Magnifico (7 page)

For centuries the youngest magus, Caspar, was assumed to be a portrait of the ten-year-old Lorenzo. The identification has a certain superficial plausibility. The young king’s head is framed by a laurel bush, a plant that was often used as the personal emblem of the Medici heir. Gozzoli, a master of fine detail, has embossed the harness of the king with the Medici
palle
and the family motto,
SEMPER
(always), and the king’s entourage includes portraits of Cosimo (riding a donkey), Piero, and important Medici allies like Galeazzo Maria Sforza (riding the white horse to Cosimo’s right).

But for all Piero’s pride in his son, it is unthinkable that he would have placed him in a position where both he and Cosimo would be seen as supporting players in Lorenzo’s triumphal procession. And the fair, angelic face of Caspar bears no resemblance to Lorenzo, who was, in any case, far too young to play the role. Gozzoli has indeed included a portrait of the ten-year-old Lorenzo, but in a far less prominent position. To find Lorenzo we must look further back, in the great crowd of faces following in the young king’s wake. There, the swarthy complexion and shrewd, sharp features are immediately recognizable, standing out from amid the sea of less individualized faces, including that of his handsome brother, Giuliano, on his left. In this, the earliest known portrait of Lorenzo, the features of the boy are already stamped with the strong personality of the adult.

For Cosimo the new palace served the practical need of accommodating the growing families of two married sons, but it also marked a significant realignment of the larger Medici clan. In the
casa vecchia
the descendants of Giovanni di Bicci had shared a home; they constituted a single lineage sprung from a common ancestor. Now with his own palace, built with his money and according to his tastes, Cosimo set himself up as the pater familias of his own independent dynasty. From this point on the two main branches descended from Giovanni di Bicci will go their separate ways.
*

By the time the Medici took possession of their new home the sixty-nine-year-old Cosimo had begun to loosen his hold on the reins of power. Increasingly he deferred to his sons, unloading some of the burden and preparing them for the responsibilities they would assume when he was gone. Given the unofficial nature of Cosimo’s position, the continuity of the
reggimento
and of the Medicis’ dominant position within it were by no means assured. Working in their favor, however, was Cosimo’s longevity, which guaranteed that he would be around long enough to see his children firmly established in the upper echelons of the state. By 1458, Piero was already a leading member of the
reggimento,
having served in important positions, including as a member of the
Signoria
in 1448, while Giovanni also served as one of the priors in 1453 and on the important advisory council known as the Dodici Buonuomini, the Twelve, in 1454.

Even in a city where loyalty to family was paramount, the Medici seem remarkable for their unity of purpose through many generations. The need for collaboration was increased by Piero’s poor health. For many years, in fact, it had seemed to most Florentines that the robust and outgoing Giovanni was the more likely successor to Cosimo. In 1455, Giovanni became director general of the Medici bank, a clear indication of the central role he played in the family’s affairs. The mark he left on his nephew is unmistakable; Lorenzo seems to have inherited his gregarious personality and weakness for sensual pleasures from his fun-loving uncle rather than from his dour, humorless father. Giovanni’s amiable character is embodied in the delightful villa he had built on the slopes of Fiesole. It was a building of no practical value (in fact its construction on a steep slope was one long series of engineering disasters). After it passed into the possession of Piero and his children it became a favorite haunt of Lorenzo, Giuliano, and their companions, who would spend summer afternoons wandering along its cypress-shaded lanes, heads bent deep in conversation. Unlike Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, and Careggi, working farms that helped to feed the voracious appetite of the
palazzo
in the city, Fiesole’s sole function was the pursuit of cultivated idleness; poetry rather than produce was its main export. Lorenzo’s friend the poet Angelo Poliziano paints a charming portrait of life at the villa. “When you are made uncomfortable by the heat of the season in your retreat at Careggi,” he wrote to Marsilio Ficino,

The villa at Fiesole captures the new ideal of the Renaissance gentleman whose life is spent cultivating his mind and his aesthetic sense—an ideal that will find its fullest expression in the retreat Lorenzo later built for himself at Poggio a Caiano.
*
The difference between the fortresslike Trebbio and the airy Fiesole is the difference between the medieval and Renaissance mind. For those of Cosimo’s generation, the pursuit of pleasure unsupported by a steady return on investment was frivolous. For Lorenzo it was exactly those same pursuits that gave savor to life.

Domestic arrangements in the Medici
palazzo
were complicated, with three distinct households and three generations living under one roof, but there is little or no hint of tension or competition. This is largely a tribute to Contessina de’ Bardi, Cosimo’s wife, a sensible, nurturing woman who was the emotional glue binding the extended family together. Less educated and cultured than her two daughters-in-law, she nevertheless managed multiple households and fussed over the health and well-being of her husband, children, and grandchildren. When Lorenzo was a year old and away with his parents in Trebbio, Contessina included a reminder to Lucrezia “to make him suck well,” probably an unnecessary piece of advice for a mother of three.

Lorenzo, for one, was devoted to his grandmother. She lived until 1473, surviving her husband by ten years, and so remained a comforting figure in Lorenzo’s life well into his adulthood. Lorenzo, increasingly surrounded by hypocritical flatterers and potential rivals, craved such maternal figures who offered reassurance and unquestioning love without fear of competition.

