The princely dignity which Lorenzo enjoyed was as apparent in his relations with foreign rulers as in his position in his own country, in his own house, and in his journeys. The former have been repeatedly mentioned. Everyone made use of him; everyone applied to him; everyone gave him thanks and presents, from antiquities down to sweet-smelling essences, which the Duchess of Calabria sent him. He sent his friends and acquaintances presents of books, works of art, horses, wine, and other things. In June 1489 he presented a vase full of balm to Anne de Beaujeu, ‘Madama di Belgiù.’ Venison and fish seem to have been favourite gifts on the part of communities and individuals; on one day five wild boars were taken to Lorenzo’s house.
A great event, which has left its trace in the history of art by a representation in a fresco at Poggio a Cajano, was an embassy from Abu Nasr Kaitbei, Sultan of Egypt, or of Babylonia as he was called, which arrived at Florence on November 11, 1487, and was honourably and joyfully received by the foreign ambassadors and many of the citizens.[456] It was a fortunate time for the Republic, which had a few months before got rid of the dreary affair of Sarzana, and had now entered on a period of comparative peace which was not disturbed till the revolution of 1494. Italian affairs were of considerable importance to the Egyptian sultan, not only on account of commerce but also politically, on account of his relations with Naples and Venice; difficulties with this latter state might easily have been created by the sultan’s claims to the suzerainty of Cyprus, where Caterina Cornaro continued to reign as a queen of shadows till 1489, under the protection of Venice. The sultan’s eyes often turned towards the west as the progress of the Osmanli threatened an attack on the loosely connected empire of the Mamelukes, which, indeed, fell before their better-compacted power within less than thirty years. After the subjection of Pisa, Florence had frequent commercial relations with Egypt, and a desire to enlarge and secure its privileges gave rise to negotiations for which an Egyptian ambassador named Malphet came to Florence in 1487, and in the following year a Florentine, the aforesaid Luigi della Stufa, went to Cairo.[457] The former was sent at once to the Signoria of the Republic and to the ‘Hakim’ (lord) Lorenzo de’ Medici, and brought rich presents for both. On Sunday, November 18, he had a solemn audience of the Signoria in presence of many of the chief citizens. He had led before him a giraffe and a tame lion, gifts from the sultan. The giraffe was no novelty to the Florentines, for one had been already seen at the festivals with which the visit of Pius II. was celebrated; and the lion, the emblem of the commonwealth, was always carefully kept here, alive as well as in effigy. A street behind the palace of the Signoria took its name from the lion-cage, afterwards removed to the square of San Marco. A Sicilian interpreter translated the conversation, which turned on the privileges offered to the Florentines in Egypt and Syria. For Lorenzo the ambassador brought gifts of various kinds: an Arabian horse, rare animals, among which were rams and sheep of various colours, with long hanging ears and tails; several horns of civet, a lamp with balsam, a quantity of aloe-wood, beautiful many coloured porcelain such as had never before been seen, vases of preserves, and rich and finely woven silk and linen stuffs.[458] There was a great festival in the Medici household when all these rarities were brought home; Madonna Clarice was absent, being then at Rome with Maddalena. Among Lorenzo’s gifts to the sultan is mentioned a bed, carried by a special messenger.
Whenever Lorenzo went to the baths or left home for any purpose, he was everywhere received like a prince. The municipalities within the Florentine dominions were accustomed to send yearly presents to the capital on certain feasts, and they did not neglect to send offerings to the head of the Republic. After the fashion of the times these gifts usually consisted of provisions and goods for the house. When Lorenzo was expected, early in 1485, at San Gemignano, on his way to Bagno a Morba, but took another route, the municipality, which had voted 100 lire for his reception, sent to Morba a load of Greek wine, capons, marchpane and wax.[459] The Signoria of Siena, though they had not a few complaints against Lorenzo, honoured him in a similar manner when he was in their territory. During his stay at Vignone they sent ample provisions for his table.[460] His suite was unusually numerous. A list of the persons he once took with him to Morba[461] names the following: a chaplain, Filippo (Ubaldini) da Gagliano, Francesco degli Organi (Squarcialupi), a house-steward, two chancellors (secretaries), two singers, Bertoldo the sculptor, a barber, two valets, a butler, five crossbowmen, ten grooms, an equerry, a cook, a kitchen-boy, and a coachman. For these thirty-two persons fourteen beds were required. His family, too, when they travelled without him, were everywhere received in the most distinguished manner possible. A letter of their faithful, cheerful friend, Matteo Franco, gives a lively sketch of a journey on horseback made by Clarice in May 1485, from Morba, where she had been with her husband, through the Volterra district and the Elsa valley to Florence. At all the places where she stopped, especially at Colle, where the first halt for sleeping was made (the second was at Passignano, where stood the great abbey given to Giovanni de’ Medici), everybody was astir; yet friendly intercourse was combined with a ceremonious reception.
