CHAPTER VIII.

DEATH OF LORENZO.

WHEN Lorenzo wrote that letter to his son his condition might be called hopeless. From his youth up he had suffered from hereditary physical ailments. The attacks had increased with age, till they weakened his originally strong constitution. Gout made its appearance in various forms, and the waters, tried frequently and one after another, failed to give lasting relief, partly because he never gave them time to produce their full effect. He often joked about his sufferings. ‘Pain in my feet,’ he wrote to Lanfredini in August 1489, ‘has hindered my correspondence with you. Feet and tongue are indeed far apart, yet they interfere with each other.’ Towards the end of August 1491, he was so ill that he had to be carried to Spedaletto in a litter.[561] The waters of Morba had only a passing soothing effect; and at the end of the autumn a slow fever set in with grave symptoms. His whole system seemed attacked at once—bowels, limbs, and nerves. To the arthritic pains were added pains in the bones, which robbed him of rest by night and day; gout had attacked the higher organs: the physicians were at their wits’ end. When the year 1492 opened, he could see no one; all grave political business had to be set aside; a Milanese ambassador waited more than a fortnight for an audience. An improvement permitted him to leave the house again, but it was not lasting. ‘The illustrious Lorenzo,’ wrote the Ferrarese ambassador on February 11,[562] ‘has been again for some days greatly tormented with pains which attack the whole of his body except his head. At times he suffers so acutely that it is hard to understand how he can hold out. The doctors do not indeed consider the illness mortal; but his condition is getting very bad, because he enjoys very little rest. God grant him health again; for the accounts of his state are really such as to excite sympathy.’ On the 8th of the same month, King Ferrante wrote to his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli:[563] ‘We have received many letters from you, but now we only reply concerning the long-continued sufferings of the illustrious Lorenzo, which have grieved and do grieve us to the depths of our soul. Would God we could procure him recovery, or even alleviation! Exhort his Magnificence to arm himself with patience and thus overcome the evil; more especially as we may now expect better weather, after these last days which have indeed been bad. Inform his Magnificence also that we congratulate him on the settlement of the dispute with his Holiness, which must be as pleasing to him as to ourself, he having had so great a share in it, as is known to us and all. May he, by God’s help, the advice of good doctors and prudence on his own part, recover his health, so that we may both enjoy peace, and especially peace of mind.’

The king was not deceived in his estimate of how much depended on Lorenzo’s life and activity. In the middle of February an improvement set in, but again it was but transitory. The weather continued bad, and at the beginning of March the pains returned; no one was admitted to the invalid with the exception of his family and a very few intimate friends. We remarked before that he was unable to take part in the solemnities attending the proclamation of his son’s cardinalate; his most ardent wish was now fulfilled, and his life was on the wane. He seems to have been aware of his condition, when the young Cardinal set out on March 12. He spoke thus to Filippo Valori, brother of his biographer, and Andrea Carubini, the former of whom was to accompany Giovanni to Rome, and the latter was attached to his household: ‘I entrust my son’s youth to you; me you will never see again.’ Who can tell what were his feelings as he wrote that beautiful letter!—There was again a slight improvement; but it was the last. The disease made rapid progress. On the 21st the invalid was taken to Careggi, his favourite abode, where he had planned and done so much, and where he could get more air and sunshine than in the city. Towards the end of March a physician was expected from Naples. At the beginning of April, Duke Ercole of Ferrara came to Florence[564] on his journey to Rome, whither he was going ostensibly for purposes of devotion, in reality for political objects, and to try to obtain the cardinalate for his son Ippolito. The boy was only thirteen, but he had already been Archbishop of Gran for six years; and if a Medici had won the purple at fourteen, why not an Este, a scion of one of the oldest families of Italy? If Innocent VIII. had lived longer he would have been unable to avoid giving this nomination also. The duke could not see Lorenzo, but the latter had already promised him his son’s vote in the future Consistory.

The sufferer’s days were numbered. He made himself ready for the worst, set his house in order, and made what arrangements he could to secure for his son the position he had himself held. But he was too clear-sighted not to perceive the dangers which the old love of freedom and impatience under the long and ever-strengthening supremacy of a single family, together with Piero’s inexperience and haughty character, must bring upon him. Poliziano indeed relates that Lorenzo had cherished an intention of retiring, and handing over the direction of affairs to his son. ‘About two years before his death,’ he says, ‘I was sitting with him in his bed-chamber, and we were talking, as usual, of philosophy and literature. He then said that he intended passing the rest of his days with Ficino, Pico, and myself, in study, far from the bustle of the city. To my objection that this would be impossible, as the citizens needed his counsel and authority more and more every day, he answered smiling: “I shall provide a substitute in the person of thy pupil, and entrust the burden to his shoulders.“‘ Then on Poliziano’s expressing a doubt whether Piero’s age was sufficient to render him competent, he praised his son’s mind and bearing, and the good foundations which Poliziano had laid. The story may be true, notwithstanding the writer’s visible tendency to over-rate his friend’s actions and sayings. But doubtless Lorenzo’s sole object was to hear what would be said to such an intention. He can hardly have had serious thoughts of retiring from public life, least of all at such a time.

Looking back upon his own short but eventful career, he could see more clearly than ever what unceasing care and trouble, what knowledge of characters and calculation of humours and circumstances, had been necessary to govern parties, keep down opponents without driving them to extremity, and make use of and direct adherents without letting them outgrow his control. He knew but too well that a single false step might upset everything. In the depths of his own mind he felt the discords that ran through the general tone of thought and feeling in the state. He measured the force of the hardly-concealed moral and religious currents that were threatening to break forth. When he, the experienced statesman, looked around him and surveyed the political condition of Italy, he was alarmed at the weak foundations of the edifice which it had cost him so much exertion to support by his counsels and actions. But just now he had put an end to the long and dangerous strife between the Pope and the King; and who was to answer for the future? And when the unstable Pope and the unprincipled King were gone, who could predict the former’s successor—who dared flatter himself with the hope that the latter’s heir, in every respect worse than himself, would keep even his own disaffected land at peace, and not foster the seeds, sown long ago, of dissensions with other countries? Perhaps Lorenzo’s death-bed was haunted even more by the consciousness of the preponderance of evil elements in the College, by the thoughts of Alfonso of Naples, of Lodovico il Moro, and of the hostility of Venice, than even by the dread of attempts at a change in Florence.

In his religious views and his mode of expressing them Lorenzo had always been a true child of the age, which combined a secular temper with a tinge of unfeigned religious feeling, and amid all its grave intellectual errors was not without moral consciousness. That Lorenzo possessed this moral consciousness is proved by many of his expressions through his latter years. He had gained from his excellent and pious mother something more than a literary acquaintance with religious matters. He had inherited from his forefathers the traditions of a close and active connection with ecclesiastical foundations and ecclesiastical interests, which he furthered in a manner that cannot be attributed solely to political motives. His sensuous temperament, his early elevation to such authority as perhaps no private man has ever enjoyed in a city so full of genuine life, led him into many moral errors. But as he was at the same time the author of the lays of the Carnaval and the poet of philosophical and spiritual songs, even so, amid all his errors and notwithstanding the great influence exercised over him from his youth up by antique philosophy, he still adhered to the faith of Christianity practised and taught by his teacher Ficino and his friend Pico della Mirandola. All his life he had been attentive to the observance of religious ordinances; and he continued so when that life was near its close. His sister Bianca de’ Pazzi had accompanied him to Careggi; and it was she who told him of his imminent danger. ‘Brother,’ said she, ‘thou hast lived as a man of lofty mind; thou must quit this life not only bravely but piously. Know that all hope is over.’[565] He seemed somewhat distressed that hope had been encouraged too long; then he asked for the aid of the Church. It was late when the priest who was summoned from San Lorenzo reached the villa. The dying man would not receive him in bed: in spite of the remonstrances of those about him, he got up and had himself dressed: then, supported by his attendants, he entered the room, where he sank on his knees before the ciborium. Seeing how weak he was, the priest insisted that he should lie down again; and he was with difficulty induced to do so. He then received the viaticum with a devoutness which made an impression on all present.[566]

His eldest son, his sister, and Angelo Poliziano were almost constantly near him. After the religious ceremony Piero remained alone by his bedside. Lorenzo comforted him, and gave him warnings and good advice as to his conduct in the city and the state when he himself should have departed. ‘The citizens,’ said he, ‘will, I believe, acknowledge thee, my son, as worthy to fill the position which I have occupied; and I doubt not that thou wilt have the same authority in the commonwealth as I have enjoyed until now. But as this commonwealth is, according to the common expression, a body with many heads, and it is impossible to please them all, remember that in all the varied circumstances of life the way to be kept is that which appears most honourable; and always prefer the general good to personal and party interests.’ Wise counsel this; if he who gave it had but followed it more strictly, it would have saved him from much bitter and but too well-founded reproach! He charged Piero to take a father’s place towards his young brother Giuliano; to the Cardinal he commended his nephew Giulio, then aged fourteen, and for whom he seems already to have had visions of an ecclesiastical career. He also spoke to his son about his funeral, ordering that it should be arranged after the pattern of his grandfather’s, and that the limits usual in the interment of a private man should not be overstepped.

Meanwhile a famous Lombard doctor, Lazaro of Pavia, sent by Lodovico il Moro, had arrived at Careggi. The invalid asked the attendants what he was doing, and on being told that he was composing a draught of pulverised pearls, precious stones, and other costly substances, he exclaimed with eager voice and cheerful look to Poliziano, who was standing near the bed: ‘Dost thou hear, Angelo, dost thou hear?’ Then, stretching out his enfeebled arms, he seized his friend by both hands and held him fast, while the latter sought to turn away to hide the rising tears; at last Lorenzo, seeing his emotion, let him go, and he rushed to his own rooms to let his grief take its course. When he came back, Lorenzo asked why Pico did not come to see him; and being answered that probably Pico feared to trouble him, he remarked that he rather feared it was the distance from the villa to the city that troubled Pico. The latter, thus called for, came; and the invalid received him with the old cordiality. He begged him to excuse the trouble he was giving him, adding that it must be attributed to his affection, for he should die more content after having seen him once more. Then he spoke on many subjects, both general and particular, and said, looking at the two: ‘I would that death had spared me till I had been able to complete your libraries.’ Poliziano knelt down beside the bed to catch the words, which were already becoming indistinct.

Scarcely had Pico left Careggi when another man entered the chamber of death.[567] If Lorenzo summoned Girolamo Savonarola to him, it must have been because he was not easy in his conscience. The several versions of the interview, as related by those who were connected either with Lorenzo or the Dominican Prior, differ so widely as to the circumstances that only greater or less probability can decide between them. This is Poliziano’s story: Fra Girolamo of Ferrara, a man distinguished by his learning and godliness, and an excellent preacher of the Divine Word, entered the room, and admonished the invalid to hold fast to the Faith; to which Lorenzo replied that he continued immovable therein. Hereupon he exhorted him thenceforth to lead a virtuous life; to which the reply was that he would endeavour himself so to do. Thirdly, he recommended him to meet death, if it needs must be, with firmness. ‘Nothing,’ replied the invalid, ‘is sweeter to me, if it be God’s will.’ The monk was departing, when Lorenzo said to him: ‘Give me thy blessing, father, before thou partest from me.’ And with bowed head, and in the attitude of religious earnestness, he responded correctly, and with full consciousness to Savonarola’s words and prayers, undisturbed by the no longer concealed mourning of the household.

So reports the friend of many years—he who knew the dying man better perhaps than anyone else. But another story stands in opposition to his. According to this version, Lorenzo wished to make one last confession to the Dominican. He accused himself of three things: the sack of Volterra, the squandering of the dower-moneys, and the blood shed at the time of the Pazzi conspiracy. The dying man’s agitation was distressing. ‘God is gracious, God is merciful,’ said the monk to soothe him. Then, when he had done, Savonarola spoke. ‘You have need of three things. First, true and lively confidence in the Divine grace.’ To this the invalid replied, ‘I am penetrated therewith.’ ‘Secondly, you must restore what you have wrongfully appropriated, and make restitution a duty for your sons.’ Lorenzo reflected a moment, then assented by a movement of the head. ‘Lastly, you must restore to the people of Florence their freedom.’ The invalid turned away his head without answering, and the monk left him unabsolved.

Lorenzo’s death—to resume Poliziano’s report—was peaceful. It seemed that it was not he who was about to undergo the fate of all mortals, but rather those who stood around his bed. He did not refuse what the doctors prescribed, though he expected no effect from it. Even his old cheerfulness had not altogether deserted him. When after taking some food he was asked how he relished it, he answered: ‘Like a dying man.’ He embraced his relatives and friends and begged them to forgive him if he had offended them or shown impatience during his long illness. When he asked to have read to him from the Gospel the history of the Passion and Death of our Lord, at first he repeated the words of Scripture, then, getting weaker, only moved his lips and at last his fingers, in token that he still followed the sense. When death drew near, a crucifix was held out to him; he opened his eyes, kissed it and departed. This was on Sunday, April 8, 1492, about the fifth hour of the night.

What a strange abundant variety of cares and pleasures, of labour and enjoyment, of thought and action, of poetry and realism, of danger and success, of evil and good, had been crowded together into that life of barely forty-three years!

The tidings of his death naturally put all Florence in commotion. Almost simultaneously with it came the news that the physician Piero Leoni had thrown himself into a well at Francesco Martelli’s villa at San Gervasio by the Porta Pinti, whither he had been secretly taken because his life was threatened at Careggi, as he was suspected of an intent to poison. It was not known whether the unhappy man really perished by his own resolve or by another’s hand.[568] As usual, prodigies were believed to have presaged the event with which all minds were occupied. In Sta. Maria Novella a woman had started up in the middle of the sermon, crying out that she saw a raging bull, with burning horns, overthrowing the church. Three days before Lorenzo’s death a flash of lightning had struck the lantern of the Cathedral and hurled down some heavy blocks of marble on the north-west, the side towards the Medici’s dwelling; one fell in through the roof, another crushed the house of Luca Rinieri. On the night of the death a meteor was said to have been seen to shine over Careggi and then vanish.[569] Three hours after death the body was taken from Careggi to San Marco; there it remained in the chapel of a lay-brotherhood till the following evening, when the clergy of San Lorenzo came in solemn procession to fetch it away and carry it to the sacristy of the Basilica. The ceremony at church was simple, as he had wished it. The mourning was general. The upper ranks, almost entirely attached to the Medicean interest, felt deeply the loss of the man whose firm and practised hand had guided the helm for so long, and whose vices had been outweighed by his brilliant qualities. Who should tell them what might happen now? On April 10, wrote Bartolommeo Cerretani, the whole city went to Piero. The people lamented the loss of him who, at whatever cost, had procured them peace and comfort.[570] There were indeed some who rejoiced at his death and expected good from it; there is no lack of testimony to such feelings in memoirs not intended for the eyes of strangers. ‘As I know,’ writes Alamanno Rinuccini, when describing the merits and demerits of the Medici, ‘that many falsehoods about him have been spread, in eye-service and deceit, by flatterers and perverters of the truth, mostly bought and corrupted by him by means of honours and enrichment at the public expense. I intend to give a brief account of his life and manners, with both of which I was intimately acquainted: not by way of detraction, nor from hatred towards him, from whom I have received divers marks of distinction, to which I had no claim, but in compliance with truth. The multitude regarded the signs before his death as prognostics of great evils; they would have been prognostics of great good, had the citizens known how to use their opportunity.’[571]

On April 13, three days after the funeral, the assembled councils and the people, in conjunction with the Signoria, issued the following decree:[572] ‘Whereas the foremost man of all this city, the lately deceased Lorenzo de’ Medici, did during his whole life neglect no opportunity of protecting, increasing, adorning, and raising this city, but was always ready with counsel, authority, and painstaking, in thought and deed; subordinated his personal interest to the advantage and benefit of the community; shrank from neither trouble nor dangers for the good of the State and its freedom; and devoted to that object all his thoughts and powers, securing public order by excellent laws; by his presence brought a dangerous war to a conclusion; regained the places lost in battle and took those belonging to the enemies;—whereas he furthermore, after the rare examples furnished by antiquity, for the safety of his fellow-citizens and the freedom of his country gave himself up into his enemies’ power, and, filled with love for his house, averted the general danger by drawing it all upon his own head; whereas, finally, he omitted nothing which could tend to raise our reputation and enlarge our borders; it hath seemed good to the Senate and people of Florence, on the motion of the chief magistrate, to establish a public testimonial of gratitude to the memory of such a man, in order that virtue may not be unhonoured among the Florentines, and that in days to come other citizens may be incited to serve the commonwealth with might and wisdom. But whereas the memory of Lorenzo needs no outward adornments, as it has struck deep root, and blooms fresher every day, it hath been determined to transfer to Piero, the eldest son of the deceased, the heir of his father’s dignity and successor to his fame, the public honour due to his father and his ancestors. So much the more, as Piero has already in his youth displayed the endowments of his father and is in some degree his image, and has already shown himself such that we may hope he will, by God’s assistance, tread in his father’s steps.’

