The Pursuit of Italy

by David Gilmour

  Whatever they might say about being the heirs of Romulus, the Florentines knew they were not very good at warfare. They were too prosperous to want to fight and perhaps too individualistic to form a disciplined militia of citizens. As a result they entrusted their defence to foreign protectors (usually Neapolitan) or hired mercenaries, who were mostly brutal, expensive and unreliable. The Florentine hierarchy had a different explanation for the city’s lack of virility – the rifeness of sodomy which, it claimed, corrupted and enfeebled its manhood and resulted in a low birth rate. Florence was indeed so notorious for this propensity that Florenzer became a German word for pederast. In response, the government encouraged anonymous denunciations of suspected pederasts and created special magistrates, ‘Officials of the Night’, to enforce new laws against the vice. Niccolò Machiavelli was one of those accused of sodomy, though in his case with a woman, a prostitute known as ‘Curly’.

  Less questionable explanations for the instability of the republic might be sought in its constitutional flaws – electing a new executive every two months was an inept interpretation of democracy – and in the city’s ethos, which encouraged the belief that in Florence (unlike Venice or Siena) the public good should give way to private interest. Despairing of its politicals, Dante had earlier castigated Florentines as ‘the most empty-headed’ of all Tuscans and compared their city to a ‘sick woman who can find no rest on her downy bed but tosses and turns to try to ease her pain’.13 Even more frustrated by Florentine fractiousness was Machiavelli, a great Renaissance figure who has been much vilified by posterity: since Shakespeare referred to him as ‘the murderous Machiavel’, his name has been such a byword for political duplicity that it is still used to describe behaviour that he himself would never have countenanced. Machiavelli’s republican convictions have been somewhat obscured by his most famous book, The Prince, in which he explained how an authoritarian ruler could secure power and advised princes that it was safer for them to be feared than be loved – advice closely followed by hundreds of rulers of numerous nations over subsequent centuries. Yet he was a genuine republican, much influenced by his study of Cicero, and he urged Florentines to emulate the ancient Romans’ patriotism and sense of responsibility; had they been able to do so, he believed they could have built the finest republic of all time. He was also perhaps the only real Italian of his age, a man who did not simply shout ‘Italia!’ as a rallying cry for expelling invaders but seems to have believed that a unified Italy was a potential entity whose emergence had hitherto been thwarted by the papacy. The last chapter of The Prince is an ‘Exhortation to liberate Italy from the barbarian yoke’ and a plea for someone to lead the way.

  In the middle third of the fifteenth century the effective ruler of Florence was Cosimo de’ Medici, a great European banker with branches as distant as London, Bruges and Lyon. He had opposed the war against Lucca and had been exiled for his wisdom. After the debacle and the resulting chaos in Florence, he was invited home to govern behind the façade of republican institutions. A learned and conscientious man, he understood the inherent strength of Florentine republicanism and never tried to make himself a signore. The Signoria and the councils remained, their composition subtly influenced by Medici’s supporters. Cosimo himself was seldom an official: prudently, he limited himself to three brief periods as gonfalonier of justice.

  His talents were inherited not by his son Piero ‘the Gouty’ but by his grandson Lorenzo ‘the Magnificent’, a man of multiple accomplishments. Cultured and intellectual, Lorenzo was the most charismatic exemplar of a Renaissance ruler, a statesman whose diplomatic skills preserved peace in Italy for most of his ‘reign’ between 1469 and his death in 1492. After the ‘Pazzi Conspiracy’ of 1478 – an assassination attempt that missed him but killed his brother – he found ways of excluding his family’s opponents from office although, like his grandfather, he refused to become an official with a title himself. His position was never legally defined and, apart from being known as ‘il magnifico’, he held no rank. After he died, an official decree referred to him merely as ‘the leading citizen of Florence’.14

  If one obstacle to a republican revival was the quality of the Medici rulers, another was the ineptitude of the republicans themselves. A second Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s son and successor, lacked his father’s negotiating skills and during the King of France’s invasion of 1494 he blundered so deeply that he was forced into exile. Yet the new republican regime, led initially by Girolamo Savonarola, the radical priest and demagogue, had learned none of the lessons of the old: its constitution enlarged popular participation and made Florence both more democratic and more difficult to govern than before. Furthermore, it wasted most of its short lifetime trying to recover Pisa, a city which, though Florence had conquered it in 1406, had been independent since the arrival of the French. As Pisa’s harbour had silted up, the city was now of little use to the Florentines, and their obsessive, fifteen-year-old war to recover it, which included the fiasco of Leonardo’s canal, almost bankrupted them.

