But Sixtus and his nephews did not in their hearts desire peace
in Italy, and were plotting against Lorenzo with the Pazzi, who,
although united to the Medici by marriage, had secret and growing
grievances against them. On the morning of Sunday April 26th, 1478,
the conspirators set upon the two brothers at Mass in the Duomo;
Giuliano perished beneath nineteen dagger-stabs; Lorenzo escaped with a
slight wound in the neck. The Archbishop Salviati of Pisa in the
meantime attempted to seize the Palace of the Priors, but was arrested by
the Gonfaloniere, and promptly hung out of the window for his
trouble. Jacopo Pazzi rode madly through the streets with an armed
force, calling the people to arms, with the old shout of _Popolo e
Liberta_, but was only answered by the ringing cries of _Palle, Palle_.[18]
The vengeance taken by the people upon the conspirators was so prompt
and terrible that Lorenzo had little left him to do (though that little
he did to excess, punishing the innocent with the guilty); and the
result of the plot simply was to leave him alone in the government,
securely enthroned above the splash of blood. The Pope appears not to
have been actually privy to the murder, but he promptly took up the
cause of the murderers. It was followed by a general break-up of the
Italian peace and a disastrous war, carried on mainly by mercenary
soldiers, in which all the powers of Italy were more or less engaged;
and Florence was terribly hard pressed by the allied forces of Naples
and Rome. The plague broke out in the city; Lorenzo was
practically deserted by his allies, and on the brink of financial ruin. Then
was it that he did one of the most noteworthy, perhaps the noblest, of
the actions of his life, and saved himself and the State by
voluntarily going to Naples and putting himself in the power of King
Ferrante, an infamous tyrant, who would readily have murdered his guest, if
it had seemed to his advantage to do so. But, like all the Italians of
the Renaissance, Ferrante was open to reason, and the eloquence of
the Magnifico won him over to grant an honourable peace, with
which Lorenzo returned to Florence in March 1480. "If Lorenzo was great
when he left Florence," writes Machiavelli, "he returned much greater
than ever; and he was received with such joy by the city as his
great qualities and his fresh merits deserved, seeing that he had
exposed his own life to restore peace to his country." Botticelli's
noble allegory of the olive-decked Medicean Pallas, taming the Centaur
of war and disorder, appears to have been painted in commemoration of this
event. In the following August the Turks landed in Italy and stormed Otranto,
and the need of union, in the face of "the common enemy Ottoman," reconciled
the Pope to Florence, and secured for the time an uneasy peace among the
powers of Italy.
[18] The _Palle_, it will be remembered, were the
golden balls on the Medicean arms, and hence the rallying cry of their
adherents.
Lorenzo's power in Florence and influence throughout Italy was
now secure. By the institution in 1480 of a Council of Seventy,
a permanent council to manage and control the election of the
Signoria (with two special committees drawn from the Seventy every six
months, the _Otto di pratica_ for foreign affairs and the _Dodici
Procuratori_ for internal), the State was firmly established in his
hands--the older councils still remaining, as was usual in every
Florentine reformation of government. Ten years later, in 1490, this
council showed signs of independence; and Lorenzo therefore reduced
the authority of electing the Signoria to a small committee with
a reforming Balia of seventeen, of which he was one. Had he lived longer,
he would undoubtedly have crowned his policy either by being made
Gonfaloniere for life, or by obtaining some similar constitutional
confirmation of his position as head of the State. Externally his influence
was thrown into the scale for peace, and, on the death of Sixtus IV. in 1484,
he established friendly relations and a family alliance with the new Pontiff,
Innocent VIII. Sarzana with Pietrasanta were won back for Florence, and
portions of the Sienese territory which had been lost during the war with
Naples and the Church; a virtual protectorate was established over portions
of Umbria and Romagna, where the daggers of assassins daily emptied the
thrones of minor tyrants. Two attempts on his life failed. In the last
years of his foreign policy and diplomacy he showed himself truly
the magnificent. East and West united to do him honour; the Sultan of
the Turks and the Soldan of Egypt sent ambassadors and presents;
the rulers of France and Germany treated him as an equal. Soon the
torrent of foreign invasion was to sweep over the Alps and inundate all
the "Ausonian" land; Milan and Naples were ready to rend each
other; Ludovico Sforza was plotting his own rise upon the ruin of Italy,
and already intriguing with France; but, for the present,
Lorenzo succeeded in maintaining the balance of power between the five
great Italian states, which seemed as though they might present a
united front for mutual defence against the coming of the
barbarians.
_Sarebbe impossibile avesse avuto un tiranno migliore e
piu piacevole_, writes Guicciardini: "Florence could not have had a
better or more delightful tyrant." The externals of life were splendid
and gorgeous indeed in the city where Lorenzo ruled, but everything was
in his hands and had virtually to proceed from him. His spies
were everywhere; marriages might only be arranged and celebrated
according to his good pleasure; the least sign of independence was promptly
and severely repressed. By perpetual festivities and splendid shows,
he strove to keep the minds of the citizens contented and
occupied; tournaments, pageants, masques and triumphs filled the streets;
and the strains of licentious songs, of which many were Lorenzo's
own composition, helped to sap the morality of that people which Dante
had once dreamed of as _sobria e pudica_. But around the Magnifico
were grouped the greatest artists and scholars of the age, who found in
him an enlightened Maecenas and most charming companion.
_Amava maravigliosamente qualunque era in una arte eccellente_,
writes Machiavelli of him; and that word--_maravigliosamente_--so
entirely characteristic of Lorenzo and his ways, occurs again and
again, repeated with studied persistence, in the chapter which
closes Machiavelli's History. He was said to have sounded the depths
of Platonic philosophy; he was a true poet, within certain
limitations; few men have been more keenly alive to beauty in all
its manifestations, physical and spiritual alike. Though
profoundly immoral, _nelle cose veneree maravigliosamente involto_, he was
a tolerable husband, and the fondest of fathers with his children, whom he
adored. The delight of his closing days was the elevation of his favourite
son, Giovanni, to the Cardinalate at the age of fourteen; it gave the Medici
a voice in the Curia like the other princes of Europe, and pleased all
Florence; but more than half Lorenzo's joy proceeded from paternal pride and
love, and the letter of advice which he wrote for his son on the occasion
shows both father and boy in a very amiable, even edifying light. And yet
this same man had ruined the happiness of countless homes, and had even
seized upon the doweries of Florentine maidens to fill his own coffers and
pay his mercenaries.