On April 10, before break of day, a special messenger brought to the Cardinal the fatal tidings which had been expected for several days. Giovanni, his attendants and servants, at once put on mourning, the house was hung with black, and all the Cardinals, headed by Francesco Piccolomini, paid visits of condolence to their youthful colleague. Four days after, a Requiem was sung in Sta. Maria sopra Minerva; Franceschetto Cybò and the Count of Pitigliano were present in coarse black mantles reaching to the ground, and also Onofrio Tornabuoni, the Medicean agent at the Roman Curia, and many prelates and gentlemen. The next day Innocent proclaimed the appointment of Giovanni de’ Medici to be legate in Tuscany, whither the boy wished to return in consequence of his father’s death, that he might consult on the condition of affairs with his brother, to whom he had already written many letters. The young Cardinal was so much moved that he had to retire for a while during mass.[573] Nothing is known of the remarks made by the Pope (who sent an orator to Florence) on the loss of the man with whom he was so intimate, although throughout his pontificate he had never personally seen him. The case is otherwise with regard to King Ferrante. On the morning of April 11, being then in the neighbourhood of Palma, he learned from a letter of Marino Tomacelli that all hope was abandoned. He thereupon wrote to Gioviano Pontano at Rome that he should offer the Pope all the means at his command to prevent a disturbance of the peace of Italy, and place at his disposal the troops commanded by Virginio Orsini. To Virginio he wrote the same evening, after receiving news of the death (‘which has grieved us to the depths of our soul’), charging him to act without further orders from him according to the disposition of the Pope, in case the latter should have need of him.[574] To those around him the King is said to have thus spoken: ‘That man’s life has been long enough for his own deathless fame, but too short for Italy. God grant that now he is dead, that may not be attempted which was not ventured on during his life.’[575]

That Innocent was entirely of one mind with Ferrante in considering the maintenance of the house of Medici in the position it had hitherto occupied as necessary for the preservation of the existing political system, may be judged from the answer addressed to the Pope, from Vigevano on April 20, by Lodovico il Moro in the name of his nephew Gian Galeazzo.[576] Whatever might be the real feeling of Sforza, who had already two months ago drawn up the instructions for that embassy to Charles VIII. which was the first step towards the ruin of Italy—at all events, his letter throws a favourable light on the Pope’s views of the matter: ‘Your Holiness could have written me nothing more welcome than what you have lately communicated to me as to your desire to keep Italy in peace, and maintain the sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici in their position. For I have nothing more at heart than the preservation of the peace of Italy, for which I have not shrunk from subjecting myself to intolerable burdens and struggles; and between me and the Medici family there is a bond of friendship both public and private. My memory recalls how the illustrious prince my grandfather (Francesco), aided by the pecuniary means of Cosimo de’ Medici, regained the state of our forefathers, which after his father-in-law’s death had been, so to say, lost. I likewise remember how since then Florence and the house of Medici have never been in a position to need our help without our placing arms and money at their disposal. I am therefore glad that amid the deep mourning occasioned by the death of the illustrious Lorenzo, your Holiness’s letter calls upon me to do that to which my own inclination prompted me, and which is as interesting to me as if it concerned my own personal welfare. For not only your Holiness, to whom my attachment to the Medici family is known, but all who know anything of Italian affairs must be convinced that I shall continue to act towards the sons of Lorenzo as my predecessors acted towards his father and grandfather. No one can imagine that I shall not tread as heretofore in the footsteps of my ancestors; for this friendship with the Medici has always been cultivated and confirmed by practical proofs on both sides, up to the present hour, and has not only never experienced a disturbance, but has been constantly strengthened, to the advantage and pleasure of both parties. Perseverance in this mind is made doubly my duty, by old and new relations with the Medici, and by the circumstance that I shall thereby suit the views of your Holiness.’

Lorenzo de’ Medici was buried in the sacristy of San Lorenzo, the resting-place of his father, uncle, brother, grandparents, and other relatives. When Giovanni, who left Rome on May 11, 1492, to return home, stood here at his father’s grave, he little thought that more than twenty-three years later, on Advent Sunday, 1515, he was destined to kneel there in tears as the spiritual head of Christendom.[577] Amid all the splendour and greatness to which the Medici afterwards rose, not one of them seems to have thought of raising a monument to the most famous man of the family, though the greatest sculptor of the age helped to immortalise on their monuments two of its insignificant members. In 1559 Duke Cosimo I. caused the mortal remains of Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano to be laid in the porphyry sarcophagus which they had erected for their father and uncle.[578]

The following poem,[579] set to music by Heinrich Isaak, was written by Angelo Poliziano on the death of the man to whom he had been through life so deeply attached:—

MONODIA IN LAURENTIUM MEDICEM.

Quis dabit capiti meo Aquam? quis oculis meis Fontem lachrymarum dabit? Ut nocte fleam, Ut luce fleam. Sic turtur viduus solet; Sic cygnus moriens solet, Sic luscinia conqueri. Heu miser, miser; O dolor, dolor!

Laurus impetu fulminis Illa illa jacet subito; Laurus omnium celebris Musarum choris, Nympharum choris, Sub cujus patula coma, Et Phœbi lyra blandius Et vox dulcius insonat. Nunc muta omnia, Nunc surda omnia.

Quis dabit capiti meo Aquam? quis oculis meis Fontem lachrymarum dabit? Ut nocte fleam, Ut luce fleam. Sic turtur viduus solet; Sic cygnus moriens solet, Sic luscinia conqueri. Heu miser, miser; O dolor, dolor!

CONCLUSION.

AT the age of forty-three Lorenzo was called away. His span of life had been but a short one for such manifold activity and such lasting fame. A remarkable man, he was the most brilliant representative of a remarkable time; in no one else were its qualities and excellences united in such a harmonious whole. Energetic in action, and earnest in his endeavours to watch the phases of progress in the establishment of a new order of things; endowed with the liveliest susceptibilities and the quickest perceptions, combined with the earnestness and thoroughness of a student; with a strongly sympathetic feeling for art, yet capable of immediate application to the business of life; he united imaginative power with clear common sense, the capacity for lofty projects with that for patient calculation; he had all the qualities of poet and statesman, connoisseur and patron of learning, citizen and prince. He was indefatigable and persevering in the endless business thrown upon him by his position as the leader of a peculiarly constituted state; with a quick and unerring eye he was able to grasp the whole and yet observe its smallest detail; in his riper years he was cautious and prudent, keeping his object immovably in view without blind self-confidence or presumption, though fully alive to his own position and that of the state which he represented. He passed with wonderful ease from practical to speculative politics, from science to poetry. Few could equal him in comprehensive, manifold, creative gifts, or in the most delicate sense of beauty, and the most active interest, with the deepest insight, into the character and purposes of art. In his home and family relations he was kindly, sociable, cheerful, even amid physical sufferings; not free from errors which even in earlier years and afterwards far more decidedly loosened the bond between him and his wife, yet still unaffectedly attached to all his family; to the admirable mother, many of whose qualities he had inherited, to the wife who was not of his own choosing, to the children to whom he was a wise and prudent counsellor, and a tender but not a weak father. Moreover he was a warm, attentive, and constant friend, attracting and attaching to himself the most different natures, ever ready to help in counsel and action, interposing and interceding for high and low with equal zeal amid a thousand occupations. He was gifted with a delicate sense of propriety, though he could not keep himself free from the Epicureanism of the time, which exacted a sacrifice even from him; and vividly conscious of the power of culture in the field of the Church, though a frivolous materialism threatened to weaken that power and lead him seriously astray in his views of life.

He was not without the weaknesses and vices of his time. They cramped his policy, though it still stood far higher than that of most princes and statesmen of the age, both Italian and others. He was superior too in honesty and consistency, and, at least during the last ten years of his life, in unalterable adherence to the preservation of peace and unity, and to a feeling of nationality such as answered to the ideas of the time, from which it is not fair to demand conceptions unfamiliar to it. His home policy has called forth severe blame both on account of his progressive violations of the constitution to increase his personal authority, and of the corruption he employed in order to obtain undisturbed control of the finances. With regard to the latter, it is hard to see how, had he lived longer, he could have avoided national bankruptcy, unless indeed he and the state had contrived by the preservation of peace to restore an internal equilibrium, for which in his last years he had begun to lay some slight foundation. As to the former, many of his contemporaries expressed the opinion that he aimed at becoming a recognised prince, and was only waiting for a favourable opportunity—such as his entrance on the office of Gonfalonier, as soon as that dignity should fall to him on his reaching the legal age. And yet he, who had everything in his power, could not have lacked means and opportunities, if this had been his object. But he knew the city and the people too well to be blind to the obstacles and dangers which threatened to impede that path.

Perhaps the worst evil of Lorenzo’s government lay in the increasing incongruity between the outward form and the real power, and in the displacement of authority from its legal centre, whereby both law and moderation were called in question. Personal influence decided everything in politics, in administration, in finance, even in the dispensation of justice. The more clear-sighted among Lorenzo’s contemporaries did not fail to perceive this radical evil, and expressed their opinion of it in the bitterest terms. Nevertheless not merely did Florence escape such excesses as occurred in all other Italian states, almost without an exception, but Lorenzo’s government was on the whole free from the violence which had characterised that of Cosimo. Doubtless the greater tranquillity of the time, the more secure position of the Medici, the fact that the people had been longer accustomed to their rule, contributed to this result; but so also did the character of the man himself. Lorenzo was ambitious to rule, but he was no tyrant. On the one hand he was too keen-sighted, and had calculated too accurately the character and traditions of the people; on the other hand his own nature was too grand, too open, too high-minded, too warm-hearted, and also too fond of enjoyment; finally, he was too much of a Florentine citizen, and that not merely in name but in his appearance, his dress and his bearing. He would have had nothing to distinguish him from the rest of the community, had there not been permitted or granted to him, ever since the Pazzi conspiracy, a suite consisting at first of four of his own confidants, afterwards of twelve men paid by the Signoria. It is true that this was a grave offence against civil equality. This citizen-character was not kept up by Lorenzo’s sons—it was said of Piero that he was not a Florentine by nature—and its outward signs vanished altogether in some others of the race. In his own family Lorenzo maintained simplicity; in public affairs, however completely he held the real direction of them, he tried to keep up fair appearances; though indeed he could not prevent a complaint that Ser Piero da Bibiena brought into his court of chancery matters which rightly belonged to the police-jurisdiction of the Eight. On important occasions he liked to consult with many persons, but with each one separately; and then he formed his own decision independently.

On his arbitrary proceedings in money matters there were very divided opinions even in his own time. If he had not used the money of the state he would have been ruined; and it was said that his ruin would have entailed that of everybody else; that all he took to save his credit and to lead a showy life was nothing in comparison of the losses to which a state would be exposed by incapable administration; that one single unskilful or ill-timed measure might cost a state dearer than Lorenzo’s whole course of government; that the ultimate and highest object of the Medici, for which they calculated everything they did or left undone, was indeed their own benefit; but they were and always had been Florentine citizens, and in most cases their interest and that of the state was one and the same. So said the favourable party after Lorenzo’s death and Piero’s fall. To this it was answered that the ultimate object of the Medici was not supremacy like that of the Albizzi in a state becoming more and more aristocratic in form, but simply autocracy, which they had sought to attain under the form of democracy, by removing the influence of the noble families and favouring many members of the lower classes. A cunning tyranny like that of Cosimo, or one softened by affability and generosity like that of Lorenzo, was all the worse because it spread poison among the people, preparing the way for the endurance of something harder. The truth of this view was proved at no very distant time.

For good or for evil the Medici’s influence struck deep root in Florence. They made the lasting existence of the Republic impossible. ‘We are suffering’—such are the words placed by Francesco Guicciardini in the mouth of a man frequently named in this history—Paol’Antonio Soderini—after their expulsion in 1494—‘from two mortal wounds: the Pisan war, and the exile of the Medici. With their numerous friends in the city and country, and the greatness of their name abroad, they will give us a great deal of trouble.’ He was right. The Medicean party would have given the death-blow to the Republic of 1495 as well as to that of 1527, even if external circumstances had not come to their assistance. The work was made easier for them because here, as in many other republics, the relation of the ruling commonwealth to her subject towns and districts was an unnatural and very oppressive one; these subjects, influenced by the traditions of their old freedom, obeyed only on compulsion; and endured a personal government such as was permanently established forty years after Lorenzo’s death, more easily than their former position—perhaps because their old masters now had to bow their necks to the same yoke.

In the ninth chapter of his Florentine history, the great writer just mentioned sums up at the close, in a few words, his masterly picture of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s influence on his native city. The city, he says, was not free under him; but it could not have found a more endurable and better master. For while there proceeded from him much good, owing to his natural goodness and amiable disposition, the evils, so far as they proceeded from the nature of the tyranny itself, were slight and limited to absolute necessity, and infinitely slighter still where his own will was concerned. Therefore, although many might rejoice at his death, yet it grieved those who had a share in the government, and even those who had some ground of complaint against him, for no one knew whither the change might lead.

This was soon discovered. Lorenzo the Magnificent had been scarcely two years and a half in his grave, and his sons had not yet found time to raise a monument to his memory, when the stately edifice of which Giovanni d’Averardo had laid the foundation-stone, which Cosimo had built up, and Piero and Lorenzo enlarged and adorned, crumbled to pieces. On November 9, 1494, Luca Corsini, one of the Priori, shut the gate of the palace of the Signoria in the face of Piero de’ Medici, on his return from the French camp at Sarzana, and thus gave the signal for a great change in the destinies of the commonwealth. Lorenzo’s son and successor had neither his father’s sagacity and experience, nor his father’s authority with the great men nor the attachment of the people, to help him. In the long-threatened division which brought down France to interfere in the dynastic troubles of Italy, he first made common cause with the house of Aragon against the Moro and the French king, and then, as soon as the latter, having crossed the Alps without obstacle, was threatening Florence, the young man lost his head and his courage, and without a shadow of right delivered up the fortresses of the state, Sarzana, Pietrasanta, Pisa, Livorno, to the foreigner. As soon as the old cry of ‘People and liberty!’ was raised in a burst of anger at this unheard-of proceeding, Piero mounted his horse and was glad when he found himself safe on the road to Bologna, whither he was followed by his brothers and those of his adherents who were most deeply compromised, while the mob was sacking the Medici palace and the houses of the most detested tools of their financial administration. Thus in a moment a revolution was accomplished which created a new popular state, under the eyes of a foreign sovereign. That same November 9 Charles VIII. entered Pisa, where the rising against Florence began, and a week later he was in the palace in the Via Larga. This state lasted, amid the greatest internal and external difficulties, for nearly eighteen years, and then gave way to a new Medicean supremacy, which after another three years’ interruption, brought about by similar extraneous circumstances, formed itself into an hereditary autocracy, lasting till, after the lapse of two full centuries, the altered family died out in the altered country, and was mourned even then, when but little was left of the qualities which had lent it so much splendour.