  The diplomatic power of the Medici was another problem because the family was no longer limited to Florence, even if it was not until later in the sixteenth century that it supplied two famous queens of France. Giovanni, the cardinal son of Lorenzo, became papal legate to Bologna and the Romagna in 1511, a position he used the following year to organize an army of Spanish and papal troops to overthrow the Florentine Republic and bring his family, headed by his brother Giuliano, back to power. Another year on, Giovanni became Pope Leo X and immediately made his illegitimate cousin Giulio the Cardinal-Archbishop of Florence. Leo died in 1521 and was succeeded by the only Dutch pope, Adrian VI, who lasted barely a year and was followed by Giulio, who as Clement VII directed the papacy for eleven turbulent years from 1523. After a last spasm of radical republicanism chased the Medici out of Florence again in 1527, Clement devoted his time to defeating the new regime and securing his family’s return. Although the city’s new fortifications, built partly by Michelangelo, held out well, forces belonging to the pope and the Emperor Charles V starved the last republic into submission in 1530.

  There had been dozens of republics in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A number survived into the next century but were then extinguished by signori or absorbed by neighbours. After oscillating between republican and signorial rule, Bologna and Perugia were incorporated into the Papal States in the sixteenth century. Milan, the most successful signory of all, demonstrated that the old communal spirit was still alive when, in the middle of the fifteenth century, between the end of the Visconti and the beginning of the Sforza dynasties, it threw up a short-lived regime, the Ambrosian republic, known after its patron saint. Yet it fell because, as with most Italian republics, it was divided into factions, because its leadership became unrealistically radical and because ultimately most of its merchants and nobles did not want it. Signorial Milan had been the model for people who sought an alternative to communal instability.

  In the early sixteenth century only five republics were left, Venice, Genoa and three in Tuscany. Florence’s went in 1530 followed by Siena’s a generation later, leaving Lucca the sole survivor of the inland republics. Like the Venetians and the Genoese, the Lucchesi had realized that republicanism was safer in the hands of a select oligarchy than in a system such as the Florentine that opened government office to thousands of unqualified people.15

  Although Siena remained intact until it was absorbed by Florence in 1557, its economic power had vanished long before. So, unfortunately, had its cultural identity. By the early fifteenth century its population had declined to 20,000 – less than half of what it had been before the Black Death – though the influence of its great artistic age was still visible, exemplified by the exquisite paintings of Sassetta, a late follower of Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Yet that age was soon gone, along with the city’s communal culture and Gothic architecture, vernacular brick losing out to classical stone and marble; even Duccio’s Maestà wa
s removed from the altar of the cathedral. The shadow of the Florentine Renaissance was partly responsible. So was the Piccolomini family, which produced the two Sienese popes, Pius II and Pius III. The first of these had an interesting pre-priestly life as an excommunicate, secretary to an anti-pope, poet laureate at the Habsburg court in Vienna, talented humanist scholar and begetter of numerous illegitimate children. When he became pope in 1458, he directed his humanism towards the rebuilding in Renaissance style of his home town Corsignano, which was rechristened Pienza in commemoration. He also made his nephew, the future Pius III, Archbishop of Siena, an appointment that led to the construction of a series of classical white palaces for the Piccolomini clan amidst the burnt sienna bricks of communal Siena.

