The Golden Age of Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence

Piero the Gouty

Piero, son of Cosimo, at the age of fifty inherited his father's wealth, power, and gout. Even from childhood he suffered from this special disease of the rich, and his contemporaries, to distinguish him from other Pieros, called him il Gottoso (the Gouty). He was a relatively capable man possessed of moral virtues, and he had successfully carried out several political missions entrusted to him by his father. He was open-handed toward friends, literature, religion, and art, but he lacked Cosimo's intelligence, good humor, and presence of mind.

Cosimo had lent huge sums to influential citizens to consolidate the foundations of his political power; now Piero suddenly called in these loans. Machiavelli says that several of the debtors, fearing bankruptcy, raised a revolution against him, of course "under the banner of liberty, because they wished to place a deceptive cover over their real aims." These men held the government for a short time; but the partisans of the Medici family soon recovered it, and Piero continued his troubled rule until his death (1469).

He left two sons: Lorenzo, twenty years old, and Giuliano, sixteen. The people of Florence did not believe that these youths could even manage their family's affairs, let alone administer the government. Some citizens desired the return of the republic, both in reality and in form; and many feared the outbreak of anarchy and civil war. Lorenzo astonished them all.

Growth and Development of Lorenzo

Cosimo, bearing in mind Piero's ill health, had exerted every effort to prepare Lorenzo to assume power. The boy had learned Greek from Joannes Argyropoulos and philosophy from Ficino, and by listening to the conversations of statesmen, poets, artists, and humanists he had unconsciously absorbed knowledge. He also learned the arts of war, and at nineteen he won first prize in a sword contest held among the sons of Florence's leading families—not by favor but by his own merit. On his sword was engraved a French phrase: the Golden Age returns, which could well have been the motto of the Renaissance.

In the meantime he had begun to compose sonnets in the style of Dante and Petrarch; and since, according to the fashion of the day, he was obliged to write about love, he sought among the noble families a woman to whom he could poetically attach his heart. He chose Lucrezia Donati and praised all her virtues except her regrettable chastity, for she apparently never allowed Lorenzo to go beyond the bounds of penmanship. Piero, who considered marriage the certain cure for amorousness, urged his son to wed Clarice Orsini (1469) and thus allied the Medici with one of Rome's two powerful families. On this occasion the entire population of the city took part in a three-day feast given by the Medici, during which about two thousand two hundred and fifty kilograms of sweets were consumed.

Cosimo had involved the young man to some extent in public affairs; and when Piero came to power he extended the range of Lorenzo's responsibilities in financial and governmental matters. After Piero's death Lorenzo became the richest man in Florence and perhaps in Italy. The management of the Medici bank's finances might well have sufficed for his young shoulders, and the republic now had an opportunity to regain its authority. But the partisans, debtors, friends, and agents of the Medici family were so numerous and so attached to the continuation of Medici rule that two days after Piero's death the representatives of Florence's influential classes gathered in Lorenzo's house and asked him to assume leadership of the government. Persuading him was not difficult. The bank's financial affairs were so intertwined with the city's finances that he feared that the domination of enemies or rivals over political power would cause his own bankruptcy.

To silence criticisms of his youth and age, Lorenzo chose a council of experienced citizens to consult on all important matters. Although he consulted this council throughout his rule, he soon showed such ability that his leadership was rarely questioned. Lorenzo generously shared his powers with his younger brother, but Giuliano was more interested in poetry, music, jousting, and love affairs; he admired Lorenzo and gladly surrendered all governmental powers and honors to him.

Lorenzo governed in the same manner as Cosimo and Piero had done; until 1490 he remained an ordinary citizen, but he dictated policy to the Balìa, in which Medici partisans held an absolute majority. The Balìa, which according to the constitution possessed absolute but temporary power, became a permanent Council of Seventy under Medici rule.

The citizens agreed to this because progress and prosperity continued. When Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, visited Florence in 1471, he was astonished by the signs of wealth in the city and even more by the numerous works of art that Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo had gathered in the Medici palace and its gardens. Here was in fact a museum of statues, vases, carved stones, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and architectural pieces. Galeazzo admitted that the exquisite paintings he saw in this collection exceeded the total number of paintings in all of Italy; Florence had advanced so far in this particular branch of Renaissance art.

The Volterra Crisis and Foreign Policy

Immediately after returning from Rome, Lorenzo faced the first great crisis of his rule, in whose solution he had little success. One of the alum mines in the Volterra district—a part of Florentine territory—had been leased to private contractors who apparently had ties to the Medici family. When the people of Volterra learned of the mine's rich profits, they demanded a share for their city. The contractors refused, and the dispute was brought before the Florentine council; the council doubled the problem by decreeing that all revenue must go into the public treasury of Florence. The city of Volterra rejected the decree, declared its independence, and condemned to death several citizens who had opposed the city's separation.

In the Florentine city council, Tommaso Soderini proposed that measures for peace and compromise be taken. Lorenzo, fearing that other cities might be encouraged to revolt and seek separation, opposed this proposal and his view prevailed. The rebellion was suppressed by force, and mercenary soldiers, whose control had slipped from Florence's hands, sacked the rebellious city. Lorenzo hastened to Volterra and strove to restore order and compensate the people for damages, but the incident remained like a stain on the pages of his rule's record.

The people of Florence easily forgave his severity toward Volterra and praised the effort he made in 1472 by promptly bringing loads of grain to Florence, thus saving the city from famine. They were also pleased that Lorenzo arranged a triple alliance with Venice and Milan to secure peace in northern Italy. This situation was not at all pleasing to Pope Sixtus IV, for if the papal court were hemmed in on one side by a united and powerful northern Italy and on the other by the vast kingdom of Naples, it could never feel secure with its own weak temporal power.

The Pazzi Conspiracy and Peace with Naples

When Sixtus learned that Florence was planning to buy the city and territory of Imola (between Bologna and Ravenna), he suspected that Lorenzo might be harboring plans to extend Florentine territory to the Adriatic Sea. Sixtus himself hastily purchased Imola as the necessary connecting link in the chain of cities that were legally—and rarely actually—subject to the papal court. In this transaction the pope used the financial services and aid of the Pazzi family banks, now the Medici's most powerful rival, and transferred the lucrative administration of papal finances from Lorenzo to the Pazzi; he also appointed two enemies of the Medici—Girolamo Riario and Francesco Salviati—respectively as ruler of Imola and archbishop of Pisa, which at that time belonged to Florentine possessions.

Lorenzo reacted with such violent haste that had Cosimo been alive he would have expressed regret: he took steps to destroy the Pazzi bank and ordered the people of Pisa to drive Salviati from his archbishopric. The pope was so enraged that he agreed to the conspiracy of the Pazzi, Riario, and Salviati to overthrow Lorenzo. The pope was unwilling to approve the murder of the young Lorenzo, but the conspirators paid no heed to such delicacies. With astonishing disregard for the sanctity of religious places, they arranged to assassinate Lorenzo and Giuliano in the cathedral during the Easter Sunday mass (26 April 1478), at the very moment when the priest raised the Host of the "Eucharist." At the same moment Salviati and others were to seize the Palazzo Vecchio and dissolve the city council.

On the appointed day Lorenzo entered the cathedral as usual without weapons or guards. Giuliano was delayed, but Francesco de' Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini, who were assigned to kill him, went to his house, joked and bantered with him, and urged him to go to the cathedral. At the very moment the priest raised the Host, Bandini plunged a dagger into Giuliano's breast. Giuliano fell to the ground, and Francesco de' Pazzi threw himself upon him and struck him repeatedly with such fury that he severely wounded his own foot. Meanwhile Antonio da Volterra and the priest Stefano attacked Lorenzo with their daggers. Lorenzo defended himself with his strong arms and received only a slight wound; his friends surrounded him, carried him to the sacristy, and the attackers fled through the angry crowd. Giuliano's body was carried to the Medici palace.

