Lorenzo’s able performance during the recent crisis had dramatically increased his influence and prestige. Foreign leaders paid him tribute, while his compatriots began to treat him with newfound respect. As his father’s closest aide and confidant he spent much time conferring with the principali. Veterans of the political scene like Tommaso Soderini, Otto Niccolini, Carlo Pandolfini, and Luigi Guicciardini had a chance to observe him on a daily basis and judge his character, and as Piero’s health continued to deteriorate, the question uppermost in the minds of all those concerned about the future of the republic was whether the ship of state could be entrusted to the captaincy of one so young and untested.
Reviews of Lorenzo’s character in this period reveal a young man whose gifts exceed his wisdom. The Milanese ambassador wrote what is probably the most balanced judgment: “[Lorenzo] is of such a nature as I have written previously: astute and possessing great insight he surely is; but he thinks too highly of himself and he sets his sails too high for comfort.” This observation on the part of a friend is similar to the conclusion reached by his bitter critic Alamanno Rinuccini—that Lorenzo was immensely able but dangerously arrogant. Piero himself noted similar qualities in his son and often seemed to think that paternal duty required him to knock Lorenzo down a peg or two.
Indeed, relations between father and son were not without difficulties. Lorenzo was too much the dutiful son for the natural tension that existed between them to lead to an open breach, but as Piero struggled with his infirmities, Lorenzo, bursting with youthful energy, grew increasingly impatient with his father’s efforts to hold him back. Their relations mirrored in miniature the perennial rivalry between generations, which in fifteenth-century Florence had traditionally been heavily slanted toward age and experience and had only partially succumbed to the cult of youth built up around Lorenzo and Giuliano. Complaints that the government had been handed over to unruly adolescents were surely exaggerated, but they were common enough to have contained at least a grain of truth. Lorenzo’s government would be distinguished by its youth, vitality, and dynamism, qualities that stirred up resentment among the city’s entrenched elites.
Tensions between father and son, however, were as much a matter of temperament as of age. While Lorenzo was outgoing and socially skilled, Piero was reserved with strangers and uncomfortable with the ceremonial aspects of government. Piero knew that Lorenzo was blessed with skills he did not possess, confessing during one of his absences that without him, “I shall be as a man without hands.” Particularly after the death of his gregarious uncle, Giovanni, in 1462, Lorenzo became the social coordinator and principal spokesman for the Medici regime.
During his adolescent years Lorenzo was busy building up his own personal authority, a process that fostered a growing belief in his own abilities and encouraged a sense of independence. Those in Florence wishing to advance their careers, or who found themselves on the wrong side of the law, appealed to Lorenzo, who thus developed a following of clients dependent on his favor.* The way in which Lorenzo wielded patronage in these years is suggested by a letter he wrote to the leaders of the commune of Arezzo: “The enduring and intimate good will that has always existed between your community and our house, particularly owing to the revered memory of my grandfather Cosimo and now with Piero my father, encourages me to appeal to Your Lordships with great confidence in every case. Ser Carlo di Piero di Berto da Firenzuola, notary, a noble youth and my great friend…would like to obtain from your community the position of notary of the office of the Civil Court, at the first vacancy, or whenever possible.”
After 1466, Lorenzo’s day-to-day role became more prominent and that of his father receded somewhat into the background. Lorenzo was no longer merely the “hope of the city” but a practicing and practical political operative. As his confidence grew and as he became more familiar with the intricacies of statecraft, Lorenzo began to criticize his father’s ways of doing business. “Lorenzo demonstrates that he has thought things out for himself,” reported the Milanese ambassador to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, “and he complains that he was unable to remedy the many ways of his father, which were more apt to lose him every friend within the city than to increase them abroad by even one.”
