Magnifico (78 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Florentine bankers usually kept two sets of accounts, the public books where profits were minimized and liabilities were exaggerated, and a “secret book,” where the real accounting took place. Naturally it is to these latter that historians refer in reconstructing the economic history of the period. The existence of these secret books should make us skeptical of taking the
catasti,
or public tax statements, too literally.
The importance of Rome to the Medici can be seen in a comparison of profits from various branches for the years 1420–35 (in de Roover, table 11, chapter 3). Over those fifteen years the Roman branch made a profit of 117,037 florins, representing almost 63 percent of the total. By contrast the Florentine branch brought in less than 10 percent. The second most profitable branch was in Venice, followed closely by Geneva, but neither approached that of Rome. Over the course of the fifteenth century, as more branches were added in cities like Avignon, Pisa, Milan, and London, Rome declined in relative importance, but it still remained the critical piece of the Medici financial empire. From 1435 to 1450, profits from the Roman branch, 88,511 florins, still constituted 30 percent of the total (de Roover, table 17, chapter 3). Unlike most branches, where much of the capital was supplied by the partners of the bank, the Roman branch drew its funds from deposits by individual clerics and the papal treasury. In 1427, the deposits amounted to almost 100,000 florins, four times the amount in all the other branches combined (see de Roover,
The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank
chapter 5).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* Despite considerable contemporary evidence, some historians have tended to downplay or contradict the official version of what happened on August 27, 1466. The main disagreement comes over whether, as the Medici contended, the Hill precipitated the crisis by calling on Borso d’Este’s troops and attempting to seize Piero at Sant’Antonio del Vescovo, or, as their opponents claimed, the whole event was staged by the partisans of the Plain in order to crush the reform movement. A contemporary account of the plot is given by one Iacopo di Niccolò di Cocco Donati, a member of the
Signoria
that August, who declared that the conspirators “had arranged to assassinate [Piero] at Careggi” (Phillips, chapter 12). (It is Donati’s account, incidentally, that supplies the crucial detail that Piero had gone to his villa as part of an arrangement with Neroni.) Donati’s report offers crucial confirmation of the Medici version. Another contemporary account bolstering the Medici position comes from the diary of the apothecary Luca Landucci, a man whose testimony is all the more credible because he had no political ax to grind (see Landucci,
A Florentine Diary,
chapter 1). Also significant are the letters of the Milanese ambassador, who confirms the movements of Borso d’Este’s army, and Piero’s panicky call for troops to his friends and neighbors. The confession of Dietisalvi’s brother, Francesco (two versions of which are reproduced in Nicolai Rubinstein’s “La Confessione di Francesco Neroni e la congiura anti-Medicea del 1466,” Archivio Storico Italiano, 126, 1968), offers important testimony on the coordination between the leaders of the Hill and Borso d’Este. Francesco’s confession also confirms the basic outlines of the plot, though it differs on some of the details. The memoirs of Benedetto Dei also tend to support the Medici account (see his
Cronica,
especially 23v and 24r). For the other side see Marco Parenti’s
Ricordi Storici
. Parenti, though an ardent adherent of the Hill, had no access to the inner circle that planned the coup. His belief that the accusations against the leaders of his party were false was based on hope rather than fact. Lorenzo’s own later recollections are significant, if frustratingly vague. The subsequent behavior of the leaders of the Hill shows the plot to kill Piero to be thoroughly consistent with their characters. It is suggestive that the two great Florentine historians, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, writing within a few decades of the events, largely accepted the Medici version. Rubinstein is no doubt correct when he says, “Fear was probably the decisive element in the final crisis” (
The Government of Florence Under the Medici,
chapter 9). Both sides had built up foreign armies just outside Florentine territory, each believing it needed to act to forestall an invasion by the other. Under the circumstances, the pressure to steal the march on one’s opponents was great.

* Piero must have been confident indeed that he would have things his own way in the palace since the
Accoppiatori
had only recently been abolished. He might well have relished the irony that it was Pitti himself who led the fight to abolish the committee on which he now so desperately wished to serve.

* A holdover from the first days of the commune when government truly rested in the hands of all the citizens, a
parlamento
was called only in moments of greatest crisis and, though ostensibly the purest expression of Florentine democracy, every citizen knew it was an instrument of tyranny. Such an unwieldy mob was easily manipulated by those in power to achieve their ends.