  After it had lost its cultural identity, Siena also lost its artistic reputation. Here too the Florentines made a contribution. As the art historian John White noted, ‘the patent on the history of art was taken out in Florence’.16 The chief culprit was Giorgio Vasari, a poor painter, a pedantic architect and the wrecker of Florentine Gothic, but celebrated for being the author of a hugely influential work celebrating the supremacy of Florentine art, Lives of the Most Eminent Italian Architects, Painters and Sculptors, published in 1550. For Vasari and his myriad followers, art had been rescued from its dismal medieval abyss by the talents of Florence. The age of the ‘primitives’, wooden and lifeless, had been vanquished by the Florentine Renaissance, an extended miracle begun by Giotto, continued by Masaccio and completed by Michelangelo. In such a narrative there was no room for Duccio, Simone Martini or the Lorenzetti brothers; forgotten – or, if remembered, mocked – they were only rescued and revived in the 1930s by the English art critic John Pope-Hennessy. The reputation of Florentine art is of course unassailable, but its supremacy can nowadays be somewhat qualified. It was ‘rather an exciting experience’, said a director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, to witness the end of the oldest tradition in art history: ‘Vasari’s Florentinocentrism’.17

  PRINCELY ITALY

  Power in Italy in the late fifteenth century was effectively shared among five states: a genuine republic (Venice), a nominal republic (Florence), a duchy (Milan), a kingdom (Naples) and the Papal States, a monarchy without a fixed dynasty, although several families were soon competing to supply more than one pontiff.** The variance in title was more than nominal: it reflected real differences in ethos between the states.

  European society in the late Middle Ages was being happily seduced by aristocratic values and monarchical glamour. In Italy the world of communes and citizens was disappearing beneath a panoply of princes and their courts; aristocratic pomp and competitive extravagance had almost everywhere become the fashion. Government officials were now being selected by rulers instead of being balloted or chosen directly by voters. In the monarchies – as in the smaller lordships – the life of the state was being conflated with the life of the court, and the officials of the two became effectively indistinguishable.

  Civic patronage survived in the republics though on a smaller scale than in the fourteenth century, when the communes of Florence and Siena built their glorious palaces of government. Yet elsewhere in Italy patronage was now in the hands of princes and, to a lesser extent, the Church and wealthy noblemen. The versatile craftsmen of the Middle Ages – humble men toiling in teams in their workshops – gave way to flamboyant and temperamental artists who preferred to work at a court. Some of the best, such as the Venetians Tintoretto and Giovanni Bellini, stayed at home – Tintoretto apparently only once left Venice, for a brief business visit to Mantua with his wife – but others were attracted to princely courts by the allure of sophistication, the promise of riches, an abundance of good food and frequent theatrical entertainments. Leonardo, Raphael and Michelangelo all worked for long periods for powerful patrons. So did Titian, who spent much time depicting the Emperor Charles V at the imperial courts in Bologna and Augsburg, painting for the emperor’s son, Philip II of Spain (who never paid him), and accepting commissions from the Farnese pope, Paul III. In 1533 Charles rewarded him with a noble title.

  The first real court painter was Andrea Mantegna, employed by the Gonzaga marquesses of Mantua from 1459 until his death forty-seven years later. He was a clever choice for a dynasty with such political and cultural pretensions. With his talents, his knowledge of the classical world and his understanding of perspective, Mantegna managed to glorify his subjects, making his nobles seem like saints or ancient heroes as well as contemporary men. Viewers of his powerful series The Triumph of Julius Caesar (now at Hampton Court) can sense the implied connection between his patrons and the conquering Caesar, who is depicted parading through Rome preceded by his soldiers, trumpeters, prisoners and booty. Both parties to this business arrangement were satisfied. Mantegna, the son of a woodworker, acquired an income, a house and the noble title he craved; the Gonzaga got their propaganda and the reputation they still enjoy, that of being great and generous patrons of the arts.

  In the fifteenth century Milan was the most aggressive and successful of the mainland states. It was also one of the richest, its prosperity extended into its contado by canals and irrigation, the introduction of rice and the planting of mulberry trees for the nascent silk industry. The Sforza’s Milan seemed the leading candidate for princely pre-eminence in Italy until the French invasions of the late fifteenth century which led eventually to the city’s absorption by the Spanish.