Whether in town, in the country, or on a journey, Lorenzo was always surrounded by friends, whose names are inseparable from his. Most of them have become known in the course of this history; various characters, of whom more than one may be differently judged, according to whether we view them in private life and in their confidential relations, or as public men, authors or otherwise. First come those who were the guides of his youth or whom he knew in his father’s house; Gentile Becchi, who remained a member of the Medicean household even after his appointment to the see of Arezzo, as bishops were not required to reside too strictly; Ficino, Landino, and Poliziano. Then those who, having been friends of his parents, attached themselves to him in his youth and manhood; or those who first came in contact with him in his mature years; Luigi Pulci, Matteo Franco, Bartolommeo Scala, Pico della Mirandola—besides those who were drawn to him by political and allied interests, and who zealously served him and, in his sense of the word, the State, without forgetting themselves. On each and all Lorenzo had a deep and lasting influence; he was the centre around which all revolved, the link that bound all together, however much a few of the disaffected ones might try to fight against it. Their attachment to him was not forced or selfish; the affection expressed in Pulci’s letters and Poliziano’s verses had nothing artificial about it. Lorenzo was a genial man, cordial and kind, a born prince, simple and natural. In his intercourse with the scholars and artists who were in some sense dependent on him, the relation of patron and client was forgotten. Their letters to him, grave and gay, are proofs of their confidence and intimacy. If they address him as ‘Magnifico,’ they soon follow it up with a plain ‘Lorenzo.’ In the midst of the war-troubles of 1479, Donatello’s pupil Bertoldo wrote Lorenzo a letter full of fun, to the effect that it was more profitable to be a cook than an artist;[462] and the famous Niccolò Grosso, called Caparra, in reality a blacksmith, but who executed works of art, would not fulfil Lorenzo’s orders till he had executed others he had received first.[463] How entirely constraint was banished in intercourse with him is shown by his conversation with the mosaic-worker Graffione, a pupil of Baldovinetti. Lorenzo once said he would like to adorn the inside of the dome of the Cathedral with mosaics. ‘For that you could not get masters,’ replied Graffione. ‘We have money enough to get masters,’ was the probably half-jesting answer. ‘Eh, Lorenzo,’ exclaimed the artist, ‘it is not the money that procures the masters, but the masters who procure the money!’ He bore with their humours and oddities; he honoured them living and dead, feeling that their fame would add to his own. Had he done nothing for art beyond the cordial and almost fatherly reception which he, a powerful and much-envied man of mature years, gave to Michelangelo when the latter was almost in his boyhood, that alone would make his memory illustrious. On his death-bed he desired once more to see the friends in whose society he had passed his happiest hours, and whose attachment followed him beyond the grave.