But the _bel viver italiano_ of the Quattrocento,
with all its loveliness and all its immorality--more lovely and far less
immoral in Florence than anywhere else--was drawing to an end. A new prophet
had arisen, and, from the pulpits of San Marco and Santa Maria del
Fiore, the stern Dominican, Fra Girolamo Savonarola, denounced the
corruption of the day and announced that speedy judgment was at hand; the
Church should be chastised, and that speedily, and renovation should
follow. Prodigies were seen. The lions tore and rent each other in
their cages; lightning struck the cupola of the Duomo on the side
towards the Medicean palace; while in his villa at Careggi the Magnifico
lay dying, watched over by his sister Bianca and the poet Poliziano.
A visit from the young Pico della Mirandola cheered his last hours.
He received the Last Sacraments, with every sign of contrition
and humility. Then Savonarola came to his bedside. There are two
accounts of what happened between these two terrible men, the corruptor
of Florence and the prophet of renovation, and they are
altogether inconsistent. The ultimate source of the one is
apparently Savonarola's fellow-martyr, Fra Silvestro, an utterly
untrustworthy witness; that of the other, Lorenzo's intimate, Poliziano.
According to Savonarola's biographers and adherents, Lorenzo, overwhelmed
with remorse and terror, had sent for the Frate to give him the
absolution which his courtly confessor dared not refuse (_io non ho mai
trovato uno che sia vero frate, se non lui_); and when the Dominican,
seeming to soar above his natural height, bade him restore liberty
to Florence, the Magnifico sullenly turned his back upon him and
shortly afterwards died in despair.[19] According to Poliziano, an
eyewitness and an absolutely whole-hearted adherent of the Medici, Fra
Girolamo simply spoke a few words of priestly exhortation to the dying
man; then, as he turned away, Lorenzo cried, "Your blessing, father,
before you depart" (_Heus, benedictionem, Pater, priusquam a
nobis proficisceris_) and the two together repeated word for word
the Church's prayers for the departing; then Savonarola returned to
his convent, and Lorenzo passed away in peace and consolation.
Reverently and solemnly the body was brought from Careggi to Florence, rested
for a while in San Marco, and was then buried, with all
external simplicity, with his murdered brother in San Lorenzo. It was
the beginning of April 1492, and the Magnifico was only in
his forty-fourth year. The words of old Sixtus must have risen to the
lips of many: _Oggi e morta la pace d'Italia_. "This man," said Ferrante
of Naples, "lived long enough to make good his own title to
immortality, but not long enough for Italy."
[19] The familiar
legend that Lorenzo told Savonarola that the three sins which lay heaviest
on his conscience were the sack of Volterra, the robbery of the Monte delle
Doti, and the vengeance he had taken for the Pazzi conspiracy, is only
valuable as showing what were popularly supposed by the Florentines to be
his greatest crimes.
Lorenzo left three sons--Piero, who virtually
succeeded him in the same rather undefined princedom; the young Cardinal
Giovanni; and Giuliano. Their father was wont to call Piero the "mad,"
Giovanni the "wise," Giuliano the "good"; and to a certain extent their
after-lives corresponded with his characterisation. There was also a boy
Giulio, Lorenzo's nephew, an illegitimate child of Giuliano the elder by
a girl of the lower class; him Lorenzo left to the charge of
Cardinal Giovanni--the future Pope Clement to the future Pope Leo. Piero
had none of his father's abilities, and was not the man to guide the
ship of State through the storm that was rising; he was a wild
licentious young fellow, devoted to sport and athletics, with a great shock
of dark hair; he was practically the only handsome member of his
family, as you may see in a peculiarly fascinating Botticellian portrait
in the Uffizi, where he is holding a medallion of his great
grandfather Cosimo, and gazing out of the picture with a rather
pathetic expression, as if the Florentines who set a price upon his head
had misunderstood him.
Piero's folly at once began to undo his
father's work. A part of Lorenzo's policy had been to keep his family united,
including those not belonging to the reigning branch. There were two young
Medici then in the city, about Piero's own age; Lorenzo and Giovanni di
Pier Francesco, the grandsons of Cosimo's brother Lorenzo (you may
see Giovanni with his father in a picture by Filippino Lippi in
the Uffizi). Lorenzo the Magnificent had made a point of keeping on
good terms with them, for they were beloved of the people. Giovanni
was destined, in a way, to play the part of Banquo to the
Magnificent's Macbeth, had there been a Florentine prophet to tell him, "Thou
shalt get kings though thou be none." But Piero disliked the two; at a
dance he struck Giovanni, and then, when the brothers showed resentment,
he arrested both and, not daring to take their lives, confined them
to their villas. And these were times when a stronger head than
Piero's might well have reeled. Italy's day had ended, and she was now to
be the battle-ground for the gigantic forces of the monarchies of
Europe. That same year in which Lorenzo died, Alexander VI. was elected to
the Papacy he had so shamelessly bought. A mysterious terror fell upon
the people; an agony of apprehension consumed their rulers throughout
the length and breadth of the land. In 1494 the crash came. The old
King Ferrante of Naples died, and his successor Alfonso prepared to
meet the torrent of French arms which Ludovico Sforza, the usurping Duke
of Milan, had invited into Italy.
* * *
* *
In art and in letters, as well as in life and general conduct,
this epoch of the Quattrocento is one of the most marvellous chapters
in the history of human thought; the Renaissance as a wave broke
over Italy, and from Italy surged on to the bounds of Europe. And of
this "discovery by man of himself and of the world," Florence was
the centre; in its hothouse of learning and culture the
rarest personalities flourished, and its strangest and most brilliant
flower, in whose hard brilliancy a suggestion of poison lurked, was
Lorenzo the Magnificent himself.