While this ceremony was taking place in the cathedral, Archbishop Salviati, Jacopo de' Pazzi, and a hundred armed men rushed toward the Palazzo Vecchio and tried to stir up the people by shouting "People! Liberty!" But the people, in this critical moment, expressed their loyalty to the Medici family with the cry "Long live the balls!"—the balls of the Medici coat of arms. Salviati, who had entered the palace, was cut down by Gonfaloniere Cesare Petrucci; Jacopo di Poggio, son of the famous humanist, was hanged from one of the palace windows; and several other conspirators who had climbed the stairs were seized by the palace wardens and thrown from the windows to die on the street pavement or fall into the hands of the angry crowd. When Lorenzo appeared with numerous guards, the people showed their joy at his safety by unleashing savage violence against all those suspected of involvement in the conspiracy. Francesco de' Pazzi, weakened by loss of blood, was dragged from his bed and hanged beside the archbishop, who in the agony of death had bitten Francesco's shoulder. The naked corpse of old and influential Jacopo de' Pazzi, head of the Pazzi family, was dragged through the city streets and thrown into the Arno River. Lorenzo did what he could to restrain the crowd's bloodlust and saved several people who had been wrongly accused. But the animal instincts hidden even in the most civilized men could not forgo this opportunity to express themselves safely in the anonymity of the crowd.

Pope Sixtus IV, shocked by the hanging of the archbishop, excommunicated Lorenzo, the Gonfaloniere, and other Florentine leaders and forbade all religious ceremonies throughout Florence. Some clerics protested this excommunication to the pope and in a declaration condemned the pope in harsh, insulting, and reproachful terms. At Sixtus's suggestion, Ferrante—Ferdinand I—King of Naples sent an ambassador to Florence asking the council and people of the city to surrender Lorenzo to the pope or at least expel him from the city. Lorenzo advised the city council to agree, but the council replied to Ferdinand that Florence was ready to endure any hardship rather than betray its leader and hand him over to his enemies. Sixtus and Ferrante subsequently declared war on Florence (1479). Alfonso, son of the King of Naples, defeated the Florentine army near Poggibonsi and ravaged the surrounding districts.

Before long the people of Florence began to complain of the heavy taxes Lorenzo had imposed to finance the war, and Lorenzo realized that no society could endure sacrificing itself for one individual. At this turning point in his rule he made an unprecedented and daring decision. From Pisa he sailed to Naples and asked to be brought before the king. Ferrante praised his courage; the two were at war; Lorenzo had no safe-conduct, no weapons, no guards; recently the Florentine condottiere Francesco Piccinino, invited as the king's guest to Naples, had been treacherously murdered on the king's orders. Lorenzo frankly described the difficulties Florence faced but also reminded him how dangerous it would be for the Neapolitan kingdom if the pope extended his power over Florentine territory and then revived the old papal claims to Naples as a tributary fief. The Turks were advancing westward by land and sea and might at any moment invade Italy and attack the states under Ferrante on the Adriatic coast. Therefore, in this critical moment it was unwise for Italy to lose its unity through enmity and civil war. Ferrante did not accuse himself of anything but ordered that Lorenzo should be detained both as a prisoner and as an honored guest.

Alfonso's continued victories over the Florentine forces and Sixtus's repeated demand that Lorenzo be sent to Rome as the pope's prisoner made Lorenzo's mission even more difficult. Lorenzo remained in detention for three months, knowing that failure would probably mean his own death and the end of Florence's independence. Meanwhile, by his hospitality, generosity, good manners, and affability he made friends for himself. Count Carafa, the minister of state, was also drawn to him and supported him. Ferrante admired the culture and character of his prisoner and realized that he was apparently dealing with a refined and honorable man; making peace with such a man might secure Naples the friendship of Florence at least until the end of Lorenzo's life. Thus he made a peace treaty with Lorenzo, gave him an excellent horse, and allowed him to return by ship from Naples. When the people of Florence learned that Lorenzo had brought peace with him, they welcomed him with splendid and exciting ceremonies. Sixtus was furious and decided to continue the war alone, but when Sultan Mehmed II, conqueror of Constantinople, marched on Otranto (1480) and threatened to overrun all Italy and capture the religious capital of the Latin Christian world, Sixtus invited the Florentines to negotiate. The Florentine representatives paid the necessary respects to the pope; the pope courteously reproached them, forgave their sins, urged them to equip eleven warships against the Turks, and peace was concluded. From that time onward Lorenzo became the undisputed ruler of Tuscany.

Lorenzo the Magnificent

Lorenzo now governed with greater moderation than in his youth. He had just turned thirty, but in the hothouse of the Renaissance men matured quickly. Lorenzo was not handsome: his broad, large nose overhung his upper lip and then curved forward in a strange way; his complexion was dark; and his thick eyebrows and strong jaw veiled the serenity of his spirit, the grace of his manners and humility, his cheerfulness and wit, and the poetic sensitivity of his mind; he was tall, broad-shouldered, and robust, more like an athlete than a statesman; and indeed in physical sports few could surpass him. He was dignified in accordance with his rank, but in private circles he behaved in such a way that his friends immediately forgot his power and wealth. Lorenzo, like his son Leo X, took pleasure in the most delicate works of art and the simplest manifestations of beauty. In the company of the witty Pulci, the poet Poliziano, the scholar Landino, the philosopher Ficino, the esoteric Pico, the aesthetic Botticelli, the musician Squarcialupi, and at banquets he was among the happiest of men. He wrote to Ficino: "When the troubles of public affairs disturb my mind and the noise of turbulent citizens hurts my ears, how can I bear such clamor except by taking refuge in the calm of learning?"—and by learning he meant the teaching of knowledge in all its forms.

Lorenzo's morals were not as outstanding as his mind and knowledge. Like many of his contemporaries he did not allow religious faith to keep him from the pleasures of life. With open sincerity he wrote pious religious hymns, but without apparent reason he abandoned them and turned to composing poems in praise of sensual love. It seems he never regretted anything except lost pleasures. Since he had married his wife reluctantly and only for political reasons, had no affection for her, and merely respected her, he amused himself, as was the custom of his time, with other women. But the fact that he had no illegitimate children was counted among his merits. His honesty in financial and profit-making matters remains open to discussion and doubt. No one doubts his open-mindedness; in this respect he was little inferior to Cosimo. He would not rest until he had rewarded a gift with a more valuable one; in many cases he paid the expenses of religious works; he gave financial help to countless artists, scholars, and poets; and he lent huge sums to the state. After the Pazzi conspiracy he realized that because of the funds he had spent on public and private matters his bank could no longer meet its obligations; therefore a state council decided that all his loans should be paid from the state treasury (1480). It is not clear whether this decision was a fair reward for his services and the money he had spent for public purposes or was nothing more than outright embezzlement. The fact that the council's action, despite its publicity, did not damage Lorenzo's popularity supports the first, more lenient interpretation. It was because of his open-mindedness and also his wealth and luxurious house and life that the people called him il Magnifico (the Magnificent).

His cultural activities caused him to some extent to neglect the extensive affairs of his bank. His agents took advantage of his preoccupations and engaged in extravagance and falsification of accounts. Lorenzo saved the family fortune by gradually withdrawing it from trade and investing it in urban real estate and vast farmlands. He took pleasure in personally supervising his farms and gardens, and he knew as much about agricultural fertilizers as he did about philosophy. His farms near his villas in Careggi and Poggio a Caiano, because they were irrigated and fertilized by scientific methods, were considered model farms of agricultural economy.

During his rule the economic life of Florence flourished. The interest rate fell to five percent, and commercial affairs with easily accessible capital continued to prosper until the end of Lorenzo's life, when England became a troublesome rival in the export of textiles. What contributed more than any other factor to the progress of Florence's economy was the peace-loving policy and balance of power that he established in Italy during the second decade of his rule. To drive the Turks out of Italy, Florence joined other Italian governments; and when this purpose was achieved, Lorenzo urged King Ferrante of Naples and Duke Galeazzo Sforza of Milan to make a mutual defense pact with Florence, and when Pope Innocent VIII also joined this league, most of the smaller governments also adhered to it. Venice did not join this league but, fearing the allies, adopted a conciliatory attitude. In this way, except for short interruptions, Italy enjoyed peace and tranquility until the end of Lorenzo's life. Meanwhile Lorenzo used all his measures and influence to protect weak governments against strong ones, to quell disputes between governments, to reconcile their interests, and to nip any possibility of disturbance in the bud. In that happy decade (1480–1490) Florence reached the peak of its glory in politics, literature, and art.

Literature: The Age of Poliziano

Florentine writers, encouraged by Lorenzo's help and example, now wrote their works increasingly in Italian. Gradually they spread that literary Tuscan Italian which became the model and standard language of the entire Italian peninsula—to the words of the patriot Varchi, "the sweetest, richest, and most cultivated language not only among all Italian languages but among all known languages of the world."