Notwithstanding many disturbances caused by political events, increasing bad health, and several deaths in the family, still life was cheerful in the Medici household. Music was a daily pleasure. Lorenzo’s poetical talents attached him to this art, and his unmusical voice did not hinder him from taking a part in singing. Marsilio relates that he did so at a social gathering which apparently took its name of La Mammola (the Violet) from a still existing hostelry. Thus, too, one evening, when he was singing the mysteries of love, he originated a discussion as to whether subjects in which mourning occurred were appropriate, which Ficino decided in the affirmative.[464] In his poetical productions he reckoned much on musical effect, a necessary condition of songs for dancing and for the carnaval. As long as his health permitted he was never absent from the merry processions at which popular melodies alternated with those of Heinrich Isaak; and on journeys, at the May-festivals and other times of gaiety there was no lack of musical accompaniments to the verses of Poliziano and other friends. Although from Guido Aretino down to the father of Galileo, Tuscany produced no remarkable composer or writer on music, yet the people were always musical. Ficino was doubly welcome when he appeared with his plectrum, after the pattern of the earliest half-deified apostles of Greek culture, to secure a better reception for ancient philosophy by his strains delighting the ear and winning the heart. As in Poliziano’s ‘Orpheus,’ Baccio Ugolini accompanied on the lyre the ode in praise of Cardinal Gonzaga, so did Marsilio when extemporising, in which art he was a master.
One of Lorenzo’s protégés was the organ-builder Antonio Squarcialupi, who, as a precentor, had been a familiar of the house in Piero’s time. His life and conversation seem not to have been blameless; but Lorenzo took him under his protection for the sake of his uncommon talent. ‘If you knew,’ he said once to those who blamed him, ‘what it is to attain perfection in anything, you would judge him more gently and modestly.’[465] Squarcialupi set to music many of the songs of his patron, who, it is said, composed the inscription for his tomb. To the friendship of the Medici he owed the epigram in which Poliziano called upon Florence to honour with a marble monument him who had long been the voice of her temple.[466] The man really must have possessed rare artistic merits; for a son of the Count of Altavilla—one of the guests at the Salutati banquet—came to Florence with an introduction from King Ferrante to Lorenzo, to study the organ and other instruments under Squarcialupi; and ten years later a clergyman named Stephen came from Ofen, with a recommendation from Matthias Corvinus, to learn organ-building.[467] In 1477 a lute-player of Lodovico Sforza’s suite came to Florence to be heard by the famous master.[468] Organ-building, as well as organ-playing, was a somewhat rare art. The difficulty of finding good masters is shown by the trouble and loss of time caused in Cosimo’s days to the committee entrusted with the building of the Cathedral, through the untrustworthiness of Matteo da Prato, who had undertaken to furnish the new organs, to be decorated by Donatello and Luca della Robbia. Lorenzo took great interest in this branch of music. Many of his letters relate to organists recommended by him to various Tuscan towns, or sent from one place to another. At his death there were in his house no less than five organs; one large one with a finely-carved wooden case, the rest smaller, partly metal, partly paste-board, which was then used for these instruments.[469] Musicians were included among the servants; and in the evenings there was singing and playing on the lute. Michelangelo in his later years used to tell of a man who was called the Cardiere, and who was a great favourite with Lorenzo on account of his wonderful talent for improvising songs to an instrumental accompaniment.[470] Lorenzo also looked after the musical education of his children. ‘The evening before last,’ wrote Poliziano to him at Bagno a Morba on June 5, 1490,[471] ‘I unexpectedly heard our Piero sing, and then he and his companions came to my room. He pleased me exceedingly, especially in the motetts and answers to the strophes, and also by his charms of articulation. I felt as if I were listening to your Magnificence.’ Leo X. had through life a true passion for music and improvisation. As a cardinal, his palace near Sant’Eustachio (Palazzo Madama) continually resounded with instruments and singing; and in the Vatican music and poetry vied with each other, and both improvisers and musicians made their fortunes with the Pope.
It is needless to repeat how closely poetry was intertwined with the life of the Medici. The taste for it was hereditary. Cosimo the elder, Lorenzo, his brother Giuliano, all wrote poetry; so did the younger Piero and others of the family. As a child Lorenzo’s daughter Lucrezia knew by heart the spiritual songs of her grandmother;[472] and the songs of the ‘Morgante’ were first heard in the Medici house when Lucrezia Tornabuoni took part in them. Many of Poliziano’s poems were evidently intended to be recited to his patron; and when he relates in a letter[473] how one asked him for sermons for the brotherhoods, another for carnaval songs, one wanted sentimental songs for the viola, another gay serenades, it is probable that he referred to members of the society he met in the house of the Medici. One can fancy Pulci and Matteo Franco sending satirical shafts in the form of sonnets at each other across the table. In the ‘Beoni’ and ‘Nencia,’ evidently intended for gay meetings, Lorenzo himself gave the signal for poetical entertainments and contests; Pulci once answered him with the ‘Beca da Dicomano.’ The poetic gifts of his eldest son are displayed in the latter’s productions; the verses written by him in exile show more depth of feeling than one would have given him credit for. In his youth, at least, his contemporaries seem to have judged him favourably. In a sonnet of Antonio da Pistoja on the poets of the time, both Piero and his father are mentioned, and the praise bestowed on them gains weight from the fact that Poliziano alone is placed above them:—
Who among Tuscans doth in verse excel?