Lorenzo’s friends and adherents met with various fates. Of the heads of the party, now left to their own resources, some attained influence and power in the new commonwealth; others came to a bloody end. Of the friends who stood round his death-bed, one, Angelo Poliziano, did not live to see the catastrophe that befell the once splendid house. He was taken away on September 24, 1494; and the evil reports which his life, notwithstanding all his high intellectual gifts, had in some measure called forth, did not spare him even in death. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola died on the day of the French king’s entry, and the comforter of his last moments was the man whom Lorenzo, too, had summoned in the hour of death—the Predicant monk of Ferrara who was destined to stir Florence to her deepest depths, and to die amid the flames lighted by his own hand. Marsilio Ficino and Cristoforo Landino were doomed to witness the misfortunes of the family to whom they owed everything and were attached by hereditary affection, and to survive the execution of many friends, and the dispersion of the rich treasures of art and learning which adorned the house in which they had been born and grown up. Of the younger members of the circle, some spent eighteen years in exile and vicissitude, to come back at last and sun themselves in the splendour, brilliant indeed but fleeting, of the pontificate of Leo X. Then the seeds of literature and art sown in the days of Lorenzo, sprang up in the works of Ariosto and Machiavelli, of Raphael and Michelangelo; but the political edifice, whose chief pillar he had been, and the national polity were irrecoverably destroyed; Italy had become the whole world’s battle-field; Lombardy was subject to the French, Naples to the Spaniards; the crowd of dynasties in Romagna had been swept away by the flood; while of those who had once held in their control the weal and woe of the peninsula, Ferrante and Alfonso of Aragon had died in distress and remorse, and Lodovico il Moro had ended his days in a French prison.

APPENDICES.

APPENDIX I.

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE.[580]

1115. Death of the Countess Matilda. Increased independence of the Tuscan towns.

1188. Frederic Barbarossa in Florence.

1201. Chiarissimo de’ Medici member of the council of the Florentine Commonwealth.

1207. Election of the first Podestà.

1215. Beginning of civil feuds.

1250. First constitution of the Florentine commonalty of citizens in opposition to the nobility. The _Capitano del Popolo_.

1260. Battle of Montaperti. Victory of the Ghibelline party.

1266. Charles of Anjou. The Ghibellines leave Florence.

1282. Origin of the political constitution of the guilds (_Priori delle Arti_).

1293. Reform of the constitution of the guilds. _Gonfalonieri di giustizia._ Penal laws against the nobility.

1294. Building of the Palace of the Commonwealth (_Palazzo dei Priori_), and of the new Cathedral begun.

1312. Siege of Florence by the Emperor Henry VII.

1320. Beginning of the war against Castruccio, Lord of Lucca.

1336. War against Martino della Scala, Lord of Verona.

1342-43. Tyrannical government of Gautier de Brienne, Duke of Athens. Complete downfall of the ancient nobility.

1346. Great losses of the Florentine banks.

1351. Beginning of the wars against the Visconti of Milan.

1362. War with Pisa.

1371. Factions of the Albizzi and Ricci. Exclusion of many citizens from office.

1375. Beginning of enmity between the Florentines and Pope Gregory XI. (1377, return of the Pope from Avignon to Rome.)

1378. Gonfaloniership of Salvestro de’ Medici. Rising and government of the lowest classes (_Tumulto dei Ciompi_).

Ambrogio Traversari born (d. 1439).

1379. Execution of Piero degli Albizzi.

Filippo Brunelleschi b. (d. 1446).

1380. Poggio Bracciolini b. (d. 1459).

1381? Lorenzo Ghiberti b. (d. 1455).

1382. End of the popular government. Rise of the power of the Albizzi.

1386. Donatello b. (d. 1466).

1387. Exile of Benedetto degli Alberti and his family. Fra Giovanni of Fiesole b. (d. 1455).

1388. Salvestro de’ Medici d.

1389. Cosimo de’ Medici b. (d. 1464).

1391. Neri Capponi, son of Gino, b. (d. 1457). Michelozzo Michelozzi b. (d. 1472).

1393. Tyranny of Maso degli Albizzi. Vieri de’ Medici.

1394. Luigi Marsigli d.

1396. Emmanuel Chrysoloras called to Florence (d. 1415). Giannozzo Manetti b. (d. 1459).

1399. Pilgrimages of the White Penitents. Great mortality. Carlo Marsuppini b. (d. 1453).

1400. War with Gian-Galeazzo Visconti (d. 1402). Alliance with King Ruprecht of the Pfalz. Luca della Robbia b. (d. 1482).

1401. Masaccio b., at San Giovanni in Val d’Arno (d. 1428).

1403. League with Pope Boniface IX. and others against the Visconti.

L. Ghiberti receives the commission for the first door of the Baptistery.

1404. Beginning of the enterprise against Pisa.

1405. Fight for Pisa. Gino Capponi.

Matteo Palmieri b. (d. 1475). L. B. Alberti b. (d. 1472).

1406. Capture of Pisa.

Coluccio Salutati d. (b. 1330).

1408. Efforts to restore the unity of the Church.

1409. Council of Pisa. (P. Alexander V.)

Bernardo Rossellino b. (d. 1464).

1410. League with Pope John XXIII. [Baldassar Cossa]. Feo Belcari b. (d. 1484).

1411. Treaty with K. Ladislas of Naples. Purchase of Cortona. Establishment of the Council of Two Hundred.

1412? Fra Filippo Lippi b. (d. 1469).

1414. New treaty with K. Ladislas, and after his death, with his sister Queen Joanna II. Cosimo de’ Medici and John XXII. at Constance.

1415. Benedetto Accolti b. (d. 1466).

1416. Plague at Florence.

Piero de’ Medici b. (d. 1469).

1417. Maso degli Albizzi d. His son Rinaldo and Niccolò da Uzzano at the head of the Commonwealth.

1419. Pope Martin V. in Florence. Reconciliation and death of John XXII.

Archbishopric of Florence. Amerigo Corsini.

1420. Filippo Brunelleschi architect of the dome of the Cathedral.

Benozzo Gozzoli b. (d. 1498).

1421. Purchase of Livorno. Gino Capponi d.

1422. Flourishing state of commerce. Relations with the Levant.

1423. Beginning of the war with Filippo Maria Visconti.

1424. Defeat at Zagonara.

Cristoforo Landino b. (d. 1504).

1425. Defeat at Anghiari.

Lorenzo Ghiberti receives the commission for the second door of the Baptistery.

1426. Disputes about taxes and war-imposts. The Albizzi and Giovanni de’ Medici.

1427. First register of lands.

Antonio Rossellino b. (d. 1478).

1428. Peace with F. M. Visconti.

Reform of the University. Palla Strozzi.

1429. Giovanni de’ Medici d. Revolt of Volterra on account of the introduction of the land-register.

Francesco Filelfo in Florence.

Antonio Pollaiuolo b. (d. 1498).

1430. War with Lucca. The Jews in Florence.

Bartolommeo Scala b. (d. 1495).

1431. Pope Eugene IV.

Luigi Pulci b. (d. 1486).

Mino da Fiesole b. (d. 1484).

1432. Giuliano da Majano b. (d. 1490.)

Niccolò da Uzzano d.

K. Sigismund in Italy. (Crowned Emperor 1433).

1433. War with Lucca ended by a treaty with Milan.

Exile of Cosimo de’ Medici.

Marsilio Ficino b. (d. 1499).

1434. Recall of Cosimo de’ Medici. Exile of Rinaldo degli Albizzi, Palla Strozzi and their friends. Pope Eugene IV. in Florence. Completion of the dome of the Cathedral.

1435. Cosimo de’ Medici Gonfalonier.

Andrea del Verrocchio b. (d. 1488).

1436. Consecration of the Cathedral by Pope Eugene IV. Convent and library of San Marco. Medici palace.

1439. Florentine Council of Union. The Greeks in Florence.

1440. War of the Visconti. Battle of Anghiari. End of the dominion of the Guidi in the Casentino.

1441. Death of Baldaccio da Anghiari.

Pietro Pollaiuolo b. (d. 1489?).

? Luca Signorelli b. (d. 1523).

1442. Benedetto da Majano b. (d. 1498?).

Rinaldo degli Albizzi d., at Ancona.

1445. Giuliano Giamberti da Sangallo b. (d. 1516).

1446. S. Antonine Archbishop (d. 1459).

1447. War in the Chiana valley with Alfonso of Aragon, King of Naples. Pope Nicholas V.

1449. (January 1) Lorenzo de’ Medici b. (d. 1492).

Bernardo Rucellai b. (d. 1514).

Domenico Ghirlandajo b. (d. 1494).

1450. Dispute with Venice. Francesco Sforza Duke of Milan.

1451. Amerigo Vespucci b. (d. 1512).

1452. Emperor Frederic III. in Florence. The Neapolitans in the Chiana valley. Leonardo da Vinci b. (d. 1519).

1453. Giuliano de’ Medici b. (d. 1478).

Girolamo Benevieni b. (d. 1542).

1454. Peace of Lodi, between Florence, Milan, Venice, and Naples.

Angelo Ambrogio Poliziano b. (d. 1494).

1455. Intrigues against Cosimo de’ Medici. Luca Pitti. Pope Calixtus III.

1456. Johannes Argyropulos called to Florence.

1457. Simone Pollaiuolo Cronaca b. (d. 1508).

Filippino Lippi b. (d. 1504).

1458. Changes in the Constitution by Luca Pitti. Pope Pius II.

1459. Pope Pius II. in Florence.

Benozzo Gozzoli paints the chapel of the Medici palace.

1461. Piero de’ Medici Gonfalonier.

1463. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola b. (d. 1494).

1464. Cosimo de’ Medici, ‘Pater Patriæ,’ d. Pope Paul II.

Marcello Virgilio Adriani b. (d. 1521).

1465. Beginning of the Pitti disturbances.

1466. Conspiracy of Diotisalvi Neroni, Luca Pitti, and their friends against Piero de’ Medici.

1467. War of Colleone.

1468. Peace with Venice. Purchase of Sarzana. Tournament and marriage of Lorenzo de’ Medici.

1469. Piero de’ Medici d. Authority of Lorenzo. Tommaso Soderini.

1470. Attempted revolt at Prato.

Bernardo Dovizj of Bibiena b. (d. 1520).

1471. Galeazzo Maria Sforza in Florence. Lorenzo de’ Medici at Rome with Pope Sixtus IV. Piero de’ Medici b. (d. 1503). Bernardo Cennini, first Florentine printer.

1472. Revolt and conquest of Volterra.

1473. Re-opening of the University of Pisa.

1474. King Christian of Denmark in Florence.

1475. Giovanni de’ Medici [Pope Leo X.] b. (d. 1521). Michelangelo Buonarotti b. (d. 1564). Murder of Galeazzo M. Sforza. Regency of Bona of Savoy.

1478. Conspiracy of the Pazzi. Death of Giuliano de’ Medici. War with Rome and Naples. Giulio de’ Medici [Pope Clement VII.] b.

1479. Defeat at Poggibonzi. Lorenzo de’ Medici in Naples. Lodovico il Moro regent of Milan.

1480. Peace between Florence, Naples, and the Pope. Establishment of the Council of Seventy.

1481. Cristoforo Landino’s edition of Dante.

1482. Ferrarese war. Francesco Guicciardini b. (d. 1540).

1483. Fra Girolamo Savonarola in Florence. King Louis XI. of France d. Charles VIII. king.

1484. Peace of Bagnolo. Pope Sixtus IV. d. Innocent VIII. Pope.

1485. The Florentines in the Neapolitan barons’ war against the Pope.

1486. Peace between the Pope and King Ferrante.

1487. Re-capture of Sarzana by the Florentines.

1488. Family alliance between the Medici and Innocent VIII. Clarice de’ Medici d. Homer’s works first printed. Convent of San Gallo.

Murder of Girolamo Riario and Galeotto Manfredi.

1489. Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici.

Fra Girolamo Savonarola again at San Marco.

Building of the Strozzi palace begun.

Benedetto da Majano.

1490. New constitutional reform. Lorenzo de’ Medici mediator between Pope Innocent and King Ferrante.

Cathedral. Choir of Sta. Maria Novella by Ghirlandajo. Negotiations for completion of the Cathedral façade.

1491. Reconciliation between the Pope and Naples.

1492. Proclamation of the Cardinalate of Giovanni de’ Medici.

Lorenzo de’ Medici d., April 8.

APPENDIX II.

MEDICI.

Giovanni de’ Averardo=Piccarda Bueri. b. 1360, d. 1429. │ ┌──────────────────┴────────────────────+ │ │ Cosimo = Contessina de’ Bardi Lorenzo = Ginevra ‘pater │ d. 1473 b. 1395 │ Cavalcanti. patriæ’│ d. 1440 │ b. 1389│ │ d. 1464│ Grand─Ducal line, │ extinct 1737. ┌───┴─────────────┬──────+ │ │ │ Piero = Lucrezia │ Carlo b. 1416 │ Tornabuoni │ (nat) d. 1469 │ d. 1482. │ d. 1492. │ │ │ Giovanni=Ginevra │ d. 1463 degli │ Albizzi. ├──────────────┬───────────┬────────────┬────────+ │ │ │ │ │ Lorenzo ‘il=Clarice │ Bianca=Guglielmo │ Maria = Lionetto magnifico’ │Orsini │ de’ Pazzi. │ (nat.) de’ Rossi. b. 1449 │d. 1488 │ │ d. 1492. │ │ Nannina=Bernardo │ │ Rucellai. │ Giuliano b. 1453 │ d. 1478. │ │ │ Giulio │ b. 1478 │ d. 1534 │ (Pope Clement │ VII.) │ ┌─────┴─────┬──────────┬──────────┬─────┬──────┬─────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Piero = Alfonsina │ Giuliano=Filiberta │ Luisa │Contessina= b. 1471 │ Orsini │ Duke of │of Savoy. │ betrothed │Piero Ridolfi. d. 1503 │ d. 1520 │ Nemours │ │ to Giovanni│ │ │ b. 1479 │ │ de’ Medici.│ │ │ d. 1516 │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Maddalena= │ Giovanni │ Lucrezia=Jacopo Franceschetto │ b. 1475 │ Salviati. Cybò. │ d. 1521 │ │ (Pope └──────────────────────────────┐ │ Leo X.) │ │ Ippolito (nat.) ├───────────────────────────┐ Cardinal │ │ d. 1535. Lorenzo = Madeleine Clarice = Filippo Strozzi Duke of │ de la Tour d. 1528. the younger. Urbino, │ d’Auvergne b. 1492 │ d. 1519 d. 1519 │ │ ├─────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ Caterina=Henri II. King of France. Alessandro (nat.), b. 1519 first Duke of Florence d. 1589 d. 1537

PAZZI.

GUIDOTTO DE’ PAZZI fought at Montecatini 1315, exiled after the time of the Duke of Athens, d. 1348. │ Guglielmo = Costanza de’ Bardi. condemned 1345, afterwards in │ offices of State, Camarlingo │ 1374, d. 1377. │ ┌──────┘ │ Andrea = Caterina Salviati. b. 1372, Capitano di parte Guelfa │ 1413, made eligible to municipal │ offices by Cosimo de’ Medici 1434, │ knighted by René of Anjou 1442, │ d. 1445. │ ┌──────────────────┬─────┴─────────────────┐ │ │ │ Jacopo = Maddalena Piero =Fiammetta Antonio=Cosa Gonfalonier │ Serristori. ambassador│Giugni. │degli 1469, │ at Naples,│ │Alessandri. d. 1478. │ aid to │ │ │ Louis XI. │ │ │ in 1461. │ │ Caterina, b. 1463, │ │ Abbess of Sta. Maria di │ │ Monticelli, d. 1490. │ │ │ │ ┌───────┬─────────┬─────────┬───────┴─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ Renato. Andrea. Niccolò. Leonardo. Galeotto. │ 1478. │ ┌─────────────────────┬──────────────────┴─────┐ │ │ │ Guglielmo = Bianca Giovanni = Beatrice Francesco d. 1516. │ de Medici. d. 1481. Borromeo. d. 1478. │ ├─────────────────────┐ │ │ Cosimo Alessandro Archbishop of Florence d. 1530. d. 1513.

SODERINI.

