

  This simple statement is at the core of Machiavelli’s revolutionary approach. It establishes him as the father of modern political science, a field whose proper subject is “the actual truth of things” rather than “dreams.” His hardheaded analysis is the source of his originality, as well as all those morally dubious propositions that have troubled later generations. As a bureaucrat who dedicated every waking hour to the state, he took as his starting point the welfare of that impersonal and amoral organism. “For when the safety of one’s country wholly depends on the decision to be taken,” Machiavelli proclaims, in what amounts to the bureaucrat’s Hippocratic Oath, “no attention should be paid either to justice or injustice, to kindness or cruelty, or to its being praiseworthy or ignominious. On the contrary, every other consideration being set aside, that alternative should be wholeheartedly adopted which will save the life and preserve the freedom of one’s country.” Though Machiavelli did not coin the phrase raison d’état, the ideology that animated the careers of statesmen from Richelieu to Kissinger was first articulated by the humble Florentine chancellor.

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  Machiavelli clearly appreciated Leonardo’s engineering skills. What is unclear is whether he appreciated Leonardo’s talent in less practical areas. There is little evidence, in fact, that Machiavelli cared deeply about art. Though he was born and raised in a city whose greatest glory was its art and architecture, little in his writing or his life demonstrates a keen interest in either. In his political writings, Machiavelli focuses narrowly on issues of power and governance. Only rarely does his view of society expand to encompass the vast array of activities that people engage in that constitute the core of what makes us human. Perhaps his most glaring oversight is the short shrift he gives to economic factors in determining political structures. One of the few times he looks up to survey the broader terrain comes in a chapter in The Prince titled “What a Prince Must Do to Be Esteemed.” But even here, cultural endeavors are viewed merely as tools of statecraft: “A prince must show himself a lover of virtue, supporting gifted men and by honoring in the arts . . . . He must, in addition to this, at the appropriate time of year, keep the populace occupied with feasts and spectacles.” A similar passage can be found near the end of his Florentine Histories, where he summarizes Lorenzo de’ Medici’s contribution to his native land. “[H]e turned to making his city more beautiful and greater,” he notes approvingly. “[H]e kept his fatherland always in festivities: there frequent jousts and representations of old deeds and triumphs were to be seen; and his aim was to keep the city in abundance, the people united, and the nobility honored. He loved marvelously anyone who was excellent in an art; he favored men of letters.” In neither passage does Machiavelli show an appreciation of art for art’s sake. Instead, art is a tool in the hands of the shrewd leader who employs it to distract the people and retain power.

  Reducing art to “bread and circuses” is perhaps a surprising attitude in someone with Machiavelli’s creative gifts. He was a more than competent poet and perhaps the greatest prose writer of his day, so one might expect him to possess a greater sensitivity to the arts and artists. But it is clear that the fine arts were, at best, only of secondary importance. He makes his dismissive attitude clear in h
is preface to Book I of The Discourses:

  When, therefore, I consider in what honor antiquity is held, and how—to cite but one instance—a bit of an old statue has fetched a high price that someone may have it by him to give honor to his house and that it may be possible for it to be copied by those who are keen on this art; and how the latter then work with great industry and take pains to reproduce it in all their works; and when, on the other hand, I notice that what history has to say about the highly virtuous actions performed by ancient kingdoms and republics, by their kings, their generals, their citizens, their legislators, and by others, who have gone to the trouble of serving their country, is rather admired than imitated; nay, is so shunned by everybody in each little thing they do, that of the virtue of bygone days there remains no trace, it cannot but fill me at once with astonishment and grief.

  His most sustained discussion of art, then, is an opportunity to deride those connoisseurs who admire the skill of ancient sculptors who shaped bronze and marble while ignoring those statesmen who were molders of men and morals.

