The Fruit of Liberty: Political Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1550 9780674726390

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i tatti studies in italian re nais sance history

Sponsored by Villa I Tatti Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Florence, Italy

The FRUIT of LIBERTY PO LITI CAL CULTURE IN THE FLORENTINE RE NAIS SANCE, 14 80 – 1550

N I C H O L AS S COT T B A K E R

H A R VA R D U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S

Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England 2013

Copyright © 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Baker, Nicholas Scott, 1975– The fruit of liberty : political culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480–1550 / Nicholas Scott Baker. pages cm. — (I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-72452-5 (alk. paper) 1. Florence (Italy)—Politics and government—1421–1737. I. Title. DG738.13.B35 2013 945 .51106—dc23 ' 2012051725

Non è il frutto delle libertà, nè il fine al quale le furono trovate, che ognuno governi; perchè non debbe governare se non chi è atto e lo merita. (The fruit of liberties and the end for which they were founded is not that everyone governs; since no one should govern except the able and deserving.) Francesco Guicciardini, Ricordi (ca. 1530)

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface xi

ix

Introduction States and Status in the Florentine Renaissance

1

1 Imagining Florence The Civic World of the Late Fifteenth Century

15

2 Great Expectations The Place of the Medici in the Office-Holding Class, 1480–1527 3 Defending Liberty The Climacteric of Republican Florence

98

4 Neither Fish nor Flesh The Difficulty of Being Florentine, 1530–1537

142

5 Reimagining Florence The Court Society of the Mid-Sixteenth Century Conclusion Florence and Renaissance Republicanism

189

228

Appendix 1: A Partial Reconstruction of the Office-Holding Class of Florence, ca. 1500 Appendix 2: Biographical Information 254 Notes 279 Acknowledgments 357 Index 359

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Illustrations

1.1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III (ca. 1479–1485)

24

1.2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (ca. 1479–1485)

25

1.3. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Appearance of the Angel to Zacharias (ca. 1485–1489)

27

1.4. Filippino Lippi, The Madonna Appears to Saint Bernard (ca. 1490)

29

1.5. Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi—east wall (ca. 1459)

30

1.6. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Birth of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1485–1489)

42

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Visitation of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1485–1489)

43

1.8. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro (ca. 1488)

44

2.1. Piero di Cosimo, The Liberation of Andromeda (1513)

66

2.2. Francesco Botticini, The Assumption of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1475–1476)

84

2.3. Andrea del Sarto, Scenes from the Life of San Filippo Benizzi: A Boy Is Healed by Touching the Saint’s Clothes (1510)

85

1.7.

x

List of Illustrations

2.4. Pontormo, Joseph with Jacob in Egypt—detail (ca. 1518)

86

2.5. Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio (ca. 1519)

87

3.1. Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi?) (1528–1530)

119

3.2. Donatello, David (1409)

120

3.3. Pontormo, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints (ca. 1528–1529)

123

3.4. Pontormo, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints—detail (ca. 1528–1529)

125

4.1. Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (ca. 1536–1537)

176

4.2. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours—detail (1526–1533)

177

4.3. Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady in Red (ca. 1533)

180

5.1. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman (1546–1548)

206

5.2. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Sword (ca. 1543–1548)

207

Preface

All translations are my own except where noted. The original text of archival and manuscript material appears in the endnotes. The Florentine year began on 25 March rather than 1 January. All dates in both the text and the notes, however, appear in the modern style. The book epigraph is from Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini, vol. 1 (Florence: Barbèra, Bianchi e Comp., 1857), 124. The translation is my own.

the fruit of liberty

Introduction States and Status in the Florentine Renaissance

; Endemic warfare and political turmoil marked the decades between 1494 and 1559 in Italy, as the peninsula became the principal battleground between the dynastic and territorial ambitions of the Valois kings of France and the Trastámara and (after 1516) Habsburg kings of Spain. The city-state system of the fi fteenth century collapsed, its conceits of power, influence, and European significance revealed as inadequate in the face of the economic and military might of the ultramontane monarchies. The political map of Italy shifted several times as previously independent states became the possessions or dependents of new masters, as new states arose, and old ones altered regimes or institutions. The Duchy of Milan and the Kingdom of Naples fell under the government of Habsburgs, ruled by representatives of an absent overlord. The Republic of Venice lost, for a time, the entirety of its empire on the Italian mainland. In Rome, an imperial army humbled the papacy and brutally sacked the city. The experience of Florence in these years ranked among the most volatile: the city oscillated between more and less exclusive forms of republican government, endured several violent regime changes, and

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came close to sack by foreign armies on no fewer than three separate occasions. This turmoil culminated in the collapse of the 250-year-old Florentine republic and the creation of a principality in its place. In 1529, the exiled Medici family—which had dominated Florence for the better part of a century—formed an alliance with Emperor Charles V. In August 1530, after a siege lasting ten months, the city’s government surrendered to the imperial commander and accepted the return to power of the Medici. During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the family had maintained its position by manipulating but not abandoning the republican institutions and traditions of Florence. In 1532, however, the new regime permanently altered the government of the city, abolishing the republican structures and creating a hereditary Medici principality. This book examines how this change in state occurred in cultural terms. My object of study is the political culture of the Florentine office-holding class during the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. I explore how it changed in dialogue with the institutional shift from a republican to a monarchical form of government, but more importantly how it stayed the same. The court society of the Medici principato did not destroy or replace the civic world of the fifteenth-century republic in Florence; rather the former evolved from the latter. Concepts central to the civic republican tradition—liberty, public ser vice, the common good—served to create, promote, and bolster the Medici principality in the 1530s and 1540s. A continuity of language and images, as well as of the men holding offices, existed from the late fi fteenth to mid-sixteenth centuries in Florence. The office-holding class did not abandon the elements of republicanism that had been central to their social identity for over two centuries. Instead, the majority of the city elite’s reconceptualized their understandings of liberty, public ser vice, and the common good in new ways. These reconceived meanings aided the social and cultural transition of the office-holding class from citizens into courtiers, as well as furthering the creation of the new princely government. This cultural continuity suggests that Renaissance republics and principalities existed as two points on a continuum of political experi-

Introduction

3

ence rather than inhabiting opposite and contrary ends of an institutional and philosophical spectrum. This implies two important hypotheses. First, that republics and monarchies in early modern Europe were far closer in terms of political culture than the dominant paradigm for understanding Renaissance politics has depicted them to be.1 Second, that historians should perhaps consider the politico-cultural legacy of Renaissance republicanism as extending beyond “the Atlantic republican tradition,” beyond the emergence of participatory government, to its antithesis: the authoritarian state. 2 The phrase authoritarian state in my interpretation refers not to state building or the emergence of proto-modern states under the monarchies of ancien régime Europe but to a specific political culture: nonparticipatory, centralized, and antidemocratic. The experience of Florence during the fi rst half of the sixteenth century helps to explain the continuing attraction of authoritarianism in Europe up to the mid-twentieth century. It places the authoritarian state back within the broader Western tradition, demonstrating that such polities were not aberrations to this tradition, not led astray on some misguided Sonderweg, but an essential part of Europe’s Renaissance inheritance. The cultural roots of the authoritarian state lie in the same soil that produced the liberal, participatory system. They both partake of a common cultural heritage. The end of the Florentine republic has attracted political and historical interest since the sixteenth century itself, due in large part to the profi le of two Florentine thinkers: Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. Both members of the office-holding class who lived through most of the city’s period of turmoil (Machiavelli died in 1527, Guicciardini in 1540), they distilled their experiences into political and historical writings. In these works they grappled particularly with the need to reconcile the republican principles of liberty and equality with the requirements of social order and effective government.3 Machiavelli’s death allowed him to avoid the climacteric of Florence’s political turmoil and the choices that accompanied it. His voice remained essentially (The Prince notwithstanding) a proponent of civic, if militant and imperial, republicanism. Guicciardini, in contrast, became in his later years one of the leading apologists for the Medici

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principality and its principal theoretician, suggesting in 1536 that it represented the true fruit of Florentine liberty. 4 In historiographical terms, Machiavelli has overshadowed Guicciardini, attracting the lion’s share of attention. This is not surprising. His simple yet elegant prose, his often confronting ideas, and his occasionally provocative phrasing make Machiavelli a continuing and continual object of scholarly fascination and interest. But the issue that makes Machiavelli so attractive to historians, his startling originality, also seems to suggest that he is a less than ideal representative of the mental world of his contemporaries. As a result, Machiavelli appears rarely and only in passing in the following pages. Guicciardini—with his ambiguity, his sophistry, his more nakedly self-serving ambitions— presents a better candidate as spokesperson to posterity for the officeholding class of the early sixteenth century. This book aims to explain these less-than-attractive traits, to explain how a man so obviously convinced of his own suitability for governance and, therefore, so committed to an idea of republican (if aristocratic) government in which he could exercise his talents became one of the principal accessories to the creation of the Medici principality. It does so by analyzing the social, cultural, and political world in which Guicciardini and others of his generation (born in the last two decades of the fifteenth century) lived. It examines the behavior and practices of the office-holding class, revealed in private letters, diaries, and commissioned works of art, as they changed between the late-fi fteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. These sort of private sources are essential for the examination of Florentine political culture because, with the exception of the consulte e pratiche (an ad hoc advisory body), the records of the formal, political institutions do not include discussion and debate, only the decisions made. As a result, they have limited value as evidence for behavior and expectations. By contrast, the correspondence of members of the office-holding class is replete with political information and opinion. These letters provide the most valuable record of political culture, of the interests, values, and expectations of the city’s elite in the functioning of the government.

Introduction

5

In undertaking this analysis I am engaging with and building on two significant currents of historical research: the literature on Renaissance republicanism and that on the changes in state structures and political thought that accompanied the end of the Florentine republic. Since the mid-twentieth century, study of Florence’s republican tradition has flourished. In recent decades, one prominent strand of historical interest—most commonly associated with, but not restricted to, the so-called Cambridge School—has focused on the contribution that the city’s republicanism had on the development of later political ideas and practices in Europe and its colonies. The most famous instance of this discussion is John Pocock’s examination of the Florentine influence on what he called “the Atlantic republican tradition”— the emergence of republican thought in seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century America.5 Intellectual historians have argued that—despite its eventual demise—the Florentine republic and Italian Renaissance republicanism more broadly constituted an essential stepping-stone to the development of pluralist, participatory democracies in Western Eu rope and North America. In so doing, they have demonstrated that the civic governments of north-central Italy from the thirteenth through the sixteenth centuries constituted an important moment in the development of the Western political tradition and its accompanying values of equality, individualism, selfgovernment, and civic responsibility.6 This recent focus on Florentine republicanism has to a certain extent obscured an earlier historiographical trend that saw the creation of the Medici principality as a central moment in the development of modern political structures in Europe. This eclipse occurred, at least in part, because much of the scholarship on Renaissance republics appeared in reaction to these older studies that had devalued or ignored the contribution of republicanism. Rudolf von Albertini, in whose footsteps I am walking in writing this book, situated his study of the end of the Florentine republic in terms of explaining the emergence of both the modern state and seventeenth-century absolutism.7 Albertini saw this development as representing a clear break with the republican

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tradition, describing it as the substitution of what he called a CounterReformation mentality for the Renaissance one.8 Antonio Anzilotti, in whose footsteps Albertini himself walked, saw the seeds of monarchical absolutism under the Medici in the inadequacies of the republican constitution.9 However, he too represented the shift from republic to principality, when it actually occurred, as a rupture and not in terms of continuity. In the fi nal chapter of his study, Anzilotti’s focus shifts abruptly from the Florentine elite of the republic to the secretaries and appointed ministers of the principato. This book, in a sense, combines and builds upon these two traditions. I am taking the idea of the enduring legacy and long-term historical significance of the Florentine republic from the scholars of republicanism but using this to describe—in a new way—the changes in state structure that Anzilotti and Albertini examined. In this way, I will show how this fundamental and dramatic reorga nization of Florence’s political institutions occurred with the participation of the office-holding class, through dialogue and consensus. The civilian magistrates of Renaissance Florence agreed to and aided the changes in state and status that occurred in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century because they saw them as the best means of preserving the traditional values and expectations of the republican tradition.

The word stato, used by Renaissance Florentines and usually translated into English as “state,” had multiple if interrelated meanings in the sixteenth century.10 Only very rarely, however, did it occur in Florentine writings in the sense that predominates today: referring to a territory coterminous with, as well as the apparatus of, the monopoly of violence and rule of law exercised by a sovereign government. In theoretical writings, stato referred to the constitution or form of government. Authors from the late Middle Ages used it to translate and explain Aristotle’s tripartite division of government into monarchies, aristocracies, and democracies. From the fourteenth century, Florentines identified their political system as a stato popolare, a republic. In more concrete terms, they used the word as a synonym for the govern-

Introduction

7

ment itself, in an institutional sense, referring collectively to the actual offices and magistracies. From this meaning stato evolved to refer also to those who controlled these institutions of government, referring in this case to the ruling group or regime. Hence the proliferation of phrases such as avere lo stato (having the state), while those who lost position within the reggimento could be spoken of having lost the state. To speak of the stato, then, meant to refer, respectively or simultaneously, to a type of government, the institutions of governance, and those who governed. It spoke to a social as well as a political place: to status as well as to state. In Florence, as across Europe during the early modern period more broadly, the fundamental sociopolitical distinction divided the city into two classes: those permitted by statute and tradition to participate in the government, who could potentially avere lo stato—the officeholding class—and those excluded from the practice of governance: the populo minuto (little people). The line of demarcation between these two groups was citizenship: a gendered, social, and economic concept in Renaissance Florence. Only men, over thirty years of age, enrolled in one the city’s twenty-one guilds, and who paid their taxes could become citizens. These mature males constituted the citizenry of the city, the office-holding class: the minority of Florence’s actual population privileged with the possibility of participating in the government. The distinction of participation—the legal possibility of it, not necessarily its actual practice—is an important one. The office-holding class was not the political class, a term too readily used by historians discussing early modern Europe. The popolo minuto, although excluded from government, were certainly as political as the officeholders. Women too, of all social backgrounds, while legally forbidden from the practice of the stato, played political roles and had political agency.11 The office-holding class of Florence embraced a broad range of socioeconomic states: not only the pan-European merchant-bankers but also small-time, local retailers and artisans. It did not form a homogeneous or a harmonious entity.12 A whole series of overlapping status groups or estates existed within its broad bonds: fluid categories that distinguished grades of social, economic, and political prestige.13 These

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distinctions included the socioeconomic gulf that separated men belonging to one of the fourteen minor guilds from those enrolled in one of the seven major ones, who possessed a statutory majority on all decision-making bodies in the government. Other estates included those distinguishing men from magnate lineages—technically barred from holding offices between 1293 and the mid-fifteenth century—as well as the new men ( gente nuova), whose ancestors had first held the highest posts in Florence only after 1343. In 1484, Piero di Jacopo Guicciardini—father of the historian and political theorist Francesco—distinguished five estates within the office-holding class of Florence.14 At one extreme of this social spectrum he placed the old noble houses of the city, such as the Bardi and the Rossi, many of whom had roots as rural feudatories in Tuscany. At the other, he positioned the “ignoble” artisans and other minor guildsmen who were eligible to sit on the Signoria, the highest executive council of the republic, but had not done so. Just above this group came “the more noble artisans” as well as families belonging to the major guilds who had only recently had a member win a seat on the Signoria. Immediately below the noble houses Guicciardini placed the “ancient noble popolani,” the big people, the urban aristocrats whose ancestors had triumphed in the political struggles of the thirteenth century. This category included Guicciardini’s own family, as well as many of the more familiar names from Florentine history, such as the Medici, Albizzi, Ricci, and Corsini. Finally, at the median point of the spectrum, he positioned those lineages “which, although not yet noble, nonetheless are not entirely ignoble and that, although new, have nevertheless enjoyed all the dignities [of government].” The office-holding class was not, then, the ruling group or stato of Florence, the men who at a given time formed the governing regime.15 Rather, the term refers to the entire class of men eligible—in a strictly literal and legalistic sense—to participate in the government of the city. It remains, deliberately, a loose and flexible term to permit analysis of political culture over a seventy-year period in which the stato changed several times. Given the political volatility of these years, together with the inherent social mobility that colored Florence through-

Introduction

9

out the Renaissance, attempts to defi ne precisely the membership of the ruling group are useful only for limited moments of time.16 The political culture of the declining republic and emergent principality, however, encompassed not only those men active in the regime for any one period but also, and importantly, those excluded from it or who refused to participate in it. Moreover, the principal continuity that I want to emphasize is not the membership of the elite—the actual personnel of office holding—for which a fi ne-grained list of who was in or out would be crucial. This continuity of membership is not, I think, particularly surprising. What this book emphasizes instead are the continuities in the political culture, which the office-holding class shared in and sustained, between the republic and principality. I am using the concept of the office-holding class in this book, then, in a qualitative, not a quantitative, sense.17 Several scholars have noted that at least three distinct and not necessarily overlapping indicators of status operated in Renaissance Florence: political power, economic power, and social power, the latter referring to a mix of both intangible and more objective criteria such as family size, influence, and antiquity.18 The use of office-holding class as an analytic tool identifies all those Florentines who had the possibility of access to the fi rst of these indicators: formal political power. It does not measure only those who actually exerted such power, although they would have formed a specific subset within the broader class. Likewise, it does not effectively delineate economic or social power, although these indicators did sometimes overlap with political influence. What it does measure, or rather what it does describe, is the extent to which the Renaissance republican ideal of office holding—of government by civilian magistrates, of public service—penetrated Florentine society beyond the ranks of the patriciate. Much as one scholar has recently illustrated how the patrician ideal of patriarchal lineage diffused through the lower social orders of the city,19 conceiving of the existence of a broad office-holding class recognizes that what was essentially an elite political notion (and reality) had a broad social subscription by the late fifteenth century. The vigorous debates and confl icts over who, exactly, could and should participate in the government, which occurred during the very period

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under examination in this book, testify to the importance of this concept to men from a wide variety of socioeconomic estates. Piero Guicciardini’s description of the office-holding class, outlined above, underscored the fluidity of social place within its ranks, which fueled and was fueled by the diffusion of the ideal of participation in government. He noted that the second-lowest estate consisted of men “recently exited” from the ranks of the very lowest status. His emphasis that the median grouping was “not yet noble” implicitly acknowledged that, with time, its members could earn such nobility. The yardstick that Guicciardini used for measuring social place was office holding, specifically presence or absence on the Signoria. The lowest of the five estates contained men who, by statute and citizenship, could possibly sit on the republic’s executive but had not enjoyed that office. Above these men came those who had only recently obtained such a privilege. The median estate housed families that regularly achieved representation on this and all other of the most significant public magistracies, but that could not claim a history of some two centuries of political prominence, as their social superiors did. Only when discussing the two groups that he declared “noble” did Guicciardini ignore office holding. In his eyes, the summits of social and political prominence were indistinguishable. No need existed to relate the practice of government by the top two estates because it went, axiomatically, with their nobility. These two estates formed what is most conveniently described as the patriciate of Florence: families whose sociopolitical longevity, in a society of constant mobility, had assured them of at least the semblance of permanent prominence.20 Men born into patrician houses expected to hold the highest offices of the republic as their birthright. “The fruit of liberties and the end for which they were instituted is not government by everyone,” observed Francesco Guicciardini; “only the able and deserving should govern.”21 Such sentiment captured the feeling of the Florentine patricians about the government of their city. Not only did they expect to govern the republic, but they also conceived of themselves as the best possible stato Florence could enjoy.22

