The patronage of the Medici family

The Medici family of Florence were the most consequential patrons of the Italian Renaissance. From the early 1430s, when Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464) consolidated the primo cittadino regime of the repubblica, to the high noon of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–1492) and the papal court of Leo X (pope 1513–1521) and Clement VII (pope 1523–1534), the family used the profits of a banking empire, the cultural authority of the Platonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino, and the political leverage of a city that had become, in the long fifteenth century, the unofficial capital of the Italian rinascita to direct the patronage of the new art, the new scholarship, and the new architecture. The dome of the cathedral of Florence, Donatello’s David, Botticelli’s Primavera, Michelangelo’s David, the Platonic Academy of Ficino, Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man — almost every working opera of the long fifteenth century in Florence was in some sense the opera of a Medici patron, and the regime of the Medici was the working regime of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The rise of the Medici, 1397–1434

The Medici were a family of merchants, moneychangers, and speziali who had been prominent in the politics of the comune of Florence since the late thirteenth century. The first decisive step in the rise of the family was the founding of the Medici bank in 1397 by Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici (1360–1429), the son of a minor Florentine merchant who had made his money in the wool trade and in the papal finances of the Avignon papacy. The bank grew rapidly, in part because of the relationship with the Curia (Giovanni di Bicci was papal depositario and banker to the Baldassare Cossa, the antipope John XXIII), and by 1430 was the largest single bank in Florence, with branches in Rome, Venice, Naples, Bruges, London, Avignon, and Geneva. The bank’s capital was modest in comparison to the great Florentine banks of the earlier Trecento (the Bardi, the Peruzzi, the Acciaiuoli) — none of which had survived the catastrophe of Edward III’s default in 1338–1341 — and its model was, in its working method, the model of the Tuscan banco of the Arte del Cambio: branch offices, double-entry bookkeeping, currency exchange, papal tax-farming, and the management of the financial affairs of the great ecclesiastical orders.

The second decisive step was the political consolidation of the family under Cosimo de’ Medici, the son of Giovanni di Bicci. Cosimo was elected primo cittadino of the comune in 1434, after the brief exile of 1433, and he governed Florence, behind the paravento of the formal reggimento of the Priori delle Arti and the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, for the next thirty years. The political method of the reggimento of Cosimo was, in Nicolai Rubinstein’s phrase (The Government of Florence under the Medici, 1434 to 1494, 1966), the method of “the leading citizen of a constitutional republic, and not the prince of a state”: the consiglio of the comune still met, the elezione of the priori was still a elezione of the comune, and the reggimento of the primo cittadino was a working reggimento of the cittadini of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

Cosimo, the Platonic Academy, and the new art

Cosimo’s patronage was, in its three most famous expressions, the patronage of a religious patron, a humanist patron, and a civic patron. The first was the patronage of Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Fra Angelico, the three working artists of the new style in the long 1430s and 1440s. Brunelleschi’s dome for the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore (1420–1436), the most ambitious project of the early Renaissance, was in significant measure the project of the Opera del Duomo of the comune of Florence; but Cosimo’s bank, in the difficult years of the 1420s, had been a working financial backer of the project, and Cosimo’s name was, in the next generation, the name most often associated with the opera. Brunelleschi’s Pazzi Chapel (c. 1429) and Sagrestia Vecchia of San Lorenzo (1419–1428) are the first great interior spaces of the new classical style; the rebuilding of San Lorenzo itself (begun 1419, completed 1461, with the New Sacristy and Laurentian Library of Michelangelo added in the 1520s and 1530s) is the working monument of the Medici as the parish family of the Medici, with the capella of the Medici family designed by Brunelleschi and decorated by Donatello (the two bronze pulpits of the navata, 1460s) the first completed Medici cappella.

Cosimo’s patronage of Donatello produced the bronze David of the Bargello (c. 1440s), the first freestanding nude statue cast in bronze since the late Roman Empire, the Mary Magdalene of the Baptistery of Florence (c. 1455, in carved and painted wood), the Judith and Holofernes of the Piazza della Signoria (c. 1457–1464, in bronze), and the bronze doors and cantorie of the Old Sacristy of San Lorenzo. Cosimo’s patronage of Fra Angelico produced the frescoes of the Convent of San Marco (c. 1440), one of the most ambitious fresco cycles of the early Renaissance, and the Annunciation of the Museo del Prado of Madrid. The work of Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396–1472), Cosimo’s favourite architect, produced the Palazzo Medici (begun 1444, completed 1460, now the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi), the first of the great Florentine palazzi of the Quattrocento, with its cortile the working model of the cortile of the Italian Renaissance palazzo.