  But while Machiavelli exhibited no particular feeling for the visual arts, he could not help but get caught up in a culture where painting, sculpture, and all manner of fine craftsmanship were essential ingredients of everyday life. To the rest of the world Florence was synonymous with high achievement in the arts, and Machiavelli, always attuned to the way his city was perceived abroad, appreciated the favorable impression this artistic achievement made. The fame of artists like Leonardo and Michelangelo, he knew, helped burnish the city’s reputation when the conduct of her armies was having the opposite effect. Art in Florence—carried out on an almost industrial scale in large workshops like Verrocchio’s or Ghirlandaio’s that employed dozens of apprentices churning out altarpieces, portraits, and more ephemeral items for festivals—was a propaganda tool, and this was something Machiavelli understood and cared about deeply.

  In the fall of 1503, before his plans to divert the Arno had been finalized, Leonardo was given the commission to fresco the Hall of the Great Council in the Palazzo della Signoria, perhaps the most significant honor the republic could bestow on an artist. The vast room had just been built to house the large assemblies resulting from the Savonarolan reforms of 1494, which had opened up the government to the entire citizen class of Florence. It was thus a potent symbol of the city’s republican regime, and it was vital that the art should convey an appropriately patriotic message. That Machiavelli himself was instrumental in securing the commission is suggested by the fact that it was his assistant in the chancery, Agostino Vespucci, who transcribed in Leonardo’s own notebook the text on which the painting, The Battle of Anghiari, was based. Vespucci’s services were probably required since Leonardo’s command of Latin was imperfect, but the participation of this civil servant reveals the extent to which the government was intimately involved in every detail of such an important public commission. Whether or not Machiavelli himself conceived the subject for the painting—which commemorated the last major triumph of Florentine arms more than sixty years earlier—its militaristic theme coincided perfectly with the Second Chancellor’s own views of a citizen republic sustained by the martial valor of its people.

  In fact at the very same moment Leonardo was designing his fresco Machiavelli was drawing up his initial plans for reinstituting a citizen militia, and the martial theme may well reflect an attempt on his part to gin up enthusiasm for this still unpopular undertaking. By recalling past triumphs, Leonardo’s painting would restore Florentines’ faith in their own valor while reminding them, by way of contrast, how poorly the current crop of mercenary captains stacked up.

  Like so many of Leonardo’s undertakings, the painting’s execution was fraught with difficulty, much of it the artist’s own making. Leonardo was easily distracted and easily offended. He dawdled while bureaucrats withheld payment, each side blaming the other for the stalemate. As the process dragged on, Leonardo began to lose interest while the government—now facing the prospect of having invested in another failed venture—grew increasingly impatient with the temperamental genius who never seemed to fulfill his promises. On May 4, 1504, after months of recriminations, a new contract was signed spelling out in greater detail the obligations of each party. The document, which provides a schedule of payments upon the completion of certain benchmarks, ends with the following Latin inscription: “Enacted in the palace of the aforementioned Lords, in the presence of Niccolò son of Bernardo Machiavelli, Chancellor of the aforementioned Lords, and Marco, of ser Giovanni Romenea, citizen of Florence, as witnesses.”

  Machiavelli’s intervention ensured that work would continue, though Leonardo once again failed to live up to expectations. For a time he set to work with renewed vigor, but his penchant for experimentation, and his tendency to lose interest in a project after the initial stages, all but guaranteed failure. Leonardo chafed at the limitations of the fresco technique. This time he mixed oils into the water-based medium, causing the plaster to dry slowly and unevenly. Even before the monumental mural was completed it began sliding from the wall. In a little more than fifty years the painting had deteriorated so badly that it was painted over by that mediocre dauber (and first-rate art historian) Giorgio Vasari.iii

  Though ultimately a grand failure, The Battle of Anghiari offers an instructive illustration of the way the government deployed artists to further its political agenda. By depicting a heroic chapter in Florence’s history Soderini’s regime hoped to wrap itself in past glories, particularly since success on the battlefield had been so conspicuously absent of late.

