confined within this prison’s gloom, it will
always be governed by desire and doubt.
The soul is so wrapped up in error when
it’s body-bound, that it won’t know itself
until its liberation is complete.
For Lorenzo, no stranger to the cruder forms of the emotion, it was a philosophy that validated his own appetites; if lust was not the highest form of love, at least it deserved respect as the first step of a journey that ultimately led to God.
Ficino’s doctrines had wide-ranging and long-term influence. His philosophy of Platonic love helped reconcile pagan art and literature with Christianity, speeding up the assimilation of ancient texts from which modern philosophy and science sprang. The doctrine of divine love also had profound implications for the visual arts by conceding to physical beauty an element of the spiritual. In the short term, however, the greatest impact of Ficino’s ideas may have been on the way Florentines thought of relations between the citizen and the state. Indeed some scholars have detected in these rather esoteric concepts the core of an official ideology intended to excuse a creeping despotism. In this scenario, Ficino and Lorenzo worked hand in glove to craft an intellectual framework for a regime bent on undermining the republican traditions of the city.
In the realm of philosophy, as in art, Lorenzo’s critics often find themselves caught between two contradictory theories. There are those who insist that Lorenzo’s contribution to the intellectual climate was negligible, his patronage inconsistent, and his own writings derivative. A second line of attack is that he was the guiding light of an intellectual movement that led Florentines away from the civic-minded pragmatism that had characterized the writings of Leonardo Bruni and Coluccio Salutati at the beginning of the century. To these critics, Lorenzo’s taste for Platonic allegory appears to be part of a cynical ploy to lead citizens away from politics and into a maze of harmless metaphysics. It is true that Ficino’s mysticism was a far cry from Bruni’s overtly political writing—and even more out of step with Machiavelli’s hardheaded realism in the following generation—but it is implausible to view Lorenzo’s philosophical tastes as part of any such consciously “Machiavellian” scheme. Rather, Lorenzo seems to have been genuinely attracted to Ficino’s brand of speculative philosophy. Recasting Plato’s thought in a form that made it seem the natural precursor of Christian theology, it fulfilled a deep, if rather amorphous, spiritual yearning. The most moving fragment of religious poetry Lorenzo wrote infuses Neoplatonic philosophy with an urgency born of metaphysical anxiety:
O’ God, O’ greatest Good, how is it,
that I seek only you but it is you I never find?
Like many statesmen before and since, Lorenzo found Plato’s thought deeply compelling. Plato’s vision of the perfect society, elaborated most fully in The Republic, furnishes the would-be ruler with a model of good government unequaled in the history of philosophy not only for its idealism but also its impracticality. There is an indication, particularly during the 1470s when Ficino and Lorenzo were in almost daily contact, that Lorenzo saw himself as something akin to a Platonic philosopher-king, a benign despot who ruled selflessly on behalf of his people. During the early years of Lorenzo’s reign the two exchanged frequent letters in which the older Ficino played the role of spiritual advisor to the younger man. “[The ruler] will not, indeed, consider himself a master of the law,” Ficino wrote to his eager pupil, “but its faithful interpreter and devoted servant. In administering it he should punish offenses impartially and with even temper. Without envy he should reward virtuous actions according to their worth. He should not give thought to his own interests but rather to those of the community.” No doubt the temperamental Lorenzo had difficulty living up to this ideal, but it was a model he strived to emulate. His mentor’s words find an echo in his play The Martyrdom of Saints John and Paul, where the Emperor Julian sketches an idealized portrait of the enlightened despot that Lorenzo, in his more introspective moments, must have known was a far cry from the realities that confronted him every day:
The majesty of our imperial throne
Is built upon the emperor’s good name.
He is no private person on his own,
But stands for all his subjects by acclaim.
