Lorenzo himself was ill and overwhelmed with business. Ser Piero da Bibiena wrote to Lanfredini on June 26:[337] ‘Lorenzo has ridden out to Monte Paldi [338] ‘thinks of setting out in a week, and, as I understand, taking Maddalena with him. I have not yet spoken of it to him, but I should be glad if you would mention the matter to his Holiness and get it arranged that she should remain here the rest of the summer and autumn. I have two chief motives for this wish. First, Clarice is very ill, so much so that the doctors are doubtful whether the disease will soon end fatally or whether it will drag on and the immediate danger pass over; secondly, the air yonder is unhealthy, and Maddalena is not used to it. For these reasons, and also because I have never yet had time to see my daughter comfortably, I earnestly beg his Holiness that of his kindness he will let me have her a few more months and write to Signor Francesco accordingly, so that the occasion may not appear to have come from us.’
Lorenzo’s desire was fulfilled. On July 4, he received from Rome the news that the Pope had determined to entrust Franceschetto with a mission to Perugia, and to leave his wife in Florence for a time. It may easily be imagined how pleasing this last arrangement was to Lorenzo; the former seemed rather questionable to the experienced politician. ‘This Perugian affair,’ he wrote at once to Lanfredini,[339] ‘seems to me very grave, and such as may create embarrassment; all the more so as Signor Francesco has had no practice in such things, and has no one near him to whom anything important can be entrusted.’ Then, after relating how he dined the day before with his son-in-law at Careggi, and they had visited the Petraja and other places, which he had much liked, he continues: ‘Maddalena will remain here, to which Signor Francesco seems quite agreed. Clarice could not be worse than she is now, and I fear we shall soon lose her. You can imagine what comfort she finds in the presence of her daughter, who has always seemed to me to be the apple of her eye (l’occhio del capo suo); so we are both very grateful to his Holiness. Of myself I say nothing, for you know how I love my children, especially in the present case.’
On July 6, Franceschetto Cybò left Florence. His experiences at Perugia will be mentioned hereafter. Lorenzo, though much in need of the baths, was detained in the city by the weak state of Clarice and the pressure of business. At last, on the morning of July 21, he set out for Filetta in the Merse Vale in the Sienese territory. It is a small village consisting of only a few houses, in a valley surrounded with woods; the waters of the neighbouring sulphur-springs of Macereto have been brought thither, and it lies lonely and deserted on the road leading from Siena to Grosseto and the Maremma. In the summer of 1813 Emperor Henry of Luxemburg was carried thither, with the hand of death upon him; in 1459 Pope Pius II., who repeatedly visited the waters of his native land, sought relief from his inveterate enemy the gout in these springs. Scarcely had Lorenzo arrived at Filetta when the fatal news reached him—Clarice died on the afternoon of July 30. The day before, Ser Piero had written to Lanfredini:[340] ‘I know not what to tell you of Madonna Clarice; she gets better for a day or two, and then gets worse again, so that she is slowly approaching dissolution.’ The dissolution came much quicker than was expected, yet it hardly looks well that Lorenzo should leave the city when her state was so critical, and that he did not return on hearing that she was worse. ‘If you should hear Lorenzo blamed for not being present at his wife’s death,’ wrote Ser Piero to Lanfredini on July 31, ‘excuse him. Leoni (the physician) considered it necessary for his health for him to go to the baths, and no one thought death was so near.’ The Ferrarese ambassador confirms the statement that, according to the doctors’ advice, Lorenzo’s stay at the baths was absolutely necessary, and all his friends had entreated him not to return till the cure was completed. On the evening after her death Clarice de’ Medici was entombed without pomp in San Lorenzo, and on the following morning all the ambassadors present in Florence went to Piero to offer their condolences. The solemn obsequies, at which the whole city was present, took place on August 1.[341] Lorenzo’s wife was not quite forty. No notice is to be found in his writings of the woman who shared the lights and shadows of life with him for nineteen years; an idea of their conjugal relations can be formed only from a few words of his in earlier days, and the inadequate testimony of contemporaries, which seems to indicate that their views and inclinations did not always agree. Clarice’s disagreement with such a celebrated man as Poliziano has tended to bias the judgment of her contemporaries against her. Nevertheless, this daughter of an old Roman baronial house, obliged, when young and inexperienced, to enter a strange world as the wife of a man for whom she had no affection, displayed in all things tact and sound judgment; without putting herself forward she did honour to her position and her husband, and she brought up her children tenderly and carefully. Her feelings and her relations to Lorenzo are indicated, amongst others, by the following letter, written to her husband from Caffaggiuolo on December 13 of the year they were so long separated, 1478, on behalf of a servant who had been dismissed for some misconduct.[342] ‘Illustrious husband,’ she wrote; ‘Andrea your messenger has been up here for two days, and earnestly begged me to put in a good word for him as he is deeply grieved for his fault. I therefore beg you to keep him with you or procure him another situation; for, as he has formerly shown his fidelity, you would be acting contrary to your nature if you did not forgive him his error, besides being responsible for his falling into worse ways; also you might inadvertently by this means discourage others who are faithful to you. He has a mother who was delighted at his position in your service, and is now in like measure distressed, fearing that her son may, if you dismiss him, go astray and bring her to sorrow. He has already expiated his fault by grief and shame; for, since you sent him away, he has been like one beside himself and has never had a moment’s happiness. I think he is especially touched on the point of honour, which is a good sign and should have weight with you. I beg you therefore to be indulgent to him, whether for the sake of his proved fidelity, or from pity for his mother, or because he shows right feeling, or, lastly, for the sake of my intercession, either by taking him back or by providing for him in some other way.’
