Christopher - The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici

Every morning before he began work on The Crucifixion , as on every other morning before starting to paint one of those religious subjects to which he devoted the rest of his life, Fra Angelico would kneel in prayer. And each day, as on every other day when painting a picture of Christ suffering on the Cross, he would be so overcome by emotion that the tears would pour down his cheeks. He was a man of the utmost simplicity, modesty and holiness; hisfellow friars never once saw him angry. Cosimo once said, ‘Every painter paints himself.’ Looking upon the faces and attitudes of the figures in the painting of Fra Angelico it was impossible not to believe that this was so.

When Fra Angelico died in 1455, Cosimo’s health was failing fast. Often totally incapacitated by arthritis and gout, he had to be carried about the house and would cry out as though in agony as he approached a doorway. ‘Why do you scream so?’ his wife once asked him, ‘Nothing has happened.’ ‘If anything had happened,’ he replied, ‘it wouldn’t be any use crying out.’

Over the years he had become increasingly sardonic, ever more terse and caustic. It was said that when his old friend the Archbishop asked him to introduce a measure making it illegal for priests to gamble, he had riposted with curt cynicism, ‘Better to begin by forbidding them loaded dice.’ A visitor to Florence at this time noticed how drawn and ill and unhappy he looked; and his declining years were, indeed, clouded by sadness. His eldest son, Piero, now forty years old, had never been strong and was not expected to survive him long, if at all. Cosimo’s hopes were centred in his second, his favourite son, Giovanni, for whom Michelozzo had been asked to build the Villa Medici on the slopes of Fiesole.

Giovanni was thirty-seven when work began on the villa in 1458. An able, shrewd and cheerful man, he was ill-favoured in appearance with the large Medici nose, a lumpy swelling between his eyebrows and a skin troubled by eczema. Very fond of women, he was also a dedicated trencherman and extremely fat. He was a good judge of painting; he loved music; and was so taken with the ribald wit of the Florentine barber, Burchiello, that even after Burchiello’s talents for burlesque had been turned against the Medici, he invited him to come to entertain him while he was taking a cure at the sulphur baths at Pietrolo. But although so cheerful and carefree, Giovanni was a conscientious citizen and a capable businessman, carefully trained by his father who relied on him more and more after the death of the bank’s general manager, Giovanni d’Amerigo Benci.

Having worked for a time in the Ferrara branch of the family bank, Giovanni became a Priore in the Signoria in 1454, and in the following year served as ambassador to the Curia, where he seems to have spent a large part of his time eating and drinking with the more worldly cardinals. Like his father he had bought a Circassian slave girl from the market in Venice, a ‘delightfully pretty girl aged about seventeen or eighteen… with black hair, delicate features, vivacious and intelligent’. Yet he was evidently quite fond of his wife, Ginevra degli Albizzi, and he loved their only child, Cosimino. Cosimo, too, was devoted to this little boy. There is a story related by his contemporary, Lodovico Carbone of Ferrara, that one day, when Cosimo was discussing some matter of state with an embassy from Lucca, the boy walked into the room with a bundle of sticks, interrupting the conference to ask his grandfather to make him a whistle. Much to the annoyance of the Lucchese delegates, the meeting was promptly adjourned while Cosimo set to work; and no further business was discussed until the whistle had been made to the boy’s satisfaction. ‘I must say, Sir,’ the leader of the delegation felt constrained to protest when recalled to Cosimo’s presence, ‘we cannot be other than surprised at your behaviour. We have come to you representing our commune to treat of grave matters, and you desert us to devote your time to a child.’

4Oh, my lords,’ Cosimo replied, not in the least abashed, throwing his arms round the ambassadors’ shoulders. ‘Are you not also fathers and grandfathers? You must not be surprised that I should have made a whistle. It’s a good thing that the boy didn’t ask me to play it for him; because I would have done that too.’

To his grandfather’s infinite sorrow, this beloved boy died in 1461 shortly before his sixth birthday. And two years later Giovanni himself, having steadfastly refused to diet to lessen his great weight, died of a heart attack. Cosimo never recovered from the shock. As his servants carried him through the big rooms of the Medici Palace, which at the height of his career had contained a household of fifty people, he was heard repeatedly to murmur, ‘Too large a house now for so small a family.’ At his villa at Careggi he spent long hours in silence. Why did he spend so much time alone, without speaking, his wife wanted to know. ‘When we are going away, you spend a fortnight preparing for the move,’ he replied. ‘So, since I have soon to go from this life to another, don’t you understand how much I have to think about.’ On another occasion she asked him why he sat so long with his eyes shut. His reply on this occasion was briefer and even more resigned: ‘To get them used to it.’

In the early summer of 1464, Francesco Sforza’s envoy in Florence, Nicodemo Tranchedini, went to call upon him. He had been there often in the past, and once had found Cosimo and both his sons in bed together, all suffering from gout and each one as ill-tempered as the other. But Cosimo was weary now rather than irritable, almost despairing. As well as gout and arthritis he was ‘afflicted with suppression of urine which caused frequent fever’. ‘Nicodemo mio,’ he said to his visitor, ‘I can bear no more. I feel myself failing and am ready to go.’ Two months later, on i August, he died. He was in his seventy-sixth year. A few days before, he had insisted on getting out of bed and, fully dressed, making his confession to the Prior of San Lorenzo. ‘After which he caused Mass to be said,’ so his son Piero told his two surviving grandsons,

making the responses as though he were quite well. Afterwards being asked to make profession of his faith, he said the creed word for word, repeated the confession himself, and then received the Holy Sacrament, doing so with the most perfect devotion, having first asked pardon of everyone for any wrongs he had done them.

There were those he had wronged, as he well knew. Had he been more lenient, more forebearing he could never have won for himself so much power and wealth. He had never thought it prudent to pardon or to allow back to Florence those rivals whom the Signoria had banished in 1434; he had not hesitated to ruin families or businesses that had appeared to threaten his own; he had always been careful to ensure that his own family’s friends were given profitable or honourable appointments which the Medici’s opponents were rigorously denied. Yet to the Florentines as a whole, to those fellow citizens who had due cause to feel grateful for all he had done for them and for their city, he died revered and sincerely lamented, honoured for his generosity, his political acumen and the wide range of his many accomplishments. As his friend, Vespasiano da Bisticci, wrote of him, his knowledge, taste and versatility were truly remarkable.

When giving audience to a scholar he discoursed concerning letters; in the company of theologians he showed his acquaintance with theology, a branch of learning always studied by him with delight. So also with regard to philosophy. Astrologers found him well versed in their science,

for he had a certain faith in astrology, and employed it to guide him on certain private occasions. Musicians in like manner perceived his mastery of music, wherein he took great pleasure. The same was true about sculpture and painting; both of these arts he understood completely, and showed much favour to all worthy craftsmen. In architecture he was a consummate judge; and without his opinion and advice no public building of any importance was begun or carried to completion.