But Lorenzo, at the same time as reviving Italian literature, diligently continued his grandfather's work of collecting all the classical works of Greece and Rome for the use of Florentine writers. He sent Poliziano and Janus Lascaris to various cities of Italy and abroad to purchase ancient manuscripts. Lascaris brought back two hundred manuscripts from a monastery on Mount Athos, eighty of which were previously unknown to Western Europe. According to Poliziano, Lorenzo wished he could spend all his wealth, even the furniture of his house, on buying books. Lorenzo hired scribes to copy manuscripts that could not be bought and, in return, allowed other collectors of old manuscripts, such as Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and Duke Federico of Urbino, to send scribes to the Medici library to copy from his manuscripts. After Lorenzo's death this collection, together with the books Cosimo had deposited in the monastery of San Marco, was gathered together. In 1495 the total number of these books reached 1,039 volumes, of which 460 were in Greek. Michelangelo later built a beautiful structure to house these books, which became known to posterity as the Laurentian Library. When Bernardo Cennini established a printing press in Florence (1471), Lorenzo, unlike his friend Poliziano or Federico, did not show indifference to this new art; apparently he at once perceived the revolutionary possibilities of movable type and commissioned a group of scholars to collate various texts so that classical works could be printed with the greatest possible accuracy of that day. Bartolommeo de' Libri, thus encouraged, published the first printed edition of Homer's poems under the close supervision of Demetrius Chalcondyles (1488); Janus Lascaris published the editio princeps of Euripides (1494), an anthology of Greek literature (1494), and the works of Lucian (1496); and Cristoforo Landino edited and printed the poems of Horace (1482), Virgil, the elder Pliny, and Dante—whose language and metaphors even then required interpretation. When we hear that Florence, in reward for these scholarly efforts, presented Cristoforo with a magnificent house, we gain a better understanding of the spirit of that time.

Scholars attracted by the fame of the Medici and other Florentines for their generous patronage of writers flocked to Florence and made the city the capital of literary learning. Vespasiano da Bisticci, who had served as bookseller and librarian in Florence, Urbino, and Rome, wrote a series of elegant and wise books entitled Lives of Famous Men containing biographies of the writers and their patrons of that age. Lorenzo, to expand and transmit the intellectual heritage of his race, revived and developed the ancient University of Pisa and the Platonic Academy of Florence. This Academy was not a formal college but an association of lovers of Plato who met at irregular intervals in Lorenzo's city palace or Ficino's villa at Careggi, dined together, read aloud a section or the whole of one of Plato's dialogues, and discussed its philosophy. On November 7, considered the anniversary of Plato's birth and death, the Academy held magnificent ceremonies almost resembling religious rites; they placed a wreath on a bust which they believed to be Plato's and lit a lamp before it, as one lights a lamp before the image of a god. Cristoforo Landino used these gatherings as the basis for his imaginary dialogues entitled Disputations at Camaldoli (1468). His account is that one day he and his brother, while visiting the Camaldolese monastery, met the young Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, Leon Battista Alberti, and six other Florentine personages; they reclined on the grass beside a flowing spring and compared the anxious haste of the city with the healing calm of the countryside and discussed lively bustle versus contemplative life; Alberti praised the contemplative rural life, whereas Lorenzo insisted that the perfected mind finds its maximum efficiency and satisfaction only in public service and world trade.

Among those who participated in the discussions of the Platonic Academy were Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola, Michelangelo, and Marsilio Ficino. Marsilio was so faithful to the mission Cosimo had entrusted to him that he devoted almost his entire life to translating Plato's books into Latin and to studying, teaching, and writing about the Platonic school. In his youth Marsilio was so handsome that Florentine girls looked at him with the eyes of buyers, but he paid more attention to his books than to women. For a time he lost his religious faith; the Platonic school seemed superior to him; he addressed his pupils more often as "lovers of Plato" than "lovers of Christ"; he lit candles before a bust of Plato and worshiped him like the saints. In this state Christianity seemed to him nothing but one of many religions that hid elements of truth behind the metaphors of dogmatic beliefs and symbolic rites. The writings of Saint Augustine and his gratitude for being healed of a serious illness once more threw him back into the arms of Christianity. At the age of forty he became a priest but remained one of Plato's eager followers. Marsilio believed that Socrates and Plato had also expressed a kind of monotheism equal in sublimity and authenticity to the monotheism of the prophets. They too had been inspired by God in their own degree; and indeed all those over whom reason ruled had been so. Following him, Lorenzo and most humanists, instead of substituting another faith for Christianity, tried to reinterpret Christianity in such terms that it would also be acceptable to philosophers. For one or two generations (1447–1534) the Church preserved its patient smile in the face of these preoccupations. Savonarola called it a kind of deception.

After Lorenzo himself, Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was the most attractive personality of the Platonic Academy. He was born in a town (near Modena) that became known by his name, studied in Bologna and Paris, and was warmly and respectfully received in almost all the courts of Europe; finally Lorenzo encouraged him to make Florence his residence. His inquiring mind moved from one subject to another—poetry, philosophy, architecture, and music—and in every subject and field he achieved brilliant successes. Poliziano described him as the model man in whom nature had gathered all her gifts: "tall and well-proportioned, with a divine halo shining in his face"; a man with a penetrating gaze, tireless in study, with an astonishing memory, wide-ranging knowledge, master of several languages, beloved by women and philosophers, and with a personality as lovable as his outward beauty and intellectual brilliance. His mind was open to every philosophy and every religion; he did not see in himself the rejection of any system or any person; although in the last years of his life he turned away from astrology, he welcomed esotericism and magic as easily as he accepted Plato and Christ. Unlike most other humanists who rejected scholastic philosophers as pedants concerned only with expressing fantasies, Giovanni della Mirandola held positive views about their philosophy. He admired many Arabic and Jewish ideas and placed many Jews among his esteemed teachers and friends. He studied the Hebrew "Kabbalah," naively accepted its attributed antiquity, and declared that he had found in it complete proofs for the divinity of Christ. Just as one of his feudal titles was Count of Concordia (Concord), he considered it his heavy duty to create reconciliation among all the great religions of the West—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—as well as between these religions and Plato, and Plato with Aristotle. Although everyone flattered him, until the end of his short life he preserved his delightful humility; the only thing that marred this humility was his firm belief in the correctness of his knowledge and learning and also in the rational power of man.

At the age of twenty-four, when Pico went to Rome (1486), he astonished priests and prelates by publishing a list of nine hundred different theses on logic, metaphysics, theology, ethics, mathematics, physics, magic, and "Kabbalah." In this same list he included his own bold and heretical theory that however great mortal sins may be, because of their limited nature they do not deserve eternal punishment. He also declared that he was ready for a public disputation before anyone who wished to defend any of these theses and offered to pay the travel expenses of any claimant from wherever he might come. As a preface to this proposed philosophical contest he prepared the famous oration later known as On the Dignity of Man, in which with youthful enthusiasm he explained the exalted humanist theory of the human species—which was incompatible with most medieval theories. Pico writes in this oration: "For all schools this is now a commonplace that man is himself a little world in which can be discerned a mixture of earthly elements, heavenly spirit, plant soul, senses of lower animals, intellect, angelic soul, and divine likeness." Pico then, speaking in the voice of God Himself as words addressed to Adam, provides divine witness for man's unlimited abilities: "I created you neither earthly nor heavenly ... so that you may be free to shape your own personality and master yourself. You can descend to the level of an animal or be reborn in a divine form." Pico then adds, in his own voice, with the exalted spirit of the youth of the Renaissance:

This is the supreme gift of God and the marvelous and astonishing happiness of man ... that he can be whatever he wishes to be. Animals, from the very moment of birth from their mother's womb, bring with them all the things that are destined for them or that they are to be; the most exalted spirits (angels) from the first day of eternity ... are what they will be forever. But "God the Father" gave to man, from the very moment of birth, the seeds of all kinds of possibilities and all kinds of life.

No one agreed to participate in Pico's multi-sided disputation, but Pope Innocent VIII condemned three of his theses as heretical. Since these three theses were only a small part of all the theses, Pico could expect the pope to pardon his sin, and indeed Innocent did not deal with him harshly. But Pico wrote a cautious letter of apology and went to Paris; the University of Paris also supported him. In 1493 Pope Alexander VI with his usual good nature informed Pico that all his errors had been forgiven. After returning to Florence, Pico became a faithful follower of Savonarola, abandoned the pursuit of all sciences, burned five volumes of his amorous poems, devoted his property to providing dowries for poor girls, and himself adopted a semi-monastic life. He intended to join the Dominican order, but before he could make a final decision on this matter, while still a thirty-one-year-old youth, he closed his eyes to the world. Pico's influence remained after the end of his short life and inspired Reuchlin in Germany to continue the studies of Hebrew literature to which Pico had enthusiastically devoted himself in his own life.

