The goldsmith’s art, which in the preceding century had reached great perfection in Tuscan cities and was closely connected with sculpture, attained through niello-work to engraving on copperplate. The name of Maso Finiguerra, who executed the celebrated pyx for the Baptistery in 1452, is inseparable from the history of the Medicean splendour.
For painting, whether in its general development or its particular productions, the period under consideration is less important than for the sister arts, at least as far as the Medici are concerned. The two greatest masters, in different lines, of the first half of the century, Masaccio and Fra Angelico, continued to adorn Florence with their works. The former, at his death in 1443, left unfinished the Brancacci chapel in San Pietro del Carmine, the high school of all later works of the kind. Unluckily, the fresco has perished in which he represented the consecration of the church in 1422, with a group of remarkable men of the time: Giovanni d’Averardo de’ Medici, Niccolò da Uzzano, Baccio Valori, Lorenzo Ridolfi, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masolino da Panicale, and others. Fra Angelico decorated the chapter-house, corridors, and cells of the convent of San Marco with his wall-pictures, which represent religious art in its loveliest bloom, a free modification of the principles of Giotto’s school. He was busy here till Eugene IV. called him to Rome, where he painted the two chapels in the Vatican for this Pope and his successor, Nicolas V. He died in 1455. His greatest pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, followed his master from Rome to Orvieto, and in 1459 painted the private chapel of the Medici, his most pleasing work. The ‘Adoration of the Angels’ is here represented amid a rich landscape, with choirs of angels, numerous spectators, and festive scenes, painted with a cheerful colouring that recalls Gentile da Fabriano. Later, when painting in San Gemignano and at Pisa, Gozzoli was still connected with the Medici, and in his first fresco in the Campo Santo, the ‘Curse of Ham,’ a group in the foreground represents the members of the family as he had known them in earlier years.
The realistic tendency exhibited by Masaccio grew more prominent in Paolo Uccello, who was evidently influenced by sculpture, especially by Donatello. In some of his most important frescoes, those in Sta. Maria Novella, representing the history of the Creation, and the figure of John Hawkwood in Sta. Maria del Fiore,[149] the very colouring, grey upon grey, aims at producing the effect of sculpture. This painter’s study of perspective made him exaggerate that branch of his art. The austerity of Andrea dal Castagno’s style is not softened by the colouring. The repulsive expression of his group of St. John and St. Francis in Sta. Croce supports the legend of the murder of Domenico Veneziano, which has adhered to Andrea’s name till our own day, though he died four years before his supposed victim.[150] The most important works he has left are the figures of sibyls and of famous men, executed in a hall of the villa formerly belonging to the Pandolfini at Legnaia, but now removed to the National Museum at the Palace of the Podestà. The characteristic figures, among whom are Nicola Acciaiuolo and Pippo Spano, produce a great effect. Neither Andrea nor Uccello seems to have been employed by the Medici, who did, however, engage Domenico Veneziano, Andrea’s fellow-worker on the lost frescoes in Sta. Maria Nuova, a painter much influenced by Fra Angelico. The repeated occurrence of the Medici’s patron saints, Cosmo and Damian, in pictures of which the origin cannot be clearly traced, points to the conclusion that they were commissions from the family or their friends. But the painter most highly favoured by Cosimo and his sons was Fra Filippo Lippi, whose manners and conversation were as great a scandal to the Carmelite order as Fra Angelico’s whole life was an ornament to that of St. Dominic. Disorderly, loose in morals, always in difficulties and need of money, he yet gained patrons by his undeniable talent, which unites force and animation to Angelico’s intensity of feeling. Lippi’s grouping and composition is various, free, and rich, showing a realistic study of nature. He worked a great deal for the Medici, who made presents of his pictures to the Pope and King Alfonso, and procured him commissions abroad. His greatest work, the frescoes in the chapel in the choir of the Collegiate Church of Prato, was finished for the Provost Carlo de’ Medici, whose likeness may be seen in the representation of the burial of St. Stephen. It was through Cosimo, who had many connections in Umbria, that Fra Filippo went to Spoleto, where he executed in the cathedral the scenes from the history of the Madonna which were finished after his death in 1469 by his assistant Fra Diamante.
