A liberal and discerning patron to artists and men of letters, Cosimo founded libraries in the Badia of Fiesole and in S. Marco; in the latter he had a cell for his own use. To the Greeks who came to the Council of Florence, or soon afterwards fled thither when Constantinople was captured by the Turks, he extended a splendid hospitality in his palace in Via Larga. “To him,” remarks Burckhardt, “belongs the special glory of recognizing in the Platonic philosophy the fairest flower of the ancient world of thought, and of inspiring his friends with the same belief.” While spending his money in a princely manner on works of art, public libraries and buildings, and in donations to needy scholars, his home life was perfectly simple. He was an excellent husband and a kind father, and contemporaries tell us he rose early to prune his pear trees and plant his vines. His greatest recreation was in the society of learned men. On feast days Argyropolos, who taught Greek to his son Piero and afterwards to his grandson Lorenzo, would go with his scholars to the Palazzo Medici and discuss philosophy. “The great Cosimo,” writes Marsilio Ficino, “often attended to hear the Greek philosopher Gemisthus Pletho, well nigh a second Plato, discourse concerning the Platonic mysteries, and so moved was he by his stirring eloquence that he determined to establish a Greek academy at the first opportunity. When this project was about to be carried into effect he selected me, the son of his favourite doctor, to preside over the important work, though at the time I was little more than a boy.” Enormous sums were spent by him on building. The convent of S. Marco cost 70,000 golden florins, and his own palace 60,000, so that an army of workmen obtained employment, whose wages were paid regularly at his banking house every Saturday.
The death of his second son, Giovanni, was a blow from which Cosimo did not recover. He lingered for a year, during which his chief solace was in being read aloud to. “Come to us, Marsilio,” he wrote, “as soon as you can. Bring with you your translation of Plato, De summo Bono, for I desire nothing so much as to learn the road which leads to the greatest happiness. Farewell, come not without thy Orphean lyre.”
Cosimo died on the 1st August, 1464, at Careggi. His funeral was attended by a huge concourse of people. His fellow-citizens enacted that the epitaph Cosmus Medice hic situs est decreto publico Pater Patriae should be engraved on the plain porphyry slab which marks his tomb in front of the choir in S. Lorenzo.
Piero de’ Medici, a martyr to gout and in bad health, soon felt the weight of irksome business, as had been predicted by his father, and called in one of his most trusted friends. The sagacious, far-seeing Cosimo had been singularly deceived in his estimate of Messer Diotisalvi Neroni, in whom he had counselled his son to place absolute confidence. Neroni was secretly in league with Luca Pitti, Agnolo Acciaiuoli and Niccolò Soderini, avowed enemies of the Medici, and when Piero placed the books containing Cosimo’s business transactions in his hands, he advised him to call in the debts owing by many of the chief families of the city. The consequence was the loss of the popularity and of the affection enjoyed by Cosimo. The projected marriage of Piero’s son, Lorenzo, to a daughter of the proud Roman house of Orsini, added fuel to the flame. It was decided to assassinate him on his return from Careggi, and his life was only saved by the presence of mind of young Lorenzo. He observed armed men as he rode into town before his father, and sent a messenger back to tell the bearers of Piero’s litter to take a roundabout country lane, whilst announcing that his father was but a short way behind him. The defection of Luca Pitti was a deathblow to the conspiracy and to his own fortunes. Neroni and Soderini fled to Venice, Agnolo Acciaiuoli to Naples, whence he wrote to Piero to excuse himself:
“I laugh at the tricks of fortune, and how she turns friends into foes. Thou may’st recall that when thy father was exiled, thinking more of his disaster than of mine own peril I lost my country, and was well nigh losing my life. Never during my friendship with Cosimo did I cease to honour and favour thy house, neither have I, since his death, had any intention of offending thee. It is true that thy bad health and the tender age of thy children so alarmed me, that I thought it were better to give such form to the State that our country should not fall to ruin after thy death. Hence arose certain events, not directed against thee, but in favour of Florence, which even if erroneous merit forgetfulness, on account of my good conscience and my past actions.”
Piero’s answer to this epistle was: “Thy laughter is the reason why I do not weep; for wert thou laughing at Florence, I should be weeping at Naples. I admit thy friendship for my father and thou must admit that he repaid thee well. So thou art more beholden to us than we to thee, as deeds are worth more than words. Having been thus recompensed for thy good services, thou canst not wonder at being repaid for evil ones. Love of thy country is no excuse, as none will believe that the Medici love this city less, or have served her worse, than the Acciaiuoli. Live therefore in dishonour where thou art, as thou hast not known how to live with honour here.”
Piero de’ Medici was forty-eight when his father died. He inherited his love of letters and was of a kindly nature, “it was due to him,” writes Machiavelli, “that his partisans did not stain their hands with the blood of their fellow-citizens.” In June, 1469, his son Lorenzo married Clarice Orsini, and great festivities took place in the Medici palace, soon to be followed by sounds of mourning, for Piero died in December. “Two days later, the principal men of the city and of the State,” writes Lorenzo in his Ricordi, “came to us in our house to condole with us on our loss, and to encourage me to take charge of the city and of the government, as my grandfather and my father had done. This I was most unwilling to accept, on account of my youth and of the great responsibility and peril, yet for the safety of our friends and of our possessions I did so. For it is ill living for the rich in Florence unless they rule the State. Until now we have succeeded with honour and renown, which I attribute, not to prudence, but to the grace of God and the good conduct of my ancestors.”
Lorenzo was then in his twenty-second year and Giuliano was sixteen. Few princes of that time had received such an education as the sons of Piero de’ Medici. Messer Gentile Becchi of Urbino, a man of great learning, pure life and high moral character, was their tutor, Landino taught them Italian literature, Argyropolos Greek, and Marsilio Ficino the philosophy of Plato. Above all Lorenzo had been well trained by his mother, a woman of strong good sense, a poetess, yet withal an excellent housewife. Niccolò Valori describes Lorenzo as “above the common stature, broad-shouldered and solidly built, robust, and second to none in agility. Although nature had been a step-mother to him with regard to his personal appearance, she had acted as a loving mother in all things connected with the mind. His complexion was dark, and although his face was not handsome it was so full of dignity as to compel respect. He was short-sighted, his nose was flattened and he had no sense of smell. This did not trouble him and he was wont to say that he was grateful to nature, disagreeable things being more common than agreeable ones to so delicate a sense.”
In March, 1471, when Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, with his wife, paid a visit to Lorenzo, the Medici palace must have been filled to overflowing. “100 men at arms, 500 infantry, 50 running footmen clothed in silk and cloth of silver, 50 led ambling palfreys for the use of the Duchess and 50 led war-horses, splendidly caparisoned, for himself; dogs and falcons for the chase and 12 two-wheeled carts,[74] drawn by mules and covered with embroidered cloth of gold and silver, for the use of the Duchess and her ladies whilst crossing the Alps; in all the Duke had 2,000 horses,” says an eyewitness. Magnificent festivities were given every day and to the horror of the religiously inclined, meat was eaten although it was Lent; so when the church of S. Spirito was burnt to the ground, owing to the scenery erected for a sacred play acted before the Duke catching fire, it was looked upon as a judgment of God.
But Lorenzo loved the society of scholars and artists, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leon Battista Alberti, Michelangelo Buonarroti, Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, Cristofano Landino, and Luigi Pulci, who wrote his Morgante for the amusement of Lorenzo’s mother Lucrezia, and recited it canto by canto after dinner, were his constant guests in the palace of Via Larga. In their society he laid aside the statesman and became the discerning critic and the graceful poet.