Magnifico (14 page)

Luca Pitti’s emergence as the leading exponent of reform must have come as a surprise to any Florentine who had followed his career. Only seven years earlier he had been vilified for the harsh methods he had used to push through legislation that strengthened the controls of the Medici regime. Like most of those now in opposition to Piero, Pitti had been willing to do Cosimo’s bidding, but his pride would not allow him to place himself under the authority of his son. This was a generational as much as an ideological conflict, pitting those who felt that they had earned the right to succession through their long years of loyal service to Cosimo against Cosimo’s natural heirs.

For all his sudden celebrity, however, Pitti could not command the affection of his followers or inspire trust in his compatriots. His main attribute, embodied in his ostentatious palace, was a vanity ill suited to one who claimed to speak for the rights of the ordinary citizen. Cosimo summed up the difference between the two men during the last years of his life, when the two former allies had begun to grow apart. “You raise your ladder to the heavens,” he observed, “while I rest mine upon earth lest I should mount so high that I may fall. Now it seems to me only just and honest that I should prefer the good name and honor of my house to you: that I should work for my own interest rather than for yours. So you and I will act like two big dogs who, when they meet, smell one another and then, because they both have teeth, go their ways.”

Now in his seventies, with hollow cheeks and the sharp profile of a bird of prey, Pitti had been one of Cosimo’s most effective lieutenants, though, according to Guicciardini, he prospered in Medici Florence only because “he had not sufficient brains that Cosimo need fear him.” In the summer of 1458, when the government was besieged by reformers who wished to abolish the electoral controls that ensured the dominance of the regime, it was Pitti, then serving his two-month term as
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia,
who led the pro-Medici reaction. At the time, according to Parenti, he was “a man entirely devoted to Cosimo.”

Since Cosimo’s death, however, Pitti had been angling for the top position in the
reggimento,
and those electoral controls that had appeared to him so necessary only a few years back were viewed in a different light now that they favored Piero at Pitti’s expense. Pitti’s leadership of the anti-Medici faction was confirmed in May when his signature appeared prominently atop an oath signed by four hundred of his fellow citizens pledging to work toward democratic reforms. One of its stated goals was to ensure that “[a]ll the affairs of the commune should be conducted in the Palace of the Priors,” an attack directed at the sickly Piero, who, even more than his father, was accustomed to doing the government’s business in his private chambers.
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Both Neroni and Acciaiuoli were content to let Pitti serve as the public face of the rebellion precisely because, as Guicciardini noted, he posed no long-term threat to their own ambitions: “Thinking that
Messer
Luca Pitti, with his strong following, would be a useful instrument, they entered into negotiations and convinced him that they would make him head of the city—though they are said to have agreed among themselves that as soon as they had deposed Piero they would also get rid of
Messer
Luca. That much, they thought, would be easy, since he was not a very capable man.” Marco Parenti, who knew him well, shared their low opinion of Pitti, judging both Acciaiuoli and Neroni “superior in prudence.”

Agnolo Acciaiuoli, like the other leaders of the Hill, was driven to oppose Piero out of motives that were at least as much personal as ideological. At one time Cosimo had counted him among his closest friends. Their affection was based on a mutual passion for classical literature and philosophy that they had both discovered while young men attending learned discussions in the garden of Santa Maria degli Angeli conducted by the great humanist scholar Ambrogio Traversari. Acciaiuoli’s attachment to Cosimo was genuine and cost him dearly when the Albizzi government banished them both in 1433. Having demonstrated his loyalty in this most trying time, Acciaiuoli soon reaped his reward. The following year he returned to Florence in triumph with Cosimo, quickly rising to a place of prominence within the highest circles of the regime.

For all his skill and erudition, there seems to have been a streak of naïveté in Acciaiuoli that allowed his passions to overrule his better judgment. This naïveté was compounded by the fact that over the years he spent much of his time abroad on important missions for the government, and was therefore ill equipped to engage in the sort of intrigues that were a perpetual feature of Florentine political life. “Now Agnolo had been absent from Florence for a long time,” Vespesiano da Bisticci explained, and “he did not realize the treachery of the democracy of the city so, being strongly importuned, he cast in his lot with
Messer
Luca.”

But Acciaiuoli was not just the dupe of shrewder and more violent men; he had his own reasons for wishing to rid the city of the Medici. Vespesiano da Bisticci traces his estrangement from his old friend to Cosimo’s attempts to block the appointment of Agnolo’s son Lorenzo as archbishop of Pisa in order that he might promote his own kinsman, Filippo de’ Medici, for the job. Though Lorenzo was given as consolation the less prestigious bishopric of Arezzo, Agnolo resented Cosimo’s behind-the-scenes maneuvering.

It was a second betrayal, however, that turned the friends into bitter enemies. When the young Alessandra de’ Bardi wed Acciaiuoli’s son Raffaello, she brought with her the prestige of the ancient Bardi name (Cosimo himself was married to Contessina de’ Bardi) as well as a substantial dowry. Marriages between leading merchant families carried important political and financial ramifications, and though love rarely entered into the equation, this marriage proved more than usually unhappy. Shortly after the wedding Alessandra began complaining to her relatives of abuse at the hands of Raffaello. The complaints grew so persistent that the Bardi dispatched a band of armed men, who showed up at the Acciaiuoli palace in the dead of night to rescue the long-suffering bride. Agnolo, if not Raffaello, might have reconciled himself to the loss of the Bardi girl, but to return the dowry would entail not only financial loss but would constitute a permanent stain on the family escutcheon. Cosimo, whether out of a sense of fair play or out of political calculation, ultimately intervened in favor of the Bardi. Agnolo, already less than pleased by Cosimo’s neglect of his family’s interests, saw this as an unforgivable breach of friendship, and from that moment he worked to take his revenge against the family that had wronged him.