  Indeed, Leonardo was not the only artistic giant whose work on behalf of the Florentine government was less than a success. The Palazzo della Signoria where Machiavelli worked, in particular the Hall of the Great Council, had the distinction of simultaneously playing host to two of the greatest artistic fiascoes of all time, at least if one measures disaster by the distance between promise and achievement. Working alongside Leonardo in 1504 was Michelangelo Buonarotti who had been commissioned to paint The Battle of Cascina to complement Leonardo’s fresco on the other half of the main wall in front of which the nation’s leaders sat in regal splendor. Even more explicitly than the great cavalry clash depicted by Leonardo, Michelangelo’s frieze of monumental nudes seems to have been intended to promote Machiavelli’s plan for a revived citizen militia. The scene depicts a moment in Florence’s last (and more successful) campaign against Pisa in the fourteenth century, when the courage and quick thinking of the Florentine commissioner, Manno Donati, saved the citizen army from a surprise attack after its commander, the mercenary captain Galeotto Malatesta, had taken to his bed. As Donati raises the alarm, the soldiers, according to a contemporary account, “Florentines who had voluntarily joined on horseback in order to do honor to their fatherland,” hurriedly pull on their clothes and gird for battle, successfully repelling the enemy attack. Few images could have appealed to Machiavelli as much as this scene of citizens routing a professional army, a vivid illustration of his own political philosophy.

  Rarely have two men of such towering genius worked side by side as colleagues and rivals; rarely have two works begun with such great promise ended in such disappointment. Ultimately the two aborted masterpieces complemented each other only in the magnitude of their failure.iv While Leonardo’s painting began to deteriorate before it was completed, Michelangelo barely got past the initial drawing. Even before he had a chance to transfer the design to the wall he was called away to Rome by the new Pope, Julius II, who demanded the services of the rising star of Italian art for his own vast projects, a request that Soderini, anxious to maintain cordial relations with his neighbor to the south, could ill afford to ignore.

  Fortunately, not everything Michelangelo produced on behalf of his native land was a flop. In fact the commission for the vast fresco was his reward for an earlier spectacular success. Michelangelo had returned to Florence in 1501 after a seven-year absence following the overthro
w of the Medici regime.v Six years younger than Machiavelli, Michelangelo had traveled in the same circles before 1494, when Piero de’ Medici’s expulsion transformed the prospects of the clients of the ruling family. They certainly knew each other and had friends in common, but there is no indication the two men were ever close. In fact if Machiavelli’s relationship with Leonardo lacks a certain inspirational quality, the few documented points of contact between Michelangelo and the Second Chancellor are mundane in the extreme, proving that when two great minds meet the results can be trivial. One well-documented encounter came in 1506, when Machiavelli was in Rome on an embassy to Pope Julius. At the time the artist was working for both the Florentine government and the Pope, who had commissioned him to sculpt his tomb. Since Michelangelo was frequently shuttling between Florence and the Eternal City, Biagio Buonaccorsi entrusted him with a menial task: “[T]hus with the sculptor Michelangelo acting as deputy,” he wrote to Machiavelli, “I have sent you the money for the courier . . . . He told me he would be there next Sunday and would find you, since he also has some of his own business to do.” This minor incident says nothing about Machiavelli’s appreciation of the artist’s talent, but it captures a world in which geniuses were a common enough sight around town that it did not seem strange to employ them as errand boys.

  Michelangelo had originally been enticed back to his native city with the promise he would be allowed to work on a legendary block of marble that had lain half ruined in a yard near the Duomo. “This block of marble was nine bracciavi high,” recorded Michelangelo’s friend and colleague Vasari, “and from it, unluckily, one Maestro Simone da Fiesole had begun a giant, and he had managed to work so ill, that he had hacked a hole between the legs, and it was altogether misshapen and reduced to ruin, insomuch that the Wardens of Works of S. Maria del Fiore [in charge of the cathedral], who had the charge of the undertaking, had placed it on one side without troubling to have it finished.” Never one to duck a challenge, Michelangelo was also hoping to forestall the commission being offered to Leonardo, the only man he regarded as a worthy rival. After spending time with the magnificent but damaged block, Michelangelo was inspired to carve a figure that would symbolize the republic, an underdog warrior taking on and besting his more powerful adversary. The colossal statue that emerged cut by cut from the marble was the David. All Florence followed its progress as diligently as they followed the less happy course of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari. Among those stopping by the stonecutter’s yard was the Gonfaloniere himself: