The first of the great house of Medici, according to Passerini, was Giambuono, an ecclesiastic. He lived in the XIIth century, and his son Chiarissimo owned houses and a tower in Florence near S. Tommaso. Admirers of the Medici attributed to them a far more magnificent origin—Perseus; a Roman Emperor; a learned physician who saved the life of Charlemagne; or Averardo de’ Medici, a brave knight who slew Mugello, a giant who was the terror of Tuscany. Their enemies, on the other hand, assert that the son of a poor charcoal-burner in the Mugello who became a doctor (medico) was their progenitor, and point to the well-known balls, or pills, on the Medici arms as confirming their story; whilst to their admirers they represent golden apples from the gardens of the Hesperides, or dents in Averardo’s shield, made by the mace of the giant Mugello.
The name of Medici occurs occasionally in the early annals of Florence, but the real history of the family begins with Salvestro. In 1352 he led the Florentine troops against the Archbishop of Milan, and was knighted on the field of battle. In 1370 he was Gonfalonier of Justice and again in 1378, in spite of the efforts of the old nobility and of the Guelph party whose power he had sought to diminish by a new law. Their opposition to his suggestions brought about the Ciompi riots, and Salvestro de’ Medici was the first citizen knighted by the mob on the Piazza della Signoria. His grandson, Giovanni, born in 1360, became the first banker of Italy, and is described by Machiavelli as “most kind of heart, not only giving alms to all who begged of him, but aiding many poor people without being solicited. He was kindly towards all men, praising the good, and pitying the wicked. Never suing for honours, he obtained them all. He never went to the palace unless summoned. He loved peace, and always sought to avoid war. When men fell into trouble he gave them help, and aided those who had attained prosperity. Hostile to public peculation, he worked for the common good. As a magistrate he was gracious in manner, not eloquent, but of extraordinary prudence. Of a melancholy countenance, yet was he pleasant and witty in conversation. He died rich in the goods of this world, but richer in good repute and in the good-will of his fellow-citizens.”
Cosimo de’ Medici, for whom Michelozzo Michelozzi built the great palace in Via Larga (now Palazzo Riccardi), is described as tall, of dark complexion and of imposing presence. He applied himself so strenuously to increase the political power of his house, “that those who had rejoiced,” writes Machiavelli, “at Giovanni’s death, now regretted it, perceiving what manner of man Cosimo was. Of consummate prudence, staid, yet agreeable presence, he was liberal and humane. He never worked against his own party nor against the State, and was prompt in giving aid to all. His liberality gained him many partisans among the citizens.”
After his marriage with Contessina, daughter of Giovanni Bardi, Count of Vernio, he bought and rebuilt the villa of Careggi, and soon afterwards, as Vasari tells us, charged his intimate friend Michelozzo Michelozzi “to make the design for the house and palace which is at the corner of Via Larga, opposite to S. Giovannino; as it seemed to him that the one made, as has been said elsewhere, by Filippo di Ser Brunelleschi, was too sumptuous and magnificent, and would rather attract the envy of his fellow-citizens, than add to the beauty and ornament of the city and to his own convenience. Being therefore pleased with Michelozzo’s design, he bade him carry it out in the form we now see.... Michelozzo’s merit is the greater, as this is the first palace built in Florence in the modern style, containing suites of rooms both useful and beautiful. The cellars are four braccie below ground and three braccie above, so as to afford light, and near them are store rooms and pantries. The ground floor consists of two courtyards with magnificent loggie, out of which open halls, drawing-rooms, waiting-rooms, studies, bakeries, kitchens, wells, and commodious public and secret staircases. On the upper floors are apartments for a family, with every convenience that can serve, not only for a private citizen, as Cosimo then was, but for a magnificent and powerful king.” The palace was begun in 1444, according to Gianozzo di Bernardo Galviati.73
A more detailed account of the palace is given in Firenze Antica e Moderna, where it is described as having “originally been a square building of the rustic order up to the first floor, with large protruding ‘bozzi.’ The two upper floors are Doric and Corinthian, with hammered and flattened ‘bozzi.’ The windows have double arches with composite columns in the centre, and in the triangles are sculptured alternately the Medici arms with seven balls and the device of Cosimo Pater Patriae, a ring with a diamond encircling two feathers, to which was added later a third feather and the motto Semper, the device of the Magnificent Lorenzo. The palace was at first built with four doors, but only the one in Via Larga was retained, the three others being turned into kneeling windows designed by Michelangelo. They are said to be the first made after such fashion in Florence, and are highly praised for their beauty and good proportions. Before these windows were made the two doors at the angle, or at all events the one opposite the church of S. Giovannino, were always open, and led into a large internal loggia, called the Loggia de’ Medici. At the angle of the palace is a magnificent shield containing their well known arms, with the Lily of France, granted to the Medici by Charles VII., on the centre ball. The balls were removed when they were driven out of Florence in 1527 and the Cross, emblem of the People, put in their stead; but on the restoration of the family the balls were replaced. Entering the first courtyard, surrounded with an arcade, are to be seen columns of pietra serena with composite capitals, and in the frieze are eight medallions of marble copied from antique cameos and trophies of medals, by that famous artist, Donatello.”
It will ever remain a mystery why Michelozzi made so small and so dark a chapel for such a noble palace. It almost seems as if he had forgotten it in the original plan, and had then placed it where it would not interfere with the fine suites of rooms. Resting almost entirely on the vaulted rooms of the ground floor, it is in a corner of the building, and is built of brick. But all the defects of the architect vanish before the vivid beauty and the grace of Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes.
On either side of the window (enlarged in 1837) in front of which stood the altar with the picture of the Madonna adoring the Infant Christ, by Filippo Lippi, now in the Berlin gallery, are groups of adoring angels with peacock wings, and behind them stand others singing. The landscape is worthy of the angels. From the flower-spangled grass rise hedges of roses and pomegranates, huge stone pines and slender cypresses; in the distance are grey towns with many towers, and in the sky above angels float amongst the clouds. Brilliantly coloured birds are flying here and there, while others perch on the ground at the feet of the kneeling angels. The walls of the chapel are entirely covered with the story of the Magii; only the Kings and their attendants are portraits of the time and the landscape is purely Tuscan.