Among the painters employed by Cosimo and his sons were the two Peselli, Giuliano d’Arrigo, and his grandson Pesellino; the former followed the artistic tendencies represented by Giotto, the latter was an earnest disciple of the realistic school. Much of the Medici furniture was painted by them, according to a fashion of the time, continued till the middle of the sixteenth century. Presses and coffers (cassoni) were ornamented with compositions of small figures, taken from history, sacred or profane, animals, hunting-scenes, &c. In the Florentine collections are many paintings of this kind, even down to Andrea del Sarto and his friends and pupils, the original destination of which is shown by their form. They were not all Florentines who painted for the Medici. A Veronese, Matteo de’ Pasti, wrote to Piero in 1441, that he trusted to send him works such as he had never before seen.[151] He probably alluded to the convex tablets (now in the Uffizi collection) representing scenes from Petrarca’s triumphs, which were doubtless intended to decorate a room. The various dealings of the Medici with Flanders, from the time of Cosimo, contributed to draw attention in Florence to the Van Eyck school of painting, which influenced Italian art in the fifteenth century, particularly in point of technicalities. It was through Tommaso Portinari, director of the Medici bank at Bruges, that the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova—an old foundation of the family—obtained the most important work of the Flemish school to be found in Tuscany. This was the masterpiece of Hugo van der Goes, the ‘Adoration of the Shepherds,’ containing portraits of the members of the donor’s family.[152] The Flemish pictures mentioned by Vasari as being in the possession of the Medici (one of them, a portrait of Tommaso Portinari, is now in the Pitti Palace), prove the interest awakened by these works, great as was their difference in conception from Italian art.
It is easy to imagine that other branches of artistic industry were furthered by this artistically inclined family at a period of such varied activity, and that their house kept constantly filling with treasures of all kinds. For it was the pride of the princes and rich citizens—and even of such as had to deny themselves many of the comforts of life in order to satisfy a noble passion—to surround themselves with ancient and modern works, to decorate halls, staircases, and courts with marbles and other antiquities; to collect old coins and intaglios; to deck their rooms with statues and sculptures by living artists, with handsome furniture, silver plate, rich silken hangings and carpets.
Among the records of the Rinuccini family are notes of the cost of goldsmiths’ work furnished by Finiguerra and Pollaiuolo.[153] Cosimo’s love for these things was shared by his brother Lorenzo and both his sons. An inventory of the antique coins, cameos, gems, mosaic tablets; and enamels preserved in the house in the Via Larga, mentions 100 gold and 503 silver coins, a number of intaglios set as seals and rings, Greek and Roman mosaic tablets, valuable vases, precious stones to the value of more than thirty thousand gold florins.[154] The silver plate here, as well as at the villas, was not reckoned in. Mention has already been made of the travelling antiquaries who carried about with them manuscripts and objects of art, and were at once scholars and colporteurs. But purchases were also made for the Medici abroad. Antiquities came from Rome, Naples, Viterbo, and other places. Donatello was accustomed to restore injured antique marbles, a custom which was later carried to extremes, and led to mischief. Worked carpets (Arazzi) came from Flanders, where Bruges was the chief emporium for works of art, though Antwerp fairs were often visited.[155] A letter of Carlo de’ Medici to his half-brother Giovanni, written from Rome, apparently in the autumn of 1451,[156] shows that Cardinal Barbo, afterwards Pope Paul II., was in competition with the Medici, and was not above a little gentle compulsion: ‘I bought some time ago about thirty silver medals from an assistant cf Pisanello, who is lately dead. I know not how Monsignore di San Marco heard of it, but, meeting me accidentally in the church of the Santi Apostoli, he took me by the hand, and would not let me go till he had got me to his house and taken all I had about me—rings and coins to the value of about twenty florins. There was no getting them back, and in the end I have had to let him keep the things, after a vain appeal to the Pope.’ The complaint is repeated in a letter of 1455. As we shall see, however, such losses were more than made up to the Medici at the death of Paul II.
