Nourishing Venus comes, companion to her
sister, and is followed by the little loves; Flora
offers welcome kisses to her eager husband
(Zephyr); and in their midst with hair unbound
and bared breasts dances Grace, tapping the
ground with rhythmic step.
Leaving its indelible imprint on both the poem and the painting—each poised vertiginously between rigorous intellectuality and ripe sensuousness—is the restless and contradictory spirit of the man who ruled the state.
Melozzo da Forli, Pope Sixtus IV Appointing Platina, 1477 (Art Resource)
XII. THE SHADOW OF ROME
“She who was once mistress of the world is now, by the injustice of fortune, which overturns all things, not only despoiled of her empire and majesty, but delivered over to the basest servitude, misshapen and degraded, her ruins alone showing forth her former dignity and greatness.”
—POGGIO BRACCIOLINI “ON THE RUINS OF ROME”
JUST BEFORE DAWN ON JULY 26, 1471, POPE PAUL II, THE grasping, quarrelsome Venetian who had headed the Church of Rome for the past seven years, departed this life. It took almost two weeks of hard bargaining to elect his successor, the fifty-seven-year-old Cardinal Francesco della Rovere, who ascended the papal throne as Sixtus IV.
Despite the usual chicanery employed to lift della Rovere to the very summit of the Church hierarchy—including the funneling of gold ducats into the pockets of the eighteen cardinals in the conclave—the choice struck a hopeful note for an institution that for the past few years seemed more a slave to Mammon than a servant of Christ.* Indeed, the contrast with his aristocratic predecessor, could not have been greater. Unlike the well-born Venetian, della Rovere was a self-made man who during his previous four years as cardinal had led an existence of unusual frugality. He was so poor, in fact, that when he was elected cardinal he could not afford to restore the dilapidated palace attached to the church of San Pietro in Vincoli (St. Peter in Chains) that served as his official residence.
Sixtus had been born the son of a poor fisherman from Savona, near Genoa, and had achieved his lofty position by dint of his own drive and intelligence. His one discernible fault was an excessive fondness for his numerous relatives, who, with their strange accents and boorish manners, had descended upon the city like barbarians of old. This shrewd, toothless peasant with the pugnacious face of a snapping turtle promised to reinvigorate a papacy sapped by petty squabbles with other Italian states and an unbecoming taste for ostentation.
Florentines, whose own sphere of influence abutted that of the heir of St. Peter at many sensitive points, looked on with a mixture of hope and apprehension. For Lorenzo in particular, the transition offered opportunities as well as potential dangers. Despite the official condemnation of usurious practices, cardinals and noblemen continued to deposit their coin in Medici coffers at interest and to borrow against their assets, much to the profit of each. Rome was more than ever the financial as well as spiritual capital of Europe, with money from the sale of indulgences and priestly offices flowing to the Vatican from the furthest reaches of Christendom. The Medici bankers knelt beside this bountiful stream and drank their fill.*
There was reason to believe that the new occupant of St. Peter’s throne would be particularly well disposed toward the ruling family of Florence. Upon hearing of Cardinal della Rovere’s election, Lorenzo’s kinsman Filippo de’ Medici, archbishop of Pisa, wrote that it “would be very acceptable to Your Magnificence.” Lorenzo, who through his Orsini in-laws had acquired a good deal of influence in the Vatican, had championed della Rovere during the elections. Shortly after his elevation the new pope sent a fulsome letter to Lorenzo expressing his gratitude toward the house of Medici for the “infinite blessings received, which redound to its honor and exaltation.” What exactly these blessings were is unclear, but in della Rovere, Lorenzo believed he had a friend on the papal throne.
Also contributing to the general optimism was the belief that this Franciscan would avoid the imbroglios that had marred the tenure of his predecessor. “This pope evidently intends to be on good terms with every one,” the ambassador from the marquis of Mantua reported.* Promoting the cause of harmony was the fact that Sixtus found himself so deeply in debt from the excesses of his predecessor, and from the bribes that ensured his election, that his scope for an aggressive policy in Italy was severely circumscribed. This fiscal irresponsibility was not all bad as far as Lorenzo was concerned since it encouraged Sixtus to remain on friendly terms with the Medici, the most experienced and well connected of the papal bankers. In order to equip the fleet readying itself to set out against the Turks, for instance, Sixtus was forced to sell a large part of the jewels amassed by Paul II—including fifty-four silver shells filled with pearls valued at 30,000 ducats and a diamond valued at 7,000 ducats—which the Medici bank snapped up for the bargain-basement price of 23,170 florins.†
Lorenzo was one of the six distinguished citizens—all of them men at the core of the reggimento—who set out from Florence on September 23, laden with gifts—including four hundred pounds of silver plates, vases, and saucers—for the new pontiff. The warm reception they received reinforced their conviction that Sixtus was eager to be a good neighbor. Lorenzo was treated with special favor by the pope, who was impressed by the poise and cultivation of his young guest. In a particularly gracious gesture, Sixtus, having learned of Lorenzo’s passion for antiquities, presented him with two fine marble busts of Agrippa and Augustus. Lorenzo also purchased at discounted prices numerous cameos, vases, and carved gemstones from the papal treasury to add to his own collection. On a more practical note, Sixtus reappointed Lorenzo’s uncle Giovanni Tornabuoni depositor general of the Apostolic Chamber, restoring the Medici bank to the same privileged position it had enjoyed under previous popes, and extended the Medici monopoly on the sale and distribution of alum from the papal mines at Tolfa.*
In addition to ensuring the continued solvency of the Roman bank, Lorenzo had another vital issue to raise with the pontiff: the long-standing desire of the Florentine people for a native-born cardinal. Lorenzo reminded Sixtus of the Holy Father’s traditional deference to the Florentine Signoria when it came to filling major ecclesiastical positions within their territory, and Sixtus, grateful for Lorenzo’s help in easing his way onto the papal throne, seemed happy to oblige, promising he would appoint someone “close to the hearts of all the citizens of the state.”† This was not only a point of pride for Florence but a mark of independence. Without the capacity to control, or at least guide, the selection of church officials within its own borders, no state could feel itself to be truly sovereign. It was even more critical for Lorenzo, whose ability to find sinecures for his favorites was an important part of the patronage system upon which his personal authority depended.
