Bartolommeo Dei.[406]
Lorenzo was buried by the side of his brother Giuliano under the sarcophagus fashioned by Verrocchio for Cosimo and Piero in the Old Sacristy of S. Lorenzo, but in 1559 the coffins were removed and placed in a vault under the statue of the Madonna by Michelangelo in the New Sacristy. No epitaph, not even his name, marks the spot where the Magnificent Lorenzo lies. King Ferrante’s words when he heard of his death were prophetic: “This man has lived long enough for his own immortal fame, but not for Italy. God grant that now he is dead men may not attempt that which they dared not do while he was alive.”
FOOTNOTES:
[150] Renaissance in Italy, J. A. Symonds, ii. 232. Smith, Elder & Co., London, 1897.
[151] To obtain funds for the exchequer exhausted by the war against Milan in 1426 recourse was had to a curious financial scheme. A Monte, or special fund, was created for granting marriage portions to young men and maidens. Every contributor had the right to name a male or female child, to whom at the expiration of fifteen years a sum five times that subscribed was paid when they married. Should the nominee die the money became the property of the Monte. As far as I understand these Monti gradually developed into State pawnbrokers’ establishments.
[152] Istorie di Giovanni Cambi, Delizie degli Eruditi Toscani, xxi. 64. Firenze, 1785.
[153] I have followed the Ashburnham Codex, now in the Laurentian Library, published by Sigr. Gugliemo Volpi in the Atti della R. Academia della Crusca, 1907-1908. There the poem has only twenty octaves instead of fifty, and I think most people will agree that this is the real version and that the other mentioning quella trista Becca, evidently alluding to Luigi Pulci’s poem La Becca di Dicomano, written later in imitation of Lorenzo’s poem Nencia, has interpolations by an inferior hand. Sigr. Volpi has published the poem in a small pamphlet, Un Nuovo Testo della Nencia, da G. Volpi. Tipografia Gallileiana, Firenze, 1908.
[154] Heinrich Isaak, a Bohemian composer.
[155] It is probable that the French ambassadors who so often came to Florence found their journey was profitable. This was certainly the case with Philippe de Comines. See p. [312].
[156] A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome, by M. Creighton, D.D. Oxon. and Cam., Lord Bishop of London, iv. 162. Longmans, Green & Co., 1897.