The centre figure on the north wall is a handsome, fair-haired youth, wearing a curious turban-like jewelled crown and riding a high-stepping white horse on whose gorgeous trappings are embroidered the Medici arms. He is supposed to be Lorenzo, the darling of his grandfather Cosimo. Behind him rides his father, Piero, grasping a lock of his horse’s mane with one hand and attended by a serving-man, evidently a portrait. Cosimo Pater Patriae rides beside him on a mule, a black slave running at his stirrup. Other members of the Medici family are no doubt depicted in the train of followers, amongst whom one discerns the stern, sagacious face of the painter himself, with Opus Benotii written on his cap. A long line of horse and footmen are seen in the distance winding down the hills in a rocky landscape with here and there a tall cypress tree, denuded of its lower branches in the fashion still dear to Tuscan hearts. A hind is rushing up a slope chased by greyhounds and huntsmen. On the west wall, opposite the window, is another King on a splendidly caparisoned white horse, wearing a long green tunic of Oriental cut and a jewelled crown on his head with the points curving inwards. He is the Emperor John Paleologus who came to Florence to attend the Council, and round him are graceful, lithe, young pages on foot, while others follow on horseback crowned with wreaths of pink roses. The landscape is rocky and broken, winding roads lead up to fortified hill-towns and castles, and rivers rush down to the plain. A window has been cut in this wall, but without doing the irreparable damage committed by the Marchese Francesco Riccardi who, in order to widen the staircase leading from the courtyard up to the first floor, cut a corner out of the chapel. Part of the wall was utterly destroyed and the figure of the third King, the portrait of the Greek Patriarch, is cut in two. His mule has lost one leg, and the upper part of the fresco on the wall which was moved forwards is a daub by some inferior artist. Fortunately the lower part suffered less. The Patriarch wears a crown with high points, and is clothed in a cassock with a mozzetta of red velvet edged with ermine over his shoulders. His mule, whose bridle has large golden bosses, holds its head proudly, as though conscious of the high dignity of its rider. Among the richly dressed cavaliers in front of him is a gallant lad, with a hunting guepard on a pad behind him; this is said to be the portrait of Lorenzo’s younger brother Giuliano, murdered some years later by Francesco de’ Pazzi in the cathedral. In the distance a long train of baggage animals, horses, mules, donkeys and camels, are wending their way round the shoulder of a mountain. On each side of the recess where the altar stood are painted, above the doors of the tiny sacristies, the ass on one side, the ox on the other, in whose manger the Holy Infant was laid.
The war with Lucca gave rise to accusations against all who had to do with it and Florence was divided into two factions, one led by Cosimo de’ Medici, the other by Rinaldo degl’Albizzi, who contrived to get an adherent of his own elected Gonfalonier of Justice for the months of September and October in 1433. Cosimo, who had passed the summer at his villa in the Mugello, “to escape,” as he writes in his diary, “from the contests and divisions in the city,” was advised by his friends to return. On going to the Palazzo della Signoria he was seized and imprisoned in the Barberia, a small room in the tower. Sentenced to banishment he went to Venice, where he notes: “I was received with more honour and charity than I can describe.” Just a year later he was recalled from exile. “Seldom has a citizen, returning from a great victory,” writes Machiavelli, “been greeted by such a concourse of people, and with such demonstrations of affection, as was Cosimo on his return from exile; saluted by all as the benefactor of the people and the Father of his country.” From this time forward, “partly,” as Symonds remarks, “by his remarkable talent for intrigue, partly by the clever use he made of his vast wealth, and partly by espousing the plebeian cause, Cosimo de’ Medici succeeded in monopolizing the government.” Yet while engaged in political matters Cosimo found time to attend to his business and to correspond with the managers of his banks, scattered throughout Europe and even in Asia. To all he gave orders to buy ancient manuscripts on any subject. “Cosimo,” writes Gibbon, “was the father of a line of princes, whose name and age are almost synonymous with the restoration of learning; his credit was ennobled into fame; his riches were dedicated to the service of mankind; he corresponded at once with Cairo and London, and a cargo of Indian spices and Greek books were often imported in the same vessel.”
A liberal and discerning patron to artists and men of letters, Cosimo founded libraries in the Badia of Fiesole and in S. Marco; in the latter he had a cell for his own use. To the Greeks who came to the Council of Florence, or soon afterwards fled thither when Constantinople was captured by the Turks, he extended a splendid hospitality in his palace in Via Larga. “To him,” remarks Burckhardt, “belongs the special glory of recognizing in the Platonic philosophy the fairest flower of the ancient world of thought, and of inspiring his friends with the same belief.” While spending his money in a princely manner on works of art, public libraries and buildings, and in donations to needy scholars, his home life was perfectly simple. He was an excellent husband and a kind father, and contemporaries tell us he rose early to prune his pear trees and plant his vines. His greatest recreation was in the society of learned men. On feast days Argyropolos, who taught Greek to his son Piero and afterwards to his grandson Lorenzo, would go with his scholars to the Palazzo Medici and discuss philosophy. “The great Cosimo,” writes Marsilio Ficino, “often attended to hear the Greek philosopher Gemisthus Pletho, well nigh a second Plato, discourse concerning the Platonic mysteries, and so moved was he by his stirring eloquence that he determined to establish a Greek academy at the first opportunity. When this project was about to be carried into effect he selected me, the son of his favourite doctor, to preside over the important work, though at the time I was little more than a boy.” Enormous sums were spent by him on building. The convent of S. Marco cost 70,000 golden florins, and his own palace 60,000, so that an army of workmen obtained employment, whose wages were paid regularly at his banking house every Saturday.
The death of his second son, Giovanni, was a blow from which Cosimo did not recover. He lingered for a year, during which his chief solace was in being read aloud to. “Come to us, Marsilio,” he wrote, “as soon as you can. Bring with you your translation of Plato, De summo Bono, for I desire nothing so much as to learn the road which leads to the greatest happiness. Farewell, come not without thy Orphean lyre.”