There does seem to be an implicit recognition in Ficino’s letters to Lorenzo that his correspondent was more than merely the first citizen of the state. He is treated as something resembling a constitutional monarch who through his privileged position incurs certain obligations. But the political implications of Ficino’s philosophy went beyond the lessons contained in these overtly political passages. Some have seen his idealism as a key to the political apathy that was a notable element of the Lorenzan age. In the debate between proponents of the active life of the citizen and the contemplative life of the philosopher, explored at length in Cristoforo Landino’s Disputationes Camaldulenses,* Ficino’s ethereal flights of fancy seem to support the latter course. Lorenzo’s friend Donato Acciaiuoli stated the dilemma of the Florentine intellectual succinctly. “I have gone over in my mind many times the problem of which sort of life is better and more worthy of praise,” he wrote to Marco Parenti, “to serve the republic and to fulfill the duties of a good and wise man by taking part actively in it, or to choose a life removed from all public and private activity, a life yet laborious in the diligent pursuit and investigation of the highest things.” How Acciaiuoli himself resolved this issue is clear in the long and distinguished career he had as a roving ambassador for the republic, but this was a choice that many Florentines of the intellectual and governing class (peculiarly, the two were one and the same in the Renaissance) felt obligated to make. Judging by Acciaiuoli’s own experience, choosing the active life was not always the best option: on his mission to Rome during the Pazzi conspiracy he was roughed up by Girolamo Riario’s soldiers, and long after he was entitled to retire he was sent on a mission by the republic, during which he died.
The debate between the merits of the active and the contemplative life were not original to Renaissance Florentines. The same dilemmas had been explored by ancient writers like Cicero, for whom a life of quiet reflection was the consolation for political defeat.† A similar dynamic was at work in Renaissance Florence; the more disengaged philosophy that characterized the period of Lorenzo’s ascendance reflected a narrowing of political horizons. Clearly a philosophy whose main purpose was to exhort men to participate actively as citizens was inappropriate to an age when power was concentrated in only a few hands. But external events, too, played a role in this philosophical evolution. Salutati and Bruni wrote in a euphoric time, when Florence’s ultimately successful contest against the Visconti of Milan, viewed as a biblical contest of David vs. Goliath, encouraged men to reflect on the unique qualities that allowed a small republic to face down a giant and despotic power. Emphasizing the vital democracy of their own city allowed them to draw a more effective contrast with the tyranny they were fighting. A century later, Machiavelli and Guicciardini were both motivated to write about politics out of despair following the trauma of the foreign invasions in the years after Lorenzo’s death; as the city-states of their youth crumbled before the nation states of the future, it was only natural to examine the political institutions that had led them down the path to ruin. By contrast, Lorenzo presided over an age of political lethargy. For the most part citizens were willing to give up at least a portion of their ancient rights in return for the stability and peace that Medici rule brought them. It is telling that the greatest crisis of Lorenzo’s reign—the Pazzi conspiracy—was overcome not through military might but because the ancient cry of “Popolo e Liberta!” no longer stirred the hearts of the citizens.
Even opponents of Lorenzo’s regime seemed content for the most part to till their own little plots. One of the most coherent critiques of Medici rule—Alamanno Rinuccini’s “Dialogue on Liberty”—was written in secret by someone whose own career was a model of apathy and
ineffectualness. Though in private he boldly chastised Lorenzo and his regime, Rinuccini was always happy to pick up whatever political plums were tossed his way.* In fact while Rinuccini and Lorenzo stood on opposite sides of the political fence, the two are not as dissimilar as they might at first appear. Rinuccini’s imaginary dialogue concludes with his alter ego, Eleutherius (lover of liberty), issuing something less than a ringing call to arms: “[T]he truth is that I cannot peacefully tolerate our ungrateful citizenry and the usurpers of our liberty. I live, therefore, as you see, content with this little house and farm. I am free from all anxiety. I don’t inquire what goes on in the city, and I lead a quiet and free life.” Is it any wonder that with friends like Rinuccini the Pazzi revolution never got off the ground?
Rinuccini’s dialogue is not too far in spirit from Lorenzo’s own writing, which makes no secret of his disdain for the corruption of city life and sings the paeans to the simple virtues of the countryside:
Lured on, escorted by the sweetest thoughts
I fled the bitter storms of civic life
to lead my soul back to a calmer port….