It is a tribute to Lorenzo’s prodigious energy that the growing list of official duties did nothing to dampen his appetite for more frivolous pursuits. Far from trimming his sails, Lorenzo seemed more determined than ever to enjoy himself at every opportunity. One incident in particular shows how Lorenzo chafed under the burdens imposed by his newfound responsibilities. It came in the fall of 1467, during a period of unrest stirred up by the continuing machinations of the exiled leaders of the Hill,* and the streak of recklessness that Lorenzo exhibited at the time caused friends and family once again to question his judgment.
In mid-September, with the countryside plagued by marauding bands of mercenary soldiers, many of them in the pay of the exiles, Lorenzo set aside his duties in the city and headed for the spa at Bagno a Morba, an isolated hamlet located in the rugged hills near Volterra.* There was nothing unusual about such a trip. Lorenzo, like all the Medici, was plagued by eczema as well as gout and arthritic pains, and throughout his life he would seek relief in the various mineral spas that dotted the countryside. An additional motivation was that his mother had stopped by the baths on her return from Rome to recover from a bout of fever, and Lorenzo was anxious to see her and to catch up on the news from the great capital.
But spas like Bagno a Morba were not only prized for their medicinal effects: something about the sulfurous vapors seemed to loosen morals as well as muscles, and there is no doubt that Lorenzo left the city in order to pursue some sort of sexual liaison. “[He] who want[s] a son,” went an old Tuscan saying, “leaves his wife at the baths, where she’ll have fun.”
No sooner had Lorenzo and his companions set out than word began to spread that bandits in the pay of the exiles were planning to descend on the village to kidnap or murder him. Alerted to the danger, Piero hurried messengers to the baths and urged his family to seek safety, though he concluded that the threats “are all dreams.” The rumors, though unsubstantiated, brought forth one letter that provides a telling glimpse into the character of the young Lorenzo. It was Gentile Becchi, Lorenzo’s tutor, who was given the task of coaxing the young man back to Florence. “There [at the baths] you risk unnecessary peril,” he scolded Lorenzo. “It seems to your friends that you should return. And they wish that, having returned, you looked after yourself better, valuing those who value you, and not putting us off with one of your ‘leave-it to-me’s,’ and that in re venere [i.e., in matters of love] you avoid those places where you are in danger.”
The re venere that enticed Lorenzo to the baths are not spelled out by Becchi, but gossip about Lorenzo’s mistresses, as well as the ribald banter of letters from his friend Braccio Martelli, confirm that young Lorenzo was not leading a life of monkish denial. Becchi’s missive had the desired result of bringing an early end to Lorenzo’s tryst. More important from the historian’s point of view, his admonishment reveals a headstrong young man unwilling to forgo his pleasures and liable to respond to criticism or advice with a dismissive “leave-it-to me.” Such self-assurance was to be both a source of strength and significant weakness throughout Lorenzo’s life, allowing him to take decisive action while others hesitated, but also leading him into perilous waters when he failed to heed the council of more experienced men.
The incident, though amounting to little in the end, is significant for the light it sheds on that perennial conflict within Lorenzo between duty and pleasure. Such conflicts are, of course, a natural part of growing up, but the violent backdrop to this inner struggle, and the potential for disaster should any of the choices he made turn out badly, added to the normal stresses of adolescence.
The incident also highlights the contrasting roles played by town and country in Lorenzo’s mind, a contrast that imparted a certain predictable rhythm to his life.
While it was largely in the city that important business was conducted, the countryside provided a much needed release whenever the pressures of city life grew too great. Lorenzo drew sustenance from the hard physical labor of the fields and the practical hands-on management of his various estates; in his library ancient and modern texts on agronomy and animal husbandry shared the shelves with beautifully illuminated manuscripts and rare volumes of Plutarch, Homer, and Plato. Like his grandfather before him, he found in the workaday chores of pruning and planting the perfect means to clear his head after the intrigues and petty squabbles of political life. He was invigorated by the pungent smell of the stable (where he preferred to groom his horses himself) and rejuvenated by the feel of the hot Tuscan sun on his neck.
