In these stately and beautiful localities, both in the city and country, active, energetic, comfortable, and cheerful life went on its way in spite of a few natural troubles. Lorenzo never gave himself up to senseless luxury such as many princes and cardinals indulged in; but he was always a grand gentleman in the true sense of the words. He never forgot that he was a Florentine citizen, as he loved to describe himself; his correspondents adopted the same idea of him, and he impressed the fact strongly upon his sons. At the same time he never forgot that at home all eyes were fixed on him, and that abroad it was he who represented the State. In his house and his villas there was perpetual movement. Everybody and everything went to and fro in the house of the man who stood at the head of all. Besides politics, he was constantly engaged with family affairs and intercourse with scholars and artists. He had many relations, and made good use of some of them. Numerous families were intimately connected with his. Many were made great by him; others, great already, he tried to attach more and more to himself. He stood godfather to his own countrymen as well as to foreign princes. When in 1490, Duke Alfonso of Calabria consented to be sponsor for the son of Giuliano Gondi, a business friend of the Medici, he asked Lorenzo to act as proxy for him.
The Medici in some degree kept open house. We learn from the life of Michelangelo that whosoever was present at the beginning of the dinner took his seat after the master of the house, each according to his rank; and the arrangement of the table was not altered for those who came later, even though they were of higher rank. All the inmates of the house who were not servants dined together; the young Buonarotti, then in the earliest days of his apprenticeship, was a constant guest at his patron’s table.[439] Besides the Academic and other learned symposia, banquets were frequently given, both in the city and at Careggi, in honour of distinguished foreigners or ambassadors, and on festive occasions. Cristoforo Landino has left an account of a banquet which was something between a dinner of scholars and a feast, and was given by Lorenzo in his young days, when a noble Greek named Philotimos, who traced his pedigree up to the time of Constantine and prided himself greatly thereon, came to Florence accompanied by an Athenian philosopher named Aretophilos, to condole with the young Medici on the death of his father. Lorenzo rode out four miles to meet his guests, and conducted them to his house, where he had assembled the most distinguished literary men and the friends of the family. Among the company were Gentile Becchi, Antonio degli Agli, Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, Leon Battista Alberti, Ficino, Landino, Poliziano, Argyropulos, his pupils Piero and Donato Acciaiuolo, and Alamanno Rinuccini. The discourse at table and the claims of the proud Greek furnished Landino with the materials for his treatise on true nobility, which he dedicated to Lorenzo.[440] On these and suchlike occasions the hospitality was on a grand and brilliant scale; but on ordinary days Lorenzo kept his table within the modest limits befitting a citizen. So Franceschetto Cybò discovered when he came on a visit in June 1488. Roman lords and a number of other people accompanied the Pope’s son; they wished to see the splendour of the house of Medici, of which all the world spoke so much. Franceschetto stayed in his father-in-law’s house; a fine palace was assigned to his companions. After a few days passed in festivities, the visitor found a simple table. He wondered; and when the dinner and supper were served in the same style, he began to suspect that his companions might be treated in the same way. The suspicion troubled him, knowing as he did with what expectations they had come to Florence. He was therefore delighted to learn that they continued to be most sumptuously entertained. Talking confidentially with his father-in-law he mentioned the circumstance, whereupon Lorenzo quietly answered that he had received him into his house as a son and was treating him as such; to act otherwise would be to make a stranger of him. The noble lords who had come with him to celebrate his marriage were strangers; Lorenzo was treating them accordingly, as became his position and theirs.
At the end of 1482 an illustrious German guest came to the Medici house: Eberhard the Bearded Count of Würtemberg, son-in-law of Lodovico Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua, a connection which formed a natural introduction to friendly relations with the Medici.[441] The count’s learned companions have been already mentioned. Eberhard surveyed the riches of the house, the handsome halls filled with plate and other valuables, the library, the terrace with its evergreen fruit-trees and the stables. What he saw here must have been a source of great enjoyment to this highly accomplished prince, who combined a love of native literature with a knowledge of antiquity, possessed a fine library, and four years before had conferred a lasting benefit on his admiring country by founding the university of Tübingen. He saw the whole family, Lorenzo and his sons, Clarice and her daughters, still all together in those days. He openly expressed his pleasure at everything, both the house and its inhabitants. When he admired the collection of books, greatly increased and with much discrimination since Cosimo’s days, Lorenzo, with a play on the words libri and liberi, answered that his children were his greatest treasures. From Florence Eberhard went to Rome, where Sixtus IV. presented him with the golden rose.[442]