To free my feeble nature from the load
that wearies it and stops its flight, I left
the pretty circle of my native walls.
And having reached a pleasant, shady glen
within the shadow of that mountain which
in its old age preserves the name,
there, where a verdant laurel cast some shade
below that lovely peak, I found a seat,
my heart untrammeled by a single care.
Lorenzo’s disillusionment with politics was as profound as Rinuccini’s. A speech he places in the mouth of the Emperor Constantine in The Martyrdom of Saints John and Paul includes a line that may well have been his own cri de coeur: “To rule is wearisome, a bitter feat.” Though Rinuccini and Lorenzo disagreed about the cause of the political decline, given their disillusionment with civic life it was only natural for both to turn from an unsatisfactory world of politics toward the consolations of metaphysics. A philosophy that left the storms of daily life far behind and fled to realms eternal best expressed the mood of the times.
For Lorenzo the company of artists and writers had always been one of the antidotes to the poisonous atmosphere of Florentine politics. If no less mercenary than those seeking political office, artists and writers were usually more entertaining. Among the companions of his later years was the sculptor Giovanni di Bertoldo. Lorenzo valued Bertoldo not only for his talent as a bronze caster but for his sarcastic wit.* Bertoldo was constantly at Lorenzo’s house and accompanied him on his travels. Bertoldo’s death in 1491 came while he was staying at Lorenzo’s villa at Poggio a Caiano, much to the grief of his master, who was said to have mourned his passing as if he had been a member of his own family.
Bertoldo was considerably older than Lorenzo (he was born c. 1430), but as Lorenzo himself grew into middle age he more often took on the role of a father figure to a younger generation of brilliant men, reinvigorated by their energy and their wit. Among the young geniuses who came into Lorenzo’s life during these latter years was the teenage Michelangelo. Condivi relates a charming story of their first encounter in the garden at San Marco, which the biographer heard from the mouth of the artist himself:
One day, [Michelangelo] was examining among these works the Head of a Faun, already old in appearance, with a long beard and laughing countenance, though the mouth, on account of its antiquity, could hardly be distinguished or recognized for what it was; and, as he liked it inordinately, he decided to copy it in marble…. He set about copying the Faun with such care and study that in a few days he had perfected it, supplying from his imagination all that was lacking in the ancient work, that is, the open mouth as of a man laughing, so that the hollow of the mouth and all the teeth could be seen. In the midst of this, the Magnificent, coming to see what point his works had reached, found the boy engaged in polishing the head and, approaching quite near, he was much amazed, considering first the excellence and then the boy’s age; and although he did praise the work, nonetheless he joked with him as with a child and said, “Oh, you have made this Faun old and left him all his teeth. Don’t you know that old men of that age are always missing a few?”
To Michelangelo it seemed a thousand years before the Magnificent went away so that he could correct the mistake; and, when he was alone, he removed an upper tooth from his old man, drilling the gum as if it had come out with the root, and the following day he awaited the Magnificent with eager longing. When he had come and noted the boy’s goodness and simplicity, he laughed at him very much; but then, when he weighed in his mind the perfection of the thing and the age of the boy, he, who was the father of all virtù, resolved to help and encourage such great genius and to take him into his household; and, learning from him whose son he was, he said, “Inform your father that I would like to speak to him.”
Thus it was that the fifteen-year-old came to live in the palace of the Via Larga, though even with the lord of the city weighing in on his behalf it took some doing to persuade the elder Buonarroti to allow his son to become an artist, a calling so far beneath him.* Lorenzo, in fact, seems to have had fewer of the prejudices of his class against artisans than Michelangelo’s father, a member of the impoverished nobility whose pride was in inverse proportion to the size of his bank account. There was, of course, an element of noblesse oblige in Lorenzo’s patronage of talented men he did not consider his social equal. By inviting the artist to stay in his house he was following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who had kept the painter Filippo Lippi on the premises while he was working for him in an effort to keep the lusty monk’s mind on the job.