Cosimo died on the 1st August, 1464, at Careggi. His funeral was attended by a huge concourse of people. His fellow-citizens enacted that the epitaph Cosmus Medice hic situs est decreto publico Pater Patriae should be engraved on the plain porphyry slab which marks his tomb in front of the choir in S. Lorenzo.
Piero de’ Medici, a martyr to gout and in bad health, soon felt the weight of irksome business, as had been predicted by his father, and called in one of his most trusted friends. The sagacious, far-seeing Cosimo had been singularly deceived in his estimate of Messer Diotisalvi Neroni, in whom he had counselled his son to place absolute confidence. Neroni was secretly in league with Luca Pitti, Agnolo Acciaiuoli and Niccolò Soderini, avowed enemies of the Medici, and when Piero placed the books containing Cosimo’s business transactions in his hands, he advised him to call in the debts owing by many of the chief families of the city. The consequence was the loss of the popularity and of the affection enjoyed by Cosimo. The projected marriage of Piero’s son, Lorenzo, to a daughter of the proud Roman house of Orsini, added fuel to the flame. It was decided to assassinate him on his return from Careggi, and his life was only saved by the presence of mind of young Lorenzo. He observed armed men as he rode into town before his father, and sent a messenger back to tell the bearers of Piero’s litter to take a roundabout country lane, whilst announcing that his father was but a short way behind him. The defection of Luca Pitti was a deathblow to the conspiracy and to his own fortunes. Neroni and Soderini fled to Venice, Agnolo Acciaiuoli to Naples, whence he wrote to Piero to excuse himself:
“I laugh at the tricks of fortune, and how she turns friends into foes. Thou may’st recall that when thy father was exiled, thinking more of his disaster than of mine own peril I lost my country, and was well nigh losing my life. Never during my friendship with Cosimo did I cease to honour and favour thy house, neither have I, since his death, had any intention of offending thee. It is true that thy bad health and the tender age of thy children so alarmed me, that I thought it were better to give such form to the State that our country should not fall to ruin after thy death. Hence arose certain events, not directed against thee, but in favour of Florence, which even if erroneous merit forgetfulness, on account of my good conscience and my past actions.”
Piero’s answer to this epistle was: “Thy laughter is the reason why I do not weep; for wert thou laughing at Florence, I should be weeping at Naples. I admit thy friendship for my father and thou must admit that he repaid thee well. So thou art more beholden to us than we to thee, as deeds are worth more than words. Having been thus recompensed for thy good services, thou canst not wonder at being repaid for evil ones. Love of thy country is no excuse, as none will believe that the Medici love this city less, or have served her worse, than the Acciaiuoli. Live therefore in dishonour where thou art, as thou hast not known how to live with honour here.”
Piero de’ Medici was forty-eight when his father died. He inherited his love of letters and was of a kindly nature, “it was due to him,” writes Machiavelli, “that his partisans did not stain their hands with the blood of their fellow-citizens.” In June, 1469, his son Lorenzo married Clarice Orsini, and great festivities took place in the Medici palace, soon to be followed by sounds of mourning, for Piero died in December. “Two days later, the principal men of the city and of the State,” writes Lorenzo in his Ricordi, “came to us in our house to condole with us on our loss, and to encourage me to take charge of the city and of the government, as my grandfather and my father had done. This I was most unwilling to accept, on account of my youth and of the great responsibility and peril, yet for the safety of our friends and of our possessions I did so. For it is ill living for the rich in Florence unless they rule the State. Until now we have succeeded with honour and renown, which I attribute, not to prudence, but to the grace of God and the good conduct of my ancestors.”
Lorenzo was then in his twenty-second year and Giuliano was sixteen. Few princes of that time had received such an education as the sons of Piero de’ Medici. Messer Gentile Becchi of Urbino, a man of great learning, pure life and high moral character, was their tutor, Landino taught them Italian literature, Argyropolos Greek, and Marsilio Ficino the philosophy of Plato. Above all Lorenzo had been well trained by his mother, a woman of strong good sense, a poetess, yet withal an excellent housewife. Niccolò Valori describes Lorenzo as “above the common stature, broad-shouldered and solidly built, robust, and second to none in agility. Although nature had been a step-mother to him with regard to his personal appearance, she had acted as a loving mother in all things connected with the mind. His complexion was dark, and although his face was not handsome it was so full of dignity as to compel respect. He was short-sighted, his nose was flattened and he had no sense of smell. This did not trouble him and he was wont to say that he was grateful to nature, disagreeable things being more common than agreeable ones to so delicate a sense.”
In March, 1471, when Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, with his wife, paid a visit to Lorenzo, the Medici palace must have been filled to overflowing. “100 men at arms, 500 infantry, 50 running footmen clothed in silk and cloth of silver, 50 led ambling palfreys for the use of the Duchess and 50 led war-horses, splendidly caparisoned, for himself; dogs and falcons for the chase and 12 two-wheeled carts,74 drawn by mules and covered with embroidered cloth of gold and silver, for the use of the Duchess and her ladies whilst crossing the Alps; in all the Duke had 2,000 horses,” says an eyewitness. Magnificent festivities were given every day and to the horror of the religiously inclined, meat was eaten although it was Lent; so when the church of S. Spirito was burnt to the ground, owing to the scenery erected for a sacred play acted before the Duke catching fire, it was looked upon as a judgment of God.
But Lorenzo loved the society of scholars and artists, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, Cristofano Landino, and Luigi Pulci, who wrote his Morgante for the amusement of Lorenzo’s mother Lucrezia, and recited it canto by canto after dinner, were his constant guests in the palace of Via Larga. In their society he laid aside the statesman and became the discerning critic and the graceful poet.
