WE KNOW THAT Cosimo de’ Medici was an instinctively cautious man in his personal, political and professional life – yet why was he so profligate in his patronage? There are several reasons for this, each an integral part of his complex character. First of all he felt guilt, for although the Church tended to turn a blind eye, Christianity still explicity forbade usury: If you lend money . . . you shall not extract interest’ (Exodus 22:25), and many other references make this all too plain. Cosimo was also mindful of Christ’s pronouncement: ‘It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God’ (Matthew 19:24). Throughout his life Cosimo remained a devout Christian, insisting that the ledgers of the Medici Bank, like those of all other banks of the period, should be headed with the inscription: ‘Col Nome di Dio e di Bona Ventura’ (in the context, this has frequently been translated as In the name of God and Profit’, the latter being what ‘good fortune’ means for a banker). By middle age this conflict between Cosimo’s faith and his worldly activities had begun to trouble his conscience; and when he was in his early forties he had a private audience with Pope Eugenius IV, during his residence in Florence. The pope suggested that to salve his conscience he could fund the rebuilding of the monastery of San Marco, and Cosimo immediately set Michelozzo to work on this project, one on which he would eventually spend more than 30,000 florins. This was a huge amount, but Cosimo seems to have taken this project very much to heart; he even retained his own cell in San Marco, where he would retire for periods of meditation. During these periods he began holding theological discussions with the prior, Antonio Pierozzi, a small intense man of austere and formidable character, whose exceptional spiritual qualities would cause him to be canonised after his death.
Something in Pierozzi’s character appealed deeply to Cosimo, and it was probably the saintly prior who convinced him to seek full forgiveness for his sins. In the case of usury, this could only be done by disembursing himself of all that he had gained through such practice. This would certainly account for the sheer extravagance of Cosimo’s patronage – though a careful study of the libro segreto reveals that even the colossal 660,000 florins he is known to have spent did not account for all he had gained. It has been estimated that Cosimo inherited somewhere in the region of 100,000 florins from his father Giovanni di Bicci, yet despite his vast charitable spending he is thought to have left more than 200,000 florins.
There is no denying that Cosimo’s motives for his charitable projects were not entirely spiritual. They certainly furthered his political aims, as well as raising his standing in Florence, and that of the Medici Bank far beyond it. Cosimo is known to have rebuilt the residential college for Florentine students in Paris, and to have refurbished the Italian church of Santo Spirito in Jerusalem. Yet he remained a political realist, as we know from his contemporary Vespasiano, who records him saying: ‘I know the ways of Florence, within fifty years we Medici will have been exiled, but my buildings will remain.’ He wished to immortalise himself in the works that resulted from his patronage. This may well explain why he usually chose to patronise publicly visible projects; when it came to more private and less visible patronage, such as painting, he preferred to leave this to his sons Piero and Giovanni.
Cosimo may have had little faith in the permanence of Medici power after he was gone, but he made sure that the family remained in control of Florence as long as he was alive, and any potential political opponents were quickly warned off. Many fortunes were made during Cosimo’s ‘reign’, and money meant power in Florence; in this the city lived up to its republican ideal, at least in part – and certainly more than any other major city in Italy (or indeed Europe). In Florence, power traditionally lay in the hands of the business class; the landowning aristocracy was specifically eliminated from the democratic process, they could have their titles instead of the vote – though some managed to circumvent this ban by becoming members of a trade guild.
When Cosimo noticed that any family was accumulating sufficient wealth to become a possible focus of opposition, he was not slow to issue a covert warning. But despite its underhand nature, the advice would be quite straightforward: the head of the family should disperse his capital by purchasing country estates, and he would then be ennobled; if not, he was liable to face a ruinous tax assessment by the inspectors, who were all stalwarts of the Medici party.
Cosimo’s power was everywhere; as a foreign envoy to the city remarked: It is Cosimo who does everything . . . Without him nothing is done.’ Yet his power was also elusive; he was not the government, merely the power behind it, and such power was difficult to oppose or eliminate. In the words of the renowned twentieth-century Renaissance historian J. R. Hale: ‘given the city scale of most Italian statecraft, it is not without reason that [Cosimo] has been compared to the “boss” of Chicago or Dallas ward politics or the “padre” of a power zone of the Mafia’. This is fair comment – a number of bloody deeds were done in his name, if not necessarily on his direct orders, in back-streets at night – yet it is difficult to characterise as a tyranny a government that relied on such widespread public acquiescence. The people of Florence evidently felt that they needed their godfather; even if they did not necessarily want him, they understood that the alternatives were worse.
This may have accounted for the internal politics of Florence, but its external politics was a different matter. Here Cosimo was very much the visible moving force, and wished everyone outside Florence to know this. There is no doubt that he was an extraordinarily astute statesman, constantly working for the good of Florence – and its citizens, ruled as well as ruling. Cosimo had a vision that extended far beyond local politics, and this was largely due to his position as a banker. If the Medici Bank was to thrive, or even survive, it was necessary to keep a very close watch on the political scene; and here his international network of branches and agents served him well, supplying a constant flow of intelligence. By the 1450s the Medici Bank had established branches over much of western Europe – from London to Naples, Cologne to Ancona. The only countries that remained mostly beyond the Medici reach were Spain (which jealously monopolised its trade with the New World), Austria and southern Germany (the province of the great German financial family, the Fuggers of Augsburg) and the Baltic (monopolised by the Hanseatic League).
Although Cosimo may have sinned as a godfather of the Renaissance, he was undeniably amongst the saints when it came to the major players on the Italian scene. Florence’s main adversary was the powerful and intermittently rich city of Milan, whose shifting territorial border seldom lay much more than fifty miles to the north. Milan had been ruled since 1412 by Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, the degenerate scion of an illustrious family, who lived as a recluse in his impregnable fortress in Milan, assuming the proportions of a grim legend, even amongst his own people. Immensely fat and fearsomely ugly, he rarely appeared in public; he refused to attend public ceremonies, even those involving a visiting emperor or royalty, owing to his touchiness about his appearance. Having succeeded to the dukedom on the assassination of his older brother, he remained paranoid about plots to kill him, sleeping in heavily armed bedchambers, and switching beds three times a night to elude possible assassins. He was also ludicrously superstitious: his terror of thunder drove him to construct a special double-doored soundproofed chamber in the midst of his castle, so that he could not hear this frightful omen.
When Filippo Maria had suddenly ascended to the dukedom at the age of twenty, he had found the coffers all but empty; in order to remedy this he married Beatrice, the forty-year-old widow of one of his condottieri, who brought a dowry of 40,000 florins. Marital relations between the reclusive, overweight Filippo and the unexpectedly cultured, former mercenary general’s wife proved difficult from the outset, and after a few years paranoia took over. Beatrice was arrested and put on trial for infidelity with a teenage pageboy, whose only transgression had been to entertain his mistress, in the company of her maids of honour, with his lute playing. All, including the maids of honour, were tortured until they confessed Beatrice’s infidelity, and were then executed, while all evidence relating to their ‘trial’ was stricken from the records. Later, a second, politically expedient marriage was arranged with the young Maria of Savoy, thus protecting Milan against attack from the north. But when the couple retired to their wedding bed, Filippo heard a dog howling in the night, and as a result of this dreadful omen refused to have his wife under the same roof as himself – a decision that almost certainly saved her life. However, this meant that there was no direct Visconti heir to the dukedom, though Filippo did produce an illegitimate daughter called Bianca.
With such a figure as his immediate neighbour, Cosimo de’ Medici was forced to exercise his considerable diplomatic skills to the full. Despite living locked in his castle, Filippo Maria Visconti had dreams of making Milan the supreme power in northern Italy, and his scheming to this end exhibited all the skill of the convinced paranoid. It would be almost impossible to guess his next move, which might well be prompted by his latest consultation with his astrologer. Whim was another factor to keep his enemies guessing, and proved particularly effective in dealing with the powerful condottieri whom he employed to fight his wars. When payment was withheld, they would often fight on – rather than withdraw and have another condottiere move in and pick up their pay. Visconti knew how to play on even the slightest fears and suspicions of others.
Cosimo managed to achieve a measure of equilibrium in northern Italy by maintaining Florence’s traditional alliance with Venice. Even so, Milan remained a continuous threat, with Duke Filippo Maria encouraged by the exiled Rinaldo degli Albizzi, who had sworn revenge on Cosimo. Milanese armies invaded Florentine territory in 1437, and again in 1438; both times they were successfully repulsed, but not without strains beginning to show on the international scene. In order to combat Milan’s mercenary troops, Cosimo hired his new friend, the great mercenary general Francesco Sforza, ordering him to drive the Milanese forces from Florentine territory, and then take Lucca, a move that he knew would be popular in Florence. Sforza advanced, forcing the Milanese troops to retreat to Lucca, but was unwilling to press home his advantage by actually attacking the city and the Milanese forces. He had no wish to offend Duke Filippo Maria, as he still had hopes of marrying the Duke’s illegitimate daughter Bianca. At the same time Venice was refusing to support Florence in an attack on Lucca, being reluctant to see any increase in Florentine territory. Cosimo himself travelled to Venice in 1438 in an attempt to persuade his allies to join him, but Venice remained obdurately neutral; Cosimo now realised that he could never fully rely on Venice.
