PIERO DI COSIMO de’ Medici – or Piero the Gouty as he came to be called – would rule Florence for just five years. This period is often overlooked as a brief interlude between the prudent rule of Cosimo and the more flamboyant era of Lorenzo the Magnificent. It was much more than that.
When Cosimo died in 1464, the ‘succession’ passed to Piero; Cosimo’s ‘rule’ had been a fact, but not a publicly acknowledged one (both the preceding sets of inverted commas are apt here, indicatively). With Piero, the Medici ascendancy becomes for the first time an accepted fact; he is understood as the ruler of Florence, and this has come about as a result of a family succession: no democratic process was involved. And what was tacitly acknowledged at the beginning of Piero’s five-year reign would have become a consolidated fact by the end of it, when his son Lorenzo succeeded (no question of inverted commas here). The sea change was subtle but fundamental: Lorenzo the Magnificent would walk the streets of the city as its acknowledged leader; Cosimo would never have done this. His son Piero undemonstratively accepted the fact of his leadership; Lorenzo would see it as his right, and revel in it.
Despite Piero’s debilitating illness, he was much more striking in appearance than his father; the busts and portraits show a sternly handsome man, a rarity in the Medici family. There were hidden depths to Piero, which Cosimo probably never realised. Even so, he had arranged for Piero to marry an exceptional woman: Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the daughter of the Medici Bank’s long-term manager in Rome. Lucrezia was a forceful, spirited and intelligent woman, who was both a good mother and a woman of deep spirituality. She would play a leading role in Piero’s dispensation of patronage and personally befriend several artists; she would also write poetry of some distinction, though this is little read today on account of its almost exclusively religious content. And as we shall see, her formative influence on her eldest son Lorenzo would be striking.
There is no denying that Piero’s gout affected his character. He could at times display an appealing social grace that his father lacked, but during his increasingly frequent bouts of pain he could be cold, distant, or irritable. Even the teenage Lorenzo could not help noticing how his father sometimes inadvertently alienated people, for Italian relationships, then as now, thrived on warmth – its lack could often upset people.
So what precisely was this ‘gout’, which so affected the Medici family and all but crippled Piero? There is no doubt that Piero’s affliction was inherited from Cosimo, and Giovanni di Bicci’s somewhat crabbed appearance suggests that it may well have afflicted Piero’s grandfather too. There is also no doubting that Piero’s disease would have been exacerbated by the diet prevalent amongst well-to-do Italians of the period. The higher social classes tended to eat an excessive amount of meat – out of enjoyment, for hearty nourishment, and as a show of their distinction, for meat was expensive. At the time it was habitually served with rich and pungent sauces to mask the taste of the meat, which quickly became tainted in the heat, in the centuries before refrigeration. Florentines in particular also favoured kidney and liver dishes. Vegetables were for the most part considered peasant food and eaten sparingly. But the real damage was done during winter, for this was the season of root vegetables, which were regarded as animal fodder. It was all right for the popolo minuto to feed themselves on such fare; refined people simply did not contemplate eating such things. As a result, vitamin and mineral deficiencies were prevalent amongst the upper classes, especially in the winter months.
Not surprisingly, Piero’s gout got worse on such a diet, but it seems unlikely that it was caused by it. Medically, we now know that his gout and arthritis resulted from retention of uric acid; this would have caused kidney disease, and in consequence his facial complexion was probably a deep yellow. The retention of uric acid would also have resulted in crystalline desposits, causing painful and swollen joints, so it was hardly surprising that for large parts of his later life Piero was carried about in a litter. Eyewitnesses report that on occasion he would become almost completely paralysed, to the extent that he could sometimes move only his tongue, in order to speak. Yet this invalid would prove an able leader: such mistakes as he made were not caused by a mind clouded with the pain of illness. His self-control and will-power must have been almost equal that of his father’s.
For several years before Cosimo’s death, a number of leading citizens in Florence had gradually grown discontented with his rule. The usual jealousies and resentments built up, increasing the ranks of the quietly disaffected. Amongst these was Cosimo’s old humanist friend Agnolo Acciaiuoli, who turned against him and regarded Piero as totally inadequate to take over the reins of power. Acciaiuoli had come to see Cosimo as a coward in his old age; in his eyes, Cosimo had begun to ‘avoid taking any decisions which might require him to be forceful’. As is often the case, there was an element of truth in this; several wealthy citizens of Florence had heavily overdrawn accounts at the Medici Bank, but Cosimo refrained from pressing them to pay off their debts. As a result, the accounts as a whole were not in a particularly healthy state when he died.