The conspiracy of the Pazzi is a matter of history. Attempts to murder the two Medici brothers had been frustrated by Giuliano’s failing, on account of illness, to attend banquets, and by Lorenzo giving up his journey to Rome. But on Sunday, 26th April, 1478, it was arranged that Cardinal Raffaello Riario, the Pope’s great-nephew, was to attend high mass in the cathedral with Lorenzo and Giuliano, and afterwards to dine with them. “The church,” writes Machiavelli, “was filled with people, and divine service had begun, yet Giuliano had not made his appearance. So Francesco de’ Pazzi, with Bernardo, who were to murder him, went to his house, and by entreaties and flattery induced him to go to the Duomo with them. On the way Francesco, under pretext of caressing him, embraced him with hands and arms to see whether he wore a cuirass or any other armour.” At the elevation of the Host Bernardo Bandini plunged his dagger into Giuliano’s breast, who staggered and fell, upon which Francesco de’ Pazzi stabbed him nineteen times with such blind fury, that he wounded himself in the thigh. The two priests who had undertaken to kill Lorenzo, after the refusal of the old soldier, Giovanbattista Montesecco, to commit a murder “where Christ would be sure to see him,” were not skilled in the use of the dagger, and Lorenzo was only wounded in the neck. Bandini, hastening to complete the work, was stopped by Francesco Nori, a friend of the Medici, whom he stabbed to the heart. Lorenzo took refuge in the new sacristy, where one of his adherents, fearing the dagger was poisoned, sucked the wound, and then, surrounded by his friends, Lorenzo walked to his palace. “By this time,” continues Machiavelli, “the whole city was under arms.... There was not a citizen who, armed or unarmed, did not go to the palace of Lorenzo in this time of trouble, to offer to him his person and his goods; such was the position and the affection that the family had acquired by their prudence and their liberality.”
In 1487 Lorenzo’s eldest son Piero de’ Medici married Alfonsina Orsini, a relation of his mother Clarice, and the following year Lorenzo attained a great object of his ambition. He had carefully educated his second son Giovanni for the Church, and Pope Innocent VIII., whose son Francesco Cibo had married Maddalena de’ Medici, made the lad of fourteen a cardinal, “on condition,” as Giovanni Cambi tells us, “that he was not to wear the hat or the habit for three years.” In August, 1488, Clarice died, and Lorenzo’s health became more and more precarious, but in March, 1491, he was well enough to witness the ceremony of bestowing the cardinal’s hat on his son in the abbey church of Fiesole. “The Signoria decided,” continues old Cambi, “that for love of Lorenzo his father, who little by little had made himself the head and the chief personage of the city, great honour should be paid to him. So it was ordered that three hundred citizens should go out to meet him, and it was not necessary to entreat them to do this as was often the case when an ambassador had to be met. They were all clothed in silk, and counting Giovanni’s own people, the bishops, clergy and notaries, there were five hundred horsemen, and on the Sunday morning a solemn mass was said in S. Maria del Fiore.” The young Cardinal soon afterwards left for Rome, and on the 8th April, 1492, Lorenzo de’ Medici died at Careggi. He was buried in S. Lorenzo, and no monument marks the last resting-place of one of the most illustrious men of Florence.
“Lorenzo,” writes Gino Capponi, “represented and united in his own person a whole century; he wrote sacred hymns and carnival songs, sought the society of, and listened to, religious men, whilst he led a dissolute life. An assiduous worker in state affairs, and indefatigable in all things that served his purpose and augmented his fame, yet he appeared only to care for amusement and gaiety and the company of witty and brilliant men. He was so constituted that nothing came amiss to him. The Medici palace was a museum, a school and a place of meeting for all the learned men who flocked thither, and from it proceeded grave counsel and intellectual teaching, as well as shows and festivals and a general corruption of manners. Two popes passed their childhood there, and the Platonic Academy, intended to raise the standards of life and thought, was founded within its walls. Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, one of the greatest men of his time, were constant visitors. There the first chips flew off the marble under the chisel of Michelangelo, and there Luigi Pulci read the Morgante aloud. Such exuberance of life, such magnificence, such gaiety has probably never been witnessed in any other age, and the name of Lorenzo towers above it all.”75
Piero de’ Medici was twenty-one when his father died, and was in all respects different from him. “This is not to be wondered at,” remarks Guicciardini, “as he was born of a foreign mother, whereby the Florentine blood got mixed, and he acquired foreign manners and a style too haughty for our habits of life.” On hearing of the approach of Charles VIII., in 1494, he quitted Florence in a panic, and rode to Sarzana, where he had an audience of the King, and granted all his demands. On his return to Florence, he dismounted at the Palazzo Vecchio, and informed the Signoria that he had ceded Sarzana, Sarzanella, Pietrasanta, Pisa, Leghorn and Ripafratta to Charles. Next day he was saluted in the streets with the cry of Popolo! Libertà! and Giovanni Cambi went home and wrote in his diary: “I note how on the 9th November, 1494, by the grace of God and of the Virgin Mary, Piero di Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, the tyrant of his country, was expelled by the people at the hour of vespers.... The Signoria put the price of 2,000 scudi on his head and the same on the head of his brother, Messer Giovanni the Cardinal, and 5,000 if they were taken alive. They fled by the Porta S. Gallo and went to Bologna, and with them went Ser Piero da Bibbiena, his chancellor, who was the king of all evil; a vainglorious peasant, and the chief cause of the ruin of the said Piero.”
The Medici brothers having escaped, the mob wreaked their vengeance on the valuable contents of the magnificent palace, so that the Signoria were obliged to borrow or buy furniture in great haste to make it fit to receive Charles VIII. when he entered Florence on the 19th November. He was followed by his whole army, “a very grand sight,” exclaims Guicciardini, “but for which the spectators had small liking, by reason of the dread and the terror which filled their souls.” It was in the Palazzo Medici that the memorable scene took place between a plain burgher of the city and the King of France. The demands made by him were impossible for the Signoria to comply with, and Pier Capponi was sent to remonstrate. Charles angrily replied that if the huge sums of money he asked for were not forthcoming, he would command his trumpets to be sounded. Capponi snatched the paper on which the conditions were written from his hands, and tore it to pieces, crying, “If you sound your trumpets, we shall ring our bells.” It was a bold deed, and those present were astounded at his daring. But the King, who wanted money and not war, gave way, and covered his discomfiture by a sorry joke on the name of the Florentine citizen. Ah Ciappon, Ciappon, voi siete un mal ciappon. (Ah Capon, Capon, you are a bad capon.)