With these important matters satisfactorily settled, Lorenzo now took the opportunity to tour the city’s ancient ruins with Leon Battista Alberti, the foremost architect and architectural historian of his generation. Clambering among the shattered vaults and broken columns of the imperial capital like Donatello and Brunelleschi a generation earlier, Lorenzo sharpened his own architectural ideas, ones he would later put into practice in both public and private commissions.
Like other fifteenth-century Florentines, Lorenzo felt himself the heir of the civilization that had emerged two thousand years earlier along the banks of the Tiber.‡ But Rome in the fifteenth century was a sorry spectacle in which past grandeur served to highlight present decadence. Sheep grazed in pastures where ancient temples once stood; wolves hunted rabbits and deer among the broken columns that Caesar and Augustus had first raised. Open sewers had replaced the aqueducts that once had supplied the city with fresh water, causing a stench to rise from crooked streets overhung by ramshackle tenements. Through the squalor and the rubble, cardinals with their vast retinues of liveried servants daintily picked their way from sumptuous palaces to the Vatican, where they
conferred with their master about the fate of millions of souls. “Surely this city is to be mourned,” Lorenzo’s compatriot Poggio Bracciolini had written earlier in the century,
which once produced so many illustrious men and emperors…the mother of so many good arts, the city from which flowed military discipline, purity of morals and life, the decrees of the law, the models of all the virtues, and the knowledge of right living. She who was once mistress of the world is now, by the injustice of fortune, which overturns all things, not only despoiled of her empire and majesty, but delivered over to the basest servitude.
Lorenzo returned to Florence after a twelve-day sojourn in the Eternal City, his aesthetic ambition stimulated by his exposure to its splendid monuments, his saddle bags filled with treasures to adorn the already crowded rooms of his palace, his spirits lifted by the tokens of friendship he’d received from the head of Christendom. Though his attention was soon diverted by other pressing matters—including the war with Volterra that was reaching its sorry climax—he had not forgotten the promise Sixtus had made to appoint a Florentine cardinal. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to him that the pope’s apparent agreeableness provided the perfect opportunity to advance not only the prestige of the city but the fortunes of his family. During his conversations with Sixtus he had been content with the vague formulation of a candidate “close to the hearts of all the citizens of the state”; now he had in mind a particular name. The identity of this candidate is suggested in a letter he wrote to Pope Sixtus in November 1472: “In order not to trouble Your Blessedness,” he began, “I write to Giovanni Tornabuoni, who will speak of the longstanding wish of our house to have a cardinal; and such is the faith that I place in Your Holiness, that I am certain I need no other assurances than those already freely promised in this matter, nevertheless, hearing the news that soon more cardinals will be named, I wish to place once again in the mind of Your Blessedness a reminder of this our ancient desire.”
There is little doubt that when Giovanni Tornabuoni met with Sixtus it was to lobby on behalf of Giuliano, Lorenzo’s eighteen-year-old brother. If Lorenzo had his way—and he had little reason to doubt that the pope would oblige him in this matter—the carefree, high-living teenager would exchange his doublet and hose for the scarlet robes and skullcap of a cardinal. This would mark the final transformation of this family of bankers into one of the great noble houses of Europe, making the Medici a force to be reckoned with in both the secular and spiritual realms. In a matter of such importance Lorenzo was unwilling to leave things to chance. Shortly after instructing Tornabuoni to broach the subject with the pope, he dispatched another emissary to Rome—his devoted friend and manager of the Medici bank in Florence, Francesco Nori. Even before Nori arrived Lorenzo had softened up potential opposition by unleashing a barrage of letters to all the leading prelates, including the pope’s nephew, the newly minted cardinal Pietro Riario.