Poliziano, who held great admiration for Pico and corrected his poems with much humility and apology, had less enthusiasm but deeper learning and insight than Pico. Poliziano's real name was Angelus Bassus; others called him Angelo Ambrogini; and the name Poliziano by which he became famous is derived from the local name Montepulciano located in the plains around Florence. After coming to Florence he studied Latin with Cristoforo Landino, Greek with Andronicus of Thessalonica, Platonic philosophy with Ficino, and Aristotelian philosophy with Argyropoulos. At the age of sixteen he began translating Homer's works into Latin and used such coherent and powerful terms and sentences in it that it seemed to belong to the "Silver Age" of Roman poetry. After completing the translation of the first two volumes of the book, he sent them to Lorenzo. That foremost patron of literature, who shrewdly recognized the value of every precious work, encouraged Poliziano to continue the translation. He took him into his own house to tutor his son Piero and provide for all his needs. Poliziano, whose financial needs were now met, edited old texts—including Justinian's Code—with extraordinary knowledge and insight and aroused the admiration of the world. When Landino published an edition of Horace, Poliziano composed a poem as the preface to the book that equaled Horace's own poems in Latin prose, phrasing, and complex techniques of versification. In his classical literature classes attended members of the Medici family, Pico della Mirandola, and foreign students—Reuchlin, Grocyn, Linacre, and others—who had heard from lands beyond the Alps his fame as a scholar, poet, and orator in three different languages. Poliziano usually began his lectures with a long poem in Latin composed according to the subject of the lesson. One of these pieces, written in hexameters, was a poetic history from the time of Homer to the time of Boccaccio. This poem and others that Poliziano published under the name Silva possessed such fluent and eloquent Latin style and such vivid imagery that the humanists, despite his youth, praised him as their master and rejoiced that the authentic Latin language they had awaited the revival of had come back to life through his efforts.

While Poliziano had almost raised himself to the level of a classical Latin personality, he also composed many poems in Italian that remained unrivaled from the time of Petrarch to the age of Ariosto. When Giuliano, Lorenzo's brother, won the jousting contest in 1475, Poliziano praised him in a novel and melodious poem, and in the beautiful poem Stanze per la Giostra he praised the aristocratic beauty of Giuliano's beloved with such eloquence and grace that Italian poetry thereafter reached new frontiers of delicacy of feeling and expression. In this poem Giuliano describes how, while going hunting, he came upon Simonetta and other girls dancing in a meadow:

I found a nymph of beauty that sets my soul on fire
in a state calm and pure and modest,
with gracious behavior,
lovable, chaste, pure, wise, and kind.
Her heavenly face, so sweet, so delicate,
and so fresh that in her heavenly eyes
paradise shone in its entirety,
yes, all the good things we poor mortals seek. ...
As she stepped among the chorus of companions,
with feet in harmony with the measured melody,
from her regal head and tempting brow
her golden tresses joyfully scattered.
Her gaze, though rarely lifted from the ground,
sent a divine light stealthily toward me;
but her jealous tresses
shattered that bright column of light and hid her from my sight.
She who was born and raised in heaven to be praised by angels,
when she saw this fault, at once—
with a hand like crystal—
brushed those charming tresses aside from her calm and kind face;
then from her eyes a spirit so radiant,
a spirit of love so sweet breathed into me
that I can hardly comprehend it—
how then have I survived being burned from head to foot.

Poliziano composed delicate and passionate love poems for his beloved Ippolita Leoncina; and he also popularized similar amorous poems that were novel, melodious, rhythmic, and rhymed so that his friends could use them as charms to break shyness. He learned simple rustic songs and shaped them into literary forms. These poems, with altered and fresh words, returned again among the common people and their effects in the Tuscan language remain to this day. In the poem "My dark-eyed, dark-haired one" he describes a cheerful peasant girl who washes her face and breast in a spring and adorns her hair with a crown of flowers; "her breasts resembled spring red roses and her lips were like strawberries." This popular simile never grows tiresome. In an effort to regain the unity of drama, poetry, music, and song as performed in the Dionysian theater of Greece, Poliziano composed in two days—as he himself said—a short amorous drama of 434 verses that was recited in the presence of Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga in Mantua (1472). In this drama, called the fable of Orpheus, Poliziano narrates how Eurydice, Orpheus's wife, while fleeing from an amorous shepherd, dies from the venomous sting of a snake and how the heartbroken Orpheus descends to Hades or the world of the dead and with the sound of his lyre so enchants Pluto, god of the underworld, that he returns Eurydice to him on the condition that they not look back at her until they have completely left the world of the dead. They have not gone many steps when Orpheus, enchanted by love, turns his head to glance at her. In that instant the wife is returned to the world of the dead in the twinkling of an eye, and the husband is forbidden to follow her. Orpheus in a mad reaction turns into a "woman-hater" and recommends that men should turn their eyes from women and, following the satisfying relationship of Zeus with Ganymede, satisfy themselves with boys. The forest-dwelling women, angered by Orpheus's indifference to them, beat him to death, flay his skin, and celebrate this revenge with melodious songs. The music that accompanied this performance has been lost; nevertheless, with confidence we can count Orpheus as one of the first Italian operas.

Poliziano did not reach a high rank in poetry because he avoided the traps of passion and lust and never delved into the depths of life or love; he was always charming but never profound. The strongest feeling he had was his attachment to Lorenzo. On the day Giuliano was killed in the cathedral, Poliziano was beside his patron and saved him by bolting the doors of the sacristy against the conspirators. When Lorenzo returned from his perilous journey to Naples, Poliziano welcomed him with poems whose intensity of affection and attachment almost bordered on scandal. When Lorenzo died, Poliziano mourned inconsolably; then he gradually declined and two years later, like Pico, in that fateful year when the French set foot in Italy, he bade farewell to life.

Architecture and Sculpture: The Age of Verrocchio

Lorenzo enthusiastically continued the Medici family's tradition of supporting art. Velluti, a contemporary of Lorenzo, wrote: "He admired the remains of all ancient works so much that nothing else could please him as much. Those who wished to do him a service had become accustomed to collecting from every corner of the world medals, coins, ... statues, busts, and other things that bore the seal of ancient Rome or Greece." Lorenzo placed his collection of architectural works and statues, together with the pieces inherited from Cosimo and Piero, in a garden between the Medici palace and the monastery of San Marco and declared free access to them for all reputable scholars and enthusiasts. He paid living allowances to students who showed perseverance and talent—young Michelangelo was one of them—and rewarded those who demonstrated special merit. Vasari says: "It is very noteworthy that all those who studied in the Medici gardens and enjoyed Lorenzo's favor all became outstanding artists. This fact can only be attributed to the judgment and discernment of this great and art-loving man ... who was not only able to recognize individuals of genius but also had the desire and ability to reward them."

The most important artistic event of Lorenzo's rule was the publication (1486) of Vitruvius's treatise On Architecture (first century BC), which had been discovered about seventy years earlier in the monastery of St. Gall by Poggio. Lorenzo was completely fascinated by this dry classical work and used his influence to spread the architectural style of the Roman Empire. Perhaps in this respect he did as much harm as good, because he diminished the flourishing of native forms that had been fruitfully revived in literature, in architecture. But he had a generous spirit. Through his encouragements and in many cases as a result of his financial assistance, Florence was now adorned with magnificent national buildings and private houses. He completed the construction of the church of San Lorenzo and a monastery in Fiesole and commissioned Giuliano da Sangallo to design the construction of a monastery outside the San Gallo gate, from which the artist's name is also derived. Giuliano built such a beautiful villa for Lorenzo in Poggio a Caiano that when Ferdinand, King of Naples, asked him to recommend an architect, Lorenzo recommended Giuliano to him. The extent to which artists loved Lorenzo is evident from Giuliano's generous act: Ferdinand had given him a bust of Hadrian (the emperor), a statue of "Sleeping Cupid," and other ancient statues, and he donated all of them to Lorenzo. Lorenzo added these statues to the collection he had gathered in the garden, which later formed the core of the statues in the Uffizi Gallery.

