Sixtus the Fourth was personally his enemy, and with his assent was obtained the co-operation of the archbishop of Florence, Francesco Salviati. Two fêtes were given by the conspirators: the first at Fiesole, the second at Florence,—to which the Medici were invited; but Julian each time failed to come. The day and place at last appointed were the 26th of April, 1478, in the cathedral; and the moment that of the elevation of the host, as the brothers never failed to attend high mass on Sundays, and it was difficult to be certain of their presence together, and off their guard, elsewhere. The condottiere Montesicco was charged with the murder of Lorenzo; Bandini and Francesco Pazzi with that of young Julian, and no circumstance of the plot having transpired, its success seemed certain. When, however, the mercenary soldier had been informed of the time chosen, in horror excited by the sacrilege, not the murder, he refused the part assigned him, and yielded its performance to two priests less scrupulous. Francesco Salviati was to remain near the old palace, to take instant possession on receiving news of the brothers’ death. Giacopo Pazzi, drawn into the conspiracy against his will, was commissioned to call the citizens to arms, and proclaim their freedom. Mass had begun, and Lorenzo was present; but Julian had not appeared, and Francis Pazzi and Bandini went to seek him, and accompanied him to the cathedral, conversing with him gaily as they went along, and, arrived there, Francis Pazzi embraced the young man with seeming amity, but to assure himself that he wore beneath his peaceful attire no cuirass which would interrupt the passage of steel. The moment arrived, Bandini, who stood ready, plunged his dagger into young Julian’s breast, who staggered a few steps and fell; but Francis Pazzi, rushing upon him also, inflicted so deep a wound on his own thigh, as incapacitated him for further effort. The priests attacked Lorenzo, but Maffei only succeeded in slightly wounding him in the throat; and drawing his sword and defending himself gallantly, he fought retreating, till succour came, and the assassins fled, and took refuge with his friends in the sagrestia, where Bandini, who, having murdered Francis Neri, as well as Julian, advanced to try his firmer hand against Lorenzo’s life, could not reach him. Meanwhile the Archbishop Salviati, proceeding to take possession of the palace with his thirty followers, and Giacopo Pazzi, arriving on the public square with a hundred men-at-arms, found the Medici party too strong, were taken or fled. The former, in his cardinal’s robes, with Francis Poggio, the historian’s son, was hanged from the windows of the palace; and Francis, who had dragged himself home, and striven to mount his horse, but, weak from pain and loss of blood, had sunk down on his bed, was brought thither, half clothed as he was, and suspended by the archbishop’s side. His doom inflicted with haste and carelessness, death did not immediately follow, and in his prolonged agonies he gnawed the breast of his neighbour.
Torn in pieces by the infuriated populace, or flung from the castle-battlement; or by the hand of the executioner, there perished seventy persons. Giacopo Pazzi, who had escaped, was taken in the mountains, brought back to Florence, and hanged also. Only the pope’s nephew, the Cardinal Riario, who, too young to be made privy to the plot, had been conducted to the city and the cathedral to lure the Medici more surely thither, was spared to appease the pontiff, having first suffered insult and injury; but Paul the Fourth, nevertheless, placed Florence under interdict for the violent death of her archbishop, Salviati. Vasari mentions that the artist, Andrea del Castagno was selected to fulfill the decree issued,—bearing, that all who had taken part in the conspiracy should be represented, with the ignominy they merited, on the façade of the old palace. Andrea, being under obligation to the Medici, executed this painting with so much energy and truth, representing all the personages hanged by the feet, but in varied and admirable attitudes, that his work awakened the curiosity of the town and the enthusiasm of connoisseurs, while it bestowed on him the nickname of “Andrew of the Hanged.”
From the Duomo we went to the Baptistery, entering by the northern door, which, as well as that facing the cathedral, is the work of Ghiberti, and opposite which is the little pillar of St. Zanobi, recalling a miracle his ashes performed when they were transported to Santa Maria del Fiore:—The bier touched by accident a withered elm, which then occupied the place since yielded to the column, and its dead branches were instantly covered with leaves!! Above these celebrated doors are bronze statues of remarkable workmanship. It was in the year 1293 that the edifice was encrusted with marble, at the expense of the shopkeepers of Florence, who were its patrons; and young Arnolfo di Lapo, entrusted with the restoration, also agreed to preserve and employ all ornaments and sacred fragments he should find at his disposal: and this may account for the irregularities within, for the mingling of Composite with Corinthian architecture, and the difference existing in the sixteen granite columns which, ranged within the circle, support the terrace carried round the temple. Between these pillars are the figures of the twelve apostles, and two statues representing Natural and Revealed Religion, the former very beautiful, in carta pesta. The mosaics of the dome were chiefly executed by Giotto’s pupils, and are admired for their execution. I think I never saw anything more horrid than the Last Judgment, a representation of which fills a large circle in the part of the dome immediately above the high altar, and its fine group in white marble of St. John supported by angels, and ascending to heaven. The Saviour (so the artist has named an ignoble figure of gigantic size) is placed between the elect and the damned, which last a devil of extraordinary shape is employed in thrusting down his large throat whole, with an eagerness which threatens indigestion.
