CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER III.THE HOUSE AND FAMILY OF THE MEDICI.Thehouse of the Medici had not its equal in Florence, probably not in all Italy. Its inner arrangements corresponded with its outward stately and beautiful architecture. Three generations, with the whole world open before them, of highly-cultivated, art-loving owners had ruled in it. No other family ever existed in which the love of collecting, combined with a hearty appreciation of the value and importance of the most various objects, retained its ardour and thoroughness through so many centuries, as in the case of these Florentine merchants, who gradually developed and grew into a princely house, and intermarried with the royal houses of Hapsburg, Lorraine, Wittelsbach, and Bourbon. As in other great historical families, the same traits were noticeable in all the Medici. Even in the days when several members of the house fell victims to the curse that eventually destroyed many of the ruling families of Italy, when the Medici as a distinct family were fast perishing, though mourned for by thousands—even then the surviving members of the race preserved the many brilliant qualities which had made their ancestors famous. In every direction they had relations with grand-dukes and princes; beautiful, curious, and rare objects of art were sent to them from all quarters of the globe by their agents, diplomatists, scholars, artists, and merchants; and in their own country they constantly employed those who displayed talent, learning, or skill. The colossal wealth of the Florentine collections, chiefly inheritancesfrom the Medici, proves this; and the sudden bankruptcy which occurred in all these things at their extinction gives a striking example of the contrast which was brought about by years.The history of art and literature from Cosimo’s days shows what a treasury of paintings, sculptures, coins, engraved stones, manuscripts, gems, and antiquities of all kinds were collected together in that house in the Via Larga. Commines, describing the shameless plunder of the Medici’s houses begun in November 1494 by the French and continued by the Florentines,[429]estimates the value of the objects destroyed in one day at 100,000 crowns;—‘the most beautiful rings, specimens of agate, admirable cameos, and near three thousand gold and silver medals, such as no other collection in Italy could equal.’ Galeazzo Maria Sforza once said that he, too, could show treasures; but the finest things in all the world were collected in the house of a private man—Lorenzo. And what a quantity had been gathered together there since the visit of the Milanese Duke! ‘Lorenzo,’ says Niccolò Valori,[430]‘took the liveliest interest in all things antique. I have heard from Marsilio that on receiving from Girolamo Rossi of Pistoja a bust of Plato, found amid the ruins of the Athenian Academy, his delight was exceeding great, and he always held that bust in high honour. Those who wished to do this great man a pleasure vied with each other in bringing him coins and bronze works distinguished by their value and workmanship, and antiquities of all sorts, from all parts of the world. When I came home from Naples I sent him busts of the Empress Faustina and Africanus and several beautifully chiselled marbles. I cannot describe the manner in which he received them. What he had collected from all quarters he carefully preserved in his house. He did notshow them to just anybody, but only to those who understood them, and at festive banquets he adorned his table with works of art to do honour to his guests. When the excellent Duke Federigo of Urbino saw these treasures of Lorenzo, he admired not only the materials and skilful workmanship, but also the almost incredible number of the objects. He is said to have thus addressed Lorenzo: ‘How much can love and perseverance accomplish! I behold, here, a royal treasure-house; yet one such as no king is able to gather together, either by money, or power, or rapine.’These treasures were collected in the most various ways. Sellers of antiques brought them to Florence or sent them from a distance. When Paul III.’s rich collection of engraved and precious stones was sold after his death, a considerable part of it passed into the hands of the Medici for a moderate sum, by means of Giovanni Tornabuoni. Lorenzo himself in his memoirs mentions the marble busts of Augustus and Agrippa, gifts of Sixtus IV., and the vases of chalcedony and engraved stones bought in Rome. In 1484, 1488, and 1490, Luigi Lotti of Barberino, Giovan Antonio of Arezzo, and Andrea of Fojano were commissioned to make purchases in Rome and Siena.[431]On Giuliano da Sangallo’s return from Naples, King Ferrante gave him a bust of Hadrian, a nude female statue and a sleeping Cupid, for Lorenzo, who had sent him to the king.[432]Messer Zaccaria Barbaro, grateful for the sympathy shown to his son, sent a precious Greek vase. Carlo de’ Medici bought antiquities, coins, &c., in Rome. Besides the manuscripts and objects of art, there were a quantity of curiosities and handsome household furniture of all sorts, porcelain and majolica, given by the Malatesta, and, as Lorenzo wrote,[433]more highly prized by him than if they were of silver, because they were excellent, rare, and, till then, unknown in Florence. Much of what now adorns the great Uffizi collection came to Florence in those days. Mostof the sculptures and larger works of art, however, were not placed in the house in the Via Larga, where there was no space for them, but in the neighbouring garden of San Marco. Opposite the left aisle, near to where the long street joins the large conventual and other gardens, the Medici had a casino, to which were attached grounds and plantations extending as far as the Via San Gallo. Casinos of this kind, intended for social purposes and walks, were usual among the great Florentine families even down to the last century. The whole place has been altered; a century after Lorenzo’s time, Bernardo Buontalenti built a grand but heavy palace, which has been lately used for various purposes, and after the extinction of the Medici, part of the ground was cleared for the pretty house called Casino della Livia, after a favourite of the Grand-Duke Leopold I. About the same time the appearance of the adjoining Piazza San Marco was completely changed by the new façade of the church, the new front of the convent, and the building of the Academy of Arts on the site of Lemmo Balducci’s hospital.[434]Here, in the alleys of trees, were set up the antique sculptures, and in the house were kept the cartoons and pictures which had been collected in the course of years; here young artists studied from old and new models. Lorenzo, most eager of collectors, knew how to appreciate love of art in others. Not only to allied princes did he give great assistance in this respect. When Commines returned from his embassy in 1478, he brought home several beautiful medals of which the ‘Seigneur Laurens’ had made him a present.[435]The Medici did not confine their splendour to their town houses. Lorenzo divided his time between the city and the country. His appreciation of the beauties of nature made a sojourn at his villas particularly agreeable to him; and following the example of his father and grandfather, hefrequently went to stay at Careggi, whose nearness to the city facilitated the transaction of business; in the hot season he went up to the more retired and cooler Cafaggiuolo or Trebbio. After Careggi, however, his favourite abode was Poggio a Cajano. Half way between Florence and Pistoja, ten miles from either city, on a low hill, the last on the north-eastern slope of the Monte Albano, which separates the plain of Pistoja from the valley of the Nievole and the lower part of that of the Arno, stands Sangallo’s handsome building, overlooking the green and fruitful valley watered by the Ombrone, and made famous by Lorenzo’s poem of ‘Ambra.’ Travellers may now wander through the well-cultivated grounds of the farm, and the park, twenty or thirty years ago still full of gold pheasants, the descendants of those procured by Lorenzo from Sicily; or cross the stream by means of a suspension-bridge. The beauty of the place, and the admirable arrangements made for purposes of husbandry by the owner of the villa, were described by Poliziano at the end of his ‘Ambra’ (composed in 1485), and by Michele Verino in a letter to Simone Canigiani. An aqueduct brought water from the neighbouring height of Bonistallo. Besides the vegetable and fruit gardens there were large mulberry plantations for rearing silk-worms, still a profitable business in that district. On the low uplands were large stalls, paved with stone for the sake of cleanliness, and with their four turrets resembling little fortresses; here was kept a whole herd of fine cows which fed on the rich pasture-lands and supplied the city of Florence with cheese, an article which hitherto had had to be fetched from Lombardy. There were plenty of calves and sheep; a breed of uncommonly large pigs had been got from Calabria, and a breed of rabbits from Spain. Birds of all kinds abounded, particularly water-fowl and quails. The quantity of water made the soil fruitful, but there was ample provision for manure.[436]It is interestingto see the statesman and patron of literature and art occupied with agricultural interests, a liking for which he had inherited from his grandfather, and to which he was specially attracted by his strong feeling for nature.Down to our own time the villa of Poggio a Cajano has kept up these traditions side by side with its historic reminiscences. The very ancient and noble family of the Cadolingi of Fucecchio had property here which passed to the powerful Pistojan family of the Cancellieri, and in 1420, by sale, to Palla Strozzi.[437]How and when the Medici came into possession of it is unknown. That it should have changed hands twice in a century is nothing astonishing, considering the vicissitudes of families in those eventful times. Nowhere is one so vividly reminded as here of Lorenzo il Magnifico, who actually built the place as it is now. When his second son had mounted the Papal chair, he caused the great hall to be decorated with frescoes representing scenes from the old Roman world, and containing allusions to home events. Paolo Giovio, a client of the Pope and of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, chose the subjects; the animals bringing tribute to Cæsar were painted by Andrea del Sarto; the triumph of Cicero, which Poggio Bracciolini had compared to the return of Cosimo, by Franciabigo; and some mythological representations by Jacopo da Pontormo. Leo’s death interrupted the work, which was completed in 1580 by Alessandro Allori. In a Pietà forming the altar-piece of the village church Giorgio Vasari placed the two patron saints of the Medici beside the dead Saviour.[438]In these stately and beautiful localities, both in the city and country, active, energetic, comfortable, and cheerful life went on its way in spite of a few natural troubles. Lorenzo never gave himself up to senseless luxury such as many princes and cardinals indulged in; but he was always a grand gentleman in the true sense of the words. He never forgot that he was a Florentine citizen, as he loved to describe himself; his correspondents adopted the same idea of him, and he impressed the fact strongly upon his sons. At the same time he never forgot that at home all eyes were fixed on him, and that abroad it was he who represented the State. In his house and his villas there was perpetual movement. Everybody and everything went to and fro in the house of the man who stood at the head of all. Besides politics, he was constantly engaged with family affairs and intercourse with scholars and artists. He had many relations, and made good use of some of them. Numerous families were intimately connected with his. Many were made great by him; others, great already, he tried to attach more and more to himself. He stood godfather to his own countrymen as well as to foreign princes. When in 1490, Duke Alfonso of Calabria consented to be sponsor for the son of Giuliano Gondi, a business friend of the Medici, he asked Lorenzo to act as proxy for him.The Medici in some degree kept open house. We learn from the life of Michelangelo that whosoever was present at the beginning of the dinner took his seat after the master of the house, each according to his rank; and the arrangement of the table was not altered for those who came later, even though they were of higher rank. All the inmates of the house who were not servants dined together; the young Buonarotti, then in the earliest days of his apprenticeship, was a constant guest at his patron’s table.[439]Besides the Academic and other learned symposia, banquets were frequentlygiven, both in the city and at Careggi, in honour of distinguished foreigners or ambassadors, and on festive occasions. Cristoforo Landino has left an account of a banquet which was something between a dinner of scholars and a feast, and was given by Lorenzo in his young days, when a noble Greek named Philotimos, who traced his pedigree up to the time of Constantine and prided himself greatly thereon, came to Florence accompanied by an Athenian philosopher named Aretophilos, to condole with the young Medici on the death of his father. Lorenzo rode out four miles to meet his guests, and conducted them to his house, where he had assembled the most distinguished literary men and the friends of the family. Among the company were Gentile Becchi, Antonio degli Agli, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Ficino, Landino, Poliziano, Argyropulos, his pupils Piero and Donato Acciaiuolo, and Alamanno Rinuccini. The discourse at table and the claims of the proud Greek furnished Landino with the materials for his treatise on true nobility, which he dedicated to Lorenzo.[440]On these and suchlike occasions the hospitality was on a grand and brilliant scale; but on ordinary days Lorenzo kept his table within the modest limits befitting a citizen. So Franceschetto Cybò discovered when he came on a visit in June 1488. Roman lords and a number of other people accompanied the Pope’s son; they wished to see the splendour of the house of Medici, of which all the world spoke so much. Franceschetto stayed in his father-in-law’s house; a fine palace was assigned to his companions. After a few days passed in festivities, the visitor found a simple table. He wondered; and when the dinner and supper were served in the same style, he began to suspect that his companions might be treated in the same way. The suspicion troubled him, knowing as he did with what expectations they had come to Florence. He was therefore delighted to learn that theycontinued to be most sumptuously entertained. Talking confidentially with his father-in-law he mentioned the circumstance, whereupon Lorenzo quietly answered that he had received him into his house as a son and was treating him as such; to act otherwise would be to make a stranger of him. The noble lords who had come with him to celebrate his marriage were strangers; Lorenzo was treating them accordingly, as became his position and theirs.At the end of 1482 an illustrious German guest came to the Medici house: Eberhard the Bearded Count of Würtemberg, son-in-law of Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a connection which formed a natural introduction to friendly relations with the Medici.[441]The count’s learned companions have been already mentioned. Eberhard surveyed the riches of the house, the handsome halls filled with plate and other valuables, the library, the terrace with its evergreen fruit-trees and the stables. What he saw here must have been a source of great enjoyment to this highly accomplished prince, who combined a love of native literature with a knowledge of antiquity, possessed a fine library, and four years before had conferred a lasting benefit on his admiring country by founding the university of Tübingen. He saw the whole family, Lorenzo and his sons, Clarice and her daughters, still all together in those days. He openly expressed his pleasure at everything, both the house and its inhabitants. When he admired the collection of books, greatly increased and with much discrimination since Cosimo’s days, Lorenzo, with a play on the wordslibriandliberi, answered that his children were his greatest treasures. From Florence Eberhard went to Rome, where Sixtus IV. presented him with the golden rose.[442]The German prince admired Lorenzo’s stud, and nodoubt with justice. Lorenzo had a passion for riding-horses, hunters, and racers. Presents, purchases, and borrowing of horses occur over and over again in his correspondence. In October 1488 he bought twenty mares at Naples, and only a short time before his death horses for him were on their way from Egypt and the coast of Barbary.[443]The taste of the Florentines for horse-racing, with or without riders, and for which even in those days there were regular horse-lenders, has been preserved down to our own time; in the house of the Alessandri is shown a room whose walls are entirely covered with brocades won as prizes by a horse belonging to the family. Lorenzo always kept race-horses; one in particular, called Morello from its dark colour, always came off victorious, and was so attached to its master that it showed signs of illness when he did not feed it with his own hand, and testified its joy at his approach by stamping and loud neighing.[444]In his young days a handsome Sicilian horse was presented to him, and its value was outdone by that of the presents he gave in return. He himself made presents of horses. In November 1479, when he was particularly anxious to keep on good terms with Lodovico il Moro, he sent to Roberto Sanseverino, who was at that time a confidant of the Moro, a fine horse and a falcon.[445]Letters about their horses passed between Lorenzo and King Ferrante, the Este family, the Sforzas of Pesaro, and others. In January 1473 the king thanked Lorenzo for the gift of a horse about which his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli, had written to him. Four years after he announced that he was sending Lorenzo two racers, a Sicilian and another, from his own stud, and two hunters, as tokens of his attachment. Horses of the king’s, lent for the Florentine races, were on their way at the time of the Pazzi catastrophe.[446]It was, moreover, the custom to send horsesto allied nobles and cities, to keep them for the races; those of the Medici went to both Ferrara and Lucca. When Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro was going to be married to Maddalena Gonzaga at the end of the summer of 1489, he begged Lorenzo to lend him one of his horses for the tournament to be held on the occasion. In Lorenzo’s latter years his eldest son had the direction of the stables.[447]Lorenzo has left in his pretty and cheerful description of the hawking-party a graceful memorial of his love of the sport. Hawking was an old pastime always in great favour with princes and nobles. Dante’s master, Brunetto Latini, mentions in his ‘Treasury’ seven species of falcons which served for the chase. Two contemporaries of Lorenzo paid special attention to the training of these birds: the King of Naples, who imported the best falcons from Rhodes with the permission of the grand-master of the Hospitallers, and Ercole d’Este, to whom Lorenzo gave leave to catch the birds on his estates in the Pisan territory. In return for this the duke sent to Lorenzo some of his own well-trained falcons for the purpose of the chase or to help in training his wild ones, and the king several times made him presents of hawks, as he did also to Maximilian of Austria, Ferdinand of Castile, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and others.[448]The wide, well-wooded and watered plain of Pisa, and the lowlands and hills round Poggio a Cajano, were the scenes of the chase. On December 1, 1475, Angelo Poliziano, who was seldom absent from either studies or sports, wrote from Pisa to Madonna Clarice, then expecting her confinement (the child was afterwards Pope Leo):[449]‘Yesterday we went hawking. It was windyand we were unlucky, for we lost Pilato’s falcon called Mantovano. To-day we tried again, and again the wind was contrary; yet we had some fine flights, for Maestro Giorgio let loose his falcon, which returned obediently at a given signal. Lorenzo is quite in love with the bird, and not without justice, for Maestro Giorgio says he has never seen one larger or finer, and he hopes to make him the best falcon in the world. While we were in the field Pilato returned from the shore with the truant of yesterday, which redoubled Lorenzo’s pleasure. We are hawking from morning till night, and do nothing else. On Monday I hear our sport is to be varied by a deer-hunt.’Independently of hunting, Lorenzo liked being in Pisa, and it was not his fault that the unfortunate city’s relations with Florence did not improve, and that she could not accustom herself to bear the position of a subject city. Even when not called there by business, he frequently stayed there. From his youth up he was in the habit of leaving Florence to meet friends for change, for hunting or to see after his great estate at Agnano. This place, first a fortress and then a villa round which had gathered a population of a few hundreds, lies on the western slope of the Monte San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa, near marshes which Valori says Lorenzo would have drained if he had lived longer, and which mostly are drained now. A large pine-wood forms part of the estate, which in Lorenzo’s days furnished a considerable quantity of corn and oil, and with other possessions in the Maremma of Pisa, at Colle Salvetti (now one of the stations on the railway which passes through the plain to Civita Vecchia), at Colmezzano, and other places, formed a most important part of the Medici landed property. Lorenzo’s letters bear testimony to the great care he took in the improvement of husbandry in this hitherto sadly neglected part. Like Spedaletto, Agnano passed to Maddalena Cybò; her son Lorenzo, who was not on very good terms with his wife—Ricciarda Malaspina, heiress of Massa and Carrara—endedhis days there in 1549.[450]After Lorenzo had re-established the University of Pisa, its interests frequently called him to the city. During the disastrous fight for Sarzana he made Pisa a sort of head-quarters. The house then inhabited by the Medici, now belonging to the Pieracchi family, stands not far from the upper bridge over the Arno—the Ponte della Fortezza—on the right bank, near the church of San Matteo. Here is said to have occurred, seventy years after Lorenzo’s death, that domestic tragedy which has never been cleared up, and which casts a dark shadow over the history of the first Medicean grand-duke.In Lorenzo’s days the house was more cheerful. Here, probably, was the scene of his discourse with Federigo of Aragon on Italian poetry; here he passed some pleasant days in April 1476. He came by San Miniato, where a halt was always made, with six-and-twenty horses. ‘We rode along,’ wrote Poliziano to Clarice,[451]‘singing, and sometimes talking theology in order not to forget this season of fasting; Lorenzo was triumphant. At San Miniato we tried to read some of St. Augustine, but the reading was soon exchanged for music and for polishing up a figure of a dancer which we found there.’ There was no lack of merriment and jesting wherever Lorenzo went; the Pisan students found him a ready supporter of their carnaval gaieties, at which they were permitted to take away the instruction-books from the professors and to spend on festivities the money paid to ransom them. The attribution to Lorenzo of the combat on the middle bridge over the Arno (Giuoco del Ponte), at which the ground was disputed between armed bands on either side, and which was forbidden by the Grand-Duke Leopold I. on account of its fatal episodes, is a mistake; traces of it may be found in much earlier times.It was in Pisa, at the end of May 1477, that Lorenzoreceived Eleonora of Aragon, wife of Duke Ercole of Ferrara; she had come by way of Lucca to attend her father’s marriage at Naples, whither she was conveyed by a royal fleet which had anchored at Livorno.[452]As long as Filippo de’ Medici was Archbishop of Pisa, and his brother Tanai dwelt there, there was no lack of grand hospitality; Luigi Pulci mentions the festivities during the presence of the Duke of Calabria in the war of Colleone.[453]Other than cheerful purposes called Lorenzo to Pisa. He sought in its mild air relief from physical sufferings; as in the autumn of 1474, after being cured of fever by the waters of Porretta. He stopped at Pisa, at a critical moment of his life, before embarking for Naples. In the little church of Sta. Maria della Spina, whose spires and pinnacles are seen adjoining the quay on the south shore, in 1485 he ordered for the victims of the Sarzana struggle requiems to be sung, at which he was present together with the widow of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, who had met his death in the unhealthy air of the Lunigiana coast.[454]Lorenzo’s visits to the baths played a great part in his life, though they never took him beyond the borders of Tuscany. Gout was hereditary in his family; his grandfather, his father, and his uncle all suffered from it, and his mother too was not exempt. When only twenty-six he was obliged to take the waters of Porretta, which still attract so many invalids to the valley of the Reno in the Apennines, on the road between Pistoja and Bologna. His most frequent resort was Bagno a Morba, where Madonna Lucrezia had a house and stayed frequently, and in his latter years he had the water sent to Spedaletto. Most of the Tuscan baths were anything but inviting; some are not more so now. In the Roman territory they are still worse; SerMatteo Franco, describing the baths of Stigliano near the lake of Bracciano, remarks that in comparison with this place Bagno a Morba was a Careggi. Lorenzo tried other medicinal waters. In the autumn of 1484, after the taking of Pietrasanta, he went to the baths of San Filippo in the Sienese country. These remarkable thermal springs are reached by turning out of the old Roman high-road at the little village of Ricorsi, at the foot of the inhospitable height of Radicofani, and proceeding through the valley of the Orcia towards the stately group of Mont’Amiata, covered throughout its 5,000 feet of height with chestnuts and beeches, and surrounded with a girdle of villages. The springs lie in a deep ravine encircled with woods; a precipitate of carbonic acid and lime forms a marble-like crust, and the waters are an efficacious remedy for arthritic disorders as well as for skin-diseases. It is a desolate place, with only a few houses destined for the reception of invalids, in the narrow valley where oppressive heat alternates with a damp cold atmosphere. In autumn of the following year, and several times afterwards, Lorenzo came again. In the spring of 1490 he spent some time at the baths of Vignone in the same valley of the Orcia, a little southwards of San Quirico. Powerful thermal springs, similar to those mentioned above, issue from a travertine hill in the middle of the village, and fill a large basin; they were known in Roman times. Here Ermolao Barbaro visited Lorenzo, and Franceschetto Cybò and his wife kept him company; at that season the place was safe, but in summer the air can hardly be borne even by natives. Lorenzo’s stay at Filetto in the valley of the Merse has already been mentioned. All these water-cures only gave temporary relief to his malady, and the short time he usually devoted to them would have prevented any lasting result even if his maladies had been less rooted and less complicated. Besides, even after his health had suffered considerably, his mode of life was not exactly regular. He not only exerted himself too much in attendingto business of all kinds, public and private, which poured in upon him surrounded as he was by many cares, but he was always involved in love intrigues. Bartolommea de’ Nasi, the wife of Donato Benci, held him in her chains for years; she was neither young nor beautiful, but graceful and attractive. Even in winter he would ride out in the evening to her villa to be back in the city before daybreak. Two confidants, Luigi della Stufa and Andrea de’ Medici, were his usual companions. They got tired of it, and their remarks came to the ears of the lady; whereupon she managed to have them punished by being sent off on diplomatic errands, the one to Cairo and the other to Constantinople—an old and well-worn contrivance which, in this case, caused a sensation of a nature not very favourable to the great man, ‘who behaved himself like an inexperienced youth.’[455]The princely dignity which Lorenzo enjoyed was as apparent in his relations with foreign rulers as in his position in his own country, in his own house, and in his journeys. The former have been repeatedly mentioned. Everyone made use of him; everyone applied to him; everyone gave him thanks and presents, from antiquities down to sweet-smelling essences, which the Duchess of Calabria sent him. He sent his friends and acquaintances presents of books, works of art, horses, wine, and other things. In June 1489 he presented a vase full of balm to Anne de Beaujeu, ‘Madama di Belgiù.’ Venison and fish seem to have been favourite gifts on the part of communities and individuals; on one day five wild boars were taken to Lorenzo’s house.A great event, which has left its trace in the history of art by a representation in a fresco at Poggio a Cajano, was an embassy from Abu Nasr Kaitbei, Sultan of Egypt, or of Babylonia as he was called, which arrived at Florence on November 11, 1487, and was honourably and joyfully receivedby the foreign ambassadors and many of the citizens.[456]It was a fortunate time for the Republic, which had a few months before got rid of the dreary affair of Sarzana, and had now entered on a period of comparative peace which was not disturbed till the revolution of 1494. Italian affairs were of considerable importance to the Egyptian sultan, not only on account of commerce but also politically, on account of his relations with Naples and Venice; difficulties with this latter state might easily have been created by the sultan’s claims to the suzerainty of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro continued to reign as a queen of shadows till 1489, under the protection of Venice. The sultan’s eyes often turned towards the west as the progress of the Osmanli threatened an attack on the loosely connected empire of the Mamelukes, which, indeed, fell before their better-compacted power within less than thirty years. After the subjection of Pisa, Florence had frequent commercial relations with Egypt, and a desire to enlarge and secure its privileges gave rise to negotiations for which an Egyptian ambassador named Malphet came to Florence in 1487, and in the following year a Florentine, the aforesaid Luigi della Stufa, went to Cairo.[457]The former was sent at once to the Signoria of the Republic and to the ‘Hakim’ (lord) Lorenzo de’ Medici, and brought rich presents for both. On Sunday, November 18, he had a solemn audience of the Signoria in presence of many of the chief citizens. He had led before him a giraffe and a tame lion, gifts from the sultan. The giraffe was no novelty to the Florentines, for one had been already seen at the festivals with which the visit of Pius II. was celebrated; and the lion, the emblem of the commonwealth, was always carefully kept here, alive as well as in effigy. A street behind the palace of the Signoria took its name from thelion-cage, afterwards removed to the square of San Marco. A Sicilian interpreter translated the conversation, which turned on the privileges offered to the Florentines in Egypt and Syria. For Lorenzo the ambassador brought gifts of various kinds: an Arabian horse, rare animals, among which were rams and sheep of various colours, with long hanging ears and tails; several horns of civet, a lamp with balsam, a quantity of aloe-wood, beautiful many coloured porcelain such as had never before been seen, vases of preserves, and rich and finely woven silk and linen stuffs.[458]There was a great festival in the Medici household when all these rarities were brought home; Madonna Clarice was absent, being then at Rome with Maddalena. Among Lorenzo’s gifts to the sultan is mentioned a bed, carried by a special messenger.Whenever Lorenzo went to the baths or left home for any purpose, he was everywhere received like a prince. The municipalities within the Florentine dominions were accustomed to send yearly presents to the capital on certain feasts, and they did not neglect to send offerings to the head of the Republic. After the fashion of the times these gifts usually consisted of provisions and goods for the house. When Lorenzo was expected, early in 1485, at San Gemignano, on his way to Bagno a Morba, but took another route, the municipality, which had voted 100 lire for his reception, sent to Morba a load of Greek wine, capons, marchpane and wax.[459]The Signoria of Siena, though they had not a few complaints against Lorenzo, honoured him in a similar manner when he was in their territory. During his stay at Vignone they sent ample provisions for his table.[460]His suite was unusually numerous. A list of the persons he once took with him to Morba[461]names the following: a chaplain,Filippo (Ubaldini) da Gagliano, Francesco degli Organi (Squarcialupi), a house-steward, two chancellors (secretaries), two singers, Bertoldo the sculptor, a barber, two valets, a butler, five crossbowmen, ten grooms, an equerry, a cook, a kitchen-boy, and a coachman. For these thirty-two persons fourteen beds were required. His family, too, when they travelled without him, were everywhere received in the most distinguished manner possible. A letter of their faithful, cheerful friend, Matteo Franco, gives a lively sketch of a journey on horseback made by Clarice in May 1485, from Morba, where she had been with her husband, through the Volterra district and the Elsa valley to Florence. At all the places where she stopped, especially at Colle, where the first halt for sleeping was made (the second was at Passignano, where stood the great abbey given to Giovanni de’ Medici), everybody was astir; yet friendly intercourse was combined with a ceremonious reception.Whether in town, in the country, or on a journey, Lorenzo was always surrounded by friends, whose names are inseparable from his. Most of them have become known in the course of this history; various characters, of whom more than one may be differently judged, according to whether we view them in private life and in their confidential relations, or as public men, authors or otherwise. First come those who were the guides of his youth or whom he knew in his father’s house; Gentile Becchi, who remained a member of the Medicean household even after his appointment to the see of Arezzo, as bishops were not required to reside too strictly; Ficino, Landino, and Poliziano. Then those who, having been friends of his parents, attached themselves to him in his youth and manhood; or those who first came in contact with him in his mature years; Luigi Pulci, Matteo Franco, Bartolommeo Scala, Pico della Mirandola—besides those who were drawn to him by political and allied interests, and who zealously served him and, in his sense of the word, the State, without forgetting themselves. On each and allLorenzo had a deep and lasting influence; he was the centre around which all revolved, the link that bound all together, however much a few of the disaffected ones might try to fight against it. Their attachment to him was not forced or selfish; the affection expressed in Pulci’s letters and Poliziano’s verses had nothing artificial about it. Lorenzo was a genial man, cordial and kind, a born prince, simple and natural. In his intercourse with the scholars and artists who were in some sense dependent on him, the relation of patron and client was forgotten. Their letters to him, grave and gay, are proofs of their confidence and intimacy. If they address him as ‘Magnifico,’ they soon follow it up with a plain ‘Lorenzo.’ In the midst of the war-troubles of 1479, Donatello’s pupil Bertoldo wrote Lorenzo a letter full of fun, to the effect that it was more profitable to be a cook than an artist;[462]and the famous Niccolò Grosso, called Caparra, in reality a blacksmith, but who executed works of art, would not fulfil Lorenzo’s orders till he had executed others he had received first.[463]How entirely constraint was banished in intercourse with him is shown by his conversation with the mosaic-worker Graffione, a pupil of Baldovinetti. Lorenzo once said he would like to adorn the inside of the dome of the Cathedral with mosaics. ‘For that you could not get masters,’ replied Graffione. ‘We have money enough to get masters,’ was the probably half-jesting answer. ‘Eh, Lorenzo,’ exclaimed the artist, ‘it is not the money that procures the masters, but the masters who procure the money!’ He bore with their humours and oddities; he honoured them living and dead, feeling that their fame would add to his own. Had he done nothing for art beyond the cordial and almost fatherly reception which he, a powerful and much-envied man of mature years, gave to Michelangelo when the latter was almost in his boyhood, that alone would make his memory illustrious. On his death-bedhe desired once more to see the friends in whose society he had passed his happiest hours, and whose attachment followed him beyond the grave.Notwithstanding many disturbances caused by political events, increasing bad health, and several deaths in the family, still life was cheerful in the Medici household. Music was a daily pleasure. Lorenzo’s poetical talents attached him to this art, and his unmusical voice did not hinder him from taking a part in singing. Marsilio relates that he did so at a social gathering which apparently took its name ofLa Mammola(the Violet) from a still existing hostelry. Thus, too, one evening, when he was singing the mysteries of love, he originated a discussion as to whether subjects in which mourning occurred were appropriate, which Ficino decided in the affirmative.[464]In his poetical productions he reckoned much on musical effect, a necessary condition of songs for dancing and for the carnaval. As long as his health permitted he was never absent from the merry processions at which popular melodies alternated with those of Heinrich Isaak; and on journeys, at the May-festivals and other times of gaiety there was no lack of musical accompaniments to the verses of Poliziano and other friends. Although from Guido Aretino down to the father of Galileo, Tuscany produced no remarkable composer or writer on music, yet the people were always musical. Ficino was doubly welcome when he appeared with his plectrum, after the pattern of the earliest half-deified apostles of Greek culture, to secure a better reception for ancient philosophy by his strains delighting the ear and winning the heart. As in Poliziano’s ‘Orpheus,’ Baccio Ugolini accompanied on the lyre the ode in praise of Cardinal Gonzaga, so did Marsilio when extemporising, in which art he was a master.One of Lorenzo’s protégés was the organ-builder Antonio Squarcialupi, who, as a precentor, had been a familiar of thehouse in Piero’s time. His life and conversation seem not to have been blameless; but Lorenzo took him under his protection for the sake of his uncommon talent. ‘If you knew,’ he said once to those who blamed him, ‘what it is to attain perfection in anything, you would judge him more gently and modestly.’[465]Squarcialupi set to music many of the songs of his patron, who, it is said, composed the inscription for his tomb. To the friendship of the Medici he owed the epigram in which Poliziano called upon Florence to honour with a marble monument him who had long been the voice of her temple.[466]The man really must have possessed rare artistic merits; for a son of the Count of Altavilla—one of the guests at the Salutati banquet—came to Florence with an introduction from King Ferrante to Lorenzo, to study the organ and other instruments under Squarcialupi; and ten years later a clergyman named Stephen came from Ofen, with a recommendation from Matthias Corvinus, to learn organ-building.[467]In 1477 a lute-player of Lodovico Sforza’s suite came to Florence to be heard by the famous master.[468]Organ-building, as well as organ-playing, was a somewhat rare art. The difficulty of finding good masters is shown by the trouble and loss of time caused in Cosimo’s days to the committee entrusted with the building of the Cathedral, through the untrustworthiness of Matteo da Prato, who had undertaken to furnish the new organs, to be decorated by Donatello and Luca della Robbia. Lorenzo took great interest in this branch of music. Many of his letters relate to organists recommended by him to various Tuscan towns, or sent from one place to another. At his death there were in his house no less than five organs; one large one with a finely-carved wooden case, the rest smaller, partly metal, partly paste-board, which was then used for these instruments.[469]Musicians were included among the servants; and in the evenings there was singing and playing on the lute. Michelangelo in his later years used to tell of a man who was called theCardiere, and who was a great favourite with Lorenzo on account of his wonderful talent for improvising songs to an instrumental accompaniment.[470]Lorenzo also looked after the musical education of his children. ‘The evening before last,’ wrote Poliziano to him at Bagno a Morba on June 5, 1490,[471]‘I unexpectedly heard our Piero sing, and then he and his companions came to my room. He pleased me exceedingly, especially in the motetts and answers to the strophes, and also by his charms of articulation. I felt as if I were listening to your Magnificence.’ Leo X. had through life a true passion for music and improvisation. As a cardinal, his palace near Sant’Eustachio (Palazzo Madama) continually resounded with instruments and singing; and in the Vatican music and poetry vied with each other, and both improvisers and musicians made their fortunes with the Pope.It is needless to repeat how closely poetry was intertwined with the life of the Medici. The taste for it was hereditary. Cosimo the elder, Lorenzo, his brother Giuliano, all wrote poetry; so did the younger Piero and others of the family. As a child Lorenzo’s daughter Lucrezia knew by heart the spiritual songs of her grandmother;[472]and the songs of the ‘Morgante’ were first heard in the Medici house when Lucrezia Tornabuoni took part in them. Many of Poliziano’s poems were evidently intended to be recited to his patron; and when he relates in a letter[473]how one asked him for sermons for the brotherhoods, another for carnaval songs, one wanted sentimental songs for the viola, another gayserenades, it is probable that he referred to members of the society he met in the house of the Medici. One can fancy Pulci and Matteo Franco sending satirical shafts in the form of sonnets at each other across the table. In the ‘Beoni’ and ‘Nencia,’ evidently intended for gay meetings, Lorenzo himself gave the signal for poetical entertainments and contests; Pulci once answered him with the ‘Beca da Dicomano.’ The poetic gifts of his eldest son are displayed in the latter’s productions; the verses written by him in exile show more depth of feeling than one would have given him credit for. In his youth, at least, his contemporaries seem to have judged him favourably. In a sonnet of Antonio da Pistoja on the poets of the time, both Piero and his father are mentioned, and the praise bestowed on them gains weight from the fact that Poliziano alone is placed above them:—Who among Tuscans doth in verse excel?In vulgar tongue? Aye, and in Latin speech.Lorenzo and his son write passing well,But neither can Politian’s glory reach.[474]Piero’s letters to his father, on literary and other subjects, display sound judgment, information, and lively interest. His boyish letters, indeed, are of little consequence; and when, as a lad of fourteen, he writes from the villa to his father at San Filippo, giving an account of his own studies and those of his brother Giovanni, with whom he was reading Virgil’s Bucolics, thereby, as he said, gaining double profit,[475]his master’s hand is clearly traceable. But there are other letters worthy of consideration, such as that on the visit of Ermolao Barbaro. Although Poliziano’s descriptions of his pupil and of the young Cardinal Giovanni lose much of their effect and even spoil their subjects by exaggeration, yet it cannot be disputed that Lorenzo’s eldest son, though he did notpossess his father’s prudence and calculation (a want which may perhaps be explained and excused by the degree of splendour, fortune, and grandeur at which Lorenzo left the personal government in his hands), yet did possess many of his intellectual qualities. The time during which he continued to hold the government was too short and too much disturbed by preludes of the coming storm to furnish premisses for a decisive judgment of him; neither can such a judgment be fairly founded on his conduct in exile, which may be mistaken even by the keenest eye.Piero’s wife can hardly have had a good influence on him. Alfonsina Orsini was infinitely less fitted than her mother-in-law for Florentine life and manners. In her nature the pride of the Roman barons seems to have been combined with covetousness and hardness, whereby she made herself very much disliked in later years, when her brother-in-law was Pope and she was a great deal in Rome, where she died in 1520. Her husband’s three sisters, Lucrezia, Maddalena, and Contessina, the wife of Piero Ridolfi, were frequently at their father’s house. Maddalena, whose daughter Lucrezia was born at Rome early in 1490, became at Florence, on August 24 of the following year, the mother of a son who was christened Innocenzo after the Pope, received the red hat from Leo X., and, with his cousins Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, played some part in Florence after the murder of the first duke. All three sisters afterwards attached themselves to the court of Leo X. in a way which threw no favourable light on his financial arrangements; and the influence of Lucrezia, doubtless the most highly gifted of the three, lasted beyond her brother’s lifetime throughout the whole reign of her cousin Clement VII., with whom her husband, Jacopo Salviati (father of the cardinal), was very intimate, till the Pope’s proceedings in 1529 against the city of his fathers estranged the relatives. In one of Ariosto’s satires, invaluable for a study of the manners and general circumstances of the early years of the sixteenth century, heintroduces Lorenzo’s posterity and their friends rejoicing at the elevation of Leo X.,—a rejoicing destined to be of short duration.[476]There were numerous other members of the family, rich and poor, nearly and distantly connected. The nearest branch was, of course, that descended from Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo, whose chief representative at this time was the oft-mentioned Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco. One of those admitted to the closest intimacy was a distant cousin, Andrea. As long as the daughters remained at home Lorenzo insisted on their dressing modestly and simply, in conformity to the sumptuary laws. Certain materials he never would allow them, because they resembled the forbidden crimson cloth, although many other grand ladies wore them without scruple. He himself was never distinguished from other citizens in outward apparel. In winter he wore a violet mantle with a hood, and in summer thelucco: the long red robe of the upper class of citizens, still the usual dress of the magistrates. It is mentioned that he got Venetian silk for his dress. To elderly people he always offered his hand and gave the place of honour, and what he taught his sons he first followed himself.Lorenzo’s observations generally were very pointed without falling into the sarcasm of his grandfather. When the Sienese jurist Bartolommeo Sozzini repeated the old reproach against the air of Florence that it was bad for the sight (‘An ancient saying calls her people blind’) before Lorenzo, who suffered from weak eyes, Lorenzo replied that the air of Siena was worse still; it was bad for the brains. When the same man, having broken his plighted word in leaving Pisa secretly, on being caught and imprisoned complained of the punishment as unbecoming his position, Lorenzo answered that the dishonour was not in the punishment but in the unworthy action. He said of those who built recklessly that they were buying repentance dear; and when his cousinPier Francesco, having begun at Majano a building which he kept on altering as the work proceeded, complained that the expense far exceeded the estimate, he exclaimed: ‘No wonder; others build according to their plans, you make your plans after the building.’ When Carlo de’ Medici, who seems not to have been over-nice in his methods of getting money, boasted of the quantity of water round his villa, Lorenzo remarked that he would have to keep his hands all the cleaner. That he also had a turn for practical joking, which, as has been seen, was an ingredient in Florentine life, is shown by the history of the troublesome parasitical doctor Maestro Manente, whom he caused to be taken one evening, when drunk, by two men in disguise, and shut up in a place unknown to him outside the city, and given out for dead. When the supposed dead man at last got home, his wife, who took him for a ghost, would not let him in till the enchantment of which he was supposed to have been the victim was cleared up by the intervention of others.[477]This trick evidently recalls the story of the fat cabinet-maker.In a letter to Lodovico Odasio, Poliziano has left a description of his patron and friend in graver conversation.[478]‘Think not that any one of our learned brethren, even those whose very life’s work is study, can surpass Lorenzo de’ Medici in acuteness of disputation and in formulating a conclusion; or that he is inferior to anyone in the easy, graceful, and varied expression of his ideas. Historical examples occur to him as readily as to the most accomplished of his companions; and whenever the subject of the discourse admits of it, his conversation is richly seasoned with the salt of the ocean from which Venus rose.’ Poliziano, the confidential friend of the house, who was never absent either from the literary symposia or from the narrower circle of friends, in time of joy or in time of mourning, understoodLorenzo thoroughly, and his judgment may be accepted. Many of Lorenzo’s sayings have been preserved which bear witness to the soundness of his judgment, or in some way reflect credit on him. He said once: ‘As a healthy body resists the influence of a storm, so a state can brave dangers when the citizens are of one mind.’ When Filippo Valori (brother of his biographer) was desirous but yet afraid to try to reconcile Lorenzo with Antonio Tebalducci, against whom the latter had grounds for complaint, Lorenzo said to him: ‘To recommend a friend to me would be no merit, but for making an opponent my friend I thank thee, and I beg thee to do it again in the like case.[479]Only he who knows how to forgive knows how to conquer,’ he added.[480]The combination of prince and citizen, statesman and man of letters; the mixture of gravity and gaiety, of lofty intellect and cheerful participation in everyday life, of grandeur and simplicity in his household and family, of sagacious calculation and hearty unfeigned good nature,—all this makes Lorenzo de’ Medici an unusual figure, very attractive in its individuality, and accounts for the impression he made on all; especially, and most lastingly, on those who were intimate at his house and had the opportunity of observing him in private.