A letter written to Innocent VIII. the day after Clarice’s death[343] displays a warmth of feeling which, after the passages that have been mentioned, one would hardly have expected from Lorenzo, and which give a favourable impression of him: ‘I am too often obliged to trouble your Holiness with what is daily sent me by fate and prepared for me by the will of God, against which all striving is vain, and to which everyone must bow with patience and humility, accepting His ways as tokens of goodness and love. But the recent death of my sweet and beloved companion Clarice is for numberless reasons such a grief and loss to me that it has conquered my resignation and endurance amid the trials and persecutions of fate, against which I thought myself proof. Bereaved of the pleasant society to which I was accustomed, I feel the limit is passed, and I can find no comfort or rest for my deep sorrow. As I do not cease to pray the Lord God to give me peace, I trust that of His goodness He will put an end to this sorrow and spare me any more such trials as have visited me lately. I humbly and from my inmost heart beseech your Holiness to pray for me, for I know your prayers will do me good. Filetta, July 31.’ August 6, Lorenzo returned to Florence, from whence he wrote to the ambassador at Rome on behalf of an Englishman who was going thither to procure a Papal brief and had been specially recommended to him by the Queen, Elizabeth of York. Two days later, he apologised to Lanfredini for not having answered some business questions:[344] ‘You know the cause; when my mind is entirely occupied with one thing, it cannot think of anything else.’
Clarice’s death obliged Lorenzo to seek a companion for his daughter to take her back to Rome. He chose a distant relative, Maria de’ Medici, widow of Galeazzo Malatesta. ‘Maddalena,’ he wrote to Lanfredini on September 3,[345] ‘starts to-morrow for Rome. She will be accompanied by my Piero and my uncle Giovanni, who will take her as far as Acquapendente, as arranged by Signor Francesco. I have chosen for her companion one Madonna Maria de’ Medici, widow of Signor Galeazzo Malatesta and daughter of Madonna Ciulla. She is a very well-bred and truly venerable lady over fifty, who since her widowhood has lived the retired life of a nun. I think that the more Signor Francesco thinks over this choice of mine, the better pleased he will be.’ Maddalena remained with her husband in Rome, whence she wrote to her father, September 1 of the next year, that she was about to become a mother. The young wife’s days seem not to have been very cheerful ones. When she went to Rome with her mother, Lorenzo sent with her a man whom he trusted and who was faithfully attached to his house—the same Ser Matteo Franco whose name holds a place in the history of burlesque poetry. He was Maddalena’s adviser and confidant, her man of business and, perhaps, her house-chaplain; and his many letters to members of the Medicean household display a sympathy and warmth of feeling doubly pleasing in such a jovial man. Franceschetto neglected his young wife, who fretted continually, while he passed the nights in play and feasting. With no one to keep her company, she soon languished and lost her health, thinking regretfully of her father’s house and the pleasant villas around Florence, where she had passed her happy childhood.[346]
A few days after the loss of Clarice, another death took place which did not affect the Medici family personally, but whose consequences had no little influence on the family relations which were closely connected with later political events. On August 19, at the castle of Capuano near Naples, died at the age of forty-two Ippolita Maria, Duchess of Calabria.