Florence

by Christopher Hibbert

  Also in this circle of Florentine humanists of the first half of the fourteenth century – who were often to be found talking eagerly together in Vespasiano da Bisticci's bookshop near the Badia – was Ambrogio Traversari, the small, ascetic and kindly vicar-general of the Camaldolese Order, whose rooms in the monastery of Santa Maria degli Angeli were always littered with Greek and Latin manuscripts, which he translated with astonishing facility and speed. Two others, of comparable learning but far less abstemious, were Poggio Bracciolini, the son of a poor apothecary, a charming, amusing, gregarious man who had studied law at the Studio Fiorentino and made occasional forays from Florence into France, Germany, Switzerland and even Britain in search of texts for his friends, and Niccolò Niccoli, who, having inherited a fortune from his father, an extremely rich wool merchant, spent most of it amassing not only manuscripts but also medals and coins, cameos and intaglios, crystal cups and antique vases.

  A most fastidiously aesthetic man, Niccolò spent all his long life in Florence, and, in his later years, became one of the sights of the city as he walked in his stately way about the streets, beautifully dressed, aloof, disdainful, so sensitive that even the squeaking of a trapped mouse was intolerable to him, and so imperious that it was difficult to believe that he had a virago of a mistress of whom he was much in awe. In his fine house he had a library of over eight hundred books, the largest collection of his day, and would have liked to have added to their number by a composition of his own, but he could never finish a passage that reached the impossibly high standards he set for himself. He did, however, develop a most polished antica corsiva script which enabled his scribes to copy manuscripts neatly and quickly, and strongly influenced the early Italian printers in the development of italic type. Indirectly, Niccolò was also responsible for the printers' use of Roman type, since his friend Poggio Bracciolini, when unable to buy a manuscript for him on his travels, would make a copy of it in a clear hand based on the eleventh-century Carolingian script, rather than in the clumsy Gothic handwriting which had superseded it.

  Deeply impressed by Niccolò's collections, Cosimo de' Medici, twenty-five years his junior, determined to have such a library of his own and began to buy books at an early age. His father, who had no such interest – who, indeed, according to an inventory of 1418, had only three books altogether – became alarmed that his son's friendships with the scholars and intellectuals of Florence would seduce him from the family business; and when it was proposed that Cosimo and Niccolò should go to the Holy Land together in search of Greek manuscripts, Giovanni put his foot down. Cosimo was set to work in the bank before he became as much of a dilettante as Niccolò himself.

  Giovanni had good cause to take pride in the Medici bank. There were over seventy other bankers and bill-brokers in Florence, most of them with counting-houses in the area of the Mercato Vecchio. But Giovanni had ensured that the Medici bank was the most successful. He had contrived to do so largely by his good relations with the Papacy. In the past the Curia had dealt mostly with other Florentine banking houses, mainly with the Alberti, the Spini and the Ricci; but after the election of Cardinal Baldassarre Cossa as one of three rival Popes, the improbable friendship between this restless, sensual Neapolitan adventurer, who became Pope John XXIII, and the cautious, reserved Florentine banker, Giovanni di

  A painting by Giusto Utens of Cosimo's favourite villa, the Villa Cafaggiolo.

  Caption

  Cosimo di Giovanni de' Medici, Pater Patriae (1389–1464) from the portrait by Pontormo in the Uffizi's Tribuna.

  Bicci de' Medici, helped to ensure that more and more business came the Medici way, until the two Rome branches of their bank accounted for well over half the astonishing profits of the family's business.

  Unfortunately John XXIII was not Pope for long, since this former pirate, whose cardinal's hat, so it was rumoured, had been bought with money provided by the Medici, was deposed in 1415 after being accused of all manner of crimes, including heresy, the murder of one of his rival Popes, Alexander V, and the seduction, while papal representative in Bologna, of no fewer than two hundred ladies of that city. Imprisoned in Germany, he was released after a large ransom had been paid by the Medici bank's Venetian branch, and came to spend the rest of his life in Florence, where the Medici found him a house and commissioned Donatello and Michelozzo to design a splendid monument to his memory which can be seen in the Baptistery.8

  His successor, Pope Martin V, who lived in Florence for a time in apartments specially prepared for him at Santa Maria Novella, was not as kindly disposed to the Medici, preferring to deal with the Spini; but within a few weeks of Martin V's departure for Rome in a grand procession through the Porta di San Pier Gattolini, the Spini were suddenly forced into bankruptcy. Gradually the Medici regained their old standing with the Curia, and when Giovanni died in 1429 leaving the business to his two sons, Cosimo, then aged forty, and Lorenzo, who was thirty-four, the Medici bank was the most profitable family business in Europe, with branches not only in Italy, in Florence, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Naples and Gaeta, but also in Bruges, Geneva and London.