The German prince admired Lorenzo’s stud, and no doubt with justice. Lorenzo had a passion for riding-horses, hunters, and racers. Presents, purchases, and borrowing of horses occur over and over again in his correspondence. In October 1488 he bought twenty mares at Naples, and only a short time before his death horses for him were on their way from Egypt and the coast of Barbary.[443] The taste of the Florentines for horse-racing, with or without riders, and for which even in those days there were regular horse-lenders, has been preserved down to our own time; in the house of the Alessandri is shown a room whose walls are entirely covered with brocades won as prizes by a horse belonging to the family. Lorenzo always kept race-horses; one in particular, called Morello from its dark colour, always came off victorious, and was so attached to its master that it showed signs of illness when he did not feed it with his own hand, and testified its joy at his approach by stamping and loud neighing.[444] In his young days a handsome Sicilian horse was presented to him, and its value was outdone by that of the presents he gave in return. He himself made presents of horses. In November 1479, when he was particularly anxious to keep on good terms with Lodovico il Moro, he sent to Roberto Sanseverino, who was at that time a confidant of the Moro, a fine horse and a falcon.[445] Letters about their horses passed between Lorenzo and King Ferrante, the Este family, the Sforzas of Pesaro, and others. In January 1473 the king thanked Lorenzo for the gift of a horse about which his ambassador, Marino Tomacelli, had written to him. Four years after he announced that he was sending Lorenzo two racers, a Sicilian and another, from his own stud, and two hunters, as tokens of his attachment. Horses of the king’s, lent for the Florentine races, were on their way at the time of the Pazzi catastrophe.[446] It was, moreover, the custom to send horses to allied nobles and cities, to keep them for the races; those of the Medici went to both Ferrara and Lucca. When Giovanni Sforza of Pesaro was going to be married to Maddalena Gonzaga at the end of the summer of 1489, he begged Lorenzo to lend him one of his horses for the tournament to be held on the occasion. In Lorenzo’s latter years his eldest son had the direction of the stables.[447]
Lorenzo has left in his pretty and cheerful description of the hawking-party a graceful memorial of his love of the sport. Hawking was an old pastime always in great favour with princes and nobles. Dante’s master, Brunetto Latini, mentions in his ‘Treasury’ seven species of falcons which served for the chase. Two contemporaries of Lorenzo paid special attention to the training of these birds: the King of Naples, who imported the best falcons from Rhodes with the permission of the grand-master of the Hospitallers, and Ercole d’Este, to whom Lorenzo gave leave to catch the birds on his estates in the Pisan territory. In return for this the duke sent to Lorenzo some of his own well-trained falcons for the purpose of the chase or to help in training his wild ones, and the king several times made him presents of hawks, as he did also to Maximilian of Austria, Ferdinand of Castile, Galeazzo Maria Sforza, and others.[448] The wide, well-wooded and watered plain of Pisa, and the lowlands and hills round Poggio a Cajano, were the scenes of the chase. On December 1, 1475, Angelo Poliziano, who was seldom absent from either studies or sports, wrote from Pisa to Madonna Clarice, then expecting her confinement (the child was afterwards Pope Leo):[449] ‘Yesterday we went hawking. It was windy and we were unlucky, for we lost Pilato’s falcon called Mantovano. To-day we tried again, and again the wind was contrary; yet we had some fine flights, for Maestro Giorgio let loose his falcon, which returned obediently at a given signal. Lorenzo is quite in love with the bird, and not without justice, for Maestro Giorgio says he has never seen one larger or finer, and he hopes to make him the best falcon in the world. While we were in the field Pilato returned from the shore with the truant of yesterday, which redoubled Lorenzo’s pleasure. We are hawking from morning till night, and do nothing else. On Monday I hear our sport is to be varied by a deer-hunt.’
Independently of hunting, Lorenzo liked being in Pisa, and it was not his fault that the unfortunate city’s relations with Florence did not improve, and that she could not accustom herself to bear the position of a subject city. Even when not called there by business, he frequently stayed there. From his youth up he was in the habit of leaving Florence to meet friends for change, for hunting or to see after his great estate at Agnano. This place, first a fortress and then a villa round which had gathered a population of a few hundreds, lies on the western slope of the Monte San Giuliano, four miles from Pisa, near marshes which Valori says Lorenzo would have drained if he had lived longer, and which mostly are drained now. A large pine-wood forms part of the estate, which in Lorenzo’s days furnished a considerable quantity of corn and oil, and with other possessions in the Maremma of Pisa, at Colle Salvetti (now one of the stations on the railway which passes through the plain to Civita Vecchia), at Colmezzano, and other places, formed a most important part of the Medici landed property. Lorenzo’s letters bear testimony to the great care he took in the improvement of husbandry in this hitherto sadly neglected part. Like Spedaletto, Agnano passed to Maddalena Cybò; her son Lorenzo, who was not on very good terms with his wife—Ricciarda Malaspina, heiress of Massa and Carrara—ended his days there in 1549.[450] After Lorenzo had re-established the University of Pisa, its interests frequently called him to the city. During the disastrous fight for Sarzana he made Pisa a sort of head-quarters. The house then inhabited by the Medici, now belonging to the Pieracchi family, stands not far from the upper bridge over the Arno—the Ponte della Fortezza—on the right bank, near the church of San Matteo. Here is said to have occurred, seventy years after Lorenzo’s death, that domestic tragedy which has never been cleared up, and which casts a dark shadow over the history of the first Medicean grand-duke.