Introduction

11

The patrician estates of Renaissance Florence were not entirely immune to the social fluidity of the remainder of the office-holding class. Beyond a minority of around twenty families, who held their place unyieldingly from the creation of the civic republican system in the 1280s, the patriciate’s makeup altered slowly but steadily over generations as political and economic fortunes rose and fell.23 The mobility that existed in Florentine society necessitated some means for those who did make it to its pinnacle to distinguish themselves as well as to attempt to cement their place, to achieve some permanence for their family. As they lacked any of the cultural resources available to most other contemporary European elites—such as nobility of blood or statute, or titles—except for wealth, the Florentine patricians had to manufacture a different way to express their legitimacy and secure their legacy. This problem received additional impetus from the nature of the government itself. The origins of the Florentine republic, as indeed of most of the states of north-central Italy during the Renaissance, were illegitimate. The medieval communes of the peninsula had asserted their independence from their feudal overlord, the German emperor, based on fact and not law. While Bartolo of Sassoferrato argued in the fourteenth century that the law had to accord with the facts and not vice versa, a lingering insecurity tainted the existence of the Italian city-states, especially the republics and especially in their dealings with monarchs and nobles.24 The patricians of Florence, and indeed the office-holding class more broadly, found the perfect vehicle for justifying their sociopolitical predominance in the city and legitimizing their status beyond it in the realm of visual and material culture. It has recently become something of a truism of Renaissance historiography that the cultural production of the period constituted a means for the creation of identity.25 But I want to demonstrate throughout this book that the connection between social status and cultural capital operated at an even more profound level than scholars have yet conceded. In addition to making an argument about the political legacy of Renaissance Florence, I want to suggest an argument about its cultural legacy, because these two

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inheritances cannot and should not be considered separately, but always and necessarily together. The patricians of Florence did not simply create social identities through visual means; they also reshaped the city in their own image. They inscribed themselves on the material fabric of Florence: building palaces, decorating chapels, giving their name to streets and piazze. In doing so, not only did they assert their status, but they also built (literally) a profound, almost existential, connection to the physical urban landscape. Their material contributions, their ability to alter the topography, demonstrated a sense of permanence and possession. Florence belonged to the elite members of the office-holding class: the stato possessed the city. But this connection ran in the opposite direction also: the office-holding class belonged to the city too. They had no status or legitimacy outside its walls, beyond the material world they had built. They had no titles that an overlord, such as the German emperor or the French king, could recognize, no oaths of fealty they could transfer from one feudal master to another. They were merchants, with a legally uncertain grip on the government and their place in society. Even as late as the mid-sixteenth century the status of the Florentine elite, as a group, was subject to mockery. 26 This had significant effects on the political behavior of the officeholding class. It conditioned them to protect and prize Florence’s independence—physical and political—above all else, in order to defend their own social status. Moreover, this is, perhaps, what made the Renaissance the Renaissance: the conjunction of insecurities about states and status with the economic means to produce cultural capital: to create legitimacy, history, identity out of paint, plaster, bricks, and mortar. A chemistry of social and political necessity, combined with economic and technical ability, produced the cultural flourishing that still draws legions of tourists to the city on the Arno. The causes and reasons for the unprecedented and spectacular cultural production of a relatively small city in the space of three generations or so has remained the essential, yet unanswered, question for scholars of Florence. Without claiming to produce a defi nitive answer, I hope this book will provoke further dialogue on this important matter. The society and political realities of

Introduction

13

Florence in the fifteenth century, and indeed of most of the other citystates of north-central Italy, required a form of capital that the rest of Europe could recognize and understand: a cultural nobility. On the question of Florentine exceptionalism, then, this book proposes two answers. Politically, I argue that Florence looked a lot more like the rest of early modern Europe than many scholars have previously acknowledged. The political cultures of Renaissance republics and monarchies were not as antithetical as Machiavelli supposed. This does not dull the impact of Florence’s experience; rather it makes it more essential that historians understand and explain it in its entirety. In the realm of culture, however, I argue that Florence’s experience— and that of Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries more broadly—was defi ning on the European stage. The intersection of this politics with a cultural sophistication and literacy largely unmatched north of the Alps did produce an exceptional creative flourishing: the Florentine Renaissance.

The principal human objects of this study are men drawn from the ranks of the patriciate. More specifically, it focuses on patricians born in the last two decades of the fifteenth century: men who were subsequently active in the public offices of Florence throughout the period of transition from republic to principality; men who left a record of how they experienced this transformation. This group includes some perhaps familiar names, such Francesco Guicciardini (born 1484), the fabulously wealthy banker Filippo Strozzi (born 1489), and the historian Filippo de’ Nerli (born 1486). It also includes many men of lesser profi les but equal significance—such as Benedetto Buondelmonti (born 1481), Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi (born 1486), and Filippo Strozzi’s elder brother, Lorenzo (born 1482)—as well as many men whose contributions to the narrative are less prominent but whose experiences provide greater breadth to the perspective.27 The government of Renaissance Florence was a hypermasculine and socially exclusive space. Its structures banned participation not only by women, but by the majority of the male population of the city:

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laborers, slaves, servants, foreigners, clerics, and youths. As a result the sources for studying the political culture of the city’s stato reside to a greater extent, although not exclusively, in exchanges between elite males who had reached maturity.28 Theirs was not the defi nitive or even representative Florentine experience. But they did play the central role in the eclipse and end of the republican government. The perspective of these men, as those who stood to lose the most politically from the creation of the principality but whose collaboration was essential for its success, is crucial to explaining how the change in states from republic to principato occurred. The stories of how the political transformation of sixteenth-century Florence affected the urban plebeians, the peasants of Florence’s surrounding district, and women from all walks of life, must wait for another day to be told and would not make sense without fi rst understanding the events from the understanding of the patriciate. The story that this book recounts tells how men from the elite estates of the office-holding class experienced the changing states of the sixteenth century: the transition from the civic world of the republic to the court society of the principality. Their experiences and the meanings they attached to them reveal that the political cultures of Renaissance republics and monarchies did not exist in antithesis. The boundaries between them were permeable. Significant changes occurred in the creation of the Medici principality during the 1530s and 1540s but no radical or revolutionary rupture. The same images and concepts that had featured prominently in the republican tradition of Florence served to justify and aid the abolition of the republic’s institutions and the formation of the principato in its place. The failure of the Florentine republic and the manner in which the Medici principality emerged suggest that the political heritage of Renaissance Italy extends beyond the pluralist, liberal democratic tradition with which recent scholarship has most readily associated it.

1 Imagining Florence The Civic World of the Late Fifteenth Century

; During the decade of the 1480s, the painter Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop decorated chapels belonging to the Sassetti and Tornabuoni families with elaborate fresco cycles. The resulting images are among the most brilliant and memorable creations from late fifteenth-century Florence. Ghirlandaio and his assistants interwove biblical and hagiographic narratives with scenes and figures from contemporary life. In this way, the frescoes served a purpose beyond their immediate devotional context by reflecting and reproducing the social world of the office-holding class in Florence at the end of the fifteenth century. The ranks of mature men dressed in the red robes of state, the elegantly attired females, the potentially disruptive youths lingering on the peripheries, the emphasis given to appearance, the articulation of gendered divides, and the indication of bonds of family and friendship all combined in Ghirlandaio’s paintings to give expression to an imagined community produced by the social and political organization of the city and which in turn reinforced and reproduced the same.

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Societies do not exist solely in institutions, practices, economic functions, or relationships and networks. They exist also in the realm of the imagination.1 The individuals and collectivities that form any society do not perceive their social world only in terms of objective structures. They also imagine it and idealize it. This imagination— most clearly and usually expressed in stories, images, rituals, beliefs, values, and expectations—is not purely subjective but functions also as a product and a producer of the material and more objective manifestations of community. The form of government, nature of the economy, marriage and kinship practices, and a myriad of other factors all work to shape the social imagination and are in turn shaped by it. Of course, not all the members or groups of any given society imagine their world in the same way. The social world depicted in the Ghirlandaio frescoes was but one of probably several imagined communities that existed in fifteenth-century Florence.2 The images in the Sassetti and Tornabuoni chapels depicted a limited, gendered, and specific imaginary: that of the city’s office-holding class, and, more precisely, of the men of elite orders of that class, the male patricians of Florence. Examining the social imaginary of the late fifteenth-century officeholding class through the lens of Ghirlandaio’s frescoes demonstrates how closely the identity of the city’s elite intertwined with the republican system of government and its attendant civic humanist mythology during this period. Despite the lengthy predominance of the Medici family during the fi fteenth century in Florence, the political culture and social imagination of the office-holding class remained fi rmly civic in its nature. The men of the office-holding class imagined themselves as a self-reproducing fraternity of civilian magistrates, dedicated to the ser vice of the common good of Florence. They inscribed this sociopolitical imagination and orga nization on the physical substance of Florence—in palaces, churches, and the names of streets—reflecting and reproducing the predominant order and so preserving their own place in Florence. The civic republican political culture imagined in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes constituted the essential glue that bound together the disparate estates of the office-holding class, above and beyond the statutory

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bond of citizenship. While scholars have disagreed over its exact development, a general consensus exists that during the early 1400s a defi nable shift occurred in the imagination of the city, which affected both the nature and the rhetoric of government.3 The older corporate social world, based on the representation of stakeholders in the city—the guilds, the neighborhoods, the Guelf Party—was eclipsed by an emergent citywide elite, an oligarchy. 4 These corporate institutions never entirely lost their role or influence in the civic life of Florence, but their continuation occurred under the shadow of a new political order and culture. In a mutually rewarding exchange, the emergent oligarchy became infused with the ideas and learning of revived classicism, practiced by the Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati and his disciples and most commonly labeled civic humanism by historians.5 Texts by men such as Salutati and speeches made in the governing councils of the city fused ideas of liberty, civic virtue, and public ser vice adopted from classical sources into a potent mythology for the form, constitution, and ambitions of the Florentine government. A fundamental element of this myth was the praise of public ser vice and the active life of a good citizen: the practice of governance. Civic humanist writings embraced Cicero’s concepts of civic duty and patriotism as well as the Roman philosopher’s rhetorical techniques. The “noblest use of virtue,” he had asserted, “is the government of the State.”6 Matteo Palmieri echoed this sentiment in Vita civile (1449), concluding that the ultimate purpose of virtue was to serve “the public government and universal health of the civic union and concord.”7 This notion of public ser vice for the common good made the political culture of fifteenth-century Florence republican. The office-holding class rendered this ser vice to the mutual benefit of the citizenry. The city’s government was republican not in the sense of lacking a monarch (although it did), but in the promotion of the res publica, the public things, the commonwealth.8 Florence existed in this imagination, socially and politically, as the collectivity of the office-holding class. Members of the city’s elite spoke of possessing a share in the state.9 This ownership was not distributed equally or evenly: social distinctions between the higher and lower estates mattered and had real

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consequences in the field of power relations. But it did encourage notions of reciprocity and obligation to the greater whole of the class, to the public benefit. While the concept of “public” among fifteenthcentury Florentines does not accord with modern understandings of a clear distinction between public and private spheres or interests, they did conceive of Florence as a commonwealth, a res publica. This public space, such as it existed during the Renaissance, occurred at the point of greatest convergence between the various competing personal, familial, and corporate interests that jostled for space in the city: that is, in the administration and maintenance of Florence and its state, in the practice of governance, in the holding of offices. The political culture of civic republicanism celebrated the possibility for all members of the office-holding class to participate in the government of the city, to have a share (greater or lesser) in the state. It encouraged the imagination of the class as a fraternity—unequal in status but with common rights and obligations—as well as the promotion of a concept of common good: a notion that the best means of protecting personal, familial, or corporate interests was balancing them through dialogue, discourse, and competition in the public sphere. This political culture served as one central referent for the frescoes created by Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella.

Francesco di Tommaso Sassetti and Giovanni di Francesco Tornabuoni, respectively, commissioned the fresco cycles completed by Ghirlandaio during the 1480s. Both men belonged to the office-holding class and were prominent associates of the Medici family, which had dominated Florence since 1434. Sassetti worked as the general manager of the Medici bank from 1463 until his death. He served on the balìe of 1471 and 1480, the plenipotentiary councils through which the oligarchic party, led by the Medici, controlled the city’s government.10 The Sassetti were new arrivals to social prominence in Florence: the family’s fi rst representative on the Signoria sat in 1453, only twentyfive years earlier. Piero Guicciardini probably would have ranked them among the median estate of those neither noble nor ignoble. The deco-

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ration of the chapel at Santa Trinita by Francesco Sassetti represented an assertion of even greater status, a coming out for his family as members of the city’s elite. Tornabuoni managed the crucial Roman branch of the Medici commercial empire from 1464 until 1494, which explains his relative absence from public office in Florence. His brother Filippo, however, served on the balìe of 1471 and 1480 as well as being one of the members of the Settanta (the Council of Seventy) at is inception in 1480.11 Giovanni and Filippo’s sister, Lucrezia, moreover, was the wife of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici and the mother of Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici, the men who headed the Medici family from 1464 to 1469 and from 1469 to 1492, respectively.12 The Tornabuoni were a branch of the magnate Tornaquinci lineage that had changed their name in order to reclaim political rights in the city. As a result, despite sitting a man on the Signoria under the name of Tornabuoni for the fi rst time only in 1445, the family could claim ancient nobility in Florence. Giovanni Tornabuoni’s chapel, then, represented an affirmation of existing social place rather than an aspiration toward it. Sassetti and Tornabuoni were not only professional associates, social peers, and neighbors (both residing in the Lion Bianco district of Santa Maria Novella) but also rivals in their chapel-building enterprises. The Sassetti family had held patronage rights over the altar in the main chapel of the Dominican basilica Santa Maria Novella until Giovanni Tornabuoni outmaneuvered and outbid his colleague to gain control of the entire chapel.13 Perhaps Sassetti obtained some measure of satisfaction in completing his chapel, relocated to Santa Trinita, first. Ghirlandaio and his assistants painted the Sassetti chapel between 1479 and 1485, completing the Tornabuoni cycle immediately afterward, between 1485 and 1490. The commissioning of artists to decorate family chapels by men such as Sassetti and Tornabuoni constituted more than an act of conspicuous consumption; a complex of motives and desires operated in such an enterprise in a sustained and unified manner. As one historian has recently observed, Giovanni Rucellai’s oft-cited dictum that he indulged in his mid-fifteenth-century building program “for the honor

20

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of God, the honor of the city, and the memory of myself ” reflected one cohesive impulse, not three separate or competing desires.14 Giovanni Tornabuoni echoed Rucellai in reference to the chapel at Santa Maria Novella, stating that its decoration represented “an act of piety and love of God, to the exaltation of his house and family and the enhancement of the said church and chapel.”15 The impulse to build and ornament public and private edifices that so distinguishes Florence during the Renaissance involved a process of self-defi nition for the patricians who acted upon it.16 In addition to creating the wealth of material objects that still draw crowds of tourists to the city on the Arno, men such as Sassetti and Tornabuoni constructed social identities and power relationships in bricks and mortar, in plaster and paint. In Italian, the English term “patronage” is served by two distinct words: mecenatismo (patronage of the arts) and clientelismo (political patronage and clientage). In the fifteenth century, however, Florentines did not make this same distinction. The world of politics and that (in the modern sense) of fi ne arts intertwined inextricably in Renaissance understanding.17 This is not to say that all the artistic commissions paid for by Florentine patricians constituted cynical manipulations of aesthetic sentiments for overtly political purposes. Indeed, no contemporary of Sassetti and Tornabuoni would or could have articulated such an assessment. Rather, the very act of building a palace, minting a medal, commissioning a portrait bust, or decorating a chapel—in addition to aesthetic, materialistic, egotistic, and religious motives—always and necessarily involved a political statement. The material and visual culture of Renaissance Florence not only reflected sociopolitical orga ni zation but also actively structured and constituted social and power relations within the city. The construction or purchase of an urban palace or the ornamentation of the neighborhood church expressed a visible and tangible assertion of status, influence, lineage, and prestige.18 The ability to shape the urban landscape—to provide affective material objects—became a central means for the Florentine officeholding class, especially the patriciate, to demonstrate, justify, create, and maintain its social prestige. To a certain extent this tendency reflected

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the economic realities of fifteenth-century Europe. In the absence of deposit banking, and given the tendency of Florentine merchants not to accumulate capital in commercial enterprises, few other avenues for investment or expenditure offered themselves to the wealthy. The patricians of Florence invested their cash in things, in consumer commodities that, as well as reflecting and constituting their social identity, could be transformed back into liquid capital should the need arise.19 The inventory listing the possessions of the heirs of Puccio Pucci, compiled in 1449, recorded that investments in real estate represented around 31 percent of the total value. Clothing and jewelry constituted a further 40 percent of the total.20 Just as the relationship between art and politics revolved around a complex of interacting impulses rather than simply reflecting cynical or overt manipulation, so too the economics of material culture in Renaissance Florence did not confi ne itself solely to investment needs and commodification. Central to the intersection of economics and aesthetics in the fi fteenth century was the concept of magnificence: the celebration and justification of wealth and expenditure.21 The same civic humanist rhetoric that justified the political hegemony of a minority in Florence also provided a defense for their economic preponderance. Poggio Bracciolini had the figure of Antonio Loschi in his dialogue De avaritia (late 1420s) observe: “Money is very advantageous, both for the common welfare and for civic life.” A little further on, the protagonist Loschi argued that in the absence of private wealth, the cultural life of cities would founder, and public ornamentation, such as churches or colonnades, would not exist.22 The construction of palaces, the decoration of chapels, and the fi nancing of public festivals or civic buildings constituted part of the patrician notion of public duty and ser vice. The wealthy had an obligation to spend at least part of their patrimony on beautifying the city, whether through personal or civic commissions. 23 “Magnificence,” wrote Palmieri in Vita civile, “consists in the great expense of marvelous and notable works; for which reason this virtue cannot be employed except by the wealthy and powerful.” In the fourth and fi nal book he noted that the splendid lives and personal ornamentation of private citizens formed an integral part of the civic life.24 The

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concept of magnificence endowed the wealth of Florentine patricians, and especially its expenditure on building or decoration, as beneficial to the commonwealth of the city. At a more profound level, the identity of Florence’s patricians depended upon their relationship with the physical city. Their social status and political prominence relied on a close material association with Florence itself. Aside from their wealth, the office-holding class of the city on the Arno possessed none of the cultural resources available to most other elites in early modern Europe to justify their social, economic, and political predominance. Without titles, nobility of birth, or even the juridical status enjoyed by comparable merchant aristocracies in Venice and Nuremberg, the patricians of Florence relied upon their ability to shape the urban geography of the city to support their power and influence. Building a palace, affi xing a coat of arms to the exterior wall of a chapel, or bestowing of a family name on a piazza all demonstrated and cultivated a sense of possession by the city’s elite, as well as a sense of inevitability or even eternity that justified the arbitrary sociopolitical orga nization as the natural order of things.25 Florence belonged to the office-holding class, especially to the patriciate. Political behavior in the city during periods of unrest reflected this as an accepted reality. In times of internal confl ict, mobs attacked the houses and property of the elite and not the institutions of the government. On 20 June 1378, during the Ciompi Revolt, groups of lower guildsmen and popolo minuto sacked and burned palaces belonging to members of the office-holding class. On 8 April 1498, gangs destroyed the homes of Francesco Valori and Andrea Cambini, following the fall of Fra Girolamo Savonarola.26 The corollary of this close association, this existential relationship between social status and the material city, was that the sociopolitical prestige of the patriciate had no legitimacy outside of Florence.27 The fate of the elite, as a distinct and predominant estate, depended on the liberty of the city itself. The defi ning ideological construct of the medieval Italian citystates, liberty possessed a double meaning. It meant independence from foreign rule, or sovereignty, and also the political freedom of civic republicanism, the control over and sharing of the governance of the

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city by the citizens.28 In the fi rst emergence of this sense of liberty, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as the communes in north and central Italy struggled for autonomy against the German emperors, the twin concepts existed coherently. In the context of a conflict for political and military freedom from imperial rule, they reinforced one another. As early as the thirteenth century, however, a divergence developed as the majority of these city-states evolved into principalities. The ideology of many of the fi rst signori argued that the endemic factionalism produced by civic government in fact undermined and weakened sovereignty. Even in the surviving republics, most notably in both Florence and Venice, internal contradictions emerged as these cities sought to protect their own independence by depriving neighboring communes or lords of theirs.29 Despite this the concept of liberty, in both its meanings, continued to endure in fifteenth-century Florence, becoming central to the rhetoric of civic humanism and an important value of republican political culture. The frescoes completed by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the 1480s provide a compelling example of the patronage of the office-holding class in Renaissance Florence, of how the images produced by such commissions shaped and reflected social identities, and how these images and identities intertwined with concepts of liberty, public ser vice, and the common good. For Francesco Sassetti, at Santa Trinita, the painter and his workshop executed a series of images from the life of the donor’s homonymic saint, Francis of Assisi. Of particular interest to an assessment of the social imaginary of the Quattrocento elite are the two scenes that decorate the principal wall of the chapel behind the altar: Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III (Figure 1.1) and The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 1.2).30 The narrative of the fi rst image occurs on the middle plane. Here, on the far right, a kneeling Saint Francis presents the rule of his order to Honorius III. Behind this scene, visible through a series of archways suggestive of an ecclesiastical interior, lies the Piazza della Signoria of Florence: the palazzo to the far left and the loggia (now the Loggia de’ Lanzi) in the center. The transposition of the depicted event from Rome to the city on the Arno testifies to the power of the