The agreement, signed on the 25th November, stipulated an offensive and defensive alliance between France and Florence, the payment by the latter of 120,000 golden ducats, the retention by Charles of the citadels, but not of the towns, of Pisa, Leghorn, Pietrasanta and Sarzana, until the end of his war with Naples, when they were to revert to Florence. Finding the King showed no disposition to leave his luxurious quarters on the next day, as the Florentines had hoped, they sent Savonarola to the Medici palace. He accosted Charles in these words: “Most Christian Prince, thy delay in going is causing serious harm to this city and to the enterprize in which thou art engaged. Thou art losing thy time, forgetful of the task imposed on thee by Providence, to the grave detriment of thy spiritual welfare and thy worldly renown. Listen, therefore, to the words of the servant of God. Go on thy way without further delay; take heed not to bring ruin on this city and on thyself the anger of God.” Two days later Charles departed, and with him went many of the most valuable works of art in the palace. De Comines mentions, among other things, beautiful agate cups, wonderful cameos, and more than 3,000 gold and silver medals, “more than I thought could have been found in all Italy.” Courtiers, officers and soldiers, robbed right and left, and quitted the city laden with spoil. Eight years later Cambi writes in his diary: “On the 8th January, 1502, came letters saying that Piero was at Gaeta which was held for the King of France; and the Spaniards beat the French, who put all their artillery on a ship in which was also Piero de’ Medici, and he was drowned, thanks be to God.”
The terrible sack of Prato by the Spaniards in 1512, at which the Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici assisted, struck terror into the hearts of the Florentines. They agreed to pay 140,000 ducats to the Spanish Viceroy on condition that he quitted Tuscany; to allow the Medici to return to Florence in the quality of private citizens, and to permit them to buy back their private possessions. Giuliano, the third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, then entered the city; “having first doffed his rich Spanish habit and put on a lucco, the everyday dress of a Florentine burgher. He came in the company of Anton Francesco degl’Albizzi and dismounted at his palace, that of the Medici being empty and in a ruinous condition.” But the Medicean party soon found that Giuliano lacked energy, and Cardinal Giovanni, with Messer Giulio, the illegitimate son of the murdered Giuliano, came from Campi with four hundred lances, and took up his abode in the Palazzo Medici with all the state pertaining to a prince of the Church. His nephew Lorenzo, Piero de’ Medici’s only son, came with him, and the house of Medici, after an exile of eighteen years, once more ruled in Florence.
The old palace regained much of its pristine splendour. Festivals and gay pageants “in order,” writes old Cambi with bitter irony, “to let it be seen that the city was festively inclined and in a flourishing condition,” succeeded each other. But there was a strong under-current of hatred, and plots to assassinate Lorenzo, Giuliano and Giulio de’ Medici, were rife. Whilst the two young men, Pietro Pagolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi were lying under sentence of death in the Bargello (see p. 222), two pageants, rivalling those of the Magnificent himself, issued on two successive days out of the great door of the Medici palace. Giuliano had instituted a company of noble youths called, after the device of Cosimo, the Diamond. Andrea Dazzi, who held the chair of Greek and Latin literature, was the inventor and poet of Giuliano’s pageant, while Pontormo painted and decorated the cars. Lorenzo, competing with his uncle, was the head of a company called Il Broncone, whose emblem was a withered laurel branch whence sprouted fresh leaves, and for him, Jacopo Nardi, the historian, invented a pageant symbolizing the Golden Age, for which Pontormo also painted the cars. “Thus,” exclaims Cambi, “the people were fed with rubbish and follies, and took no heed to penitence. Yet they had seen the scourge at Brescia, and again at Prato. They beheld Italy from one end to the other full of barbarian troops, they perceived that God was threatening us—ay, even now scourging us, and yet they did worse. Oh! may God in His mercy not look upon these our sins.”
The election of Giovanni de’ Medici to the papal chair in March, 1513, was hailed with exultant joy in Florence, and Leo X. did not disappoint the hopes of his fellow-citizens, or those of his own family. Three out of four new cardinals created by him were Florentines, one being his cousin Giulio de’ Medici, in despite of the canon law excluding any one of illegitimate birth. Giuliano, the Pope’s brother, became Captain-General of the Church and married Filiberta of Savoy, and Leo’s young nephew, Lorenzo, was selected to govern Florence.
When Leo X. passed through Florence on his way to meet Francis I. at Bologna, he rested for a day or two in the apartment set aside for the popes in Sta. Maria Novella, but on his return journey he spent several weeks with his nephew in the Palazzo Medici. Contemporary chroniclers devote many pages to describing the magnificence of his reception and the entertainments given in his honour, amongst them the representation of Rosmunda in the Rucellai gardens. Splendid were the gifts he bestowed on churches and on private individuals. To the cathedral he gave “a mitre of great beauty, adorned with many pearls, sapphires, emeralds, diamonds and rubies, worth more than 10,000 ducats, as a mark of the tender affection he bore the church in which he had been a canon when a little child.” The cathedral chapter was endowed with the right of legitimatizing children born out of wedlock, the revenue of the officiating clergy was increased, and indulgences of many days were granted to the principal altars.
A few days after Leo X. left Florence for Rome, his brother Giuliano died. He left no children by his wife Filiberta of Savoy and the title of Duc de Nemours, bestowed on him by Francis I. when he married, lapsed to the French crown. His illegitimate son, Ippolito, we shall have occasion to mention hereafter. Lorenzo persuaded his uncle, the Pope, to deprive Francesco Maria della Rovere of the Duchy of Urbino in his favour, and soon afterwards married Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne, who died after giving birth to a daughter, Catherine, destined to become Queen of France. Duke Lorenzo of Urbino died, worn out by dissipation at the age of twenty-seven, six days after his young wife; and his only claim to fame is Michelangelo’s noble statue, Il Pensieroso, above his tomb in the Medici chapel in S. Lorenzo. The statue of his uncle, Giuliano, who also died before he was thirty, is opposite to him in the same chapel holding the baton of command as Gonfalonier of the Church.