Another man who had quietly turned against Cosimo was his trusted adviser Diotisalvi Neroni, another member of a long-established Florentine family, who had accumulated considerable wealth. He was now ambitious to turn this wealth into power, and was exasperated at being balked by the Medici succession. He also shared Acciaiuoli’s disdain for Piero.
When Piero took over the running of the Medici Bank from Cosimo, he felt it only prudent to ask his father’s old friend Neroni to investigate the books and advise him on the bank’s financial situation. Neroni decided to frighten Piero by exaggerating the parlous state of the Medici accounts. At this time, many Florentine merchant traders were severely over-stretched owing to developments in the eastern Mediterranean: the Turks and the Venetians had been at war since 1463, and this was playing havoc with the silk and spice trades from the Near East. As a result of Neroni’s exaggerated concerns, Piero decided upon an immediate retrenchment in the bank’s affairs: major debts were to be called in at all over-stretched offices of the bank – including those in London, Bruges and at home in Florence.
The result was regretful, and though it was not in itself calamitous, in retrospect it can be seen as the first significant decline from the high point in the bank’s affairs established by Cosimo. For instance, it now became clear at the London branch that the debts owed by King Edward IV were unlikely to be paid. Such ‘clarifications’ at London, and similar ones at Bruges, hinted that the Medici fortunes in northern Europe were unlikely to continue prospering.
The situation in Florence became more immediately serious, at least in political terms, when Piero called in a number of debts at the local branch of the Medici Bank and many of the over-stretched merchants found themselves faced with bankruptcy. Opinion amongst the merchant class began to swing against the Medici, and the leader of this growing faction soon emerged as Luca Pitti, the head of an ancient banking family that had undergone a resurgence of commercial success over the previous decades.
Pitti had become renowned for his ostentatious spending, which was frequently used for purposes of self-aggrandisement. Many of the more extravagant features of Florence’s welcome for Pope Pius II had been his doing, with Cosimo only reluctantly agreeing to such unnecessary waste (as he saw it). Pitti had wished to demonstrate his role as a prime mover in the city, as well as gain a certain international recognition for himself. For several years he had also been building a vast palace for himself on the hill on the south bank of the Arno, completely dominating the district of the city known as the Oltrarno (‘across the Arno’). Cosimo had been willing to let Pitti flourish under the illusion that he was on the way to becoming the main political power in Florence. But partly owing to Cosimo’s later unwillingness to face upsetting long-term problems, and partly through the surreptitious growth of the Pitti family’s actual power, Luca Pitti was by this stage undeniably emerging as a very visible and flamboyant power to be reckoned with.
Florentine opinion now began dividing between the Party of the Hill (the Pitti faction, centred on its palazzo) and the Party of the Plain (the Medici faction, centred on its more modest palazzo on the flat ground to the north of the city centre). Acciaiuoli, and more covertly Neroni, sided with the Party of the Hill. They were joined by Niccolò Soderini, the idealistic son of another ancient Florentine family, who was also a highly gifted orator. Soderini now became the mouthpiece for the Party of the Hill, drumming up popular support for the cause by urging the abolition of the corrupt voting system by which the Medici maintained their power. Feeling that the time was ripe, the impetuous Pitti privately called for immediate action against the Medici, urging that with popular support, as well as the backing of the merchants, the Medici government could easily be overthrown by an armed insurrection. Piero could be captured and murdered, all the other leading members of the Medici faction could be exiled, and the city would be rid of the family for ever. Pitti was well aware that the Medici faction could summon military support from Sforza in Milan, but he had already ascertained that in an armed conflict the Party of the Hill could rely on the superior backing of Venice, Ferrara and the new Pope Paul II, who was also a Venetian.
Yet Soderini was opposed to this, and managed to persuade the other conspirators against armed force. His idealism won the day further afield, and the call to liberty and equality’ that Soderini urged was soon taken up by the populace. As a result of mounting public pressure, the system by which the Signoria was nominated by the guilds (so easily controlled by the Medici) was replaced by more democratic election by lot (which had been the city’s historical method), and Soderini was elected gonfaloniere on a tide of popular support.