While his affection for this simple woman was direct and sincere, his feelings for his grandfather were complicated by constant reminders to live up to his example. Even when Cosimo was many years in his grave, Lorenzo found it difficult to emerge from under his shadow. “[A]s God created Cosimo as a model of the universe,” the philosopher Marsilio Ficino wrote to Lorenzo, “mold yourself on the model of Cosimo. Indeed you have begun to do so.” Lorenzo’s own protean achievement as a writer, patron, and statesman may well have been spurred by the desire to make a greater mark in the minds of his countrymen than his illustrious grandfather.

A similar pattern was repeated in his relations with his parents. Piero was a dutiful father, but any expressions of affection were tempered by his belief that it was his role to prepare his son for the difficult position he would inherit. “Be old beyond your years,” was the constant refrain in his letters to Lorenzo. In other words, Piero was a typical Florentine father, dispensing stern advice more readily than emotional support.

Piero’s affectionate nature becomes apparent only in his letters to his wife, and then often only indirectly. At first their correspondence is marked by a formality dictated by the absolute authority of a husband over his wife. In the first letter we have from Lucrezia (written in 1446), the twenty-one-year-old bride addresses her husband as “My Lord and Master,” but after years of marriage their correspondence takes on a tone of mutual respect and deep affection. In 1463, when Giuliano was taken seriously ill while visiting Pisa, Lucrezia hurried to her son’s side. Piero, who had remained behind to attend to his work, was evidently distracted with worry. “I write to you several letters on the same day so that,” she informed him, “in case one goes astray, you will have another giving you news of Giuliano…. I want you to know every little change, so that you may understand better what [the physician]
Maestro
Mariotto writes, and that you may decide, not according to my opinion, but according to what you yourself think best…. He is not as cheerful in the day time as I should like, because he is exhausted by the fever…. Do not get depressed, however, for Giuliano is strong.” When Lucrezia herself fell ill, Piero was equally solicitous. “Have faith and obey the doctors,” he urged her, “and do not budge one jot from their orders, and bear and suffer everything, if not for yourself and for us, for the love of God who is helping you.”

Piero’s devotion to his wife was not misplaced. Not only was she the ideal Florentine housewife, but she was an important political asset, a woman whose kindness and tact more than made up for her husband’s shortcomings. Lucrezia’s social skills were crucial to maintaining the loyalty of the literally thousands of clients whose support was necessary to maintain the Medici in power. Many petitioners applied directly to Lucrezia rather than dealing with her more forbidding husband. Her correspondents include both the great and the humble. At one extreme is the queen of Bosnia, exiled by the advancing Ottoman Turks, who writes to Lucrezia to implore her to expedite a loan from the Roman branch of the Medici bank; at the other is a letter in which she is asked to intercede on behalf of a humble weaver condemned to death for committing bigamy. (Lucrezia will play a similar role on behalf of Lorenzo, who, while more gregarious than his father, was often simply overwhelmed by the number of demands made on his time.)

Piero relied increasingly on Lucrezia’s judgment, sending her on important missions when he was unable to travel and depending on her vivid descriptions of people and places. In addition to being the wife of Florence’s leading citizen, she was an important literary patroness and a fine poet in her own right, and participated as much as the limited possibilities available to her permitted in the great artistic and intellectual movements of the day. Lorenzo’s tutor, the erudite Gentile Becchi, penned the following tribute to the mistress of the house: “You are well read, your bureau full of books, you have understood how to comment on the epistles of Saint Paul, you have, throughout your life kept company with men of honor.” Despite her traditional views on religion, Lucrezia saw nothing incompatible between the new trends in literature, with their almost pagan appetite for the pleasures and flavors of the world, and Christian values.
*
Her retellings of sacred stories, written for her grandchildren, contain vivid descriptions that owe much to her own life at the palace on the Via Larga. In her “Story of Queen Esther,” the feast King Ahasuerus gives for his bride, where “[e]verywhere you could hear instruments playing of every kind,” while singers serenaded the guests “with sweet melodies and skillful harmonies,” as they supped on “infinite dishes…savoring their aromas,” recalls similar descriptions of Nannina’s or Lorenzo’s own wedding feasts.

Impatient with the limited role assigned to her, Lucrezia turned even her physical ailments into opportunities. Like most of the other members of the family, Lucrezia was often in poor health, suffering repeated attacks of fever and eczema (a condition that also plagued Lorenzo) for which she sought some relief by frequenting mineral baths. One of these spas, in Bagno a Morba in the Apennine foothills, she purchased and turned into a thriving business.

Such was Piero’s confidence in his wife’s good sense that in 1467 he sent her to Rome to consult with the papal curia. It was a remarkably public role for a woman, so contrary to custom that, according to the sour Jacopo Acciaiuoli, it “reduced Florence to the lowest level of repute.” That she was equally helpful to her son is revealed in a letter addressed to Lorenzo from Francesco da Castiglione, one of the canons of San Lorenzo, consoling him on the occasion of his mother’s death:

Reading between the lines one can sense that Lucrezia softened Lorenzo’s harsh edges, soothing the feelings of those who had been brushed aside or ignored by her imperious son.