With Leo X. died the last legitimate descendant of Cosimo Pater Patriae, and the Medici palace was inhabited by the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, son of the Magnificent Lorenzo’s younger brother Giuliano, by a lady of the Gorini family. He left his mark on the Palazzo by closing the open loggia on the first floor, where Cosimo had always received the citizens who visited him, thus turning it into a long gallery. Even the thorough-going old Republican Jacopo Nardi admits that the Cardinal’s rule was better than any the city had known for many a long year, and everything went smoothly until in 1522 a plot was discovered to murder him. Most of the conspirators, belonging to well-known Florentine families, fled, but young Diaceto and his friend Alamanni were beheaded. The old Palazzo Medici was too small to contain the crowd of citizens of all classes who flocked thither to assure the Cardinal of their heart-felt joy at his escape. According to Ammirato their joy was sincere, for the city would probably have been attacked by the Imperial forces, which had just sacked Genoa and would have seized on such a good excuse as the murder of the Cardinal-Governor to obtain so rich a prize.
In November, 1523, the Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici became Pope under the title of Clement VII. and his election was hailed with demonstrations of joy in Florence. Ippolito, the handsome illegitimate son of Giuliano, Duc de Nemours, was sent from Rome under the charge of Silvio Passerini, Cardinal of Cortona, installed in the Palazzo Medici with great magnificence and, although he was only thirteen years of age, declared eligible to all offices of state in the Republic. Alessandro, the reputed son of Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, but more probably the child of Clement himself, together with the young Duchess Catherine, was sent to Poggio a Cajano, a Medici villa about nine miles out of Florence. The two lads hated one another, so the Pope thought it best to separate them. Ippolito was handsome, his manners were engaging and he already had a right royal way of spending money. Alessandro, commonly supposed to have been the son of a Moorish slave woman, a report his crisped hair, thick lips and swarthy complexion, tended to confirm, was ugly, violent in temper and abrupt in manner. The appointment of Passerini was not a happy one. “Besides being,” writes Varchi, “like most prelates, extremely avaricious, he had neither the intellect to understand the Florentine character, nor the judgment to manage it had he understood it.” The sack of Rome, and the imprisonment of Clement in Castel S. Angelo, offered too good an opportunity for the Republican party in Florence to lose, and the dreaded cry of Popolo, Libertà, resounded in the streets. Ridolfi had come into town with his young pupil Alessandro, and the anxiety of the inmates of Palazzo Medici was not lessened by a visit from their imperious kinswoman, Clarice, daughter of Piero de’ Medici, who had just escaped from Rome with her husband Filippo Strozzi. He followed her to the Palazzo Medici to ask for information as to how things were in Florence pretending, that having just arrived, he was ignorant. Ippolito, with the impetuosity of youth, recounted how ill the city was behaving and then complained bitterly that Madonna Clarice sided with rebels against her own kith and kin. Strozzi professed great sorrow for the behaviour of the Florentines, and still greater for that of his wife, but the fact was, he added with a sigh, that, as a Medici, Clarice was so superior to himself that he had not such control over her as might be desired. Nevertheless, as the Cardinal and the two lads still hesitated about following his advice and quitting the city, he summoned his wife to his help. “Standing in the long gallery she poured forth,” writes old Segni, “her scorn of the base-born scions of her family. ‘You show plainly, what is already known, that you are not of the blood of the Medici. I say this, not only of you, but of Pope Clement, wrongfully a Pope, and now most righteously a prisoner in S. Angelo. As for you, leave a house and a city, neither of which are yours by the right of either birth or of merit. Go, and lose no time.’”
Quitting the Medici palace, the Cardinal and the two lads rode out of the Porta S. Gallo and for the third time the Medici were exiled, and their noble palace was attacked by the mob who were with difficulty restrained from setting it on fire. The arms of the Medici were everywhere defaced and the waxen counterfeits of the Popes Leo and Clement were torn from their places in the church of the Annunziata and destroyed (see p. 380).
After the terrible privations suffered by Florence during the siege under the Prince of Orange, her citizens were fain to bow their necks once more to the Medicean yoke. In obedience to an order motu proprio, et de plenitudine potestatis, from Clement VII., they declared that considering the excellent qualities, life and habits of the Most Illustrious Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, son of the late Magnificent Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino, and in recognition of the many and great benefits received, both spiritual and temporal from the house of Medici, he was eligible to all offices of State. Ippolito, who had entered the Church unwillingly, had been made a Cardinal before he was twenty. “He was handsome and agreeable,” writes Varchi, “with a quick understanding and gifted with every grace and accomplishment, affable and pleasant to every man and most liberal towards all who excelled in war or letters, or in any of the liberal arts.... He knew Latin well, and wrote gracefully, both in prose and verse, in the Florentine idiom.... It is true that by nature he was superficial and fickle, and did many things solely out of vainglory and ambition.... When he understood, or heard from others, that Pope Clement had decided that the riches and the greatness of the house of Medici were to be continued by Alessandro and not by himself, a great change took place in him. He was seized with incredible anger and grief, as it seemed to him that being older, a nearer relation to the Pope and better endowed by nature, so rich an inheritance and so brilliant a marriage should rather be his: either not knowing, or not believing, the secret rumours that Alessandro was the son of Clement.” He left Rome in haste for Florence with the idea of seizing the State before Alessandro, who was in Flanders with his future father-in-law the Emperor, could arrive. The Pope despatched Bacio Valori after him laden with entreaties and promises, and after passing a few days in Florence and finding that he had no following, he returned to Rome. On the 4th July, Alessandro, who had been created Duke of Cività di Penna, entered Florence and dismounted at the Palazzo Medici, where he was received by the principal citizens.
The exiled Florentines, who were plotting against the stern and dissolute rule of Alessandro, often met in Filippo Strozzi’s house in Rome, and their deliberations were always communicated to the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici. At last it was decided to send an embassy to Charles V. to complain of the tyranny of the Duke Alessandro and to expose his evil life. This sealed the fate of Ippolito. He died of poison in August, 1535, and the man he accused on his deathbed and who cynically admitted his crime, took refuge in Alessandro’s house in Via Larga.
Splendid was the reception of the Emperor Charles V. when he entered Florence on the 24th April, 1536. During the seven days he passed in the Palazzo Medici grand entertainments were given; but old Varchi complains that, unlike other Emperors, he bestowed no privileges on the city and left no memorial of his visit. The old palace witnessed yet grander festivals on the 19th June, for the marriage of the Duke Alessandro with Margaret of Austria, the illegitimate daughter of Charles V. She came from Naples, accompanied by the Vice-queen, the Grand Penitentiary Cardinal of Santi Quattro and the Cardinal Cibo. After the marriage service in S. Lorenzo there was a grand banquet, to which all the Florentine nobility were invited, and then dancing; followed by a comedy and a sham fight by torchlight on the Piazza S. Lorenzo.