Such were the relations of Cosimo and his sons to art-life in Florence. The great movement had begun before they took the helm of the state; but they exercised great and beneficial influence on its development, and always set a praiseworthy example to their fellow-citizens. In this respect they thoroughly understood their time. The tone and manner of their relations with artists is particularly attractive; it was inspired by true refinement of feeling. Merchant princes as they were, whose help was generally coveted, they kept up a confidential intercourse with men of talent, as among friends and equals. In the requests addressed to them there is no tone of servility; the traditions of free citizenship continued in all social relations. So it was also at a later period, when Cosimo’s grandson had attained the position of a ruling prince; Lorenzo’s bearing was the same, and contributed not a little to his powerful influence over his fellow-men. In many cases, as with Antonio Squarcialupi, the musician and organ-builder, he merely continued a connection begun by his father, uncle, and grandfather. Antonio, who in his writings adopted the pseudonym Degli Organi, belonged to an old family who had once been ‘Signori’ at Poggibonzi in the Elsa valley, and who on account of their rank were long excluded from office. It was not till 1453 that Antonio became a member of one of the smaller guilds, though before that time he was intimate with the Medici household. After spending some time at Naples with King Alfonso, in 1450, he wrote from Siena on November 26 to Giovanni de’ Medici at Volterra, as follows:[157] ‘Dearest gossip, dutiful greeting and salutation! As you doubtless know, it is now about a month since I returned from Naples. Since then it has never ceased raining, or I should have come to see you. The bad weather has hindered me not only from coming, but also from writing, as I kept waiting for the sky to clear. Now, God be thanked for all things. If I were to tell you about Naples, and the majesty of the king and his court, there would be so much to say that I must needs take all the scriveners in Rome into my employ for five days. So for the present I will say nothing about it, and will only tell you that Cardinal Sta. Maria sets great store by his organ; wherein he is quite right, for truly it deserves it. I promise you on your return the satisfaction of hearing one which cannot fail to please you. It is destined for Antonio di Migliorino, who I trust will not object to my letting you see and hear it. Now I will trouble you no further. Commend me above all to Madonna Contessina, Messer Piero, and all the rest.’
In the spring of 1438, Domenico Veneziano wrote from Perugia to Piero as follows:[158] ‘Noble and honoured sir, greeting. I have to inform you that by God’s grace I am in good health, and hope to see you well and happy. I have made inquiries after you at various times, and never received any news save through Manno Donati, who told me that you were at Ferrara in very good health, which gave me great pleasure. Had I known your place of abode sooner, I would have written to you, both for my own satisfaction and as it is fitting. My position is in truth far below yours, but my hearty attachment to you and all yours gives me boldness to write to you, to whom I owe so much.’ One-and-twenty years later this same Piero, then at Careggi, was thus addressed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who was painting the chapel in the Medici house at Florence:[159] ‘My dearest friend, I informed your Magnificence in a previous letter that I am in need of forty florins, and begged you to advance them to me; for now is the time to buy corn and many other things that I want, whereby I shall save, and get rid of a heavy load of care. I had resolved to ask nothing of you till you had seen my work, but I now find myself compelled to ask this favour. Therefore, be indulgent; God knows I am endeavouring to please you. I also reminded you to send to Venice for some ultramarine, for in the course of this week one wall will be finished, and for the other I shall need ultramarine. The brocades and other things can then be finished as well as the figures, or even sooner. I am working with all possible diligence. I have nothing more to add save my salutations.’
These confidential relations between the Medici and the artists did not prevent them from carefully settling minor details when giving an order, such as the use of ultramarine and gold, and still smaller matters. Even with regard to the actual composition remarks were not spared, not merely concerning the saints to be placed in the Madonna pictures and other votive tablets, but also as to other figures and accessories. Piero de’ Medici was not satisfied with some angels that Benozzo had introduced in the chapel; the painter defended them, but added that he could put a cloud to cover them. Needless to say that all matters of business—prices, instalments of payment and work, &c.—were settled with scrupulous exactness. This belonged to the character of the time, and to the Florentine love of order and mercantile habits; a characteristic which never fails, and remained in the Medici nature even in Cosimo’s magnificent grandson. Strict supervision was indeed necessary in the case of these colossal undertakings. It was more especially needful with a disorderly man like Filippo Lippi, who passed his whole life in want of his own making; witness his letters to Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici: ‘If there is a wretched monk in Florence, it is I!’ His protectors pitied him and judged his sins leniently, if we rightly understand the remark in one of Giovanni’s letters, to the effect that they had a laugh over Fra Filippo’s error. It refers presumably to the well-known story of the elopement of Spinetta Buti from the convent at Prato, where she was being educated; a story the details of which, as in other instances, are inaccurately given by Vasari.[160] The interest taken by the Medici in this painter descended to Lorenzo. On his return from Rome he wanted to have Fra Filippo’s mortal remains brought from Spoleto to Florence, and when this was refused, he assisted Filippo’s son in erecting a monument in Spoleto Cathedral.