There Cosimo, Pater Patriæ, had died in fulness of years and was succeeded by his grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent, though not immediately, for there was a short-lived Piero in between. Lorenzo took his grandfather's place, became lord of Florence in all but name, and stood the centre of a brilliant group of artists, sculptors, poets, and scholars. His reign, for it must be so called, lasted from 1469 to 1492, a most notable span of time. The mere names of the famous Florentines would fill pages. A few must be mentioned: Benedetto da Maiano, sculptor and architect, who carved the beautiful pulpit in Santa Croce, and drew the designs for the palace-fortress of the Strozzi; Giuliano da San Gallo, sculptor and architect, who made the plans for Lorenzo's villa at Poggio a Caiano; Andrea della Robbia, nephew to Luca, and almost his equal in the tender charm of his blue and white Madonnas; Mino da Fiesole, who made a bust of Lorenzo's father, and carved in marble the sweetness of young mothers; Antonio Rossellino, who wrought the famous tomb for a great Portuguese prelate in the church of San Miniato; Andrea Verrocchio, who painted the Uffizi Annunciation, so beautiful that it was long attributed to Leonardo, modelled the lady dalle belle mani in the Bargello, and the Colleoni at Venice, greatest of equestrian statues; Benozzo Gozzoli, who painted the three generations of Medici in the Riccardi palace, and in the Campo Santo at Pisa the enchanting frescoes which turn the Old Testament into a kind of Arabian Nights; Antonio Pollaiuolo, sculptor and painter, a leader in the new school of realism, and notable for the feeling of movement which he conveys; Filippino Lippi, Lippo Lippi's son, who completed the frescoes in the chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine left unfinished by Masaccio; Botticelli, the greatest of all the Florentine painters, except Leonardo and Michelangelo; Domenico Ghirlandaio, whose frescoes in Santa Maria Novella tell us more about those shrewd, capable, quick-witted Florentines than any historian; Pulci, the poet, who wrote "Morgante Maggiore," a gay epic, which Savonarola thought ought to be burned; Poliziano, great embodiment of culture, who wrote the first lyrical tragedy, and led the way towards the opera; Marsilio Ficino, the philosopher who helped Cosimo found the Platonic Academy; Pico della Mirandola, the charming scholar, whom Machiavelli called "a man almost divine."
Perhaps none of these men were equal to the leaders in the group which surrounded Cosimo, but they are more interesting to us, and touch our sympathy more readily. They are nearer to us. The earlier problems in architecture, sculpture, and painting were more difficult, but they had been successfully solved; and the fresh problems, which confronted the younger generation, though less adventurous, were more refined. The sons have entered into a hard-earned inheritance, and live more freely. They have more spiritual alertness than their fathers though less vigour, more sensitiveness to passing moods though less robustness, greater mastery of technique though less genius for principles. Less great themselves, they have created greater works. Benedetto's Palazzo Strozzi is more majestic and splendid than Michelozzo's Palazzo Riccardi; Verrocchio's statue of Colleoni surpasses Donatello's Gattamelata; Botticelli's poetry is more interesting, at least to the unlearned, than Masaccio's puissant drawing. Nevertheless, the greater intimacy of sympathy and interest which we feel for the later men is not accounted for by their greater command of their crafts. There is some new element less readily discovered. We perceive a change of attitude toward life, a new conception of human existence. The readiest explanation and perhaps the best, if we do not treat it as completely adequate, lies in the new Greek thought (or rather Greek thought as the Florentines understood it), which the humanists contributed to Italian culture; and indeed not so much in Greek thought itself, as in the impulse it gave to a subtler and more complicated conception of life.
Direct Greek influence is most conspicuous in Botticelli. This rare spirit wandered about half in the world of reality which he ill understood and depicted badly, and half in a world of fantasy which he knew better than any other painter. The secret of this world of fantasy, as he discovered, was motion. If a vision tarries, it becomes touched by the blight of familiarity, soiled by the comradeship of life. The fairy spirit of imagination must be ever on the wing. No artist ever let Sweet Fancy loose as Botticelli did in his two great pictures, The Primavera (Spring) and The Birth of Venus. In them this Greek influence finds its fullest direct expression. The glory of dawn, the first unveiled fresh beauty of the world, which the Greeks saw, Botticelli saw also. But besides the childlike joy in pure beauty is another, more complicated, element. Into the rapturous Greek world, beautiful with sensuous charm, the bewildering idea of a moral order presents itself. On the countenance of Venus and in the figure of Primavera there is a wistfulness, as if they had a presentiment that they must leave the rose-strewn ocean and the magic wood in which they found themselves. The consequence is a sadness as of beholding an antagonism between two beautiful things.
The subtler and more complicated conception of life is best expressed by Verrocchio, the other master spirit of this generation, who displays in his paintings and statues the joy he takes in pure beauty, but always adds some other element. The little boy who hugs a dolphin in the court of the Palazzo Vecchio is the incarnation of the grace and happiness of childhood, but he has an impish, Puck-like expression. The young bronze David, who has just conquered Goliath, has an odd, mischievous sprightliness. Both statues intimate a sceptical attitude towards the fine seriousness of life which had marked Puritan Florence of the older days. His painting of the Annunciation shows a magic background, beautiful and mystical, with enchanted cities, rivers, mountains, like the part of Xanadu where Kubla Khan decreed his pleasure dome, or the strange land where La belle Dame sans Merci left her knight-at-arms alone and palely loitering. Subtle thoughts play over his statues and paintings, and he taught his pupil Leonardo that strange and beautiful fascination of face which expresses one knows not what. The earlier simplicity of the quattrocento has passed, the artist's attitude to life has become complicated, although the love of beauty for beauty's sake remains abundantly.