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Figure 1.1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III (ca. 1479–1485). Fresco. Florence: Santa Trinita. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

connection between elite status and the physical city, as well as tacitly acknowledging the developing axis between Florence and Rome in the 1480s. The most striking aspect of this particular image resides in the figures that fi ll the foreground. Consisting entirely of men, dressed in the uniform scarlet robes of the Florentine office-holding class, they ignore the sacred story unfolding behind them. A wooden railing physically separates them from the meeting between Francis and Honorius. On the right-hand side, from left to right, stand Antonio Pucci, Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici, Francesco Sassetti himself, and his youngest son Federigo, dressed in clerical garments. On the left-hand side stand Francesco’s three elder sons: Galeazzo, Cosimo, and a posthumous representation of Teodoro the elder (who died in 1479). Between the two groups, the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico and their tutors enter

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Figure 1.2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (ca. 1479– 1485). Fresco. Florence: Santa Trinita. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

the scene. The youngest, Giuliano, leads the procession, flanked by Angelo Poliziano. Behind this pair come Piero, staring arrogantly at the viewer, Giovanni (the future Pope Leo X), and fi nally two men tentatively identified as Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco. Both Francesco Sassetti and Lorenzo de’ Medici indicate their respective offspring. The former points across the scene at the trio of his eldest sons, while the latter gestures with his left hand toward the group emerging from the stairs. In the second image, The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son, Ghirlandaio once again shifted the sacred narrative from Rome to Florence. The miracle unfolds outside the doors of the church in which the image resides, in the Piazza Santa Trinita. The Romanesque façade of the church is visible on the right, from which a group of figures emerges to witness the resurrection, while to the left stands the Palazzo Spini. The narrative drama unfolds in the center foreground. Upon a bed the

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notary’s son, perhaps a portrait of the younger Teodoro di Francesco Sassetti, born the year his elder namesake died, rises from death under the blessing of the heavenly Francis, who floats above him. Male and female religious surround the miracle, witnesses to its occurrence. Two groups of contemporary portrait figures flank the sacred narrative, only very slightly engaged with its unfolding. On the left-hand side gathers a group of young men and women, who art historians have agreed represent the daughters of Francesco Sassetti with their actual or prospective husbands. The specifics of identity, however, remain uncertain. Among the females, the most youthful girl wearing the blue dress, who gazes out at the viewer, presumably represents Lisabetta, the youngest of Sassetti’s daughters. The other two girls with uncovered hair—the one kneeling in prayer and the other dressed in a damask gown with her hands folded over her belly—who flank the girl in blue are probably Maddalena and Selvaggia, both unmarried at the time of painting. Sassetti’s two married daughters, Violante and Sibilla, would then be among the other female figures gathered behind this more prominent threesome. None of the male figures has a secure identity. On the right-hand side gathers a group of more mature males, who appear completely disconnected with the miracle unfolding in their presence. Only three of these bear certain identifications. The balding man, with his back to the viewer, represents Neri di Gino Capponi the elder, the grandfather and namesake of the husband of Violante Sassetti. To the extreme right, with his hand on his hip, stands the artist himself, Ghirlandaio, in conversation with the man just to his left, his brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi. For Giovanni Tornabuoni, Ghirlandaio and his assistants completed a series of images from the lives of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, Tornabuoni’s homonymic saint and patron of the city. One scene, the Appearance of the Angel to Zacharias (Figure 1.3), holds special interest.31 This image depicts an uncertain artificial space that appears both civic and religious, both open and enclosed. In the background, on the right, a triumphal arch opens through which a palace is visible. To the left, an overgrown wall topped by a relief-adorned panel partially obscures a classically inspired palazzo. An imposing loggia,

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Figure 1.3. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Appearance of the Angel to Zacharias (ca. 1485–1489). Fresco. Florence: Santa Maria Novella, Tornabuoni Chapel. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence / Fondo Edifici di Culto—Min. dell’Interno.)

decorated by antique reliefs and marble panels, dominates the center ground. It houses an altar at which the sacred narrative occurs: the appearance of the angel to Zacharias announcing the impending birth of his son, John. Just to the left of this scene, on the same level but outside the loggia, stands a group of four men dressed in the scarlet robes and cappucci (hoods) of the Florentine ruling elite. From left to right they represent the three lineages that diverged from the ancestral line of the Tornaquinci: the chapel’s patron, Giovanni Tornabuoni; Piero Popoleschi; and Girolamo Giachinotti, along with Giovanni’s only surviving brother, Leonardo. To their left and right stand more ranks of mature men. Mostly dressed in the red robes of office, these two gatherings consist predominately of more members of Tornabuoni’s extended family. Behind the men on the right side, almost under the triumphal arch stands a group of four unidentified women. In the front left, a quartet of prominent humanist scholars stands in conversation, representing, from the left, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo

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Poliziano (a portrait comparable to that in Figure 1.1), and Gentile de’ Becchi, whose figure some have identified as Demetrio Chalcondilas. In the right foreground, three youths consider the gathering of their elders. The proliferation of contemporary portrait figures in both the Santa Trinita and the Santa Maria Novella frescoes constitutes the most striking and, in analytic terms, valuable element of the decorative schema in each chapel. They present to the viewer and to the historian an assertion of social identity and place on the part of the men who commissioned the images. The portrait types, full length and generally utterly disconnected with the sacred narrative of the painting, also represent an innovative departure from tradition. Donor portraits in the Florentine style, while often separated from and marginal to the central action of a religious image, had previously always directed their attention toward the sacred figures: presenting a guide to the viewer rather than a distraction. In Filippo Lippi’s The Madonna Appears to Saint Bernard (Figure 1.4), Piero di Francesco del Pugliese, although obviously outside of the drama, had himself presented as a pious observer meditating on the scene. Even in fifteenth-century paintings in which contemporary portraits appeared as participants within the narrative, such as Bennozzo Gozzoli’s magnificent Procession of the Magi (Figure 1.5), which ornaments the chapel in the Medici palace, they consisted essentially of faces and took the form of actors in a sacra rappresentazione (sacred drama) re-creating the story for the knowledge and benefit of the viewers. In Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, however, especially in the Appearance of the Angel and the Confirmation of the Rule, the contemporary portrait figures dominate the images to the extent that they almost obscure the narratives.32 Aby Warburg speculated that these portraits served a purpose analogous to the life-size wax votives that fifteenth-century Florentines placed in Santissima Annunziata, expressing personal relationships between the represented person and the sacred figures.33 Without discounting or displacing the very real spiritual motivations and concerns for salvation that drove men such as Sassetti and Tornabuoni to ornament chapels, the images they commissioned from Ghirlandaio, above all in the dominance of the portrait

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Figure 1.4. Filippino Lippi, The Madonna Appears to Saint Bernard (ca. 1490). Panel painting, 208.4 × 195.7 cm. Florence: La Badia. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

figures, captured a particularly legible moment of social organization and imagination. They give visual form to the imagined community of the office-holding class. The organizing principles of the images consist of three distinct concepts: family, appearance, and gender.

Family, as a structure and a concept, lay at the heart of the social world of the Florentine patriciate. It did so in the sense both of individual

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Figure 1.5. Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi—east wall (ca. 1459). Fresco. Florence: Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Capella della Trinità. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

households (which could extend from one to three generations and included servants and slaves) and of lineage, embracing all the households who shared a surname.34 The evidence of Ghirlandaio’s frescoes supports this doubled vision of family, depicting the Sassetti household but the Tornabuoni/Tornaquinci lineage. In Santa Trinita, Francesco Sassetti appears with his sons and daughters only. By contrast, the images in Santa Maria Novella include representatives of four divergent lineages that all descend from the medieval line of the Tornaquinci: the Tornaquinci themselves, the Tornabuoni, the Popoleschi, and the Giachinotti. The latter three branches all separated themselves nominally from their magnate ancestors during the fourteenth century in order to regain political rights in Florence. The chapel commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni suggests that they did not divorce themselves from a less tangible sentiment of family community be-

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tween all four lineages. The decorative schemes of the chapels in Santa Trinita and in Santa Maria Novella, despite their apparent divergence, contain elements of both the dynastic household and the extended clan. This occurred because the lineage remained of continuing ideological and political importance in the later fi fteenth century as a result of, not despite, the indubitable tendency toward economic fragmentation within families and the associated socio-fi nancial dynamism that makes identifying the Florentine elite so difficult to begin with.35 The lineage emerged in Florence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as a means of fostering cooperation between men who shared a common name and ancestry. In the absence of civic institutions capable of monopolizing violence and in the face of competition from neighboring families, medieval patricians banded together for mutual defense. Kin cooperated to construct and maintain a defensible family compound in the city, and to coerce or threaten neighbors into submission. Lineages owned urban property, as well as ecclesiastical patronage rights, in common. Every mature male received a share of the indivisible economic patrimony. In the later decades of the thirteenth century, however, as the guild-based republic created stronger institutions and the legal sanctions of the Ordinances of Justice (which explicitly targeted the political culture of private violence and familial power), the lineage as a military entity became unnecessary, and even a liability. As a result the common patrimonies began to be divided and alienated between individual members.36 This economic behavior—the tendency for Florentine households to pursue their own economic benefit—fostered social and political dynamism. While no exact correlation existed between wealth and power, a significant correspondence is visible between commercial and political success throughout the fi fteenth century. The constitution of the office-holding class, and specifically of the patriciate, remains so difficult for historians to assess because it was fluid. Individuals, often on the basis of their mercantile success, rose to local and then communal prominence. Correspondingly, once a member of the elite ceased commercial activities—either willingly or through fi nancial collapse—he

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normally fell into political obscurity. All four sons of Francesco Cambini, a linen manufacturer of little influence or prestige, followed this arc of sociopolitical development, albeit at differing levels. Whatever the high-water mark of prominence, for both Bartolomeo and Cambino, who remained small-time merchants, as well as Niccolò and Andrea, who became pan-European merchant-bankers, loss of wealth or commercial establishments translated into obscurity in the corridors of power and prestige.37 Several other lineages display analogous developments. The Castellani, after playing a significant role in the oligarchic revival of the 1380s and 1390s, fade from view among the most important offices of the republic after 1407. From the turn of the century their economic fortunes suffered a parallel decline.38 The Della Casa lineage charted the same trajectory. After consistently seating members on the Signoria and its advisory colleges, the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve Goodmen) and the Sedici Gonfalonieri (Sixteen Standard-Bearers), from the last decade of the fourteenth century until the 1430s, the Della Casa disappear from the highest political offices (with one exception in 1474) until the last decade of the fifteenth century. The wealth of the family, having expanded in the early decades of the century, reached a peak in the 1450s and then plunged in an analogous fall.39 All the lineages in the preceding examples belonged to the fringes of the patriciate. None of them were “ancient popolani houses,” as Piero Guicciardini described them: those families who had formed part of the ruling elite from the foundation of the guild-based regime at the end of the Dugento, who had sat on the Signoria before 1300 and continued to appear in records of the highest offices since. 40 The Cambini sat their fi rst prior (the title given to members of the Signoria) in 1399, the Castellani in 1326, and the Della Casa in 1393. The very fact of the relatively late political appearance of these lineages, combined with the trajectory of rise and decline that all followed, underlines the fluidity and social dynamism of Renaissance Florence. According to one analysis, almost one-quarter of the lineages that formed the office-holding class in 1433 had achieved election to the Signoria only after 1382, one century since the institution’s foundation. 41 The predominance of

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these middling lineages—those that Guicciardini described as “although not yet noble, nevertheless they are not totally ignoble”42—in these examples of social dynamism also highlights the absence of the two noble estates. These families, such as the Alberti, the Corsini, and the Ricci, appear to have achieved a relative immunity from sociopolitical decline, which their less prestigious peers did not. Hence, Filippo di Matteo Strozzi endured three decades of exile and political ostracization after 1434 but retained his social prestige and increased his wealth during the same period (thanks in no small part to the labors of his mother). The Medici themselves did not suffer a loss of political influence or social prestige; if anything, both increased, despite the floundering of the family bank following the death of Cosimo il Vecchio in 1464. A multitude of factors contributed to these outcomes, and not all ancient patrician lineages enjoyed the same success: the Guadagni fell into political and economic obscurity following their exile and political ban in 1434. 43 In general, however, these older families endured in large part because of the ideology and concept of lineage. The very fact of their enduring political prominence and their long genealogies provided an aura of immutability about these lineages. Combined with their material and geographic impact on the city—through the construction of palaces as well as the tendency for family compounds to lend their name to adjacent streets or piazze—this fostered a memory of the lineage not only for the members themselves but for the wider city. 44 The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son indicates how this assertion of status, through association with the material world, operated. The identifiable Florentine location combines with the recognizable figures of Sassetti’s daughters and their husbands or fiancés in a message of familial prestige and social prominence. The church of Santa Trinita, visible on the right of the image, in which the fresco was painted, serves as the material reinforcement of sociopolitical identity. The depiction of the Piazza della Signoria with its imposing governmental buildings similarly contextualized the appearance of the Sassetti men in the Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis. The juxtaposition of the civic heart of

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the city with the individuals testified to their claim over the levers of power in Florence. Taken together, these images depict the urban geography of social identity. They present two of the three key nodes within the city where the office-holding class would appear: the local church and the seat of government. The third was the family palace. While distinct, these three spheres were interdependent. They worked together, combining to underwrite and sustain the prestige and power of Florence’s elite at local, parish, and citywide levels. At each stage the material supported and reinforced the social. 45 Less prominent and less ancient lineages on an upward trajectory through the office-holding class attempted to reproduce this air of enduring inevitability and power by putting their own physical footprint on the urban space of Florence. Niccolò di Francesco Cambini may have come from a humble, politically obscure background, but in constructing a palazzo and decorating a chapel in San Lorenzo, he appealed to a sense of lineage and hoped to defi ne his family as powerful and enduring. 46 Certain socially ascendant men went even further in seeking to create an artificial memory of their family. In 1464, the banker Giovanni di Bono Boni began construction of a family palace that included deliberately old-fashioned or anachronistic features in an effort to cultivate a sense of ancient permanence. Some five years later, Francesco di Antonio Nori, instead of building a new edifice, acquired a palace built around 1400, which was the largest building in his neighborhood. While Nori enlarged and tidied up the structure, he preserved the preexisting arms that decorated the palazzo’s exterior and also utilized non-current designs for windows, arches, and a corner colonette. 47 These men were not simply foolish or tactless arrivistes hopelessly mimicking the style of their social betters. Rather, they deliberately sought to create a memory of their lineage: a sense of continuity with the past, of permanency, of stability, of belonging. This was a political act. These men hoped to construct such a memory and identity not only for themselves and their heirs but also for their neighbors, enemies, friends, clients, and patrons. As Francesco Guicciardini, who distilled so much of the aristocratic prejudice and culture of the Flor-

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ence patriciate, would observe in the early sixteenth century, “a good name is more valuable than great wealth.” 48 The convergence of two factors, interacting with the political culture of civic republicanism, resulted in a dramatic increase in the possession of surnames in Florence between the mid-fourteenth and later fi fteenth centuries. In 1345, only around 13 percent of registered creditors of the Florentine public debt, the Monte Comune, identified themselves with a surname. By 1480, almost half of all households submitting returns for the catasto—a direct income tax—possessed cognomens. The office-holding class had found it increasingly necessary and expedient to identify themselves individually for both administrative and cultural reasons. The need to distinguish between magnate and popolano lineages and to determine consanguinity for purposes of political eligibility, as well as to identify creditors and debtors of the commune, constituted the principal bureaucratic factors driving this process. By regulating their own political ambitions and economic position, the office-holding class could maintain the sense of reciprocity and equality of access that underlay the notion of the common good. Second, as a consequence, socially and politically prominent lineages came to consider possession of a surname a central component of their social identity and self-conception. The government and the city, in the imagination of the office-holding class, became a confederation of prominent families identified by possession of a cognomen. 49 As Matteo Palmieri, in Vita civile, observed, “The consortorie and copious families, who, giving and receiving legitimate marriages, with their familial alliances and love comprise a good part of the city.”50 Possession of a surname became a constitutive element of patrician status, and in doing so appealed to a concept of lineage, of family beyond the household that could guarantee and stabilize social and political place in the city through the vicissitudes of life.51 The appearance of some 210 households with no family name in the ranks of the wealthiest in the city in 1480, as well as the political prominence of individuals such as Antonio di Bernardo di Miniato within the Medicean stato, should caution against too fi xed a correlation

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between possession of a surname and politico-economic success and remind historians of the high degree of social dynamism in Renaissance Florence.52 However, these remain exceptions to a more pervasive trend. The 210 nameless households represented only 14 percent of the wealthiest in the city, and only 11 of the 190 individuals who dominated the Medicean republic were not identified by a surname in the electoral records for the accoppiatori and balìe between 1434 and 1494. The possession of a cognomen indicated the enduring appeal of the concept of lineage: a sense of familial solidarity and identity extending beyond the household, of common ancestry, and a public memory of belonging to the city and its office-holding class. The very act of patronizing and decorating a chapel within a prominent church, such as Santa Trinita or Santa Maria Novella, therefore constituted a public and material assertion of the power of the family name. Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni Tornabuoni inscribed their lineage and themselves upon the fabric of Florence. Sassetti appears with his immediate descendants—his sons and daughters— asserting the continuing strength of the name and household. Moreover, the appearance of the husbands and betrothed of the banker’s female offspring places his own family within the web of alliances that constituted the patriciate, and recalls Palmieri’s description of the city. Tornabuoni presents himself with male kin from the four lineages descended from the medieval line of the Tornaquinci. The images invoke a memory of shared ancestry, of over two hundred years of sociopolitical prominence, as well as evoking the current vitality of the family. The images in the chapels at Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, then, underwrote the past, present, and future place of the two families in Florence, celebrating both household and lineage. The continuation of this social and political prominence depended on the freedom of Florence from foreign rule. The place of the office-holding class in the city, inscribed upon the city’s material fabric, intertwined with the concept of liberty understood as sovereignty. The prominence created, reflected, and memorialized in the Ghirlandaio frescoes depended upon the continued liberty of the city. In both churches, the

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assertion of social prestige and political prominence working in the frescoes through the concept of lineage received reinforcement in the appearance of all the family members represented: that is, in the clothes they wear. One historian has recently observed that fifteenth-century Florence was a “cloth-sophisticated” society. The production of cloth, as well as clothing, constituted the major industry of the city, employed a great proportion of the population, and formed the basis for the wealth of many patrician families. Within this milieu, minimal variations in grade, expense, cut, and color could indicate shifts in wealth and prestige legible to much of the city.53 As Niccolò Roberti, the Este ambassador to Florence, observed to the Duke of Ferrara on 11 March 1468, “this is a city which sets greater store by clothes than by virtue or anything else.”54 When discussing clothing in I libri della famiglia, Leon Battista Alberti observed through the voice of Giannozzo: “Clothes, my Lionardo, do you honor.”55 The elite of Florence invested much of their wealth in clothing and jewelry, material objects that represented and constituted their identity as socially prominent and politically dominant. One scarlet cioppa (tunic), such as those worn by most of the males in the Ghirlandaio frescoes, would have cost around ninetynine florins in 1450, inclusive of cloth, dye, tailoring, and trimming with fur.56 The most striking aspect of the portrait figures in the images at Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella is the uniformity of the mature men depicted by Ghirlandaio. Especially in the Confirmation of the Rule and the Appearance of the Angel, only faces and idiosyncratic arrangements of hoods or hats distinguish one man from the next. In contrast, the female members of the Sassetti appear individuated in The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son, each distinct in appearance and dress. Given the sensitivity to and significance of clothing in Florence, these details must have constituted a deliberate choice by artist and client, based on a common understanding shared with the wider audience of the images about how the office-holding class should appear. As much as the possession of a palace or a family chapel, clothing fashioned identity in the social world of Renaissance Florence. The axiomatic association of