  During his early years in the bank Cosimo travelled widely between these various branches, leaving his young wife at home apparently without regret. She was Contessina de' Bardi, a house-proud, fussy woman, much occupied with servants and cheese moulds, daughter of one of his father's partners, a member of the old Florentine family whose own banking business had been ruined by the insolvency of the English King Edward III.9 As part of her dowry she brought to Cosimo the Palazzo Bardi in Via de' Bardi,10 which winds up from the Ponte Vecchio towards the Porta San Miniato and Piazzale Michelangelo.11 It had formerly been known as the Borgo Pidiglioso (full of fleas), because the poorest of the poor lived there, but later became filled with houses belonging to the Bardi family.

  In the Palazzo Bardi, Cosimo's two sons, Piero and Giovanni, were born, and these boys were soon joined there by Carlo, the son of Cosimo's mistress, a dark slave girl – ‘a sound virgin, free from disease and aged about twenty-one’ – who had been bought for him by one of his agents in Venice to act as his housekeeper while he was manager in Rome. After his father's death Cosimo moved into the Medici family palace near Santa Maria del Fiore; and year by year his influence in Florence grew more marked.

  Jealous of this growing authority, the Albizzi family,12 who had for long exercised control of the government through their friends and nominees in the Signoria, contrived to have him arrested and imprisoned in a small cell in the bell tower of the Palazzo della Signoria. The head of the family, the arrogant and reactionary Rinaldo di Messer Maso degli Albizzi, who succeeded in bringing a charge of treason against him by having two of his associates tortured by the city rackmaster, would have liked to engineer his execution. But there were protests from foreign governments, customers of the Medici bank; there were representations, too, from the Pope; there were protests from Medici supporters in Florence; there were reports of Medici money being used to raise troops in the Mugello and to secure the services of one of Italy's most experienced condottieri, Niccolò da Tolentino.13 The elder statesman, Niccolò da Uzzano, had already advised caution: if it came to a contest between the two families it was doubtful that the Albizzi would win, for the Medici enjoyed wide support among the popolo minuto, who were grateful for past favours, while there was equally widespread apprehension that the Albizzi, once all rivals had been destroyed, might become tyrants like the Visconti of Milan. Besides, it was not only the ordinary people upon whom the Medici could rely for support. Several of Florence's leading families were on their side, either through business associations or through marriage: the Portinari and the Malespini, the Bardi, the Cavalcanti and the Tornabuoni. And then there were the humanists of Florence, proponents of what was already being spoken of as the Rinascimento, men reviled by the bigoted Rinaldo degli Albizzi as enemies of the Christian faith, yet men of ever-growing influence in the city, among them Ambrogio Traversari, the vicar-general of the C
amaldolese Order, whose protests, it was believed, had the strong backing of the Pope.

  In his cell in the Palazzo della Signoria, Cosimo himself put his riches to work. He bribed his gaoler; he bribed the impoverished Gonfaloniere, whom the Albizzi had hoped to win to their side by paying his debts; he bribed several of the priori, whose election they had manipulated. In the end Rinaldo degli Albizzi was forced to conclude that he would have to be content with a sentence of exile.

  So Cosimo left for Venice by way of Ferrara and Padua. Having prudently arranged for the transfer of large sums from Florence shortly before his arrest, he was almost as rich as ever and had lost none of his cunning. Kept fully informed of the changing situation in Florence, avoiding involvement in plots against the Albizzi and awaiting his opportunity, he learned with pleasure that the banishment of one of the Albizzi's formidable critics, Agnolo Acciaiuoli, the respected head of an old family which owned many houses in the Borgo Santi Apostoli,14 had caused much resentment and that, subsequently, a number of known Medici adherents had been elected to the Signoria, one of them as Gonfaloniere.