In 1440, Milanese mercenaries led by Rinaldo degli Albizzi again marched into Florentine territory, but were again repulsed, causing Rinaldo to give up in disgust and set out on a prolonged pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Meanwhile Sforza was rewarded for his covert loyalty to Milan, and Duke Filippo Maria allowed him to marry Bianca, even making vague promises about naming Sforza as his heir.
Six years later, in 1447, Filippo Maria of Milan died. He had nominated no successor, and claims to the dukedom of Milan came in from all sides. Sforza’s claim was ignored, as King Alfonso of Naples and the French Duke of Orleans both pressed their separate claims; meanwhile the people of Milan declared their city state a republic, on the Florentine model. After three years of international diplomatic intrigue and squabbling, Sforza simply moved in with his army and declared himself Duke of Milan. Cosimo had backed the right man; Florence’s old enemy had now become its ally.
But Sforza’s move had dangerous consequences. Venice immediately broke off relations with Florence and allied itself with the Kingdom of Naples, which still laid claim to the dukedom of Milan. Florentine citizens were expelled from Venice and Naples, and the Medici Bank was forced to close its branches in these cities, at considerable cost: everyone reneged on their debts to the enemy. In compensation, Sforza invited Cosimo to open a branch of the Medici Bank in Milan, offering him a palace for its premises. Such would be Sforza’s reliance on the Medici Bank that this palace virtually became the dukedom’s ministry of finance; once again, Cosimo’s luck had held.
A precarious peace now held in Italy, with Naples and Venice appearing to be willing to bide their time; to Cosimo’s relief, this meant that trade could continue. However, although the alliance with Milan may have been good for Florence’s merchants and external trade, it was not welcomed by the majority of the populace. Many had fought in the wars against Milan, and found this alliance with their old enemy difficult to stomach. Meanwhile aggrieved exiles returning from Naples and Venice spread rumours that Cosimo was supporting Sforza only because the mercenary general owed him a fortune, which he wanted to get back through the coffers of Milan.
These changes in the Italian political scene soon began to have implications further afield. Feeling under threat, Venice appealed to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III to dismantle the alliance between Florence and Milan, which threatened the whole of northern Italy. In response to this threat, Cosimo decided that his only option was to appeal for support from the Emperor Frederick III’s enemy, King Charles VII of France. He knew that this appeal would have to be handled with extreme care, for France had long had territorial ambitions in Italy, and a full-scale French invasion had to be avoided at all costs. Initially Cosimo thought of travelling north to meet Charles VII himself, but he recognised that the situation was too precarious at home for him to leave Florence on a long mission to France. Instead he chose as his ambassador his humanist friend Agnolo Acciaiuoli, a member of one of the old Florentine families that had remained loyal to the Medici; Acciaiuoli himself had even been banished by Rinaldo degli Albizzi during Cosimo’s exile. He was also an extremely gifted orator, and had spent many happy hours with Cosimo reading the Roman author and rhetorician Cicero. Perhaps compensating for his ineptitude as a public speaker, Cosimo greatly admired Cicero’s speeches, which defended the republican virtues of Ancient Rome and stressed civic duty as one of the necessary requirements of the good life.
In 1451 Acciaiuoli was despatched to France, where his oratory duly charmed Charles VII, who promised to recognise the new Milan–Florence alliance for the next two years. Deprived of trade with Venice, Florence had now turned to France, and Charles VII’s assurance meant that the increasing trade between the two states could continue, for the time being. But Acciaiuoli had been forced to make one minor concession: Milan and Florence agreed to stand aside if French claims to the kingdom of Naples were pursued. This meant that René of Anjou, the French claimant, was now free to move south to Naples, crossing Florentine Tuscany unhindered.