Among the artifacts remaining from Michelangelo’s years in Lorenzo’s house is a vivid account of the informal atmosphere of the palace he recounted to his biographer:
[Lorenzo] arranged that Michelangelo be given a good room in his house, providing him with all the conveniences he desired and treating him not otherwise than as a son, both in other ways and at his table, at which, as befitted such a man, personages of the highest nobility and of great affairs were seated every day. And as it was the custom that those who were present at the first sat down near the Magnificent, each according to his rank, without changing places no matter who should arrive later, it quite often happened that Michelangelo was seated above Lorenzo’s sons and other distinguished people, the constant company in which that house flourished and abounded. By all of them Michelangelo was treated affectionately and encouraged in his honorable pursuit, but above all by the Magnificent, who would send for him many times a day and would show him his jewels, carnelions, medals and similar things of great value, as he knew the boy had high intelligence and judgment.
The casualness of dinner at the palace was confirmed by Franceschetto Cibo, Lorenzo’s future son-in-law, who complained at the undignified treatment he had received until it was explained that there was no surer sign that one was thought a part of the family than to be included in such a boisterous, informal gathering.
If Michelangelo felt the need to talk shop he could always rely on Bertoldo, who had a room on the mezzanine near the top of the stairs. Despite the fact that he was a dear friend of Lorenzo’s and someone Lorenzo trusted to oversee his collection of valuable objects, Bertoldo’s room was listed among those of the household waiters. More influential on the young sculptor’s development was another guest of the palace, Angelo Poliziano. “Recognizing in Michelangelo a superior spirit,” writes Condivi, “he loved him very much and, although there was no need, he continually urged him on his studies, always explaining to him and providing him with subjects.” The fruit of Poliziano’s teaching is visible in the relief The Battle of the Lapiths and the Centaurs, whose mythological theme was suggested by the poet. In this early work Michelangelo first explores the form of the male nude that will define his work from the David to the Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. Though Poliziano
provided the literary background for this seminal work, Michelangelo was also inspired by his surroundings at the palace, where Donatello’s David stood in the courtyard and Antonio del Pollaiuolo’s Labors of Hercules hung in the Grand Salon.
Though Michelangelo is the most famous name on the guest list of the Medici palace, his experience was by no means unique. Three generations of discerning and profligate Medici collecting had turned the palace on the Via Larga into a museum of both ancient and modern art; under the guidance of Poliziano, Lorenzo had amassed one of the greatest collections of manuscripts in the world, turning the two hundred he had inherited to over one thousand at the time of his death. All of which made an invitation to the palace indispensable for anyone wishing to further his visual or literary education. To attract the attention and win the admiration of il Magnifico was the goal of any man of talent or ambition; to win his patronage was to be set out on the path to success. Not only was his patronage a good thing in itself, but to be known as a protégé of the lord of Florence was to possess currency that could purchase a place in any court of Europe where learning and cultivation were valued.
Among those drawn to Florence by Lorenzo’s reputation for enlightened patronage was the young Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, one of the most precociously gifted intellects of the age. With a command of numerous languages, ancient and modern—including those exotic acquisitions for a man of his times, Arabic and Hebrew, which he mastered in order to delve more deeply into the mystical teaching of Cabala—and talent for philosophical disputation, Pico dazzled everyone he met. Admired both for his learning and personal charm, the handsome count was immediately welcomed into Lorenzo’s circle, where his formidable erudition added to the liveliness of the discussions. A letter Poliziano wrote to Ficino from the Medici villa at Fiesole paints an idyllic portrait of the life of a scholar under Lorenzo’s aegis: “Wandering beyond the limits of his own property, Pico sometimes steals unexpectedly on my retirement, and draws me from the shade to partake of his supper. What kind of supper that is you well know; sparing indeed, but neat, and rendered graceful by the charms of conversation. But be my guest. Your supper shall be as good, and your wine perhaps better, for in the quality of wine I shall contend for superiority even with Pico himself.”
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