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Contents The rise of the Medici family 7 11 14 19 23 32 Florence without the Medici (1494-1512) The return of the Medici 36 Giovanni di Bicci Cosimo the Elder Piero the Gouty Lorenzo the Magnificent Piero the Unlucky Giuliano Duke of Nemours Lorenzo Duke of Urbino The Medici and the Papacy Giovanni, Pope Leo x Giulio, Pope Clement vii Alessandro Duke of Florence The Medici Grand Duchy Cosimo i Francesco i Ferdinando i The Medici Queens Caterina Queen of France Maria Queen of France The last Grand Dukes Cosimo ii Ferdinando ii Cosimo iii Gian Gastone The end of a dynasty Anna Maria Luisa Palatine Electress Taking stock of a dynasty 43 45 47 49 49 54 58 62 62 68 74 78 78 85 89 89 91 97 102 104 104 107 T he rise of the M edici family Florence at the beginning of the fifteenth century was already a magnificent city in which the Arts and Crafts [Guilds] had been set up in a very detailed and complete way. They made it possible for work to be carried out on an industrial level, to the extent that every possible aspect of goods and services was covered. They enjoyed the autonomy necessary for achievement of their technical and economical objectives. These organisations, known collectively as the Arts, divided principally into the Major Arts and the Minor Arts, represented the best possible use of shared resources for the achievement of an integral socialeconomic system. This system gave all those who participated in it both the opportunity and the freedom to hold public office and thereby influence the improvement of their social conditions. The Textile and Exchange Guilds were by far the most powerful, partly because they developed more rapidly and more efficiently than other guilds. In 1252, Florence’s influence in economic and financial matters, in which it had established a leading position for itself with its own manufacturing, well-equipped artisanal workshops and a development policy that led to its expansion beyond the Roman walls, was such that its new coin, the fiorino, became, in the general confusion of the cur 7 rency markets of the time, a unit of measurement used throughout Europe and even in some countries in North Africa. Militarily, the city, which had too often relied on mercenaries, had been subjected to two serious defeats: in 1315, at Montecatini, by Uguccione della Faggiola, and in 1325, at Altopascio, by Castruccio Castracani. These defeats had limited its independence to a certain extent. Florence’s republican tradition, which was obscured during the period of the seigneury of Carlo, Duke of Calabria, was not restored to its original splendour in spite of a series of conquests – Pistoia (1331), Cortona (1332), Arezzo (1337) and Colle Val d’Elsa (1338) – nor by the subsequent resumption of the city’s supremacy in Tuscany. After another, brief decline, under the despotic rule of Gualtieri di Brienne, Duke of Athens, and a period of grey political latency, two events occurred which, although very dissimilar, were equally significant historically. The first was the victorious war against Gregory xi, conducted by the merchants who, although indisputably Guelphs, fought against the pope, who was threatening their liberty. They succeeded in breaking the control to which Gregory, with the restoration of papal authority in Romagna, seemed to be attempting to subject them, and were so skilful in doing so that, because of their brilliant conduct of the war, they became known as the Eight Saints. The second, an internal event, was the Revolt of the Ciompi, the wool carders, workers who, dependent on the wool guild, suffered from its repressive economic policies. On 21 July 1378, they revolted against the guild because of their miserable level of pay and, emerging victorious from the struggle, destroyed the power of the nobles and 8The Medici the oligarchy of the Guelph party. The rebels, who had seized the Commune, opened the magistracy to all the Minor Arts, including the recently established Popolo di Dio [People of God]. But, as was in any case to be expected from a regime that was constitutionally and necessarily united, widespread democracy was short-lived. Merchants, entrepreneurs and bankers, having realised the expediency of reestablishing a necessary cohesion amongst themselves for their undoubted common interest within the Major Arts, allied with the Minor Arts in order to isolate the lower class and, above all, to dissolve the Popolo di Dio guild. As confirmation of the image of Florence as a city proudly intent on social values within the framework of an extensive literary and artistic culture that refined the quality of life, it should be pointed out that neither internal trouble nor external aggression had prevented Florence from excelling in intellectual life. Dante and Boccaccio were both sons of Florence, and it is due to them that the Florentine vernacular became established as the Italian language. In the field of learning and scholarship, individuals such as Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni and Poggio Bracciolini had served as shining examples to the Florentine people. In the figurative arts, it suffices to recall Masaccio’s frescoes in the Carmine Church and the Hospital of the Innocents, not to mention the work of Brunelleschi. These great artists had left the Middle Ages far behind them. It was then, in a city as lively and as participatory as Florence, populated by people who were distinguished by the particular arts of making beautiful objects or of formulating ideas tending to improve existence, that an autonoThe rise of the Medici family 9 Paolo Uccello, Battle of St. Romano, variously dated circa 1435-1438 and circa 1456-1460, Florence, Uffizi Beato Angelico, “San Marco Altarpiece”, 1438-1443, Florence, San Marco Museum View of the Medici-Riccardi Palace courtyard in Florence Donatello, David, 1440-1450, Florence, National Bargello Museum COSIMO THE ELDER Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi, 1459, Florence, Medici-Riccardi Palace Giuliano da Sangallo, The Medici Villa at Poggio a Caiano Antonio del Pollaiolo, Hercules and Antaeus, circa 1478, Florence, National Bargello Museum On the following pages: Vault decorations in the Leo x Drawing Room, Poggio a Caiano, Medici Villa Michelangelo Buonarroti, New Sacristy vault, Florence, Medici Chapels Musuem PIERO THE GOUTY LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT