Magnifico

by Miles J. Unger

  * A braccia was a Florentine unit of measure. Literally meaning “arm,” it measured something under a yard.

  * Alessandra Strozzi was the wife of Matteo Strozzi, who was exiled by Cosimo after his defeat of the Albizzi faction in 1434. Her letters provide a portrait of Florence under Medici rule.

  * Rinuccini’s distrust of the Medici seems never to have led him into active resistance against the regime. He always kept his criticisms private while seeking advancement in Medicean Florence (see Chapter XIX). It is difficult to know if his views represent those of a “silent majority” or merely a small, if articulate, group of malcontents.

  * Florentines divided young men into different categories; fanciulli (boys) and giovanni (young men), usually defined as those who had yet to marry. The average age of marriage for men in Florence was about thirty-four (contrast this with girls, who usually married in their mid-to late teens). Young men were not considered fit for responsible life until they had reached their thirties; before then, these shiftless youths were a constant source of tension and potential dissension in Florence.

  * Some of the opposition came from those old enough to remember the bitter wars with the northern giant that time and again had brought the republic to the brink of disaster; they could not forget, nor forgive, the dark days of 1402 when Duke Gian Galeazzo Visconti sat with his vast army on the hills overlooking Florence, ready to starve the city into submission and unite the entire peninsula in his iron grasp. That Florence was miraculously delivered by Visconti’s sudden death of the plague—an apparent instance of divine intervention on behalf of the City of the Baptist—did little to soften Florentine hearts toward this bully to the north. Many Florentines preferred an alliance with their sister republic of Venice, whose oligarchic form of government was widely admired as preferable to the more democratic, but more chaotic, Florentine system. (See Felix Gilbert, “The Venetian Constitution in Florentine Political Thought,” in Rubinstein, Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence, 463–500). Many, however, opposed the Milan alliance simply to undermine the Medici position.

  * Now in the Bargello Museum in Florence.

  * See, for example, Agnolo Acciaiuoli’s letter to Francesco Sforza, April 23, 1465, in which he declares that while “Piero is as honored in this city as he was before,” nonetheless “because of his illness he cannot handle such burdens and cares” (Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici, 157).

  * Tranchedini wrote to Francesco Sforza, September 14, 1465, “Being today with the Magnificent Piero, he told me…that he has it on good authority that his adversaries wish to stir up anger against your Highness that will put you in low repute here, and then to propose a pact of friendship with the Venetians.” (See Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici, 176.)

  * This is something of an oversimplification. Francesco’s title came through his wife, illegitimate daughter of the last of the ruling Visconti clan. After Visconti’s death the people of Milan had risen up and briefly established a republic, which Francesco overthrew with an army funded largely by Cosimo’s money. His son’s accession would not be without drama (he was away campaigning in France when word reached him of his father’s death; he was forced to sneak back to Milan through hostile Savoy in disguise), but in the end it went off with no serious opposition. The Sforza title was never officially acknowledged by the Holy Roman Emperor, their ostensible feudal overlords, but this was a mere formality and was no real threat to their legitimacy.

  * This was especially the case during the reign of Galeazzo Maria. Francesco, an old soldier, was unaccustomed to and uncomfortable with the ways of the court. His son, however, had a taste for luxury and an inability to deny himself any indulgence that eventually contributed to his downfall. The Fortezza da Basso in Florence, which somewhat resembles the Sforza residence for sheer intimidating mass, was built by the Medici grand dukes in the sixteenth century and symbolized the city’s loss of its ancient liberties.

  * The creation of the Accoppiatori was typical of the methods the Medici employed to manipulate the republican government to their own ends without eradicating democratic forms and practices. Even Cosimo could resort to such tactics only on the understanding that such departures from constitutional practice were merely temporary responses to emergencies. Though most histories seem to work on the assumption that it was the Accoppiatori who actually picked the government, the truth is that they only picked the names—inscribed on little paper tickets—of the candidates, who continued to be drawn, as before, at random from the purses. When the government no longer felt itself threatened by foreign powers or domestic enemies, there were many who naturally clamored for a restoration of traditional methods. Those chosen to serve as Accoppiatori included the most powerful and trusted members of the regime. Among those serving on the committee in these years were Piero, Dietisalvi Neroni, and Agnolo Acciaiuoli. (See Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici, Appendix I for a complete list.)

  * Nicodemo Tranchedini was among those who believed that “the leading citizens will regret closing the bags, and do not understand the good and well-being of the state”(see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici, chapter 8, note 2).

  † There is a wonderful portrait bust of Niccolò da Uzzano by Donatello. The terra-cotta bust in the Bargello depicts him in the guise of a Roman senator, very much the image every Florentine patrician cultivated, but despite its rhetorical formulas it is a portrait full of lively character.

  * Lorenzo Soderini was the illegitimate child of the prominent merchant Tommaso Soderini and a French woman of lowly status. Though Tommaso raised his bastard son, Lorenzo did not inherit his father’s wealth or position. In order to redress the wrongs done to him because of his illegitimacy, Lorenzo forged a document purporting to show that his father had actually married his mother, thus entitling him to a substantial portion of the Soderini inheritance. The forgery was discovered, however, leading to Lorenzo’s eventual hanging (see Clarke, The Soderini and the Medici, chapter 1).