Cosimo remained wary of French intervention in Italy, but he was presented with an unexpected opportunity to counteract this. In 1452 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III passed through Florence on his way back from the formality of his coronation by the pope. Cosimo ordered that the emperor and his entourage of 1,500 Austrian knights should be housed and entertained at the city’s expense, while the Medici Bank was told to cover all outstanding debts for the quickly depleted city exchequer. The cost proved enormous, but it bought the lasting goodwill of the emperor. The citizens of Florence, on the other hand, were less impressed, and there were increased mutterings against the Medici. The cost of supporting Sforza in Milan was proving a major drain on the city finances; his large mercenary army was no longer fighting, but still had to be paid – and now the populace of Florence was subsidising drinking bouts by thousands of loutish Austrian knights. What next would the Medici expect of them?
Then disaster struck: King Alfonso of Naples, outraged that Florence had recognised French claims to his throne, despatched an army under his illegitimate son Ferrante to march on the Florentine Republic. News soon reached Florence that Ferrante and his troops had crossed the southern border and were advancing through the countryside south of the village of Rencine. The city was in turmoil; this was all the fault of the Medici. Cosimo was horrified, but maintained a brave face. At one point a panic-stricken merchant burst into his study in the Palazzo Medici, crying out: ‘Rencine has fallen!’ Cosimo looked up calmly from his desk and asked with a puzzled frown: ‘Rencine? Where is this Rencine?’ It was as if he considered it a matter of little importance.
Cosimo assured those around him that there was no need for alarm, but it was not long before his nerve broke. As the panic-stricken citizens of Florence clamoured outside the Palazzo Medici, demanding to know what was to become of them, Cosimo crept upstairs to his bedchamber. At sixty-four years old, it was suddenly all too much for him. Some reports claim that he feigned illness, others that he actually fell ill with worry; in all likelihood, he suffered a minor nervous collapse. The arch controller was unable to face the prospect of having lost control; this time he stood to lose everything, and there was nothing he could do about it.
At this moment, the news reached Florence that René of Anjou and his formidable French army had crossed the border and were heading south to attack the Neapolitans. As if by a miracle, Florence had been saved. Cosimo retired to his country villa at Cafaggiolo in the mountains to recover, and gradually regained his old composure. Yet now there was another threat to be faced. In 1453 Charles VII’s two-year guarantee of support ran out, which meant that the Venetians could attack at any moment. But once again Florence’s luck held, as news reached Europe of a crippling blow to Venice: Constantinople had fallen to the Ottoman Turks. This was a disaster for Venetian trade, and its far-flung Greek and Adriatic possessions now stood at the mercy of the Turks. Yet it was soon realised that this was more than just a catastrophe for Venice; the whole of Italy now came under threat from the Turks. In 1454, Venice united with Florence, Milan and the pope in a Holy League against the Turkish infidel; this was soon joined by Naples, and a period of peace now emerged in Italy.
Cosimo de’ Medici firmly believed: ‘Trade brings all mankind together, and casts glory on those who venture into it.’ This was the crucial difference between him and his rivals on the Italian and European scene. Kings, dukes, princes, emperors and popes had the traditional agenda of power and territorial ambition. With the exception of Venice (also significantly a republic), trade was not their prime concern; such things were a matter for merchants and bankers. Cosimo was not interested in senseless conflict; in this, he was very much a modern ruler. Instead he was interested in money, which he saw as his power base; and here his interest was at least in part also that of the citizens of Florence. Yet his pursuit of prosperity, both for himself and Florence, was to prove as risky as any king’s pursuit of glory and conquest. In foreign policy, Cosimo had been perceptive enough to back Sforza, a choice that had echoed his father’s risky backing of Baldassare Cossa. But Baldassare had become pope and had entrusted the Medici with the lucrative papal account; Sforza, on the other hand, had merely become Duke of Milan, a cornerstone in Cosimo’s policy to achieve peace, but a constant drain on Medici finances. The Medici Bank’s main source of income remained its revenue derived from the papal Curia: the link with Rome remained as vital as the link with Milan.
Yet Cosimo had been forced to take a big risk here. Years before Sforza took over in Milan, he had begun carving his own private state out of land in the Romagna, which consisted of a number of quasi-autonomous small city states, though it officially belonged to the Papal States. This made Sforza no friend of Pope Eugenius IV, who had been less than happy when he learned of Cosimo’s meeting and consequent friendship with Sforza. As a result, the Medici Bank lost the account handling the papal revenues in the last years of Eugenius IV’s papacy. But although it had forfeited the Court of Rome branch, it still retained its other Rome branch, which continued to transact a very lucrative business holding large deposits in the pope’s personal account, as well as those of many of his cardinals.