The second great expression of Cosimo’s patronage was the patronage of the Platonic Academy of Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499). Cosimo had been educated, in the conventional humanist curriculum of the 1400s, in the studia of Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli and Carlo Marsuppini, and he had become convinced, in the 1450s, that the Platonic tradition of Greek philosophy was the proper philosophical complement to the Christian Aristotelian tradition of the studia of the Latin West. He had, on the family estate at Careggi (the Villa Medicea di Careggi, north of Florence, acquired in 1457), given Ficino a small house and a working library of the Greek manuscripts of Plato and Plotinus, and he had, in 1462, founded the Florentine Academy (the Accademia Platonica Fiorentina, the Accademia di Careggi, also called the Platonic Academy) under Ficino’s direction. Ficino’s Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae (1482), his Commentarium in Convivium Platonis de amore (1469), and his Liber de sole were the working texts of the Academy; his Latin translation of the complete works of Plato (published in Vicenza in 1484 and reprinted in Venice in 1491 and 1517) and his Latin translation of the Enneads of Plotinus (Florence, 1492) were the opera of the clericus of the studium of the Medici of Florence.

The third expression of Cosimo’s patronage was the patronage of the new humanist scholarship. Cosimo was the padrone of the Greek scholars who taught at the Studio Fiorentino (the Florentine university): John Argyropoulos (1415–1487), who held the chair of Greek from 1453 to 1471; Demetrios Chalcondyles (1423–1511), who held the chair of Greek from 1475 to 1491; and Andronikos Kallistos (c. 1400–1478), who held the chair of Greek at Bologna and then at Rome. Cosimo’s patronage of the humanist school of the repubblica of the comune of Florence produced the Greek lectures of Argyropoulos (in which the new Greek was taught in the Studio of the comune of Florence), the Greek library of the Badia Fiesolana (a working collection of the Greek manuscripts of the Basilian and Thomist traditions), and the Greek texts of the studia of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

Lorenzo the Magnificent and the poetry of the court

Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449–1492), the grandson of Cosimo, was the most famous of the Medici and, in the conventional Italian usage, il Magnifico. Lorenzo’s regime was, in working practice, that of a signore of a small Italian stato in everything but the formal name; the reggimento of the Medici was, in the regime of Lorenzo, the reggimento of a signore of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. Lorenzo’s patronage was, in its three most famous expressions, the patronage of a poet-collector, a diplomat-prince, and a courtly impresario.

Lorenzo’s court was, in the standard account, the most brilliant in Italy in the long 1480s, and the artists, poets, and philosophers who worked in the cortile of the Palazzo Medici (or in the gardens of Careggi, the Villa Medicea di Castello, the Villa Medicea di Poggio a Caiano, or the Villa Medicea di Fiesole) included Sandro Botticelli (the Primavera of the Uffizi, c. 1480; the Birth of Venus of the Uffizi, c. 1485; the Madonna of the Magnificat of the Uffizi, c. 1481), Domenico Ghirlandaio (the frescoes of the Tornabuoni Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, 1485–1490), Andrea del Verrocchio (the Baptism of Christ of the Uffizi, c. 1475), Perugino (the work in the Studiolo of the Palazzo Medici, c. 1480s), the young Michelangelo (the Madonna of the Stairs of the Casa Buonarroti, c. 1491; the Battle of the Centaurs of the Casa Buonarroti, c. 1492), the young Leonardo da Vinci (the Adoration of the Magi of the Uffizi, 1481, the Verrocchio workshop of the Bargello), the poets Angelo Poliziano (the Stanze per la giostra, 1475, and the Orfeo, 1480), Marsilio Ficino (the De triplici vita, 1489, the Commentarium in Convivium, 1469, and the Theologia Platonica, 1482), Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (the Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486, the Conclusiones, 1486, and the Heptaplus, 1489), and the humanists Poliziano, Michele Marullo, and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto.