TOMMASO SODERINI. Capitano di parte Guelfa 1377─78, then banished, returned 1381, Gonfalonier 1395, d. 1402. │ ┌─────────┴─────────────────────┐ │ │ Lorenzo = Ghilla Cambi. Francesco = Margherita (nat., legitimatized), │ of Elisabetta Altoviti, dau. of knighted by K. Charles V. │ b. 1376, member of the Palla 1397, d. 1405. │ magistracy of Eight 1433. Strozzi │ ┌─────────┴────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ Niccolò Tommaso=Dianora b. 1401, Gonfalonier 1451 and 1465, b. 1403. several times│Tornabuoni exiled in consequence of the ambassador and five │ conspiracy of Diotisalvi Neroni, times Gonfalonier, │ d. at Ravenna 1474. d. 1485. │ │ ┌────────────────┬───────────────┬──────────┬────────┴───┐ │ │ │ │ │ Francesco Piero Paol’Antonio Tommaso Gian Vittorio b. 1453. made several times knighted Rector of Cardinal─Bishop Gonfalonier ambassador, by Leo X. Pisa and of Volterra, for life d. 1499. ambassador. d. 1524. in 1502, d. 1522.

VISCONTI AND SFORZA.

GIAN GALEAZZO VISCONTI = Isabelle of France. Duke of Milan, d. 1402. │ ┌───────┬────────┴─────┐ Muzio Attendolo │ │ │ of Cotignola, │ Giovanni Filippo │ called Sforza d. 1424. │ Maria Maria │ ┌─────┬────┬───────┐ │ d. 1412. d. 1447. │ │ │ │ │ │ Bianca=Francesco │ Bosio │ Valentina = Louis, Maria │b. 1401, │ Count of │ │ Duke of (nat.)│ Duke of │ Sta. Fiora,│ │ Orleans. │Milan 1450,│ d. 1476. │ │ │ d. 1466. │ │ Charles, Duke of Orleans. │ │ ┌──┘ │ │ │ │ │ │ Alessandro Lisa=Leonetto Louis XII., King of France. │ Lord of │da │ Pesaro, │San │ d. 1473. │Severino. │ │ │ │ Costanzo Roberto │ d. 1483. da San │ Severino. │ ┌────────────┬───────┬─────────┴────────┬────┬────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ Galeazzo=Bona of │ Lodovico = Beatrice │ Ascanio │ Maria │Savoy. │ ‘il Moro’ d’Este │ Maria │ d. 1476.│ │ Duke of dau. of │ Cardinal│ │ │ Bari and Duke Ercole │ 1484, │ │ │ of Milan, and Eleonora│ d. 1505│ │ Sforza d. 1510. of Aragon. │ │ │ Duke of │ │ │ Bari, Ottaviano Ippolita │ d. 1479. d. 1477. Maria │ d. 1488.=Alfonso │ │of │ │Aragon, │ │afterwards │ │King of │ │Naples. │ │ │ ┌──────────────────────────────────┘ │ │ Giovanni Galeazzo = Isabella Duke of Milan, d. 1495.

APPENDIX III.

LORENZO’S LAST HOURS.

_Book VI. Chapter VIII._

THE interview of Savonarola and Lorenzo de’ Medici has given rise to a controversy which has never been definitively settled. The account of the monk’s biographers, Giovan Francesco Pico and Pacifico Burlamachi, cannot be reconciled with that given in Politian’s letter above referred to. This last has the air of containing a mitigated version of the facts, intended to efface the bad impression made by current reports of the matter; and the third exhortation put into the monk’s mouth by Politian—‘that he should endure death with patience’—sounds almost like a commonplace, considering the gravity of the moment and the characters of the interlocutors. C. F. Meier, in his History of Savonarola (p. 52, &c.), and Villari, in ‘La Storia di Girolamo Savonarola’ (i. 136), accept the version given by the Ferrarese monk’s earliest biographers, and Villari tries to establish it by a long note (p. 155-158). But this version contains great improbabilities. How should the dying man, who had just received the viaticum, make another confession? And what could Savonarola have meant by his famous third demand—what practical use or effect could he expect from it, or from the possible assent of the dying man? The story looks like an invention of the after-days of excitement. The doubts as to the authenticity of the books of Burlamachi and Pico, which, it is suspected, were fabricated in the convent of San Marco and adorned with these authors’ names, are of little consequence in this connection, as in any case the tradition was doubtless current among Savonarola’s contemporaries.

Bartolommeo Cerretani gives, in the third book of his MS. chronicle, the following account of Lorenzo’s last hours:—‘April 7, about the fifth hour, Lorenzo received the Lord’s Supper. As his illness was making such rapid progress, Messer Pier Leoni, otherwise an excellent physician, lost heart; other doctors were at once sent for, but it was too late. Feeling his end approaching, the sick man sent for his eldest son Piero, gave him divers exhortations, and then sent him away. About the twentieth hour he began to cry out: “I am dying and there is none to help me!” All hastened to him. He said he wanted to get up a little, and had himself lifted out of bed, but only to be laid down immediately. The pains were so violent that he lost consciousness. Those standing round him began to weep, for they thought he was dead. A Camaldulensian who was present took off his spectacles, and holding them to his mouth perceived that he still breathed. A restorative was given him and he came to himself. Then he called for his son again and spoke to him softly, so that none of the others heard. After that his condition rapidly grew worse, so that he gave up the ghost on the 8th, about the fourth hour of the evening, in the arms of a valet.’

The doctor who, though a learned man, certainly seems to have blundered in his judgment as to Lorenzo’s illness, put an end to his life next morning as has been related above (p. 461), by jumping into the well at the Martelli villa at San Gervasio before Porta Pinti.

Sannazzaro’s poem in terza rima (in Roscoe, Ap. lxxviii.) on the death of Piero Leoni attributes it to the instigation of Piero de’ Medici. The fragment beginning: ‘Fu trovato essere stato gettato in un pozzo’ &c., published in Fabroni (l. c. ii. 397) as being from some anonymous author in the Magliabecchiana, is borrowed from the Ricordi of Alamanno Rinuccini (p. cxlvi). Petrus Crinitus and Valerianus (De literatorum infelicitate) take it for granted that the doctor in his agitation took his own life; and Cerretani certainly indicates that Leoni, who a short time before had been in good hopes, lost his head. He states, moreover, that the Medici’s grooms threatened the life of the physician, who was, therefore, taken to San Gervasio, and that the report of his death by the violence of others was immediately spread, but was unfounded. Burcard in his defective report (p. 175) alludes to Piero de’ Medici’s complaint by saying that the fatal termination of the illness was to be attributed to wrong medical treatment, and raises a supposition that at Rome there was believed to have been a murder.

In May, Demetrius Chalcondylas wrote from Milan to Marcello Virgilio Adriani: ‘Thou hast announced to me two sad events; the flash of lightning which has struck the principal church of the city, occasioned so much ruin, and presaged so great evils; and the death of Lorenzo, the most famous man of our time, who was distinguished in so many ways. His decease causes me deep sorrow, not merely on account of the loss, which touches us all in no slight degree, but also on account of what I personally lose, who have always found him a kind patron. And to all this is added the sad and fearful death of Piero Leoni, which has shocked me more than anything for a long time past. Believe me, Marcello, this end casts a shadow over Lorenzo’s death, and is a dishonour to the family and to the whole city. For although thou, like others, writest that he threw himself into the well, yet it is difficult to convince thoughtful people that such a wise and learned man, who, as thou thyself also tellest me, treated Lorenzo in his illness with so much care, could have been seized with such madness as to choose so shameful a death.’ (Bandini, Collectio, &c., p. 22).

In Fabroni, l. c., and Roscoe, ‘Life of Leo X.’ (Ap. No. xxii.) will be found the letters written by Cardinal Giovanni to his brother after their father’s death. The first may be given here. The original is in the curious mixture of Latin and Italian sentences which was then still in vogue.

‘My beloved brother, now the only support of our house. What shall I write to thee, when only tears are left me? For when I consider that our father of blessed memory is taken from us, I am nearer weeping than speaking. What a father! None was kinder than he to his children; of this facts are witness. Therefore it is no wonder that I lament and can find no rest; and my only consolation is that I have thee, my brother, in our father’s place. It is for thee to command, for me to obey, and thy commands will always give me the greatest pleasure. Try me; nothing shall find me backward. But I beg thee, my Piero, be towards all, especially towards thine own people, as I wish thee, beneficent, kind, courteous, gracious; thereby all is obtained, all is preserved. Not because I mistrust thee do I remind thee of this, but because it is my duty. I am consoled and sustained by the concourse of mourners to our house, the universal sympathy, the mourning of the whole city, and other things which help to alleviate sorrow. But what consoles me above all is that I have thee, whom I trust more than my words are able to express. As to what thou wishest arranged with his Holiness, nothing has been done, as it seemed better to take another way, on which the ambassador will report to thee, and which seems as if it must lead more easily to the object. Rome, April 12, 1492.’

THE END.

LONDON: PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. NEW-STREET SQUARE AND PARLIAMENT STREET

FOOTNOTES:

[1] The collection of Italian poetry made by Lorenzo de’ Medici for Don Federigo is to be found—not, indeed, in the original, which was lost probably during the French invasion of Naples in 1495—but in a copy made either at the end of the fifteenth or in the sixteenth century, and now in the Florentine National Library (Magliabecchi), to which it passed with the Palatine MSS. (Fr. Palermo, _I manoscritti Palatini di Firenze_, Flor. 1853 _seq._; i. 353 _seq._). This MS. belonged to Marco Foscarini, with whose library it went in 1800 to Vienna, and later to the Archduke, afterwards Grand Duke, Leopold, when he collected and published the poems of Lorenzo (_Opere di Lorenzo de’ Medici_, Florence, 1825, 4 vols. i. p. xxvi., where occur also Apostolo Zeno’s remarks on the MS. in question). On the MSS. and printed copies of Lorenzo’s poems, compare the same edition, i. p. xiii.-xlv., and Gamba, _Testi di Lingua_, pp. 648-660. For a complete critically revised text much is still wanting, even after the splendid edition of 1825, which came out under the auspices of the della Crusca Academy. A large and well-arranged selection, _Poesie di Lorenzo de’ Medici_, Flor. 1859, has an introduction by Giosuè Carducci, which has been a guide to much of what is said here of Lorenzo as a poet.

The letter of Lorenzo to Don Federigo, from which extracts are given above, is among the Riccardi MSS., No. 2723, under the name of Poliziano, and was published under that name in the edition of the _Rime_ by V. Manucci and L. Ciampolini, Flor. 1814. The mistake is palpable; Poliziano’s age and the agreement with Lorenzo’s views in the commentary on his poems, show it as clearly as do the historical allusions.

[2] Cf. Carducci’s edition of the _Poesie di Lor. de’ Med._, p. 54 _seq._, and Fabroni, _supra_, p. 10.

[3] Herr von Reumont here gives two or three specimens of Lorenzo’s sonnets translated into German verse. It is not attempted to retranslate these, but the English reader in search of examples of the poet’s style is referred to Roscoe’s _Lorenzo de’ Medici_, ii., iii., v.—_Note by Translator._

[4] ‘Il montanino ha scarpe grosse e cervello fino.’ The fullest collection of _rispetti_ and other Tuscan popular songs is that of G. Tigri, _Canti popolari Toscani_, first published at Florence in 1856, and reprinted several times since. The reproach against the ‘Wunderhorn’ has been repeated in this case, and indeed not without reason.

[5] Tommaso Lancillotto’s _Chronicle_ in the _Cronache inedite Modenesi_, pp. 8, 9. _Poesie musicali dei secoli XIV, XV, XVI, tratte da vari codici per cura di Ant. Cappelli_, Bologna 1869. Cf. the last story of the fifth day of the _Decameron_.

[6] _Oratio christiani gregis ad pastorem Xistum_, Epist. 1. vi. 1. Cf. _supra_, i. 440.

[7] _Lettere di Marsilio Ficino_, i. 66 _seq._

[8] Inscription on the monument in Sta. Maria del Fiore:

EN HOSPES HIC EST MARSILIUS SOPHIÆ PATER, PLATONICUM QUI DOGMA CULPA TEMPORUM SITU OBRUTUM ILLUSTRANS, ET ATTICUM DECUS SERVANS, LATIO DEDIT FORES PRIMUS SACRAS, DIVINO APERIENS MENTIS ACTUS NUMINE. VIXIT BEATUS ANTE COSMI MUNERE LAURIQUE MEDICI NUNC REVIXIT PUBLICO. S. P. Q. F. ANNO MXDXI.

[9] See a remarkable letter to Lorenzo, dated 1475, in which he speaks of the neglected muses, in Bandini, _Collectio veterum monumentorum_, p. 1.

[10] In his poem of _Xandra_, book ii. Cf. Bandini, _Specimen litt._, i. 124.

[11] The copy of _Christophori Landini Florentini ad illustrem Fridericim principem Urbinatem Disputationum Camaldulensiam libri IV._, now in the Laurentian library, was written by Pietro Cennini, son of Bernardo, the first Florentine printer, finished at the end of spring, and collated with the original. Cf. Bandini, l. c. ii. 188 _seq._ (see also p. 3 _seq._ as to the meeting and the persons present). The first edition is said (_ibid._ p. 192) to have been printed in 1475(?) and a second at Strasburg in 1508. It was translated into Italian by Antonio Cambini, a literary man much employed by Lorenzo and also in the service of his son the Cardinal. He was also in communication with the Este family, and afterwards attached himself to Savonarola, at whose fall his house was burnt down. (Cf. Cappelli, l. c. p. 309; Villari, _Storia di G. Savonarola_, ii. 388.)

[12] Manni, _Istoria del Decamerone_, pt. i. chap. xxix.

[13] Mehus, _Traversari_, p. 178.

[14] Mehus, l. c. p. 176.

[15] ‘Che ‘l Dante io leggeva per mio piacere e per fare cosa grata alla vostra inclyta città.’ Milan, May 29, 1473, in Fabroni, _Laur. Med. Vita_, ii. 76.

[16] On the various editions of the old biographies of Dante, see G. C. Galletti in _Phil. Villani liber_, &c., where Villani, Leon. Bruni, and Giann. Manetti are printed, the last with Melius’ notes for his edition, Flor. 1747. The MS. of G. M. Filelfo in the Laurentiana was published by D. Morini, Flor. 1826.

[17] Vide section iii. chap. iii.

[18] For the numerous bibliographical works on the history of Dante and his writings, we can only give a general reference to the _Bibliografia Dantesca_ of Colomb de Batines and the _Enciclopedia Dantesca_ of Ferrazzi.

[19] According to the colophon, the printing was finished on August 30, 1481. Cf. Bandini, l. c. ii. 131, 140-143; Colomb de Batines, l. c. vol. i. pt. ii. p. 43; Marsilio’s Address, Bandini, pp. 132-134; Batines, pp. 43, 44. The Magliabecchian copy has been lately rebound, and not in very good taste.

[20] _Paradiso_, xxv. 7. Girol. Benivieni, _Cantico in laude di Dante Alighieri_, in _Works_, Venice 1522. Cf. Bandini, ii. 134-136. The latter part of the poem, from the line ‘La patria, che a me madre, a Te noverca,’ refers to the above-quoted lines of Dante. The restoration of citizen rights to the poet’s great-great-grandson, who bore his name, and who was a friend of Poliziano (_Letter to Lorenzo_, Flor. June 5, 1490, in the _Prose volgari_, &c., p. 76), did not take place till 1496, and was paid for! (Gaye, l. c. p. 584.)

[21] Isidoro del Lungo, _Un documento Dantesco, Arch. Stor. Ital._, series iii. vol. xix. p. 4.

[22] Vespasiano da Bisticci, l. c. p. 499 _seq._ Palmieri’s Latin biography of the grand seneschal was translated into Italian by a relative of the latter, Donato Acciaiuolo.

[23] On the _Giostra_, see above, i. 264 _seq._, and Salvator Bongi’s oft-mentioned edition of the _Lettere di Luigi Pulci_. A new edition of _Ciriffo Calvaneo_, with full bibliographical references by S. L. G. Audin, appeared at Florence in 1834.

[24] L. Ranke’s academical treatise, _Zur Geschichte der italienischen Poesie_, Berlin, 1837, contains an excellent account of the elements and the development of the romantic epopee. The last edition of _Morgante_, which was first printed at Venice in 1481 and at Florence in the following year (Gamba, _Testi di Lingua_, p. 241 _seq._) is that by P. Sermolli, published at Florence a few years ago. The oldest impression of the _Reali di Francia_ is that published at Modena in 1491, ten years after Pulci’s poem.

[25] L. Pulci, _Lettere_, p. 38. Cf. _supra_, i. 313.

[26] February 1, 1468. L. Pulci, _Lettere_, p. 8.