  While Rinaldo degli Albizzi was away from Florence on business, this Signoria invited Cosimo to return to the city. Rinaldo, upon his own return a few days later, rallied his supporters to keep the Medici out, occupying positions around the beleaguered priori in the Palazzo della Signoria, offering the guard on the palace door as many ducats as he could get into his helmet to leave it unlocked, and ordering the five hundred men of his bodyguard to occupy the church of San Pier Scheraggio.

  But one by one Rinaldo's adherents, never very trustworthy, began to show signs of deserting him. Ridolfo Peruzzi, head of the banking family, began to waver. So did the inordinately rich Palla Strozzi, who had been the most influential of Florence's elder statesmen since the recent death of Niccolò da Uzzano. So also did Giovanni Guicciardini, whose family palace still stands in the Oltrarno at the south-east end of Via Guicciardini between the Palazzo Pitti and the Ponte Vecchio.15 For the moment, however, Rinaldo's other principal supporter, Niccolò Barbadori, remained staunch.

  Summoned by the Pope to Santa Maria Novella, Rinaldo rode there accompanied by Niccolò Barbadori and an apparently reluctant Ridolfo Peruzzi. The Pope urged them to abandon their opposition to the Signoria, undertaking to do all he could to protect the Albizzi from the vengeance of their opponents. Two days later, on 28 September 1434, the great bell in the tower of the Palazzo della Signoria was tolled to call the people to a meeting in the piazza where, in the time-honoured way, the Notaio delle Riformagioni, the official who promulgated the decrees of the Signoria, called out from the ringhiera, ‘Citizens of Florence! Are you content that a Balìa should be appointed to reform the city for the good of the people?’

  The people signified their assent; a Balìa was elected; and the sentence of exile imposed upon the Medici was revoked, while their enemies, the Albizzi, together with numerous members of the Peruzzi, Guasconi, Strozzi, Guadagni, Guicciardini and other families were banished from Florence. Indeed, sentences of exile were imposed upon so many of Florence's leading citizens that when Cosimo de' Medici returned to the city, entering quietly by night through a small gateway near the Bargello, someone observed that it had been almost emptied of its most prominent names. Cosimo replied with one of those sardonic observations for which he was already celebrated, ‘Two yards of rose-coloured cloth will make a new gentleman.’

  He quickly resumed his authority while contriving to appear no more than an extremely prosperous banker, happier in his counting-house than in the council chamber, though ready to give advice on the political and financial problems of the state when approached, allowing it to seem that the flamboyant, ambitious and talkative Luca Pitti, a rich entrepreneur in the French cloth trade, was of more consequence than himself, persuading others to put forward suggestions and take initiatives. According to his friend, the bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, he paraded his virtue by paying

  Caption

  The pietra serena interior of San Lorenzo looking west. This church, the church of the Medici, was rebuilt to the designs of Filippo Brunelleschi between 1425 and 1446.

  more taxes than anyone else in Florence, while concealing his true wealth by greatly exaggerating bad debts in his accounts; at the same time he attracted esteem by his continued patronage of such institutions as the Studio Fiorentino, by his magnificent gifts to the monasteries and churches of San Marco and San Lorenzo, and by his support of the scholars, artists and craftsmen so busily at work in the libraries, studios and workshops of the city. Regarded as an expert in such matters, he was consulted by other patrons about works they had it in mind to commission – and was depicted in a poem by Giovanni Avogrado strolling about a building site followed closely by a mason scribbling down everything he said.

  Soon after his return from Venice, a proposal was made for the creation of a piazza in Cosimo's honour opposite Brunelleschi's church of San Lorenzo. It was in this area, on the corner of Via Larga and Via de' Gori, close by the church of San Giovannino degli Scolopi,16 that Cosimo had already contemplated building a new palace for his family. Brunelleschi's church was then partially built; and it was considered appropriate that the same architect should design both the piazza and the palace which was to enhance it. When he saw Brunelleschi's designs and wooden model, however, Cosimo shrank from so ambitious and pretentious an architectural scheme, expressing the opinion that they were far too ‘grand and sumptuous’. On his deathbed his father had warned him against just such extravagance as this. Be inoffensive to the rich and strong, he had advised him, while being consistently charitable to the poor and weak. ‘Do not appear to give advice, but put your views forward discreetly in conversation. Be wary of going to the Palazzo della Signoria; wait to be summoned; and when you are summoned, do what you are asked to do; never display any pride should you receive a lot of votes… Always keep out of the public eye.’