CHAPTER III.THE HOUSE AND FAMILY OF THE MEDICI.Thehouse of the Medici had not its equal in Florence, probably not in all Italy. Its inner arrangements corresponded with its outward stately and beautiful architecture. Three generations, with the whole world open before them, of highly-cultivated, art-loving owners had ruled in it. No other family ever existed in which the love of collecting, combined with a hearty appreciation of the value and importance of the most various objects, retained its ardour and thoroughness through so many centuries, as in the case of these Florentine merchants, who gradually developed and grew into a princely house, and intermarried with the royal houses of Hapsburg, Lorraine, Wittelsbach, and Bourbon. As in other great historical families, the same traits were noticeable in all the Medici. Even in the days when several members of the house fell victims to the curse that eventually destroyed many of the ruling families of Italy, when the Medici as a distinct family were fast perishing, though mourned for by thousands—even then the surviving members of the race preserved the many brilliant qualities which had made their ancestors famous. In every direction they had relations with grand-dukes and princes; beautiful, curious, and rare objects of art were sent to them from all quarters of the globe by their agents, diplomatists, scholars, artists, and merchants; and in their own country they constantly employed those who displayed talent, learning, or skill. The colossal wealth of the Florentine collections, chiefly inheritancesfrom the Medici, proves this; and the sudden bankruptcy which occurred in all these things at their extinction gives a striking example of the contrast which was brought about by years.The history of art and literature from Cosimo’s days shows what a treasury of paintings, sculptures, coins, engraved stones, manuscripts, gems, and antiquities of all kinds were collected together in that house in the Via Larga. Commines, describing the shameless plunder of the Medici’s houses begun in November 1494 by the French and continued by the Florentines,[429]estimates the value of the objects destroyed in one day at 100,000 crowns;—‘the most beautiful rings, specimens of agate, admirable cameos, and near three thousand gold and silver medals, such as no other collection in Italy could equal.’ Galeazzo Maria Sforza once said that he, too, could show treasures; but the finest things in all the world were collected in the house of a private man—Lorenzo. And what a quantity had been gathered together there since the visit of the Milanese Duke! ‘Lorenzo,’ says Niccolò Valori,[430]‘took the liveliest interest in all things antique. I have heard from Marsilio that on receiving from Girolamo Rossi of Pistoja a bust of Plato, found amid the ruins of the Athenian Academy, his delight was exceeding great, and he always held that bust in high honour. Those who wished to do this great man a pleasure vied with each other in bringing him coins and bronze works distinguished by their value and workmanship, and antiquities of all sorts, from all parts of the world. When I came home from Naples I sent him busts of the Empress Faustina and Africanus and several beautifully chiselled marbles. I cannot describe the manner in which he received them. What he had collected from all quarters he carefully preserved in his house. He did notshow them to just anybody, but only to those who understood them, and at festive banquets he adorned his table with works of art to do honour to his guests. When the excellent Duke Federigo of Urbino saw these treasures of Lorenzo, he admired not only the materials and skilful workmanship, but also the almost incredible number of the objects. He is said to have thus addressed Lorenzo: ‘How much can love and perseverance accomplish! I behold, here, a royal treasure-house; yet one such as no king is able to gather together, either by money, or power, or rapine.’These treasures were collected in the most various ways. Sellers of antiques brought them to Florence or sent them from a distance. When Paul III.’s rich collection of engraved and precious stones was sold after his death, a considerable part of it passed into the hands of the Medici for a moderate sum, by means of Giovanni Tornabuoni. Lorenzo himself in his memoirs mentions the marble busts of Augustus and Agrippa, gifts of Sixtus IV., and the vases of chalcedony and engraved stones bought in Rome. In 1484, 1488, and 1490, Luigi Lotti of Barberino, Giovan Antonio of Arezzo, and Andrea of Fojano were commissioned to make purchases in Rome and Siena.[431]On Giuliano da Sangallo’s return from Naples, King Ferrante gave him a bust of Hadrian, a nude female statue and a sleeping Cupid, for Lorenzo, who had sent him to the king.[432]Messer Zaccaria Barbaro, grateful for the sympathy shown to his son, sent a precious Greek vase. Carlo de’ Medici bought antiquities, coins, &c., in Rome. Besides the manuscripts and objects of art, there were a quantity of curiosities and handsome household furniture of all sorts, porcelain and majolica, given by the Malatesta, and, as Lorenzo wrote,[433]more highly prized by him than if they were of silver, because they were excellent, rare, and, till then, unknown in Florence. Much of what now adorns the great Uffizi collection came to Florence in those days. Mostof the sculptures and larger works of art, however, were not placed in the house in the Via Larga, where there was no space for them, but in the neighbouring garden of San Marco. Opposite the left aisle, near to where the long street joins the large conventual and other gardens, the Medici had a casino, to which were attached grounds and plantations extending as far as the Via San Gallo. Casinos of this kind, intended for social purposes and walks, were usual among the great Florentine families even down to the last century. The whole place has been altered; a century after Lorenzo’s time, Bernardo Buontalenti built a grand but heavy palace, which has been lately used for various purposes, and after the extinction of the Medici, part of the ground was cleared for the pretty house called Casino della Livia, after a favourite of the Grand-Duke Leopold I. About the same time the appearance of the adjoining Piazza San Marco was completely changed by the new façade of the church, the new front of the convent, and the building of the Academy of Arts on the site of Lemmo Balducci’s hospital.[434]Here, in the alleys of trees, were set up the antique sculptures, and in the house were kept the cartoons and pictures which had been collected in the course of years; here young artists studied from old and new models. Lorenzo, most eager of collectors, knew how to appreciate love of art in others. Not only to allied princes did he give great assistance in this respect. When Commines returned from his embassy in 1478, he brought home several beautiful medals of which the ‘Seigneur Laurens’ had made him a present.[435]The Medici did not confine their splendour to their town houses. Lorenzo divided his time between the city and the country. His appreciation of the beauties of nature made a sojourn at his villas particularly agreeable to him; and following the example of his father and grandfather, hefrequently went to stay at Careggi, whose nearness to the city facilitated the transaction of business; in the hot season he went up to the more retired and cooler Cafaggiuolo or Trebbio. After Careggi, however, his favourite abode was Poggio a Cajano. Half way between Florence and Pistoja, ten miles from either city, on a low hill, the last on the north-eastern slope of the Monte Albano, which separates the plain of Pistoja from the valley of the Nievole and the lower part of that of the Arno, stands Sangallo’s handsome building, overlooking the green and fruitful valley watered by the Ombrone, and made famous by Lorenzo’s poem of ‘Ambra.’ Travellers may now wander through the well-cultivated grounds of the farm, and the park, twenty or thirty years ago still full of gold pheasants, the descendants of those procured by Lorenzo from Sicily; or cross the stream by means of a suspension-bridge. The beauty of the place, and the admirable arrangements made for purposes of husbandry by the owner of the villa, were described by Poliziano at the end of his ‘Ambra’ (composed in 1485), and by Michele Verino in a letter to Simone Canigiani. An aqueduct brought water from the neighbouring height of Bonistallo. Besides the vegetable and fruit gardens there were large mulberry plantations for rearing silk-worms, still a profitable business in that district. On the low uplands were large stalls, paved with stone for the sake of cleanliness, and with their four turrets resembling little fortresses; here was kept a whole herd of fine cows which fed on the rich pasture-lands and supplied the city of Florence with cheese, an article which hitherto had had to be fetched from Lombardy. There were plenty of calves and sheep; a breed of uncommonly large pigs had been got from Calabria, and a breed of rabbits from Spain. Birds of all kinds abounded, particularly water-fowl and quails. The quantity of water made the soil fruitful, but there was ample provision for manure.[436]It is interestingto see the statesman and patron of literature and art occupied with agricultural interests, a liking for which he had inherited from his grandfather, and to which he was specially attracted by his strong feeling for nature.Down to our own time the villa of Poggio a Cajano has kept up these traditions side by side with its historic reminiscences. The very ancient and noble family of the Cadolingi of Fucecchio had property here which passed to the powerful Pistojan family of the Cancellieri, and in 1420, by sale, to Palla Strozzi.[437]How and when the Medici came into possession of it is unknown. That it should have changed hands twice in a century is nothing astonishing, considering the vicissitudes of families in those eventful times. Nowhere is one so vividly reminded as here of Lorenzo il Magnifico, who actually built the place as it is now. When his second son had mounted the Papal chair, he caused the great hall to be decorated with frescoes representing scenes from the old Roman world, and containing allusions to home events. Paolo Giovio, a client of the Pope and of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, chose the subjects; the animals bringing tribute to Cæsar were painted by Andrea del Sarto; the triumph of Cicero, which Poggio Bracciolini had compared to the return of Cosimo, by Franciabigo; and some mythological representations by Jacopo da Pontormo. Leo’s death interrupted the work, which was completed in 1580 by Alessandro Allori. In a Pietà forming the altar-piece of the village church Giorgio Vasari placed the two patron saints of the Medici beside the dead Saviour.[438]In these stately and beautiful localities, both in the city and country, active, energetic, comfortable, and cheerful life went on its way in spite of a few natural troubles. Lorenzo never gave himself up to senseless luxury such as many princes and cardinals indulged in; but he was always a grand gentleman in the true sense of the words. He never forgot that he was a Florentine citizen, as he loved to describe himself; his correspondents adopted the same idea of him, and he impressed the fact strongly upon his sons. At the same time he never forgot that at home all eyes were fixed on him, and that abroad it was he who represented the State. In his house and his villas there was perpetual movement. Everybody and everything went to and fro in the house of the man who stood at the head of all. Besides politics, he was constantly engaged with family affairs and intercourse with scholars and artists. He had many relations, and made good use of some of them. Numerous families were intimately connected with his. Many were made great by him; others, great already, he tried to attach more and more to himself. He stood godfather to his own countrymen as well as to foreign princes. When in 1490, Duke Alfonso of Calabria consented to be sponsor for the son of Giuliano Gondi, a business friend of the Medici, he asked Lorenzo to act as proxy for him.The Medici in some degree kept open house. We learn from the life of Michelangelo that whosoever was present at the beginning of the dinner took his seat after the master of the house, each according to his rank; and the arrangement of the table was not altered for those who came later, even though they were of higher rank. All the inmates of the house who were not servants dined together; the young Buonarotti, then in the earliest days of his apprenticeship, was a constant guest at his patron’s table.[439]Besides the Academic and other learned symposia, banquets were frequentlygiven, both in the city and at Careggi, in honour of distinguished foreigners or ambassadors, and on festive occasions. Cristoforo Landino has left an account of a banquet which was something between a dinner of scholars and a feast, and was given by Lorenzo in his young days, when a noble Greek named Philotimos, who traced his pedigree up to the time of Constantine and prided himself greatly thereon, came to Florence accompanied by an Athenian philosopher named Aretophilos, to condole with the young Medici on the death of his father. Lorenzo rode out four miles to meet his guests, and conducted them to his house, where he had assembled the most distinguished literary men and the friends of the family. Among the company were Gentile Becchi, Antonio degli Agli, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Ficino, Landino, Poliziano, Argyropulos, his pupils Piero and Donato Acciaiuolo, and Alamanno Rinuccini. The discourse at table and the claims of the proud Greek furnished Landino with the materials for his treatise on true nobility, which he dedicated to Lorenzo.[440]On these and suchlike occasions the hospitality was on a grand and brilliant scale; but on ordinary days Lorenzo kept his table within the modest limits befitting a citizen. So Franceschetto Cybò discovered when he came on a visit in June 1488. Roman lords and a number of other people accompanied the Pope’s son; they wished to see the splendour of the house of Medici, of which all the world spoke so much. Franceschetto stayed in his father-in-law’s house; a fine palace was assigned to his companions. After a few days passed in festivities, the visitor found a simple table. He wondered; and when the dinner and supper were served in the same style, he began to suspect that his companions might be treated in the same way. The suspicion troubled him, knowing as he did with what expectations they had come to Florence. He was therefore delighted to learn that theycontinued to be most sumptuously entertained. Talking confidentially with his father-in-law he mentioned the circumstance, whereupon Lorenzo quietly answered that he had received him into his house as a son and was treating him as such; to act otherwise would be to make a stranger of him. The noble lords who had come with him to celebrate his marriage were strangers; Lorenzo was treating them accordingly, as became his position and theirs.At the end of 1482 an illustrious German guest came to the Medici house: Eberhard the Bearded Count of Würtemberg, son-in-law of Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a connection which formed a natural introduction to friendly relations with the Medici.[441]The count’s learned companions have been already mentioned. Eberhard surveyed the riches of the house, the handsome halls filled with plate and other valuables, the library, the terrace with its evergreen fruit-trees and the stables. What he saw here must have been a source of great enjoyment to this highly accomplished prince, who combined a love of native literature with a knowledge of antiquity, possessed a fine library, and four years before had conferred a lasting benefit on his admiring country by founding the university of Tübingen. He saw the whole family, Lorenzo and his sons, Clarice and her daughters, still all together in those days. He openly expressed his pleasure at everything, both the house and its inhabitants. When he admired the collection of books, greatly increased and with much discrimination since Cosimo’s days, Lorenzo, with a play on the wordslibriandliberi, answered that his children were his greatest treasures. From Florence Eberhard went to Rome, where Sixtus IV. presented him with the golden rose.[442]The German prince admired Lorenzo’s stud, and nodoubt with justice. Lorenzo had a passion for riding-horses, hunters, and racers. Presents, purchases, and borrowing of horses occur over and over again in his correspondence. In October 1488 he bought twenty mares at Naples, and only a short time before his death horses for him were on their way from Egypt and the coast of Barbary.[443]The taste of the Florentines for horse-racing, with or without riders, and for which even in those days there were regular horse-lenders, has been preserved down to our own time; in the house of the Alessandri is shown a room whose walls are entirely covered with brocades won as prizes by a horse belonging to the family. Lorenzo always kept race-horses; one in particular, called Morello from its dark colour, always came off victorious, and was so attached to its master that it showed signs of illness when he did not feed it with his own hand, and testified its joy at his approach by stamping and loud neighing.[444]In his young days a handsome Sicilian horse was presented to him, and its value was outdone by that of the presents he gave in return. He himself made presents of horses. In November 1479, when he was particularly anxious to keep on good terms with Lodovico il Moro, he sent to Roberto Sanseverino, who was at that time a confidant of the Moro, a fine horse and a falcon.[445]Letters about their horses passed between Lorenzo and King Ferrante, the Este family, the Sforzas of Pesaro, and others. In January 1473 the king thanked Lorenzo for the gift of a horse about which his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli, had written to him. Four years after he announced that he was sending Lorenzo two racers, a Sicilian and another, from his own stud, and two hunters, as tokens of his attachment. Horses of the king’s, lent for the Florentine races, were on their way at the time of the Pazzi catastrophe.[446]It was, moreover, the custom to send horsesto allied nobles and cities, to keep them for the races; those of the Medici went to both Ferrara and Lucca. When Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro was going to be married to Maddalena Gonzaga at the end of the summer of 1489, he begged Lorenzo to lend him one of his horses for the tournament to be held on the occasion. In Lorenzo’s latter years his eldest son had the direction of the stables.[447]Lorenzo has left in his pretty and cheerful description of the hawking-party a graceful memorial of his love of the sport. Hawking was an old pastime always in great favour with princes and nobles. Dante’s master, Brunetto Latini, mentions in his ‘Treasury’ seven species of falcons which served for the chase. Two contemporaries of Lorenzo paid special attention to the training of these birds: the King of Naples, who imported the best falcons from Rhodes with the permission of the grand-master of the Hospitallers, and Ercole d’Este, to whom Lorenzo gave leave to catch the birds on his estates in the Pisan territory. In return for this the duke sent to Lorenzo some of his own well-trained falcons for the purpose of the chase or to help in training his wild ones, and the king several times made him presents of hawks, as he did also to Maximilian of Austria, Ferdinand of Castile, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and others.[448]The wide, well-wooded and watered plain of Pisa, and the lowlands and hills round Poggio a Cajano, were the scenes of the chase. On December 1, 1475, Angelo Poliziano, who was seldom absent from either studies or sports, wrote from Pisa to Madonna Clarice, then expecting her confinement (the child was afterwards Pope Leo):[449]‘Yesterday we went hawking. It was windyand we were unlucky, for we lost Pilato’s falcon called Mantovano. To-day we tried again, and again the wind was contrary; yet we had some fine flights, for Maestro Giorgio let loose his falcon, which returned obediently at a given signal. Lorenzo is quite in love with the bird, and not without justice, for Maestro Giorgio says he has never seen one larger or finer, and he hopes to make him the best falcon in the world. While we were in the field Pilato returned from the shore with the truant of yesterday, which redoubled Lorenzo’s pleasure. We are hawking from morning till night, and do nothing else. On Monday I hear our sport is to be varied by a deer-hunt.’Independently of hunting, Lorenzo liked being in Pisa, and it was not his fault that the unfortunate city’s relations with Florence did not improve, and that she could not accustom herself to bear the position of a subject city. Even when not called there by business, he frequently stayed there. From his youth up he was in the habit of leaving Florence to meet friends for change, for hunting or to see after his great estate at Agnano. This place, first a fortress and then a villa round which had gathered a population of a few hundreds, lies on the western slope of the Monte San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa, near marshes which Valori says Lorenzo would have drained if he had lived longer, and which mostly are drained now. A large pine-wood forms part of the estate, which in Lorenzo’s days furnished a considerable quantity of corn and oil, and with other possessions in the Maremma of Pisa, at Colle Salvetti (now one of the stations on the railway which passes through the plain to Civita Vecchia), at Colmezzano, and other places, formed a most important part of the Medici landed property. Lorenzo’s letters bear testimony to the great care he took in the improvement of husbandry in this hitherto sadly neglected part. Like Spedaletto, Agnano passed to Maddalena Cybò; her son Lorenzo, who was not on very good terms with his wife—Ricciarda Malaspina, heiress of Massa and Carrara—endedhis days there in 1549.[450]After Lorenzo had re-established the University of Pisa, its interests frequently called him to the city. During the disastrous fight for Sarzana he made Pisa a sort of head-quarters. The house then inhabited by the Medici, now belonging to the Pieracchi family, stands not far from the upper bridge over the Arno—the Ponte della Fortezza—on the right bank, near the church of San Matteo. Here is said to have occurred, seventy years after Lorenzo’s death, that domestic tragedy which has never been cleared up, and which casts a dark shadow over the history of the first Medicean grand-duke.In Lorenzo’s days the house was more cheerful. Here, probably, was the scene of his discourse with Federigo of Aragon on Italian poetry; here he passed some pleasant days in April 1476. He came by San Miniato, where a halt was always made, with six-and-twenty horses. ‘We rode along,’ wrote Poliziano to Clarice,[451]‘singing, and sometimes talking theology in order not to forget this season of fasting; Lorenzo was triumphant. At San Miniato we tried to read some of St. Augustine, but the reading was soon exchanged for music and for polishing up a figure of a dancer which we found there.’ There was no lack of merriment and jesting wherever Lorenzo went; the Pisan students found him a ready supporter of their carnaval gaieties, at which they were permitted to take away the instruction-books from the professors and to spend on festivities the money paid to ransom them. The attribution to Lorenzo of the combat on the middle bridge over the Arno (Giuoco del Ponte), at which the ground was disputed between armed bands on either side, and which was forbidden by the Grand-Duke Leopold I. on account of its fatal episodes, is a mistake; traces of it may be found in much earlier times.It was in Pisa, at the end of May 1477, that Lorenzoreceived Eleonora of Aragon, wife of Duke Ercole of Ferrara; she had come by way of Lucca to attend her father’s marriage at Naples, whither she was conveyed by a royal fleet which had anchored at Livorno.[452]As long as Filippo de’ Medici was Archbishop of Pisa, and his brother Tanai dwelt there, there was no lack of grand hospitality; Luigi Pulci mentions the festivities during the presence of the Duke of Calabria in the war of Colleone.[453]Other than cheerful purposes called Lorenzo to Pisa. He sought in its mild air relief from physical sufferings; as in the autumn of 1474, after being cured of fever by the waters of Porretta. He stopped at Pisa, at a critical moment of his life, before embarking for Naples. In the little church of Sta. Maria della Spina, whose spires and pinnacles are seen adjoining the quay on the south shore, in 1485 he ordered for the victims of the Sarzana struggle requiems to be sung, at which he was present together with the widow of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, who had met his death in the unhealthy air of the Lunigiana coast.