[27] A petition of his widow, July 14, 1485, states that he had been dead more than eight months. Cf. _Lettere_, pp. 10, 102, 114.

[28] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 98.

[29] Isidoro del Lungo, _La patria e gli antenati d’Angelo Poliziano_ in _Arch. Stor. Ital._, series iii. vol. xi. p. 9 _seq._ Id. _Uno Scolare dello studio fiorentino nel sec. XV_, in the _Nuova Antologia_, x. 215, _seq._ Fr. Otto Mencke’s _Historia Vitæ, etc. Ang. Pol._, Leipzig, 1736, will always be valuable as a careful collection of literary and critical materials. _Opera Ang. Politiani_, Flor. 1499. _Le Stanze, l’Orfeo e le Rime di Messer Ang. Ambrogini Pol., illustrate da Giosuè Carducci_, Flor. 1863. _Prose volgari e Poesie latine e greche di A. A. P. raccolte da Isidoro del Lungo_, Flor. 1867.

[30] _Prose volgari_, p. 109.

[31] Ibid. p. 248.

[32] See _Prose volgare_, p. 481: ‘O cui tyrrheni florentia signa leonis.’

[33] _Epistolæ_, viii. 6, 7.

[34] See the poems addressed to Cardinal Riario in the _Prose volgare_, pp. 111-114. Cf. _supra_, i. 346.

[35] These four books were printed by Cardinal Angelo Mai in the second volume of the _Spicilegium Romanum_, from two MSS. in the Vatican, and thence in the _Prose volgare_, pp. 431-523. The MSS. came to the Vatican from Fulvio Orsini. The one on parchment, with the Medici arms on a red leather binding, is the copy of books ii. and iii., presented by the author to Lorenzo. The other contains books iv. and v., apparently in Poliziano’s handwriting and without a dedication.

[36] There has been much question as to the relation between the original ‘Orfeo,’ which the author wanted to destroy, and the later one, which was turned into a tragedy in several acts. The latter was published in 1776 by Ireneo Affò, with a detailed introduction and _excursus_; and in 1812 Vincenzo Ranucci wrote some extensive philological observations upon it which were reprinted in the Carducci edition, pp. 113-188. The question which has lately been raised as to Poliziano’s authorship of this second version must be left for decision to the poet’s biographers. There is a prospect of a detailed account of his life by I. del Lungo.

[37] It has been shown in vol. i. p. 299, that Poliziano did not begin this poem so early as has been imagined, from an idea that Giuliano’s tournament was held at the same time as that of his brother. That he was at work upon it in 1476 is proved by the allusion to the death of Simonetta, the young beauty to whom Giuliano’s heart was given, an event which Poliziano sang also in Latin, _Prose volgare_, p. 149. [In Simonettam, ‘Dum pulchra effertur nigro Simonetta pheretro.’]

[38] Laurus, the poetical name by which the poets of the time distinguished Lorenzo.

[39] Roscoe’s translation.

[40] ‘In violas a Venere mea dono acceptas,’ in _Prose volgare_, p. 238; Carducci, p. cviii. Agnolo Firenzuola and Giulio Perticari have translated this elegy in very different styles. Cf. _supra_, p. 15.

[41] The diploma (with a wrong date) was printed from the archiepiscopal archives of Florence in Bandini, l. c. i. 188.

[42] _Prose volgare_, pp. 285-427.

[43] _Epist._ l. x. 14.

[44] _Prælectio in Priora Aristotelis analytica cui titulus Lamia. La Strega, prelezione alle Priora d’Aristotile nello studio Fiorentino l’anno 1483 per Ang. Ambr. Poliziano volgar. da Isidori del Lungo_, Flor. 1864. The immediate neighbourhood of Fiesole, where Poliziano was so thoroughly at home, still recalls the witch-traditions of the middle ages. The subterranean chambers of the Roman theatre (unhappily in great part destroyed) on the northern slope of the hill are called by the people the Witches’ grottos—(Buche delle Fate); they are not far from the stone grotto on the eastern slope, the Fonte Soterra, which is always full of cool water, and the Latomie, which Brunelleschi opened for the purposes of his wonderful buildings (Fr. Inghirami, _Memorie storiche per servire di guida all’Osservatore in Fiesole_, Fiesole 1839), p. 60 _seq._

[45] The translation appeared at Rome in 1493. The dedication to the Pope and his Brief are in book viii. of the _Epistolæ_. The poem ‘Herodianus in laudem traductoris sui,’ is in _Prose volgare_, etc., p. 264.

[46] _Letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici_, June 5, 1490, _ibid._ p. 76.

[47] _Letter to Piero de’ Medici_, Florence, May 23, 1494, _ibid._ p. 84.

[48] Poliziano’s _Letters to Madonna Clarice_ (cf. vol. ii. book vi. ch. iii.) are in I. del Lungo, _Prose volgare_, p. 45 _seq._, and also his letters from Pistoja, Caffagiuolo, Careggi, and Fiesole, to Lorenzo and his mother, some of which had already been printed by Fabroni.

[49] Poliziano afterwards sent the ode also to Lorenzo.

[50] The graceful description of the view of Florence and its neighbourhood from Fiesole (‘Talia Fœsuleo lentus meditabar in antro Rure suburbano Medicum) stands at the end of the poem of Rusticus, which bears the date 1483, but its origin is probably connected with the time referred to above.

[51] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 288.

[52] Fiesole, May 21 and July 18, 1479, in _Prose volgari_, pp. 71-74. Several Latin epigrams to Lorenzo (_ibid._ pp. 123, 124) are of this period.

[53] _Prose volgari_, p. 127 (‘O ego quam cupio reducis contingere dextram’).

[54] Latini dettati a Piero de’ Medici, 1481, _ibid._ pp. 17-41.

[55] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 280.

[56] _Epist._ xii. 7.

[57] D. M. Manni, _Bartholomei Scalæ Collensis vita_, Flor. 1768. Scala’s _Florentine History_, now completely forgotten, appeared at Rome in 1677. The Laurentiana contains a MS. collection of letters, poems, &c., by him, to and on Cosimo the elder, and dedicated to Lorenzo (cf. Moreni, _Bibliographia_, ii. 321).

[58] Ang. Pol. _Epist._ xii. 17.

[59] Accolti (on whom cf. Vespasiano da Bisticci, l. c. p. 442 _seq._) died in 1466, aged 51; the seals were not delivered to Scala till March 1473, so they must have been put into commission (Manni, l. c. 15). Accolti’s dialogue, _De præstantia virorum sui ævi_, which, in spite of the many reservations made by the author from personal motives, will deserve regard as the work of a man in high position, was first printed by Ben. Bacchini, Parma, 1689, and later by Galletti in _Philippi Villani Liber_, p. 97 _seq._

[60] A. M. Bandini, _Lettere Fiesolane_, Flor. 1776, p. 30.

[61] A. Guidoni to Duke Ercole II., April 1486, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 281.

[62] Ang. Pol. _Epist._ xii. 17-19.

[63] ‘Ad Bartholomæum Scalam’ in the _Prose volgari_, p. 273.

[64] In the _Epigrammata Græca_. Cf. _Prose volgari_, p. 199 _seq._

[65] ‘Quæris quid mihi de tuo Marullo,’ in the _Prose volgari_, p. 124; ‘Quod plura Venerem tuus Marullus, _ibid._ p. 125.

[66] ‘Invectiva in Mabilium,’ _ibid._ p. 131 _seq._ The poems of Marullus were printed at Florence in 1497.

[67] F. Fossi, _Monumenta ad Alamanni Rinuccini vitam contexandam_, &c., Flor. 1791. G. Aiazzi, in _Ricordi storici di Filippo Rinuccini_, p. 139 _seq._

[68] Anton. Francesco Gori has added to a MS. commentary on Rucellai’s treatise _De Urbe Roma_ (in the Marucelliana at Florence) a life of the author. Cf. L. Passerini, _Genealogia ec. della Famiglia Rucellai_, p. 122 _seq._ Bernardo was born 1488, died 1514.

[69] L. Passerini, _Degli Orti Oricellarj_, in the _Curiosità_, p. 56 _seq._ The house, built on the ground bought from Nannina de’ Medici in 1482, was begun about the end of the century. It passed, with the beautiful gardens, to Bianca Cappello; it now, after many changes, belongs to a Countess Orloff.

[70] ‘Bernardo Bembo veneto oratori viro undecumque elegantissimo.’ In the _Prose volgari_, p. 251. The copy of Landino’s _Xandra_, once sent by him to Bembo, is in the Vatican library. Cf. Bandini, l. c. ii. 164 _seq._

[71] Foscarini, l. c. 267.

[72] Inscription on his tomb in Sta. Maria del Popolo:

BARBARIEM HERMOLEOS LATIO QUI DEPULIT OMNEM BARBARUS HIC SITUS EST UTRAQUE LINGUA OEMIT URBS VENETUM VITAM MORTEM DEDIT INCLYTA ROMA NON POTUIT NASCI NOBILIUSQUE MORI.

[73] Florence, May 10, 1490. Fabroni, l. c. ii. 377.

[74] Gaye, l. c. i. 294.

[75] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 284; also in _Prose volgari_, p. 78 _seq._

[76] Piero Alamanni to Lorenzo, Rome, May 14, 1491; in Fabroni, l. c. p. 379.

[77] L. Geiger, _Johann Reuchlin_ (Leipzig, 1871), p. 163 _seq._

[78] In A. Cappelli, l. c. p. 282. Domenico Berti, _Cenni e documenti intorno a Giovanni Pico della Mirandola_, in the _Rivista contemporanea_, vol. xvi., Turin, 1859. The reports sent to Lorenzo during his stay at the baths, quoted here from the Medicean archives, agree substantially with the accounts given by Guidoni.

[79] In Cappelli, l. c. p. 303. The date of the _Apology_ seems to be really wrong. In the register of Lorenzo’s correspondence (_Ricordi di lettere scripti per Lor. de’ Med._) in the Florentine archives, we find notice of a letter written as late as February 12, 1488, ‘al conte della Mirandola, ringraziandolo dell’Apologia mandate,’ letter enclosed to Lorenzo Spinelli, one of the Medicean agents in France.

[80] _Med. Arch._, Filza 57.

[81] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 291. Some of the following extracts are in the same; some, unpublished, in the _Med. Arch._

[82] A. Guidoni, Flor. September 25, 1488, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 303.

[83] _Epist._ lib. i. 4. _Epigramm. Græca_, lib. iii. in _Prose volgari_, p. 218.

[84] _Disputationum de Astrologia_, lib. xii. _Epigramm. Græca_, xlix. l. c. p. 214.

[85] Speech on accepting the office of Capitano del popolo, from L. B. Alberti’s papers, in Bonucci, _Opere di L. B. A._, vol. i. p. xlii.

[86] G. Perticaro, _Intorno la morte di Pandolfo Collenuccio_, in his _Opere_, Bologna, 1839, ii. 52 _seq._

[87] Cf. Ben. Varchi’s remarks upon Naldi in _Prose volgari inedite_, p. 122.

[88] It is not intended in the present work to go into the details of these mostly uninteresting poetical productions. Bandini has noticed many of them in the catalogue of the Laurentiana; Roscoe has filled many pages with quotations and bibliographical notices; to add to them would be easy but useless.

[89] The _Dieci di Balia_, Florence, January 14, 1432, in Fabroni, _Cosmi Med. Vita_, ii. 8.

[90] Guicciardini, _Del reggimento di Firenze_, p. 209.

[91] Fabroni, _Historia Academiæ Pisanæ_, i. 109 _seq._; _Laur. Med. Vita_, i. 49. Many other references to the University, _ibid._ ii. 74 _seq._ Carlo de’ Massimi, _Carmen heroicum ad Laurentium Medicem de studio per eumden Pisis innovato_, from a Laurentian MS., in Bandini, _Laur. Cat._, vol. iii., and Roscoe, iii. 237 _seq._ (No. lviii.)

[92] Fabroni, _Laur. Med. Vita_, ii. 77.

[93] Rosmini, _Vita di Fr. Filelfo_, ii 191.

[94] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 75, 76.

[95] Camillo Massimo, _Sopra una inedita medaglia di Francesco Massimo dottore in legge e cavaliere_, Rome, 1860. Francesco Massimo was elected Podestà of Siena in 1477, but could not assume the office owing to the death of his father. That he was in Florence in 1488-89, engaged in affairs of state, is shown by the following letter from Lorenzo to Giovanni Lanfredini at Rome: ‘Messer Francesco Massimi is going back, having gained the approval of the whole city as well as my own. He has in truth conducted himself so well that I have thought good to recommend him to his Holiness and to the Cardinal Giovanni Colonna. I do the same to you, and beg you to bear witness that his conduct could not have been more praiseworthy. In consideration of his good offices I shall be glad if you will introduce him wherever it may be agreeable to him.’ Florence, March 13, 1489 (_Med. Arch._ Filza 59).

[96] The _Annales suorum temporum_ were printed by Gio. Lami in the _Catalogus codd. MSS. bibl. Riccard._, Livorno, 1756; and again by Galletti, in _Phil. Villani liber_, &c., p. 151 _seq._ According to a letter of Fonti to Lorenzo, he once intended writing a history of the Medici. He praised the chief scholars of his time in a pretty epigram, _ibid._ p. 153.

[97] Gaye, l. c. i. 273.

[98] _Med. Arch._, Filza 59.

[99] Venice, June 20, 1491, in _Prose volgari_, p. 78.

[100] The letters are in Poliziano’s _Epistolæ_, book xi.

[101] A. M. Bandini, _Ragionamento istorico sulle collazione delle Pandette, ec._, Livorno 1762, The copy of the Pandects marked with Poliziano’s collations is preserved in the Laurentianæ. Bandini also speaks of it in the fourth volume of the _Catalogue of Latin MSS._ See Th. Mommsen’s introduction to his critical edition of the _Digestum_.

[102] F. Fantozzi, _Notizie biografiche di Bernardo Cennini_, Florence, 1839. G. Ottino, _Di Bernardo Cennini e dell’arte della stampa in Firenze_, Florence, 1871. When the first Florentine printer had been almost forgotten for 400 years, the present generation, on occasion of the fourth centenary of his work, has raised a monument to him in San Lorenzo—where he lies buried—placed a memorial tablet on the site of his workshop, and given his name to a street.

[103] ‘Ad lectorem. Florentiæ, VII. Idus Novembres, MCCCCLXXI. Bernardus Cennnius (_sic_) aurifer omnium iudicio præstantissimus: et Dominicus eius F. egregiæ indolis adolescens: expressis ante calibe caracteribus et deinde fusis literis volumen hoc primum impresserunt. Petrus Cenninus Bernardi eiusdem F. quanta potuit cura et diligentia emendavit ut cernis. Florentinis ingeniis nil ardui est.’

[104] P. Vinc. Fineschi, _Notizie istoriche sopra la stamperia di [S. Jacopo di] Ripoli_, Flor. 1761. D. Moreni in the _Novelle letterarie Fiorentine_ of 1791, and F. Fossi in the _Catalogo delle antiche edizioni della B. Magliabechiana_, vol. iii., have collected other information concerning the works of this printing establishment amounting to eighty-six in number, among which, curiously enough, a _Decameron_ is included.

[105] Enea Piccolomini, _Delle condizioni e delle vicende della libreria Medicea privata_, in the _Arch. Star. Ital._, series iii. vols. xix. and xx. N. Anziani, _Della Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana_, Flor. 1872.

[106] Targioni-Tozzetti, _Notizie sulla storia delle scienze fisiche in Toscana_ (ed. by Fr. Palermo), Flor. 1853, pp. 60, 61.

[107] _Med. Arch._

[108] Fabroni, l. c. i. 153; ii. 286.

[109] _Ibid._ i. 163.

[110] Cappelli, l. c. The MS. was by Battista Guarino. The translation was first printed at Venice in 1532, the original at Paris in 1548.

[111] _Prose volgari_, p. 78.

[112] This poetess, of a Milanese family, was born at Venice about 1465, and is supposed to have died in 1558. Politian (_Epist._ l. iii. 17) addresses her: ‘O decus Italiæ virgo.’

[113] Florence, May 8, 1490, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 287.