[347] Her death broke the ties which bound together the Houses of Aragon and the Sforza. This was probably not perceived at the moment, for not only did the alliance continue which seemed to unite the two states, but the death caused no change in the plans for the new connection long decided on between the two families, whereby their interests were to be yet more closely and firmly linked together. But the death of this clever and accomplished woman dissolved the union between Ippolita’s husband and brother, two men who were willing and accustomed to sacrifice every consideration and every scruple to their ambition, greed and hatred, and who, since the Ferrarese war, had regarded each other with ever-increasing distrust and ill-will. The longer Lodovico il Moro held the reins of government in Milan, the less disposed he was to surrender them to his nephew, who, although now nineteen years old, was still duke only in title. Whether the accusation is true that Lodovico had neglected the youth’s education to such an extent that, delicate as he had been from childhood, he was unfit to govern, must be left an open question. At all events, Gian-Galeazzo took no part in public affairs, and though everything was done in the name of the Duke of Milan, it all went through the hands of the Duke of Bari. From early childhood Gian-Galeazzo had been betrothed to his cousin Isabella. Alfonso of Calabria had already often pressed for the completion of the marriage; and as the bride was now eighteen, Lodovico at last had to yield. The mourning for the Duchess was not yet over, when, on December 11, Hermes Sforza, Gian-Galeazzo’s younger brother, arrived in the bay of Naples with six galleys, and with a brilliant suite landed to fetch his future sister-in-law, whose father came to meet him and conducted him to the king and queen at Castelnuovo. On the 21st of the same month Hermes, in his brother’s name, placed the wedding-ring on Isabella’s finger. The court mourning prevented all festivities. A gloomy shadow seemed to hang over this marriage, which was destined to bring nothing but suffering and misery to the contracting parties.
Its early days, however, were not lacking in splendour. On December 30 the young Duchess of Milan embarked, accompanied as far as the Molo by her father, her grandparents and their court. Many distinguished Milanese and Genoese had come with Hermes Sforza; among them Vitaliano Borromeo, Gasparo Visconti, Ambrosio del Maino, and Giovan Francesco da Sanseverino Count of Cajazzo (son of Roberto). Ten galleys were filled by these and the Neapolitan suite, the Duke and Duchess of Melfi, the Countess of Terranuova, the Counts of Potenza and Consa, and others. They touched at Civitavecchia, Piombino, and Livorno. At the first-named port the bride was received by the Cardinals Sforza, Riario, and de Foix, with the Senator of Rome; at Piombino by Jacopo IV. Appiani. At Livorno, Lorenzo, again confined at home by the gout, was represented by his son Piero, accompanied by Pier Antonio Carnesecchi and Alessandro Nasi. The Republic sent Jacopo Guicciardini, Pier Filippo Pandolfini, and Paol’Antonio Soderini as envoys to welcome the Duchess; but Lorenzo’s son put them all in the shade by his princely appearance. It was the same at Milan, whither Piero went towards the end of January 1489, to be present at Isabella’s triumphal entry and the final marriage, which took place on Candlemas day. On reaching the Milanese frontier, Piero was received by several nobles sent by il Moro to form his train. At the wedding in the cathedral, where the ceremony was performed by Federigo Sanseverino (another son of Roberto, and afterwards a Cardinal), Piero outshone everybody; though the splendour was such that, as a reporter wrote to Lorenzo, the very cooks were in velvet and silk. After the ceremony the Ducal couple sent to Piero to fetch his attire and admire it again. Lodovico exhausted himself in attentions towards the son of the man in whose hands were the destinies of Florence. ‘It seems a perfect marvel,’ wrote the Florentine ambassador, Piero Alamanni, on January 31, 1489, ‘to all these Lombards, as well as to the ambassadors, that young as he [Piero] is, he maintains such a dignified bearing and discourses on everything with so much readiness. Yesterday morning my lord Lodovico spoke for half an hour in his praise before the ambassadors, and assigned to him a place of honour next Messer Galeotto della Mirandola, Rodolfo Gonzaga, and Annibale Bentivoglio.’ After the nuptial ceremony Alamanni was knighted by the young Duke and presented with a splendid robe of brocade, and his spurs were fastened on by Galeazzo and Gian Francesco da Sanseverino. The splendour of the festivities was such as the Milanese court had been wont to display since the days of Galeazzo Maria.[348]