[454]Lorenzo’s visits to the baths played a great part in his life, though they never took him beyond the borders of Tuscany. Gout was hereditary in his family; his grandfather, his father, and his uncle all suffered from it, and his mother too was not exempt. When only twenty-six he was obliged to take the waters of Porretta, which still attract so many invalids to the valley of the Reno in the Apennines, on the road between Pistoja and Bologna. His most frequent resort was Bagno a Morba, where Madonna Lucrezia had a house and stayed frequently, and in his latter years he had the water sent to Spedaletto. Most of the Tuscan baths were anything but inviting; some are not more so now. In the Roman territory they are still worse; SerMatteo Franco, describing the baths of Stigliano near the lake of Bracciano, remarks that in comparison with this place Bagno a Morba was a Careggi. Lorenzo tried other medicinal waters. In the autumn of 1484, after the taking of Pietrasanta, he went to the baths of San Filippo in the Sienese country. These remarkable thermal springs are reached by turning out of the old Roman high-road at the little village of Ricorsi, at the foot of the inhospitable height of Radicofani, and proceeding through the valley of the Orcia towards the stately group of Mont’Amiata, covered throughout its 5,000 feet of height with chestnuts and beeches, and surrounded with a girdle of villages. The springs lie in a deep ravine encircled with woods; a precipitate of carbonic acid and lime forms a marble-like crust, and the waters are an efficacious remedy for arthritic disorders as well as for skin-diseases. It is a desolate place, with only a few houses destined for the reception of invalids, in the narrow valley where oppressive heat alternates with a damp cold atmosphere. In autumn of the following year, and several times afterwards, Lorenzo came again. In the spring of 1490 he spent some time at the baths of Vignone in the same valley of the Orcia, a little southwards of San Quirico. Powerful thermal springs, similar to those mentioned above, issue from a travertine hill in the middle of the village, and fill a large basin; they were known in Roman times. Here Ermolao Barbaro visited Lorenzo, and Franceschetto Cybò and his wife kept him company; at that season the place was safe, but in summer the air can hardly be borne even by natives. Lorenzo’s stay at Filetto in the valley of the Merse has already been mentioned. All these water-cures only gave temporary relief to his malady, and the short time he usually devoted to them would have prevented any lasting result even if his maladies had been less rooted and less complicated. Besides, even after his health had suffered considerably, his mode of life was not exactly regular. He not only exerted himself too much in attendingto business of all kinds, public and private, which poured in upon him surrounded as he was by many cares, but he was always involved in love intrigues. Bartolommea de’ Nasi, the wife of Donato Benci, held him in her chains for years; she was neither young nor beautiful, but graceful and attractive. Even in winter he would ride out in the evening to her villa to be back in the city before daybreak. Two confidants, Luigi della Stufa and Andrea de’ Medici, were his usual companions. They got tired of it, and their remarks came to the ears of the lady; whereupon she managed to have them punished by being sent off on diplomatic errands, the one to Cairo and the other to Constantinople—an old and well-worn contrivance which, in this case, caused a sensation of a nature not very favourable to the great man, ‘who behaved himself like an inexperienced youth.’[455]The princely dignity which Lorenzo enjoyed was as apparent in his relations with foreign rulers as in his position in his own country, in his own house, and in his journeys. The former have been repeatedly mentioned. Everyone made use of him; everyone applied to him; everyone gave him thanks and presents, from antiquities down to sweet-smelling essences, which the Duchess of Calabria sent him. He sent his friends and acquaintances presents of books, works of art, horses, wine, and other things. In June 1489 he presented a vase full of balm to Anne de Beaujeu, ‘Madama di Belgiù.’ Venison and fish seem to have been favourite gifts on the part of communities and individuals; on one day five wild boars were taken to Lorenzo’s house.A great event, which has left its trace in the history of art by a representation in a fresco at Poggio a Cajano, was an embassy from Abu Nasr Kaitbei, Sultan of Egypt, or of Babylonia as he was called, which arrived at Florence on November 11, 1487, and was honourably and joyfully receivedby the foreign ambassadors and many of the citizens.[456]It was a fortunate time for the Republic, which had a few months before got rid of the dreary affair of Sarzana, and had now entered on a period of comparative peace which was not disturbed till the revolution of 1494. Italian affairs were of considerable importance to the Egyptian sultan, not only on account of commerce but also politically, on account of his relations with Naples and Venice; difficulties with this latter state might easily have been created by the sultan’s claims to the suzerainty of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro continued to reign as a queen of shadows till 1489, under the protection of Venice. The sultan’s eyes often turned towards the west as the progress of the Osmanli threatened an attack on the loosely connected empire of the Mamelukes, which, indeed, fell before their better-compacted power within less than thirty years. After the subjection of Pisa, Florence had frequent commercial relations with Egypt, and a desire to enlarge and secure its privileges gave rise to negotiations for which an Egyptian ambassador named Malphet came to Florence in 1487, and in the following year a Florentine, the aforesaid Luigi della Stufa, went to Cairo.[457]The former was sent at once to the Signoria of the Republic and to the ‘Hakim’ (lord) Lorenzo de’ Medici, and brought rich presents for both. On Sunday, November 18, he had a solemn audience of the Signoria in presence of many of the chief citizens. He had led before him a giraffe and a tame lion, gifts from the sultan. The giraffe was no novelty to the Florentines, for one had been already seen at the festivals with which the visit of Pius II. was celebrated; and the lion, the emblem of the commonwealth, was always carefully kept here, alive as well as in effigy. A street behind the palace of the Signoria took its name from thelion-cage, afterwards removed to the square of San Marco. A Sicilian interpreter translated the conversation, which turned on the privileges offered to the Florentines in Egypt and Syria. For Lorenzo the ambassador brought gifts of various kinds: an Arabian horse, rare animals, among which were rams and sheep of various colours, with long hanging ears and tails; several horns of civet, a lamp with balsam, a quantity of aloe-wood, beautiful many coloured porcelain such as had never before been seen, vases of preserves, and rich and finely woven silk and linen stuffs.[458]There was a great festival in the Medici household when all these rarities were brought home; Madonna Clarice was absent, being then at Rome with Maddalena. Among Lorenzo’s gifts to the sultan is mentioned a bed, carried by a special messenger.Whenever Lorenzo went to the baths or left home for any purpose, he was everywhere received like a prince. The municipalities within the Florentine dominions were accustomed to send yearly presents to the capital on certain feasts, and they did not neglect to send offerings to the head of the Republic. After the fashion of the times these gifts usually consisted of provisions and goods for the house. When Lorenzo was expected, early in 1485, at San Gemignano, on his way to Bagno a Morba, but took another route, the municipality, which had voted 100 lire for his reception, sent to Morba a load of Greek wine, capons, marchpane and wax.[459]The Signoria of Siena, though they had not a few complaints against Lorenzo, honoured him in a similar manner when he was in their territory. During his stay at Vignone they sent ample provisions for his table.[460]His suite was unusually numerous. A list of the persons he once took with him to Morba[461]names the following: a chaplain,Filippo (Ubaldini) da Gagliano, Francesco degli Organi (Squarcialupi), a house-steward, two chancellors (secretaries), two singers, Bertoldo the sculptor, a barber, two valets, a butler, five crossbowmen, ten grooms, an equerry, a cook, a kitchen-boy, and a coachman. For these thirty-two persons fourteen beds were required. His family, too, when they travelled without him, were everywhere received in the most distinguished manner possible. A letter of their faithful, cheerful friend, Matteo Franco, gives a lively sketch of a journey on horseback made by Clarice in May 1485, from Morba, where she had been with her husband, through the Volterra district and the Elsa valley to Florence. At all the places where she stopped, especially at Colle, where the first halt for sleeping was made (the second was at Passignano, where stood the great abbey given to Giovanni de’ Medici), everybody was astir; yet friendly intercourse was combined with a ceremonious reception.Whether in town, in the country, or on a journey, Lorenzo was always surrounded by friends, whose names are inseparable from his. Most of them have become known in the course of this history; various characters, of whom more than one may be differently judged, according to whether we view them in private life and in their confidential relations, or as public men, authors or otherwise. First come those who were the guides of his youth or whom he knew in his father’s house; Gentile Becchi, who remained a member of the Medicean household even after his appointment to the see of Arezzo, as bishops were not required to reside too strictly; Ficino, Landino, and Poliziano. Then those who, having been friends of his parents, attached themselves to him in his youth and manhood; or those who first came in contact with him in his mature years; Luigi Pulci, Matteo Franco, Bartolommeo Scala, Pico della Mirandola—besides those who were drawn to him by political and allied interests, and who zealously served him and, in his sense of the word, the State, without forgetting themselves. On each and allLorenzo had a deep and lasting influence; he was the centre around which all revolved, the link that bound all together, however much a few of the disaffected ones might try to fight against it. Their attachment to him was not forced or selfish; the affection expressed in Pulci’s letters and Poliziano’s verses had nothing artificial about it. Lorenzo was a genial man, cordial and kind, a born prince, simple and natural. In his intercourse with the scholars and artists who were in some sense dependent on him, the relation of patron and client was forgotten. Their letters to him, grave and gay, are proofs of their confidence and intimacy. If they address him as ‘Magnifico,’ they soon follow it up with a plain ‘Lorenzo.’ In the midst of the war-troubles of 1479, Donatello’s pupil Bertoldo wrote Lorenzo a letter full of fun, to the effect that it was more profitable to be a cook than an artist;[462]and the famous Niccolò Grosso, called Caparra, in reality a blacksmith, but who executed works of art, would not fulfil Lorenzo’s orders till he had executed others he had received first.[463]How entirely constraint was banished in intercourse with him is shown by his conversation with the mosaic-worker Graffione, a pupil of Baldovinetti. Lorenzo once said he would like to adorn the inside of the dome of the Cathedral with mosaics. ‘For that you could not get masters,’ replied Graffione. ‘We have money enough to get masters,’ was the probably half-jesting answer. ‘Eh, Lorenzo,’ exclaimed the artist, ‘it is not the money that procures the masters, but the masters who procure the money!’ He bore with their humours and oddities; he honoured them living and dead, feeling that their fame would add to his own. Had he done nothing for art beyond the cordial and almost fatherly reception which he, a powerful and much-envied man of mature years, gave to Michelangelo when the latter was almost in his boyhood, that alone would make his memory illustrious. On his death-bedhe desired once more to see the friends in whose society he had passed his happiest hours, and whose attachment followed him beyond the grave.Notwithstanding many disturbances caused by political events, increasing bad health, and several deaths in the family, still life was cheerful in the Medici household. Music was a daily pleasure. Lorenzo’s poetical talents attached him to this art, and his unmusical voice did not hinder him from taking a part in singing. Marsilio relates that he did so at a social gathering which apparently took its name ofLa Mammola(the Violet) from a still existing hostelry. Thus, too, one evening, when he was singing the mysteries of love, he originated a discussion as to whether subjects in which mourning occurred were appropriate, which Ficino decided in the affirmative.[464]In his poetical productions he reckoned much on musical effect, a necessary condition of songs for dancing and for the carnaval. As long as his health permitted he was never absent from the merry processions at which popular melodies alternated with those of Heinrich Isaak; and on journeys, at the May-festivals and other times of gaiety there was no lack of musical accompaniments to the verses of Poliziano and other friends. Although from Guido Aretino down to the father of Galileo, Tuscany produced no remarkable composer or writer on music, yet the people were always musical. Ficino was doubly welcome when he appeared with his plectrum, after the pattern of the earliest half-deified apostles of Greek culture, to secure a better reception for ancient philosophy by his strains delighting the ear and winning the heart. As in Poliziano’s ‘Orpheus,’ Baccio Ugolini accompanied on the lyre the ode in praise of Cardinal Gonzaga, so did Marsilio when extemporising, in which art he was a master.One of Lorenzo’s protégés was the organ-builder Antonio Squarcialupi, who, as a precentor, had been a familiar of thehouse in Piero’s time. His life and conversation seem not to have been blameless; but Lorenzo took him under his protection for the sake of his uncommon talent. ‘If you knew,’ he said once to those who blamed him, ‘what it is to attain perfection in anything, you would judge him more gently and modestly.’[465]Squarcialupi set to music many of the songs of his patron, who, it is said, composed the inscription for his tomb. To the friendship of the Medici he owed the epigram in which Poliziano called upon Florence to honour with a marble monument him who had long been the voice of her temple.[466]The man really must have possessed rare artistic merits; for a son of the Count of Altavilla—one of the guests at the Salutati banquet—came to Florence with an introduction from King Ferrante to Lorenzo, to study the organ and other instruments under Squarcialupi; and ten years later a clergyman named Stephen came from Ofen, with a recommendation from Matthias Corvinus, to learn organ-building.[467]In 1477 a lute-player of Lodovico Sforza’s suite came to Florence to be heard by the famous master.[468]Organ-building, as well as organ-playing, was a somewhat rare art. The difficulty of finding good masters is shown by the trouble and loss of time caused in Cosimo’s days to the committee entrusted with the building of the Cathedral, through the untrustworthiness of Matteo da Prato, who had undertaken to furnish the new organs, to be decorated by Donatello and Luca della Robbia. Lorenzo took great interest in this branch of music. Many of his letters relate to organists recommended by him to various Tuscan towns, or sent from one place to another. At his death there were in his house no less than five organs; one large one with a finely-carved wooden case, the rest smaller, partly metal, partly paste-board, which was then used for these instruments.[469]Musicians were included among the servants; and in the evenings there was singing and playing on the lute. Michelangelo in his later years used to tell of a man who was called theCardiere, and who was a great favourite with Lorenzo on account of his wonderful talent for improvising songs to an instrumental accompaniment.[470]Lorenzo also looked after the musical education of his children. ‘The evening before last,’ wrote Poliziano to him at Bagno a Morba on June 5, 1490,[471]‘I unexpectedly heard our Piero sing, and then he and his companions came to my room. He pleased me exceedingly, especially in the motetts and answers to the strophes, and also by his charms of articulation. I felt as if I were listening to your Magnificence.’ Leo X. had through life a true passion for music and improvisation. As a cardinal, his palace near Sant’Eustachio (Palazzo Madama) continually resounded with instruments and singing; and in the Vatican music and poetry vied with each other, and both improvisers and musicians made their fortunes with the Pope.It is needless to repeat how closely poetry was intertwined with the life of the Medici. The taste for it was hereditary. Cosimo the elder, Lorenzo, his brother Giuliano, all wrote poetry; so did the younger Piero and others of the family. As a child Lorenzo’s daughter Lucrezia knew by heart the spiritual songs of her grandmother;[472]and the songs of the ‘Morgante’ were first heard in the Medici house when Lucrezia Tornabuoni took part in them. Many of Poliziano’s poems were evidently intended to be recited to his patron; and when he relates in a letter[473]how one asked him for sermons for the brotherhoods, another for carnaval songs, one wanted sentimental songs for the viola, another gayserenades, it is probable that he referred to members of the society he met in the house of the Medici. One can fancy Pulci and Matteo Franco sending satirical shafts in the form of sonnets at each other across the table. In the ‘Beoni’ and ‘Nencia,’ evidently intended for gay meetings, Lorenzo himself gave the signal for poetical entertainments and contests; Pulci once answered him with the ‘Beca da Dicomano.’ The poetic gifts of his eldest son are displayed in the latter’s productions; the verses written by him in exile show more depth of feeling than one would have given him credit for. In his youth, at least, his contemporaries seem to have judged him favourably. In a sonnet of Antonio da Pistoja on the poets of the time, both Piero and his father are mentioned, and the praise bestowed on them gains weight from the fact that Poliziano alone is placed above them:—Who among Tuscans doth in verse excel?In vulgar tongue? Aye, and in Latin speech.Lorenzo and his son write passing well,But neither can Politian’s glory reach.[474]Piero’s letters to his father, on literary and other subjects, display sound judgment, information, and lively interest. His boyish letters, indeed, are of little consequence; and when, as a lad of fourteen, he writes from the villa to his father at San Filippo, giving an account of his own studies and those of his brother Giovanni, with whom he was reading Virgil’s Bucolics, thereby, as he said, gaining double profit,[475]his master’s hand is clearly traceable. But there are other letters worthy of consideration, such as that on the visit of Ermolao Barbaro. Although Poliziano’s descriptions of his pupil and of the young Cardinal Giovanni lose much of their effect and even spoil their subjects by exaggeration, yet it cannot be disputed that Lorenzo’s eldest son, though he did notpossess his father’s prudence and calculation (a want which may perhaps be explained and excused by the degree of splendour, fortune, and grandeur at which Lorenzo left the personal government in his hands), yet did possess many of his intellectual qualities. The time during which he continued to hold the government was too short and too much disturbed by preludes of the coming storm to furnish premisses for a decisive judgment of him; neither can such a judgment be fairly founded on his conduct in exile, which may be mistaken even by the keenest eye.Piero’s wife can hardly have had a good influence on him. Alfonsina Orsini was infinitely less fitted than her mother-in-law for Florentine life and manners. In her nature the pride of the Roman barons seems to have been combined with covetousness and hardness, whereby she made herself very much disliked in later years, when her brother-in-law was Pope and she was a great deal in Rome, where she died in 1520. Her husband’s three sisters, Lucrezia, Maddalena, and Contessina, the wife of Piero Ridolfi, were frequently at their father’s house. Maddalena, whose daughter Lucrezia was born at Rome early in 1490, became at Florence, on August 24 of the following year, the mother of a son who was christened Innocenzo after the Pope, received the red hat from Leo X., and, with his cousins Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, played some part in Florence after the murder of the first duke. All three sisters afterwards attached themselves to the court of Leo X. in a way which threw no favourable light on his financial arrangements; and the influence of Lucrezia, doubtless the most highly gifted of the three, lasted beyond her brother’s lifetime throughout the whole reign of her cousin Clement VII., with whom her husband, Jacopo Salviati (father of the cardinal), was very intimate, till the Pope’s proceedings in 1529 against the city of his fathers estranged the relatives. In one of Ariosto’s satires, invaluable for a study of the manners and general circumstances of the early years of the sixteenth century, heintroduces Lorenzo’s posterity and their friends rejoicing at the elevation of Leo X.,—a rejoicing destined to be of short duration.[476]There were numerous other members of the family, rich and poor, nearly and distantly connected. The nearest branch was, of course, that descended from Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo, whose chief representative at this time was the oft-mentioned Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco. One of those admitted to the closest intimacy was a distant cousin, Andrea. As long as the daughters remained at home Lorenzo insisted on their dressing modestly and simply, in conformity to the sumptuary laws. Certain materials he never would allow them, because they resembled the forbidden crimson cloth, although many other grand ladies wore them without scruple. He himself was never distinguished from other citizens in outward apparel. In winter he wore a violet mantle with a hood, and in summer thelucco: the long red robe of the upper class of citizens, still the usual dress of the magistrates. It is mentioned that he got Venetian silk for his dress. To elderly people he always offered his hand and gave the place of honour, and what he taught his sons he first followed himself.Lorenzo’s observations generally were very pointed without falling into the sarcasm of his grandfather. When the Sienese jurist Bartolommeo Sozzini repeated the old reproach against the air of Florence that it was bad for the sight (‘An ancient saying calls her people blind’) before Lorenzo, who suffered from weak eyes, Lorenzo replied that the air of Siena was worse still; it was bad for the brains. When the same man, having broken his plighted word in leaving Pisa secretly, on being caught and imprisoned complained of the punishment as unbecoming his position, Lorenzo answered that the dishonour was not in the punishment but in the unworthy action. He said of those who built recklessly that they were buying repentance dear; and when his cousinPier Francesco, having begun at Majano a building which he kept on altering as the work proceeded, complained that the expense far exceeded the estimate, he exclaimed: ‘No wonder; others build according to their plans, you make your plans after the building.’ When Carlo de’ Medici, who seems not to have been over-nice in his methods of getting money, boasted of the quantity of water round his villa, Lorenzo remarked that he would have to keep his hands all the cleaner. That he also had a turn for practical joking, which, as has been seen, was an ingredient in Florentine life, is shown by the history of the troublesome parasitical doctor Maestro Manente, whom he caused to be taken one evening, when drunk, by two men in disguise, and shut up in a place unknown to him outside the city, and given out for dead. When the supposed dead man at last got home, his wife, who took him for a ghost, would not let him in till the enchantment of which he was supposed to have been the victim was cleared up by the intervention of others.[477]This trick evidently recalls the story of the fat cabinet-maker.In a letter to Lodovico Odasio, Poliziano has left a description of his patron and friend in graver conversation.[478]‘Think not that any one of our learned brethren, even those whose very life’s work is study, can surpass Lorenzo de’ Medici in acuteness of disputation and in formulating a conclusion; or that he is inferior to anyone in the easy, graceful, and varied expression of his ideas. Historical examples occur to him as readily as to the most accomplished of his companions; and whenever the subject of the discourse admits of it, his conversation is richly seasoned with the salt of the ocean from which Venus rose.’ Poliziano, the confidential friend of the house, who was never absent either from the literary symposia or from the narrower circle of friends, in time of joy or in time of mourning, understoodLorenzo thoroughly, and his judgment may be accepted. Many of Lorenzo’s sayings have been preserved which bear witness to the soundness of his judgment, or in some way reflect credit on him. He said once: ‘As a healthy body resists the influence of a storm, so a state can brave dangers when the citizens are of one mind.’ When Filippo Valori (brother of his biographer) was desirous but yet afraid to try to reconcile Lorenzo with Antonio Tebalducci, against whom the latter had grounds for complaint, Lorenzo said to him: ‘To recommend a friend to me would be no merit, but for making an opponent my friend I thank thee, and I beg thee to do it again in the like case.[479]Only he who knows how to forgive knows how to conquer,’ he added.[480]The combination of prince and citizen, statesman and man of letters; the mixture of gravity and gaiety, of lofty intellect and cheerful participation in everyday life, of grandeur and simplicity in his household and family, of sagacious calculation and hearty unfeigned good nature,—all this makes Lorenzo de’ Medici an unusual figure, very attractive in its individuality, and accounts for the impression he made on all; especially, and most lastingly, on those who were intimate at his house and had the opportunity of observing him in private.