  * See “Note on the Government of Florence.”

  * The exact nature of the reforms Soderini was proposing have been hotly debated by historians. His proposal to combine the closing of the bags with new criteria for holding high office would have widened the franchise but also permanently fixed the number of eligible families. Some insist that the effect would have been to make the government more democratic; others insist his reforms would have created a closed oligarchic caste, modeled on that of Venice, that would have killed off the kind of social mobility that Florentines believed was an important part of their political system. (See Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici, especially chapter 8 and Pampaloni, “Fermenti di Riforme Democratiche nella Firenze Medicea del Quattrocento,” in Archivio Storico Italiano 119 (1961): 11–62. It is impossible to judge Florentine politics by modern standards, since often reformers were those who actually favored a return to a more oligarchic form of government.

  * Thus, for instance, the Medici were proud to display the fleurs de lis, granted to them by the French king, on their coat of arms, while others jockeyed for knighthoods and foreign titles of nobility. It is typical of Florentine ambivalence toward such feudal titles that while knights were given a special prominence in the city’s festivals and ceremonies, anyone stigmatized with the label “magnate” was excluded from participation in the city’s government. Suspicion of the hereditary aristocracy stemmed from the centuries of violence committed by the native nobility.

  † Votes in the palazzo were counted by means of black and white beans.

  * In an earlier crisis, one Florentine declared, “He who creates party, sells his liberty” (see Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici Faction, chapter 2). This fear of faction reflects the violent history of the city in which Guelfs and Ghibellines, and later Black and White Guelfs, murdered each other with abandon in the streets. There is an interesting parallel to the early
days of the American republic. The almost universal support for George Washington initially masked the quarrels between the followers of Thomas Jefferson and those of Alexander Hamilton. Each side accused the other of “faction” and disloyalty. But, unlike fifteenth-century Florence, the American system quickly adapted, leading to the formation of political parties that pursued their aims openly.

  † Lorenzo was qualified to replace a deceased relative. Replacements were supposed to be at least twenty-five, but exceptions were made in a few cases, including not only Lorenzo but Piero de’Pazzi’s son Renato. The following year Lorenzo was appointed to the board of trade (Mercanzia).

  * A replica of this masterpiece can still be seen in its original location on the facade of Orsanmichele. This church, which also served as a public granary, was one of the major civic monuments of Florence. Its medieval facade was punctuated by numerous niches, each one belonging to one of the major trade guilds, who were expected to fill them with sculptures of their patron saints. Among the famous works adorning the church are Donatello’s Saint George (for the armorers’ guild), Nanni di Banco’s Four Crowned Saints for the guild of wood-and stone-workers, and Lorenzo Ghiberti’s St. Matthew for the bankers. The sculptures now in place are mostly replicas of the originals, most of which are in the Bargello. Orsanmichele, with its singular blend of religion, business, and art, is a perfect symbol of the spirit of Renaissance Florence.

  † The palace we see today, which still dominates the neighborhood of the Oltrarno, has been expanded since Pitti’s day. In an ironic twist, the Pitti palace was enlarged when it became home to the Medici grand dukes in the sixteenth century. It now houses one of the world’s premier art museums. The story is told in Vasari’s Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects how Cosimo had originally asked Brunelleschi to design his own palace. But upon seeing “the very beautiful model” he rejected it, “thinking it too sumptuous….[He] refrained from putting it into execution, more to avoid envy than by reason of the cost.” Luca Pitti apparently had no such compunctions, allowing the offended genius to fashion him a home of “such grandeur and magnificence that nothing more rare or more magnificent has yet been seen in the Tuscan manner.”

  * Parenti uses the date 1465, following the Florentine usage of beginning the New Year on the Feast of the Annunciation in March.

  * The practice of undermining the legally constituted government by conducting business in the private houses of the leading citizens did not begin with the Medici. During the Albizzi regime, Giovanni Cavalcanti complained that the state “was governed more from the dinner-table and the study than from the Palace” (Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici Faction, chapter 1).

  * On the side of the Hill were the Venetians, acting largely through their proxies, Borso d’Este and the mercenary leader Bartolomeo Colleoni, a general in the Venetian employ. Backing the Medici were the forces of Milan, also gathering in the vicinity of Bologna.

  * Many, according to Marco Parenti, believed that Sforza had connived in his son-in-law’s assassination, but Parenti concluded “that the duke of Milan had no fault in this” (see Ricordi Storici, chapter 4). Francesco Sforza’s anger, demonstrated by his delaying Ippolita’s journey to Naples to consummate the marriage to Alfonso, had less to do with the murder itself than with the false accusations that were rained down upon him by this rash act of his kinsman. Eventually the incident was papered over, but relations between Naples and Milan remained tumultuous. One of the principal goals of Florentine diplomacy was to keep these two natural competitors at peace.