In Lorenzo’s days the house was more cheerful. Here, probably, was the scene of his discourse with Federigo of Aragon on Italian poetry; here he passed some pleasant days in April 1476. He came by San Miniato, where a halt was always made, with six-and-twenty horses. ‘We rode along,’ wrote Poliziano to Clarice,[451] ‘singing, and sometimes talking theology in order not to forget this season of fasting; Lorenzo was triumphant. At San Miniato we tried to read some of St. Augustine, but the reading was soon exchanged for music and for polishing up a figure of a dancer which we found there.’ There was no lack of merriment and jesting wherever Lorenzo went; the Pisan students found him a ready supporter of their carnaval gaieties, at which they were permitted to take away the instruction-books from the professors and to spend on festivities the money paid to ransom them. The attribution to Lorenzo of the combat on the middle bridge over the Arno (Giuoco del Ponte), at which the ground was disputed between armed bands on either side, and which was forbidden by the Grand-Duke Leopold I. on account of its fatal episodes, is a mistake; traces of it may be found in much earlier times.
It was in Pisa, at the end of May 1477, that Lorenzo received Eleonora of Aragon, wife of Duke Ercole of Ferrara; she had come by way of Lucca to attend her father’s marriage at Naples, whither she was conveyed by a royal fleet which had anchored at Livorno.[452] As long as Filippo de’ Medici was Archbishop of Pisa, and his brother Tanai dwelt there, there was no lack of grand hospitality; Luigi Pulci mentions the festivities during the presence of the Duke of Calabria in the war of Colleone.[453] Other than cheerful purposes called Lorenzo to Pisa. He sought in its mild air relief from physical sufferings; as in the autumn of 1474, after being cured of fever by the waters of Porretta. He stopped at Pisa, at a critical moment of his life, before embarking for Naples. In the little church of Sta. Maria della Spina, whose spires and pinnacles are seen adjoining the quay on the south shore, in 1485 he ordered for the victims of the Sarzana struggle requiems to be sung, at which he was present together with the widow of Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, who had met his death in the unhealthy air of the Lunigiana coast.[454]
Lorenzo’s visits to the baths played a great part in his life, though they never took him beyond the borders of Tuscany. Gout was hereditary in his family; his grandfather, his father, and his uncle all suffered from it, and his mother too was not exempt. When only twenty-six he was obliged to take the waters of Porretta, which still attract so many invalids to the valley of the Reno in the Apennines, on the road between Pistoja and Bologna. His most frequent resort was Bagno a Morba, where Madonna Lucrezia had a house and stayed frequently, and in his latter years he had the water sent to Spedaletto. Most of the Tuscan baths were anything but inviting; some are not more so now. In the Roman territory they are still worse; Ser Matteo Franco, describing the baths of Stigliano near the lake of Bracciano, remarks that in comparison with this place Bagno a Morba was a Careggi. Lorenzo tried other medicinal waters. In the autumn of 1484, after the taking of Pietrasanta, he went to the baths of San Filippo in the Sienese country. These remarkable thermal springs are reached by turning out of the old Roman high-road at the little village of Ricorsi, at the foot of the inhospitable height of Radicofani, and proceeding through the valley of the Orcia towards the stately group of Mont’Amiata, covered throughout its 5,000 feet of height with chestnuts and beeches, and surrounded with a girdle of villages. The springs lie in a deep ravine encircled with woods; a precipitate of carbonic acid and lime forms a marble-like crust, and the waters are an efficacious remedy for arthritic disorders as well as for skin-diseases. It is a desolate place, with only a few houses destined for the reception of invalids, in the narrow valley where oppressive heat alternates with a damp cold atmosphere. In autumn of the following year, and several times afterwards, Lorenzo came again. In the spring of 1490 he spent some time at the baths of Vignone in the same valley of the Orcia, a little southwards of San Quirico. Powerful thermal springs, similar to those mentioned above, issue from a travertine hill in the middle of the village, and fill a large basin; they were known in Roman times. Here Ermolao Barbaro visited Lorenzo, and Franceschetto Cybò and his wife kept him company; at that season the place was safe, but in summer the air can hardly be borne even by natives. Lorenzo’s stay at Filetto in the valley of the Merse has already been mentioned. All these water-cures only gave temporary relief to his malady, and the short time he usually devoted to them would have prevented any lasting result even if his maladies had been less rooted and less complicated. Besides, even after his health had suffered considerably, his mode of life was not exactly regular. He not only exerted himself too much in attending to business of all kinds, public and private, which poured in upon him surrounded as he was by many cares, but he was always involved in love intrigues. Bartolommea de’ Nasi, the wife of Donato Benci, held him in her chains for years; she was neither young nor beautiful, but graceful and attractive. Even in winter he would ride out in the evening to her villa to be back in the city before daybreak. Two confidants, Luigi della Stufa and Andrea de’ Medici, were his usual companions. They got tired of it, and their remarks came to the ears of the lady; whereupon she managed to have them punished by being sent off on diplomatic errands, the one to Cairo and the other to Constantinople—an old and well-worn contrivance which, in this case, caused a sensation of a nature not very favourable to the great man, ‘who behaved himself like an inexperienced youth.’[455]