But the family’s many villas in the Tuscan hills offered more than simple rustic pursuits. Those close to the city, like Fiesole and Careggi, were the preferred venues for the philosophical discussions to which Lorenzo and his circle of friends were addicted. Music and dance were also part of the daily fare, with Lorenzo an enthusiastic participant in both, performing with particular skill on the lyre. The more distant villas, like Trebbio and Cafaggiolo in the Apennine foothills, served as hunting lodges from which to set out in pursuit of a stag or to watch the soaring flight of a well-trained hawk. These pastimes, too, were not entirely without intellectual content since they provided the inspiration for much of his best poetry.
Lorenzo’s need to find a refuge from the cares of the city grew with his political responsibilities. “Let search who will for pomp and honors high” he wrote in one of his sonnets,
the plazas, the temples and the great buildings, the pleasures,
the treasures, that accompany
a thousand hard thoughts, a thousand pains.
A green meadow filled with lovely flowers,
a little brook that bathes the grass around,
a little bird pining for his love,
better stills our ardor…
It is not surprising that Lorenzo longed to put the stone and brick of Florencefar behind him. In the city he could not avoid the crowds clamoring for his attention. Down the Via Larga flowed an endless stream of citizens, rich and poor, begging a little more of his time to plead their case. In the piazza and even in the privacy of his chambers men and women tugged at his sleeve. Just a word from him and all could be arranged! A letter to the proper official and the petitioner or his son would be set for life; a nod from Lorenzo and a debtor might be set free or a judge persuaded to change his verdict. Even the most intimate matters were the business of the Medici heir. Marriages were as much a political as a personal affair, and soon Lorenzo found himself the city’s matchmaker, with the power to determine whose daughter would share a bed with whose son.* The role of mezzano (intermediary) gave him a wide, if somewhat jaundiced, view of the human condition. As thousands of trivial and sordid details were whispered in his ear he came to know more about the private lives of his fellow citizens than any priest hearing confession.
It was during his teenage years that he began to write poetry. Lorenzo spent many of his happiest hours among artists and poets, and under the influence of Luigi Pulci he now tried his hand composing his own verses, a pursuit that cleared his head as effectively as the country air and provided an outlet for his creative energies. His admiration for Pulci’s talents did not prevent Lorenzo from poking fun at his absentminded ways in his own verses. These lines from his “Partridge Hunt” evoke pleasant days spent hunting in the woods where poetic inspiration was pursued as vigorously as bird or beast:
And where is Pulci, that he can’t be heard?
A while ago he went into that spread
Of trees, perhaps he wants to spin a sonnet—
He’s sure to have some notion in his head.
Breaking with tradition, Lorenzo wrote in his native Tuscan dialect, rather than the more elevated Latin, “to prove the dignity of our language” by demonstrating that it can “easily express any concept of our minds.”* His preferred idiom was the sonnet, a form perfected more than a century earlier by his illustrious compatriot Petrarch, because, Lorenzo explained, “honor, according to the philosophers, is attached to that which is difficult.” There was nothing he liked better than a challenge, and the rigid structure of the sonnet constituted a formidable literary bastion whose conquest could only impart added luster to he who conquered it.
Once he began to write in earnest, poetry was not simply a pastime to fill up the dull hours but an integral part of Lorenzo’s self-conception and self-presentation. Sometime around 1467 or 1468, he sent to don Federigo—the younger son of King Ferrante, whom he’d befriended during the wedding of Ippolita Sforza to his older brother Alfonso—a compilation of poems by famous Tuscans, along with a spirited defense of the vernacular in which they were written. “At the end of the volume (as seemed to be your request),” wrote Lorenzo to the prince, “we have copied a few of our own sonnets and songs, so that when reading them you can remember my loyalty and affection…. Receive, therefore, Illustrious Lord, this volume and myself, not only in your house, but in your heart and soul, as you have a blithe and enduring abode in ours.”
