“No art collection,” says Eugene Müntz in his Les Collections des Médicis, “has more deeply influenced the art of the Renaissance, no collection has passed through more trials than the one of this family. Ten generations of enthusiastic amateurs have given themselves to its enrichment; the greatest artists, Donatello, Ghiberti, Verrocchio, the two Lippi, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael have sought inspiration and models in the Medici collection. This while, by an unaccountable contradiction, all the revolutions that troubled the city of Florence seem to have continually threatened the existence of such an inestimable gathering.”
To be convinced of the extreme importance of the Medici collection one has but to reflect that what now remains of it in the Florentine museums or in well-known private hands is only the smallest part of those past treasures, which has managed to survive the pillage of the collection in the year 1494, when Piero Medici fled and the Medici palace was sacked by the populace and the remaining effects sold and dispersed by order of the Commune. What was later recovered by the family was only a small part of the collection. An idea of the magnitude of the Medici museum of art can be gained by perusing the accurate inventories still remaining in the Florentine archives, the list of the objects left by Cosimo the Elder to his son Piero and the catalogue of the collection belonging to Lorenzo il Magnifico, and finally the account of their money.
A brief study of the character of the two most important collectors of the Medici family, Cosimo and Lorenzo il Magnifico, will enable us to judge of the quality and tendencies of the amateur of the Renaissance.
The characteristics of the time in which Cosimo lived and the fact that he had spent a long period in exile, a misfortune brought upon him by jealousy, gave his inclinations as an amateur a different course from what they might otherwise have had. Thus, while on the one hand Cosimo never lost a chance to help artists and to acquire fine works of art, he was shrewd enough to do so without ostentation, to avoid arousing enmity from adversaries. But for this peculiar feeling Cosimo’s palace, the present Palazzo Riccardi, one of the most sumptuous monuments of Florence, might have been still more imposing, displaying greater architectural wealth. It is known that Brunelleschi’s project was privately preferred by Cosimo, but he did not dare to arouse old jealousies by too sumptuous a display. Michelozzo’s design was chosen as the more modest of the two and thus better fitted for the “bourgeois prince” of Florence. Notwithstanding the necessity for caution even in liberality, Cosimo encouraged Poggio Bracciolini and many others in their intelligent search for manuscripts and rare parchments. He had Niccoli as an invaluable adviser and helper, and left to his son Piero one of the finest collections of antiques.
His grandson, Lorenzo il Magnifico, was more free-handed. Times had changed, the Medici family, though without heraldic title, was now master of the city, and the splendours of a man of taste, such as Lorenzo, and his prodigal inclinations, knew no restraint whatever. The difference between Cosimo and Lorenzo lay perhaps in the fact that the former could not do half what he might have done. Comparing Niccoli and Lorenzo, one might say that the former tallied more with the modern interpretation of the word collector, while the latter, as being far too eclectic a lover of all sorts of artistic expression, was more cut out for the part of an enlightened Mæcenas, a prince-amateur and a generous patron of art and literature. One can hardly even imagine the Magnifico classifying his cameos as did Niccoli, or giving a semi-scientific and rational order to his objects of virtu, but, running on the same lines as Cosimo, Lorenzo invested in the rôle of patron of art and lover of the antique, in which he displayed such magnificence as to fully deserve his appellation. Such was the character of these two Medicis, stated by contemporaries as being more greedy for fame than money. An estimation fully justified, especially in the case of Lorenzo, who in his Ricordi notes that his father and grandfather spent 663,755 florins in the space of thirty years and rejoices in the fact. The sum quoted amounts to rather more than a million francs; how many modern heirs would feel like Lorenzo il Magnifico?
Like Niccoli and Cosimo, Lorenzo possessed the excellent quality, most uncommon in a collector, of letting friends and admirers have full benefit of his collection. More than the gratification of an egotistic desire to possess rare and beautiful things, he saw in his artistic pursuits a great means of education and a help to the artists of his time.
According to the taste of his age, Lorenzo was very partial to Greek and Roman art, to all that concerned past civilization. A page of Plato or the beautiful form of a Greek marble aroused in him feelings of emotion more than any modern expression. Not only did he fill his palace with fine pieces of sculpture but his villas also appear to have been replete with them.
“He was bursting with joy,” Valori, one of his contemporaries tells us, “when he received the bust of Plato sent him by Girolamo Roscio.”
This passion for the antique, however, did not prevent Lorenzo from encouraging the artists of his own time or from taking a deep interest in their art. Eclectic in taste, as a collector he nevertheless had some preferences. In a letter to his son Giulio, the future Leo X, on his promotion to the Cardinalate, he gives advice as to the kind of art which is most in keeping with ecclesiastical taste, but as a matter of fact epitomizes his own penchant as a collector of art. Urging his son to give preference to antique statuary, he discourages him from becoming a collector of jewels, tapestries and embroideries. “Love in preference,” he recommends, “fine antique things and books”—qualche gentilezza di cose antiche.
Lorenzo the Magnificent seems to stand apart from the lovers of art of his time not only on account of his culture and intelligence, his broad eclectic views and genuine cult of every expression of beauty, but as being a rare type of the grand seigneur, æsthete and humanist. Paul II is a passionate collector of art, but more a scholar than an artist, with him knowledge is supreme; Cardinal Scarampi is, as Ciriaco D’Ancona calls him, an archæologist, and Niccoli, as an eager and intelligent searcher of objects, would make a good type of antiquary of our day, but Lorenzo displays interest in every kind of elevated human expression; his character seems to conform to his noble motto, Nul ne sait qui n’essaye (nobody knows who does not try).