[114] Vasari’s _Life of Fra Giocondo_ (ix. 155 _seq._) is very imperfect and leaves room for further study. On Giocondo’s works in his own city see G. Orti Manara, _Dei lavori architettonici di Fra Giocondo in Verona_, Ver., 1853. On his collection of inscriptions see G. B. de Rossi, _I Fasti municipali di Venosa restituite alla sincera lezione_, Rome 1853. (From vol. cxxxiii. of the _Giornale Arcadico_.) According to the _Novelle letterarie di Firenze_ for the year 1771, p. 725, the Medicean copy was sent to Pope Clement XIV., but has never been seen either in the Vatican archives or the library. On the other copies, and the second collection, differing from the first in some respects, less numerous, and dedicated to Ludovico de Agnellis, Archbishop of Cosenza, cf. De Rossi, p. 7 _seq._ The dedication—‘Laurentio Medici Fr. Io. Jucundus S. P. D.’—is in Fabroni, ii. 279 _seq._ It ends: ‘Vale feliciter humani generis amor et deliciæ.’

[115] _Med. Arch._

[116] Epist. ad J. Bracciolini, l. i. Prolegom. ad Platonis convivium.

[117] The work of the Sicilian Jesuit, P. Leonardo Ximenes, _Del vecchio e nuovo Gnomone fiorentino_, Flor. 1757, contains the history and explanation of the scientific value of the famous meridian, and of the more ancient mathematical and astronomical works in Tuscany.

[118] This controversy has never rested from the time of Angelo Maria Bandini, who published in 1755 the _Vita e Lettere di Amerigo Vespucci gentiluomo fiorentino_, down to our own days, which have witnessed a new defence of the Florentine’s claims by the Brazilian, F. A. de Varnhagen. It will be sufficient here to refer the reader to the facts published by Oscar Peschel in the _Zeitalter der Entdeckungen_, p. 305 _seq._, and in an essay on Amerigo in the periodical _Das Ausland_ (No. 32, 1858). Vespucci’s well-known work on his second journey (Bandini, p. 64) is addressed to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the son of Pier Francesco.

[119] Cianfogni, _Memorie istoriche della basilica di S. Lorenzo_ (Flor. 1804), p. 228. On Brunelleschi, cf. i. 71 _seq._

[120] D. Moreni, _Continuazione delle Memorie della basilica di San Lorenzo_ (Flor. 1816), i. 6 _seq._

[121] The dedication (to Piero de’ Medici) of a treatise on Architecture by Antonio Averlino, called Filarete (see below, p. 135), shows that the Church had not been rebuilt in 1460: ‘Resta ancora la chiesa a rinovare.’ The resemblance of its architecture to that of the chapel of the Madonna de’ Voti, afterwards dell’Incoronata, in the cathedral of Mantua, always regarded as a work of Leon Bat. Alberti, awakens a suspicion that he may have been concerned in the building at Fiesole. Cf. Gaye, l. c. i. 200 _seq._; 263. Vasari, _Life of Filarete_, iii. 290.

[122] D. Moreni, _Notizie istoriche dei Contorni di Firenze_, iii. 93 _seq._ Cf. i. 576 _seq._

[123] The Silvestrine was a branch of the Vallombrosan order, named after its founder Silvestro Gozzolini.

[124] Cf. i. 574-576.

[125] Vasari, _Life of Michelozzo_, iii. 277-279. V. Marchese, _Memorie dei Pittori ec. Domenicani_, i. 278 _seq._ _Id._, _San Marco convento dei Frati Predicatori_ (Flor. 1853), p. 75 _seq._ The inscription in the church, dated 1442, which speaks of ‘magnificis sumptibus v. cl. Cosmi Medicis,’ &c., is in Vasari, p. 279.

[126] A. Zobi, _Memorie storico-artistiche relative alla Cappella della SS. Annunziata_ (Flor. 1837), p. 14 _seq._ Fr. Bocchi, _Della immagine miracolosa della SS. Nunziata_ (Flor. 1592, new ed. 1852). Inscription: ‘Petrus Med. Cosmi Joann. filius sacellum marmoreum voto suscepto animo libens d. d. Anno 1448. Idib. Martii.’ Another inscription on the cornice: ‘Piero di Cosimo de Medici fece fare questa hopera et Pagno di Lapo di Fiesole fu el maestro chella fè MCCCCLII.’ From this it certainly looks questionable whether Michelozzo furnished the designs, as Pagno also executed larger works. Inscription relating to the consecration: ‘Mariæ glorioss. virg. Guilelmus Cardinalis Rotomagensis cum superni in terris nuntii munere fungeretur legati ratus officium et innumeris miraculis locique religione motus hanc Annunciatæ aram summa cum celebritate ac solenni pompa sacravit MCCCCLII., VIII. Kalen. Januar.’

[127] Berti, _Cenni storico-artistici di S. Miniato al Monte_ (Flor. 1850), p. 54 _seq._ On June 10, 1448, Piero de’ Medici was allowed to place his arms on the tabernacle on condition that those of the Guild should have the highest place.

[128] C. Guasti, l. c. Doc. 290, p. 201. Brunelleschi was buried in the cathedral. The epitaph is by Carlo Marsuppini: ‘D. S. Quantum Philippus architectus arte Dædalea valuerit cum huius celeberrimi templi mira testudo tum plures aliæ divino ingenio ab eo adiuventæ machinæ documento esse possunt quapropter ob eximias sui animi dotes singularesque virtutes XV. Kal. Maias anno MCCCCXLVI. eius b. m. corpus in hac humo supposita grata patria sepeliri iussit.’

[129] Round the altar is the following inscription: ‘Ædem hanc sanctissime Andrea tibi Pactii dedicarunt ut cum te immortalis Deus hominum constituerit piscatorem locus sit in quem suos Franciscus ad tua possit retia convocare.’ By Franciscus is doubtless meant the saint to whose order the convent belonged, and not, as Richa and Moisè suppose, Francesco de’ Pazzi, Andrea’s grandson. A letter of indulgence from Card. Pietro Riario, October 8, 1473, speaks of Jacopo de’ Pazzi as the founder.

[130] The history of the building of the Pitti palace has never been thoroughly cleared up.

[131] Inscription:

JOHANNES RUCELLARIUS PAULI FILIUS INDE SALUTEM SUAM PRECARETUR UNDE OMNIUM CUM CHRISTO FACTA EST RESURRECTIO SACELLUM HOC AD INSTAR HYEROSOLIMITANI SEPULCRI FACIUNDUM CURAVIT MCCCCLXVII.

[132] Documents on the building (1471), in Gaye, l. c. p. 225 _seq._ Vasari, iv. 59.

[133] The price was 150 gold florins; Gaye, l. c. p. 572. The statue was removed when Duke Cosimo erected the fountain adorned with Verrocchio’s Boy, and is now in the national museum in the Palace of the Podestà.

[134] ‘Exemplum sal. pub. cives posuere MCCCCXCV.’ This inscription can have nothing to do with the driving out of the Duke of Athens, as Moisè (_Palazzo de’ Priori_, p. 166) imagines. The group occupied the place which was assigned in 1504 to Michel Angelo’s ‘David,’ and has stood since then on the side of the Loggia de’ Lanzi towards the Uffizi. Vasari (l. c. p. 251) wrongly thinks it was executed for the Signoria.

[135] L. c. p. 250.

[136] Mantua, November 7, 1458. Cf. Braghirolli, in the _Giornale di erudizione artistica_ (of Perugia), ii. 4 _seq._

[137] Vasari, l. c. pp. 264, 266. Fabroni, l. c. p. 159. According to Vasari, Donatello died on December 13, 1466; according to the contemporary M. Palmieri (_De Temporibus_), in 1468. In the crypt of S. Lorenzo, near the tombs of the Medici, is the following later inscription: ‘Donatellus restituta antiqua sculpendi cælandiq. arte celeberrimus Mediceis principibus summis bonarum artium patronis apprime carus qui ut vivum suspexere mortuo etiam sepulcrum loco sibi proximiore constituerunt obiit idibus Decembris an. sal. MCCCCLXIV. æt. suæ LXXXIII.’

[138] On Francesco Livi, cf. Gaye, l. c. ii. 441 _seq._ On Ser Guasparre, see Rumohr, _Ital. Forschungen_, ii. 377 _seq._; G. Milanesi, _Documenti dell’arte Sanese_, ii. 194 _seq._ On the Jesuates, cf. i. 596, 597, and L. Fanfani, _Memorie di Sta. Maria del Pontenuovo_ (Pisa 1871), p. 124 _seq._

[139] These basso-rilievos, removed from the cathedral when the organs were modernised, are now in the museum of the Palazzo del Podestà.

[140] _Metropolitana Fiorentina_, tables xxxiii.-xxxvi.

[141] Transferred from San Pancrazio to the church of San Francesco di Paola before the Porta Romana; _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate lvii.

[142] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plates lvi., xli., xxi.

[143] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate xxxvi. Inscription:

SISTE VIDES MAGNUM QUÆ SERVANT MARMORA VATEM INGENIO CUIUS NON SATIS ORBIS ERAT QUÆ NATURA POLUS QUÆ MOS FERAT OMNIA NOVIT KAROLUS ÆTATIS GLORIA MAGNA SUÆ AUSONLÆ ET GRAJÆ CRINES NUNC SOLVITE MUSÆ OCCIDIT HEU VESTRI FAMA DECUSQUE CHORI.

[144] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plates l., xxxi. Inscription:

POSTQUAM LEONARDUS E VITA MIGRAVIT HISTORIA LUGET ELOQUENTIA MUTA EST FERTURQUE MUSAS TUM GRAIAS TUM LATINAS LACRIMAS TENERE NON POTUISSE.

[145] Vespasiano da Bisticci, l. c. p. 157. Vasari mentions the modelling in Verrocchio, v. 152. Brunelleschi’s cast is in the building-office of Sta. Maria del Fiore (_Opera del Duomo_).

[146] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate lvi. Vasari, vol. iv. p. 218. Berti, p. 70.

[147] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate lv.

[148] C. Pini, _La Scrittura di artisti Italiani_, cf. _supra_, p. 163.

[149] Executed in 1436; a pendant to the equestrian figure of Niccolò Maruzzi of Tolentino (d. 1434) by Andrea dal Castagno. The improper introduction of these equestrian figures into churches paved the way for similar monuments in marble, such as may be seen especially in Venice. In the cathedral of Florence was a complete figure of Piero Farnese on a mule, as he rode to a fight with the Pisans in 1363.

[150] In this place, where we are concerned chiefly with the position of the Medici in connection with the development of art, we cannot refer in detail to the literature, which has been much enriched of late years by Gastano Milanesi’s researches among the archives, on the Tuscan painters of the early quattrocento (_Giornale storico degli Archivi Toscani_, vols. iv. and vi., and reprinted in _Sulla storia dell’arte Toscana_, Siena 1873), made use of by Crowe and Cavalcaselle in their _History of Painting in Italy_.

[151] C. Pini, _Scrittura di Artisti_.

[152] This is not the place to refer in detail to the confused notices in the Italian art-historians. Vasari mentions these works, among others, in his Introduction, l. c. i. 63.

[153] Rinuccini, _Ricordi_, p. 251.

[154] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 231. It is doubtful whether the sums given at the end of the inventory are to be added up together, or whether the last represents the sum total.

[155] Letter to Giovanni de’ Medici, Bruges, June 22, 1488; in Gaye, l. c. p. 158.

[156] Gaye, l. c. p. 163.

[157] Gaye, l. c. p. 160.

[158] Gaye, l. c. p. 136.

[159] _Ibid._ p. 192.

[160] Gaye, l. c. pp. 141, 175, 180. Cf. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iii. 64, 65.

[161] Complete edition by Gaetano and Carlo Milanese, _Il Libro dell’arte o Trattato della Pittura_ (Flor. 1859). There is a German translation, _Das Buch von der Kunst_, &c., by Albert Ilg (Vienna, 1871). The general supposition, from Baldinucci down to Tambroni, the first editor of the treatise (Rome, 1821), viz., that Cennini wrote it in 1437 in the Stinche prison, is derived from a gloss to the Laurentian MS. which proceeds from the copyist instead of referring to the author. The same postil gave rise to the statement that a fresco in Giotto’s style, representing the driving out of the Duke of Athens, and brought to light at the demolition of the prison, was painted by Cennini. (Fr. Bacchi, _Illustratore Fiorentino_, pt. v., Flor. 1839).

[162] The second commentary, with the notices of modern art, is printed in Cicognara’s _Storia della Scultura_, vol. iv., and more readably, together with some extracts from the third, in Lemonnier’s edition of _Vasari_, vol. i. pp. v.-xxxv.

[163] On Filarete’s treatise and the two dedications, cf. Vasari, iii. 290, 291, and Gaye, i. 200-206, where will be found the dedication to Fr. Sforza. (Cf. _supra_, p. 122.) Filarete gives us a foretaste of the art-phraseology of Federigo Zuccaro. For the rest, he says to Sforza: ‘If my book is not elegant, take it as the work, not of an orator nor of a Vitruvius, but of thy master-builder who cast the doors of St. Peter’s.’

[164] N. Valori, l. c. p. 176.

[165] Vasari, viii. 267. On the design of Andrea, see Waagen, _Kunstwerk und Künstler in England_, i. 244. Cf. _posf_, p. 197 _seq._

[166] Pini, _Scrittura d’Artisti_. Cf. A. v. Zahn, _Jahrbücher für Kunstwissenschaft_, iv. 367.

[167] Vasari, _Life of Giuliano_, iv. 1 _seq._ Gaye, l. c. in annis 1478, 1480, 1481.

[168] A. Rossi, in the _Giornale di erudiz. artist._, 1872, p. 97. Inscription: ‘Opus Juliani Maiani et Dominici Taxi, Florentini, MCCCCLXXXXI.’

[169] C. Milanesi, in the _Giorn. stor. degli Arch. Tosc._, iii. 233, 234. Letters dated Rome, February 1-20, 1478. In consequence of the Cardinal’s death in the summer of 1479, the building remained unfinished.

[170] Urbino, June 18, 1481. Gaye, l. c. p. 274.

[171] S. Volpicelli, _Descrizione storica di alcuni principali edificii della città di Napoli_ (Naples 1850), p. 1 _seq._

[172] Gaye, l. c. p. 300 (undated).

[173] _Vita di Fil. Strozzi il vecchio_, p. 22 _seq._ (Cf. i. 395.) Cf. also, Gaye, l. c. p. 354 _seq._, where are also notices by Luca Landucci, an apothecary, on the beginning and progress of the work, and Filippo’s will. Vasari treats at length of the palace and of the smith Caparri in his _Life of Cronaca_, viii. 116 _seq._

[174] Gaye, l. c. _ibid._ A letter from Lorenzo, December 16, 1490, to Francesco Gonzaga, in which he asks for leave of absence for Luca Fancelli. Whether the latter went to Naples is uncertain; Francesco di Giorgio was there for some time between February and May 1491.

[175] Among Sangallo’s drawings in the Barberiniana at Rome. Gaye, l. c. p. 301. Vasari, vii. 212, 213.

[176] A. v. Zahn, _Notizie artistiche tratte dall’Archivio segreto Vaticano, Arch. stor. Ital._, ser. iii. vi. 171.

[177] A. Guglielmotti, _Della rocca d’Ostia e delle condizioni dell’architettura militare in Italia prima della calata di Carlo VIII._ (Rome 1862). C. Ravioli, _Notizie sopra i lavori di architettura militare dei nove da Sangallo_ (Rome 1863).

[178] The circumstance that the name Sangallo is to be found as early as 1485 (notes to Vasari, l. c. p. 214) hardly tells against the truth of this story, as the building was probably begun long before. The appearance of the name in the collection of the Barberini drawings, begun in 1465, dates from a later time.

[179] The Gondi Palace was finished in 1874, if not after the original design, at least in the style of the part previously existing.

[180] From a drawing of Bernardino Poccetti and other documents in the _Metropolitana Fior. Illustr._, plate xiv.

[181] In the commentary on Vasari, vii. 243. Francesco Albertini mentions in his _Memoriale_ (see Crowe and Cavalcaselle, ii. 436) Lorenzo’s intention of finishing the façade (‘la quale Lorenzo de’ Medici voleva levare e riducerla a perfectione’) and his plan.