Cosimo had foreseen this development, and as ever he had taken precautions. Aware that the ageing Eugenius IV would not live much longer, he had long ago begun quietly cultivating a friendship with Tommaso Parentucelli, his most likely successor.
Parentucelli was the son of a poor physician from remote northern Tuscany, and as a young man he had been forced to abandon his studies at the University of Bologna due to lack of funds. Around 1420 he had arrived in Florence, where he had been employed by Rinaldo degli Albizzi and Palla Strozzi as a tutor for their children. During this time he had embraced humanism and joined Cosimo’s circle. He soon shared Cosimo’s love of books and played a major role in helping Cosimo set up his library, which was open to all and even loaned rare manuscripts to impecunious scholars such as Parentucelli. For his part, Parentucelli read every book and manuscript he could lay his hands on, so that within a few years it was being said of him that ‘anything he does not know lies beyond the limits of human knowledge’. He soon attracted the attention of Eugenius IV, who appointed him Bishop of Bologna, and Cosimo now loaned Parentucelli large sums of money so that he could seek out and purchase rare manuscripts for the Church. The two of them would meet up again when Parentucelli attended the Ecumenical Council in Florence in 1439. Here his deep learning impressed the Byzantine delegates, and he managed to play a leading role in persuading the Armenians, Ethiopians and Jacobites to forget their differences with Constantinople and join in the ecumenical aims of the Council.
When Eugenius IV finally died in 1447, Parentucelli succeeded him as Pope Nicholas V, and Cosimo’s position as the papal banker was once again assured. Yet their friendship was much more than a monetary matter. Nicholas V would go on to consult Cosimo about the founding of the Vatican Library, which he modelled directly on the Medici Library. Likewise the pope’s wish for peace in Italy ‘without using arms other than those of Christ’ coincided with Cosimo’s more secular wish for peace and prosperity; meanwhile it was Nicholas V who introduced Cosimo to his Sienese friend Aeneas Piccolomini, who would become Pope Pius II eleven years later in 1458.
Where Nicholas V had been the first pope who was also a humanist, Pius II would take things one step further and become the first humanist who was also a pope. Yet it was more than his overriding belief in humanism that made Piccolomini an unlikely choice as pope. He was well over forty before he had even taken holy orders, by which time he had established a deserved reputation as both a highly accomplished Latinist and an equally accomplished womaniser. His erotic The Tale of Two Lovers, and his sparkling Latin verse, had early brought Piccolomini to the attention of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III, who had appointed him his poet laureate. Piccolomini appears to have taken holy orders purely out of ambition, for they made little difference to his behaviour. Though he did now turn his wide humanist learning to a few more serious works, such as his ground-breaking geographical history entitled On Asia – which would later inspire Christopher Columbus to seek a westward passage to Cathay (China).
At the age of fifty-three Piccolomini eventually achieved his ambition and became Pope Pius II. Yet to Cosimo’s dismay, the new pope gave the papal account to a banker from his home town of Siena, though he did retain his personal account with the Rome branch of the Medici Bank. Cosimo immediately launched a charm offensive to persuade Pius II to reconsider his decision, and when the new pope passed through Florence soon after his appointment, a suitably lavish show was laid on. This featured knights jousting by torchlight in the Piazza della Signoria, and a pageant whose cast included Cosimo’s nine-year-old grandson (the future Lorenzo the Magnificent). Behind closed doors sumptuous banquets were laid on, where the honoured guests were served the finest wines and partnered by Florence’s most beautiful courtesans.
By now Cosimo was becoming an old man and had begun suffering from bouts of gout and arthritis. As a result, when he was presented to the pope he was unable to greet him properly: he could neither rise, nor could he kneel at his feet. Cosimo made a joke of this, and they both laughed, though his attempt to win the coveted papal account proved unsuccessful. Yet once again Cosimo had taken precautions, and by the time Pius II died five years later he had already ingratiated himself with the future Pope Paul II, with the result that the papal account returned once more to the Medici Bank.