The young Duchess, according to a contemporary chronicler, was very happy, “for the Duke paid her great court and she knew not that he paid even more to other women of all grades.” Banquets, masked balls and comedies, were given in the old palace, and one of the constant guests was a cousin of the Duke’s, a descendant of the younger branch of the Medici family, called Lorenzo. His father died when he was a child and his mother, Maria Soderini, devoted herself to his education. Gifted with an excellent memory and good abilities he learnt with ease; but Varchi describes him as of a restless and dissatisfied temperament, and fond of low company. Being small and slightly made he was generally known as Lorenzino, which was changed to Lorenzaccio, when his real character was known. Of a dark complexion and melancholy aspect, he dressed carelessly, affected contempt for all who exposed themselves to danger and openly proclaimed himself a coward. He made himself necessary to Alessandro, whose inseparable companion he became, encouraging him in all his vices, which he shared, and amusing him by his scurrilous wit.
Rastrelli tells us that “on the 5th January, 1536, in carnival time, the Duke and Lorenzino disguised themselves as mountaineers and on sorry donkeys rode about the town paying visits to their mistresses and playing practical jokes. Thus passed the day, and towards evening they returned weary to the palace and supped together. Then Lorenzino said to his cousin, What shall we do to-night? and the Duke replied, I shall go to bed for I am tired out. Whereupon the traitorous Lorenzino whispered something in the Duke’s ear, who sprang up, went to his room and took a mantle lined with rich fur. Girding on his sword and putting his dagger in his belt, he left the palace secretly by the garden wicket, followed by Giomo da Carpi, Unghero, Captain Giustiniani of Cesena and one of his own body servants. On the Piazza S. Marco he met Lorenzino who was awaiting him and dismissed his attendants, and the two cousins returned to Lorenzino’s house. The Duke began to loosen his belt, but Lorenzino undid it entirely and took from him his sword and dagger, entangling the belt so dexterously round the handles of both that they could not be easily drawn. After a while the Duke asked at what hour the expected lady would arrive, and Lorenzino answered: She waits for me to fetch her. Go then, said Alessandro, and in order that she may not be recognized give her my mantle, and as he spoke he began to take it off. But Lorenzino, who wished him to be wrapped round as far as possible and impeded in his movements, answered: No, she will know how to disguise herself properly; and without further ado left the room, taking care so to close the door that it could only be opened from the outside. The Duke, being very tired, threw himself on the bed in his mantle and fell asleep.
“The lady in question was Caterina Ginori, sister to Lorenzino’s mother. She lived close to the back entrance of the Palazzo Medici and was as virtuous as she was beautiful. But she lived in a poor way, as Leonardo, her husband, had dissipated his patrimony and was living as an outlaw in Naples. The Duke, falling in love with her beauty, had asked Lorenzino to help him to obtain speech of her, and Lorenzino encouraged him in his passion, hoping thereby to find means to effect his traitorous design. He went straight to the house of a certain Piero di Gioannabate, surnamed Scoronconcolo, a quarrelsome man of vile character, devoted to Lorenzino, who by his influence with the Duke had saved him from execution. Some days before Lorenzino had said to him: I have an enemy who is always jeering at me and turning me into ridicule, what can we do? Point him out to me, answered Scoronconcolo, and if he annoys you again, complain of me and not of him. Being thus sure of the villain’s courage, Lorenzino said: Pietro, the time has come for fulfilling the promise you made me; the enemy who continually derides me is now in my room, let us go and kill him. It is well, replied the fellow, it is not I that will fail you. At the threshold, fearing he might lose courage, Lorenzino turned to him and said: You will not fear even if it is a friend of the Duke’s? Strike hard. Were it the Duke himself I should not fear, answered Piero. You have guessed aright, said Lorenzino, it is the Duke; he cannot escape us, let us set to work heartily. For an instant the assassin seemed to hesitate, but plucking up courage he exclaimed: Here we are, let us proceed even though it were the devil himself. Entering the room Lorenzino advanced to the bed whereon the Duke was sleeping profoundly. Raising the curtain he called in an angered tone: What, Duke, are you asleep? and with a short sword pierced him in the back. The blade passed through his body, and rising in a fury the Duke staggered towards the door shouting: Traitor. Then turning his eyes, still heavy with sleep, he saw Lorenzino and exclaimed: This from thee, and attempted to defend himself. Lorenzino threw himself upon him and placed his open hand over his mouth to prevent his cries from being heard, while his abominable companion gave the Duke Alessandro a stab on the temple which crushed his left cheek. The bleeding and dying prince seized Lorenzino’s thumb between his teeth, and the pain caused him to fall on the top of the Duke; he called to Scoronconcolo for help, who could do nothing for fear of wounding him instead of the victim. Lorenzino recollecting that he had a knife in his pocket, took it out with the other hand and opening the blade with his teeth stabbed the Duke in the throat. Raising the bleeding body from the floor they placed it on the bed and Lorenzino wrote on a sheet of paper Vincit amor patriae laudumque immenso cupido, and laid it on the corpse. Then locking the door they went to the Bishop Angelo Marzi, who kept the keys of the city gates and was alone authorized to grant permits for post horses. Knowing the friendship which existed between the Duke and his cousin, the Bishop never hesitated about giving the permits and the murderers left Florence at once.”76 There was considerable alarm in the Palazzo Medici next day when the Duke did not make his appearance. All the houses he was likely to frequent were searched in vain, and at first it was thought that he had gone with Lorenzino to Cafaggiuolo.