  * This mineral was used in the manufacture of glass, in the tanning of leather, and, most vitally as far as the Medici were concerned, as a cleanser and in the cloth-dying industry that was the major employer of Florentine workers. Before its discovery in the Papal States in 1460, this valuable mineral had to be imported from the Far East at much expense and peril. Gaining the concessions on these mines had important financial rewards as well as political implications. “I give you a great victory over the Turks,” Giovanni di Castro wrote to the pope when he discovered the deposits in Tolfa. This mineral would play a role in Lorenzo’s life out of all proportion to its apparent humbleness.

  * Contemporary accounts differ as to when Piero and his family arrived in Careggi; one suggests that they had just arrived that day, though this appears unlikely. It is more probable that they had arrived a day earlier.

  † Giovanni had just been recently made managing partner of the bank after a long dispute with his colleague Leonardo Vernacci. Vernacci implied that there was nepotism involved, claiming that “[w]hile advancement was based on merit, everyone was satisfied,” implying that things now ran differently (see de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, chapter 11). The timid, fretful Giovanni turned out to be a plodding, but honest, manager, loyally serving his nephew to the best of his abilities until the expulsion of the Medici from Florence in 1494. The bank was located on the Canale di Ponte, now called the Via del Banco di Santo Spirito, in the main financial district of the city, near the Vatican.

  * Florentine bankers usually kept two sets of accounts, the public books where profits were minimized and liabilities were exaggerated, and a “secret book,” where the real accounting took place. Naturally it is to these latter that historians refer in reconstructing the economic history of the period. The existence of these secret books should make us skeptical of taking the catasti, or public tax statements, too literally.

  The importance of Rome to the Medici can be seen in a comparison of profits from various branches for the years 1420–35 (in de Roover, table 11, chapter 3). Over those fifteen years the Roman branch made a profit of 117,037 florins, representing almost 63 percent of the total. By contrast the Florentine branch brought in less than 10 percent. The second most profitable branch was in Venice, followed closely by Geneva, but neither approached that of Rome. Over the course of the fifteenth century, as more branches were added in cities like Avignon, Pisa, Milan, and London, Rome declined in relative importance, but it still remained the critical piece of the Medici financial empire. From 1435 to 1450, profits from the Roman branch, 88,511 florins, still constituted 30 percent of the total (de Roover, table 17, chapter 3). Unlike most branches, where much of the capital was supplied by the partners of the bank, the Roman branch drew its funds from deposits by individual clerics and the papal treasury. In 1427, the deposits amounted to almost 100,000 florins, four times the amount in all the other branches combined (see de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank chapter 5).

  † Throughout much of the fifteenth century the Medici bank acted, in effect, as the pope’s treasury department. Under Popes John XXIII (later declared an antipope), Martin V Nicholas V, Eugenius IV, and Calixtus III, comprising the years 1410–58, the Medici bank in Rome had served as the Depository General of the Apostolic Chamber, the place where the Vatican kept and distributed its funds. From 1458 to 1471, under Popes Pius II and Paul II, the accounts were placed elsewhere. Sixtus IV reinstated the Medici to this important role upon his accession in 1471 (see Chapter XII).

  * Despite having made his fortune as a mercenary general and having seized the ducal thrown by force, once in power, Francesco, with the backing of Cosimo, labored hard for peace.

  * One factor in Lorenzo’s favor was the king’s desire to see the decree of exile lifted on his friend Filippo Strozzi, something that could happen only with the blessing of Piero. The bulk of Marco Parenti’s correspondence, so helpful in reconstructing the events of these years, was addressed to his brother-in-law Filippo in Naples and concerns his efforts to revoke the exile imposed on the Strozzi for their father, Matteo’s support of the Albizzi faction in the struggles of 1433–34.

  * The seizure was clearly a violation of law. “The keys to the gates of the city of Florence must be kept under the power and the custody [of the Gonfaloniere]…” read the applicable statute: “these keys every night must be brought to the said palace and placed under the contro
l of the notaries of said officials.” According to one critic, this act alone made Piero a tyrant of the city.

  * This made Tommaso Lorenzo’s uncle, but the familial connection did not always lead to harmonious relations. (See especially Chapter IX for an account of the often stormy history between uncle and nephew.)

  † The Ciompi was the name given to salaried workers of the city’s textile industries. The origin of the word is uncertain.

  * The monumental originals of Pollaiuolo’s canvases are now lost, but the smaller studies for them were rediscovered following the Second World War. Two of these studies, Hercules and Antaeus and Hercules and the Hydra, are now in the Uffizi Gallery.

  * This quotation comes from the secret memoirs of Alamanno Rinuccini (Ricordi Storici). Rinuccini’s memoirs provide invaluable eyewitness testimony to the political struggles of the era. Rinuccini was not a dispassionate observer but a man with a political agenda. While making a political career as a Medici insider, he frequently found himself on the outs with the reggimento and with Lorenzo in particular. He represents the viewpoint of the old-line republicans who believed that the Medici had established a tyranny in Florence. The most thorough exposition of his political philosophy comes in his “Dialogue on Liberty,” written in 1479. This essay is included in Renée Neu Watkins’s Humanism and Liberty: Writings on Freedom from Fifteenth Century Florence. The introduction to this essay contains a revealing biographical sketch.