However, the merchants quickly saw which way the wind was blowing; the populace were now demanding sweeping changes to the way the city was run, and there was no telling where this would end. Ironically, the political corruption of government by the ruling factions had led to stability, and the merchants now saw power slipping from their hands. Popular rule would only result in turbulence; trade would suffer, and the city might be ruined. When Gonfaloniere Soderini began placing his idealistic proposals before the city councils (which remained in older, less popular hands), he found himself blocked at every turn. During his period as gonfaloniere, he and his sympathetic Signoria achieved nothing; popular feeling turned against them, and when they left office someone pinned a notice to the door of the Palazzo della Signoria proclaiming: ‘The nine donkeys have gone.’
To Soderini’s disgust, Piero de’ Medici had not been swept away on a tide of popular democratic reform, and now that the merchants were backing the old system he appeared more powerful than ever. Soderini decided to throw in his lot with Pitti and his co-conspirators Acciaiuoli and Neroni; the time for idealism was past, and more drastic measures were now required. The conspirators sent undercover messages to Ferrara and Venice, with the aim of coordinating their efforts, but soon events began to take on a momentum of their own.
In March 1466 news reached Florence that the great former condottiere and friend of Cosimo de’ Medici, Francesco Sforza, had died. He was succeeded as Duke of Milan by Galeazzo Maria Sforza, his twenty-two-year-old son. Galeazzo was an exotic character, who was already rumoured to be showing signs of dangerous mental instability. Unsavoury stories now began to circulate of noblemen’s wives being raped in the banqueting halls of his castle, and below in the dungeons he was said to conduct personally the torture of his enemies, on occasion tearing them limb from limb with his own hands.
Piero de’ Medici realised the precariousness of his situation and decided to take a diplomatic gamble. In April he despatched his seventeen-year-old son Lorenzo on a visit to Naples, in the hope that he could win round Ferrante to the Medici cause. Several weeks later Lorenzo returned, having charmed Ferrante with his youthful intellect and panache, making a firm friend of the monarch.
Then in the midst of the summer heat of August, Piero was struck down with a severe attack of gout. Virtually paralysed, he was carried on a litter to recover in the cooler air of his villa at Careggi, in the countryside a couple of miles north of the city walls. But by now the conspirators had already made their move. Whilst Piero lay incapacitated at Careggi, news reached him that the Duke of Ferrara had despatched an army across the mountains into Florentine territory, with orders to capture Piero, together with his son Lorenzo, and murder them both. Worse still, the Venetians were also preparing to send an army, under their leading condottiere Bartolommeo Colleoni (a running together of cuore leone, meaning lion heart’). Colleoni had inherited the mantle of the late Francesco Sforza, and was now regarded as the most fearsome military leader in Italy.
Despite Piero’s agonising debility, he reacted swiftly, ordering that he be carried back to Florence at once. Lorenzo rode on ahead, and as he approached the city some peasants in the fields called out to him that armed men were preparing an ambush just before the city gates. Lorenzo galloped back, warned his father, and they took a track across the countryside, arriving at another of the city gates. Once back at the Palazzo Medici, Piero set about rallying his supporters to the cause. Then unexpected news arrived that Galeazzo Sforza had despatched 1,500 armed horsemen from Milan to engage the forces sent by the Duke of Ferrara.
Piero’s sudden return to the Palazzo Medici had caught the conspirators by surprise. Acciaiuoli, Soderini and Neroni rode off to gather their men, leaving Pitti at his half-built and indefensible palazzo. As time passed, Pitti became increasingly fearful that they had abandoned him, and eventually he lost his nerve. Leaping on his horse, he rode as speedily as he could over the Ponte Vecchio across the Arno, through the city centre to the Palazzo Medici. Here he sought an immediate audience with Piero. Accounts of this meeting vary: according to one, Pitti emotionally begged Piero to forgive him, swearing that from now on he would ‘support him to the death’. It is unclear whether Piero knew at this stage how deeply Pitti was implicated in the actual plot to kill him; at any rate, it is known that he magnanimously pardoned Pitti. One report goes so far as to claim that Piero even agreed to Pitti’s suggestion that in order to heal the divisions in the city, Piero should marry his son Lorenzo to one of Pitti’s daughters.