In both art and letters, the
Renaissance had fully commenced before the accession of the Medici to power.
Ghiberti's first bronze gates of the Baptistery and Masaccio's frescoes in
the Carmine were executed under the regime of the _nobili popolani_, the
Albizzi and their allies. Many of the men whom the Medici swept relentlessly
from their path were in the fore-front of the movement, such as the noble
and generous Palla Strozzi, one of the reformers of the Florentine
Studio, who brought the Greek, Emanuel Chrysolaras, at the close of
the fourteenth century, to make Florence the centre of Italian
Hellenism. Palla lavished his wealth in the hunting of codices, and at last,
when banished on Cosimo's return, died in harness at Padua at the
venerable age of ninety-two. His house had always been full of learned men,
and his reform of the university had brought throngs of students
to Florence. Put under bounds for ten years at Padua, he lived the life of
an ancient philosopher and of exemplary Christian virtue. Persecuted at the
end of every ten years with a new sentence, the last--of ten more years--when
he was eighty-two; robbed by death of his wife and sons; he bore all with the
utmost patience and fortitude, until, in Vespasiano's words, "arrived at the
age of ninety-two years, in perfect health of body and of mind, he gave up
his soul to his Redeemer like a most faithful and good Christian."
In
1401, the first year of the fifteenth century, the competition was announced
for the second gates of the Baptistery, which marks the beginning of
Renaissance sculpture; and the same year witnessed the birth of Masaccio,
who, in the words of Leonardo da Vinci, "showed with his perfect work how
those painters who follow aught but Nature, the mistress of the masters,
laboured in vain," Morelli calls this Quattrocento the epoch of "character";
"that is, the period when it was the principal aim of art to seize and
represent the outward appearances of persons and things, determined by inward
and moral conditions." The intimate connection of arts and crafts
is characteristic of the Quattrocento, as also the mutual interaction
of art with art. Sculpture was in advance of painting in the opening stage
of the century, and, indeed, influenced it profoundly throughout; about the
middle of the century they met, and ran henceforth hand in hand. Many of the
painters and sculptors, as, notably, Ghiberti and Botticelli, had been
apprentices in the workshops of the goldsmiths; nor would the greatest
painters disdain to undertake the adornment of a _cassone_, or chest for
wedding presents, nor the most illustrious sculptor decline a commission
for the button of a prelate's cope or some mere trifle of
household furniture. The medals in the National Museum and the metal work on
the exterior of the Strozzi Palace are as typical of the art
of Renaissance Florence as the grandest statues and most
elaborate altar-pieces.
[Illustration: IN THE SCULPTORS'
WORKSHOP BY NANNI DI BANCO (For the Guild of Masters in Stone and
Timber)]
With the work of the individual artists we shall become
better acquainted in subsequent chapters. Here we can merely name
their leaders. In architecture and sculpture respectively,
Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) and Donatello (1386-1466) are the
ruling spirits of the age. Their mutual friendship and brotherly
rivalry almost recall the loves of Dante and Cavalcanti in an earlier
day. Although Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455) justly won the competition
for the second gates of the Baptistery, it is now thought that Filippo
ran his successful rival much more closely than the critics of an
earlier day supposed. Mr Perkins remarks that "indirectly Brunelleschi was
the master of all the great painters and sculptors of his time, for
he taught them how to apply science to art, and so far both Ghiberti
and Donatello were his pupils, but the last was almost literally so,
since the great architect was not only his friend, but also his
counsellor and guide." Contemporaneous with these three _spiriti magni_ in
their earlier works, and even to some extent anticipating them, is Nanni
di Banco (died in 1421), a most excellent master, both in large monumental
statues and in bas-reliefs, whose works are to be seen and loved outside and
inside the Duomo, and in the niches round San Michele in Orto. A pleasant
friendship united him with Donatello, although to regard him as that supreme
master's pupil and follower, as Vasari does, is an anachronism. To this same
earlier portion of the Quattrocento belong Leo Battista Alberti (1405-1472),
a rare genius, but a wandering stone who, as an architect, accomplished
comparatively little; Michelozzo Michelozzi (1396-1472), who worked as a
sculptor with Ghiberti and Donatello, but is best known as the
favoured architect of the Medici, for whom he built the palace so
often mentioned in these pages, and now known as the Palazzo Riccardi,
and the convent of San Marco; and Luca della Robbia (1399-1482),
that beloved master of marble music, whose enamelled terra-cotta
Madonnas are a perpetual fund of the purest delight. To Michelozzo and Luca
in collaboration we owe the bronze gates of the Duomo sacristy, a
work only inferior to Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise."
Slightly later
come Donatello's great pupils, Desiderio da Settignano (1428-1464), Andrea
Verrocchio (1435-1488), and Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498). The two latter
are almost equally famous as painters. Contemporaneous with them are Mino da
Fiesole, Bernardo and Antonio Rossellino, Giuliano da San Gallo, Giuliano and
Benedetto da Maiano, of whom the last-named was the first architect of the
Strozzi Palace. The last great architect of the Quattrocento is Simone del
Pollaiuolo, known as Cronaca (1457-1508); and its last great sculptor is
Andrea della Robbia, Luca's nephew, who was born in 1435, and lived on
until 1525. Andrea's best works--and they are very numerous indeed, in
the same enamelled terra-cotta--hardly yield in charm and fascination
to those of Luca himself; in some of them, devotional art seems to
reach its last perfection in sculpture. Giovanni, Andrea's son, and
others of the family carried on the tradition--with cruder colours and
less delicate feeling.