Poetry was a calling card Lorenzo could use to gain entry to the great courts of Europe. Throughout his life he deployed the cultural assets of Florenceas kings and princes deployed their armies, marshaling a glittering array of talent to impress outsiders with the glory and majesty of the republic. For the Medici, as for other Florentine patricians, art and literature were the great equalizers in the competition for honor and prestige. A mere banker’s son he may have been, but his literary flair, his erudition, and his cultivation were the factors that, along with his fabled wealth, allowed him to treat with kings and princes on a level playing field. It is difficult to imagine the Neapolitan prince writing in a similar vein; while Lorenzo strove by every means to show himself worthy of a place among the great don Federigo, secure in his titles, was encouraged in a life of intellectual laziness.
This letter reflects the two most significant elements of Lorenzo’s contribution to the culture of the Florentine Renaissance—his role as patron and as a creative figure in his own right. Lorenzo’s closeness to and active collaboration with some of the most creative spirits of the age—artists like Botticelli, Verrocchio, Leonardo, and Michelangelo and writers like Luigi Pulci, Angelo Poliziano, and Pico della Mirandola, who regarded him as a colleague as well as a patron—gave to the Lorenzan age its aura of a golden moment for the arts, and his role as arbiter of taste on all matters artistic increased with each passing year. His influence grew to the point where no major artistic project went forward in Tuscany without at least his tacit approval. When the city of Pistoia commissioned an important tomb for its cathedral in 1477, the city fathers sent the competing models to Lorenzo for adjudication “because you have a quite complete understanding of such things, and of everything else.” Angelo Poliziano, who had experienced Lorenzo’s generosity firsthand, penned numerous tributes to his friend and patron:
Whilst Arno, winding through the mild domain,
Leads in repeated folds his lengthen’d train;
Nor thou thy poet’s grateful strain refuse,
Lorenzo! sure resource of every muse;
Whose praise, so thou his leisure hour prolong,
Shall claim the tribute of a nobler song.
In assuming the role of artistic arbiter, Lorenzo was following in the footsteps of Piero and Cosimo (though his fame as a man of sound aesthetic judgment ultimately exceeded theirs). But by plunging into the literary fray, and staking his reputation on his talent, Lorenzo was departing from the time-tested path of the Florentine patrician whose dignity permitted him to pay for creativity in others but not to have more intimate intercourse with the muses. The explanation for this transformation from patron to artist is complex, involving factors that were both personal and political. In writing poetry, Lorenzo not only gave vent to his most private thoughts but also constructed his
public persona; however much his poetry seems to offer an intimate autobiography of a private man, it was also an important factor in shaping his public image.
In its apparently confessional tone, Lorenzo’s poetry marks a profound shift from the more reticent generation of his father. In fact Lorenzo may well have been motivated in part by a fear of repeating his father’s mistakes; if Piero was cold and aloof, Lorenzo would be warmly human and accessible. His verses collapsed the psychological distance between the ruler and the ruled, giving the Florentine people the sense, real or illusory, that they knew the man who held their fate in his hands.* His sonnets include numerous admissions of weakness and personal torment almost without precedent for a public figure:
O sleep most tranquil, still you do not come
to this troubled heart that desires you!
Seal the perennial spring of my tears,
O sweet oblivion, that pain me so!
Come, peace, that alone can stanch
the course of my desire! And to
my sweet lady’s company guide me,
she with eyes so filled with kindness and serene.
Such apparently heartfelt verses softened the harsh edges of his rule, helping to perpetuate the myth that he was merely a private citizen rather than the de facto tyrant of the city.
Lorenzo was defensive about his literary endeavors. He tried to forestall criticism that writing poetry about affairs of the heart was a trivial occupation for someone engaged in affairs of state: “I could easily be thought to possess poor judgment, having consumed so much time in composing verses and commenting upon them, the material and subject of which are in large part an amorous passion; and this being much more reprehensible given the constant affairs, both public and private, which ought rather to turn me away from such thoughts, thoughts that, according to some, are not only frivolous and of little weight, but are even pernicious and as prejudicial to our souls as to our worldly honor.”
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