Why had Giuliano’s career suddenly become a matter of such urgent concern to Lorenzo? A clue can be found in a report by the Milanese ambassador in April of 1472. It concerns a disagreement between the two brothers, one of the few on record, over a trip Giuliano had planned to Venice. This was to be his first journey to an important foreign state on his own. Conferring with the Doge and senators of the Most Serene Republic he would show the world that he was not merely Lorenzo’s younger brother but a man of substance in his own right. “Such is the desire of Giuliano to make the journey to Venice,” wrote the Milanese ambassador, “that it has caused some quarrel to arise between Lorenzo and him.” It is not clear why Lorenzo objected to the trip—perhaps he felt that his brother was still too immature, or perhaps there was important business to attend to in Florence—but whatever the reason, Giuliano felt he had been publicly humiliated, complaining, according to Sacramoro’s report, that “he [Lorenzo] does not wish him to make his way in the world, or to enjoy any reputation whatsoever.” Ironically, Giuliano was now in the same position Lorenzo had once been in, anxious to prove himself and chafing under the heavy-handed supervision of his elders. In the end Lorenzo relented. Giuliano’s journey to Venice turned out to be both a personal and diplomatic success, but the incident was a reminder that now was the time to think seriously about his future.
The quarrel over the Venetian junket was a symptom of a larger problem. Contemporary sources all attest to the genuine affection that united the two brothers—Marsilio Ficino, writing to Giuliano, refers to Lorenzo as “your other self, both in nature and in will”—but beneath the surface there were signs of strain that grew out of Lorenzo’s unique and uniquely complex position as the first citizen of Florence. So far Giuliano’s role had caused few difficulties. He ably assisted his brother with affairs of state, filling in for Lorenzo while he was away and serving as his most trusted advisor when they were together. His charm and easygoing personality served Lorenzo well on those many occasions when Giuliano was called upon to entertain visiting dignitaries or to deputize for his older brother at state functions, much as Lorenzo himself had once done for their father. When Lorenzo was detained in Pisa overseeing the reopening of the university, he informed the Milanese ambassador, “I wrote to Giuliano, my brother, that you would confer with him in everything and that you would make sure that all went according to the wishes of Our Lord [the Duke].”
But by the spring of 1472 it was becoming clear to Lorenzo that the teenager had begun to bridle at his junior status. Giuliano’s friend Piero Vespucci wrote some years later, “Many times he told me that he was the most unhappy youth, not only of Florence but of all Italy.” These lines paint a picture at odds with the usual one of the carefree youth who cared for nothing but hunting, drinking, and making love to the prettiest girls of Florence.
The pain this struggle caused Lorenzo may be gauged indirectly by verses he wrote many years later. They are found in his play The Martyrdom of Saints John and Paul, a drama that has clear parallels to his own situation. The play is set in the court of the Constantine, riven by a deadly struggle for power among the emperor’s sons, that surely contains some echo, however faint, of the palace on the Via Larga. Perhaps it was only through the camouflage of his art that Lorenzo could give voice to the fear that jealousy and ambition would ultimately poison the relationship he cherished most:
Sometimes discord can spread
Even in brothers bound by love most deep.
Personal feelings no doubt contributed to the sudden urgency with which Lorenzo pursued the matter of his brother’s career, but settling Giuliano in the Church was also part of a strategy to forge stronger links between the Medici family and the inner circle of the papal curia, building on those already established through the Orsini family. True, Giuliano had not yet shown the least aptitude for or interest in a life in the Church, his appreciation for scripture a less notable feature of his character than his appreciation for fast horses, but he would not be the first worldly young man to make the leap from man of the world to man of the cloth. Giuliano, in fact, fit the profile of a typical Renaissance cardinal. The Renaissance Church was a wealthy and worldly institution run by wealthy and worldly men. Sixtus, who had risen from obscurity based on his talents rather than his connections, was the exception rather than the rule. As a young cardinal from a rich and powerful family, Giuliano would be following in the footsteps of his Orsini relatives. Son of the even more famous Medici, he would have the prestige and cash on hand necessary to uphold the reputation and authority of the Sacred College.
For all Sixtus’s bland assurances, however, the pope seemed to be in no hurry to name a Florentine, let alone a Medici, to the highest dignity of the Church. His first slate of nominees, published in December 1471, included only two names: that of his nephews, Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovere. As new lists were compiled with equally disappointing results, Lorenzo began to suspect he had been deceived. Cardinal Ammanati, who along with Giovanni Tornabuoni had been entrusted by Lorenzo to pursue this matter, remained
hopeful: “I see no difficulty, if his Holiness lives, to his attaining the highest honor, for I can promise for more than one [vote]. Have no uneasiness about the cardinals who have just been made, as it will be necessary soon to create others for the Emperor and King Ferrante, for Rome and for you Florentines, if you desire it.”
As new appointments were announced, however, a clear pattern began to emerge: the Sacred College was to be a tightly controlled instrument of Sixtus’s foreign policy whose chief aim was to place the della Rovere and Riario names among the great clans of Europe.* It was not only Pietro Riario and Giuliano della Rovere who profited from their uncle’s generosity: in 1477, Sixtus elevated his sixteen-year-old great-nephew Raffaele Sansoni Riario—a youth in whom spiritual qualities were no more apparent than in Giuliano de’ Medici—to the cardinalate, showing once again a tendency to treat the Holy Church like a family-run business.
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