Other wealthy Florentines also competed with Lorenzo in building magnificent residences and some even surpassed him. Around 1489 Benedetto da Maiano built for Filippo Strozzi the Elder a palace of ultimate beauty and perfection in the "Tuscan" architectural style that Brunelleschi had used in the Pitti Palace—in this style the building's facade was "rustic" and irregular with large, unhewn stones, while the interior was luxurious and adorned with abundant decorations. The construction of this palace began with determining the exact time by astrology, holding religious ceremonies in several churches, and distributing alms and comforting the poor. After Benedetto's death (1497), Simone Pollaiuolo completed the palace construction and added a beautiful cornice, an example of which he had seen in Rome. From the magnificent fireplaces adorned with huge marble capitals resting on bases carved in the shape of flowers and plants with delicate reliefs, one can realize how beautiful and splendid the interiors of buildings that outwardly resembled prisons were. Meanwhile the Florentine city council also continued the work of renovating its beautiful and unique seat, the Palazzo Vecchio.

Many architects were also sculptors themselves, because sculpture played an important role in architectural decorations: carving cornices, plastering around ceilings, making columns and wall capitals, door frames, fireplace pieces, wall reliefs, altars, pulpits, and baptismal fonts of churches. Giuliano da Maiano carved the seats of the treasury of the cathedral and a monastery in Fiesole. His brother Benedetto perfected the art of inlay and marquetry and became so famous in it that Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, commissioned him to make two chests and invited him to his court. Benedetto accepted the invitation and arranged for the chests he had made to be sent there after he left; when these chests arrived in Budapest and were opened in the king's presence, because the glue of the inlays had opened due to sea moisture, the inlays came loose and fell out; although Benedetto successfully replaced the inlays again, he became discouraged with marquetry and thereafter devoted his life to sculpture. Among statues of the Virgin, few equal the beauty of his figure of "Crowned Mary"; few busts are better than the bust of "Filippo Strozzi," made with honesty and realism; few tombs are as beautiful as the one he made for the same Strozzi in the church of Santa Maria Novella; no pulpit equals the delicacy of the one he carved in the church of Santa Croce, and few altars have reached the border of perfection as much as his altar of Santa Fina in the church of the city of San Gimignano.

Sculpture and architecture were usually hereditary arts among families—the della Robbia, Sangallo, Rossellino, and Pollaiuolo families. Antonio Pollaiuolo, uncle of Simone, learned precision and delicacy of design in his father Jacopo's goldsmith workshop. His bronze, silver, and gold works made him the Cellini of his time and the favorite of Lorenzo, the Church, the Florentine city council, and the guilds of this city. Since Antonio knew that such insignificant objects could rarely keep their maker's name alive, and since he, like all Renaissance artists, sought eternal fame, he turned to sculpture and cast two beautiful bronze figures of Hercules that equaled Michelangelo's "Prisoners" in solidity and power and matched the "Laocoön" in revealing the state of pain and suffering. After turning to painting, he depicted the story of Hercules in three frescoes in the Medici palace. In the image of "Apollo and Daphne" he competed with Botticelli; and then he participated in the nonsense of dozens of other artists and painted a panel showing how Saint Sebastian with what coolness endured the arrows that were shot at his sound body by unhurried archers. In the last years of his life Antonio again turned to sculpture and made two excellent statues of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII for their tombs in the old church of St. Peter's in Rome. These statues too, with the force of engraving and anatomical precision, were forerunners of Michelangelo's works.

Mino da Fiesole was not so exuberant an artist that he could be active in several fields. He was content to learn the art of sculpture from Desiderio da Settignano and after his master's death to follow the tradition of his artistic delicacy and grace. If we believe Vasari, Desiderio's early death so distressed and upset Mino that he no longer felt happy in Florence and sought new landscapes in Rome. In this city he gained fame by creating three artistic masterpieces for himself: the tombs of Francesco Tornabuoni and Pope Paul II, and a marble tabernacle for Cardinal d'Estouteville. After regaining his self-confidence and financial ability, he returned to Florence and adorned the churches of Sant'Ambrogio and Santa Croce as well as the baptistery with magnificent altars. In the great church of his birthplace, Fiesole, he built a classical-style tomb for Bishop Salutati and in the Fiesole monastery a similar tomb for its founder, Count Ugo, which was simpler in decorations. The cathedral of the city of Prato prides itself on having a pulpit made by him, and several museums each display one or more busts of his works belonging to his patron figures. The faces of these persons were not carved in a flattering way but embodied them as they were: the face of Niccolò Strozzi, which is so swollen that it seems he suffered from ear disease; the emaciated figure of Piero the Gouty; the delicate head of Dietisalvi Neroni; the beautiful and raised relief of the young Marcus Aurelius; the magnificent bust of the young John the Baptist, and several beautiful and raised reliefs of the Virgin Mary with the Child. Almost all these figures possess a feminine delicacy that Mino had learned from Desiderio. ... His statues are charming. But they are not attractive or profound and, unlike the statues of Antonio Pollaiuolo or Antonio Rossellino, do not arouse the viewer's interest. Mino loved Desiderio too much and could not turn his back on his style and example and, in nature's ruthless indifference, delve into the important realities of life.

Verrocchio (true eye) had the courage to be truthful. He created two of the greatest statues of his time. Andrea di Michele Cioni (Verrocchio's real name) was a goldsmith, sculptor, bell-founder, painter, geometer, and musician. The main reason for his fame in painting is that he taught painting to Leonardo, Lorenzo di Credi, and Perugino and influenced them; but most of his own paintings are dry and lifeless. Among Renaissance paintings, few panels are more unpleasant than his famous Baptism of Christ. John the Baptist in this panel is a gloomy barber; Christ, who should be thirty years old, looks like an old man; and the two angels on the left have a tiresome feminine state, even the one traditionally attributed to Leonardo. But his other work, the panel of Tobias and the Three Angels, is excellent. The middle angel in the panel clearly recalls the grace and atmosphere of Botticelli's works, and the young Tobias is so beautiful that we must either attribute it to Leonardo or admit that da Vinci drew more from Verrocchio in his pictorial styles than we thought. The sketch of a woman's face in Christ Church, Oxford, again represents the delicate, ambiguous, and melancholy states of Leonardo's women; and the dark landscapes of Verrocchio's paintings already contain the quality of the dark rocks and mysterious streams of Leonardo's dreamy masterpieces.

Probably this account by Vasari is more of a legend that when Verrocchio saw the angel that Leonardo had painted in the Baptism of Christ panel, he "decided never again to touch a brush, because Leonardo, despite his youth, had far surpassed him in painting." But although Verrocchio continued painting after depicting the Baptism of Christ panel, the truth is that he devoted most of the years of his maturity to sculpture. For a time he worked with Donatello and Antonio Pollaiuolo, learned something from each of them, and then created his own harsh and dry realistic style. By making a clay bust of Lorenzo with that nose, curly hair, and worried forehead, in which there was no sign of flattery, he risked his life. Nevertheless, Lorenzo the Magnificent was so pleased with the two bronze reliefs of Alexander and Darius that Verrocchio had made for him that he sent them to Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, and employed Verrocchio himself to make a tomb for his father Piero and his uncle Giovanni in the church of San Lorenzo (1472). Verrocchio carved a sarcophagus of porphyry and adorned it with bronze bases and magnificent flower and plant shapes. Four years later he cast the statue of the young David, who stands with pride and calm beside the severed head of Goliath. This statue was so well received by the Florentine city council that they placed it above the threshold of the main steps of the Palazzo Vecchio. In the same year he accepted another statue of his, Boy with a Dolphin, and installed it on the mouth of the fountain in the palace courtyard. At the height of his power, Verrocchio designed and cast in bronze the statue of Christ and Doubting Thomas for a niche outside Orsanmichele (1483). In this statue Christ is a figure with heavenly dignity and originality; and Thomas is depicted with evident compassion, his hands finished with such perfection that they rarely have a parallel in sculpture, the robes are masterpieces of sculptural art, and the statue as a whole has a living and moving reality.

Verrocchio's superiority in bronze works was so established that the Venetian Senate invited him (1479) to go to Venice and make a statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, a condottiere who had won many victories for this island country. Andrea went there, made the mold for the horse's figure, and while preparing himself to cast it in bronze, learned that the Venetian Senate was thinking of limiting his commission to making the horse statue and assigning the making of the general's own statue to Verrocchio of Padua. According to Vasari, Andrea broke the head and legs of the horse mold and angrily returned to Florence. The Venetian Senate warned him that if he set foot on Venetian soil again, he would definitely lose his head. Andrea replied that they should not expect him to return there, because senators did not have as much skill as sculptors in joining broken heads. The Venetian Senate this time thought better of the matter and decided to entrust the entire work to him, and to bring him back and encourage him announced that it would pay double the previous fee. Verrocchio repaired the horse figure mold and successfully cast it in bronze. But during the casting he became overheated, caught a cold, and a few days later died at the age of fifty-six (1488). In his last hours a rough cross was placed before him; Verrocchio asked those present to remove that cross and instead place a cross made by Donatello so that he, as in the days of his life, might pass away in the presence of beautiful objects.