In vulgar tongue? Aye, and in Latin speech.
Lorenzo and his son write passing well,
But neither can Politian’s glory reach.[474]
Piero’s letters to his father, on literary and other subjects, display sound judgment, information, and lively interest. His boyish letters, indeed, are of little consequence; and when, as a lad of fourteen, he writes from the villa to his father at San Filippo, giving an account of his own studies and those of his brother Giovanni, with whom he was reading Virgil’s Bucolics, thereby, as he said, gaining double profit,[475] his master’s hand is clearly traceable. But there are other letters worthy of consideration, such as that on the visit of Ermolao Barbaro. Although Poliziano’s descriptions of his pupil and of the young Cardinal Giovanni lose much of their effect and even spoil their subjects by exaggeration, yet it cannot be disputed that Lorenzo’s eldest son, though he did not possess his father’s prudence and calculation (a want which may perhaps be explained and excused by the degree of splendour, fortune, and grandeur at which Lorenzo left the personal government in his hands), yet did possess many of his intellectual qualities. The time during which he continued to hold the government was too short and too much disturbed by preludes of the coming storm to furnish premisses for a decisive judgment of him; neither can such a judgment be fairly founded on his conduct in exile, which may be mistaken even by the keenest eye.
Piero’s wife can hardly have had a good influence on him. Alfonsina Orsini was infinitely less fitted than her mother-in-law for Florentine life and manners. In her nature the pride of the Roman barons seems to have been combined with covetousness and hardness, whereby she made herself very much disliked in later years, when her brother-in-law was Pope and she was a great deal in Rome, where she died in 1520. Her husband’s three sisters, Lucrezia, Maddalena, and Contessina, the wife of Piero Ridolfi, were frequently at their father’s house. Maddalena, whose daughter Lucrezia was born at Rome early in 1490, became at Florence, on August 24 of the following year, the mother of a son who was christened Innocenzo after the Pope, received the red hat from Leo X., and, with his cousins Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi, played some part in Florence after the murder of the first duke. All three sisters afterwards attached themselves to the court of Leo X. in a way which threw no favourable light on his financial arrangements; and the influence of Lucrezia, doubtless the most highly gifted of the three, lasted beyond her brother’s lifetime throughout the whole reign of her cousin Clement VII., with whom her husband, Jacopo Salviati (father of the cardinal), was very intimate, till the Pope’s proceedings in 1529 against the city of his fathers estranged the relatives. In one of Ariosto’s satires, invaluable for a study of the manners and general circumstances of the early years of the sixteenth century, he introduces Lorenzo’s posterity and their friends rejoicing at the elevation of Leo X.,—a rejoicing destined to be of short duration.[476] There were numerous other members of the family, rich and poor, nearly and distantly connected. The nearest branch was, of course, that descended from Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo, whose chief representative at this time was the oft-mentioned Lorenzo, son of Pier Francesco. One of those admitted to the closest intimacy was a distant cousin, Andrea. As long as the daughters remained at home Lorenzo insisted on their dressing modestly and simply, in conformity to the sumptuary laws. Certain materials he never would allow them, because they resembled the forbidden crimson cloth, although many other grand ladies wore them without scruple. He himself was never distinguished from other citizens in outward apparel. In winter he wore a violet mantle with a hood, and in summer the lucco: the long red robe of the upper class of citizens, still the usual dress of the magistrates. It is mentioned that he got Venetian silk for his dress. To elderly people he always offered his hand and gave the place of honour, and what he taught his sons he first followed himself.