By now Piero had assembled his armed guard and despatched a message to Galeazzo Sforza to ride with his cavalry poste-haste to Florence. Meanwhile Soderini sent word to the Duke of Ferrara’s army to march for Florence at once; he then made for the Palazzo della Signoria with the aim of browbeating the Signoria into arresting Piero. Confusion and panic spread through the city, but did not culminate in the widespread popular uprising that Pitti had been expected to encourage. As a result, no one was sent to arrest Piero, while the armed bands supporting the conspirators lost heart and began melting away through the back-streets. The Duke of Ferrara’s army soon learned of this and realised they had been misled about the situation in Florence. The populace would not rise up to welcome them as liberators, as Soderini had promised, so they decided to return home. Colleoni’s army had not yet even left Venice, when news of this reached them.
The conspiracy had failed, and Piero ordered the Medici political machine into action to restore stability. A pro-Medici Signoria was elected, the vacca tolled over the city and those eligible to vote made their way to the Piazza della Signoria. Here 3,000 soldiers were assembled: a combination of the entire city guard and armed Medici supporters, complete with the young Lorenzo in full armour riding up and down the lines. The assembled citizens had been badly frightened by talk of civil war and invasion by foreign armies; they accepted the call for a Balía, which quickly agreed on a return to the old method of appointing the members of the Signoria by the guilds, rather than the more democratic election by lot, which had led to Soderini becoming gonfaloniere. Any such democratic reform would be shelved for twenty years, until the city government was firmly established on a more stable footing. All were well aware of what had happened: the Medici rule had been reinstated and publicly confirmed, possibly for decades to come. Whether they wanted it or not, the citizens of Florence were now forced to accept this as a fact; and as far as it is possible to tell, such acceptance was not entirely grudging – this was the price to be paid for stability.
The leading conspirators Acciaiuoli, Neroni and Soderini were sentenced to death, but Piero intervened and the sentences were all commuted to exile. This was intended as a gesture to heal divisions within the city, but sending the conspirators into exile would prove a costly mistake. Soderini and Neroni travelled straight to Venice, whose rulers were growing ever more worried at the continuing alliance between Florence and Milan. The Doge of Venice and his council were soon persuaded of the necessity to act against Florence, and in May 1467 Colleoni was despatched to attack the city. At sixty-seven, the fearsome Colleoni was beginning to show his age; but he had learned his trade with Sforza himself, and he now commanded a huge army of 8,000 horsemen, together with 6,000 foot soldiers.
As ever, Piero acted swiftly on hearing this news, sending messages to Ferrante of Naples and Galeazzo of Milan, calling upon them to send as much support as they could muster. At the same time he appointed the mercenary general Federigo da Montefeltro as commander of the Florentine force (see colour plates); the forty-five-year-old Montefeltro, who was lord of the small city state of Urbino on the southern approaches to the Romagna, had a reputation second only to that of Colleoni as a military commander; he too had learned his trade under Sforza, and had even married his daughter Battista.
As the two armies began to manoeuvre amongst the hills and valleys of the Romagna, each warily tried to push the other into making a false move; Montefeltro was in fact attempting to avoid action, while he waited for the troops from Milan and Naples to arrive. His delaying tactics worked, and Montefeltro’s army was soon joined by Neapolitan forces under the Duke of Calabria, and by a strong Milanese contingent led by Galeazzo himself.
Moving swiftly into action, Montefeltro managed to corner Colleoni and his forces in an unfavourable position; but before he could strike, Galeazzo inexplicably decided to allow the enemy forces to escape. When the Signoria in Florence sent a message demanding to know what had happened, Montefeltro remonstrated that Galeazzo had whimsically decided that no Sforza should take orders from one of his father’s former junior officers. Diplomatically, the Signoria invited Galeazzo to Florence to give a first-hand report on the military situation, as well as his advice on how the Florentine forces should proceed. No longer hampered by the unreliable young Duke of Milan, Montefeltro managed to corner the Venetian army as it retreated towards Imola; Colleoni was finally forced to stand his ground, and battle was engaged. Montefeltro’s forces quickly proved superior, but darkness fell and they were compelled to fight by the light of flares. In the confusion, Colleone ordered his men to retreat. Montefeltro declared a victory for the Florentine forces, but in reality the result had been inconclusive, as Colleoni returned to Venice with his army largely intact. Despite this, the Venetians were in no mood to continue with a long war, and one year later a peace treaty was signed between the two cities. Piero had managed to secure the old alliance; stability had been restored, both internally and externally, and he was now firmly established as ruler of the city.