THE HOUSE AND FAMILY OF THE MEDICI.

Thehouse of the Medici had not its equal in Florence, probably not in all Italy. Its inner arrangements corresponded with its outward stately and beautiful architecture. Three generations, with the whole world open before them, of highly-cultivated, art-loving owners had ruled in it. No other family ever existed in which the love of collecting, combined with a hearty appreciation of the value and importance of the most various objects, retained its ardour and thoroughness through so many centuries, as in the case of these Florentine merchants, who gradually developed and grew into a princely house, and intermarried with the royal houses of Hapsburg, Lorraine, Wittelsbach, and Bourbon. As in other great historical families, the same traits were noticeable in all the Medici. Even in the days when several members of the house fell victims to the curse that eventually destroyed many of the ruling families of Italy, when the Medici as a distinct family were fast perishing, though mourned for by thousands—even then the surviving members of the race preserved the many brilliant qualities which had made their ancestors famous. In every direction they had relations with grand-dukes and princes; beautiful, curious, and rare objects of art were sent to them from all quarters of the globe by their agents, diplomatists, scholars, artists, and merchants; and in their own country they constantly employed those who displayed talent, learning, or skill. The colossal wealth of the Florentine collections, chiefly inheritancesfrom the Medici, proves this; and the sudden bankruptcy which occurred in all these things at their extinction gives a striking example of the contrast which was brought about by years.