Alessandro Leopardi, a Venetian sculptor, completed that large statue with such complete lively style and employed such skill in creating a state of dominance and command that Colleoni lost nothing from Verrocchio's death. This statue was installed in the Campo di San Zanipolo—the square of John and Paul the Apostles—(1496) and to this day remains the proudest and most exquisite equestrian figure surviving from the Renaissance era, striding.

Painting

Ghirlandaio

Verrocchio's flourishing painting workshop was an example of the artistic workshops of Renaissance Florence—all artistic activities were gathered in one workshop and sometimes in one artist; perhaps in one bottega an artist might design a church or palace, another carve or cast a statue, a third draw or color a panel, this one cut or set diamond gems, that one do inlay and marquetry of ivory or wood, or melt and hammer metal, or make litters and banners for use in festivals—men like Verrocchio, Leonardo, or Michelangelo were familiar with all these arts. Florence had many such workshops, and art students roamed freely and unbound in the city streets, or lived like gypsies in rooms, or became rich men and, like spirits, inspired found inestimable value among popes and princes and— like Cellini—beyond the law. In Florence more than anywhere else except Athens importance was given to art and the artist, they were talked about, and fights broke out over them, and just as today we talk about movie stars and actors, jokes were told about them. It was in Renaissance Florence that the word genius acquired its romantic meaning of a human inspired by a divine spirit dwelling in him (derived from the Latin genius).

It is noteworthy that Verrocchio's workshop produced no great sculptor who continued the master's artistic elevation (except for one aspect of Leonardo's art), but it trained two high-ranking painters—Leonardo and Perugino—and also a painter of lower rank than these two but nevertheless substantial named Lorenzo di Credi. Painting gradually took the place of sculpture as an art favored by everyone. Probably the fact that painters had not been trained by and were not familiar with the vanished fresco paintings of ancient times worked to their advantage. They knew that men like Apelles and Protogenes had existed, but only a few of them had seen the remains of ancient paintings, even in Alexandria or Pompeii. In Florentine paintings there was no trace of the revival of ancient paintings, and the continuation of medieval art was clearly visible along with the Renaissance: the connecting line from Byzantium to Duccio, Giotto, and Fra Angelico, and from them to Leonardo, Raphael, and Titian was winding but clear. Therefore, painters, unlike sculptors, were forced to advance through trial and error and find their own special technique and style; the use of initiative and experience was imposed on them. They researched with great difficulty the details of human, animal, and plant anatomy; they experimented with circular, triangular, and other composite designs, and to give depth to the background of their images and life to the figures, they explored the tricks of perspective and the methods of creating light and shadow; they searched the city streets for apostles of Christ and virgin Marys and drew sketches from clothed or nude models; they turned from fresco to watercolor and back to fresco again, and adopted the new oil painting styles that had been brought to northern Italy by Rogier van der Weyden and Antonello da Messina. As their skill and courage developed, the number of their admirers among ordinary people increased, they added ancient mythological narratives and the pagan beauty of the human body to religious subjects. They brought nature into their workshops or surrendered themselves to nature; in their opinion nothing from human or natural aspects was alien to art and there was no ugly face that art could not reveal its inner and enlightening importance. They reflected the world in their works; and at a time when war and politics had turned Italy into a prison and ruin, painters of line and color preserved the life and vitality of the Renaissance.

Talented men who had been nurtured by such studies and had inherited a richer tradition of methods, materials, and subjects now painted better than the geniuses who had left works a century earlier. Vasari says unkindly that Benozzo Gozzoli "was not an extraordinary artist ... but with great diligence he surpassed all other painters of his time, because finally among his many paintings some good ones inevitably emerged." He began his work as a pupil of Fra Angelico and went to Rome and Orvieto as his assistant. Piero the Gouty called him to Florence and invited him to depict on the walls of the chapel in the Medici palace the story of the journey of the Magi from the East to Bethlehem. These frescoes, which are considered Benozzo's masterpiece, display the pompous yet lively collective movement of kings and knights in luxurious robes, accompanied by attendants, servants, angels, hunters, scholars, slaves, horses, leopards, dogs, and six members of the Medici family—and Benozzo himself cunningly placed among the crowd—against a beautiful and wonderful landscape background. Benozzo, delighted with this success, went to San Gimignano and adorned the singers' gallery of the church of Saint Augustine with seventeen scenes from the life of that saint. In the Camposanto in Pisa, over sixteen years of work, he depicted twenty-one pages of the Old Testament, from the story of Adam to the story of the Queen of Sheba, on its wide walls. Some of them, such as the Tower of Babel panel, are among the notable frescoes of the Renaissance. Eager haste reduced the splendor of Benozzo's painting; from then on he worked impatiently, made many faces tiresomely monotonous, and filled the panels with various people and confused details; but blood and vitality of life surged in his being, he loved lively landscapes and the proud dignity of the great, and the splendor of his coloring and his enthusiasm and creativity made one forget to some extent the defects of his lines and design.

The gentle power of Fra Angelico passed to Alesso Baldovinetti and Cosimo Rosselli and through Alesso to one of the prominent painters of the Renaissance—Domenico Ghirlandaio. Ghirlandaio's father was a goldsmith who took the nickname "Ghirlandaio" from the golden and silver flower crowns (garlands) he made popular for the beautiful heads of Florence. Domenico studied art with enthusiasm with his father and Baldovinetti; he spent many hours before Masaccio's wall frescoes in the Carmine; with tireless practice he learned the tricks of the principle of short-line perspective and design and composition; Vasari says that with a quick glance he could "draw the image of anyone who passed in front of his workshop with astonishing resemblance." He was not yet twenty-one when he was commissioned to depict the story of the life of Santa Fina in her chapel in the great church of the city of San Gimignano. Ghirlandaio at the age of thirty-one (1480), by painting four frescoes in the church of Ognissanti and its refectory in the city of Florence, achieved the title of master. These works include: Saint Jerome, the Deposition of Christ from the Cross, the image of the Merciful Virgin (including the face of the donor of the panel's cost, Amerigo Vespucci), and the Last Supper, from some points of which Leonardo benefited.

Ghirlandaio, who was summoned to Rome by Pope Sixtus IV, depicted the panel Calling of Peter and Andrew in the Sistine Chapel. This panel is especially beautiful in terms of background, mountains, sea, and sky. During his stay in Rome, Domenico examined and drew the arches, baths, columns, aqueducts, and amphitheaters of this ancient city, and without needing a ruler or compass, with his trained eyes, with one glance he measured their exact proportions. Francesco Tornabuoni, a Florentine merchant in Rome who was mourning the death of his wife, hired Domenico to paint frescoes on the walls of the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in memory of his wife, and Domenico showed such mastery in this work that Tornabuoni sent him back to Florence with a large sum of money and a letter in praise of his sublime art. The Florentine city council immediately commissioned him to decorate the Sala del Orologio in its palace. The next four years (1481–1485) he spent depicting scenes from the life of Saint Francis in the Sassetti Chapel in the church of Santa Trinita. All the flowering of the painter's art, except the use of oil, is visible in this fresco: harmony in composition, precise lines, gradation of light, observance of perspective principles, realistic portraiture (of Lorenzo, Poliziano, Pulci, Pala Strozzi, Francesco Sassetti), and at the same time observance of the spirituality and piety of Angelico's style and tradition in painting. From the approximate perfection of his Adoration of the Shepherds panel to the deeper imagination and beauty and delicacy of Leonardo and Raphael's works there was only one step.

Giovanni Tornabuoni, head of the Medici bank in Rome, in 1485 offered twelve hundred ducats (30,000 dollars) to Ghirlandaio for painting a chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella and promised that if the work completely satisfied him, he would pay another two hundred ducats. Ghirlandaio, with the help of a group of his pupils, including Michelangelo, devoted most of the next five years to this sublime opportunity in his artistic life, painting on the chapel ceiling the images of the writers of the four Gospels; on its walls images of Saint Francis, Peter the Martyr, John the Baptist, and scenes from the life of Mary and Jesus from the "Annunciation" to the magnificent ceremony of the Virgin Mary. Here again he joyfully included the faces of several of his contemporaries: the magnificent face of Ludovica Tornabuoni with a dignity befitting queens, the world-famous beauty of Ginevra de' Benci, also the faces of scholars like Ficino, Poliziano, Landino, and images of painters like Baldovinetti, Mainardi, and Ghirlandaio himself. When the chapel was opened to the public in 1490, all the personalities and scholars of Florence turned to the church to examine the paintings. The description of the realistic faces became proverbial among the people of the city and Tornabuoni expressed his complete satisfaction with Ghirlandaio's work, but since at that time he was financially strained, he asked Domenico to forgo receiving the additional two hundred ducats; the painter replied that satisfaction as his incentive was worth more to him than gold.