Piero would also be responsible for the commercial coup that secured continuing profits for the Medici Bank (thus, in effect, masking the gradual decline of its banking activities throughout Europe). Some years previously his father Cosimo had involved the Medici Bank in the alum trade, which was operated under a papal monopoly. Alum was the mineral salt, resulting from volcanic deposits, that was used to fix vivid dyes on cloth; it was essential to the textile industry in Florence, and as far afield as the Low Countries and London. For many years Europe’s principal supply of high-grade alum had been from mines in Asia Minor, just outside Smyrna (now Izmir), and these had been controlled by the Genoese until they fell into the hands of the Ottoman Turks in 1455. Out of necessity, the alum trade continued; yet according to a contemporary estimate, the Turkish sultan ‘draws yearly from the Christians more than 300,000 pieces of gold’. This meant that the Europeans were virtually financing the war which the Turks were now waging against them in the Balkans and the eastern Mediterranean, Fortunately this ruinous anomaly came to an end in 1462, with the discovery of ‘seven hills of alum’ in the Papal State at Tolfa, just a few miles from the west coast of Italy near Civitavecchia.
The papal authorities immediately took possession of this valuable mineral resource, establishing a monopoly by announcing that from now on anyone who imported Turkish alum would be excommunicated. Indeed, so keen was the pope to protect this valuable source of income that he soon went one step further: henceforth, all indulgences sold for the pardoning of sins specifically mentioned that they were invalid for anyone who even used imported Turkish alum. However, this posed a doctrinal problem, for monopoly trading (like usury) was specifically forbidden by Church law. Fortunately the expert theologians at the papal court soon managed to find a loophole in the law. As the alum mines were depriving the infidel Turks of income, they were technically being used to further the cause of Christianity; this end fully justified the apparently illegal means, and in this particular case monopoly trading was therefore not a sin.
As the papal banker, the Medici Bank was ideally placed to move into the alum business; it also had an established network of sales outlets, in the form of its Europe-wide branches. Thus by 1464 the Medici Bank was handling almost half the alum mined at Tolfa. This must have involved a considerable operation, for it is known that by 1471 the annual extraction of alum at Tolfa amounted to around 70,000 cantaras (the cantar was the ancient pan-Mediterranean cubic measure, equivalent to a drinking pot or tankard), a figure equal to approximately 3,444 tons.
Cosimo had been too ill to supervise this business, which was inaugurated in the year of his death; instead it was handled by Piero’s father-in-law Giovanni Tornabuoni, the long-serving manager of the Rome branch. After Cosimo’s death, Tornabuoni began complaining to Piero that there was barely any profit to be made in the alum market. The overall monopoly was being handled so incompetently by the papal authorities that the market was frequently flooded, causing the price to collapse before more expensively purchased alum could reach its destination. He advised Piero either to quit the alum trade altogether or to attempt to secure sole trading rights from the papal authorities, which would enable a Medici monopoly, allowing the sale price to be fixed at a suitable level. But in 1465 the war between Florence and Venice resulted in the Venetian Pope Paul II withdrawing the papal account from the Medici Bank and transferring it to one of his relatives.
This left the Medici Bank in a quandary: remaining in the alum business at all would be difficult under Paul II, let alone seeking to secure a monopoly. Once again, Piero took a gamble on his son, and in March 1466 despatched the seventeen-year-old Lorenzo to Rome, relying not only on his youthful ability to charm, but more surprisingly on his business judgement. Piero wrote from Florence to Lorenzo on his arrival in Rome that he should ‘settle this and other matters as you think best’. Lorenzo had already been heavily briefed by Piero on what to say: only the Medici Bank could afford to equip galleys carrying alum on the long voyages to London and the Low Countries. The dangers presented by shipwreck and piracy meant that any lesser agent might soon be ruined, whereas the Medici Bank could afford to cover such losses. The combination of Lorenzo’s social graces and Piero’s cogent arguments won the day, and on 1 April 1466 the Medici Bank was awarded the alum monopoly. Writing to Piero next day, Tornabuoni happily assured him that from now on the bank would be able to secure double the previous price of alum on the London and Bruges markets. The Medici Bank was guaranteed a vast income for many years to come.
Estimates vary as to precisely how vast this income was. It is known that the papal authorities were paid a royalty of just under two florins for each cantar that passed out of the court warehouses at Civitavecchia; likewise, it is known that the Medici Bank in Bruges usually received between three and four florins per cantar. Even allowing for shipping costs, this meant that the bank probably received a minumum of around 70,000 florins per year – a colossal sum when one considers that the profit of the entire Medici Bank in the twenty-three years until 1420 was 152,000 florins.