The story of Joseph occupies another compartment; the creation of the world and the deluge, and the life of John the Baptist, fill the remainder, making sad burlesque of serious things. The tomb, which, entering at the northern door, is on the right hand (its statue of gilded bronze representing the buried pontiff, and the basso relievo bearing the three Cardinal Virtues), is that of John the Twenty-third; his name was Balthazar Cossa, a Neapolitan of noble family, but scanty fortune, and in his youth a pirate. Abandoning the sea, and the trade it offered him, ambitious, clever, and bold, he became an ecclesiastic, found means to introduce himself to Boniface the Ninth, and, obtaining his favour, was by him made cardinal and his legate at Bologna.
His conduct was scandalous and tyrannical, and discontented the successor of Boniface; yet the imperious legate resisted, and with success, the papal power; and Alexander the Fifth, to whom, when opposed to Ladislas, king of Naples, he rendered great services, received him into favour and intimacy. The ci-devant corsair was nevertheless suspected of poisoning his benefactor in his impatience to take his seat. He was crowned at Bologna, as John the Twenty-third, in 1410; but Ladislas first menaced Rome, next, in perfidy, recognised John as pope; but when the latter, believing in his sincerity, had allowed his best troops to depart thence, made his entry during the night; and John, laying aside his sacred character, found barely time left him to mount his horse and escape towards Florence.
Though Ladislas was shortly after poisoned by his mistress, the tiara remained ill secured on the brow of the pope. A council-general was assembled at Constance; a list of important accusations presented against him; and finally, having fled in disguise from Constance, been delivered up by the duke of Austria, (forced to the act by the Emperor Sigismund,) he found himself obliged to ratify the sentence which declared him to have caused scandal to the church, and deposed him from his dignity, forbidding the faithful to obey him.
Martin the Fifth being elected in his place, John sought him at Florence, and, on his knees, both implored pardon and fully ratified the act of abdication. Martin received him kindly, and created him dean of the Sacred College. The short time which intervened between this circumstance and his death, he spent in retirement and literary pursuits, for he wrote verses of some elegance, referring to his gone-by greatness and solitary close. He died in 1419, about six months after, and from his friend Cosmo de’ Medici received a splendid burial.
Continuing our walk, we passed before the Palazzo Riccardi, now the Public Library, built, in 1430, on the designs of Michelozzo, by Cosmo, father of his country, and sold to the Riccardi family by the Grand Duke Ferdinand the Second. Nearly opposite the Baptistery, on the northern side, in the time of Lorenzo the Magnificent, its gardens were filled with the fine antiques which have since formed the Florentine Gallery, and then drew within the sphere of the owner’s liberality the young sculptors of Florence. The most famous among these was Michael Angelo, whose noble name, for he was a descendant of the family of Canossa, is well nigh forgotten in that his genius ennobled more. Born in 1474, in the territory of Arezzo, his father, Buonarotti Simoni, opposed his taste for the arts, till he recognized that the natural bent of his son’s mind was too decided to be thwarted, and Michael Angelo, who, fearing his father’s severity, had worked assiduously, but in secret, was placed as a pupil with the Ghirlandai, the most celebrated painters of the time.
In the year 1489, Michael Angelo, then about fifteen, wandering over Florence with his friend Granacci, was by him introduced into the gardens of the Medici. To study the rich antiques it contained, he abandoned the workshop of Ghirlandaio, and it was here that, at that early age, he executed, from a mutilated antique, the head of the Fawn, now admired in the galleria, supplying in his copy, which surpassed the original, the parts wanting, and adding details whose truth belonged to himself only.
It was this juvenile work which awakened Lorenzo’s wonder. He said jestingly to the boy, “You have made your fawn old, and yet his teeth are perfect; do you not know, that to old people some are always wanting?”