Ghirlandaio was a lovable personality. His brothers respected him so much that one of them named David almost killed a monk who had brought food unworthy of his brother's genius with a piece of stale and dry bread. Ghirlandaio opened the doors of his workshop to all those who wanted to work or study there and turned it into a real school of art. He accepted every type of commission, whether small or large, and believed that none should be refused; he entrusted the responsibility of managing his financial and family affairs to David and said he would not be satisfied until he had painted on the walls of all Florence. He painted many panels, most of which were of average artistic level, but sometimes by chance he also created very beautiful works, like the delightful Louvre Museum panel called Grandfather, with its onion-shaped nose, and the beautiful panel of a woman's face in the Morgan collection in New York; panels full of character and features that year by year are imprinted on a person's face. Great critics who have unquestionable knowledge and fame do not attribute much artistic value to him; this is a fact that he was more skilled in design than in coloring, he painted with excessive haste, and filled his panels with irrelevant details and after Baldovinetti's experiments in oil painting perhaps took a step backward by preferring watercolor; nevertheless, he raised the level of the enriched technique of his art to the highest possible degree in his own country and also in his own age and left treasures for Florence and the world before which art connoisseurs bow their heads in respect.

Botticelli

Only one Florentine in that generation surpassed him. Sandro Botticelli was so different from Ghirlandaio that an ethereal imagination contrasted with material realities. Alessandro's father, Mariano Filipepi, who could not make his son understand that life without learning to read, write, and do mathematics was not possible, sent him as an apprentice to a goldsmith named Botticelli; this goldsmith's name, as a result of the pupil's affection or the whim of history, attached itself to Sandro and became forever intertwined with Sandro's name. This youth at the age of sixteen left this workshop for the workshop of Fra Filippo Lippi. Lippi became fond of that restless and quick-tempered youth. Filippino, Filippo's son, later depicted Sandro as a sour-faced man with sunken eyes, a prominent nose, a fleshy sensual mouth, tousled hair, a purple cap, a red tunic, and green stockings. Who could have imagined that such a man would paint such delicate imaginary works that he left in museums? Perhaps every artist, before he can create perfected works, must necessarily be a narcissist; must necessarily recognize the human body as the ultimate measure and source of aesthetic feeling and love it. Vasari described Sandro as "a cheerful man" who joked with his artist colleagues and simple fellow citizens. Undoubtedly he too, like all of us, was a multi-personality being and according to circumstances revealed one of his selves and hid his true personality from the world's sight out of fear like a secret.

Botticelli established an independent workshop for himself in 1465 and it was not long before he received commissions from the Medici family. He apparently painted the Judith panel for Lucrezia Tornabuoni, Lorenzo's mother, and the magnificent Mary panels and the Adoration of the Magi—which is a hymn of praise to three generations of the Medici family in the form of coloring—for her husband, Piero the Gouty. In the Virgin Mary panel Botticelli depicted Lorenzo and Giuliano as sixteen- and twelve-year-old boys holding a book while the Virgin Mary—who image is taken from Fra Lippi—writes her hymn of praise on it; in the Adoration of the Magi panel Cosimo kneels at Mary's feet, Piero kneels at a lower level before them, and Lorenzo, who is now seventeen years old, holds a sword as a sign that he has reached the age of maturity.

Lorenzo and Giuliano, after Piero's death, continued to support Botticelli like their father. Botticelli's most beautiful paintings are his panels of the face of Giuliano and his beloved Simonetta Vespucci. He continued to paint religious images, such as the powerful Saint Augustine panel in the Ognissanti church; but in these days, perhaps under the influence of Lorenzo's circle, he increasingly turned to non-religious subjects and usually classical mythological subjects and nude bodies. Vasari reports that "Botticelli painted many images of nude women in many houses" and accuses him of "serious disorders in his life." The humanists for a time drew Botticelli toward following a kind of Epicurean philosophy. Apparently it was for Lorenzo and Giuliano that he painted the Birth of Venus panel (1480). A dignified nude woman who uses her long braided golden hair as the only existing fig leaf rises from a golden shell in the sea; from the right, winged angels blow wind to push her toward the shore; on the left, a beautiful girl (Simonetta?) in a white garment of flowers offers a cloak to that goddess to add to her charm. This panel is a masterpiece of delicacy and in it design and composition are the main element and coloring is in a secondary rank; realism is disregarded; and everything, through the fluid harmony of lines, is directed toward conveying an imaginary and delicate image. Botticelli took the theme of this panel from a piece of Poliziano's poem "The Joust." The subject of his second non-religious panel, also known as Mars and Venus, is taken from a description in the same poem related to Giuliano's victories in jousting and love. Here Venus, who may again be the same Simonetta, is clothed; and Mars is depicted not as a harsh warrior but in the form of a youth with a beautiful and flawless body, who could be mistaken for Aphrodite, tired and sleepy. And finally in the Primavera panel, Botticelli expresses the atmosphere of Lorenzo's hymn of praise addressed to Bacchus (whoever wants to be happy, let him be!). Here the helpful woman who was in the Birth panel appears again with a long robe and her beautiful legs; on the left of the panel Giuliano (?) picks an apple from the tree to give to one of the three beauties standing half-nude beside him; on the right a lustful man has seized a girl who wears a garment of fine net; Simonetta modestly supervises this scene, and above her in the air Cupid releases his completely superfluous arrows. In these three panels many symbols were hidden, because Botticelli was interested in allegory, but perhaps without realizing it himself, this panel was also a display of the humanists' victory in art. The Church now had to try for half a century (1480–1534) to regain its dominance over pictorial subjects. Pope Sixtus IV, as if wanting to make a move against this trend, summoned Botticelli to Rome (1481) and commissioned him to paint three frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. These panels are not among Botticelli's masterpieces; at that time Botticelli was not spiritually ready to deal with religious issues. But when he returned to Florence (1485), he noticed that Savonarola's sermons had caused an uproar in the city; he too went to hear the sermons and was deeply affected. Botticelli had always been believing and committed to religious issues in the depths of his being, and the skepticism he had acquired through Lorenzo, Pulci, and Poliziano had disappeared into the hidden well of his youthful faith. Now Savonarola with his fiery sermons in the San Marco chapel revealed to him and to the people of Florence the wonderful concepts of that same faith: God had placed Adam and Eve to be insulted, whipped, and crucified for the salvation of man from sin; only the one whose life is mixed with virtue or who has sincerely repented can receive the benefit of divine intercession and escape eternal hell. It was at this time that Botticelli illustrated Dante's Divine Comedy, again put art at the service of religion, and once more retold the wonderful story of Mary and Christ. For the church of Saint Barnabas he masterfully painted a series of images of the coronation of the Virgin with various saints. Mary is still the same kind and beautiful girl that Botticelli had painted in Fra Lippi's gallery. Shortly afterward he painted the Virgin and Child with a Pomegranate panel, in which singing cherubs surround Mary and the infant Christ holds a fruit whose numerous seeds symbolize the spread of the Christian faith. In 1490 he renewed the "Mother of God" epic in two panels of the Annunciation and the Coronation. But now he had aged again and had lost the grace and fresh enlightening quality of his art.

In 1498 Savonarola was hanged and burned. Botticelli was horrified by this event, which was the most prominent murder of the Renaissance era. Perhaps shortly after this tragedy he painted the complex and symbolic panel of Calumny. In this work, against a background of classical arches and a distant sea, three women—"Cunning," "Deception," "Calumny"—led by a ragged man ("Envy") have seized the hair of a nude victim and are dragging him to a court whose judge, with the long ears of a donkey, is preparing, on the recommendation of women who symbolize "Suspicion" and "Ignorance," to surrender to the anger and bloodthirstiness of the crowd and condemn the man who has fallen to the ground; on the left, "Repentance," in black clothing, looks with sorrow at "Truth" nude—the same Botticelli Venus who has again covered herself with her same curly tresses. Was this victim, in Botticelli's view, a symbol of Savonarola? Perhaps; although that monk would probably have been shocked at the sight of those nude bodies.

