Lorenzo de' Medici

The exact same full name was also carried by his grandson Lorenzo (1492–1519), Duke of Urbino, with whom he is sometimes confused.

Lorenzo di Piero de' Medici (January 1, 1449, Florence – 8 April, 1492) was an Italian statesman and ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

Known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by contemporary Florentines, he was the most remarkable public figure of his time - accomplished in the manly arts of jousting and the hunt, as well as a wily diplomat, and the head of a brilliant group of scholars and poets. He was charismatic, tough, passionate, and energetic, equally devoted to his city, his family, the Church, and the pursuit of art and learning. His life coincided with the high point of the early Italian Renaissance, and his premature death marked the end of the Golden Age of Florence. The tenuous peace that he helped to maintain between the various Italian states collapsed with his death, and the French invasion of 1494 - two years after his death - began nearly 400 years of foreign occupation of the Italian peninsula. Though the Medici remained in power in Florence for several centuries (as well as producing three Popes and two Queens of France), none of his successors ever approached his range of interests and accomplishments, or the generosity of his vision.

Lorenzo and politics

Lorenzo was born into the leading family in Florence, owners of an international bank with branches throughout Europe. His grandfather, Cosimo de Medici, became the first of the Medici to combine running the bank with leading the Republic in both government and philanthropy, spending an enormous portion of his fortune (he was one of the wealthiest men in Europe) on art and public works. Lorenzo's father Piero Piero 'the Gouty' de' Medici was also at the center of Florentine life, and extremely active as a patron and collector. Lorenzo, groomed for power, assumed a leading role in the state upon the death of his father in 1469, when Lorenzo was just twenty. Ironically it was in the running of the bank that Lorenzo had the least success, and its assets contracted seriously during the course of his lifetime.

Lorenzo, like his father and grandfather, ruled Florence indirectly, through surrogates in the city councils, through threats, payoffs, strategic marriages - all the tools of autocracy. It was inevitable that rival families should harbor resentments as to Medici dominance, and enemies of the Medici remained a factor in Florentine life long after Lorenzo's passing.

On April 26, 1478, in an incident called the Pazzi Conspiracy, a group including members of Pazzi family, backed by the Archbishop of Pisa and his patron Pope Sixtus IV, attacked Lorenzo and his brother and co-ruler Giuliano in the cathedral of Florence. Lorenzo was stabbed but escaped, however the attackers managed to kill Giuliano. The conspiracy was brutally put down (against the express request of Lorenzo), including the lynching of the Archbishop.

In the aftermath of the Pazzi Conspiracy and the punishment of the Pope's supporters, the Medici and Florence suffered from the wrath of the Pope. He seized all the Medici assets he could find, excommunicated Lorenzo and the entire government of Florence, and finally put the city under interdict. When that had little effect, the Pope formed a military alliance with King Ferrante of Naples to attack Florence. The King's son, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, promptly invaded.

The Florentines promptly excommunicated the Pope, and Lorenzo rallied the citizens. However, with little help being provided by traditional Medici allies in Bologna and Milan (the latter being convulsed by power struggles among the Sforza), the war dragged on, and only deft diplomacy by Lorenzo, who personally travelled to Naples, saved the day. This further increased his popularity with the Florentines, and enabled him to secure constitutional changes that enhanced his power.

Thereafter, Lorenzo, like his grandfather Cosimo de' Medici, pursued a policy of maintaining both peace and a balance of power between the Northern Italian states, and keeping other states out of Italy. He also tried to create a more unified Italy but with little success.

Lorenzo and the Renaissance

Another of Lorenzo's successes was in the fields of art and learning; he gathered at his court the leading artists and intellectuals of his day.

His support for artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Sandro Botticelli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Andrea del Verrocchio and Michelangelo Buonarroti was instrumental in the development of Florence as the center of 15th century Renaissance Europe. Although his financial straits made it impossible for him to commission many works himself, he saw to it that they received commissions from other patrons. He was an artist of some note himself, writing poetry in his native Tuscan. Michelangelo actually lived with Lorenzo and his family for several years, and he was permitted to both dine at the family table and sit in on meetings of the Neo-Platonic Academy. Michelangelo never forgot his indebtedness to Lorenzo, and biographers like Irving Stone consider his early years with the Medici circle as crucial to his later development.

Cosimo started a collection of books which became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library) and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's agents retrieved from the East large numbers of previously unknown classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy his books and diffuse their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism through his circle of scholarly friends who studied Greek philosophers, and attempted to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity; among this group were the philosophers Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and the humanist poet Angelo Poliziano.

Later years

One area in which he was not successful was business. During his tenure, several branches of the family bank collapsed because of bad loans, and, in later years, he got into financial difficulties himself and resorted to mis-appropriating trust and state funds for his own needs.

Toward the end of Lorenzo's life, Florence came under the spell of Savonarola, who believed that Christians had strayed too far into Greco-Roman culture. Oddly enough, Lorenzo played a role in bringing Savonarola to Florence, even though Savonarola disliked popular art and music, two things that Lorenzo admired.

Two of his sons later became powerful popes. His second son, Giovanni, became Pope Leo X, and his adopted son Giulio (who was the illegitimate son of his slain brother Giuliano) became Pope Clement VII.

Unfortunately, his first son and his political heir, Piero 'the Unfortunate' squandered his father's patrimony and brought down his father's dynasty in Florence. Another Medici, his brother Giovanni, restored it, but it was only made wholly secure again on the accession of a distant relative from a branch line of the family, Cosimo I de' Medici.

Lorenzo de' Medici died peacefully during the night of April 8th/9th, 1492, at the long-time family villa of Careggi (Florentine reckoning considers days to begin at sunset, so his death date is the 9th in that reckoning). Savonarola visited Lorenzo on his death bed, probably on account of the pity he had for the dying man. The rumor that Savonarola damned Lorenzo on his deathbed has been refuted by Roberto Ridolfi in his book, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola. Letters written by witnesses to Lorenzo's death report that Lorenzo died a consoled man, on account of the blessing Savonarola gave him. As Lorenzo died, the tower of the church of Santa Reparata was allegedly struck by lightning. He and his brother Giuliano are buried in a chapel designed by Michelangelo, the New Sacristy; it is located adjacent to the north transept of the Church of San Lorenzo, and is reached by passing throught the main Capella di Medici; the chapel is ornamented with spectacular and famous sculptures, and some of the original working drawings of Michelangelo can still be seen on the walls.

He died at the dawn of "the age of exploration"; Christopher Columbus would reach the "New World" only six months later. With his death, the center of the Renaissance shifted from Florence to Rome, where it would remain for the next century and beyond.

Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo and politics

Lorenzo and the Renaissance

Later years

See also

Further reading