It must be said in Lorenzo’s defense that the business climate in Florence was less favorable in the second half of the fifteenth century than in the first half. The Medici bank was but one of many struggling to keep its head above water during a period of slow economic decline. By 1495, banking had reached such a low ebb in Florence that the guild of money changers (l’Arte del Cambio), once an economic engine of the city, was forced to close its doors due to dwindling membership. Perhaps most important, Lorenzo was in an impossible bind, forced to neglect his financial affairs in ordert to hold on to the political power that offered the only real means to protect his fortune.
Despite his recent political successes, Lorenzo was always on guard against a reemergence of potential rivals. Francesco Guicciardini spells out some of the “divide and conquer” methods Lorenzo used to ensure that no organized opposition to his rule arose:
As he grew stronger, Lorenzo decided to become master of the city, and not have anyone control him. He wanted to make sure that messer Tommaso [Soderini], and others who enjoyed esteem and the backing of relatives, did not grow too strong. He would allow them to be represented in the legations and in all the high offices and magistracies of the city; but at the same time he held them back, sometimes not letting them finish the business they had begun. He showed favor to men from whom he had nothing to fear, men who were then devoid of connections and standing, such as messer Bernardo Buongirolami and Antonio di Puccio; and, a year or so later, to such men as messer Agnolo Niccolini, Bernardo del Nero, and Pierfilippo Pandolfini. He used to say that if his father had done likewise, and put a little pressure on messer Luca, messer Dietisalvi, messer Agnolo Acciaiuoli, and others like them, he would not have come so close to losing his power in ’66.
This shrewd political operator was a far cry from the young man who, only three years earlier, had ridden into power on the shoulders of the principali. Then, these commanding figures were confident they could master the inexperienced youth for their own ends. Now, most had reconciled themselves to a secondary role and faithfully served the young man they thought would serve them.
Lorenzo had matured in other ways, too. In August 1470, Clarice gave birth to their first child, Lucrezia, a happy event that gave Lorenzo a certain gravitas in the eyes of his fellow citizens. For Florentines, nothing defined a man of substance as surely as fathering a child in wedlock. The responsibilities of citizenship were inextricably bound up in the role of fatherhood, the two linked by a shared impulse to make one’s mark in the civic arena. “There are two principal things that men do in this world,” Giovanni Rucellai declared in his memoirs. “The first is to procreate, the second is to build.” In the first of these roles Lorenzo was precocious by Florentine standards; in the second, while never equaling the achievements of his grandfather, he would eventually come into his own, leaving a permanent mark on the city.
By the end of 1473, still a young man of twenty-four, Lorenzo had fathered five children. In addition to Lucrezia, Clarice had delivered twin boys in 1471; born prematurely, they lived only long enough to be baptized. Fortune was kinder when on February 15, 1472, Clarice delivered a healthy boy, Piero, who would ultimately succeed his father as first citizen of Florence. Piero was followed in July of 1473 by a second healthy daughter, Maddalena.
Clarice, clearly, was fulfulling the role assigned to her by nature and by the Medici. It was assumed that after this initial—and admittedly essential—biological contribution, however, she would play only a secondary role in shaping her children’s development. In this patriarchal society the moral and intellectual education of the young was largely left to the head of the household. This was especially true in the case of sons, who were molded by their fathers for the parts they would play in the civic arena. Leon Battista Alberti in his book On the Family relegates a mother’s contribution to the first years of life. In reality, busy men like Lorenzo relied heavily on the good sense and nurturing instincts of their wives, while reserving for themselves the right to make all important decisions in shaping their sons’ futures. Fortunately, Clarice was both a loving wife and mother, and Lorenzo knew he could safely entrust the children to her care.
Indeed he had little choice in the matter. Even while he was preoccupied by affairs of state, he insisted on being kept informed of the daily routine he could rarely share. The numerous letters that provide an intimate portrait of Lorenzo’s household were prompted by his frequent absences. They attest to his deep affection for his children, and to his regret at not being able to spend as much time with them as he wished. Among the topics that appear most frequently in these letters—after the necessary reassurances as to everyone’s health—are those that concern the children’s education. Lorenzo was not far removed from his own days of wrestling with Greek and Latin grammars and he insisted that his own children receive an equally solid grounding in the classics. All of his children, but especially Piero, were anxious to impress their father with what they had learned. In 1478, the six-year-old Piero sent the following report to his father: “I write this letter to tell you that we are well. Although I do not yet know how to write well, I will do my best for the present. I will try and do better in future. I have already learnt many verses of Virgil, and I know nearly all the first book of Theodoro [a book of Greek grammar by Theodoro of Faza] by heart, and I think I understand it. The Master makes me decline and examines me every day. Giovanni sometimes comes to Mass with the Master.”
Frequent and prolonged absences did not prevent Lorenzo from making the most of his time with Clarice. By the end of 1479 he had conceived seven healthy children: following Maddalena came his second son, Giovanni, born in 1475; Luigia and Contessina, both in 1478; and, finally, Giuliano in 1479. An engaging family portrait from the year of Giuliano’s birth is provided in a letter from Piero’s hand, written from the rustic retreat at Cafaggiolo:
MAGNIFICENT FATHER MINE…. We are all well and studying. Giovanni is beginning to spell. By this letter you can judge where I am in writing; as for Greek I keep myself rather in exercise by the help of Martino than make any progress. Giuliano laughs and thinks of nothing else; Lucrezia sews, sings, and reads; Maddalena knocks her head against the wall, but without doing herself any harm; Luisa begins to say a few little words; Contessina fills the house with her noise. All others attend to their duties, and nothing is wanting to us save your presence.
It is tempting to read into these juvenile scribblings hints of the men and women Lorenzo’s children will become. “Please send me some figs,” the five-year-old Piero wrote to his grandmother from Trebbio, “for I like them. I mean those red ones, and some peaches with stones, and other things you know I like, sweets and cakes and other little things, as you think best.” Piero’s nagging for various gifts seems to portend the future leader who will alienate his fellow citizens by his ostentatious lifestyle and high-handed ways. When, years later, Piero insulted Michelangelo with the demeaning request that he sculpt him a snowman for the family courtyard, it was only the latest in a long string of demands from one who was used to having his every whim indulged.* And when Lorenzo’s daughter Lucrezia passes along a request by four-year-old Giovanni for “some sugar-plums, and says that last time you sent very few,” can we detect the first signs of the appetite that will turn the future Pope Leo X into the glutton whose massive girth fills out the famous portrait by Raphael?
Family life, while often chaotic, was marked by warmth and genuine affection. Lorenzo valued Clarice for her maternal instincts, all the more because he could rarely spend as much time at home as he would have liked. A household intimate recounts one happy occasion when Clarice, having been away for a few weeks, was reunited at long last with her children:
Then near the Certosa we met paradise full of festive and joyous angels, that is to say, Messer Giovanni and Piero, Giuliano and Giulio on pillions, with all their attendants. As soon as they saw their mother they threw themselves from their horses, some without help, others aided by their peopl
e, and they ran forward and were lifted into the arms of Madonna Clarice, with such joy and kisses and delight that a hundred letters could not describe it. Even I could not restrain myself but got off my horse, and ere they remounted I embraced them all twice; once for myself and once for Lorenzo. Darling little Giuliano said, with a long O, O, O, “Where is Lorenzo?” We said, “He has gone to Poggio to find you.” Then he: “O no, never,” almost in tears. You never beheld so touching a sight.
Not surprising, Lorenzo’s daughters have come down to us as less fully realized personalities than his sons, all of whom played prominent public roles later in life. But Lorenzo’s love for them emerges even more clearly than for his sons, where a fatherly affection was mingled with concerns lest they not live up to his expectations for them.† In this he was repeating his relations with his own parents and grandparents: relations among the men were always complicated by their heavy responsibilities and by a streak of competitiveness; only the women could give their love unstintingly, without fear that an overt display of affection would encourage weakness. Indeed one of the reasons that mothers were not more deeply involved in their sons’ education was the fear that the female influence would make them soft and unfit for the world.
As for Clarice, she—along with Lorenzo’s grandmother Contessina (until her death in 1474) and the always competent, energetic Lucrezia—continued faithfully to tend to hearth and home during Lorenzo’s frequent absences. Though not unhappy with the role assigned to her, an occasional note of reproach creeps in: “We are sending you by the bearer seventeen partridges, which your falconer took today,” she wrote to Lorenzo from Cafaggiolo, where she had been anxiously awaiting his arrival:
I should have been glad if you had come and enjoyed them with us here. We have expected you for the last three evenings up to the third hour, and were very surprised you did not come. I am afraid something out of the ordinary must have detained you. If there is anything new, please let me know, for in any case it would be better to be together, rather than one in Florence and the other in Lombardy [sic]. We expect you tomorrow in any case, so please do not let us wait in vain. The children are all well, and so are all the rest.
For all Lorenzo’s desire to spend more time with his family, he was not willing to sacrifice those recreations that were vital to his sense of well-being. Any journey was certain to be interrupted by side trips to particularly well-stocked hunting grounds, and even when Lorenzo was attending to important business he managed to find time for his favorite sports. It is perhaps telling that Clarice usually received reports of these expeditions not from Lorenzo himself but through one of his companions who was given the task of keeping her abreast of his activities. “Yesterday,” wrote Angelo Poliziano in 1475 during Lorenzo’s extended sojourn in Pisa, “though there was little wind, he went hawking, but their luck was not good, as they lost Pilato’s nice falcon, the one called Il Mantovano. This morning we also went into the country, but the wind again spoilt the sport. We saw some fine flights, however, and Maestro Giorgio made his peregrine falcon fly, and it returned most obediently to the lure. Lorenzo has fallen completely in love with it.”
Though Clarice would never openly accuse her husband of neglect, it is difficult to imagine she read these vivid reports without some twinge of jealousy. This letter may have been particularly hard to bear since at the very moment Lorenzo was galloping across the countryside she was confined to bed, about to deliver their fifth child. But one should not assume that Clarice was fundamentally discontented with her lot: a fifteenth-century wife knew it was her fate to remain at home while her husband pursued his many interests, and the expectation of narrow horizons made them more tolerable, if no less diminishing to the women who thus found little scope for their talents. Lorenzo, while busier than most husbands, was not untypical in his attitudes, and Clarice accepted her role with few complaints.
Only on rare occasions would she stand up to her formidable husband, though in the end it was always Lorenzo who prevailed in important matters. Their most famous quarrel came, not surprisingly, over the education of their children. Their disagreement is interesting not only for the light it sheds on their personal relationship but on the clash of cultures between the pious Roman matron and the liberal-minded Florentine. The confrontation was precipitated by a young man who would ultimately come to be regarded as the greatest poet of the age, a talented writer and scholar whom Lorenzo had discovered and invited into his home to serve as tutor to his children—Angelo Poliziano.*
Lorenzo’s friendship with Poliziano, perhaps the most profound and enduring of his life, had all the complexity and difficulty that comes from affection between two men of equal talent and ambition but of unequal status and power. Poliziano first came to Lorenzo’s attention in 1470 when the sixteen-year-old student, orphaned and impoverished, boldly introduced himself to the first citizen of Florence. “Magnificent Lorenzo,” he wrote,
to whom heaven has given charge of the city and the State, first citizen of Florence, doubly crowned with bays lately for war in S. Croce amid the acclamations of the people and for poetry on account of the sweetness of your verses, give ear to me who drinking at Greek sources am striving to set Homer into Latin meter. This second book which I have translated…comes to you and timidly crosses your threshold. If you welcome it I propose to offer to you all the Iliad. It rests with you, who can, to help the poet. I desire no other muse or other Gods but only you; by your help I can do that of which the ancients would not have been ashamed.
This was an ambitious calling card for someone who had yet to establish his reputation, but Poliziano could count on Lorenzo’s love of ancient poetry and his appreciation of literary talent, particularly when combined with youthful enthusiasm, to gain him entrée into his glittering circle of artists and intellectuals. Poliziano clearly hit the mark, and within three years he had become an intimate member of Lorenzo’s household.
For the brilliant poet and scholar there was no better place on earth than the Medici household, with its unparalleled collections of ancient manuscripts and objets d’arts collected over three generations by men of learning and discernment and with the vast resources to indulge their passions. “Almost all other rich men support servants of pleasure, but you support priests of the muses,” Ficino wrote to Lorenzo on hearing that he had taken the young poet under his wing. “It was due to you that Homer, the high priest of the Muses, came into Italy, and someone who was till now a wanderer and a beggar has at last found with you sweet hospitality. You are supporting in your home that young Homeric scholar, Angelo Poliziano, so that he may put the Greek face of Homer into Latin colors.” Under Lorenzo’s aegis, Poliziano would come to prominence as both a scholar and a poet. The friendly literary competition he engaged in with his boss would prove fruitful for both men, each of whom pushed the other to new heights of poetic invention. In his Silvae, Poliziano described himself as both Lorenzo’s “client and pupil.”
Poliziano’s initial service to Lorenzo was to act as his children’s tutor; the master to whom Piero refers to in his letter watching over his shoulder as he plows through his lessons is none other than the great poet himself, who often must have thought his talents wasted in trying to cram Greek and Latin grammar into the head of his less than diligent pupil.* He also served as Lorenzo’s unofficial secretary; it was he who took up the burden of writing to Clarice when Lorenzo was too busy or preoccupied.
For the most part Poliziano accepted his role, largely because it came with the friendship of a man he genuinely loved and admired. No one can read his poetry—including the heartbreaking verses he wrote upon his master’s death—or note his many acts of devotion without concluding that theirs was a friendship cemented by deep and abiding affection. There were times, however, when Angelo’s pride was stung by his lowly status, as in the summer of 1479 when he felt himself in exile in Cafaggiolo while Lorenzo was in Florence caught up in great affairs of state: “The children play about more than usual, and are
quite restored in health,” he wrote, concluding mournfully, “I would have liked to serve you in some greater thing, but since this has fallen to my lot, I will do it gladly.”
Like Clarice, Angelo was forced to adjust to Lorenzo’s needs. Staring out the windows of the isolated villa into the rain of a Tuscan winter, he sorely felt his exile from the great events happening elsewhere. Adding to his gloom was the constant fear for Lorenzo’s safety. “I am anxiously awaiting news that the plague has ceased,” he wrote to Lorenzo, “both because I fear for you, and because I want to return to serve you. I had hoped and wished to stay with you, but since you, or rather my bad luck, has given me this position in your service, I will endure it.”
With Lorenzo tied up with pressing business and with the family shuttling from one distant villa to another, a quarrel between the lady of the house and her husband’s closest friend became almost inevitable. The breach came early in 1479 when Clarice decided to replace the materials that Poliziano was using to instruct the children in Latin. In keeping with own his humanist education, these texts were primarily drawn from the great pagan authors of antiquity, a choice that distressed the conventional Clarice, who, without her husband’s consent, substituted the morally uplifting (but to Angelo’s point of view grammatically barbarous and inelegant) Book of Psalms for Seneca and Cicero. Clarice was particularly worried about the effect pagan literature would have on the precocious and impressionable Giovanni, already being groomed by his parents for a life in the Church. In a letter of April 6, Poliziano warned Lorenzo: “As to Giovanni, you will see. His mother has changed his reading to the Psalter, of which I do not approve, and has taken him away from us. When she was away it is incredible what progress he made…. I have no other daily prayer to God than that I may some day be able to show you my fidelity, diligence, and patience, which I would gladly do, even at the expense of death.”
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