  Cosimo, as though remembering these words and true to his own maxim that envy is a weed that should not be watered, rejected Brunelleschi' designs, later turning instead to a younger Florentine, Michelozzo di Bartolommeo Michelozzi, a slight which so annoyed the touchy Brunelleschi, so Giorgio Vasari said, that he lost his temper ‘and smashed his model into smithereens’.

  Michelozzo was born in Florence in 1396, the son of a tailor whose family had come from France. He was a sculptor as well as an architect, as was to be expected at a time when few if any distinguished architects did not also have experience in carving stone or wood or in painting pictures or as goldsmiths. He was in his late forties when work began on the Palazzo Medici, and had already worked both as sculptor and architect on numerous buildings and works of art in his native city. He had rebuilt the courtyard of the Palazzo della Signoria, assisted Donatello with the tomb of Pope John XXIII in the Baptistery and worked on the great silver altar frontal now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. He had probably designed the Chapel of Onofrio Strozzi17 in the church of Santa Trinita and had certainly designed a new church and convent for both San Marco and Santissima Annunziata. He was responsible for the two tabernacles on either side of the chancel in Santa Maria dell'Impruneta18 and was soon to start work on the Noviziata, the Novices' Chapel,19 in Santa Croce, and on two new villas for the Medici outside Florence, one, Cafaggiolo,20 in the Mugello, the other, Belcanto, at Fiesole.21

  The Palazzo Medici in Florence was, as Cosimo intended, quite modest in size for so rich a family and considerably smaller than the later palace, which was altered and enlarged by his descendants and by the Riccardi family into whose hands it passed in 1659. But it was certainly an imposing building. The ground floor was faced with massive rough-hewn blocks giving the effect known as rustication, in which the stone is either left rough as it came from the quarry or is cut to give variety to the surface, so that light and shadow can play on it in the glare of the sun. The lower floors of most large houses in Florence were rusticated in this way, but the Palazzo Medici was unusual in that
all three floors were faced with dressed

  An engraving by Giuseppe Zocchi of the Palazzo Medici, which was built for Cosimo de' Medici by Michelozzo in the 1440s. This engraving was done in the eighteenth century after the palace had been extended by the Riccardi family, into whose hands it passed in 1659. The church in the foreground is San Giovannino degli Scolopi.

  stone, the strong rustication of the ground floor giving way to less emphatic rustication on the floors above. Originally there were no windows at ground-floor level on the Via Larga front but on the upper floors, above the huge gateway, there were rows of arched windows flanked by Doric columns on the first floor and by Corinthian columns on the second. Above them was a massive cornice eight feet high overhanging the façade so as to cast a welcome shadow down the walls when the sun was at its highest.

  On the Via de' Gori front there was an open loggia, the arches of which were later filled in and the walls pierced by windows designed by Michelangelo when the Medici, no longer pretending to be ordinary citizens, greeted guests and celebrated family occasions in the privacy of the palace courtyard.22 The young Galeazzo Maria Sforza, while on a visit there, told his father that it was the ‘most beautiful house’ he had ever seen. He was entranced by its

  ceilings, the height of its walls, the fineness of the doors and windows, the number and quality of the books there, the pleasantness and purity of the gardens; and likewise the tapestries with which it is decorated, the chests of incomparable workmanship and inestimable value, masterly works of sculpture and pictures of infinite kinds and even of the most exquisite silver.

  I went to visit the magnificent Cosimo whom I found in his chapel. He embraced me most gently and tenderly; and said that at his age nothing could have happened to him that pleased him more; for, since it was his desire above all else to see Your Excellency, seeing me in this way made it seem almost as if he were face to face with yourself. And I, in the best manner I knew how, made my reply – only in generalities, however, and I did not speak of anything else. Afterwards, having returned to my room and stayed there a while, I returned to him a second time. He was still in the same chapel, indeed he could not have gone out during the time I was away from him. I found him there with two of his little ones, who were made to deliver two speeches, one in prose, the other in verse, in a most worthy manner and almost unbelievable coming from the mouths of boys at the age I imagine them to be (for both are most tender in years). Both the speeches were in praise of Your Excellency.