“Strange noises had been heard,” writes Varchi, “in Lorenzino’s house. But they excited no suspicion, as for some time he had been in the habit of taking boon companions to his room, where they made noises as though they were fighting; rushing about the house, shouting, hit him, kill him, traitor, and the like. The first to give the alarm was Lorenzino’s servant. He went to Cardinal Cibo in the palace, who commanded the men to maintain absolute silence under pain of losing his head, and then ordered the game of Saracino to be played to amuse the people. To those who inquired for the Duke, he smilingly answered that being tired he was still in bed.” The news had however got abroad. “Groups and parties of citizens,” continues Varchi, “were on the Piazza, and every one spoke out freely as though no doubt existed that the great Council would at once be summoned. They debated as to who would be chosen Gonfalonier, and whether for life or not ... and meanwhile the Forty-eight had been summoned to the Palazzo Medici by the Cardinal, and were assembled in the large gallery upstairs.” Francesco Guicciardini and Francesco Vettori proposed Cosimo de’ Medici, son of the famous Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and of Maria Salviati, as successor to the Duke Alessandro. “But,” as Varchi observes, “the Forty-eight were of forty-eight different opinions and so nothing was settled.” Full powers were given to the Cardinal Cibo to conduct the government of the city for three days, a decision so unpopular that when the burghers passed the shops of the smaller artisans they beat their instruments on the counters, shouting: “If you do not know how to, or cannot, act, call us. We will settle the question.”
“At this moment, when it only needed some one to begin a tumult,” writes Varchi, “Signor Cosimo arrived in Florence with but a few followers. As the son of Signor Giovanni, of fair aspect, and having always displayed a kindly disposition and a good understanding, he was liked by the people and they acclaimed him as the heir to Duke Alessandro with great affection. Showing neither grief nor joy, he rode on with a certain air of majesty, appearing rather to merit the throne than to desire it. Dismounting at the palace he visited the Cardinal and, first expressing his regret at the death of the Duke, he then with great tact, inspired either by his own natural prudence, or having been instructed by others said, that like a good son he had come to place not only his fortune, but his life, at the service of his country and of its citizens.” The following morning Cosimo de’ Medici was proclaimed, not Duke, but Head and Governor of the Florentine Republic.
Cosimo I., though but a lad of nineteen, soon showed that he intended to be the master. Cardinal Cibo and Francesco Guicciardini, the latter of whom had been chiefly instrumental in placing him at the head of the Florentine Republic, were set aside, and in June the following year the Emperor Charles V. granted him the rank and the title of Duke of Florence. In 1539 he married Eleonora di Toledo, second daughter of Don Pedro di Toledo the Viceroy of Naples, and once more the great palace was the scene of splendid festivities. It was soon afterwards deserted, as Cosimo I., to make it quite plain to his subjects that the whole government now centered in him alone, decided to take up his abode in the ancient Palazzo de’ Signori. The Medici palace was closed and abandoned until the Grand Duke Ferdinando II. sold it to the Senator Gabriello Riccardi in 1659 for 41,000 scudi, when it became the Palazzo Riccardi.
The Riccardi added considerably to the building, but care was taken to preserve the same style of architecture and only a close observer would notice that the arms of the Riccardi, a key, are in the triangles of the windows, instead of the Medici balls. The terrace, above which is a fine shield with the arms of the Riccardi; is often pointed out as occupying the site of the room in which the murder of the Duke Alessandro took place. But it was built on the site of a small house adjoining Cosimo’s palace, belonging to the Da Lutiano family, and Signor Corrazzini suggests that it was made in order to be able to continue the cornice and the “bozzi” round the corner of the palace, which would have been impossible had it been attached to the next house. The internal arrangements of the building were entirely changed, and many rooms were added at the back, where there is a second courtyard with an entrance into the Via de’ Ginori. It was then that the architect, G. B. Foggini, committed the unpardonable vandalism of cutting off a corner of the chapel in order to widen the chief staircase, and thus destroyed part of Gozzoli’s fresco.
The Riccardi were of German origin. A certain Annichino di Riccardo came from Cologne and was made a citizen of Florence in 1368. The family made a large fortune by trade, but their name does not appear in the annals of the city until Riccardo Riccardi was created a Senator and a Marquis in 1654, by Ferdinando II. He founded the fine library, still known as the Riccardiana, and his son, after purchasing the Medici palace, had the great gallery gorgeously frescoed and decorated by Luca Giordano with the apotheosis of the Medici family and allegories of the vicissitudes of human life. Francesco Riccardi married the only daughter and heiress of Vincenzo Capponi, and her father’s valuable library was added to the one already existing in the palace, which later was further augmented by Canon Riccardi’s fine collection of manuscripts and illuminated missals.77
Palazzo Riccardi must have been let to the French government, as in March, 1799, General Gaulthier had his head-quarters there until the arrival of M. Reinhard, the Commissary-General. A wondrous ceremony took place in June in the large room. Orders came from Paris to hold a solemn funeral service in commemoration of those who had fallen at Rastadt. So all the officers, municipal councillors and heads of departments met in the Palazzo Riccardi, which was hung with black and decorated with festoons of cypress. On a sarcophagus stood the cinerary urn and round it were placed three crowns of oakleaves with the inscription: “Ils travaillaient pour la paix des peuples, les tyrans les ont assassinés.” Two tricolour flags draped with crape were at one end of the room, and a raised stand for the band of the national guard and the singers had been erected. M. Reinhard then pronounced a funeral oration and, while the band played a slow and solemn symphony his wife, dressed in white, with a black scarf across her breast and a crown of laurel on her head, mounted the steps up to the urn. Dramatically casting her eyes up to heaven she first embraced it and then scattered flowers over it. The ceremony ended with the singing of Ça ira and the Marseillaise. Eighteen months later Joachim Murat, the handsomest man in the French army, entered Florence at the head of a brilliant staff. Magnificently costumed, and with highly rouged cheeks, he rode proudly through the city and dismounted at the Riccardi palace, where General Gaulthier received him at the head of the staircase. He did not however stay long in the Via Larga, as he found the old palace too sombre, cold and triste, but requisitioned the Corsini palace where his wife, Caroline Bonaparte, soon joined him.78 The Palazzo Riccardi was the head-quarters of the civil engineers as long as the French supremacy lasted. In 1814 it was bought by the Tuscan government, and during the few years that Florence was the capital of United Italy, it was the seat of the Home Office. Later the old palace was sold to the Province of Florence and is now the Prefecture.