Masaccio (1401-1428), one of "the inheritors of
unfulfilled renown," is the first great painter of the Renaissance, and bears
much the same relation to the fifteenth as Giotto to the fourteenth
century. Vasari's statement that Masaccio's master, Masolino, was
Ghiberti's assistant appears to be incorrect; but it illustrates the
dependence of the painting of this epoch upon sculpture. Masaccio's frescoes
in the Carmine, which became the school of all Italian painting,
were entirely executed before the Medicean regime. The Dominican,
Fra Angelico da Fiesole (1387-1455), seems in his San Marco frescoes
to bring the denizens of the Empyrean, of which the mediæval
mystics dreamed, down to earth to dwell among the black and white
robed children of St Dominic. The Carmelite, Fra Lippo Lippi
(1406-1469), the favourite of Cosimo, inferior to the angelical painter
in spiritual insight, had a keener eye for the beauty of the
external world and a surer touch upon reality. His buoyant humour and
excellent colouring make "the glad monk's gift" one of the most acceptable
that the Quattrocento has to offer us. Andrea del Castagno (died in
1457) and Domenico Veneziano (died in 1461), together with Paolo
Uccello (died in 1475), were all absorbed in scientific researches with an
eye to the extension of the resources of their art; but the two
former found time to paint a few masterpieces in their kind--especially
a Cenacolo by Andrea in Santa Appollonia, which is the
grandest representation of its sublime theme, until the time that Leonardo
da Vinci painted on the walls of the Dominican convent at Milan.
Problems of the anatomical construction of the human frame and the rendering
of movement occupied Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) and Andrea
Verrocchio (1435-1488); their work was taken up and completed a little later
by two greater men, Luca Signorelli of Cortona and Leonardo da
Vinci.
The Florentine painting of this epoch culminates in the work of
two men--Sandro di Mariano Filipepi, better known as Sandro
Botticelli (1447-1510), and Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449-1494). If the
greatest pictures were painted poems, as some have held, then
Sandro Botticelli's masterpieces would be among the greatest of all time.
In his rendering of religious themes, in his intensely poetic
and strangely wistful attitude towards the fair myths of antiquity, and
in his Neo-Platonic mingling of the two, he is the most complete
and typical exponent of the finest spirit of the Quattrocento, to
which, in spite of the date of his death, his art entirely
belongs. Domenico's function, on the other hand, is to translate the
external pomp and circumstance of his times into the most uninspired of
painted prose, but with enormous technical skill and with considerable
power of portraiture; this he effected above all in his ostensibly
religious frescoes in Santa Maria Novella and Santa Trinita. Elsewhere he
shows a certain pathetic sympathy with humbler life, as in his Santa
Fina frescoes at San Gemignano, and in the admirable Adoration of
the Shepherds in the Accademia; but this is a less characteristic
vein. Filippino Lippi (1457-1504), the son of the Carmelite and the pupil
of Botticelli, has a certain wayward charm, especially in his
earlier works, but as a rule falls much below his master. He may be
regarded as the last direct inheritor of the traditions of Masaccio.
Associated with these are two lesser men, who lived considerably beyond
the limits of the fifteenth century, but whose artistic methods never
went past it; Piero di Cosimo (1462-1521) and Lorenzo di Credi
(1459-1537). The former (called after Cosimo Rosselli, his master) was one of
the most piquant personalities in the art world of Florence, as
all readers of _Romola_ know. As a painter, he has been very
much overestimated; at his best, he is a sort of Botticelli, with
the Botticellian grace and the Botticellian poetry almost all left out.
He was magnificent at designing pageants; and of one of his exploits
in this kind, we shall hear more presently. Lorenzo di Credi, Verrocchio's
favourite pupil, was later, like Botticelli and others, to fall under the
spell of Fra Girolamo; his pictures breathe a true religious sentiment and
are very carefully finished; but for the most part, though there are
exceptions, they lack virility.
Before this epoch closed, the two
greatest heroes of Florentine art had appeared upon the scenes, but their
great work lay still in the future. Leonardo da Vinci (born in 1452) had
learned to paint in the school of Verrocchio; but painting was to occupy but
a small portion of his time and labour. His mind roamed freely over every
field of human activity, and plunged deeply into every sphere of human
thought; nor is he adequately represented even by the greatest of the
pictures that he has left. There is nothing of him now in Florence, save a
few drawings in the Uffizi and an unfinished picture of the
Epiphany. Leonardo finished little, and, with that little, time and man
have dealt hardly. Michelangelo Buonarroti was born in the Casentino
in 1475, and nurtured among the stone quarries of Settignano. At the
age of thirteen, his father apprenticed him to the Ghirlandaii,
Domenico and his brother David; and, with his friend and
fellow-student, Francesco Granacci, the boy began to frequent the gardens of
the Medici, near San Marco, where in the midst of a rich collection
of antiquities Donatello's pupil and successor, Bertoldo, directed a
kind of Academy. Here Michelangelo attracted the attention of
Lorenzo himself, by the head of an old satyr which he had hammered out of
a piece of marble that fell to his hand; and the Magnifico took him
into his household. This youthful period in the great master's career
was occupied in drinking in culture from the Medicean circle, in
studying the antique and, of the moderns, especially the works of Donatello
and Masaccio. But, with the exception of a few early fragments from
his hand, Michelangelo's work commenced with his first visit to Rome,
in 1496, and belongs to the following epoch.