Piero the Gouty would also maintain another great Medici tradition: that of patronage. While Cosimo had been interested in leaving a permanent Medici legacy in the form of buildings, he had largely delegated the commissioning of paintings to his sons Giovanni and Piero, a decision which not only shows their interest in painting, but also implies a developed knowledge. While his father was alive, and even during the hectic five years of his own rule, Piero would regularly commission works by a number of painters. He continued to support his father’s favourite, Donatello, and when Donatello died in 1466, he went so far as to honour the artist’s wish to be buried in the church of San Lorenzo close to Cosimo – a gesture that is indicative of the deep empathy which the Medici developed with the artists who worked for them. The Medici were among the first to understand, and publicly acknowledge, that artists were more than craftsmen; at the same time, the artists themselves were developing a personal assurance that went hand in hand with the emergence of humanism. They were beginning to believe in themselves, in their unique vision of the world; indeed, it is from this period that we can date the concept of the artist as ‘genius’, and all that entails. Here we see the artist exhibiting exceptional talent, exceptional behaviour, exceptional self-assurance – and, paradoxically, as a result of all this, exceptional psychological torment.
Typical of this new social type was the artist Fra Filippo Lippi, who would be taken on by Cosimo, would work for Piero, and become a friend of the young Lorenzo. Lippi was born the son of a butcher in Florence around 1406. Orphaned at an early age, he was brought up by an impoverished aunt, but would frequently run off to live a barefoot gutter life amongst the street urchins, a period that would form a crucial aspect of his character. When he was fifteen his exasperated aunt placed him in the monastery of Santa Maria del Carmine in the Oltrarno, where he would take his vows as a Carmelite monk (hence his title ‘Fra, short for frater or ‘brother’). Life in the monastery may have had little effect upon the unruly Lippi, but it would introduce him to the other formative element in his character.
In 1426 the twenty-five-year-old Renaissance pioneer Masaccio was hired by the monastery of Santa Maria del Carmine to paint a series of frescos on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel. Masaccio was one of the first to discover a new lifelike method of painting, which gave the figures in his frescos a verisimilitude and dramatic force never seen before. Fra Lippi was intrigued, and would spend many hours watching the young Masaccio at work. When Masaccio discovered that Lippi had a natural talent for drawing, he began showing the young friar the secrets of his painting: the use of light and perspective, the understanding of anatomy and the depiction of emotion.
Masaccio would die two years later, in 1428, but his new expressive technique would achieve full maturity in the artistry of Lippi, who soon abandoned the monastery and travelled to Padua with the aim of becoming a painter. None of his early paintings from this period survives, yet his originality must have been evident from the beginning because the effect of his style is distinctly recognisable in other Paduan painters of this time: a new spirit was moving through the world of painting.
Possibly as a result of a brawl over a woman, Lippi left Padua under a cloud and travelled south along the coast to Ancona. Here he went sailing one day, but was blown out to sea and taken captive by a galley of Moorish corsairs, who carried him off to North Africa as a slave. After he had been in captivity for eighteen months, he drew a portrait of the local caliph on his prison wall; because of the Muslim ban on figurative representation, the caliph had never seen a picture of himself before and was so enamoured that he gave Lippi his freedom. Perhaps inevitably doubt has been cast on this story, whose only source was the unreliable Lippi himself, yet there is no denying that around this time he turned up in Naples, where he combined working as a court painter with low life in the bordellos. Either now or some time later, he was briefly imprisoned and suffered a public flogging for fraud; at any rate he certainly left Naples and returned home to Florence in 1437.
Here he managed to secure a commission from the nuns of Sant’Ambrogio to paint an altarpiece, which proved of such exceptional quality that it brought him to the attention of Cosimo de’ Medici. Even today, this excellence in his work remains immediately recognisable. His faces stand out from their background, very much as if they are in relief. It is said that Lippi learned this technique from studying reliefs by Donatello, and its effect, together with the expressive individuality of his faces, must have made his paintings sensational when they first appeared. There is the distinct feeling that each madonna was a woman he knew, and even the fat-faced child in her arms was always a recognisably individual infant, rather than a spiritualised type (see colour plates).