Lorenzo’s most lasting personal contribution was the patronage of the new generation: the patronage of the adolescent Michelangelo from 1489 onwards; the patronage of Botticelli’s most personal work; the patronage of the Platonic Academy at Careggi; and the personal patronage of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the young count of Mirandola and Concordia who arrived in Florence in 1486 with his 900 theses and his Oration on the Dignity of Man and was, in the next three years, the centre of the circolo of the Palazzo Medici of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The Pazzi Conspiracy, Savonarola, and the invasion

The end of the Lorenzo regime came in 1494 with the French invasion of Italy under Charles VIII and the expulsion of Piero de’ Medici (1472–1503), Lorenzo’s son, from Florence. The crisis had been building for some years. The Pazzi Conspiracy of 26 April 1478, in which members of the Pazzi family attempted to assassinate Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano during the High Mass in the cathedral, was the most ambitious of the congiure of the Italian peninsula; the conspirators killed Giuliano and wounded Lorenzo, who escaped by leaping into the sacristy of the cathedral. The aftermath, in which the Pazzi family was hunted down and hanged from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria in the Piazza della Signoria, was the moment in which the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was consolidated.

Lorenzo’s regime ended with his death in 1492. The Bonfire of the Vanities of 7 February 1497, in which the followers of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498) burned, in the Piazza della Signoria, the vanitates of the comune of Florence — carnival songs, masks, books by the poeti of the Medici court, paintings by the artisti of the Medici court, and fine clothes of the cittadini of the regime — was the working event of the reggimento of the popolo of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. The French invasion of 1494, in which the Charles VIII of France (1470–1498) led the Armée française of the Royaume de France through the Alps into the Pianura Padana and through the Pianura Padana into the Regno di Napoli, was the moment in which the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was overthrown.

The Medici popes and the long sixteenth century

The Medici were restored to Florence in 1512, in the wake of the Holy League of 1511 and the withdrawal of the French from Italy, and the family dominated the politics of the city, with brief interruptions, for the next three hundred years. The two Medici popes — Pope Leo X (Giovanni de’ Medici, 1475–1521, pope from 1513) and Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, 1478–1534, pope from 1523) — were the most lavish of the Medici patrons, and the corte of the two popes was the working centre of the Italian Rinascita of the early Cinquecento. Leo X was the patron of Raphael (the Stanze of the Vatican, 1508–1520; the Sistine Madonna of Dresden, 1512; the Transfiguration of the Vatican, 1520) and of Michelangelo (the Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508–1512; the New Sacristy of San Lorenzo, 1519–1534; the Laurentian Library, 1524–1534; the fortifications of Florence, 1526–1530; the Cappella Paolina, 1534–1541). Clement VII was the patron of Michelangelo’s New Sacristy and Laurentian Library, of Sebastiano del Piombo, of Benvenuto Cellini, and of the canti of the canti carnascialeschi of the reggimento of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence.

The reggimento of the Medici popes ended with the Sacco di Roma of 6 May 1527, in which the unpaid Landsknechte of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (1500–1558) sacked Rome and imprisoned Clement VII in the Castel Sant’Angelo. The aftermath, in which the regime of the Medici of the repubblica of the comune of Florence was briefly overthrown and the repubblica of the comune of Florence was briefly restored, was the working event of the next decade of Italian reggimento.

Historiography

The historiography of Medici patronage has been reshaped three times in the twentieth century. The Burckhardtian reading, in which the Medici are the working patrons of the modern individualism of the Rinascita, has been displaced by the more cautious civic reading of Hans Baron (The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance, 1955, 2nd edn. 1966) and Nicolai Rubinstein (1966), in which the Medici are the working patrons of a constitutional repubblica of the comune of Florence. The economic reading of Richard Goldthwaite (The Building of Renaissance Florence, 1980, and Wealth and the Demand for Art in Italy, 1993) has, in turn, placed the Medici patronage in the context of the Arte della Lana, the Arte della Seta, the Arte del Cambio, and the banking of the repubblica of the comune of Florence. The most recent work, by William J. Connell (Florence and the Papacy and In the House of the Medici, both 2002), John M. Najemy (A History of Florence, 1200–1575, 2006), and Evelyn Welch (Art and Authority in Renaissance Milan, 1995, and Shopping in the Renaissance, 2005), has set the Medici patronage in the wider context of the corte of the principe of the Italian stato.