[182] The façade now displays the naked rough brick wall.

[183] Richa, ix. 11, _et seq._ Gaye, l. c., p. 570. Cf. i. 319.

[184] Gaye, l. c. ii. 450. Pini, _Scrittura d’Artisti_.

[185] Description by Poliziano in a letter to Francesco della Casa, _Epist._ l. iv. ep. 8. D. M. Manni, _De Florentinis inventis_ (Ferrara, 1730), c. 29. Cancellieri, _Le nuove Campane di Campidoglio_ (Rome, 1806), p. 8. Albertini mentions the clock in the Palace of the Signoria in 1510; it was probably taken there in 1495.

[186] Gaye, l. c. p. 254.

[187] There is great confusion in Vasari, viii. 115, _et seq._ The commentary begins its continuous dates only in 1495, chiefly from Gaye.

[188] Moreni, _Contorni di Firenze_, v. 6, _et seq._ The chronology here is very confused; it is no better in Moisè’s _Sta. Croce_, p. 90. The bells of San Marco were hung in the belfry in 1498.

[189] Diary of Luca Landini, in Vasari, l. c. p. 121.

[190] Fr. Albertini, l. c., p. 442.

[191] Cf. A. v. Zahn’s _Jahrbücher_, vi. p. 136.

[192] Florence, February 13, 1498, in Gaye, l. c., p. 340.

[193] The monument of Sixtus IV. was finished in 1493 for Card. Giuliano della Rovere (Julius II.). That of Innocent VIII. must not be judged from its present mutilated condition.

[194] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate iv. Inscription (by Poliziano):

ILLE EGO SUM PER QUEM PICTURA EXTINCTA REVIXIT CUI QUAM RECTA MANUS TAM FUIT ET FACILIS NATURÆ DEERAT NOSTRÆ QUOD DEFUIT ARTI PLUS LICUIT NULLI PINGERE NEC MELIUS MIRARIS TURREM EGREGIAM SACRO ÆRE SONANTEM HÆC QUOQUE DE MODULO CREVIT AD ASTRA MEO DENIQUE SUM IOCTUS QUID OPUS FUIT ILLA REFERRE HOC NOMEN LONGI CARMINIS INSTAR ERAT OB. AN. MCCCXXXVI. CIVES POS. B. M. MCCCCLXXXX.

[195] Del Migliore, l. c., p. 36. Richa, vi. 121. _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate vi. Inscription (attributed to Lorenzo):

MULTUM PROFECTO DEBET MUSICA ANTONIO SQUARCIALUPO ORGANISTE IS ENIM ITA ARTI GRATIAM CONIUNXIT UT QUARTAM SIBI VID ERENTUR CHARITES MUSICAM ASCIVISSE SO ROREM FLORENTINA CIVITAS ORATI ANIMI OFFICIUM RATA EIUS MEMORIAM PROPAGARE CUIUS MANUS SEPE MORTALES IN DULCEM AD MIRATIONEM ADDUXERAT CIVI SUO MONU MENTUM POSUIT.

[196] Engraved in seven plates by G. P. Lasinio (Flor. 1823). Mellini’s bust is in the Uffizi collection.

[197] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate liii.

[198] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate xxiv. Inscription: ‘Bernardo Junio eq^{ti} Flor^{no} pu^{aes} concordiæ. semper. auctori. et. civi. vere. populari. pii. fratres. fratri. de. se. deq. rep^{ea} opt^{o} merito. posuerunt.—Vixit ann. LXVIIII. men. VI. di. XII. Obiit ann. MCCCCLXVI. Opus Mini.—Cf. i. 145.

[199] _Paradiso_, xvi. 127. _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate xxiv.

[200] _Monuments sépulcraux_, plate xlv. Cf. Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iii. 230.

[201] Represented in Cicognara, vol. ii. plate xv.

[202] Plates and details in Cicognara, Litta, and Colas’ _Trésor de Numismatique et de Glyptique_. See Vasari’s _Life of Pisanello_, ii. 152, _et seq._ On Guazzalotti, see Julius Friedländer (Berlin, 1857), trans. by Cesare Guasti (Prato, 1862), with notes and documents, among which is a letter from Guazzalotti to Lorenzo, dated September 11, 1478.

[203] V. da Bisticci, l. c., p. 476.

[204] Vasari, l. c., iii. 112. On the Medicean treasures. Cf. _ante_, p. 132.

[205] Vasari, _Life of Valerio Vicentino_, ix. 236, _et seq._ G. Pelli, in his _Saggio istorico della R. Galeria di Firenze_ (Flor. 1779), i. 8, _et seq._, ii. 9, _et seq._, gives some account of the Medici collections. In the Museum of Naples alone (formerly in the palace of Capodimonte) are preserved more than twenty cameos with Lorenzo’s name, and a great number of gems set as rings. They came from a Bourbon-Parma inheritance, many of the family treasures having passed, through Margaret of Austria, wife of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici, to her son by her second marriage, Alessandro Farnese, and, at the extinction of the Farnese family, to the Spanish Bourbons. The question whether all the stones marked with Lorenzo’s name or with the initials L. M. are modern, or whether the name or initials were also engraved on antique gems to indicate the owner, cannot be discussed here. The epigram:

COELATUM ARGENTO VEL FULVO QUIDQUID IN AURO EST ÆDIBUS HOC LAURENS VIDIMUS ESSE TUIS, &C.

is in Bandini’s Catalogue of the Laurentian MSS., iii. 545.

[206] Perfetti, _Galeria dell’Accad. delle b. Arti_ (Flor. 1845). The collection in the Academy contains many important works of this period.

[207] Now in the English National Gallery. Outline in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iii. 132.

[208] Cf. _ante_, p. 40. Engraving in the _Metropolitana fior. illustr._, plate xxxvii. Remarks in Gaye, l. c., ii. 5. Cf. _ibid._, i. 563.

[209] Vasari, iv. 102, 103.

[210] Vasari, v. 115.

[211] _Galeria dell Acc. delle B. A._, engraved by F. Livy.

[212] Lucrezia Tornabuoni Medici, in the Berlin Museum (No. 81), wrongly described as the wife of Lorenzo, a mistake repeated in Crowe and Cavalcaselle (l. c., p. 173) from Vasari, but corrected in Lemonnier’s edition, l. c, p. 121. The Bella Simonetta is in the Pitti Palace; there is an engraving by L. Calamatta in his work on the Bardi gallery.

[213] Cf. i. 405. G. Milanesi, _Sulla Storia dell’Arte Toscana_, p. 292. Crowe and Cavalcaselle (iii. 159) strangely see in this commission a proof of the estimation in which Botticelli was held as an artist. These pictures of shame, with which tardy debtors were also punished, _e.g._ Ranuccio Farnese in 1425 (Gaye, l. c., i. 550) were not much relished by artists, and seem to have been only executed at a high price; in this case it was forty florins. Andrea del Castagno, to whom Vasari erroneously attributed these paintings, which were executed more than forty years after his death, received from a similar commission in 1445 the surname ‘degli Impiccati,’ which poor Andrea del Sarto seems to have likewise dreaded during the siege in 1530.

[214] Contract dated April 21, 1487 (remarkable for the reservations on the part of the employer), in Lorenzo Strozzi’s _Vita di Filippo Strozzi il Vecchio_, p. 60, _et seq._

[215] Now in the Uffizi. Gaye, in the _Kunstblatt_, 1836, No. 90, and Carteggio, i. 579-581.

[216] Engraved in Litta, _Fam. Medici_.

[217] The fresco in Sant’Ambrogio is dated, not 1465, as it was read by Rumohr (_Ital. Forsch._, ii. 262), on the picture, which is much blackened and varnished, but 1486, according to G. Milanesi, in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, l. c., p. 291.

[218] An. MCCCCLXXXX., quo pulcherrima civitas opibus victoriis artibus ædificiisque nobilis copia salubritate pace perfruebatur.

[219] Father Della Valle gave the various names in a note to Vasari (also in Lemonnier’s edition, v. 76) from documents in the Tornabuoni family. On the female portraits, cf. Palmerini, _Opere d’intaglio del cav. Raff. Morghen_ (Pisa, 1824), p. 108 _et seq._

[220] The ‘Education of Pan’, formerly in the Corsi Palace, is now in the Berlin Museum. Sketch in Crowe and Cavalcaselle, iv. 5.

[221] Miniature painting can only be treated of very briefly here. The editors of Lemonnier’s _Vasari_ have added much information to the biographies of Fra Angelico (iv. 25, _et seq._), Don Bartolommeo (v. 44, _et seq._ [on Attavante, _see_ p. 55]), Gherardo (_ibid._ p. 60, _et seq._), &c., and furnished materials valuable for a history of Florentine and Sienese art, in a detailed commentary (vi. 159-351). On the Dominicans, cf. V. Marchese, _Memorie_, i. 171-210. In the same author’s work on San Marco are drawings of two miniatures by Fra Benedetto. The passages referring to the treasures of Urbino, Upper Italy, &c., may be passed over here.

[222] Vasari, iv. 105; v. 60, 83; vi. 167; xi. 286.

[223] xii. 11. Cf. _Life of Torrigiano_, vii. 204, and of Michel Angelo, xii. 157.

[224] The old tradition which has come down to our own days, which derives the Buonarotti Simoni from the Counts of Canossa (and which was believed in the family itself in Michelangelo’s days, as must be concluded from Ascanio Condivi’s words in his biography, published during the artist’s lifetime), rests on no historical foundation. Cf. G. Campori, _Catalogo degli artisti sc. negli Stati Estensi_ (Modena 1855), p. 100 _et seq._ The noble family of Buonarotti has of late years become extinct in Florence. Lodovico, Michelangelo’s father, was already connected with the Medici when holding an official post in the Casentino, where his son was born within view of the great mountain of Alvernia—the _crudo sasso_ of the _Divine Comedy_.

[225] G. Milanesi, _Documenti inediti riguardanti Leonardo da Vinci_, in the _Arch. stor. Ital._, ser. iii. xvi. 219.

[226] Ant. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este (Flor., December 17, 1482), in Cappelli, l. c. p. 265.

[227] Provisioni della Republica fiorentina dei 10 e 19 Aprile 1480, per la formazione dell’ordine dei Settanta, in the Appendix to Jacopo Pitti, l. c. p. 313 _et seq._, with Gino Capponi’s introduction. Cf. Cambia, l. c. ii. 1 _et seq._, for the names of the Signori, the colleges, the original thirty and the two hundred and ten citizens entrusted with the election business. A. Rinuccini, _Ricordi_, p. cxxi. _et seq._; J. Pitti, p. 25; Fr. Guicciardini, p. 61.

[228] Cf. _ante_, vol. i. bk. ii. ch. 4.

[229] L. c. p. 174.

[230] _Ricordi_, l. c. p. cxxxv.

[231] Canestrini, l. c. p. 237 _et seq._

[232] Bartolommeo Signippi, chancellor of the Ferrarese embassy, to Ant. Montecatino, Flor. June 3 and 6; Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, June 9, 1481, in Cappelli, l. c. pp. 253-255.

[233] Ercole d’Este to Ant. Montecatino, Ferrara, January 10, 1482, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 259.

[234] For a detailed account of the ceremony, see Ant. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, Flor., October 2, 3, 8, 1481, in Cappelli, l. c. pp. 255-258.

[235] Marin Sanuto, _Commentarii della guerra di Ferrara nel 1482_. (Venice 1829, ed. by Leonardo Manin). Sanuto was an eye-witness of the events of the war. Many details are given by Malipiero, who took part in the naval war. Romanin, book xi. ch. 4 (iv. 401 _et seq._).

[236] Fac. Volaterr., l. c. col. 173.

[237] Godefroy, _Histoire de Charles VIII._ (Paris 1684). Documents, p. 312. C. de Cherrier, _Histoire de Charles VIII._ (Par. 1868), i. 32. U. Legeay, _Histoire de Louis XI._ (Paris 1874), ii. 444. [Very meagre with regard to Louis’ Italian transactions].

[238] For details of the battle of Campomorto (S. Pietro in Formis), see the Roman diaries and Montecatino’s reports to Ercole d’Este in Cappelli, l. c. p. 260 _et seq._

[239] Gino Capponi, _Storia della Republica Fiorentina_ (Flor. 1874), ii. 149.

[240] Coleti, in Farlati’s _Illyricum sacrum_, vii. 438 _et seq._ Jacopo Volterrano, Stefano Infessura, and the unpublished histories of Sigismondo de’ Conti and Rinaldus, give many details. Jacob Burckhardt’s _Andreas Erzbischof von Krain_ (Basel, 1852) gives an authentic account of the proceedings at Basel. Cf. _Arch. stor. Ital._, N. S., vol. ii. pt. ii. p. 249 _et seq._ Ugolini’s letter to Lorenzo, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 227-233.

[241] Instruction of February 5, 1483, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 241-243.

[242] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 243.

[243] Cappelli, l. c. p. 245.

[244] Fr. Guicciardini, l. c. p. 66, is doubtful as to the presence of Riario; he is not mentioned in Ant. Campo, _Cremona fedelissima città_ (Milan, 1582), p. 133. He is named as one of those present by Malevolti, l. c. pt. iii. p. 90.

[245] Ant. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, Flor. February 28, 1483, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 265.

[246] _Itinerario di Marin Sanuto per la Terraferma Veneziana nell’anno 1483_ (ed. by Rawdon Browne, Padua, 1847), p. 51.

[247] Despatches to the envoy Antonio Loredano, January to February 1484. Cf. Romanin, iv. 415. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, Flor. April 8, 1483, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 266.

[248] Nic. Valori, l. c. p. 175.

[249] Ant. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, Flor. July 23, 1484, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 269.

[250] _Mémoires_, l. vii. ch. 2.

[251] Guid’Antonio Vespucci to Lorenzo de’ Medici, Rome, October 23 and November 3, 1483, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 243-252. Ant. Montecatino to Ercole d’Este, Flor., May 25, 1484, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 268.

[252] Malevolti, l. c. pt. iii. p. 87.

[253] _Inferno_, xxix. 122. _Purgatorio_, xiii. 151.

[254] Letter of February 26, 1483, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 243.

[255] Jac. Volterrano, _Diarium Romanum_ for 1480. Muratori, l. c. col. 109.

[256] G. Viani, _Memorie della famiglia Cybò_, Pisa, 1808.

[257] Rome, August 29, 1484, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 256, 259.

[258] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 262.

[259] _Johannis Burchardi Diarium_, ed. A. Generelli (Flor. 1854), p. 57. _Ibid._ Instructions, from the Florentine Archives.

[260] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 263. Doc. of November 26, 1484.

[261] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 263.

[262] Desjardins, l. c. p. 175.

[263] ‘Les Florentins se sont tousjours monstrés et exhibés, de tel et si ancien temps que ne est mémoire du contraire, vrays et loyaulx Françoys ... et si trouvent les lois et coustumes qui leurs furent baillés par Monseigneur Saint Charlemagne.’

[264] Desjardins, l. c. p. 191.

[265] Instructions of November 8, 1483, and other documents relating to the embassy, in Desjardins, l. c. p. 193 _et seq._

[266] _Med. Arch._, f. 56. Printed in A. Gelli; rev. by De Cherrier, _Arch. stor. Ital._, ser. iii. vol. xv. 289.

[267] Cappelli, l. c. p. 298. The expression is: ‘Che non voglia investire Massimiliano de l’Imperio de’ Romani.’

[268] Report of Guid’Ant. Vespucci, Rome, September 18, in Burchard, _Diarium_, p. 51.

[269] Letter of Pier Filippo Pandolfini, Milan, September 24, 1484, l. c. p. 51.

[270] Reports of the Ferrarese ambassador, A. Guidoni, Flor. April 1485, &c., in Cappelli, l. c. p. 269 _et seq._

[271] Archives of the Riformagioni at Siena.

[272] A. Guidoni to Ercole d’Este, Flor. April 6, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 269. Ranuccio was first cousin to Pope Paul III.

[273] Archives at Siena.

[274] N. Valori, l. c. p. 175.

[275] _Regis Ferdinandi primi Instructionum liber_, 1486-87 (ed. by Scipione Vopicella, Naples, 1861), p. 87 _et seq._

[276] _Ricordi_, p. cxl.