Towards the end of his life, Cosimo took to spending more time amidst the clear mountain air of his estates in the Mugello valley. He would rise early to prune his vines or supervise the collection and pressing of the olive harvest; only later would he attend to the messages brought on horseback from the city. In the evenings he would discuss Plato with Ficino, whose cottage was nearby; and occasionally there would still be meetings of the so-called Platonic Academy, which Cosimo had founded for the discussion of the philosopher and his work. In winter, these meetings occurred on a regular basis at the Palazzo Medici, with many of Cosimo’s humanist friends in attendance, whilst on summer evenings they would sometimes take place in the garden beneath the towers of his country villa at Cafaggiolo. (Recent scholarship has questioned the entire existence of the Platonic Academy, but it seems clear that members of the humanist circle in Florence did meet fairly regularly on a semi-formal basis to discuss ancient philosophy, and that these meetings are what came to be known as the Platonic Academy.)
Cosimo had always been a withdrawn man, while his urbanity and his self-composure earned him a reputation for inscrutability. Yet in old age the constant pain of his arthritis, his gout and his bladder problems made him by turns sorrowful and sardonic, though this caustic manner retained its humorous edge. When his saintly old friend Pierozzi, now Archbishop of Florence, tried to persuade him to ban all priests from gambling, Cosimo replied: ‘First things first. Shouldn’t we start by banning them from using loaded dice.’
Previously, according to Ficino: ‘He was as avaricious of time as Midas was of gold.’ Now he would spend hours on end sitting silently in his chair, and when his wife Contessina nagged him, asking him what he was doing, he would reply: ‘When we are going to the country, you spend weeks preparing for the move. Allow me a little time preparing my own move to the country from which I will not return.’
Yet he still busied himself deeply in the affairs of Florence, refusing to pass on the reins of power to his sons, who had proved a disappointment to him. His eldest son Piero had been sickly from childhood; he was now approaching fifty and suffered badly from the family affliction of gout, whilst his heavy-lidded eyes made him appear permanently sleepy. His younger brother Giovanni was Cosimo’s favourite, although he believed in enjoying himself too much; he may have inherited a measure of his father’s intelligence, but he was obese and never took any exercise. Piero helped look after the bank, which he managed competently enough, and Giovanni was sent on the occasional diplomatic mission, where his wit and charm saw things through. But Giovanni could lapse into grumpiness: he too suffered from the family gout. The Milanese ambassador recorded one memorable occasion when he called at the Palazzo Medici to find the elderly Cosimo lying in the master bed, with his middle-aged sons lying on either side of him: all three were suffering from gout, each as disgruntled as the others.
Cosimo felt unable to rely on his sons, even on the occasion when he himself had broken under the strain of Ferrante’s Neapolitan invasion. Some years later, when Ferrante had succeeded to the throne of Naples and once more threatened war, Cosimo used guile. The seeds of the Renaissance had by now spread to Naples, where Ferrante had received a humanist education and still retained a deep interest in ancient learning. Cosimo heard that Ferrante had set his heart on possessing an invaluable, extremely rare work by the first-century BC Roman historian Livy, of which only a very few original manuscripts remained. In order to defuse the crisis that had blown up between Naples and Florence, Cosimo sent Ferrante the priceless Livy manuscript of this work which he had in his collection. Ferrante was overjoyed, and at the same time flattered to be recognised as a great scholar. Cosimo knew how to do such things, but he was now worried about what would happen when he died and one of his sons took over. Many had scores to settle with the Medici, and he had forebodings: ‘I know that at my death my sons will be involved in more trouble than the sons of any citizen of Florence who has died for many years.’
Then in 1463 Giovanni died of a heart attack. Cosimo was devastated, even more so because he felt sure that Piero too could not live that much longer. As the servants carried him on his litter through the halls of the Palazzo Medici, Cosimo would be heard to remark: ‘Too large a house for so small a family.’ Left on his own, he would now lie in his bed with his eyes closed, and when Contessina scolded him he would remark sardonically: ‘Where I am going it will be dark. I want to get used to it.’
He knew that he would soon die, and searched in philosophy for a meaning to his life. No more Cicero and civic duty; now he sought to understand Plato and the summum bonum (the supreme good). During his last days he called Piero and Contessina to his bedside, and according to Piero he explained that he wanted no pomp or ceremony at his funeral. In 1464, at the age of seventy-four, Cosimo de’ Medici finally died whilst listening to Ficino read Plato. His funeral was a simple affair, but all of Florence silently thronged the streets around the Medici church of San Lorenzo as his coffin was laid to rest. The Signoria ordered that on his tombstone should be carved the words Pater Patriae (Father of the Country).