The history of art and literature from Cosimo’s days shows what a treasury of paintings, sculptures, coins, engraved stones, manuscripts, gems, and antiquities of all kinds were collected together in that house in the Via Larga. Commines, describing the shameless plunder of the Medici’s houses begun in November 1494 by the French and continued by the Florentines,[429]estimates the value of the objects destroyed in one day at 100,000 crowns;—‘the most beautiful rings, specimens of agate, admirable cameos, and near three thousand gold and silver medals, such as no other collection in Italy could equal.’ Galeazzo Maria Sforza once said that he, too, could show treasures; but the finest things in all the world were collected in the house of a private man—Lorenzo. And what a quantity had been gathered together there since the visit of the Milanese Duke! ‘Lorenzo,’ says Niccolò Valori,[430]‘took the liveliest interest in all things antique. I have heard from Marsilio that on receiving from Girolamo Rossi of Pistoja a bust of Plato, found amid the ruins of the Athenian Academy, his delight was exceeding great, and he always held that bust in high honour. Those who wished to do this great man a pleasure vied with each other in bringing him coins and bronze works distinguished by their value and workmanship, and antiquities of all sorts, from all parts of the world. When I came home from Naples I sent him busts of the Empress Faustina and Africanus and several beautifully chiselled marbles. I cannot describe the manner in which he received them. What he had collected from all quarters he carefully preserved in his house. He did notshow them to just anybody, but only to those who understood them, and at festive banquets he adorned his table with works of art to do honour to his guests. When the excellent Duke Federigo of Urbino saw these treasures of Lorenzo, he admired not only the materials and skilful workmanship, but also the almost incredible number of the objects. He is said to have thus addressed Lorenzo: ‘How much can love and perseverance accomplish! I behold, here, a royal treasure-house; yet one such as no king is able to gather together, either by money, or power, or rapine.’

These treasures were collected in the most various ways. Sellers of antiques brought them to Florence or sent them from a distance. When Paul III.’s rich collection of engraved and precious stones was sold after his death, a considerable part of it passed into the hands of the Medici for a moderate sum, by means of Giovanni Tornabuoni. Lorenzo himself in his memoirs mentions the marble busts of Augustus and Agrippa, gifts of Sixtus IV., and the vases of chalcedony and engraved stones bought in Rome. In 1484, 1488, and 1490, Luigi Lotti of Barberino, Giovan Antonio of Arezzo, and Andrea of Fojano were commissioned to make purchases in Rome and Siena.[431]On Giuliano da Sangallo’s return from Naples, King Ferrante gave him a bust of Hadrian, a nude female statue and a sleeping Cupid, for Lorenzo, who had sent him to the king.[432]Messer Zaccaria Barbaro, grateful for the sympathy shown to his son, sent a precious Greek vase. Carlo de’ Medici bought antiquities, coins, &c., in Rome. Besides the manuscripts and objects of art, there were a quantity of curiosities and handsome household furniture of all sorts, porcelain and majolica, given by the Malatesta, and, as Lorenzo wrote,[433]more highly prized by him than if they were of silver, because they were excellent, rare, and, till then, unknown in Florence. Much of what now adorns the great Uffizi collection came to Florence in those days. Mostof the sculptures and larger works of art, however, were not placed in the house in the Via Larga, where there was no space for them, but in the neighbouring garden of San Marco. Opposite the left aisle, near to where the long street joins the large conventual and other gardens, the Medici had a casino, to which were attached grounds and plantations extending as far as the Via San Gallo. Casinos of this kind, intended for social purposes and walks, were usual among the great Florentine families even down to the last century. The whole place has been altered; a century after Lorenzo’s time, Bernardo Buontalenti built a grand but heavy palace, which has been lately used for various purposes, and after the extinction of the Medici, part of the ground was cleared for the pretty house called Casino della Livia, after a favourite of the Grand-Duke Leopold I. About the same time the appearance of the adjoining Piazza San Marco was completely changed by the new façade of the church, the new front of the convent, and the building of the Academy of Arts on the site of Lemmo Balducci’s hospital.[434]Here, in the alleys of trees, were set up the antique sculptures, and in the house were kept the cartoons and pictures which had been collected in the course of years; here young artists studied from old and new models. Lorenzo, most eager of collectors, knew how to appreciate love of art in others. Not only to allied princes did he give great assistance in this respect. When Commines returned from his embassy in 1478, he brought home several beautiful medals of which the ‘Seigneur Laurens’ had made him a present.[435]

The Medici did not confine their splendour to their town houses. Lorenzo divided his time between the city and the country. His appreciation of the beauties of nature made a sojourn at his villas particularly agreeable to him; and following the example of his father and grandfather, hefrequently went to stay at Careggi, whose nearness to the city facilitated the transaction of business; in the hot season he went up to the more retired and cooler Cafaggiuolo or Trebbio. After Careggi, however, his favourite abode was Poggio a Cajano. Half way between Florence and Pistoja, ten miles from either city, on a low hill, the last on the north-eastern slope of the Monte Albano, which separates the plain of Pistoja from the valley of the Nievole and the lower part of that of the Arno, stands Sangallo’s handsome building, overlooking the green and fruitful valley watered by the Ombrone, and made famous by Lorenzo’s poem of ‘Ambra.’ Travellers may now wander through the well-cultivated grounds of the farm, and the park, twenty or thirty years ago still full of gold pheasants, the descendants of those procured by Lorenzo from Sicily; or cross the stream by means of a suspension-bridge. The beauty of the place, and the admirable arrangements made for purposes of husbandry by the owner of the villa, were described by Poliziano at the end of his ‘Ambra’ (composed in 1485), and by Michele Verino in a letter to Simone Canigiani. An aqueduct brought water from the neighbouring height of Bonistallo. Besides the vegetable and fruit gardens there were large mulberry plantations for rearing silk-worms, still a profitable business in that district. On the low uplands were large stalls, paved with stone for the sake of cleanliness, and with their four turrets resembling little fortresses; here was kept a whole herd of fine cows which fed on the rich pasture-lands and supplied the city of Florence with cheese, an article which hitherto had had to be fetched from Lombardy. There were plenty of calves and sheep; a breed of uncommonly large pigs had been got from Calabria, and a breed of rabbits from Spain. Birds of all kinds abounded, particularly water-fowl and quails. The quantity of water made the soil fruitful, but there was ample provision for manure.[436]It is interestingto see the statesman and patron of literature and art occupied with agricultural interests, a liking for which he had inherited from his grandfather, and to which he was specially attracted by his strong feeling for nature.

Down to our own time the villa of Poggio a Cajano has kept up these traditions side by side with its historic reminiscences. The very ancient and noble family of the Cadolingi of Fucecchio had property here which passed to the powerful Pistojan family of the Cancellieri, and in 1420, by sale, to Palla Strozzi.[437]How and when the Medici came into possession of it is unknown. That it should have changed hands twice in a century is nothing astonishing, considering the vicissitudes of families in those eventful times. Nowhere is one so vividly reminded as here of Lorenzo il Magnifico, who actually built the place as it is now. When his second son had mounted the Papal chair, he caused the great hall to be decorated with frescoes representing scenes from the old Roman world, and containing allusions to home events. Paolo Giovio, a client of the Pope and of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, chose the subjects; the animals bringing tribute to Cæsar were painted by Andrea del Sarto; the triumph of Cicero, which Poggio Bracciolini had compared to the return of Cosimo, by Franciabigo; and some mythological representations by Jacopo da Pontormo. Leo’s death interrupted the work, which was completed in 1580 by Alessandro Allori. In a Pietà forming the altar-piece of the village church Giorgio Vasari placed the two patron saints of the Medici beside the dead Saviour.[438]

In these stately and beautiful localities, both in the city and country, active, energetic, comfortable, and cheerful life went on its way in spite of a few natural troubles. Lorenzo never gave himself up to senseless luxury such as many princes and cardinals indulged in; but he was always a grand gentleman in the true sense of the words. He never forgot that he was a Florentine citizen, as he loved to describe himself; his correspondents adopted the same idea of him, and he impressed the fact strongly upon his sons. At the same time he never forgot that at home all eyes were fixed on him, and that abroad it was he who represented the State. In his house and his villas there was perpetual movement. Everybody and everything went to and fro in the house of the man who stood at the head of all. Besides politics, he was constantly engaged with family affairs and intercourse with scholars and artists. He had many relations, and made good use of some of them. Numerous families were intimately connected with his. Many were made great by him; others, great already, he tried to attach more and more to himself. He stood godfather to his own countrymen as well as to foreign princes. When in 1490, Duke Alfonso of Calabria consented to be sponsor for the son of Giuliano Gondi, a business friend of the Medici, he asked Lorenzo to act as proxy for him.