The lord of Florence, Lorenzo the Magnificent, the centre and patron of this glittering ring, is the best exponent of the late quattrocento taken as a whole. He touched life on every side, public and private, intellectual and frivolous, religious and cynical, artistic, literary, philosophical. Lorenzo had a striking, indeed a fascinating, personality. His figure was strong and lithe, and his face among a thousand caught the eye. His big jaws, under his lean, furrowed cheeks, were square and grim. His long irregular nose and curving lips gave him a somewhat sardonic expression, but his broad forehead was grave and thoughtful, and "princely counsel" shone in his face. His whole aspect was full of character and dignity. Every one felt his fascination. He was a poet and wrote poems of many kinds, grave and gay, some of which are of acknowledged merit:
Quant'è bella giovinezza
Che si fugge tuttavia,
Chi vuol essere lieto, sia,
Di doman non v'è certezza.[18]
He was a scholar, and full of the fashionable admiration for Plato, though he probably shared the current confusion between Plato's own thoughts and those of the Alexandrian Neoplatonists. He was a statesman of foresight and shrewdness, and contributed more than any one else to preserve the peace of Italy, by maintaining the balance of power among the greater states. He was also a very charming person, and endeavoured to make life in Florence a happy mixture of mirth and intellectual pleasure; and it must be remembered in appreciation of the general sobriety of his life, that a gifted company of men did all they could to spoil him.
Lorenzo was the most remarkable prince of the quattrocento, but there were many others who patronized scholars and artists as generously as he. Alfonso of Aragon, the king who temporarily united the Two Sicilies, was devoted to the humanities. He was wont to hear Terence and Virgil read aloud at dinner, and took Livy with him on his campaigns. But Naples and Sicily had almost no share in the achievements and glory of the Italian Renaissance. Lawless, ignorant, poor, unsuccessful, they responded feebly to the efforts of individuals, who, here and there, strove to emulate the great Florentines. But in the North all the world was mad for art, and its princes led the fashion. Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino (1422-1482), was the foremost scholar among soldiers and the foremost soldier among scholars; he gathered together a noble library, now lodged in the Vatican; he built a palace, unmatched in Italy; and collected about him artists of all kinds. Yet Federigo was a soldier by nature as well as by profession, as one may see from the great portrait of him in the Uffizi, painted by Piero della Francesca. His strong profile, with firm mouth and big, broken, aquiline nose, testifies far more forcibly to his character as a warrior than as a virtuoso. His near neighbour, the tyrant of Pesaro (a little city by the Adriatic coast), Alessandro Sforza, passed the intervals between his battles in buying books. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was likewise a patron of art, and adorned his capital as well as his palaces and villas with all sorts of beautiful things. The dukes of Milan were somewhat eclipsed, but only for a time, by their less powerful rivals of Ferrara and Urbino. The old ducal line of the Visconti had died out with Filippo Maria, and Francesco Sforza (husband of Filippo's daughter), who succeeded to the duchy (1450), was busy making good his very defective title, and had little time to attend to art or letters. Even he kept humanists in his pay, and continued work on the glorious Certosa of Pavia.
Not only princes but private citizens were lovers and patrons of art. In almost every city of the North—excepting Piedmont—there was some artist of whom the whole city was proud. Nevertheless, throughout the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent Florence continued to be the most intellectual of Italian cities, as she had been for many generations; but on Lorenzo's death the primacy in the arts and in matters of the mind passed from Florence to Rome. By a flattering chance that primacy seemed to follow the fortunes of a single family. Under Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo dei Medici, the Renaissance may be said to have made Florence its home; in the later period it found its fullest expression in Rome, and even there took its name, the Age of Leo, from another Medici, Lorenzo's son. It was not to Pope Leo, however, but to his predecessors, that Rome was indebted for preëminence. At the summons of the Papacy men of genius went to Rome from all Italy, but chiefly from Florence; and a distinguished Tuscan, almost a Florentine, who went from Florence to Rome at the culmination of a brilliant career, fairly serves as the personification of this intellectual migration. Tommaso Parentucelli, who was born in a little town near Lucca, was educated in Florence and Bologna. He took holy orders early, and, going back to Florence, quickly became intimate with the clever set of humanists who surrounded Cosimo. He was a great student, and won so high a reputation for learning that it was to him Cosimo applied for advice, when he wanted the right books for the library at Fiesole. This collection became famous and was copied both at Rimini and Urbino. Parentucelli was a very capable and attractive man, and embodied in its best form the essence of Florentine humanistic culture. His character, talents, and accomplishments were recognized in the Church; he became bishop, cardinal, and finally Pope, as Nicholas V (1447-55).
At Rome Nicholas showed the well-marked characteristics of the Renaissance. He fostered learning, art, and general culture, not only because of his interest in them, but because he thought that by their means he could overcome that rumbling spirit of reform, which was making trouble in Bohemia and Germany, and that by giving the reformers intellectual interests he could occupy their minds and quell their discontent. He entertained lofty imaginings of a Papacy, resting on learning and culture, housed in a nonpareil city, which should be the acknowledged and admired head of Christendom. He gathered together scholars of all kinds, collected a library of five thousand volumes, and founded the Vatican library. He rebuilt or restored numerous churches and other buildings in Rome, he began the new Vatican palace, and planned a new cathedral in place of the old basilica of St. Peter's, to be the greatest church in Christendom. He brought to Rome architects, painters, goldsmiths, artists, and artisans of all sorts. With him began the brilliant period of the Papacy as a secular power devoted to art and culture, which culminated in what is known as the Age of Leo X.