[277] Commines, _Mémoires_, l. vii. ch. 11. M. Sanuto, _Chron. Ven._ (_Comment. de Bello Gallico_), _R. Ital. Ser._, xxiv. pp. 12-16. Alfonso was called ‘the idol of the flesh’ (_dio della carne_).

[278] _Cronaca di Notar-Giacomo_, p. 156.

[279] Romanin, l. c. pp. 421, 422.

[280] On G. Albino, the historian of his time, cf. C. Minieri Riccio, _Memorie storiche degli scrittori nati nel Regno di Napoli_.

[281] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 268.

[282] A. Guidoni to E. d’Este, Flor., November 11, 1485, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 273. The Ferrarese despatches contain many details of all these affairs. Scipione Ammirato, in his twenty-fifth book, is a trustworthy guide.

[283] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 269.

[284] Letter of the Anziani, May 15, 1485, Lucca archives.

[285] L. c. p. 177.

[286] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 268.

[287] Lorenzo to Albino, l. c.

[288] A. Guidoni, November 28 and 30, 1485, l. c. p. 274.

[289] Burcard, l. c. p. 72, 73.

[290] Vinc. Acciaiuolo, _Vita di Piero Capponi_, l. c. p. 20 _et seq._

[291] Trivulzio’s letters to the Duke of Milan from Florence, Montepulciano, Cortona, Pitigliano, and afterwards from the camp of the League, from February 21, 1486, onwards, are in Rosmini, l. c. ii. 130 _et seq._, with the despatches addressed to him from Milan.

[292] Letter of A. Sforza to his nephew the Duke of Milan, March 6, 1486, copies of which were sent on the same day to the Duke of Calabria, and by P. Capponi to Lorenzo. Appendix to the life of P. Capponi, _Arch. Stor. Ital._, vol. iv. pt. 2, p. 66-71.

[293] _Storia fiorentina_, ch. viii. The Ferrarese reports in Cappelli, p. 274-286, contain much that gives an insight into the position of affairs.

[294] V. Acciaiuolo, l. c. p. 24.

[295] A. Guidoni, Flor., August 13, 1486, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 285. G. J. Trivulzio to the Duke of Milan, from the camp at Ponzano, August 12, in Rosmini, ii. 150. Rinuccini, _Ricordi_, p. cxlii.: _poi per manco male si accettò_.

[296] _R. Ferdinandi Instruct._ L., p. 153. The Duke of Calabria had written to the same effect to Filippo Strozzi, on November 27, 1486, from the camp. _Vita di Fil. Strozzi il vecchio_, p. 36.

[297] Camillo Porgio’s masterly account, _La Congiura dei Baroni del Regno di Napoli contra il Re Ferdinando I._ (first printed at Rome in 1565) contains many illustrations and corrections from the _Regis Ferdinandi Instructionum Liber_ (unfortunately not printed complete), and from the two suits against the king’s private secretaries and barons, which were printed in 1487 and 1488 by Ferrante’s command and sent to the foreign courts, and reprinted with notes by Stanislao d’Aloe as an appendix to his edition of Porgio (Naples, 1859).

[298] The King to Lorenzo, Castelnuovo, June 3, 1487. Fabroni, l. c. ii. 275.

[299] Giov. Lanfredini to the Signoria, Naples, September 27, 1486, in Bandini, _Collectio_, &c. p. 10.

[300] Guidoni’s reports (in Cappelli) contain a number of notices and hints from which Lorenzo’s state of mind at the time of the treaty of 1486 and his relations with the allies may be clearly made out. On Sarzanello, see Carlo Promis, _Storia del forte di Sarzanello_ (Turin, 1888). From one of Guidoni’s reports it appears that the Florentines also used mines: ‘sperasi _per certe cave fatte_ ... che S. Francesco si acquisterà fra due dì.’

[301] R. Ferdinandi Instr. L., p. 245.

[302] The fullest detailed account of Boccalino de’ Guzzoni is given by Bernardino Baldi in the second book of his history of Guidubaldo of Montefeltro (Milan, 1821). Cf. Ugolini, _Storia dei conti e duchi d’Urbino_, ii. 49, _et seq._

[303] Lodovico to G. J. Trivulzio, Milan, April 29, 1486, in Rosmini, ii. 158. _Ibid._ other documents relating to this affair.

[304] Burcard, _Diarium_. p. 88.

[305] The Medicean Archives, F. 57, contain numerous documents relating to Osimo and Boccalino.

[306] Florence, August 8, 1487. _Med. Arch._ F. 57. In a letter of November 24, referring to Boccalino’s nephew, who was kept in prison at Rome, and afterwards executed, he expresses himself still more strongly. ‘Stimo questa coss ... quanto la vita propria, perchè

[307] Cappelli, l. c. p. 244. _Ibid._, letter, same date (March 25, 1482), to the Duke. In the register of Lorenzo’s letters are no less than 27 despatched on the same day to princes and ambassadors to announce Lucrezia’s death.

[308] A. Guidoni, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 292.

[309] R. Ferd. Instr. L., p. 222.

[310] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 313.

[311] Burcard, _Diarium_, p. 87.

[312] R. Ferd. Instr. L., p. 217 _et seq._ Cf. supra p. 265.

[313] A. Guidoni, Flor., July 7, 1487, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 295.

[314] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57. There are a number of despatches of this and a somewhat later time relating to this affair.

[315] Rainaldi, _Ann. eccl._ in anno 1487, Doc. x.

[316] Stef. Infessura, _Diarium_, in Muratori _R. It. Scr._ t. iii. pt. 2, p. 1218, 1219.

[317] _Med. Arch._, l. c.

[318] Stefano Taverna to the Duke of Milan, Flor., September 14, 1487, in Rosmini, ii. 188. A. Guidoni, Flor., September 6 and 12, in Cappelli, p. 296.

[319] Spedaletto, which passed after Lorenzo’s death to Maddalena Cybò and later to the Corsini family, to whom it still belongs, was visited in November 1654 by Cardinal de Retz, coming from Spain by sea, before he proceeded to the Grandduke Ferdinand II. at the Ambrogiana near Empoli, and thence to Rome. He knew that the villa, which he calls L’Hospitalità, had belonged to Lorenzo de’ Medici, but he wrongly places here the scene of the battle in which Catiline fell. _Mèmoires du Card. de Retz_, pt. iii. ch. i. Ed. by Champollion-Figeac (1866), iv. 246.

[320] _Lettere di Jacopo da Volterra a P. Innocenzo VIII._, published with a commentary by M. Tabarrini in the _Arch. Stor. Ital._, s. iii. vol. viii. pt. ii. p. 3, _et seq._ Jacopo Gherardi had been formerly in the service of Cardinal Ammanati. His writings passed into the Venetian archives after the sack of Rome in 1527. The Medicean archives contain a series of despatches relating to this mission. Lorenzo writes from Spedaletto on September 11-19; on the 21st he was in Florence; on October 2-10, at Spedaletto again. He says once: ‘I am here according to my custom, for the care of my health.’

[321] Despatch of October 22, 1487, in Desjardins, l. c. p. 214.

[322] October 22, 1487, in Desjardins, l. c. p. 219.

[323] A. Guidoni, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 296. Burcard, p. 95; the date is wrong. On the house of the Cybò in the Borgo, see P. Adinolfi, _La Portica di San Pietro_ (Rome, 1859), p. 119 _et seq._

[324] A. Guidoni, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 297.

[325] F. Gregorovius, _Das Archiv der Notare des Capitols in Rom und das Protocollbuch des Notars Camillus de Beneimbene_; _Sitzungsberichte d. kk. Acad. d. Wissenschaften in München_, 1872, p. 503.

[326] Flor., August 8, 1488, in Fabroni, ii. 312. Cf. i. 405.

[327] Gregorovius, l. c. [purchase of Cerveteri, June 14, 1487]. Lorenzo to Lanfredini (1490), in Fabroni, ii. 388. Nibby, _Diutorni di Roma_ (Rome, 1848), i. 348.

[328] The palace (afterwards called Quaratesi) and the villa (for a time Catalani-Valabrègue, now Lavaggi) passed after the death of Franceschetto’s son Lorenzo, to the latter’s natural son, Ottavio, with a reservation of the usufruct to Lorenzo’s sister Caterina, the widowed Duchess of Camerino. The villa belonged for a time to Eleonora Cybò, daughter of Lorenzo, and wife of Gian Luigi Fiesco, Count of Lavagna, the hero of the conspiracy of 1547.

[329] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57. The bull of Innocent VIII. is dated December 5, 1487.

[330] Letters of December 9 and 10, 1487, February 23, March 9, April 14, 1488, in the above-mentioned _Ricordi di lettere_.

[331] _Med. Arch._, fol. 59. Cf. Isid. del Lungo, _Una Lettera di Ser Matteo Franco_, in _Arch. Stor. Ital._, s. iii. ix. 32 _et seq._

[332] Poliziano, _Prose volgari inedite_, p. 74.

[333] _Med. Arch._, fol. 59.

[334] A. Guidoni in Cappelli, l. c. p. 292. Fabroni, l. c. i. 172, 173; ii. 316. On Roberto Orsini, see Litta, _Fam. Orsini_, table 23.

[335] A. Guidoni in Cappelli, l. c. p. 301.

[336] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57.

[337] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 386.

[338] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57.

[339] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57. Cf. _post_, p. 380 _et seq._

[340] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57.

[341] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 384. A. Guidoni, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 302, 303.

[342] From the _Med. Arch._, in A. Gelli, Lorenzo de’ Medici, in the _Arch. Stor. Ital._, s. iii. xvii. 431.

[343] _Lettere di Lorenzo il Magnifico al S. P. Innocenzo VIII._ [ed. by D. Moreni, Flor. 1830], p. 18.

[344] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57.

[345] _Med. Arch._, fol. 57. On Maria [not Maddalena] de’ Medici, cf. Litta, _Fam. Medici_, table 7, and Passerini, _Fam. Malatesta_, table 7.

[346] Del Lungo, _Lettere di Ser Matteo Franco_, l. c.

[347] _Cronaca di Notar Giacomo_, p. 167.

[348] _Cronaca di Notar Giacomo_, p. 169. Tristani Calchi, _Nuptiæ Mediolanens. Ducum_; cf. Ratti, _Della Famiglia Sforza_, ii. 54-60. Fabroni, l. c. i. 168, ii. 295-298. Several letters of Alamanni relating to these festivities are in the _Med. Arch._

[349] G. A. Vespucci to Lorenzo, Rome, September 25 and December 14, 1584, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 316-318.

[350] _Ricordi di Lorenzo_, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 299.

[351] Letters of Lodovico and Cecco dell’Orso, April 19, and of Stefano da Castrocaro, April 21, in Fabroni, ii. 318-325.

[352] A. Guidoni, in Cappelli, p. 298-301. The date of the despatch at p. 298 is wrong; it should probably be April 23 instead of 3.

[353] Letter of Lorenzo to Giovanni Bentivoglio, Cafaggiuolo, July 1, 1481, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 242. Galeotto Manfredi had been with him at the villa, and the matter had been arranged there.

[354] Florence, March 29, 1489, in Moreni, _Lettere_, _ec._, p. 21.

[355] Letters of Piero Nasi and Dionigi Pucci, in Fabroni, ii. 325-328. To this project refers a letter of Giovanni Bentivoglio to Lorenzo, September 7, 1489 (_Med. Arch._), and one of Caterina Riario Sforza, January 21, 1490 (_ibid._). The latter begs for a decisive answer, ‘cum un bel si o cum bel non.’

[356] Bologna, December 19, 1489. _Med. Arch._

[357] Letter of Franceschetto, Rome, March 10, 1488, in Fabroni, ii. 334-337, Lorenzo to Andrea da Fojano, _ibid._ p. 334.

[358] Pecci, _Memorie ec. della Città di Siena che servono alla vita civile di Pandolfo Petrucci_ (Siena, 1755), p. 64 _et seq._ Letter of Fr. Cybò, l. c. Andrea da Fojano to Lorenzo, Siena, October 19, 1489, _ibid._ p. 331-334.

[359] A. Rinuccini, _Ricordi_, in anno 1470, Fabroni, l. c. p. cxiii.

[360] Lorenzo de’ Medici to the Signoria of Siena, Flor. June 27, 1489, MS. in the Sienese Arch. A. Guidoni, Flor., January 19, 1489, in Cappelli, l. c. p. 305.

[361] Tommasi, l. c. p. 341. Mazzarosa, _Storia di Lucca_, ii. 25. Documents, June 3 to July 18, 1490, in the Lucchese State Archives. Cf. Bongi, _Inventario del R. Archivio di Stato in Lucca_, i. 164.

[362] Brief addressed by the Pope to the Priori, July 9, 1488.

[363] _Cronaca del Graziani_, in anno 1488 _et seq._, in _Cronache e Storie della Città di Perugia_, i. 677 _et seq._ Lorenzo de’ Medici to G. Lanfredini, 1489, in Fabroni, i. 329, 330.

[364] _Cronache della Città di Fermo_ (Flor. 1870) p. 215 _et seq._ Ugolini, _Storia dei Conti e Duchi d’Urbino_, ii. 60, 65. Reposati, _Zecca di Gubbio_, i. 291. Fabroni, l. c. ii. 330.

[365] Fabroni, l. c. ii. 359.

[366] Ferrante to Ant. di Gennaro, April 24, 1493, in Trinchera, _Codice Aragon._ vol. ii pt. i. p. 381.

[367] _Commissioni di Rinaldo degli Albizzi_, iii. 681.

[368] _Med. Arch._—_Ricordi di lettere_, February 28, March 2 and 6, 1483. Lorenzo’s instructions to his son Piero, 1484, in Fabroni, l. c. ii. 268.

[369] Cf. i. 288, and _ante_, p. 238.

[370] G. Cambi l. c. ii. 65.

[371] Cappelli, l.c. p. 248.

[372] Fabroni, vol. ii. p. 376. In another letter on the same subject preserved in the _Med. Arch._ fol. 51, he says: ‘Alexandro da Farnese, il quale dà opera alle lettere Greche et è persona dotta e molto gentile.’

[373] Guicciardini, _Del reggimento di Firenze_, p. 44; _Storia fiorentina_, cap. 9.

[374] G. Cambi, l. c. p. 68.

[375] G. Cambi (son of Neri), l.c. p. 41. A. Rinuccini, _Ricordi_, p. cxliv (very hostile to the Gonfaloniere). F. Guicciardini, _Storia fior._, ch. viii.

[376] Cambi, l. c. p. 60. Pagnini, _Delia Decima_, i. 162 _et seq._ contains details on the relative value of the coins.

[377] N. Valori, l. c. p. 174. ‘Proventus certiores et justiores, nec principe viro indigni.’ On his finances see _ante_, Bk. 5, ch. 1.

[378] Cappelli, l. c. p. 315, 316. In his correspondence with Lanfredini in Rome the alum-farming plays a great part.

[379] Gaye, l. c. p. 583.

[380] Contracts and receipts of the Medici-Sassetti and Medici-Tornabuoni bank, Lyons, for 1478, 1485, 1494, in (Molini’s) _Documenti di Storia Ital._, i. 13-16.

[381] Guicciardini, l. c. ch. ix.

[382] Guicciardini, l. c. ch. ix. J. Nardi, _Istorie di Firenze_, book i. (ed. by L. Arbib, Flor. 1842), i. 26.

[383] Rinuccini, l. c. p. cxlviii.

[384] Cf. _ante_, p. 193.

[385] Varchi, book xiii., conclusion (iii. 37 _et seq._).

[386] Canestrini, l. c. p. 163. Cambi, l. c. p. 55.

[387] _Ricordi_, p. cxlvi.

[388] _Ricordi di lettere_, for the said years.

[389] Commines, _Mémoires_, book vii. ch. ix.

[390] Molini, l. c. i. 13. Kervyn de Lettenhove, l. c. vol. ii.

[391] Kervyn de Lettenhove, l. c. p. 70. Date, end of 1489, or beginning of 1490.

[392] Kervyn de Lettenhove, l. c. ii. 71.

[393] In Desjardins, _Négociations_, i. 417, there is a letter of Commines to this Spinelli, dated Vienne, August 6, 1494, relating to the affairs of Piero de’ Medici. Spinelli, whom Commines (_Mémoires_,