Though all the leaders of the Hill were motivated in part by personal grievances, it would be a mistake to dismiss the revolt as simply the work of a few disgruntled men driven by greed and ambition. Whatever motivated the break, they had tapped into a genuine current of discontent. Few would deny that Cosimo had led the city wisely, but even his loyal supporters acknowledged that his unprecedented power had come at the expense of the traditional prerogatives of the Florentine upper classes. To concede the same authority to his son would be to admit that republican government had been replaced by dynastic rule. With Cosimo in the grave, Piero laid low by illness, and Lorenzo not yet grown, the traditional ruling class saw this moment as perhaps the final opportunity to reclaim its ancient status.

Among those now frequenting Luca Pitti’s doorstep was Niccolò Soderini. From the moment his government left office—to the accompaniment of celebratory bonfires in the Piazza della
Signoria
and graffiti on the
Palazzo
declaring “Nine fools out”—Soderini redoubled his efforts to bring about a change of regime, his hatred for Piero sharpened by the Medici’s behind-the-scenes role in his recent disgrace. To accomplish his goal he would need to mend fences with his former allies. Soderini’s task was made considerably easier by the fact that since his disastrous tenure as
Gonfaloniere
Piero had once again emerged as the chief threat to their collective ambitions. Sometime between December of 1465 and May of 1466, Soderini and the other dissidents ironed out past differences and forged an alliance powerful enough to bring about Piero’s downfall.

By the winter of 1465–66, Florence was a city divided and all signs indicated that a violent confrontation was imminent. Both Hill and Plain were hurriedly organizing militias in the countryside around Florence and urging foreign powers to intervene on their behalf as soon as the fighting broke out.
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These preparations generated their own momentum as an escalation on one side was met by an equal or greater response by the other. Each faction could plausibly claim, and probably sincerely believed, that in calling their partisans to arms they were merely responding to the provocations of their opponents.

The mood of the city was not improved by a disastrous January flood that left the entire quarter of Santa Croce under six feet of water or by the lingering effects of the economic downturn that had begun in the months following Cosimo’s death. In February of 1466, in an atmosphere of growing crisis, Lorenzo set out on another vital diplomatic mission, this time to meet with the two great leaders of southern Italy—the pope and the king of Naples. Piero’s willingness to be without Lorenzo at this critical juncture is one more indication of the decisive role that foreign powers were expected to play in the looming political contest. Marco Parenti reported to Filippo Strozzi in Naples, “everyone knows that Florence has turned towards Venice,” citing “a secret agreement among Luca Pitti, Agnolo Acciaiuoli, and Dietisalvi Neroni…intended to counter Piero de’ Medici.”

Under the circumstances it was important to bring on board or at least neutralize the two southern powers, neither of whom had firmly committed to either side. In each case the Medici had cause for concern. The current pope, Paul II, was Venetian-born and was inclined to favor his hometown as long as its interests did not clash with those of the Holy See. His suspicions of Florence had been aroused when it signed the tripartite treaty with Milan and Naples, which he believed, not without reason, was aimed in part at containing papal ambitions in central Italy. As for Naples, Ferrante had proven himself an unreliable and unpredictable ally. His treacherous murder the year before of the mercenary captain Iacopo Piccinino, Francesco Sforza’s son-in-law, had thrown the whole structure of alliances into doubt.
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An additional cause of concern was that Ferrante’s finances were largely in the hands of the Acciaiuoli family, which had ancient ties to the southern realm. Agnolo’s son, Jacopo, had long enjoyed the confidence of the king, a position he was now using to undermine his Florentine rivals.

The gravity of the mission can be gauged by the company Lorenzo kept, which included not only his tutor, Gentile Becchi, who could be expected to keep his young charge focused, but the battle-tested
condottiere
Roberto Malatesta. Absent were the boisterous companions who so often accompanied Lorenzo on his voyages. Among those left behind was Luigi Pulci, who complained, “So you intend, finally, to leave me in these snow-bound woods, alone and unhappy, while you go to Rome. When shall I join you? when I am old?…How many times have we thought of Rome, and how I should be at your side.”

Another purpose of this southern journey was to round out Lorenzo’s education as a budding merchant prince and statesman. While the trip to Milan had taken him to the source of Medici political power, the Roman journey brought him to the heart of his family’s business empire. Since the days of Giovanni di Bicci, Lorenzo’s great-grandfather, the Medici bank’s most lucrative business had been managing the finances of the papal curia. Nurturing good relations with whoever occupied the throne of St. Peter was thus of vital importance to maintaining a sound fiscal footing. While in Rome, the most pressing task for Lorenzo was to obtain the pope’s signature on a contract naming the Medici bank sole distributors of alum from the papal mines at Tolfa, a deal Piero hoped would pump much needed cash into the Medici coffers.
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Pope Paul had agreed in principle to hand over the concession in return for a portion of the proceeds, and Lorenzo was entrusted with finalizing the terms. Paul II’s willingness to expand his already substantial financial arrangements with the Medici bank was welcomed not only for the profits it would generate but as a public affirmation of his continued confidence. With the pope himself consigning his treasure to the Medici bank, who would not feel reassured doing business under the sign of the
palle
?