Largely owing to the way painters were employed at this time, Lippi’s commissions were almost exclusively religious. Perhaps inevitably, in the light of his character, they are not imbued with a deep spirituality, but they do possess a compelling actuality. His Annunciations, his madonnas, and his altarpieces all depict very real scenes, while the spirituality of those taking part is not solemn or exaggerated – we simply read their attitude, or expressiveness, from the natural cast of their faces, much as we would in real life. And his later delicacy of line and colour is reminiscent of that presence detected in the painters of Padua: with a start of recognition, we see a ghostly prefiguring of Botticelli in all his glory of line and colour.
Lippi’s luminous talent, and this alone, would appear to account for Cosimo de’ Medici’s unending patience when dealing with this recalcitrant artist, for Lippi’s patrons were rewarded with continual ingratitude – one of the few constant elements in his character. With Lippi, the godfatherly qualities of the Medici had to be exercised to the full; Cosimo, and later Piero, soon learned to withhold payment for commissions until completion, though at times even this would provide insufficient incentive. As a last resort, Lippi was given a studio in the Palazzo Medici, and here he was confined – meals and painting materials were provided, but otherwise the door remained locked – until the commissioned painting was produced. At such times Lippi was even forced to sleep in this studio; we know this, because on one occasion he managed to escape from it by tearing up the bed sheets, knotting them together and lowering himself down into the street. He then disappeared for several days, while Cosimo sent servants to seek him out in the bordellos around the Mercato Vecchio (the modern Piazza della Repubblica) and the drinking dens in the slums at the edge of the Santa Croce district (along the marshy northern bank of the Arno to the east of the city centre). Yet Lippi must have played his part in bringing Cosimo to that sympathetic understanding that he would show towards the artists he employed, for after this incident he ‘resolved in future to try to keep a hold on him by affection and kindness and to allow him to come and go as he pleased’.
Perhaps as part of this enlightened strategy, in 1446 Cosimo encouraged Lippi to leave the fleshpots of Florence and work in the countryside at Prato, beneath the mountains ten miles to the north-west. On Cosimo’s recommendation, Lippi was given a commission by the rector of St Stephen’s church, who happened to be Cosimo’s illegitimate son Carlo: Lippi would insert a portrait of him in one of his frescos.
Soon afterwards, Lippi was commissioned to paint an altarpiece for the nuns at Santa Margherita in Prato. Here he managed to persuade the abbess to allow him to use a nineteen-year-old nun called Lucrezia Buti as a model for the Madonna. Within a few months Lucrezia became pregnant, and the two of them ran off together. As both of them were in holy orders, this caused such a serious scandal that the Church authorities ended up taking the case to the pope.
This time it would take all of Cosimo’s influence to sort matters out. In 1458 the renowned humanist and erotic story-teller Piccolomini became Pope Pius II, and when he was welcomed to Florence on his festive visit, Cosimo persuaded him to look into the case of Lippi and Buti. As a result they were both released from their vows by special dispensation of the pope, which enabled them to get married and set up home with their young son (who would grow up to become the distinguished Renaissance painter Filippino Lippi). Yet Lippi senior would soon abandon his wife and son, embarking on a series of increasingly superb religious masterpieces and increasingly unforgivable escapades, on one occasion ending up on a charge of embezzlement from his assistant which resulted in him being ‘tortured on the rack till his bowels gave way’. At sixty-three he finally died in Spoleto on 8 October 1469; poisoned, it is said, by the outraged relatives of a young girl whom he had seduced.
Amazingly, Lippi was buried in the cathedral at Spoleto, almost certainly at the instigation of the Medici family. This would be one of the last acts of Piero the Gouty, who died just two months later – of the disease by which he is now known. To the end, he followed his father in being an unobtrusive, yet for the most part wise and decisive ruler. During the last months of his life when he was confined to his bed in the Palazzo Medici, he learned that certain young unruly elements in his party had begun taking advantage of the Medici ascendancy – ‘as if God and fortune had given them the city for a prey’, as Machiavelli put it. Members of other families were being waylaid at night, and sometimes even robbed in broad daylight, when they passed through the busy district around the San Lorenzo church (traditionally recognised as Medici territory). Despite Piero’s agonising condition, he summoned the ringleaders to his bedside, where they were warned that if the streets of Florence remained unsafe for certain families, he would be forced to invite back the exiled heads of these families, so that they could protect their kith and kin. The bluff worked, and once again the streets of Florence became safe for all. Piero’s legacy was the restoration of peace, both within Florence and amongst the surrounding states.