The Medici in some degree kept open house. We learn from the life of Michelangelo that whosoever was present at the beginning of the dinner took his seat after the master of the house, each according to his rank; and the arrangement of the table was not altered for those who came later, even though they were of higher rank. All the inmates of the house who were not servants dined together; the young Buonarotti, then in the earliest days of his apprenticeship, was a constant guest at his patron’s table.[439]Besides the Academic and other learned symposia, banquets were frequentlygiven, both in the city and at Careggi, in honour of distinguished foreigners or ambassadors, and on festive occasions. Cristoforo Landino has left an account of a banquet which was something between a dinner of scholars and a feast, and was given by Lorenzo in his young days, when a noble Greek named Philotimos, who traced his pedigree up to the time of Constantine and prided himself greatly thereon, came to Florence accompanied by an Athenian philosopher named Aretophilos, to condole with the young Medici on the death of his father. Lorenzo rode out four miles to meet his guests, and conducted them to his house, where he had assembled the most distinguished literary men and the friends of the family. Among the company were Gentile Becchi, Antonio degli Agli, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Ficino, Landino, Poliziano, Argyropulos, his pupils Piero and Donato Acciaiuolo, and Alamanno Rinuccini. The discourse at table and the claims of the proud Greek furnished Landino with the materials for his treatise on true nobility, which he dedicated to Lorenzo.[440]On these and suchlike occasions the hospitality was on a grand and brilliant scale; but on ordinary days Lorenzo kept his table within the modest limits befitting a citizen. So Franceschetto Cybò discovered when he came on a visit in June 1488. Roman lords and a number of other people accompanied the Pope’s son; they wished to see the splendour of the house of Medici, of which all the world spoke so much. Franceschetto stayed in his father-in-law’s house; a fine palace was assigned to his companions. After a few days passed in festivities, the visitor found a simple table. He wondered; and when the dinner and supper were served in the same style, he began to suspect that his companions might be treated in the same way. The suspicion troubled him, knowing as he did with what expectations they had come to Florence. He was therefore delighted to learn that theycontinued to be most sumptuously entertained. Talking confidentially with his father-in-law he mentioned the circumstance, whereupon Lorenzo quietly answered that he had received him into his house as a son and was treating him as such; to act otherwise would be to make a stranger of him. The noble lords who had come with him to celebrate his marriage were strangers; Lorenzo was treating them accordingly, as became his position and theirs.

At the end of 1482 an illustrious German guest came to the Medici house: Eberhard the Bearded Count of Würtemberg, son-in-law of Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a connection which formed a natural introduction to friendly relations with the Medici.[441]The count’s learned companions have been already mentioned. Eberhard surveyed the riches of the house, the handsome halls filled with plate and other valuables, the library, the terrace with its evergreen fruit-trees and the stables. What he saw here must have been a source of great enjoyment to this highly accomplished prince, who combined a love of native literature with a knowledge of antiquity, possessed a fine library, and four years before had conferred a lasting benefit on his admiring country by founding the university of Tübingen. He saw the whole family, Lorenzo and his sons, Clarice and her daughters, still all together in those days. He openly expressed his pleasure at everything, both the house and its inhabitants. When he admired the collection of books, greatly increased and with much discrimination since Cosimo’s days, Lorenzo, with a play on the wordslibriandliberi, answered that his children were his greatest treasures. From Florence Eberhard went to Rome, where Sixtus IV. presented him with the golden rose.[442]

The German prince admired Lorenzo’s stud, and nodoubt with justice. Lorenzo had a passion for riding-horses, hunters, and racers. Presents, purchases, and borrowing of horses occur over and over again in his correspondence. In October 1488 he bought twenty mares at Naples, and only a short time before his death horses for him were on their way from Egypt and the coast of Barbary.[443]The taste of the Florentines for horse-racing, with or without riders, and for which even in those days there were regular horse-lenders, has been preserved down to our own time; in the house of the Alessandri is shown a room whose walls are entirely covered with brocades won as prizes by a horse belonging to the family. Lorenzo always kept race-horses; one in particular, called Morello from its dark colour, always came off victorious, and was so attached to its master that it showed signs of illness when he did not feed it with his own hand, and testified its joy at his approach by stamping and loud neighing.[444]In his young days a handsome Sicilian horse was presented to him, and its value was outdone by that of the presents he gave in return. He himself made presents of horses. In November 1479, when he was particularly anxious to keep on good terms with Lodovico il Moro, he sent to Roberto Sanseverino, who was at that time a confidant of the Moro, a fine horse and a falcon.[445]Letters about their horses passed between Lorenzo and King Ferrante, the Este family, the Sforzas of Pesaro, and others. In January 1473 the king thanked Lorenzo for the gift of a horse about which his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli, had written to him. Four years after he announced that he was sending Lorenzo two racers, a Sicilian and another, from his own stud, and two hunters, as tokens of his attachment. Horses of the king’s, lent for the Florentine races, were on their way at the time of the Pazzi catastrophe.[446]It was, moreover, the custom to send horsesto allied nobles and cities, to keep them for the races; those of the Medici went to both Ferrara and Lucca. When Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro was going to be married to Maddalena Gonzaga at the end of the summer of 1489, he begged Lorenzo to lend him one of his horses for the tournament to be held on the occasion. In Lorenzo’s latter years his eldest son had the direction of the stables.[447]

Lorenzo has left in his pretty and cheerful description of the hawking-party a graceful memorial of his love of the sport. Hawking was an old pastime always in great favour with princes and nobles. Dante’s master, Brunetto Latini, mentions in his ‘Treasury’ seven species of falcons which served for the chase. Two contemporaries of Lorenzo paid special attention to the training of these birds: the King of Naples, who imported the best falcons from Rhodes with the permission of the grand-master of the Hospitallers, and Ercole d’Este, to whom Lorenzo gave leave to catch the birds on his estates in the Pisan territory. In return for this the duke sent to Lorenzo some of his own well-trained falcons for the purpose of the chase or to help in training his wild ones, and the king several times made him presents of hawks, as he did also to Maximilian of Austria, Ferdinand of Castile, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and others.[448]The wide, well-wooded and watered plain of Pisa, and the lowlands and hills round Poggio a Cajano, were the scenes of the chase. On December 1, 1475, Angelo Poliziano, who was seldom absent from either studies or sports, wrote from Pisa to Madonna Clarice, then expecting her confinement (the child was afterwards Pope Leo):[449]‘Yesterday we went hawking. It was windyand we were unlucky, for we lost Pilato’s falcon called Mantovano. To-day we tried again, and again the wind was contrary; yet we had some fine flights, for Maestro Giorgio let loose his falcon, which returned obediently at a given signal. Lorenzo is quite in love with the bird, and not without justice, for Maestro Giorgio says he has never seen one larger or finer, and he hopes to make him the best falcon in the world. While we were in the field Pilato returned from the shore with the truant of yesterday, which redoubled Lorenzo’s pleasure. We are hawking from morning till night, and do nothing else. On Monday I hear our sport is to be varied by a deer-hunt.’

Independently of hunting, Lorenzo liked being in Pisa, and it was not his fault that the unfortunate city’s relations with Florence did not improve, and that she could not accustom herself to bear the position of a subject city. Even when not called there by business, he frequently stayed there. From his youth up he was in the habit of leaving Florence to meet friends for change, for hunting or to see after his great estate at Agnano. This place, first a fortress and then a villa round which had gathered a population of a few hundreds, lies on the western slope of the Monte San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa, near marshes which Valori says Lorenzo would have drained if he had lived longer, and which mostly are drained now. A large pine-wood forms part of the estate, which in Lorenzo’s days furnished a considerable quantity of corn and oil, and with other possessions in the Maremma of Pisa, at Colle Salvetti (now one of the stations on the railway which passes through the plain to Civita Vecchia), at Colmezzano, and other places, formed a most important part of the Medici landed property. Lorenzo’s letters bear testimony to the great care he took in the improvement of husbandry in this hitherto sadly neglected part. Like Spedaletto, Agnano passed to Maddalena Cybò; her son Lorenzo, who was not on very good terms with his wife—Ricciarda Malaspina, heiress of Massa and Carrara—endedhis days there in 1549.[450]After Lorenzo had re-established the University of Pisa, its interests frequently called him to the city. During the disastrous fight for Sarzana he made Pisa a sort of head-quarters. The house then inhabited by the Medici, now belonging to the Pieracchi family, stands not far from the upper bridge over the Arno—the Ponte della Fortezza—on the right bank, near the church of San Matteo. Here is said to have occurred, seventy years after Lorenzo’s death, that domestic tragedy which has never been cleared up, and which casts a dark shadow over the history of the first Medicean grand-duke.

In Lorenzo’s days the house was more cheerful. Here, probably, was the scene of his discourse with Federigo of Aragon on Italian poetry; here he passed some pleasant days in April 1476. He came by San Miniato, where a halt was always made, with six-and-twenty horses. ‘We rode along,’ wrote Poliziano to Clarice,[451]‘singing, and sometimes talking theology in order not to forget this season of fasting; Lorenzo was triumphant. At San Miniato we tried to read some of St. Augustine, but the reading was soon exchanged for music and for polishing up a figure of a dancer which we found there.’ There was no lack of merriment and jesting wherever Lorenzo went; the Pisan students found him a ready supporter of their carnaval gaieties, at which they were permitted to take away the instruction-books from the professors and to spend on festivities the money paid to ransom them. The attribution to Lorenzo of the combat on the middle bridge over the Arno (Giuoco del Ponte), at which the ground was disputed between armed bands on either side, and which was forbidden by the Grand-Duke Leopold I. on account of its fatal episodes, is a mistake; traces of it may be found in much earlier times.

It was in Pisa, at the end of May 1477, that Lorenzoreceived Eleonora of Aragon, wife of Duke Ercole of Ferrara; she had come by way of Lucca to attend her father’s marriage at Naples, whither she was conveyed by a royal fleet which had anchored at Livorno.[452]As long as Filippo de’ Medici was Archbishop of Pisa, and his brother Tanai dwelt there, there was no lack of grand hospitality; Luigi Pulci mentions the festivities during the presence of the Duke of Calabria in the war of Colleone.[453]Other than cheerful purposes called Lorenzo to Pisa. He sought in its mild air relief from physical sufferings; as in the autumn of 1474, after being cured of fever by the waters of Porretta. He stopped at Pisa, at a critical moment of his life, before embarking for Naples. In the little church of Sta. Maria della Spina, whose spires and pinnacles are seen adjoining the quay on the south shore, in 1485 he ordered for the victims of the Sarzana struggle requiems to be sung, at which he was present together with the widow of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, who had met his death in the unhealthy air of the Lunigiana coast.[454]

Lorenzo’s visits to the baths played a great part in his life, though they never took him beyond the borders of Tuscany. Gout was hereditary in his family; his grandfather, his father, and his uncle all suffered from it, and his mother too was not exempt. When only twenty-six he was obliged to take the waters of Porretta, which still attract so many invalids to the valley of the Reno in the Apennines, on the road between Pistoja and Bologna. His most frequent resort was Bagno a Morba, where Madonna Lucrezia had a house and stayed frequently, and in his latter years he had the water sent to Spedaletto. Most of the Tuscan baths were anything but inviting; some are not more so now. In the Roman territory they are still worse; SerMatteo Franco, describing the baths of Stigliano near the lake of Bracciano, remarks that in comparison with this place Bagno a Morba was a Careggi. Lorenzo tried other medicinal waters. In the autumn of 1484, after the taking of Pietrasanta, he went to the baths of San Filippo in the Sienese country. These remarkable thermal springs are reached by turning out of the old Roman high-road at the little village of Ricorsi, at the foot of the inhospitable height of Radicofani, and proceeding through the valley of the Orcia towards the stately group of Mont’Amiata, covered throughout its 5,000 feet of height with chestnuts and beeches, and surrounded with a girdle of villages. The springs lie in a deep ravine encircled with woods; a precipitate of carbonic acid and lime forms a marble-like crust, and the waters are an efficacious remedy for arthritic disorders as well as for skin-diseases. It is a desolate place, with only a few houses destined for the reception of invalids, in the narrow valley where oppressive heat alternates with a damp cold atmosphere. In autumn of the following year, and several times afterwards, Lorenzo came again. In the spring of 1490 he spent some time at the baths of Vignone in the same valley of the Orcia, a little southwards of San Quirico. Powerful thermal springs, similar to those mentioned above, issue from a travertine hill in the middle of the village, and fill a large basin; they were known in Roman times. Here Ermolao Barbaro visited Lorenzo, and Franceschetto Cybò and his wife kept him company; at that season the place was safe, but in summer the air can hardly be borne even by natives. Lorenzo’s stay at Filetto in the valley of the Merse has already been mentioned. All these water-cures only gave temporary relief to his malady, and the short time he usually devoted to them would have prevented any lasting result even if his maladies had been less rooted and less complicated. Besides, even after his health had suffered considerably, his mode of life was not exactly regular. He not only exerted himself too much in attendingto business of all kinds, public and private, which poured in upon him surrounded as he was by many cares, but he was always involved in love intrigues. Bartolommea de’ Nasi, the wife of Donato Benci, held him in her chains for years; she was neither young nor beautiful, but graceful and attractive. Even in winter he would ride out in the evening to her villa to be back in the city before daybreak. Two confidants, Luigi della Stufa and Andrea de’ Medici, were his usual companions. They got tired of it, and their remarks came to the ears of the lady; whereupon she managed to have them punished by being sent off on diplomatic errands, the one to Cairo and the other to Constantinople—an old and well-worn contrivance which, in this case, caused a sensation of a nature not very favourable to the great man, ‘who behaved himself like an inexperienced youth.’[455]

The princely dignity which Lorenzo enjoyed was as apparent in his relations with foreign rulers as in his position in his own country, in his own house, and in his journeys. The former have been repeatedly mentioned. Everyone made use of him; everyone applied to him; everyone gave him thanks and presents, from antiquities down to sweet-smelling essences, which the Duchess of Calabria sent him. He sent his friends and acquaintances presents of books, works of art, horses, wine, and other things. In June 1489 he presented a vase full of balm to Anne de Beaujeu, ‘Madama di Belgiù.’ Venison and fish seem to have been favourite gifts on the part of communities and individuals; on one day five wild boars were taken to Lorenzo’s house.

A great event, which has left its trace in the history of art by a representation in a fresco at Poggio a Cajano, was an embassy from Abu Nasr Kaitbei, Sultan of Egypt, or of Babylonia as he was called, which arrived at Florence on November 11, 1487, and was honourably and joyfully receivedby the foreign ambassadors and many of the citizens.[456]It was a fortunate time for the Republic, which had a few months before got rid of the dreary affair of Sarzana, and had now entered on a period of comparative peace which was not disturbed till the revolution of 1494. Italian affairs were of considerable importance to the Egyptian sultan, not only on account of commerce but also politically, on account of his relations with Naples and Venice; difficulties with this latter state might easily have been created by the sultan’s claims to the suzerainty of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro continued to reign as a queen of shadows till 1489, under the protection of Venice. The sultan’s eyes often turned towards the west as the progress of the Osmanli threatened an attack on the loosely connected empire of the Mamelukes, which, indeed, fell before their better-compacted power within less than thirty years. After the subjection of Pisa, Florence had frequent commercial relations with Egypt, and a desire to enlarge and secure its privileges gave rise to negotiations for which an Egyptian ambassador named Malphet came to Florence in 1487, and in the following year a Florentine, the aforesaid Luigi della Stufa, went to Cairo.[457]The former was sent at once to the Signoria of the Republic and to the ‘Hakim’ (lord) Lorenzo de’ Medici, and brought rich presents for both. On Sunday, November 18, he had a solemn audience of the Signoria in presence of many of the chief citizens. He had led before him a giraffe and a tame lion, gifts from the sultan. The giraffe was no novelty to the Florentines, for one had been already seen at the festivals with which the visit of Pius II. was celebrated; and the lion, the emblem of the commonwealth, was always carefully kept here, alive as well as in effigy. A street behind the palace of the Signoria took its name from thelion-cage, afterwards removed to the square of San Marco. A Sicilian interpreter translated the conversation, which turned on the privileges offered to the Florentines in Egypt and Syria. For Lorenzo the ambassador brought gifts of various kinds: an Arabian horse, rare animals, among which were rams and sheep of various colours, with long hanging ears and tails; several horns of civet, a lamp with balsam, a quantity of aloe-wood, beautiful many coloured porcelain such as had never before been seen, vases of preserves, and rich and finely woven silk and linen stuffs.[458]There was a great festival in the Medici household when all these rarities were brought home; Madonna Clarice was absent, being then at Rome with Maddalena. Among Lorenzo’s gifts to the sultan is mentioned a bed, carried by a special messenger.