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honor and nobility with the wearing of red robes is revealed in the apocryphal quip, which Niccolò Machiavelli placed in the mouth of Cosimo de’ Medici, that “two lengths of red cloth make a gentleman.”57 Francesco Guicciardini similarly observed that the ranks of the patriciate could always be replenished “by dressing the vile people in the crimson fabric produced in San Martino.”58 All the mature males in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes appear dressed in variations of the one theme, and in varying shades of red.59 They wear either a lucco or a cioppa, a calf-length tunic either sleeveless or with fulllength sleeves respectively. In the case of the former, a shirt and doublet cover the arms. Mantles or cloaks in the same color and fabric as the tunics abound. In place of shoes, leather-soled hose cover lower legs and feet. In the Appearance of the Angel, most of the men also wear the cappuccio, the complicated hood worn either folded or rolled, often in individual styles. Others wear hats or go bareheaded. The Florentine male of the office-holding class cultivated an outward appearance of apparently egalitarian uniformity. 60 In a manner analogous to regulation of political ambitions—through mechanisms such as the divieto that prevented close kin from holding office concurrently or consecutively—that fostered the use of family names, the external sameness that characterized male apparel acted to reinforce the equality of access that underlay the republican constitution of Florence. Legally, if not in practice, all members of the office-holding class—those matriculated in one of the twenty-one guilds, who paid taxes in the city, who were not under a political ban of some sort—possessed the same political rights, although with an unequal division of places between the seven major and fourteen minor guilds of roughly three to one in favor of the former. The uniform depiction of the mature males in Ghirlandaio’s images formed a visual analogue to the ideology of the civic republicanism of fi fteenth-century Florence that conceived the city as a fraternity of citizens and celebrated public ser vice to the common good. Leonardo Bruni, chancellor of the city-state, encapsulated this mythology in his 1428 funeral oration for Nanni Strozzi: “Equal liberty exists for all . . . the hope of winning public honors and ascending [to

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office] is the same for all. . . . This then is true liberty, this equality in a commonwealth.”61 In his early fifteenth-century panegyric the Laudatio florentinae urbis (ca. 1402), Bruni had described the government of Florence as consisting in “the action of the whole citizen-body acting according to the law and legal procedure.”62 Similarly, Matteo Palmieri, almost half a century later, observed that “the state and fi rmament of every republic exists in civil union: to preserve this, it is necessary to maintain the citizen body and order with equal justice.”63 The preservation of this ideology existed not only in humanist treatises written for and by the patriciate. In 1495, the apothecary Luca Landucci identified the concept of equal access to public office, for all who qualified, as “the true manner of Florentine public life.”64 Beyond the ideal concept of a fraternity of citizens, the deliberate sameness of the male figures represents another defi ning element of republican Florentine ideology: selfless public ser vice. The men appear literally in the uniform of the Signoria, underlining the public self of the officeholder over any other bonds of obligation, such as family or guild. According to Palmieri, every citizen elected to public office “before anything else understands that he is not a private person, but represents the universal body of the whole city.”65 The ocean of red paint used by Ghirlandaio in the Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella frescoes indicates that this ideology of fraternity and selfless public ser vice formed a key part of the patrician male self-defi nition. As much as belonging to an acknowledged lineage, holding public office and doing so (at least in theory) in the name of the common good constituted key components of the public identity of the office-holding class. At another level, however, this ideology was just that: an imagined relationship to the sociopolitical reality.66 The mythology of a fraternity of mature males owing allegiance to some higher concept of the public good, and its visual presentation in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes, conveniently ignored the continuing operation of multiple social and economic ties that resulted in the individual being bound to a variety of obligations that often confl icted. This eventuated in an atmosphere of distrust, competition, and even paranoia.67 Not all the citizens of Florence did gain the honor of sitting on the highest

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councils of government and of donning the red robes of state. Many men from the lower orders of the office-holding class not only would never sit on the Signoria but also could not afford the expensive garments depicted in Ghirlandaio’s images. The status and social differentiation that existed in fi fteenthcentury Florence appeared subtly in the frescoes: in the understated but pointed allusion to Sassetti’s relationship with Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici in the Confirmation of the Rule and in the careful positioning of the various figures in the Appearance of the Angel at varying removes from the sacred narrative.68 More openly than these muted distinctions, the appearance of the female family members in the frescoes at Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella speaks to the sottogoverno of influence, alliance, sociability, and patronage that turned the wheels of power behind the ideology of the public good.69 Female patricians served their husbands or fathers as mannequins for the display of wealth and success.70 The lavish, costly damask gowns that feature so prominently in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes bear the weight of family honor and prestige. Each one would have cost at least three or four times the price of ninety-nine florins for a man’s cioppa.71 On public occasions, festivals, holidays, and weddings, the women of patrician families embodied and transmitted the spirit of competition between their lineages that the uniform appearance of their husbands and fathers subsumed. On the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the city’s patron saint, the merchant aristocrats of Florence would display their wares and their wives in analogous splendor and style. Gregorio Dati observed on such occasions that the streets were “full of young women and girls dressed in silk and decorated with jewels and precious stones and pearls.”72 Similarly, an anonymous poet recorded seeing “women, / who seemed like columns / Each more beautiful from the Prato to San Piero: / In their splendid dress / I saw that day a thousand queens.”73 Through the exchange of women and wealth, via marriage, patrician lineages formed alliances, extended their family, ended feuds, and cultivated a sense of common interests, of shared identity. The practice of homogamy became a material form of self-defi nition.74

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Women of the social elite became most visible at the time of their marriage, when they bore the honor of their natal and affi nal families literally on their shoulders. In 1447, Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi made note of the counter-trousseau lavished on her daughter, Caterina, by Marco Parenti at their engagement: “And as if married, he had a gown of crimson figured velvet made; and also a dress of the same fabric: and it is the most beautiful fabric there is in Florence. . . . When she goes out, she will wear more than four hundred florins on her back.” Almost twenty years later, when Alessandra’s eldest son, Filippo, sought a wife, she instructed him: “Being beautiful, and the wife of Filippo Strozzi, she will need beautiful jewels; as you have honor in other things, so in this she does not wish to lack it.”75 One of Sassetti’s daughters, either Maddalena or Selvaggia, appears attired in an exquisite damask gown in The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son. In the Tornabuoni chapel, Ghirlandaio depicted a daughter and a daughterin-law of the family in an identical manner: Ludovica Tornabuoni in The Birth of the Virgin (Figure 1.6), and Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni in the Visitation of the Virgin (Figure 1.7). All three were young women, either betrothed or recently married. In fact, they probably appear in their wedding gowns. The Ghirlandaio frescoes create a dichotomy of appearance in which the male figures celebrate a fraternal unity as officeholders dedicated to the common good, while the females bespeak more specific and identifiable unions: those between houses and families that fostered competition and paranoia. The distinct public identities created for the male and female figures, through their material appearance, reinforced and reproduced the gender and power dynamic operating in Renaissance Florence. Historians have described the culture of the city on the Arno, and that of early modern Europe more generally, as patriarchal.76 Such a term has a fairly limited analytic use. It suggests a binary opposition between men and women, between separated male and female spheres, as well as carrying associations of hierarchical division of power based only on horizontal distinctions of rank and status.77 The abundant records produced by Florentines during the fifteenth century do not support such concepts or conclusions.

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Figure 1.6. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Birth of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1485–1489). Fresco. Florence: Santa Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence / Fondo Edifici di Culto—Min. dell’Interno.)

This is not to deny the misogyny so prevalent in Renaissance Florentine culture: one need look no further than the well-thumbed pages of Machiavelli’s Il principe, with its use of violence against women as an acceptable metaphor for male assertiveness in the world. Nor should such a consideration obscure the exclusion of women from public office, indeed from even entering the palace of the city’s government: witness the surprise and novelty accorded to Argentina Malaspina Soderini, when she moved into the Palazzo della Signoria in 1503 to live with her husband, Piero, the newly elected gonfaloniere a vita.78 Nor, fi nally, should it preclude a consideration of the idealized image of paternity and the father: a cultural topos captured in another Ghirlandaio commission for Francesco Sassetti, a portrait of the banker with his son Teodoro, completed around 1485 (Figure 1.8). The tendency for patrician males to postpone marriage resulted in a sizable age difference between men and women at the time of their

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Figure 1.7. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Visitation of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1485–1489). Fresco. Florence: Santa Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence / Fondo Edifici di Culto—Min. dell’Interno.)

fi rst nuptials. The same impulse also resulted in men fathering children at the relatively advanced age of forty, on average, for the fi rst birth. As a consequence, only exacerbated by the pan-European nature of Florentine commerce, especially at the level at which most patrician men engaged in business, their children often grew up with the absence of their biological father: a situation that fostered the idealization of paternal power and prestige.79 However, in terms of analyzing the social and political culture of fi fteenth-century Florence, the unself-conscious application of the term “patriarchy” obscures more than it reveals, not least because it refers to an ideology rather than a social form. Patriarchy does not explain how this society functioned, only how men idealized its functioning. An analysis of how the social and political culture of Florence valued male friendships, and of how the city accordingly constituted itself as a male homosocial sphere, better serves historical understanding.

Figure 1.8. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Francesco Sassetti and His Son Teodoro (ca. 1488). Tempera on wood, 84.5 × 63.8 cm. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. (Photo: © The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Source: Art Resource, NY.)

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The office-holding class of the city on the Arno conceived, imagined, and visualized their world as formed by institutional and affective relationships between men. 80 These bonds existed on multiple and overlapping levels, ranging from the purely fictive, such as the fraternity of citizens; through the religious, such as lay confraternities; the functional, such as patron-client bonds; and the affective, such as friendships or family ties. Such relationships also evolved on a fluid gender scale: a spectrum of possible positions and relations, rather than a fi xed opposition between man and woman, or between hetero- and homosexual. At its most extreme, Florentine homosociability constructed the city as a self-reproducing community of mature males from which both women and younger men were marginalized as dangerous and liminal figures. 81 Ghirlandaio’s Confirmation of the Rule (Figure 1.1) presents the visual analogue of this imagined, hypermasculine space. Francesco Sassetti and Lorenzo de’ Medici indicate their respective sons, who appear almost by force of the paternal gesture alone. No female portrait figures complicate the process of regeneration. The giovani (youths) are safely under their father’s authority and tutelage. They also appear as modest, subdued, and serious future citizens rather than potentially threatening figures.82 This agamogenesis occurs simultaneously on two levels. The generation of sons secured and assured the continuation of family. Concurrently, the depiction of the palace and loggia of the government in the background of the image—the civic heart of Florence—also suggests the continuation of the city itself through a new generation of office-holding males. The choices made by Ghirlandaio and his patrons regarding the representation of the male figures in Confirmation of the Rule and in Appearance of the Angel commented not only on male space and relations, but also on male behavior, on the cultural expectations about masculinity. The sober, serious presence, together with the obvious (if muted) social, political, and economic success of these men advertised their virtù to the contemporary audience. Although sometimes translated as “virtue,” virtù in sixteenth-century Italy did not possess the moral sense that it does today. Rather it was an explicitly gendered construct: a

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masculine trait, traced etymologically to the Latin root vir (man), which referred to the ability to control oneself, to do things well, and so to determine one’s future.83 A vir virtutis—a manly man—seized his own destiny and made his own fortune in the world. He controlled events and was not governed by them. The concept of virtù from the early fifteenth century had possessed strong associations with the government of states.84 It took manly ability to govern oneself and so demonstrate worthiness for the government of others. The humanist Matteo Palmieri wrote, in the mid-fi fteenth century, that with virtù “good men fi rst govern themselves and their business; then, they become governors of republics, increasing, counseling, and defending them.”85 The male figures depicted by Ghirlandaio were manly men, worthy of their social place and of the obligations and responsibilities of government. The dominant discourse of male relationships and masculine virtù in everyday life did not, however, exclude women entirely. Females could act as agents through and within the bonds created by male relationships as easily as men. Indeed, women often served as the conduit through which certain homosocial relations occurred—such as that between lineages united in marriage—hence, the axiomatic depiction of the current or future husbands of Francesco Sassetti’s daughters in The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 1.2). Through his female descendants, the banker could form or renew relationships and alliances with other men. Marriage existed as a relationship between two men, as much as it did between husband and wife. When his son Bernardo married Nannina de’ Medici in 1461, Giovanni Rucellai recorded: “The other grace that God has conceded me was that he made me a relative of the said Cosimo [de’ Medici].”86 In their position as wives and mothers, women did not exist solely as objects of male dynastic policies. Instead women could exercise agency and influence through the same bonds as their husbands by virtue of their marital relationship. Rather like the intercessory role accorded to the Virgin Mary in contemporary religious practice, potential clients of powerful men would often approach them through their wives. 87 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi tartly observed to her son Filippo: “I see

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that Mona Lucrezia, Piero’s wife, has written you a fi ne letter for love of the linen [you sent her]. She would do well to reward you in a manner that would cost her nothing but words, that is by recommending you to Piero.” Similarly, she speculated that a fellow exile, Niccolò Ardinghelli, had received a permit to enter Florence for twelve days because his wife, Lucrezia Gondi, was the lover of Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici: “Perhaps it will be more useful to have a beautiful wife, than the entreaties of the king of Naples.”88 Beyond operating through male relationships, women in Renaissance Florence also no doubt fostered and developed female bonds of homosociability. The ties between women remain one of the least-studied facets of Florentine society and culture, perhaps because they also represent a difficult area to access and reconstruct. 89 At multiple levels, Ghirlandaio’s images reproduced and constituted the prevailing homosocial discourse of social orga nization. They did so not only in terms of an imagined fraternity of males or of marital alliances, but in a myriad of ways: the conception of the lineage as a collectivity of men sharing the same surname, the potentially transgressive groups of youths who cluster on the fringes of the Appearance of the Angel, the self-portrait included by Ghirlandaio that indicates the commercial relationship between painter and client in The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son, the bonds of clientage and of friendship posited between Lorenzo de’ Medici, Francesco Sassetti, and Antonio Pucci by their shoulder-to-shoulder grouping in Confirmation of the Rule. The audience of the frescoes in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, both within and without of the office-holding class, did not necessarily view the contemporary portrait figures depicted in the images as individuals. While most of the social peers of Sassetti and Tornabuoni, as well as many of their neighbors from any social strata, could probably name each of the represented family members and onlookers, the overall impression of the image was more central to the constitution of social and political culture in the city than the individual elements. The figures existed as representatives of lineage, of wealth, of power, of the homosocial bonds that constructed the social world—in short, as social persons representative of the agreed

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and understood public identity of the patricians at the end of the Quattrocento.90 In the dedication to Vita civile, Matteo Palmieri praised Alessandro di Ugo degli Alessandri as an “honored and excellent citizen.” Palmieri justified this laudation and his presentation of the text to Alessandri by observing: “You are born from noble stock, generated by an excellent father, learned in the study of the good arts, in habits you are elegant, modest, liberal, and proven by true praise, to all dear and an exemplum for good men.”91 This passage serves in many ways as a written analogue to the images created by Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella. Both constituted a process of self-defi nition and promotion by the patriciate of Florence. They not only reflected but also created the social world of the city’s ruling confederation of lineages. The frescoes, in particular, demonstrated the multiplicity of roles and associated bonds that formed the world of the office-holding class, from the imagined fraternity of citizens dedicated to selfless public ser vice, through the ties of lineage, household, patronage, and neighborhood that, among others, operated through and behind the mythology of civic humanism. Ghirlandaio’s paintings, in their very existence, also served as a material expression of social place and prestige. In decorating a family chapel, Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni Tornabuoni, along with so many of their peers, both reinforced and constituted their position in the city. Similarly, the act of writing or reading a text such as Vita civile contributed to a shared culture and intellectual identity. Both written and visual creations purposely depict a static portrait of the social world of Quattrocento Florence. For the patricians and other contemporary observers, part of the value of such material objects consisted in a sense of timeless order. In the imagination of the office-holding class and in the ideology of civic republicanism, Florence at the end of the fifteenth century was an eternal city: a self-reproducing fraternity of mature office-holding males linked through obligations of marriage and friendship and directed toward the common good of the city. The following decades would test this imagined stability and endurance, but ultimately would not break it.

2 Great Expectations The Place of the Medici in the Office-Holding Class, 1480–1527

; Carnival in Florence during the winter of 1513 was celebrated with particular relish by the friends and supporters of the Medici family: after almost twenty years in exile the sons and heirs of Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici had returned to the city in September of the previous year. For the carnival season Giuliano di Lorenzo and Lorenzo di Piero (Il Magnifico’s namesake and grandson) had created two festive companies of young men: Il Diamante (The Diamond) and Il Broncone (The Severed Bough) respectively, both named after Medici heraldic devices. Around the same time, Filippo di Filippo Strozzi, almost certainly a member of Lorenzo’s brigade, commissioned The Liberation of Andromeda (Figure 2.1) from the painter Piero di Cosimo. The panel bears the emblem of the broncone itself—the dry, broken, yet flourishing bough—in the center foreground. In the context of the recent return of the Medici, the image appears to carry a fairly clear iconographical and ideological message: the Medici (Perseus) had rescued Florence (Andromeda) from the threat of the Spanish army (the sea monster) that had sacked Prato and menaced the city on the Arno during the summer of 1512. The painting united two prominent

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iconographical themes that had long traditions in Florence: the image of youthful virtù defending liberty, and representations of the Medici as both protectors and suitors of Florence. In doing so, the image commented upon the expectations and understandings held by the officeholding class of the place of the Medici in the city: protectors, rather than princes, whose profi le and prestige could preserve Florence from foreign interference and threats. The Medici family had dominated Florentine politics for most of the fifteenth century. Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici and his cousin Averardo had created a powerful political faction during the 1420s, which by the early 1430s could command a significant number of leading members of the office-holding class. The family and their partisans survived the short-term exile of the two Medici cousins in 1433; and following his return in September 1434 Cosimo il Vecchio became the principal citizen of the city and its unofficial head of state. His eldest son, Piero, and grandson Lorenzo il Magnifico inherited both his position and preeminence in Florence in 1464 and 1469, respectively.1 Despite the predominance of the family, the city remained in both practice and culture a republic. Florence was never, during the fifteenth century, ruled by one man, but by an oligarchic regime with the Medici at its head: “the gang,” as Lorenzo il Magnifico termed it in his most personal correspondence.2 The Medici were not above or separate from the imagined community described in the previous chapter. They were members of the office-holding class themselves, and their position in the city was always negotiated. Piero di Cosimo’s image of Perseus, with its attendant ideological meanings, appealed to the memory of this earlier Medicean stato. Francesco Guicciardini remarked, about the same time that Filippo Strozzi commissioned the painting, referring to Cardinal Giovanni and Giuliano, the surviving sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico: “These Medici . . . need to demonstrate to everyone that they are the sons of their father.”3 Guicciardini did not doubt the paternity of the two men. Rather his reference emphasized his wish that they prove themselves as adept at governing as their father. In his Storie fiorentine, written in 1508–9, Guicciardini had described Florence under Lorenzo il Magnifico as

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enjoying “the summit of peace . . . the summit of tranquillity and quiet.” He had continued that “one can say that in his time the city was not free, although [it was] most rich in all those glories and felicities that can be in a city.” 4 Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Appearance of the Angel to Zacharias (Figure 1.3) contained a similar sentiment regarding the achievements of Medicean government. The inscription on the arch in the right background, above the group of four women, reads: “The year 1490, when the most beautiful city, blessed with treasures, victories, arts, and buildings, enjoyed abundance, welfare, and peace.”5 In the years following 1512, however, the expectations of the officeholding class about the nature of the restored Medici regime began to diverge from their experiences. Looking back in August 1529, Scolaio Spini observed that, in 1512, “the Medici began with a semblance of civic-mindedness [civiltà], but then did the worst they could.”6 The Medici family became increasingly separated from both the physical city and the social world of the elite. The principal point of friction was the concept of liberty. Although tensions increased regarding the deviation of the city from the civic republicanism of the previous century, of greater concern was the matter of the city’s independence. The interests of the family, tied to the papacy for two decades from 1513, and those of the city differed to such an extent that by the second half of the 1520s, far from being the principal protector of Florence from external threats, the Medici became the primary reason for such menaces. As a result, in 1527 many of the family’s closest supporters turned against them. Tying specific dates to something as nebulous as shifts in attitudes and expectations is a precarious exercise, and this chronology has value only as a rough guide to a complicated fifteen-year period. In many ways, the place of the Medici remained constantly under construction and always contested from the earliest days of their return in September 1512.7 The political currents of Florence in these years were complex and slippery. Many men in the office-holding class changed their outlooks more than once, and many held multiple, sometimes overlapping or even contradictory viewpoints at the same time. They did not turn like clockwork at appointed moments. However, the broad