Turning from art to
letters, the Quattrocento is an intermediate period between the mainly Tuscan
literary movement of the fourteenth century and the general Italian
literature of the sixteenth. The first part of this century is the time of
the discovery of the old authors, of the copying of manuscripts (printing was
not introduced into Florence until 1471), of the eager search for classical
relics and antiquities, the comparative neglect of Italian when Latinity
became the test of all. Florence was the centre of the Humanism of
the Renaissance, the revival of Grecian culture, the blending
of Christianity and Paganism, the aping of antiquity in theory and
in practice. In the pages of Vespasiano we are given a series of
lifelike portraits of the scholars of this epoch, who thronged to
Florence, served the State as Secretary of the Republic or occupied chairs
in her newly reorganised university, or basked in the sun of Strozzian
or Medicean patronage. Niccolo Niccoli, who died in 1437, is one of
the most typical of these scholars; an ardent collector of
ancient manuscripts, his library, purchased after his death by Cosimo
dei Medici, forms the nucleus of the Biblioteca Laurenziana. His house
was adorned with all that was held most choice and precious; he
always wore long sweeping red robes, and had his table covered with
ancient vases and precious Greek cups and the like. In fact he played
the ancient sage to such perfection that simply to watch him eat
his dinner was a liberal education in itself! _A vederlo in tavola,
cosi antico come era, era una gentilezza._
Vespasiano tells a
delightful yarn of how one fine day this Niccolo Niccoli, "who was another
Socrates or another Cato for continence and virtue," was taking a
constitutional round the Palazzo del Podesta, when he chanced to espy a youth
of most comely aspect, one who was entirely devoted to worldly pleasures and
delights, young Piero Pazzi. Calling him and learning his name, Niccolo
proceeded to question him as to his profession. "Having a high old time,"
answered the ingenuous youth: _attendo a darmi buon tempo_. "Being thy
father's son and so handsome," said the Sage severely, "it is a shame that
thou dost not set thyself to learn the Latin language, which would be a
great ornament to thee; and if thou dost not learn it, thou wilt be
esteemed of no account; yea, when the flower of thy youth is past, thou
shalt find thyself without any _virtu_." Messer Piero was converted on
the spot; Niccolo straightway found him a master and provided him
with books; and the pleasure-loving youth became a scholar and a patron
of scholars. Vespasiano assures us that, if he had lived,
_lo inconveniente che seguito_--so he euphoniously terms the
Pazzi conspiracy--would never have happened.
Leonardo Bruni is the
nearest approach to a really great figure in the Florentine literary world of
the first half of the century. His translations of Plato and Aristotle,
especially the former, mark an epoch. His Latin history of Florence shows
genuine critical insight; but he is, perhaps, best known at the present day
by his little Life of Dante in Italian, a charming and valuable sketch, which
has preserved for us some fragments of Dantesque letters and several
bits of really precious information about the divine poet, which seem
to be authentic and which we do not find elsewhere. Leonardo appears
to have undertaken it as a kind of holiday task, for recreation after
the work of composing his more ponderous history. As Secretary of
the Republic he exercised considerable political influence; his fame
was so great that people came to Florence only to look at him; on
his death in 1444, he was solemnly crowned on the bier as poet
laureate, and buried in Santa Croce with stately pomp and applauded
funeral orations. Leonardo's successors, Carlo Marsuppini (like him,
an Aretine by birth) and Poggio Bracciolini--the one noted for his
frank paganism, the other for the foulness of his literary
invective--are less attractive figures; though the latter was no less famous
and influential in his day. Giannozzo Manetti, who pronounced
Bruni's funeral oration, was noted for his eloquence and incorruptibility,
and stands out prominently amidst the scholars and humanists by virtue
of his nobleness of character; like that other hero of the new
learning, Palla Strozzi, he was driven into exile and persecuted by
the Mediceans.
Far more interesting are the men of light and learning
who gathered round Lorenzo dei Medici in the latter half of the century. This
is the epoch of the Platonic Academy, which Marsilio Ficino had
founded under the auspices of Cosimo. The discussions held in the
convent retreat among the forests of Camaldoli, the meetings in the Badia
at the foot of Fiesole, the mystical banquets celebrated in
Lorenzo's villa at Careggi in honour of the anniversary of Plato's birth
and death, may have added little to the sum of man's philosophic
thought; but the Neo-Platonic religion of love and beauty, which was
there proclaimed to the modern world, has left eternal traces in the
poetic literature both of Italy and of England. Spenser and Shelley
might have sat with the nine guests, whose number honoured the nine
Muses, at the famous Platonic banquet at Careggi, of which Marsilio
Ficino himself has left us an account in his commentary on the
_Symposium_. You may read a later Italian echo of it, when Marsilio Ficino
had passed away and his academy was a thing of the past, in
the impassioned and rapturous discourse on love and beauty poured forth
by Pietro Bembo, at that wonderful daybreak which ends the discussions
of Urbino's courtiers in Castiglione's treatise. In a creed that
could find one formula to cover both the reception of the Stigmata by
St Francis and the mystical flights of the Platonic Socrates and Plotinus;
that could unite the Sibyls and Diotima with the Magdalene and the Virgin
Martyrs; many a perplexed Italian of that epoch might find more than
temporary rest for his soul.
Simultaneously with this new Platonic
movement there came a great revival of Italian literature, alike in poetry
and in prose; what Carducci calls _il rinascimento della vita italiana nella
forma classica_. The earlier humanists had scorned, or at least
neglected the language of Dante; and the circle that surrounded Lorenzo
was undoubtedly instrumental in this Italian reaction. Cristoforo
Landini, one of the principal members of the Platonic Academy, now wrote
the first Renaissance commentary upon the _Divina Commedia_; Leo
Battista Alberti, also a leader in these Platonic disputations, defended
the dignity of the Italian language, as Dante himself had done in
an earlier day. Lorenzo himself compiled the so-called
_Raccolta Aragonese_ of early Italian lyrics, and sent them to Frederick
of Aragon, together with a letter full of enthusiasm for the
Tuscan tongue, and with critical remarks on the individual poets of
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Upon the popular poetry
of Tuscany Lorenzo himself, and his favourite Angelo Ambrogini
of Montepulciano, better known as Poliziano, founded a new school
of Italian song. Luigi Pulci, the gay scoffer and cynical
sceptic, entertained the festive gatherings in the Medicean palace with
his wild tales, and, in his _Morgante Maggiore_, was practically the
first to work up the popular legends of Orlando and the Paladins into
a noteworthy poem--a poem of which Savonarola and his followers
were afterwards to burn every copy that fell into their
hands.