Whenever Lorenzo went to the baths or left home for any purpose, he was everywhere received like a prince. The municipalities within the Florentine dominions were accustomed to send yearly presents to the capital on certain feasts, and they did not neglect to send offerings to the head of the Republic. After the fashion of the times these gifts usually consisted of provisions and goods for the house. When Lorenzo was expected, early in 1485, at San Gemignano, on his way to Bagno a Morba, but took another route, the municipality, which had voted 100 lire for his reception, sent to Morba a load of Greek wine, capons, marchpane and wax.[459]The Signoria of Siena, though they had not a few complaints against Lorenzo, honoured him in a similar manner when he was in their territory. During his stay at Vignone they sent ample provisions for his table.[460]His suite was unusually numerous. A list of the persons he once took with him to Morba[461]names the following: a chaplain,Filippo (Ubaldini) da Gagliano, Francesco degli Organi (Squarcialupi), a house-steward, two chancellors (secretaries), two singers, Bertoldo the sculptor, a barber, two valets, a butler, five crossbowmen, ten grooms, an equerry, a cook, a kitchen-boy, and a coachman. For these thirty-two persons fourteen beds were required. His family, too, when they travelled without him, were everywhere received in the most distinguished manner possible. A letter of their faithful, cheerful friend, Matteo Franco, gives a lively sketch of a journey on horseback made by Clarice in May 1485, from Morba, where she had been with her husband, through the Volterra district and the Elsa valley to Florence. At all the places where she stopped, especially at Colle, where the first halt for sleeping was made (the second was at Passignano, where stood the great abbey given to Giovanni de’ Medici), everybody was astir; yet friendly intercourse was combined with a ceremonious reception.

Whether in town, in the country, or on a journey, Lorenzo was always surrounded by friends, whose names are inseparable from his. Most of them have become known in the course of this history; various characters, of whom more than one may be differently judged, according to whether we view them in private life and in their confidential relations, or as public men, authors or otherwise. First come those who were the guides of his youth or whom he knew in his father’s house; Gentile Becchi, who remained a member of the Medicean household even after his appointment to the see of Arezzo, as bishops were not required to reside too strictly; Ficino, Landino, and Poliziano. Then those who, having been friends of his parents, attached themselves to him in his youth and manhood; or those who first came in contact with him in his mature years; Luigi Pulci, Matteo Franco, Bartolommeo Scala, Pico della Mirandola—besides those who were drawn to him by political and allied interests, and who zealously served him and, in his sense of the word, the State, without forgetting themselves. On each and allLorenzo had a deep and lasting influence; he was the centre around which all revolved, the link that bound all together, however much a few of the disaffected ones might try to fight against it. Their attachment to him was not forced or selfish; the affection expressed in Pulci’s letters and Poliziano’s verses had nothing artificial about it. Lorenzo was a genial man, cordial and kind, a born prince, simple and natural. In his intercourse with the scholars and artists who were in some sense dependent on him, the relation of patron and client was forgotten. Their letters to him, grave and gay, are proofs of their confidence and intimacy. If they address him as ‘Magnifico,’ they soon follow it up with a plain ‘Lorenzo.’ In the midst of the war-troubles of 1479, Donatello’s pupil Bertoldo wrote Lorenzo a letter full of fun, to the effect that it was more profitable to be a cook than an artist;[462]and the famous Niccolò Grosso, called Caparra, in reality a blacksmith, but who executed works of art, would not fulfil Lorenzo’s orders till he had executed others he had received first.[463]How entirely constraint was banished in intercourse with him is shown by his conversation with the mosaic-worker Graffione, a pupil of Baldovinetti. Lorenzo once said he would like to adorn the inside of the dome of the Cathedral with mosaics. ‘For that you could not get masters,’ replied Graffione. ‘We have money enough to get masters,’ was the probably half-jesting answer. ‘Eh, Lorenzo,’ exclaimed the artist, ‘it is not the money that procures the masters, but the masters who procure the money!’ He bore with their humours and oddities; he honoured them living and dead, feeling that their fame would add to his own. Had he done nothing for art beyond the cordial and almost fatherly reception which he, a powerful and much-envied man of mature years, gave to Michelangelo when the latter was almost in his boyhood, that alone would make his memory illustrious. On his death-bedhe desired once more to see the friends in whose society he had passed his happiest hours, and whose attachment followed him beyond the grave.

Notwithstanding many disturbances caused by political events, increasing bad health, and several deaths in the family, still life was cheerful in the Medici household. Music was a daily pleasure. Lorenzo’s poetical talents attached him to this art, and his unmusical voice did not hinder him from taking a part in singing. Marsilio relates that he did so at a social gathering which apparently took its name ofLa Mammola(the Violet) from a still existing hostelry. Thus, too, one evening, when he was singing the mysteries of love, he originated a discussion as to whether subjects in which mourning occurred were appropriate, which Ficino decided in the affirmative.[464]In his poetical productions he reckoned much on musical effect, a necessary condition of songs for dancing and for the carnaval. As long as his health permitted he was never absent from the merry processions at which popular melodies alternated with those of Heinrich Isaak; and on journeys, at the May-festivals and other times of gaiety there was no lack of musical accompaniments to the verses of Poliziano and other friends. Although from Guido Aretino down to the father of Galileo, Tuscany produced no remarkable composer or writer on music, yet the people were always musical. Ficino was doubly welcome when he appeared with his plectrum, after the pattern of the earliest half-deified apostles of Greek culture, to secure a better reception for ancient philosophy by his strains delighting the ear and winning the heart. As in Poliziano’s ‘Orpheus,’ Baccio Ugolini accompanied on the lyre the ode in praise of Cardinal Gonzaga, so did Marsilio when extemporising, in which art he was a master.

One of Lorenzo’s protégés was the organ-builder Antonio Squarcialupi, who, as a precentor, had been a familiar of thehouse in Piero’s time. His life and conversation seem not to have been blameless; but Lorenzo took him under his protection for the sake of his uncommon talent. ‘If you knew,’ he said once to those who blamed him, ‘what it is to attain perfection in anything, you would judge him more gently and modestly.’[465]Squarcialupi set to music many of the songs of his patron, who, it is said, composed the inscription for his tomb. To the friendship of the Medici he owed the epigram in which Poliziano called upon Florence to honour with a marble monument him who had long been the voice of her temple.[466]The man really must have possessed rare artistic merits; for a son of the Count of Altavilla—one of the guests at the Salutati banquet—came to Florence with an introduction from King Ferrante to Lorenzo, to study the organ and other instruments under Squarcialupi; and ten years later a clergyman named Stephen came from Ofen, with a recommendation from Matthias Corvinus, to learn organ-building.[467]In 1477 a lute-player of Lodovico Sforza’s suite came to Florence to be heard by the famous master.[468]Organ-building, as well as organ-playing, was a somewhat rare art. The difficulty of finding good masters is shown by the trouble and loss of time caused in Cosimo’s days to the committee entrusted with the building of the Cathedral, through the untrustworthiness of Matteo da Prato, who had undertaken to furnish the new organs, to be decorated by Donatello and Luca della Robbia. Lorenzo took great interest in this branch of music. Many of his letters relate to organists recommended by him to various Tuscan towns, or sent from one place to another. At his death there were in his house no less than five organs; one large one with a finely-carved wooden case, the rest smaller, partly metal, partly paste-board, which was then used for these instruments.[469]Musicians were included among the servants; and in the evenings there was singing and playing on the lute. Michelangelo in his later years used to tell of a man who was called theCardiere, and who was a great favourite with Lorenzo on account of his wonderful talent for improvising songs to an instrumental accompaniment.[470]Lorenzo also looked after the musical education of his children. ‘The evening before last,’ wrote Poliziano to him at Bagno a Morba on June 5, 1490,[471]‘I unexpectedly heard our Piero sing, and then he and his companions came to my room. He pleased me exceedingly, especially in the motetts and answers to the strophes, and also by his charms of articulation. I felt as if I were listening to your Magnificence.’ Leo X. had through life a true passion for music and improvisation. As a cardinal, his palace near Sant’Eustachio (Palazzo Madama) continually resounded with instruments and singing; and in the Vatican music and poetry vied with each other, and both improvisers and musicians made their fortunes with the Pope.

It is needless to repeat how closely poetry was intertwined with the life of the Medici. The taste for it was hereditary. Cosimo the elder, Lorenzo, his brother Giuliano, all wrote poetry; so did the younger Piero and others of the family. As a child Lorenzo’s daughter Lucrezia knew by heart the spiritual songs of her grandmother;[472]and the songs of the ‘Morgante’ were first heard in the Medici house when Lucrezia Tornabuoni took part in them. Many of Poliziano’s poems were evidently intended to be recited to his patron; and when he relates in a letter[473]how one asked him for sermons for the brotherhoods, another for carnaval songs, one wanted sentimental songs for the viola, another gayserenades, it is probable that he referred to members of the society he met in the house of the Medici. One can fancy Pulci and Matteo Franco sending satirical shafts in the form of sonnets at each other across the table. In the ‘Beoni’ and ‘Nencia,’ evidently intended for gay meetings, Lorenzo himself gave the signal for poetical entertainments and contests; Pulci once answered him with the ‘Beca da Dicomano.’ The poetic gifts of his eldest son are displayed in the latter’s productions; the verses written by him in exile show more depth of feeling than one would have given him credit for. In his youth, at least, his contemporaries seem to have judged him favourably. In a sonnet of Antonio da Pistoja on the poets of the time, both Piero and his father are mentioned, and the praise bestowed on them gains weight from the fact that Poliziano alone is placed above them:—

Who among Tuscans doth in verse excel?In vulgar tongue? Aye, and in Latin speech.Lorenzo and his son write passing well,But neither can Politian’s glory reach.[474]

Piero’s letters to his father, on literary and other subjects, display sound judgment, information, and lively interest. His boyish letters, indeed, are of little consequence; and when, as a lad of fourteen, he writes from the villa to his father at San Filippo, giving an account of his own studies and those of his brother Giovanni, with whom he was reading Virgil’s Bucolics, thereby, as he said, gaining double profit,[475]his master’s hand is clearly traceable. But there are other letters worthy of consideration, such as that on the visit of Ermolao Barbaro. Although Poliziano’s descriptions of his pupil and of the young Cardinal Giovanni lose much of their effect and even spoil their subjects by exaggeration, yet it cannot be disputed that Lorenzo’s eldest son, though he did notpossess his father’s prudence and calculation (a want which may perhaps be explained and excused by the degree of splendour, fortune, and grandeur at which Lorenzo left the personal government in his hands), yet did possess many of his intellectual qualities. The time during which he continued to hold the government was too short and too much disturbed by preludes of the coming storm to furnish premisses for a decisive judgment of him; neither can such a judgment be fairly founded on his conduct in exile, which may be mistaken even by the keenest eye.

Piero’s wife can hardly have had a good influence on him. Alfonsina Orsini was infinitely less fitted than her mother-in-law for Florentine life and manners. In her nature the pride of the Roman barons seems to have been combined with covetousness and hardness, whereby she made herself very much disliked in later years, when her brother-in-law was Pope and she was a great deal in Rome, where she died in 1520. Her husband’s three sisters, Lucrezia, Maddalena, and Contessina, the wife of Piero Ridolfi, were frequently at their father’s house. Maddalena, whose daughter Lucrezia was born at Rome early in 1490, became at Florence, on August 24 of the following year, the mother of a son who was christened Innocenzo after the Pope, received the red hat from Leo X., and, with his cousins Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, played some part in Florence after the murder of the first duke. All three sisters afterwards attached themselves to the court of Leo X. in a way which threw no favourable light on his financial arrangements; and the influence of Lucrezia, doubtless the most highly gifted of the three, lasted beyond her brother’s lifetime throughout the whole reign of her cousin Clement VII., with whom her husband, Jacopo Salviati (father of the cardinal), was very intimate, till the Pope’s proceedings in 1529 against the city of his fathers estranged the relatives. In one of Ariosto’s satires, invaluable for a study of the manners and general circumstances of the early years of the sixteenth century, heintroduces Lorenzo’s posterity and their friends rejoicing at the elevation of Leo X.,—a rejoicing destined to be of short duration.[476]There were numerous other members of the family, rich and poor, nearly and distantly connected. The nearest branch was, of course, that descended from Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo, whose chief representative at this time was the oft-mentioned Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco. One of those admitted to the closest intimacy was a distant cousin, Andrea. As long as the daughters remained at home Lorenzo insisted on their dressing modestly and simply, in conformity to the sumptuary laws. Certain materials he never would allow them, because they resembled the forbidden crimson cloth, although many other grand ladies wore them without scruple. He himself was never distinguished from other citizens in outward apparel. In winter he wore a violet mantle with a hood, and in summer thelucco: the long red robe of the upper class of citizens, still the usual dress of the magistrates. It is mentioned that he got Venetian silk for his dress. To elderly people he always offered his hand and gave the place of honour, and what he taught his sons he first followed himself.

Lorenzo’s observations generally were very pointed without falling into the sarcasm of his grandfather. When the Sienese jurist Bartolommeo Sozzini repeated the old reproach against the air of Florence that it was bad for the sight (‘An ancient saying calls her people blind’) before Lorenzo, who suffered from weak eyes, Lorenzo replied that the air of Siena was worse still; it was bad for the brains. When the same man, having broken his plighted word in leaving Pisa secretly, on being caught and imprisoned complained of the punishment as unbecoming his position, Lorenzo answered that the dishonour was not in the punishment but in the unworthy action. He said of those who built recklessly that they were buying repentance dear; and when his cousinPier Francesco, having begun at Majano a building which he kept on altering as the work proceeded, complained that the expense far exceeded the estimate, he exclaimed: ‘No wonder; others build according to their plans, you make your plans after the building.’ When Carlo de’ Medici, who seems not to have been over-nice in his methods of getting money, boasted of the quantity of water round his villa, Lorenzo remarked that he would have to keep his hands all the cleaner. That he also had a turn for practical joking, which, as has been seen, was an ingredient in Florentine life, is shown by the history of the troublesome parasitical doctor Maestro Manente, whom he caused to be taken one evening, when drunk, by two men in disguise, and shut up in a place unknown to him outside the city, and given out for dead. When the supposed dead man at last got home, his wife, who took him for a ghost, would not let him in till the enchantment of which he was supposed to have been the victim was cleared up by the intervention of others.[477]This trick evidently recalls the story of the fat cabinet-maker.

In a letter to Lodovico Odasio, Poliziano has left a description of his patron and friend in graver conversation.[478]‘Think not that any one of our learned brethren, even those whose very life’s work is study, can surpass Lorenzo de’ Medici in acuteness of disputation and in formulating a conclusion; or that he is inferior to anyone in the easy, graceful, and varied expression of his ideas. Historical examples occur to him as readily as to the most accomplished of his companions; and whenever the subject of the discourse admits of it, his conversation is richly seasoned with the salt of the ocean from which Venus rose.’ Poliziano, the confidential friend of the house, who was never absent either from the literary symposia or from the narrower circle of friends, in time of joy or in time of mourning, understoodLorenzo thoroughly, and his judgment may be accepted. Many of Lorenzo’s sayings have been preserved which bear witness to the soundness of his judgment, or in some way reflect credit on him. He said once: ‘As a healthy body resists the influence of a storm, so a state can brave dangers when the citizens are of one mind.’ When Filippo Valori (brother of his biographer) was desirous but yet afraid to try to reconcile Lorenzo with Antonio Tebalducci, against whom the latter had grounds for complaint, Lorenzo said to him: ‘To recommend a friend to me would be no merit, but for making an opponent my friend I thank thee, and I beg thee to do it again in the like case.[479]Only he who knows how to forgive knows how to conquer,’ he added.[480]The combination of prince and citizen, statesman and man of letters; the mixture of gravity and gaiety, of lofty intellect and cheerful participation in everyday life, of grandeur and simplicity in his household and family, of sagacious calculation and hearty unfeigned good nature,—all this makes Lorenzo de’ Medici an unusual figure, very attractive in its individuality, and accounts for the impression he made on all; especially, and most lastingly, on those who were intimate at his house and had the opportunity of observing him in private.

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