  South-east along the Po Valley, uncomfortably close to Milan and Venice, were two small but vigorous principalities, the duchy of Ferrara and the marquessate of Mantua. Further away in the hills of the Marches was another one, the remarkable realm of Urbino. In each case the ruling princely family remained in power for centuries – until the main branch died out. Given the nature of Renaissance politics and the fickleness of allies, this was an astonishing achievement and one that would have been impossible had the families been less ruthless and opportunistic. The success of the Gonzaga owed much to their notorious skill in identifying and then siding with the likely winner in any war. It owed even more to the political and military talents of Isabella d’Este, a daughter of the Duke of Ferrara who became regent of Mantua after the death of her husband (the marquess) in 1519 and so enhanced the prestige of her domain that her first son became a duke and her second a cardinal. Yet the finances of these high-spending states were always a problem, especially in Mantua and Urbino, cities that at the end of the fifteenth century were challenging the cultural primacy of Florence. The Duke of Urbino, Federigo da Montefeltro (Piero della Francesco’s sitter in the most famous of Renaissance profiles), was the archetypal Renaissance prince, a scholar, bibliophile and builder on a colossal scale. Yet he was unable to sit back and enjoy his pictures and his vast ducal palace. Financial needs forced him to exercise another talent – fighting – in the service of wealthier rulers; the employers he fought for as a condottiere or mercenary commander included kings of Naples, dukes of Milan and three popes.

  Historians encourage us to remember that the Renaissance in Italy was not confined to Tuscany, the north and the Papal States. Yet the variation in its cultural impact on different parts of the peninsula illustrates as well as anything the contrasts between southern Italy and the centre-north. In the middle years of the fifteenth century Alfonso V of Aragon also became King of Naples and Sicily and transferred his court to the Campanian city, where he did indeed preside over a culture that blended the Italian Renaissance with Spanish Gothic.†† Yet his influence did not last. On his death in 1458 the kingdom was divided, Sicily and Aragon going to his brother while Naples was left to endure the cruel and incompetent rule of his son Ferrante. Although Naples became the largest city in Italy, it failed to retain its cultural influence.‡‡

  Outside the southern capital there was little sign of the Renaissance. The south lacked the small courts and independent cities that stimulated cultural and economic life further north. In Apulia the town of Lecce later enjoyed an efflorescence in its
own style of Baroque and today revels in its reputation as ‘the Florence of the south’ – not a very apt sobriquet because the glories of Florence come from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and not from the city’s imitative Baroque moment. Churches in Basilicata in the town of Matera, where many citizens in the twentieth century still lived in caves, may be Romanesque or Baroque or a mixture of the two, but they are not classical. This is often the pattern in other towns of the south except where natural calamities occurred that required a total rebuilding. Like Messina across the Straits, Reggio di Calabria is today an entirely twentieth-century city dating from the 1908 earthquake. In south-eastern Sicily the towns of Noto and Ragusa were more handsomely rebuilt, in golden Baroque, after the earthquake of 1693. What was left of Catania after Mount Etna’s most savage eruption in 1669 was destroyed by an earthquake a generation later – disasters to which the city’s inhabitants responded by erecting one of the densest and most imposing concentrations of Baroque churches in the world.

  Since the thirteenth century, the south had been impoverished by rivalry between the Angevin and Aragonese dynasties and by incessant struggles between monarchs and their barons. Matters did not improve much when the Spanish crown took over at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Apart from keeping the peace in Sicily, the new rulers seemed to think the island did not need governance; no Spanish king went near the place except the Emperor Charles V, who was also Charles I of Spain, and who went everywhere. Perhaps they had a point. The Sicilian nobles seemed to be happy idling in Palermo, spending the rents from their estates on building palaces and buying titles from the Spanish – a brilliant scheme for raising money for the government: in the seventeenth century over a hundred princedoms were created in a population of about a million.§§ Palermo thus acquired plenty of grand buildings but it lacked the kind of intellectual life it had enjoyed under King Roger and the Emperor Frederick. The Renaissance largely passed it by; so, later, did the Enlightenment.