Poliziano is at once the truest classical scholar, and, with
the possible exception of Boiardo (who belongs to Ferrara, and does
not come within the scope of the present volume), the greatest
Italian poet of the fifteenth century. He is, indeed, the last and
most perfect fruit of Florentine Humanism. His father, Benedetto
Ambrogini, had been murdered in Montepulciano by the faction hostile to
the Medici; and the boy Angelo, coming to Florence, and studying
under Ficino and his colleagues, was received into Lorenzo's household
as tutor to the younger Piero. His lectures at the Studio
attracted students from all Europe, and his labours in the field of
textual criticism won a fame that has lasted to the present day. In Italian
he wrote the _Orfeo_ in two days for performance at Mantua, when he
was eighteen, a lyrical tragedy which stamps him as the father of
Italian dramatic opera; the scene of the descent of Orpheus into
Hades contains lyrical passages of great melodiousness. Shortly before
the Pazzi conspiracy, he composed his famous _Stanze_ in celebration of
a tournament given by Giuliano dei Medici, and in honour of the
_bella Simonetta_. There is absolutely no "fundamental brain work"
about these exquisitely finished stanzas; but they are full of
dainty mythological pictures quite in the Botticellian style,
overladen, perhaps, with adulation of the reigning house and its _ben
nato Lauro_. In his lyrics he gave artistic form to the _rispetti_
and _strambotti_ of the people, and wrote exceedingly musical
_ballate_, or _canzoni a ballo_, which are the best of their kind in the
whole range of Italian poetry. There is, however, little genuine passion
in his love poems for his lady, Madonna Ippolita Leoncina of Prato; though
in all that he wrote there is, as Villari puts it, "a fineness of taste that
was almost Greek."
Lorenzo dei Medici stands second to his friend as a
poet; but he is a good second. His early affection for the fair Lucrezia
Donati, with its inevitable sonnets and a commentary somewhat in the manner
of Dante's _Vita Nuova_, is more fanciful than earnest, although Poliziano
assures us of
"La lunga fedelta del franco Lauro."
But
Lorenzo's intense love of external nature, his power of close observation and
graphic description, are more clearly shown in such poems as the _Caccia col
Falcone_ and the _Ambra_, written among the woods and hills in the country
round his new villa of Poggio a Caiano. Elsewhere he gives free scope to the
animal side of his sensual nature, and in his famous _Canti carnascialeschi_,
songs to be sung at carnival and in masquerades, he at times revelled in
pruriency, less for its own sake than for the deliberate corruption of
the Florentines. And, for a time, their music drowned the
impassioned voice of Savonarola, whose stern cry of warning and exhortation
to repentance had for the nonce passed unheeded.
There is extant a
miracle play from Lorenzo's hand, the acts of the martyrs Giovanni and Paolo,
who suffered in the days of the emperor Julian. Two sides of Lorenzo's nature
are ever in conflict--the Lorenzo of the ballate and the carnival songs--the
Lorenzo of the _laude_ and spiritual poems, many of which have the
unmistakable ring of sincerity. And, in the story of his last days and the
summoning of Savonarola to his bed-side, the triumph of the man's spiritual
side is seen at the end; he is, indeed, in the position of the dying Julian
of his own play:--
"Fallace vita! O nostra vana cura! Lo
spirto e gia fuor del mio petto spinto: O Cristo Galileo, tu hai
vinto."
Such was likewise the attitude of several members of the
Medicean circle, when the crash came. Poliziano followed his friend and
patron to the grave, in September 1494; his last hours received
the consolations of religion from Savonarola's most devoted follower,
Fra Domenico da Pescia (of whom more anon); after death, he was robed
in the habit of St Dominic and buried in San Marco. Pico della
Mirandola, too, had been present at the Magnifico's death-bed, though not
there when the end actually came; he too, in 1494, received the
Dominican habit in death, and was buried by Savonarola's friars in San
Marco. Marsilio Ficino outlived his friends and denied Fra Girolamo; he
died in 1499, and lies at rest in the Duomo.
Of all these Medicean
Platonists, Pico della Mirandola is the most fascinating. A young Lombard
noble of almost feminine beauty, full of the pride of having mastered all the
knowledge of his day, he first came to Florence in 1480 or 1482, almost at
the very moment in which Marsilio Ficino finished his translation of Plato.
He became at once the chosen friend of all the choicest spirits of Lorenzo's
circle. Not only classical learning, but the mysterious East and the sacred
lore of the Jews had rendered up their treasures for his
intellectual feast; his mysticism shot far beyond even Ficino; all knowledge
and all religions were to him a revelation of the Deity. Not only
to Lorenzo and his associates did young Pico seem a phoenix of earthly and
celestial wisdom, _uomo quasi divino_ as Machiavelli puts it; but even
Savonarola in his _Triumphus Crucis_, written after Pico's death, declares
that, by reason of his loftiness of intellect and the sublimity of his
doctrine, he should be numbered amongst the miracles of God and Nature. Pico
had been much beloved of many women, and not always a Platonic lover, but,
towards the close of his short flower-like life, he burnt "fyve bokes that in
his youthe of wanton versis of love with other lyke fantasies he had made,"
and all else seemed absorbed in the vision of love Divine. "The substance
that I have left," he told his nephew, "I intend to give out to poor
people, and, fencing myself with the crucifix, barefoot walking about
the world, in every town and castle I purpose to preach of
Christ." Savonarola, to whom he had confided all the secrets of his heart,
was not the only martyr who revered the memory of the man whom Lorenzo
the Magnificent had loved. Thomas More translated his life and
letters, and reckoned him a saint. He would die at the time of the lilies, so
a lady had told Pico; and he died indeed on the very day that the
golden lilies on the royal standard of France were borne into
Florence through the Porta San Frediano--consoled with wondrous visions of
the Queen of Heaven, and speaking as though he beheld the heavens
opened.
A month or two earlier, the pen had dropped from the hand of
Matteo Maria Boiardo, as he watched the French army descending the Alps;
and he brought his unfinished _Orlando Innamorato_ to an abrupt close,
too sick at heart to sing of the vain love of Fiordespina
for Brandiamante:--
"Mentre che io canto, o Dio
Redentore, Vedo l'Italia tutta a fiamma e foco, Per questi
Galli, che con gran valore Vengon, per disertar non so che
loco."
"Whilst I sing, Oh my God, I see all Italy in flame and fire,
through these Gauls, who with great valour come, to lay waste I know not
what place." On this note of vague terror, in the onrush of the
barbarian hosts, the Quattrocento closes.