The Nativity panel in the National Gallery in London is Botticelli's last masterpiece. This panel is confused but colorful and for the last time shows the rhythmic delicacy of his works. In this panel apparently everyone enjoys heavenly happiness; the women of the Primavera panel appear here again as winged angels and praise the miraculous and salvific birth and dance in a risky way on a branch suspended in the air. But Botticelli wrote the following phrases in Greek on the panel, which recall Savonarola's words and a cry for the revival of the Middle Ages at the height of the Renaissance:

I, Alessandro, painted this panel at the end of the year 1500, in this time of turmoil in Italy ... at this time of the fulfillment of the eleventh revelation of John and the second plague of the end times, and at this time when the devil had been released for three and a half years. According to the twelfth revelation of John, the devil will later be chained, and we will see him trampled as in this image.

From the year 1500 onward we have no more panels from his works. At this time he was not yet over fifty-six years old and probably still had creative power in his being, but he gave his place to Leonardo and Michelangelo and himself spent his days in bitter poverty. The Medici family, his main patron, gave him alms, but they themselves were in decline. Botticelli died at the age of sixty-six, alone and ill, while the forgetful world continued to rush forward with haste.

Among his pupils was Filippino Lippi, son of his master. All who knew this "child of love" loved him: he was a calm, kind, humble, and polite man who, according to Vasari, "was so good and virtuous that he erased the stain of his illegitimate birth, if such a thing was true at all." Lippi learned the art of painting with such speed under the supervision of his father and Sandro that at the age of twenty-three he painted the Vision of Saint Bernard panel—a panel that in Vasari's opinion "could only not speak." When the Carmelite friars decided to complete the frescoes of their Brancacci Chapel, which had been begun sixty years earlier, they entrusted this work to Filippino, who was still a twenty-seven-year-old youth. The result of his work did not equal Masaccio's work, but in the panel Conversation of Paul with Peter in Prison, Filippino created an unforgettable face with simple dignity and calm power.

In 1489 Cardinal Carafa, on Lorenzo's recommendation, summoned Lippi to Rome to decorate a chapel in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva with scenes from the life of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Filippino, probably keeping in mind a similar image that Andrea da Firenze had painted of that saint a century earlier, depicted the triumphant face of the philosopher on the main wall while Arius, Averroes, and other heretics lay at his feet; at this very time Averroes's theories were welcomed in the universities of Bologna and Padua and prevailed over official faith. When he returned to Florence, in the chapel of Filippo Strozzi in the church of Santa Maria Novella he depicted the story of the lives of the apostles Philip and John so realistically that it is said that one day a child wanted to hide his treasure in a hole that Filippino had painted on a wall. For a short time Filippino abandoned painting this type of panel and, in place of Leonardo whose work was progressing slowly, drew a design for the high altar of the monks of the Scopeto. For this panel he chose the old subject of the Magi adoring the "Child" but gave it new life by adding the faces of Moors, Indians, and many members of the Medici family; one of these Medici, who has taken the form of an astrologer and holds an astrolabe in his hand, is one of the most human and humorous faces in Renaissance painting. Finally (1498) Filippino was invited to Prato, as if his father's sins had been forgiven, to paint the face of the Virgin Mary. Vasari praised this panel and World War II destroyed it. At the age of forty he decided to marry and for a few years enjoyed the pleasures and hardships of fatherhood. Suddenly at the age of forty-seven he died from a simple disease of tonsil abscess and sore throat (1505).

Lorenzo Dies

Lorenzo himself was not among the few individuals who reached old age in those days. Like his father he suffered from arteriosclerosis and gout, and stomach trouble, which occasionally caused severe pain, was added to these diseases. He tried various treatments and found no better way than to find temporary relief with hot mineral water baths. He, who had always preached the creed of pleasure-seeking, realized shortly before his death that little time remained to his life.

His wife died in 1488 and Lorenzo, although he had not been very faithful to her, sincerely mourned her death and felt that he had lost her unstinting help. The wife had borne him many children, of whom seven survived. Lorenzo worked hard in the education and upbringing of his children and, in the last years of his life, made great efforts to marry them off and provide happiness for Florence and for themselves. His eldest son, Piero, was betrothed to a girl from the Orsini family to find allies in Florence; his youngest son, Giuliano, married one of the sisters of the Duke of Savoy, received from Francis I the title Duke of Nemours, and thus played a role in creating a bridge of communication between Florence and France. His second son, Giovanni, joined the clergy, became attached to it with interest, and with his good temperament, kind behavior, and sufficient Latin attracted everyone to himself. Lorenzo urged Pope Innocent VIII to choose Giovanni as a cardinal at the age of fourteen, in violation of the customs of his predecessors. The pope agreed to this for the same reason that motivated most court marriages—linking one government to another through blood politics.

Lorenzo withdrew from active participation in the governmental affairs of Florence; he gradually entrusted more parts of his social and private affairs to his son Piero and retired to the calm of the countryside and the company of his friends. In a model and excellent letter he excused himself:

What can be more pleasing to one who has a balanced spirit than to spend days of leisure with dignity and peace of mind? All good men desire to obtain such a gift, but only great men have been able to achieve it. In the midst of public affairs we should really be allowed to see a day of leisure before us; but no leisure should completely prevent us from paying attention to the issues of our country. I cannot deny that the path I was destined to walk in life was hard and rough and full of danger and mixed with betrayal, but I find consolation in the fact that I have had a share in creating the welfare of the life of the people of my country, a welfare and happiness that now equals the welfare of the people of any other country, however flourishing and advanced. Nor have I been at all indifferent to the interests and spiritual advancement of my family, and I have always taken as a model the life of my grandfather Cosimo, who supervised his private and public affairs with equal care. Now that after much toil I have reached my goal, I think I have the right to enjoy the sweetness of leisure hours, to share in the credit and fame of my fellow citizens, and to rejoice in the honors of my birthplace country.

But little opportunity remained for him to enjoy the peace to which he was not accustomed. He had just moved to his villa in Careggi (21 March 1492) when the stomach pain intensified dangerously. Specialist doctors summoned to his bedside gave him a potion of jewel water, but Lorenzo's condition rapidly worsened and he surrendered himself to death. At that moment he told Pico and Poliziano that he was saddened that he had not been able to live long enough to complete his collection of manuscripts to help them and also for the use of scholars. When he reached the final moments of his life he sent for a priest and with his last strength insisted on getting out of bed, kneeling, and performing the religious rites before death. Now he was thinking of the uncompromising preacher who had called him the destroyer of liberty and the misleader of the youth and wished to ask his forgiveness before death. He sent a friend to Savonarola and requested him to come to him, hear his confessions, and grant him complete absolution. Savonarola came. According to Poliziano, for Lorenzo's absolution he proposed three conditions: Lorenzo must have great faith in God's forgiveness; he must promise that if he recovered he would change his way of life; and he must accept death with courage. Lorenzo agreed and was absolved. According to the first biographer of Savonarola, G. F. Pico (not the humanist Pico), the third condition was that Lorenzo must promise to "restore liberty to Florence"; according to Pico's account, Lorenzo gave no answer to this proposal, the friar did not absolve him and left. Lorenzo died on 9 April 1492 at the age of forty-three.

When news of Lorenzo's sudden death reached Florence, almost all the people of the city mourned and even Lorenzo's opponents now did not know how order could be maintained in Florence or peace and tranquility in Italy without his guiding help. Europe accepted his merit as a political man and felt the distinctive features of that era in his being; he was in everything a "Renaissance man" except in his hatred of acts of violence. The insight he had gradually gained in political affairs, his simple but effective eloquence in debate, and his determination and courage in action had caused almost all the people of Florence, except a few, to forget the liberty that had been destroyed by his family; and many of those who had not forgotten that liberty remembered it as the liberty of wealthy clans who, in a "democracy" in which only one-thirtieth of its population had the right to vote, continued their exploitative and competitive domination with force and cunning. Lorenzo used his power with moderation and for the benefit of the state, even by disregarding his personal wealth. He was accused of licentiousness in sexual relations and considered a bad example for Florentine youth; but in literature he left a good example, raised the Italian language to literary standards, and in poetry and versification competed with the poets under his patronage. Lorenzo, with his discriminating taste, established a standard for Europe in recognizing works of art and supported all branches of art. He was gentler and better than all "despotic and absolute" rulers. Ferdinand, King of Naples, said: "This man lived long enough to gain honors for himself personally, but his life was short for service to Italy." After him Florence declined and Italy never again saw peace.