Download The rise of the Medici family Florence without the Medici (1494

Contents
The rise of the Medici family 7
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Florence without the Medici (1494-1512)
The return of the Medici
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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
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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
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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
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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