[Illustration: ARMS OF THE
PAZZI]
CHAPTER IV
_From Fra Girolamo to Duke
Cosimo_
"Vedendo lo omnipotente Dio multiplicare li peccati della
Italia, maxime nelli capi cosi ecclesiastici come seculari, non
potendo piu sostenere, determino purgare la Chiesa sua per uno gran
flagello. Et perche come e scripto in Amos propheta, Non faciet Dominus
Deus verbum nisi revelaverit secretum suum ad servos suos prophetas: volse
per la salute delli suoi electi accio che inanzi al flagello si
preparassino ad sofferire, che nella Italia questo flagello fussi
prenuntiato. Et essendo Firenze in mezzo la Italia come il core in mezzo
il corpo, s'e dignato di eleggere questa citta; nella quale siano tale
cose prenuntiate: accio che per lei si sparghino negli altri
luoghi."--_Savonarola._
_Gladius Domini super terram cito et
velociter_, "the Sword of the Lord upon the earth soon and speedily." These
words rang ever in the ears of the Dominican friar who was now to eclipse the
Medicean rulers of Florence. Girolamo Savonarola, the grandson of a famous
Paduan physician who had settled at the court of Ferrara, had entered
the order of St Dominic at Bologna in 1474, moved by the great misery
of the world and the wickedness of men, and in 1481 had been sent to
the convent of San Marco at Florence. The corruption of the Church,
the vicious lives of her chief pastors, the growing immorality of
the people, the tyranny and oppression of their rulers, had entered
into his very soul--had found utterance in allegorical poetry, in an
ode _De Ruina Mundi_, written whilst still in the world, in another,
_De Ruina Ecclesiae_, composed in the silence of his
Bolognese cloister--that cloister which, in better days, had been hallowed
by the presence of St Dominic and the Angelical Doctor, Thomas
Aquinas. And he believed himself set by God as a watchman in the centre
of Italy, to announce to the people and princes that the sword was to fall
upon them: "If the sword come, and thou hast not announced it," said the
spirit voice that spoke to him in the silence as the dæmon to Socrates, "and
they perish unwarned, I will require their blood at thy hands and thou shalt
bear the penalty."
But at first the Florentines would not hear him; the
gay dancings and the wild carnival songs of their rulers drowned his voice;
courtly preachers like the Augustinian of Santo Spirito, Fra Mariano
da Gennazano, laid more flattering unction to their souls. Other
cities were more ready; San Gemignano first heard the word of prophecy
that was soon to resound beneath the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore,
even as, some two hundred years before, she had listened to the speech
of Dante Alighieri. At the beginning of 1490, the Friar returned
to Florence and San Marco; and, on Sunday, August 1st, expounding
the Apocalypse in the Church of San Marco, he first set forth to
the Florentines the three cardinal points of his doctrine; first,
the Church was to be renovated; secondly, before this renovation,
God would send a great scourge upon all Italy; thirdly, these things
would come speedily. He preached the following Lent in the Duomo;
and thenceforth his great work of reforming Florence, and announcing
the impending judgments of God, went on its inspired way. "Go to
Lorenzo dei Medici," he said to the five citizens who came to him, at
the Magnifico's instigation, to urge him to let the future alone in
his sermons, "and bid him do penance for his sins, for God intends
to punish him and his"; and when elected Prior of San Marco in this
same year, 1491, he would neither enter Lorenzo's palace to salute
the patron of the convent, nor welcome him when he walked among the
friars in the garden.
Fra Girolamo was preaching the Lent in San
Lorenzo, when the Magnifico died; and, a few days later, he saw a wondrous
vision, as he himself tells us in the _Compendium Revelationum_. "In 1492,"
he says, "while I was preaching the Lent in San Lorenzo at Florence, I saw,
on the night of Good Friday, two crosses. First, a black cross in the
midst of Rome, whereof the head touched the heaven and the arms
stretched forth over all the earth; and above it were written these words,
_Crux irae Dei_. After I had beheld it, suddenly I saw the sky grow
dark, and clouds fly through the air; winds, flashes of lightning
and thunderbolts drove across, hail, fire and swords rained down, and
slew a vast multitude of folk, so that few remained on the earth. And
after this, there came a sky right calm and bright, and I saw another
cross, of the same greatness as the first but of gold, rise up
over Jerusalem; the which was so resplendent that it illumined all
the world, and filled it all with flowers and joy; and above it
was written, _Crux misericordiae Dei_. And I saw all generations of
men and women come from all parts of the world, to adore it and
embrace it."
In the following August came the simoniacal election of
Roderigo Borgia to the Papacy, as Alexander VI.; and in Advent another
vision appeared to the prophet in his cell, which can only be told in
Fra Girolamo's own words:--
"I saw then in the year 1492, the night
before the last sermon which I gave that Advent in Santa Reparata, a hand in
Heaven with a sword, upon the which was written: _The sword of the Lord upon
the earth, soon and speedily_; and over the hand was written, _True and just
are the judgments of the Lord._ And it seemed that the arm of that
hand proceeded from three faces in one light, of which the first said:
_The iniquity of my sanctuary crieth to me from the earth._ The
second replied: _Therefore will I visit with a rod their iniquities, and
with stripes their sins._ The third said: _My mercy will I not remove
from it, nor will I harm it in my truth, and I will have mercy upon
the poor and the needy._ In like manner the first answered: _My
people have forgotten my commandments days without number._ The
second replied: _Therefore will I grind and break in pieces and will not
have mercy._ The third said: _I will be mindful of those who walk in
my precepts._ And straightway there came a great voice from all the
three faces, over all the world, and it said: _Hearken, all ye dwellers
on the earth; thus saith the Lord: I, the Lord, am speaking in my
holy zeal. Behold, the days shall come and I will unsheath my sword
upon you. Be ye converted therefore unto me, before my fury
be accomplished; for when the destruction cometh, ye shall seek peace
and there shall be none._ After these words it seemed to me that I saw
the whole world, and that the Angels descended from Heaven to
earth, arrayed in white, with a multitude of spotless stoles on
their shoulders and red crosses in their hands; and they went through
the world, offering to each man a white robe and a cross. Some
men accepted them and robed themselves with them. Some would not
accept them, although they did not impede the others who accepted
them. Others would neither accept them nor permit that the others
should accept them; and these were the tepid and the sapient of this
world, who made mock of them and strove to persuade the contrary. After
this, the hand turned the sword down towards the earth; and suddenly
it seemed that all the air grew dark with clouds, and that it rained down
swords and hail with great thunder and lightning and fire; and there came
upon the earth pestilence and famine and great tribulation. And I saw the
Angels go through the midst of the people, and give to those who had the
white robe and the cross in their hands a clear wine to drink; and they drank
and said: _How sweet in our mouths are thy words, O Lord._ And the dregs at
the bottom of the chalice they gave to drink to the others, and they would
not drink; and it seemed that these would fain have been converted to
penitence and could not, and they said: _Wherefore dost thou forget us,
Lord?_ And they wished to lift up their eyes and look up to God, but they
could not, so weighed down were they with tribulations; for they were as
though drunk, and it seemed that their hearts had left their breasts, and
they went seeking the lusts of this world and found them not. And they
walked like senseless beings without heart. After this was done, I heard
a very great voice from those three faces, which said: _Hear ye then
the word of the Lord: for this have I waited for you, that I may
have mercy upon you. Come ye therefore to me, for I am kind and
merciful, extending mercy to all who call upon me. But if you will not, I
will turn my eyes from you for ever._ And it turned then to the just,
and said: _But rejoice, ye just, and exult, for when my short anger
shall have passed, I will break the horns of sinners, and the horns of
the just shall be exalted._ And suddenly everything disappeared, and
it was said to me: _Son, if sinners had eyes, they would surely see
how grievous and hard is this pestilence, and how sharp the
sword._"[20]
[20] This _Compendium of Revelations_ was, like the
_Triumph of the Cross_, published both in Latin and in Italian
simultaneously. I have rendered the above from the Italian
version.
The French army, terrible beyond any that the Italians had seen,
and rendered even more terrible by the universal dread that filled
all men's minds at this moment, entered Italy. On September 9th,
1494, Charles VIII. arrived at Asti, where he was received by Ludovico
and his court, while the Swiss sacked and massacred at Rapallo. Here
was the new Cyrus whom Savonarola had foretold, the leader chosen by
God to chastise Italy and reform the Church. While the vague
terror throughout the land was at its height, Savonarola, on September
21st, ascended the pulpit of the Duomo, and poured forth so terrible a
flood of words on the text _Ecce ego adducam aquas diluvii super
terram_, that the densely packed audience were overwhelmed in agonised
panic. The bloodless mercenary conflicts of a century had reduced Italy
to helplessness; the Aragonese resistance collapsed, and, sacking
and slaughtering as they came, the French marched unopposed
through Lunigiana upon Tuscany. Piero dei Medici, who had favoured
the Aragonese in a half-hearted way, went to meet the French
King, surrendered Sarzana and Pietrasanta, the fortresses which his
father had won back for Florence, promised to cede Pisa and Leghorn, and
made an absolute submission. "Behold," cried Savonarola, a few days
later, "the sword has descended, the scourge has fallen, the prophecies
are being fulfilled; behold, it is the Lord who is leading on
these armies." And he bade the citizens fast and pray throughout the
city: it was for the sins of Italy and of Florence that these things
had happened; for the corruption of the Church, this tempest had
arisen.
It was the republican hero, Piero Capponi, who now gave utterance
to the voice of the people. "Piero dei Medici," he said in the Council
of the Seventy called by the Signoria on November 4th, "is no longer
fit to rule the State: the Republic must provide for itself: the
moment has come to shake off this baby government." They prepared
for defence, but at the same time sent ambassadors to the "most
Christian King," and amongst these ambassadors was Savonarola. In the
meantime Piero dei Medici returned to Florence to find his government at
an end; the Signoria refused him admittance into the palace; the
people assailed him in the Piazza. He made a vain attempt to regain the
State by arms, but the despairing shouts of _Palle, Palle,_ which
his adherents and mercenaries raised, were drowned in the cries of
_Popolo e Liberta_, as the citizens, as in the old days of the Republic,
heard the great bell of the Palace tolling and saw the burghers once more
in arms. On the 9th of November Piero and Giuliano fled through the
Porta di San Gallo; the Cardinal Giovanni, who had shown more courage
and resource, soon followed, disguised as a friar. There was some
pillage done, but little bloodshed. The same day Pisa received the
French troops, and shook off the Florentine yoke--an example shortly
followed by other Tuscan cities. Florence had regained her liberty, but lost
her empire. But the King had listened to the words of
Savonarola--words preserved to us by the Friar himself in his
_Compendium Revelationum_--who had hailed him as the Minister of Christ,
but warned him sternly and fearlessly that, if he abused his power
over Florence, the strength which God had given him would be
shattered.
On November 17th Charles, clad in black velvet with mantle of
gold brocade and splendidly mounted, rode into Florence, as though into
a conquered city, with lance levelled, through the Porta di San Frediano.
With him was that priestly Mars, the terrible Cardinal della Rovere
(afterwards Julius II.), now bent upon the deposition of Alexander VI. as a
simoniacal usurper; and he was followed by all the gorgeous chivalry of
France, with the fierce Swiss infantry, the light Gascon skirmishers, the
gigantic Scottish bowmen--_uomini bestiali_ as the Florentines called
them--in all about 12,000 men. The procession swept through the gaily decked
streets over the Ponte Vecchio, wound round the Piazza della Signoria, and
then round the Duomo, amidst deafening cries of _Viva Francia_ from the
enthusiastic people. But when the King descended and entered the Cathedral,
there was a sad disillusion--_parve al popolo un poco diminuta la fama_, as
the good apothecary Luca Landucci tells us--for, when off his horse,
he appeared a most insignificant little man, almost deformed, and with
an idiotic expression of countenance, as his bust portrait in the Bargello
still shows. This was not quite the sort of Cyrus that they had expected from
Savonarola's discourses; but still, within and without Santa Maria del Fiore,
the thunderous shouts of _Viva Francia_ continued, until he was solemnly
escorted to the Medicean palace which had been prepared for his reception. |
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