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chronological pa rameters suggested above help to make sense of the morass by suggesting the general direction of change. By 1480, the Medici family had dominated Florence for a half century. Lorenzo il Magnifico now led the party created by his grandfather, Cosimo. 8 The position of the Medici within Florentine government and society had evolved over time. Lorenzo possessed far greater authority and reputation than either his father or grandfather had done. The diarist and insatiable gossip Luca Landucci mentioned Cosimo only once, and then only to record that “the whole world called him the great merchant, as he had businesses everywhere.” By contrast, when Lorenzo died in 1492 Landucci reported that “this man was, according to the world, the most glorious man there was— the richest, the most powerful, and most prestigious.”9 The apothecary had begun several years earlier to record births, deaths, and other significant occurrences related to the Medici family. While Landucci’s greater age, and so perspective, might partly explain this contrast, the shifting political culture of the Medicean republic seems a more likely explanation.10 The basis of the Medicean predominance, however, remained essentially unchanged: the systematic use of a corrupted electoral system and arbitrary taxation to reward friends and punish enemies. In the middle of the century Tommaso Soderini observed that the Medicean system depended upon “the balìa, the electoral purses, and taxes.”11 This statement not only reveals how the system worked, but also it indicates, implicitly, the central paradox of the family’s position and power in Florence. The Medici sought to advance and protect their own familial interests using Florence as a vehicle. However, as they could not control the city on their own, the Medici required the continual support of their partisans and allies, all of whom would require a share in the rewards. Moreover, the stato also required the consent of the majority of the office-holding class to survive. To maintain the former, the Medicean system had to reward and to benefit the family’s supporters as much as it did the family itself.12 Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, once he became close to the Medici, observed: “I have enjoyed and enjoy their happiness and prosperity together with them.”13 For all Lorenzo

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il Magnifico’s ill-temper at the constant demands of friends—“I have more letters from those who wish to sit on the Signoria than there are days in the year,” he complained in April 1485—he made certain that petitioners had their wishes granted wherever possible.14 That the greatest threats to the Medici hegemony came from disgruntled former allies, rather than from popular uprisings, highlighted the cost of failing to satisfy the family’s friends.15 Maintaining consent among the broader office-holding class required balancing access to a share in the process of governance, with its attendant honors and rewards, and protection of Florentine independence: balancing the twin understandings of liberty, as civic republicanism and as sovereignty. The city’s elite, including Medici partisans, accepted the political and fi nancial corruption that furthered the family’s hegemony in return for the preservation of Florence free from foreign rule. As Guicciardini intimated in his Storie fiorentine, civic freedom was curtailed in the Medicean republic, but the city remained unmolested by external threats and at peace to grow wealthy in economic and cultural terms. The family’s political and fi nancial preeminence, from their foundation under Cosimo il Vecchio in the 1420s, had depended upon their ties beyond the walls of Florence.16 This ability to negotiate and associate with princes and popes, which exceeded the capabilities of any other Florentine family, gave the Medici prestige and authority in the city. In 1482, the ambassador for Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara observed, “The reputation of the aforesaid Magnificent Lorenzo rests on the esteem afforded him by the princes of Italy and elsewhere; but for this he would not possess the estimation that he has [in Florence].”17 Beyond increasing his personal prestige, Lorenzo il Magnifico proved himself capable of protecting Florence through his ability to woo foreign princes. The alliance he forged with King Ferrante of Naples in 1479, by famously traveling alone and unprotected to the king’s court, ended the Pazzi War that the Florentines could not win militarily. In the later 1480s, Lorenzo ended several years of hostility between Florence and the papacy through the personal relationship he formed with Pope Innocent VIII.18

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On occasions Lorenzo il Magnifico’s correspondence reveals a selfconsciousness about the extent to which his own, and his family’s, position in Florence rested on his personal diplomatic skill and ability to defuse foreign threats. He implicitly acknowledged the vulnerability of the Medici hegemony should he fail to meet the expectations of the office-holding class that he would protect and preserve the city and its territory. In September 1485, after initially resisting pressure to involve himself personally in negotiations with Genoa, Lorenzo conceded to the Dieci di Balìa, “I will reply with the formal words that you send me . . . [but] this resolution of yours does not please me, because you place too much weight on my shoulders.”19 The rapid collapse of the Medicean system in 1494, once Lorenzo’s sons failed to protect Florence’s sovereignty, testifies to the precarious balance that underwrote the consent of the office-holding class. A perfect storm of events converged in November 1494, precipitating the expulsion of the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico from Florence: the military threat from the approaching army of King Charles VIII of France, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tactless disregard for the men who had governed the city with his father, a growing discontent among the patricians that the Medicean hegemony was no longer benefiting the city’s elite as a whole but only the Medici themselves, and the millenarian tension cultivated by the fiery Dominican preacher Girolamo Savonarola.20 Piero de’ Medici’s ill-conceived attempt to imitate his father’s famous voyage to Naples, by negotiating alone with the French king, ended in political humiliation. Piero’s capitulation to all Charles’s demands—especially the surrender of the Florentine fortresses in the dominion—created a threat to the city’s sovereignty and so to the position of the office-holding class. This in turn provoked the coup d’état of 5–9 November. This uprising, like the upheaval of sixty years earlier that had propelled the Medici into power, constituted a realignment within the office-holding class rather than a social or ideological revolution. The same men dominated the oligarchy and controlled the government after the expulsion of Piero and his brothers as had done before. Even members of the Medici family not directly descended from Cosimo il

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Vecchio retained their status, albeit briefly changing their surname to Popolani. All contemporary records testify that many of the most prominent individuals from the Medicean stato of the previous decades played key roles in ejecting the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Bartolomeo Cerretani observed that the promoters of the coup “were none other than the leading citizens, who had always been friends, themselves, their fathers, and grandfathers of [Piero’s] house.”21 Piero Parenti, whose vehement hatred of the Medici permeated his interpretation of events, raged that “all good citizens were saddened. They lamented that they had taken up arms for liberty; however, they obtained not popular liberty, but the conservation of the rule of the same men who had governed previously.”22 Of the twenty men appointed as accoppiatori on 2 December 1494 to control the election of the Signoria for the next twelve months, only one had not personally sat, or had a father who sat, on one of the Medicean balìe of the previous sixty years.23 The years between the expulsion of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons in 1494 and their return to Florence in 1512 witnessed a plurality of political currents and struggles: between supporters and opponents of the Medici, between supporters and opponents of Savonarola, and especially between those men who favored the continuation of a restricted, oligarchic government and those who favored a broadening of political participation. 24 All of these confl icts occurred within the office-holding class itself, and no faction really favored a return to the corporate republicanism of the fourteenth century. The struggles of the period occurred over attempts to give an institutional shape to the culture of consensus that had colored Florentine politics since the 1380s.25 The principal point of difference concerned the constitution of the government: who (from within the office-holding class) should belong to the institutional basis for consensus. The oligarchs who had controlled the coup of November 1494 lost the initiative at the end of December when the councils of the Popolo (on 22 December) and the Comune (the following day)—with the moral support of Savonarola—voted to create the Consiglio Maggiore. This constitutional novelty, whose membership was permanent and hereditary, to large extent closed the office-holding class.26 While the

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Consiglio, which embraced 3,742 individuals for the entire period between 1494 and 1512, was considerably larger than the 1,250 men who sat on the Medicean balìe between 1434 and 1494, it represented less than 7 percent of the estimated total population of the city, and not even one-third of the office-holding class in its entirety.27 In effect, the creation of the Consiglio largely institutionalized the hegemony within the office-holding class of men who already had access to the highest offices of the state: membership was restricted to men over twentynine years of age, who had paid their taxes, and who possessed the beneficiato—that is, either they, their fathers, or grandfathers had been previously drawn for one of the three highest executive offices (the tre maggiori).28 But contemporary perceptions of the Consiglio Maggiore focused on how it broadened access to office holding, however nominal this increase actually was. Aristocratic patricians, such as Francesco Guicciardini, reacted with undying enmity, regarding it as a vehicle for the underqualified and politically ignorant to gain positions in the government. 29 A significant proportion of the office-holding class, however, from a variety of estates, saw the Consiglio Maggiore in a positive light. From 1494, an enduring impression developed that its creation had represented a pinnacle of civic republican liberty in Florence.30 It also became, during its existence and after its extinction, inextricably linked with the person and legacy of Girolamo Savonarola. The irruption into Florentine political life of the Dominican preacher and prior of the important convent of San Marco during the crisis of the French invasion and the overthrow of Piero de’ Medici was both as sudden and unprecedented as it appeared and yet also deeply connected to the traditions and political imaginary of the city. The sacred and the secular realms of the Italian communes intertwined from their earliest development in the high Middle Ages.31 Religious language and imagery saturated the governments of Renaissance Italy, providing legitimacy, charisma, and authority. The apparently hubristic, self-congratulatory tone that permeates the depiction of members of the office-holding class in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella (Figures 1.1–1.3) appears somewhat different when considered in this regard. As well as being an act of self-

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identification and a material claim of sociopolitical authority, the decoration of a chapel was an act of piety, born both from fear of the eternal price that the very wordly wealth and influence displayed might bring, and devotion to the divine that made it all possible.32 The appearance of the mature males in these images as officeholders, as governors of the state, also subtly underlined the role that Florentines imagined the sacred played in endorsing and protecting the city’s political structures.33 From the fourteenth century, Florentine political culture became permeated with the idea that the city had a providential role to play in the course of history, a special divine mission to restore both religious and civic life in Italy.34 Savonarola, an outsider from Ferrara, did not invent this notion. But, in the manner of all successful prophets, he wove long-standing and deeply felt traditions into a narrative that provided an explanation for a moment of crisis and a source of solace and guidance through its various challenges. In a series of sermons, delivered in the weeks following the expulsion of the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico—on the theme of the book of Haggai and the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem—Savonarola linked Florence’s providential significance to the fall of the Medicean regime and the need for constitutional reform. In the friar’s preaching the reinstitution of a true civic republican stato, rather than the corrupted political system that had preceded 1494, became a constituent element, even the principal identifying manifestation, of the city’s divine favor. “O, Florence,” Savonarola pronounced on 7 December 1494, “if you wish to renew yourself . . . if you wish to endure and if you wish to rule, you need to make a new song and seek to have a new form.” A week later, he enjoined his audience more explicitly and made a pointed reference to the defunct Medicean predominance: “Above all, you need make sure that no one can make himself head, nor supreme ruler above all others in the city. Such men are people deprived of God’s grace and of his special providence.”35 In this regard, in the same sermon, although probably not entirely of his own initiative, the Dominican proposed the creation of the Consiglio Maggiore, suggesting the homonymous Venetian institution as a model.

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Savonarola’s political thought, however, did not predate the events of November–December 1494 as a fully formed theory. He was thinking on his feet, and his vision for Florence’s civic renewal evolved as he grew in confidence and conviction.36 As it did so, he proposed that not only did God favor constitutional change but also that it represented, in fact, a divine mandate. He returned continually to this theme in his sermons on Haggai: “I tell you that God wishes that you do it. You need to renew your city and renew the government [stato], so that your city will be the city of God and no longer the city of Florence.”37 After the institution of the Consiglio Maggiore, Savonarola began to present its creation less in terms of divine compulsion and more as a gift from God to the Florentines. In the Trattato circa el reggimento e governo della città di Firenze, written early in 1498, he observed that “every Florentine citizen . . . must fi rst believe this Council and civil government to be sent from God.”38 Savonarola’s personal interests probably lay more in the message of moral renewal and charitable living that accompanied his prophecies of political renewal and glory for Florence. But while the former provoked more controversy and even outright hostility during his lifetime, the latter proved significant in the political struggles and debates of subsequent decades because of the abiding connection that formed between the memory of the Dominican preacher and the legacy of constitutional changes that he influenced.39 Following Savonarola’s fall from grace and execution on 23 May 1498—not only had he drawn the ire of Pope Alexander VI against Florence (threatening both the souls of its inhabitants and the commercial network that drove its economy), but he had also begun to fail as a prophet—the oligarchs, whom Savonarola seemed to outmaneuver in December 1494, appeared to regain their predominance in 1502, with the election of a lifetime gonfaloniere di giustizia on 22 September. This development, yet another dramatic constitutional innovation, occurred in the context of blocked government and collapse in trust between the oligarchically inclined patricians and those who, together with many from the lower estates of the office-holding class, favored a broaderbased stato. Drawn-out disputes over taxation and the powers and personnel of the important Dieci di Libertà, which managed military af-

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fairs and foreign policy, coincided with a civil war in the subject city of Pistoia and the menaces of Cesare Borgia, Alexander VI’s son. Consecutive Signorie, in 1501 and 1502, attempted to forge a new consensus that would permit the functioning of government again by seeking advice on possible reforms to the constitution. 40 Exactly why or how the office-holding class reached the decision to elect a gonfaloniere a vita remains unclear, but the attraction of such an office to the oligarchs is not. From their perspective, it provided a vehicle for restricting the circle of real power in the stato within their own hands. 41 Piero di Tommaso Soderini, who won the fi nal ballot for the election of the inaugural (and as it turned out, the only) gonfaloniere di giustizia a vita in the Consiglio Maggiore, was the son of one of the most prominent members of the Medicean stato of the previous century. Initially, his victory seemed to suggest a triumph for those patricians who favored a more oligarchic system. The office-holding class remained divided, however, in several shifting and often overlapping factions. The struggles of this period were, once again, not social but political. Against the hopes and ambitions of many of their peers, Piero Soderini and his brothers courted the interests of men who favored broader political participation among the office-holding class. The cousins Jacopo and Alamanno Salviati established themselves as leaders of a party that sought a narrower and more aristocratic government. Another group, which rejected the constitutional changes that had occurred since 1494, coalesced around Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai. 42 From outside Florence, Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici (who had inherited the mantle of family leadership following the death of his elder brother, Piero, in 1503) nurtured a growing group of young Medici partisans, who intermingled with the latter two political factions in the city. In 1508, Filippo di Filippo Strozzi shocked most of his family and disturbed Piero Soderini by marrying Clarice di Piero de’ Medici, a match carefully orchestrated by her uncle, the cardinal. Strozzi’s father and grandfather had endured long years of exile from Florence for their opposition to the Medici stato. Even when his father had returned, an extremely wealthy man, he had remained politically

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suspect and absent from the inner circles of the regime. Despite attempts by his elder half-brother, Alfonso, and by the gonfaloniere himself, Strozzi escaped with only the lightest of punishments for consorting with a family of rebels and exiles. In the process, he became a close friend of his new wife’s brother, Lorenzo, and her illegitimate cousin Giulio (who would become Pope Clement VII). 43 Around the same time, another of Strozzi’s friends, Antonfrancesco di Luca degli Albizzi, also began to associate with the Medici. Albizzi descended from a branch of his family that had supported Cosimo il Vecchio in the political struggles of the 1430s. His grandfather, Antonio di Luca, had sat on the balìe of 1458 and 1466. Both Albizzi and his father had frequented the circle of Bernardo Rucellai in the early 1500s, which contained many past and present Mediceans. According to Jacopo Nardi, Cardinal de’ Medici fi rst earned Albizzi’s gratitude by intervening in a dispute over the pieve of Remole, which Albizzi had undertaken on behalf of an old family priest. Antonfrancesco then became entangled in the cardinal’s plots to restore his family to Florence. 44 He soon became prominent among the conspirators, whom Cardinal Giovanni’s secretary Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena alluded to as “those Citizens inside.”45 The men of this designation almost certainly included Prinzivalle di Luigi della Stufa among their number. Della Stufa had impeccable Medicean credentials: his grandfather had sat on every balìa since 1455 and became one of the inaugural members of the Settanta in 1480. In November 1510, Della Stufa approached Filippo Strozzi with an illconceived plan to assassinate Piero Soderini. Strozzi, after giving Della Stufa time to leave the city, informed the gonfaloniere. The Otto di Guardia, the magistracy responsible for internal security, having failed to locate Della Stufa, declared him a rebel in absentia, forfeit to both life and property. They did arrest his father, Luigi, who had continued to hold offices under the Soderini administration, and sentenced him to five years in exile. 46 Aloof from these various intrigues, Francesco di Piero Guicciardini achieved prominence by receiving an important ambassadorial post to the court of Ferdinand of Aragon in January 1512 at the youthful age

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of twenty-nine. Like Della Stufa, Guicciardini’s grandfather, Jacopo di Piero, had held a prominent position in the Medici stato of 1434–94, and his father held important offices in recent years. Of greater significance for Guicciardini’s precocious diplomatic appointment was his father-in-law: Alamanno d’Averardo Salviati. Together with his cousin Jacopo di Giovanni, himself married to Lucrezia di Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici, Alamanno Salviati headed one of the principal political factions in the office-holding class during the first decade of the sixteenth century. He also belonged to the select group of thirteen individuals whose presence dominated the Dieci di Libertà e Pace between 1502 and 1512. 47 The events of the summer of 1512, which led to the end of Piero Soderini’s government and the return of the Medici to Florence, resembled those of 1494. A similar conjunction of elements provoked a coup d’état in the city: the threat from a foreign army, dissatisfaction within the office-holding class, and the machinations of the Medici and their supporters within the city. In mid-August, Giuliano de’ Medici, the youngest of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons, had purchased the support of both the Emperor Maximilian I and the Spanish viceroy in Italy, Ramón de Cardona, for the return of the Medici to Florence. In addition to personal payments for both Cardona and Cardinal Matthias Lang, the imperial ambassador to the Holy League formed to drive the army of Louis XII of France from Italy, the Medici provided a subsidy of eighty thousand ducats to pay the Spanish army headed by the viceroy. 48 The Medici already had the support of Pope Julius II, who not only favored Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, but also desired to punish the government of Soderini: Florence had remained the only major Italian state not to join the Holy League, continuing instead to hold to its alliance with Louis XII. 49 With the power of the French on the Italian peninsula broken after their Pyrrhic victory at Ravenna, Florence had become isolated. On 28 August 1512, the Spanish army commanded by Cardona, and accompanied by Cardinal Giovanni and Giuliano de’ Medici, laid siege to Prato, just ten miles northwest of Florence. Two days later the viceroy’s troops breached the walls and brutally sacked the city. Francesco

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Guicciardini’s brother Jacopo estimated that they killed four thousand people: “It would be a lamentable thing to narrate the great cruelty they did there: women raped and ransomed, boys sodomized, and all the monasteries turned into brothels. Whoever was not killed was imprisoned.”50 As early as 12 June, Jacopo had reported dissatisfaction among the office-holding class with Soderini’s foreign policy: “Here there is great fear and a great number of men are unhappy.”51 Following the sack of Prato, he informed Francesco: “The city here was full of confusion and fear because the Gonfaloniere governed matters as usual . . . many uomini da bene were dissatisfied.”52 Support for the administration of Soderini evaporated beyond the circle of his friends. The Ottanta counseled immediate capitulation to Cardona’s demands for money and the restoration of the Medici, where three days earlier (before the sack) they had staunchly opposed the same measures.53 On the morning of 31 August, with fear growing in the city and more men openly denouncing the gonfaloniere, a group of armed young men forced their way into the Palazzo della Signoria, demanding that Soderini resign.54 Their leaders included Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, Paolo di Piero Vettori, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, and the sons of Bernardo Rucellai. The gonfaloniere left the palazzo and sought refuge in the house of Paolo Vettori’s brother, Francesco. The number of armed youths surrounding the seat of government increased. Among their ranks were Antonfrancesco’s cousin, Girolamo di Luca degli Albizzi, and Benedetto di Filippo Buondelmonti. Girolamo’s grandfather, Maso di Luca, had been a prominent member of the Medici regime in the fifteenth century, and his mother, Caterina, was the sister of Jacopo Salviati. Buondelmonti’s association with the family was more recent: his father had frequented the circle of Bernardo Rucellai in the early 1500s, and both father and son were friends with Filippo Strozzi and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi.55 With the giovani in control of both the palazzo and the adjacent piazza, the Signoria voted to depose Soderini. The ex-gonfaloniere fled the city that night. On 1 September, Giuliano di Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici entered Florence for the first time in nearly eighteen years. He stayed

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at the home of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi until 5 September, when Lorenzo’s heirs legally regained possession of the family’s palace on the via Larga.56 The return of Giuliano and Giovanni, the surviving sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico, appears startlingly precipitous in this brief recitation of events. While the irruption of violence on 31 August certainly altered the dynamic within the city, the attitudes, both ambiguous and clear, displayed within the office-holding class in the days and weeks leading up to this moment of drama reveal the longer-term uncertainties that laid the foundations for its success. The debates that occurred in the consulte e pratiche—the ad hoc advisory councils summoned by the Signoria—reveal the tensions and cross-currents in the Florentine stato from mid-July as the multiple demands and threats from the papacy, the Spanish army, and the distant emperor (via Cardinal Lang) converged on the city.57 The speakers continually sought to balance the confl icting pratical needs of protecting the city itself from the approach of Cardona’s forces and defending the lives and property of Florentine merchants resident in France. They also juggled these material concerns with intangible, but deeply felt, and spiritual requirements of honor and trust. Every incoming Signoria swore an oath of fealty to the French alliance. Many men worried aloud about the dangers, both to Florence’s reputation and also to the officeholders’ souls, of breaking this allegiance. An air of unreality at times permeated the conversation, as men wished the impossible: that the city could fi nd accommodation with the Holy League while maintaining faith with the king of France. On other occasions, speakers took a more hardheaded line and argued that this trust should only be maintained so long as Louis XII actually upheld his end of the bargain and defended his Italian allies. The one clear constant for all speakers was the need to protect and preserve Florence. This discussion, however, did not revolve around the concept of liberty. The term libertà remains striking by its almost complete absence from the debates: very few speakers expressed the demands of the moment in terms of the need to protect the liberty of Florence.58 Instead, dignity, faith, honor, and health constituted the

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key vocabulary of the summer of 1512. Despite all the internal confl icts of the previous eighteen years, the social imaginary and political culture of the office-holding class remained remarkably cohesive. When speakers invoked the honor or dignity of the city they meant, really, the honor and dignity of the citizenry, of the stato. Behind and through this imagined community, which constituted the city in the minds of the men who spoke in the pratiche, Florence’s liberty remained a uniting and coherent ideal. In the long-term perspective, this highlights the fundamental stability of the city’s political culture despite the dramatic regime change of September 1512. The violent confl icts of the late 1520s and 1530s over what, exactly, libertà meant, were not presaged at all in the return of the Medici that summer. No question, yet, arose over whether the fundamental republican base of Florence’s government needed changing—as opposed to tinkering with or manipulating its institutions. No debate occurred in the weeks leading up to the coup d’état over whether the requirements of civic republican pratice needed balancing against the necessities of sovereign independence.

The physical return of the Medici to the city of Florence did not guarantee the reestablishment of the Medicean stato of the fi fteenth century. While a small violent group of the family’s supporters had precipitated the deposition of Piero Soderini, the majority of the office-holding class favored the continuation of the constitutional forms created after November 1494. Once again, as in 1494, the oligarchic party attempted to maintain control of the city without having to concede preeminence to the Medici.59 On 2 September, the Consiglio Maggiore elected the Signoria’s advisory colleges, the Sedici Gonfalonieri and the Dodici Buonuomini. Jacopo Guicciardini reported to Francesco, absent from the city on his ambassadorial mission, that those elected “were all popular men and scrutinized with great care to ensure they were not friends of the Medici.”60 Five days later the Consiglio passed legislation reforming the Florentine constitution. In addition to maintaining the Consiglio’s role, the provision created a senate by enlarging

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the Ottanta and mandated the appointment of the gonfaloniere di giustizia for a one-year term.61 In 1494, attempts to institutionalize an oligarchic regime without the Medici had foundered on the opposition within the office-holding class from men who favored a broader-based government. In 1512, such efforts folded in the face of resistance from the Medici and their closest supporters. Bartolomeo Cerretani noted in his diary that the preservation of the Consiglio Maggiore and the choice of Giovanbattista Ridolfi as gonfaloniere di giustizia “greatly displeased the palleschi and as a result they reconsidered whether to remain patient.”62 On 16 September, Giuliano de’ Medici, accompanied by thirty-three armed men, including Prinzivalle della Stufa and Girolamo degli Albizzi, entered the Palazzo della Signoria and demanded the summoning of a parlamento. Ostensibly a general assembly of the entire office-holding class, parlamenti had formed a crucial plank in the oligarchic system from the late fourteenth century, enabling the manufacture of consensus for constitutional or other changes.63 The citizens gathered in the piazza, controlled by mercenary soldiers loaned from the Spanish army in Prato, and approved the creation of a balìa, a plenipotentiary council the use of which had been the basis of Medici control in the fi fteenth century. The balìa included among its fi rst actions the abolition of the Consiglio Maggiore and the habilitation of several men, legally too young to hold office, to all public magistracies. In addition to Giuliano de’ Medici himself, this list included Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Benedetto Buondelmonti.64 Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromeda (Figure 2.1), painted in 1513 for Filippo Strozzi, clearly celebrates this restoration of Medici government in Florence, as well as commemorating the Carnival of that year presided over by the twin festive companies of Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Il Diamante and Il Broncone, created in midNovember 1512.65 No list of the membership of either group has survived; however, their personnel can be partly reconstructed. A late sixteenth-century document named Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, Palla and Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Paolo di Piero Vettori, and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici (the

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Figure 2.1. Piero di Cosimo, The Liberation of Andromeda (1513). Panel painting, 70 × 123 cm. Florence: Galleria degli Uffi zi. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence— courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.)

future Pope Clement VII) as members of Giuliano’s Diamante brigade.66 In addition to his brother-in-law Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzo’s company most likely also contained Benedetto Buondelmonti, Prinzivalle della Stufa, Giovanni Vespucci, and Domenico Martelli, all of whom later received payments as gentlemen in Lorenzo’s military company.67 In terms of style and iconography, Piero di Cosimo’s panel recalls the sort of festive decorations produced for Florentine Carnival celebrations.68 Andromeda was the daughter of the king and queen of Ethiopia, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. Following an ill-advised boast by Cassiopeia that her daughter’s beauty rivaled that of the Nereids, Poseidon, the god of the sea, had sent a monster to ravage the kingdom. Oracles advised Cepheus that only by sacrificing Andromeda to the beast could Poseidon’s rage be averted. At the last minute, however, Perseus rescued the Ethiopian princess, having fi rst extorted her hand in marriage. Piero di Cosimo’s panel presents the narrative at multiple stages in the one image. At the top right Perseus, flying through the air on his winged sandals, spies Andromeda’s plight. In the center ground,

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he slays the monster that menaces the half-naked princess tied to a tree stump by the ocean shore, watched from the bottom left by a despairing Cepheus (in the extravagant white turban) and his court. At bottom right, a celebratory crowd engulfs the victorious Perseus and the newly rescued Andromeda. The panel rehearsed a traditional Florentine theme: the figure of youthful virtù triumphing over impossible odds. Most commonly associated in civic iconography with David and Hercules, the image traditionally expressed the virtù of the Florentine stato and of the officeholding class in maintaining and protecting the commonwealth of the city.69 The image also contains two overt Medicean symbols. The first is the broncone itself—the broken yet flourishing bough—in this case interpreted literally as a tree stump by the ocean’s shore in the very center of the image, from which a leafy shoot emerges. The broncone had fi rst appeared as a Medici device used by Lorenzo’s father, Piero di Lorenzo il Magnifico, to refer to the continuity and survival of his family: even if one branch were severed, another would flourish in its place.70 The boughs of laurel waved by the triumphant crowd at bottom right constitute the second traditional Medicean icon in the image.71 The use of laurel ( lauro) not only played upon the name Lorenzo; it also had classical associations with glory and victory. Its presence in Piero di Cosimo’s painting indicates that the figure of Perseus should be associated with the Medici, and probably with the younger Lorenzo in particular.72 The image, therefore, reads the return of the Medici in triumphalist terms as Lorenzo-Perseus, through his virtù, liberating Florence-Andromeda.73 The representation of the Medici as protectors of the city was, again, not a new concept. In the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 a medal had appeared depicting Lorenzo il Magnifico with the inscription salvs pvblica—the public well-being—drawing on the Ciceronian epigraph salus publica sola lex (the public well-being is the only law). Around 1490, another medal bearing Lorenzo’s image on the obverse appeared. On the reverse it featured a female personification of Florence seated beneath a tree holding three lilies with the inscription

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tvtela patrie florentia—guardianship or guardian of the Florentine fatherland.74 In the context of the previous summer, however, the concept assumed new immediacy in 1513. Jacopo Guicciardini had made clear the fear felt in Florence following the sack of Prato: “When the news arrived here it produced so much horror and fear that one cannot express it: everywhere one heard wails and rumors, all the shops and houses emptied, the monasteries fi lled with women, and many people fled.” Guicciardini also indicated that the government, represented by Piero Soderini, bore the brunt of the blame for the situation: “Seeing the manifest danger and holding that this disorder eventuated only from the Gonfaloniere it began to be said that the safety of one man was not worth danger to the whole population and that it would surely be a lesser evil to accommodate the Viceroy in all that he wanted.”75 Filippo Strozzi also wrote that Soderini had lost the support of the office-holding class because “they saw the city in evident danger.”76 Over two weeks later, on September 18, Strozzi indicated that the level of popular anger against the gonfaloniere a vita’s regime had been significant, while also emphasizing the magnanimity of the new regime. He noted that while the Mediceans had had “all their enemies in the palazzo” at their mercy, they had “prevented any injury [to them], much to the anger of many, who were shouting for blood.”77 Capitalizing on this perception that Soderini’s French alliance and opposition to the Holy League had endangered Florence, the Medici and their supporters presented their return as the liberation of Florence from the threat of foreign control or intervention. The restoration of a Medici government had prevented the sack of the city by the Spanish army, as well as soothing internal confl icts. The iconography of Piero di Cosimo’s painting heralded the return of the Medici as a restoration of the golden age of Lorenzo il Magnifico, in which the family’s predominance protected and enhanced the city and the office-holding class.78 In institutional terms the system of the fi fteenth century did eventually reappear in full: in November 1513 the balìa revived the Medicean councils of the Cento and Settanta as well as the older communal councils of the Comune and the Popolo.

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The plenipotentiary body also replaced the Dieci di Libertà with its Medicean equivalent, the Otto di Pratica.79 But the Medici system and party of the previous century were not so easily restored. The constitution of the office-holding class from the late fifteenth century into the fi rst decades of the sixteenth gives an overwhelming impression of continuity. Almost half of the fifty-five men initially named on the balìa in September 1512 had sat on the most important magistracies of the previous stato, and the majority of them on several occasions.80 Even among those who formed the inner circle of the new Medici government—the sixteen men who sat five or more times on the Otto di Pratica between 1514 and 1527—older and less partisan figures dominated. 81 Some of these men did have previous connections with the Medici; six had fathers who were prominent in the fifteenth-century regime, and two—Jacopo Salviati and Piero Ridolfi— had married daughters of Lorenzo il Magnifico. But only two of these sixteen did not hold a significant office at least once during the period of the Medici’s exile from Florence—Piero Ridolfi and Matteo Cini— and several of them were as prominent prior to 1512 as they were after. 82 In a certain sense this continuity of influence reflected the requirements of efficient, effective government. The Florentine stato, like any other, needed a core of experienced actors who could provide institutional memory, gravitas, and wisdom. In the sixteenth century, the cultural associations between nobility and trust further limited the pool of potential men in sensitive areas of decision making such as those dealing with other states and military affairs that came under the Otto’s purview. Such men formed what one scholar has called a “party of government” in Florence. 83 Significantly, however, this party existed not in ideological but only in governmental terms: guiding the Florentine ship of state under the regime of Soderini and the Consiglio Maggiore as well as under that of the Medici that followed. Their principal concern throughout the period from 1494 to 1527 remained (as expressed in the vocabulary of the pratiche) the honor, dignity, and health of the city, which they saw as inseparable from their own.

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While a small party of committed Mediceans existed, most of who were too young to hold office in 1512, the majority of the city’s elite maintained a position of political agnosticism toward the nature and form of the government, whether it be a Medicean or a more civic form of republicanism. Two decades later, Francesco Vettori would pinpoint this attitude as a potential weakness for exploitation by those wishing to alter the Florentine stato, because “the majority of men . . . will stay on the corner to watch the game” rather than getting involved in active resistance to any political changes.84 The political concerns of this majority would appear to have embraced the preservation of their own personal position as well as that of the office-holding class more generally. 85 In October 1512, Luigi Guicciardini observed that “the universale, having seen the liberality and humanity of the Medici, are confident and have the greatest hope they will go from good to better.”86 This depended upon the continued independence of Florence: on the preservation of the city’s honor and health. Rather than resulting from ideological or partisan loyalties, the acceptance of the return of the Medici in 1512 for most of the office-holding class arose from a perception that the policies of Soderini’s administration had threatened the sovereignty and survival of Florence, the same concerns that had fostered the coup d’état against the Medici in 1494. The place of the Medici themselves within the government and the office-holding class altered substantially in the years after 1512 from their role during the fi fteenth century. While never dominating the most significant offices of the republic in a manner commensurate with the actual influence they possessed, the leading members of the Medici family had consistently sat on various magistracies of the government between 1434 and 1494. Cosimo il Vecchio sat as gonfaloniere di giustizia in 1434, 1438, and 1445, on the Sedici in 1450, on the Consuls of the Arte del Cambio in 1436, and served as an accoppiatore in 1440. His son Piero sat on the Signoria in 1448, on the Mercanzia in 1465, on the Consuls of the Arte di Calimala in 1468, served as gonfaloniere in 1460 and as an accoppiatore in 1448 and 1452. Lorenzo il Magnifico was too young to hold any of the most prominent political offices of the commune throughout his lifetime; but he sat on the Consuls of the Arte di

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Calimala in 1482 and 1487, served as an accoppiatore in 1471 and 1484, and as an operaio for several significant public buildings (including the Palazzo della Signoria) over many years.87 After 1512, with Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici automatically excluded by their clerical status, the family’s representation within the government of Florence fell to Lorenzo and Giuliano. While both men sat on the balìa created in 1512, and Lorenzo subsequently appeared on the Settanta following its revival in 1514, they were otherwise almost entirely absent from the most important positions within the stato: Lorenzo sat on the Otto di Pratica twice and the Cento once.88 How Giuliano and Lorenzo avoided holding office testifies to the altered nature of the stato after 1512. Lorenzo received a disqualification for owing tax payments on four separate occasions: three times for the Cento and once as gonfaloniere di giustizia. Giuliano was barred for the same reason the one time his name was drawn for the Cento.89 In all likelihood the two men did not owe any money to the commune at all, despite Lorenzo’s repeated complaints that his allowance did not meet his needs.90 Their disqualification instead represents the use of a handy mechanism for avoiding holding undesirable or tedious offices. However, it also represented a significant change in the political culture of the Medicean republic and projected an image of separation from the office-holding class. In 1480, when Lorenzo il Magnifico had actually failed to meet his tax debt, the regime went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the fact.91 The leading men of the government worried about the damage that could result if Lorenzo’s weakened fi nancial position emerged should his name be drawn for office and he be disqualified. His son and grandson’s cavalier use of fictional tax debts to shirk burdensome positions revealed a disconnection between the Medici and the rest of the office-holding class, and a striking disregard for the politics of perception. If the two younger Medici did in fact owe money to the commune, their actions represent an even starker contrast to those of their fi fteenth-century ancestors. The contortions of the regime in 1480 occurred because of a need, perceived by Lorenzo il Magnifico and his closest allies, for the Medici always to appear as good and upstanding

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citizens, subject to the same rights and obligations of any other mature male of the office-holding class. By contrast in the 1510s, the Medici, with the support of at least some of their partisans, had begun to distance themselves from the commonwealth of the republican imagination. They began to perceive the stato more as their familial possession than as communal property shared with the other families of the elite. In other words, the Medici and their closest supporters cultivated a more overtly princely culture in the city. Office holding, like tax paying, was an obligation of a citizen, not of a prince. The election of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici to the papacy, as Pope Leo X, in March 1513 constituted the single greatest factor contributing to the changed position of the Medici in Florence. It shifted the base of the family’s power and influence from Florence to Rome and provided a larger stage for their ambitions. It also separated them, irrevocably, from the social world of Florence’s office-holding class. From Leo’s accession, Rome and the potential rewards of the papacy exerted an irresistible pull on the Medici and many of their closest supporters. First Giuliano and then Lorenzo abandoned Florence, which now appeared a provincial backwater, in favor of the Eternal City at the center of Western Europe. “I think of nothing else,” Lorenzo observed in October 1513, “nor do I have any other desire except to begin tasting some of the fruits of Our Lord’s happiness.”92 When Francesco Guicciardini had his name drawn as gonfaloniere di giustizia for March–April 1517 (an office he was still too young to hold), he sent his thanks to Goro Gheri, but added: “nevertheless I pray that Your Lordship, when the time seems right, will not forget to remind Rome that which matters more to me.”93 The capture of the papacy by the Medici transformed Florence from the center of the family’s concerns to a satellite of papal policy. Guicciardini, in his 1516 Discorso del modo di assicurare lo stato alla casa de’ Medici, observed that with the election of Leo X “the government of this city [Florence] seems to them [the Medici] a small thing, and one sees that they consider it among the least of their possessions.”94 Whether Lorenzo resided in Florence or not, the stato became subject to the desires and needs of the family’s broader policy as they sought to

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use the papacy to promote themselves into the ranks of European royalty through marriage, diplomacy, and even military means.95 In April 1525, during the pontificate of the second Medici pope, Clement VII, Francesco del Nero offered a frank, if hyperbolic, assessment of his own role in transferring the costs of such policies from Rome to Florence: “I have emptied this city of gold . . . so that not one ducat remains in either pious or profane places. I have despoiled up to the Jews; and all in order to satisfy His Holiness, Our Lord.”96 Rome became the center for decision-making and the engine of policy over Florentine matters. Correspondence and diaries from the period demonstrate, again and again, how policy set in the Eternal City affected or governed outcomes in the city on the Arno. In 1514, Bartolomeo Cerretani observed that “Florence remained as if dead and everything was done in Rome.”97 In late February 1515, Francesco Guicciardini noted that the drawing of names for the Signoria of March–April that year had begun, but “because until last night the order had not yet arrived from Rome we do not yet know who will be gonfaloniere”98 From the summer of 1518, Benedetto Buondelmonti became the principal conduit for instructions to pass from Rome to Goro Gheri in Florence. In late June, for example, Buondelmonti informed Gheri that “we have the list for the new Signoria and the Most Reverend Monsignore [Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici] approves everything.”99 On other occasions, Florentine political affairs appeared to face delays because of Buondelmonti’s difficulty in gaining access to either Leo or Cardinal Giulio. “I have two letters from Your Lordship from the twelfth and the thirteenth, to which I have little to reply,” Buondelmonti informed Gheri on 15 January 1519, “because Our Lord is in the castle [Castel Sant’Angelo] and the Most Reverend Monsignore [is] with His Holiness.” The letter continued, “This morning His Most Reverend Lordship rode to his vineyard, where he is having a wall built, so I could not confer with him about the contents of your letters.”100 Possession of the papacy did expand the ability of the Medici to reward friends and allies. Many Florentines received paid positions within the papal household or employment within papal government.101

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However, the resources of the papacy had a limit, and competition for benefices or other offices often left the Medici and their agents in the unfavorable situation of choosing one Florentine over another. This hampered the family’s ability to broaden its connection with the officeholding class. In September 1518, Benedetto Buondelmonti became concerned about “disorder and unhappiness in the house of Pandolfini” because they desired certain benefices belonging the late bishop of Pistoia, Cardinal Niccolò Pandolfi ni, which Leo X wanted to give to the Pucci family.102 In February 1519, opposing claims by the Capponi and the Frescobaldi became an issue.103 Of course, just because a Florentine occupied the throne of Saint Peter, this did not give his compatriots a monopoly over the marketplace of papal favors. The patricians of Florence had to compete not only against one anther but also against the elites and merchants of other Italian states.104 With an eye on the broader ambition he harbored for his brother and nephew, Leo could not afford to ignore such petitioners. He used the rewards at his disposal to cement support for his family and build alliances as widely as possible. This, of course, further shrank the pool of papal favors that Florentines could gain access to. The experience of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, while a unique example, reveals the difficulties faced by Florentines competing in Rome and the dramatic effects that could result from the Medici failing to satisfy petitioners. Like so many others, Albizzi had sought preferment in Rome following the election of Leo X. He had requested the customs farm for the Papal States. As the Genoese Sauli family still owned this office for nearly three more years, Albizzi initially had no competition, and he submitted his petition without making any payment up front. Despite initially agreeing to Albizzi’s request, Leo X revoked his promise when the Sauli made a counteroffer with immediate payment in May 1513. The pope offered Albizzi four thousand ducats in compensation, but then reduced the amount to three thousand.105 Although Albizzi did later fi nd employment in the administration of the Papal States, the affair over the customs farm cooled his ardent support for the Medici.106 In October 1513, Benedetto Buondelmonti distrusted Albizzi enough to set a spy on him when he de-

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parted Florence for his villa.107 By 1517, Albizzi associated with men such as Luigi Alammanni, Zanobi Buondelmonti, and Jacopo da Diaceto, who later attempted to assassinate Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici in 1522.108 Whether Albizzi had any knowledge of the plot remains unclear. He was not among the men punished by the Otto di Guardia following its disclosure. But, according to the confession of Niccolò di Lorenzo Martelli, the conspirators did believe Albizzi would support their cause and named him as a member of the Signoria that would have assumed control if the assassination had succeeded.109 While Albizzi represents the extreme example, his trajectory from violent support for to equally violent opposition to the Medici demonstrates the potential for possession of the papacy to weaken the family’s position in Florence. The greatest risk to the Medici predominance that arose from the election of Leo X, however, did not come from disgruntled petitioners. Rather it eventuated from the growing divergence between papal and Florentine interests as the Medici sought to promote both Lorenzo and Giuliano into the ranks of European royalty, and as the greater powers of Western Europe continued to struggle for supremacy and for hegemony over the Italian peninsula.110 The Medici had founded their position in Florence during the fi fteenth century in part on their ability to present themselves as protectors and promoters of the city within the world of Italian and European power politics. Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromeda invoked this role in its celebration of the family’s return. When the focus of Medici ambition and power shifted from Florence to Rome, however, the family’s policy favored the advancement of their own interests without balancing the needs of the broader office-holding class. At the same time the economics of power favored the interests of the papacy over those of the Florentine state in matters of foreign policy. As a result, the diplomatic and military maneuvers of Leo led to several serious threats to the city and its territory. In the eyes of many of the patricians, the Medici appeared too willing to risk the liberty of Florence, threatening the status of the office-holding class, for their own familial benefit. In November 1527, Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi would observe that both Leo X and

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Clement VII had brought not only Florence but also all of Italy to the brink of ruin “in order to satisfy their own passions and ambitions.”111 In 1515, Leo X inclined toward using military force to oppose Francis I of France in northern Italy. This raised the uncomfortable proposition of Florentine troops, under the command of Lorenzo de’ Medici (their newly appointed captain general), fighting the city’s traditional ultramontane ally. It also increased the prospect of a French invasion of Florence’s dominion. In August that year, Francesco Guicciardini noted that reports indicated Milanese support for Francis I. He feared that, as in 1512, Florence would fi nd itself isolated: “We are declared [against the French] without any benefit, either for others or for ourselves.” He continued that any approach by Francis toward Florence could provoke a revolution in the city, again raising the specter of the summer three years earlier: “Any tumult that occurred here would be the ultimate ruin and end not only of the friends [of the Medici] but universally of the entire city.”112 In early September, Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici warned her son Lorenzo that Antonio Serristori—one of the leading men in the stato—had spoken openly against the pope’s military policy: “He said that we should pray to God that things go well, and that when they go otherwise then he will be among the fi rst to run to the Piazza [della Signoria] shouting ‘popolo!’”113 Later in the month, the immediate threat of war had lessened, with the prospect of an accord between Leo and Francis. Guicciardini, however, observed that papal and Florentine interests diverged over the treaty, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Florentine state but removed Piacenza and Parma from the Papal States. The accord, he wrote, “is greatly desired here . . . [but] there is grave fear that the pope will refuse it.”114 Leo X subsequently used the ambiguity exhibited by Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino and a papal vassal, during the confrontation with Francis I as an excuse to deprive him of his possessions in March 1516. The pope promptly bestowed the Duchy of Urbino on Lorenzo, who took over his new realm by early June. This fi rst Urbino war had few negative ramifications for Florence or the Medici position: it was swift and successful. But it did provide another distraction

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that removed Lorenzo from Florentine affairs, and the city did fi nance the war, in which the commune had no benefit or stake.115 While the initial conquest of Urbino proved relatively painless for both Florence and the Medici, a second war over the duchy provoked further divisions between the family and the office-holding class in the city. In January 1517, Francesco Maria della Rovere with the assistance of Federico Gonzaga da Bozzolo and the connivance of Odet de Foix, Viscount de Lautrec and Marshal of France, launched an offensive to retake his old fief.116 Della Rovere and Gonzaga reclaimed the territory almost as rapidly as Lorenzo had conquered it the previous year. Within one month only the fortress of San Leo still held out. By May, it appeared likely that Della Rovere would invade the Florentine state, and once again the prospect of a revolution in the city provoked by an external threat emerged. As early as 11 February, Francesco Guicciardini had presciently stated: “I most certainly do not doubt . . . that this fi re will have greater effects and burn more than perhaps many believe.” He predicted that if Della Rovere succeeded in Urbino he would turn his army on Florence, “which would eventually be our ruin.” Two weeks later, as it became obvious that retaking the duchy would require a long campaign, Guicciardini observed that lengthy wars often produced unexpected results: “Now that the fi re is alight it could produce some new travail.” He bleakly concluded that the least damaging outcome for the confl ict would be “an intolerable expense with loss of reputation.”117 Guicciardini, in Modena, observed events at a remove. His brothers Jacopo and Luigi, however, kept him informed of events in Florence. Their correspondence from May 1517 reveals the depth of anxiety and anger felt in the city over the results of the Medici military adventurism: the fi nancial drain on Florence and the threat posed by the antiMedici alliance across the Apennines. The leading members of the stato and the elite of office-holding class felt an increasing fear that discontent would provoke a rebellion in the city. “The gang here is upset,” Jacopo Guicciardini wrote on 12 May, alluding to the inner circle of the government. Two days later he observed, more somberly, “Here there is great suspicion and fear, and everyone is unhappy as suits the

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temper of these times . . . so that if someone wished to do harm here, they could do so without any effort.”118 Luigi Guicciardini offered a subtle but biting criticism of the stato when he observed that “no one doubts that we are at the mercy of our enemies.” Several days later he reiterated his judgment more bluntly: “Here there is no money, no brains, no agreement, so that we should pray to God that great harm does not follow.” Luigi reported rumors of open discord among members of the inner circle.119 Both Guicciardini brothers observed that the government had doubled the guard on the Palazzo della Signoria, and that around one hundred Pistoiese soldiers had been billeted in the Medici palace.120 Realization of fears that the economic and social costs of the war would provoke a rebellion if an immediate threat approached Florence was avoided on this occasion. With the assistance of Francis I and of King Charles I of Spain (the future Emperor Charles V), Leo X reached a negotiated settlement with Della Rovere and bought off his mercenary troops. The duchy returned to Lorenzo, and Della Rovere withdrew. Reactions in Florence to the military confrontations of 1515 and 1517 represented peaks of concern among members of the officeholding class about the divergence of Medici and Florentine interests and the growing separation between the family and their Florentine peers. Discontent bubbled along at lower levels throughout the period of Lorenzo’s administration of the city. Much of it focused on the continued and prolonged absences of the erstwhile head of the government, either in Rome, seeking preferment, or in Urbino, or in France, for his marriage to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne. In March 1515, Francesco Guicciardini complained: “We need the Magnificent [Lorenzo] to return, but no one knows when he will be here.” One month later, when Lorenzo still had not arrived in Florence, Guicciardini observed that this provoked internal tensions: “There is no check on those who take too much license, nor any particular distinction or notice of those who comport themselves well; and moreover it has enabled a few bad sorts to belabor the others.”121 A lack of direction and control resulted from Lorenzo’s interrupted presence in the city, provoking dissension and disunity in the stato. On

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17 May 1515 Benedetto Buondelmonti wrote a lengthy letter to Filippo Strozzi warning him that Galeotto de’ Medici, whom Lorenzo had left in charge of affairs in the city, and Raffaello Girolami hated him and feared his influence with Lorenzo.122 In July 1518, Buondelmonti himself bore the enmity of other men—whom he did not name—as he lamented to Strozzi: “I do not want to have worry at every hour that every little ribald and unfortunate will do me harm, because I am thirtynine years old and I would like, by now, to be known as a man and not a boy.”123 The position of Galeotto de’ Medici, during Lorenzo’s absences prior to the summer of 1515, and of Goro Gheri, in the years after, also galled the patricians in the office-holding class, as neither belonged to the social elite of the city. Buondelmonti described Galeotto as being “full of jealousy, ambition, avarice, and malignance.”124 When Galeotto fell from grace with Lorenzo in June 1515, Francesco Guicciardini brutally observed that “his fall appears to have pleased almost all the principal [men].”125 Even when Lorenzo was in Florence, his presence did not necessarily calm the situation. In the spring of 1515 the Settanta had elected Lorenzo captain general of Florence, and he received authority to maintain a body of up to five hundred men-at-arms. The election of a Florentine citizen as military commander in chief broke with tradition and shattered a taboo that, looking back to the example of Julius Caesar, viewed such an election as paving the way toward a dictatorship. Benedetto Buondelmonti noted that, in the opinion of some, the vote represented “the ruin of the city” by giving “too much authority” to Lorenzo.126 Francesco Guicciardini recorded the symbolic changes in appearance that accompanied the investiture of Lorenzo as captain general: “He then removed his lucco and assumed more military garb. . . . Today he is called more readily ‘Lord Captain’ than ‘Magnificent.’ ”127 Appearance bore great weight in Florentine society; and among the officeholding class the wearing of the scarlet lucco provided a visual analogue to the imagined fraternity of citizens. Clothing carried profound political and ideological messages: a citizen wore a robe, but a prince wore armor. When he had made his entrance into Florence in September

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1512, Giuliano de’ Medici had ostentatiously shaved off his beard— another militaristic, princely attribute—and dressed “in civilian clothes of the Florentine style.128 Lorenzo proved himself not entirely insensitive to these messages. Guicciardini noted that on “two or three occasions” when he appeared at the Settanta “he came [dressed] in a lucco as he used to do before . . . this demonstration was pleasing to the universale.” He did observe, however, that Lorenzo had acquired a following of twelve or fourteen young men, naming only Prinzivalle della Stufa, “who dressed like courtiers.”129 Behavior such as this gave rise to rumors and fears that Lorenzo intended to make himself prince of Florence, further undermining the family’s position and deepening the cleft between the Medici and the office-holding class.130 Lorenzo’s premature death, probably from syphilis, on 4 May 1519 provoked a clamor for a return to a more civic style of government. Luigi Guicciardini informed Francesco that the office-holding class expected a “better and larger government.” He continued that, in order to avoid a potential uprising, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici needed “to satisfy as many citizens as possible and restore honor to the magistrates and do things with as much civic-mindedness [civiltà] as possible.” Jacopo Guicciardini offered greater precision by stating that if the Medici wished to preserve their position they needed to choose a form of government that “they could preserve without having to torment the city and place it in danger and disorder, such would be a government similar to that of Lorenzo the Elder [Lorenzo il Magnifico].” Under such a stato “the honor and dignity of the city was continually considered, justice was well administered, citizens received their due and, if not all, at least the majority of the wisest men in the city were admitted to all the dignities and honors.”131 Even Goro Gheri, writing to Leo to recommend that the mantle of leadership in Florence pass to Ippolito de’ Medici (Giuliano’s illegitimate son), suggested: “When you send Ippolito here, sending him in a civic manner [civilmente] and as a citizen . . . will be a thing most pleasing to the universale and will be much praised.”132 The sudden reemergence of a discourse of civic government testifies to its continuing presence throughout the second decade of the six-

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teenth century. Despite the contrary opinion of some scholars, the office-holding class of Florence still clearly imagined itself in civic republican terms as the community of mature citizens dedicated to the ser vice of the city.133 Men such as Benedetto Buondelmonti, who identified his own interests and those of Florence solely in terms of the Medici, were exceptional in the 1510s and not the norm. Buondelmonti himself noted this when he warned Goro Gheri, in September 1518, that “the Consiglio Maggiore and that form of government were more beloved [in their time] than that of today.”134 Such a comment was revealing not only of the extent to which civic republicanism persevered in the political imagination of the office-holding class, but also of the extent to which the Consiglio Maggiore had become the defi ning institution of a non-Medicean stato after 1494. Civic republicanism stayed alive through the years after 1512 in the imagination, values, and practices of the office-holding class. In the literary circle of the Orti Oricellari—formed initially by Bernardo Rucellai in 1502 and continued after his 1513 death by his sons Giovanni, Palla, and Cosimo—the flame of humanist praise of the glories of the Roman republic burned brightly. An admixture of patricians and men from lower estates came together to discuss politics, history, and literature. The group included most infamously the future conspirators against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici (Luigi Alamanni, Zanobi Buondlemonti, and Battista della Palla), but also several other prominent names: Filippo de’ Nerli, Donato Giannotti, Jacopo Nardi, and, overshadowing them all, Niccolò Machiavelli. Machiavelli and two other members of the circle—Alessandro de’ Pazzi (a grandson of Lorenzo il Magnifico) and Antonio Brucioli—produced treatises on the future of the Florentine stato that expressed the prevailing intellectual currents of the Orti Oricellari during the years after 1512. All three men proposed not a Medicean but a more open, civic form of republican government. Notably, each one also supported the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore, albeit with varying degrees of power: Brucioli endowed it with the authority to elect the highest offices of the government, while the aristocratic Pazzi gave it a role only in appointing secondary magistracies.135

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In perspective, the literary production of the Orti Oricellari might appear an extremely limited sample. But considered as the remnants of a broader current of thought—much of which probably never made it to paper—they reveal the continuing vitality of republicanism at the heart of the political imagination of the office-holding class between 1512 and 1527. The fact that only one known treatise from the same period arguing in favor of the creation of a more seigniorial Medicean state—Lodovico di Piero Alamanni’s Discorso sopra il fermare lo stato di Firenze nella devozione de’ Medici (1516)—exists and that the writings of other men more closely aligned to the family, such as Francesco Guicciardini and his nephew Niccolò, expressed naked criticism of the current stato, strengthens this impression.136 Distinguishing between republican and Medicean governments in Renaissance Florence prior to 1532 is a false dichotomy.137 With the exception of a very small minority, all of the Florentine office-holding class, supporters and opponents of the Medicean stato imposed in 1512, remained republicans. They did so in the sense that they preferred and remained committed to the idea of a stato they could share among themselves, a government by civilian magistrates. Even Goro Gheri, ever the loyal servant of the Medici, noted in 1519 the need to maintain a civic republican constitution that permitted the general enjoyment of the “honors and dignities of this city . . . [by] the uomini da bene, the well deserving, and those of good quality,” albeit so long as they were “friends” of the dominant family.138 The crucial dividing line in the 1510s and 1520s was not between republicans and supporters of a principality, but between those who preferred the distribution of offices to occur under the aegis of a resuscitated Consiglio Maggiore and those who preferred (or at least tolerated) the political controls of the Medicean system. Throughout the years after 1512 men still identified the holding of communal offices as central to their individual and familial honor and identity. In October 1514, Francesco Guicciardini petitioned Lorenzo de’ Medici on behalf of a relative by marriage, Giovanni Arrigucci, for his election to the Signoria. If Lorenzo could have Arrigucci appointed to the commune’s highest body, Guicciardini said, “we will have great

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pleasure as we are joined by a tight relationship.”139 In December the same year, Filippo de’ Nerli wrote in favor of his father, Benedetto, being elected as gonfaloniere di giustizia: “It seems to me almost necessary that, while my father still lives (he is by now at least sixty-five years old), he be honored with this office so that after him I might assume his mantle and more easily enjoy and occupy the honors.”140 Lorenzo Cambi, in January 1515, referred to his election to the Signoria as “the honor and dignity given me.”141 Correspondence from the period also reveals not only that the objective structures of civic republicanism still functioned, but also that its culture of active citizenship continued to flourish. In Florence during the 1510s a discourse of civic republicanism, a “civic public sphere,” still existed: a figurative space in which the various interests of the office-holding class—personal, familial, corporate, commercial, spiritual—could be discussed and debated.142 The letters of the Guicciardini brothers during the Urbino war of 1517 formed part of this space, demonstrating how it functioned. They served to keep Francesco, absent from Florence, up to date on political events and gossip, on the debates of the day. They record the operation of a public, civic discourse. They represent a right assumed by the office-holding class to discuss and debate matters of state and governance, a right to be informed, and to have a say in the management of Florence’s affairs.143 The correspondence of Lorenzo de’ Medici himself provides further evidence from an unlikely source. In the early years of the new regime’s establishment, Lorenzo took it upon himself to remind Leo X and Cardinal Giulio not to ignore the civic republicanism of Florence. “In order to maintain matters with a better reputation and to display a desire to seek the counsel and opinion of those [men] chosen by the city about the business of the city, and to desire mature examination of all,” he wrote, “I judged it apposite not to give, at present, further commission to the aforesaid Messer Goro [Gheri], but to hold here the usual ceremonies and consultations.”144 While revealing of the cynicism of the Medici regime, this letter does also acknowledge the centrality of the practice of governance, of civic republicanism, to the office-holding class’s identity and also to their continued support for the Medici.

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Figure 2.2. Francesco Botticini, The Assumption of the Virgin—detail (ca. 1475–1476). Tempera on wood, 228.6 × 377.2 cm. London: The National Gallery. (Photo: © The National Gallery, London.)

The continued centrality of office holding and civic republicanism to the office-holding class of Florence received visual affi rmation in the period also. The images produced by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s, discussed in the previous chapter, remain unique for the centrality of social place and orga nization in their iconography. However, a continuum of images exists—from prior to the completion of the Sassetti and Tornabuoni chapels and continuing into the second decade of the sixteenth century—in which the civic republican imagination appears as the principal element of the identity of the Florentine elite. Alone or in pairs, males of the office-holding class appear represented in the red robes of government, as members of the fraternity of civilian magistrates: Matteo Palmieri in Francesco Botticini’s Assumption of the Virgin from 1475 (Figure 2.2); Luca d’Andrea della Robbia and another man (possibly his brother, Girolamo) in Andrea del Sarto’s Scenes from the Life of San Filippo Benizzi from 1510 (Figure 2.3); and an unidentified

Figure 2.3. Andrea del Sarto, Scenes from the Life of San Filippo Benizzi: A Boy Is Healed by Touching the Saint’s Clothes (1510). Fresco. Florence: Santissima Annunziata. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

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Figure 2.4. Pontormo, Joseph with Jacob in Egypt—detail (ca. 1518). Oil on wood, 96.5 × 109.5 cm. London: The National Gallery. (Photo: © The National Gallery, London.)

mature male (possibly Salvi Borgherini) in Pontormo’s Joseph in Egypt painted around the year of Lorenzo’s death (Figure 2.4). The identities of these men matter less than their representation as officeholders, which testifies to the continuing strength of the civic republican basis of elite identity. While these paintings lack the presence of Ghirland-

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Figure 2.5. Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio (ca. 1519). Panel painting, 86 × 65 cm. Florence: Galleria degli Uffi zi. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.)

aio’s frescoes from the 1480s, they appealed to the same imagination of mature males as self-sacrificing public servants. An even more striking representation of this theme, given its subject, appears in Pontormo’s Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio (Figure 2.5),

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painted around 1519. The portrait was commissioned by Goro Gheri on behalf of either Leo X or Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici. The painting formed part of Ottaviano’s collection in the early 1530s.145 Although Ottaviano shared a surname with the dominant family, he was only very distantly related to them: their last common ancestor had died in 1320. His grandfather, Bernardo di Antonio, had appeared regularly in the balìe of the fi fteenth century; but Ottaviano’s interests lay more in commerce than politics. He had, however, earned the trust of his more powerful relatives and in the early 1520s became responsible for the management of the family’s Florentine patrimony.146 Pontormo’s portrait depicts Cosimo il Vecchio in profi le, seated on a carved chair, with his hands clasped together in his lap. To his left the broncone device appears as a laurel tree with one severed and one flourishing branch. A scroll wreathed through the foliage declares, paraphrasing Virgil, uno avvulso non deficit alter (if one is torn away another takes its place).147 Previously art historians have focused their interpretations on the obvious dynastic iconography of the portrait, the commissioning of which coincided with the death of Lorenzo and the birth of the future Cosimo I.148 This interpretation misses the equally significant civic symbolism of the image. Cosimo appears dressed in the uniform of the office-holding class: a red fur-lined cioppa (the full-sleeved version of a lucco). In the context of 1519, with the prevalent desire for civic renewal noted by the brothers Guicciardini, this depiction was hardly casual. The portrait carried a clear statement about the identity of the Medici and the tradition of the family’s dominance: that the Medici were part of the social world and imagination of the office-holding class, that they saw themselves, as other members of the city’s elite did, as part of a fraternity of citizens. The message was profoundly civic, republican, and anti-courtly. In addition to the release of pent-up resentments, the sudden death of Lorenzo in 1519 left the Medici and their supporters with an awkward problem of succession. Lorenzo’s uncle, Giuliano, had died equally prematurely in 1516. As a result Pope Leo X remained the only legitimate, male heir of Lorenzo il Magnifico. The other males in direct

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descent were all illegitimate: Cardinal Giulio, and the bastard sons of Giuliano and Lorenzo, Ippolito and Alessandro respectively, who both were under the age of ten in 1519. Lorenzo left one legitimate, infant daughter from his short marriage: Caterina, the future queen of France. Initially, Cardinal Giulio took over the management of affairs in Florence. But in 1523, following the death of Pope Adrian VI—whose short-lived papacy followed that of Leo X—he became the second Medici pope in a decade, taking the name Clement VII. Although the new pope sent his young cousins Ippolito and Alessandro to the city, he entrusted the government of the city to Cardinal Silvio Passerini, a faithful servant of the Medici who had obtained his cardinal’s hat from Leo. This situation only magnified the tensions already present in Florence in the previous decade and increased the separation between the Medici and the office-holding class of the city. Francesco Guicciardini, in the early years of the 1520s, expressed the growing gulf between the Medici and the office-holding class in particularly graphic terms. In his Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze Guicciardini had the figure of Paolantonio Soderini argue that the dominant family were no longer even Florentines, having become “bastardized [by] . . . foreign blood, degenerated by alien customs, and all too insolent and haughty toward our way of life.”149 Determining the nature of the stato in Florence in this period—in the way I have done thus far—poses more problems than performing the same task for earlier decades, as the type of sources that reveal so much about the operation of earlier Medici regimes, particularly correspondence, become much scarcer.150 However, enough material has survived to enable the drawing of some conclusions. Certain elements remained the same: the tight control over and corruption of the electoral process. In July 1522, Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici to thank him for proposing that a member of the Guicciardini be appointed to the accoppiatori: “As for giving this office to one of us more than another, I will leave it to Your Most Reverend Lordship to make the decision.”151 Some indications exist that the inner circle of the government broadened slightly following the death of Lorenzo in 1519, perhaps in response to the discontent that followed.

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Of the sixty-nine men who sat on the Otto di Pratica for the entire period between 1512 and 1527, 56 percent had their names drawn after 1519. Only six men drawn for the magistracy before June 1519 sat only one time, whereas twenty-five men drawn from June 1519 sat just once. The same sixteen men continued to dominate the office as had done between 1514 and 1519, but a greater number of individuals received an opportunity to share in this significant position.152 More significant than the continuing corruption of the electoral process and the general continuity within the ruling group is the manner in which control over these elements slipped further from Florentine hands. Under Clement VII—even more so than during the reign of Leo—Florence increasingly became an appendage of the papacy, ruled from Rome rather than from the Palazzo della Signoria. Filippo Strozzi, shortly after the election of the new Medici pope, predicted that Clement would bypass the communal offices with regularity in favor of family agents. He refuted suggestions that the pope would incline toward the appointment of a gonfaloniere di giustizia with a one-year term, because such a move would give too much authority and control to the commune: “it being necessary to shift affairs and to give reputation completely to the house [of Medici] and not to the Palazzo [della Signoria]. Therefore he will be more inclined to send there a Cortona [Cardinal Passerini] than to choose this other direction.”153 Letters from Strozzi the following August indicate that although Passerini had not completely subsumed the role of the government, he had become central to the decision-making process in Florence.154 Further evidence of Passerini’s influence emerges from other correspondence. In November 1524, Jacopo Salviati wrote to his son, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, who was Clement’s legate in Lombardy, that any notice concerning military affairs should be given directly to “the cardinal of Cortona so that he can make the necessary provisions.” Salviati assumed that such authority belonged to Passerini without any reference to the Florentine magistracies. In February 1525, when Giovanbattista da Verrazzano sought to have his father, Lodovico, drawn for gonfaloniere di giustizia, he petitioned Cardinal Salviati, observ-

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ing that “it will be easy for Your Most Reverend Lordship, with a letter, to obtain this from the Most Reverend Monsignore of Cortona.”155 A particularly revealing letter from Filippo Strozzi, in the summer of 1526, offers a glimpse into the process of papal control over Florentine affairs as well as the tensions that it produced. He sketched out a discussion that had occurred between himself, Clement VII, Jacopo Salviati, and other unnamed individuals over who should become gonfaloniere di giustizia for the September–October term. The conversation took place in Rome, and the pope’s choice, Bernardo d’Antonio Miniati, unsurprisingly won the day. Strozzi concluded the vignette by stating: “This saddened me, because it seems to me a dishonor to that office to give it to a person who, neither by birth nor by quality, deserves it; although I will always approve what I see determined by the boss of the shop [maestro della bottega]. If it had been the work of Cortona I would have protested.”156 This letter is revealing on many levels. It demonstrates the extent to which the decision-making process had shifted from Florence to a small unelected coterie around the pope, and how Clement, who (although a Florentine) as pope was a foreign prince, had become the “boss of the shop” in the city on the Arno. It also testifies to the ever widening gap in values and expectations between the Medici and the office-holding class; that even a man as close to the ruling family as Filippo Strozzi voiced disappointment and disillusionment that Clement so obviously favored a candidate whose only quality was loyalty, rather than nobility or political ability. Bernardo’s father had been Lorenzo il Magnifico’s fi nancial mastermind and had been hanged by the Otto di Guardia in December 1494. Finally, it gives voice to the resentment felt toward Passerini among members of the office-holding class: Strozzi accepted the elevation of Miniati because Clement desired it but noted that he would have responded more forcefully and negatively had the decision come from the cardinal of Cortona.157 The increasingly open rule of Florence from Rome occurred as much by necessity as desire. Neither Ippolito nor Alessandro de’ Medici, despite living in Florence from early 1524, could provide the family with

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a suitable presence in the city. Both were only just entering adolescence: the years of their births are uncertain but fell somewhere between 1508 and 1511. Clement promoted Ippolito, probably because he was older; although Benedetto Varchi stated that he was preferred because the memory of Alessandro’s father, Lorenzo, was still too toxic.158 The balìa elected Ippolito to their ranks on 24 July 1524 and appointed him to the Settanta six days later.159 Whether or not he ever actually sat on either body, he probably did not assume any role in the decisionmaking process. The Medici had no effective representation or presence on the governing bodies of Florence. When Clement VII ordered the fortification of the city in May 1526, which he knew to be popular, he specifically desired that “the Magnificent [Ippolito] be one of the men deputized [for the commission] in order to benefit the family’s name.”160 During the 1520s the principal threat toward the Medici position in Florence remained, as it had been in the 1510s, the divergence between papal and Florentine interests. If anything this tension only increased during the years after the death of Lorenzo, who had often counterbalanced Leo X’s policies with his own, which usually aligned more closely with the desires of the office-holding class in the city.161 The geopolitical position of both the papacy and Florence became more urgent in the 1520s also, as fi rst Leo and then Clement sought to play off Francis I and the newly elected Emperor Charles V in order to prevent either man from obtaining total hegemony over the Italian peninsula.162 This policy left Florence following the dizzying twists of papal policy into alliances with or against each monarch in turn. In March 1526, Filippo Strozzi wrote a perspicacious letter to Niccolò Machiavelli lamenting the extent to which Florence’s security depended on the maneuverings of the pope and the ultramontane monarchs. “Thus our future is staked in a game of dice,” he lamented, “and we are having bad throws.”163 The Medici and many of their closest advisers had not absorbed the political lessons of 1494 and 1512: that the office-holding class of Florence would ultimately oppose and bring down any regime that endangered the independence of the city. In his Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, written between 1521 and 1524, Francesco Guicciardini had the person of Piero Capponi observe that

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three issues formed the crucial center of Florentine political concerns: egalitarian administration of justice, broad enough distribution of public offices, and the successful management of foreign affairs, “that is whatever pertains to the conservation and augmentation of the dominion.”164 When Paolantonio Soderini, the voice of civic republicanism in the dialogue, argued that the first two points were more important as they “concerned our own existence,” Bernardo del Nero (widely considered to voice Guicciardini’s personal opinions) objected that he was fooling himself: the preservation of Florence’s territory was the most crucial issue. “If you lose your dominion,” Del Nero argued, “you will also lose liberty and the city itself, which were it to be attacked would lack the means to defend itself.” Everything else derived from, and so was subordinate to, the maintenance of Florence’s independent territorial state.165 Guicciardini had continued in his ser vice to the Medici under Clement VII: becoming president of the Romagna in 1524 and lieutenant general of the pope’s military forces in 1526. Yet in the Dialogo written during the pontificate of Adrian VI, which briefly interrupted the Medici hold on the throne of Saint Peter, he gave voice to the defi ning principle of the office-holding class’s political agnosticism. The Florentine elite would support either a civic or a corrupted Medicean form of republicanism equally, so long as the regime protected the independence of Florence itself. Without Florentine sovereignty, no one would be in any position to enjoy the distribution of offices and administration of justice. Neither the increasingly seigniorial pretensions of the Medici nor yet the fi nancial burdens of papal policies alone proved the undoing of the family’s predominance in Florence. Rather, their growing distance from the office-holding class of the city, and especially from the elite’s values and expectations, left Clement VII blind to the Florentine perception of the dangers that his policies left Florence exposed to. The turning point came with the battle of Pavia, 24 February 1525, which saw French military power in Italy broken and Francis I subjected to the humiliation of capture by his archrival, Charles V. This victory left the Habsburg emperor in a position to dominate the entire

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Italian peninsula. Clement VII, after fi rst scrambling to abandon his pro-French policy in favor of friendship with Charles, initiated (in May 1526) the formation of the League of Cognac against this imperial hegemony, with Francis, Francesco II Sforza of Milan, and Venice.166 Under the authority given to the pope by the Otto di Pratica the previous November, Clement VII signed Florence to the anti-imperial alliance also.167 In response, while Charles de Lannoy, the imperial viceroy, marched on Rome from Naples, Charles de Bourbon and Georg von Frundsberg led a second army south from Lombardy with the express intention of sacking Florence.168 In April 1527, the army commanded by Bourbon and Frundsberg converged on the city on the Arno, as did the army of the League of Cognac led by Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. When Cardinal Passerini and Ippolito de’ Medici left the city to confer with Della Rovere, on Friday 26 April, a rumor spread that they had abandoned Florence. This provoked the so-called tumulto del venerdì (the Friday uprising), which saw a short-lived seizure of the Palazzo della Signoria. The swift return of Passerini, together with artillery to besiege the seat of government if necessary, led to the surrender of the rebels in return for a total amnesty. Cut off from Florence by the league’s army, Bourbon and Frundsberg pushed southward toward Rome instead. The soldiers under their nominal command, by now months without pay, swiftly captured the Eternal City on 6 May and subjected it to a brutal six-day sack. Clement VII took refuge in the Castel Sant’Angelo. When news of the fall of Rome reached Florence on 11 May, the rule of the Medici suddenly became a liability. The timely return of Filippo Strozzi and his wife, Clarice de’ Medici, persuaded Passerini to surrender the city without bloodshed. The cardinal of Cortona and Ippolito departed Florence on 17 May, meeting up with Alessandro, who had stayed at the villa of Poggio a Caiano west of the city.169 The decision of Clement to adhere to the anti-imperial league, in the judgment of two of the family’s previously prominent supporters, revealed to all the office-holding class of Florence the gulf between their own interests and those of the pope. Luigi Guicciardini observed that “even if the League were victorious, Florence stood to gain noth-

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ing, but were they to lose, it would be her ruin.”170 Francesco Vettori ascribed more cynicism to the pope: “Although [Clement] greatly loved the city of Florence, he loved himself more and . . . were he to be ruined, it did not seem disadvantageous to him to put it in jeopardy, so that it would go to ruin with him.”171 In less abstract terms, the experience of Filippo Strozzi between 1526 and 1527 provides an illustration of the disaffection of the officeholding class provoked by Clement’s anti-imperial policy. In September 1526, the Colonna—a Roman baronial family—at the instigation of the imperial commanders in Italy had raided the city of Rome and driven the pope into the Castel Sant’Angelo. Obliged to buy his freedom, Clement offered Strozzi and Cardinal Giovanni Salviati as hostages to his good intentions. While Cardinal Salviati never surrendered himself, Strozzi went willingly to Naples. He wrote to his brother, Lorenzo, on 27 September: “It seemed to me that, being such a servant of Our Lord as you know, I neither could nor should fail him in such urgent necessity—neither in this nor in anything else.”172 When Clement abused Strozzi’s trust—breaching both a promised amnesty for the Colonna and the provisional truce between the league and the imperials—the banker became involved in intrigues against the Medici from mid-December 1526. Principal among his coconspirators were Zanobi di Bartolomeo Buondelmonti and Battista di Marco della Palla, who both had been involved in the 1522 attempt against the life of Clement VII (when he was still a cardinal) and were now associated with the imperial cause in Italy.173 At the end of December, Strozzi explained his defection to Francesco Vettori and urged him to join the conspiracy: “This boat of Saint Peter is about to sink—it is time to throw overboard certain parts in order to save the rest.”174 Strozzi’s meaning was clear: the office-holding class had to jettison the Medici to preserve Florence. Vettori apparently did join the plot against the Medici, for Strozzi later assured Buondelmonti and Della Palla that he would “do everything for the city [Florence] that one expects from a good citizen.” In the same letter, Strozzi observed that if he ever doubted his own resolve he reminded himself that “I have been toyed with, without any respect, as if I were a slave”—a phrase that probably captured

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the general sentiment of the office-holding class of Florence, which had found itself deprived of any control over the destiny of the city. At this late moment, Strozzi appeared to recover (if only rhetorically) a belief in the civic republican heritage of Florence. “I am continually reading Livy and the Politics of Aristotle,” he claimed; “from the one it seems to me I draw the practice and from the other the theory of being a huomo da bene and an active citizen.”175 Strozzi eventually bought his own freedom from imperial custody. He returned to Rome two days before the imperial army breached the walls of the city, in time for him to whisk his family to the relative safety of Ostia, from where they journeyed by boat to Livorno.176 From the Tuscan port he and Clarice traveled to Florence to assume leading roles in the bloodless coup of 16–17 May. The defection of Filippo Strozzi, who in 1513 had commemorated the return of the Medici with the image of Perseus liberating Andromeda, epitomized the reasons for the collapse of the family’s control in 1527. In 1512, the Medici had returned as liberators of the city—albeit cynically—defending Florence from sack by the Spanish army stationed at Prato and freeing the office-holding class from the administration of Soderini that had led the city into such peril. Fifteen years later, however, the Medici family became the principal threat to Florence’s independence and existence, as the anti-imperial policy of Clement VII left the city militarily exposed and fi nancially drained. Over the course of their rule, from 1512 to 1527, the Medici had increasingly lost touch with the majority of the office-holding class, becoming separated in terms of values, expectations, and interests. The Medicean predominance of the fifteenth century had worked because the family’s interests were largely compatible with and indistinguishable from those of their peers: the Medici belonged to the elite of the city and shared the social world and imagination of the officeholding class. As a result they also experienced and relied upon the existential bond between the city and their elevated social status. Unlike other Florentine lineages, however, the Medici could use their profi le and prestige to protect the city and so preserve their own position along with that of the rest of the office-holding class. The family’s hegemony balanced a loss of civic freedom with an increased guarantee

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of Florentine independence from foreign powers. Following the election of Leo X in 1513, the Medici diverged from Florence as the larger stage of papal politics held sway in their attentions. The capture of the throne of Saint Peter by the family, which continued throughout the period with only the brief interruption of Adrian VI’s pontificate, pushed the interests of the Florentine office-holding class aside in favor of the broader goals of papal policy toward the ultramontane European monarchs. Florence became a source of fi nance to further Medici dynastic ambitions and pontifical military adventures. The majority of the office-holding class could endure the fi nancial burdens and the increasingly seigniorial pretensions of the Medici— although these certainly fostered resentment—so long as the Medici used their prestige and authority to preserve the sovereignty and independence of Florence, thus permitting the continued enjoyment of the honors and dignities of government by the patricians. Once Rome fell to the imperial army and Clement was effectively imprisoned in his own fortress, incapable of action, the government of the Medici became a liability. The Medici had failed to heed to lessons of 1494 and 1512. The majority of the office-holding class was politically agnostic about the family’s predominance in the city. Self-preservation, not partisan loyalties or ideology, motivated their political behavior. The loss of Florence’s independence to any foreign power would almost certainly result in the loss of the office-holding class’s political power and social prestige. When the Medici failed to protect the city and so the office-holding class, they lost the consent on which their rule survived. In May 1527, for the third time in a generation, Florence’s elite attempted to fashion an effective government without the family that had dominated the city for almost a century.

3 Defending Liberty The Climacteric of Republican Florence

; In the autumn of 1529, an army led by the viceroy of Emperor Charles V laid siege to Florence. Later the same year, the painter Pontormo completed a portrait of a young Florentine, Francesco Guardi (Figure 3.1). The painting restated that well-worked Florentine theme to which Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromeda (Figure 2.1) had also referred: the personification of youthful virtù defending liberty. Pontormo’s depiction of Guardi, however, did not clothe this concept in any of the mythico-religious forms—such as David or Hercules— common to representations in the preceding century. Instead, the painter presented the young man in all his humanity: dressed (apparently) in the uniform of the civic militia formed in 1528 and prepared to defend the city of Florence, alluded to by the shadowy bastions of San Miniato al Monte that loom behind him. This realism reflected the politico-military context of the painting’s production: the real, immediate threat posed to Florentine liberty by the imperial army camped at the city gates. However, while the menace of the soldiers was clear and present, what exactly Guardi and others were defending had become less so. In the years between the expulsion of the Medici and the

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siege, the office-holding class of Florence struggled over the meaning and significance of the concept of liberty. Following the departure of Cardinal Passerini and the Medici bastards in 1527, the city’s elite found themselves caught in a situation analogous to, but more dangerous than, that experienced by their forebears in 1494: forced to confront fundamental questions about the nature of Florence’s government and their place in it, within the broader context of political events they could not control. This second attempt to form a stable oligarchic regime without the Medici resulted in the near destruction of the city and provoked a decade-long cultural and military struggle. Like Guardi in Pontormo’s portrait, the Florentine elite fought—with words and weapons—to defend and promote confl icting understandings of liberty. This struggle was not simply discursive but had far-reaching implications for the shape of Florence’s society and government. It resulted, in the short term, in the end of the Florentine republic and, in the longer term, the successful creation of the Medici principality. These structural shifts testified to a fundamental reevaluation of the meaning of liberty in Florentine experience. Political and military events between 1527 and 1530—especially the ten-month-long siege of the city from October 1529—brought the two concepts of liberty (civic freedom and political sovereignty) into confl ict in Florence. While partisan distinctions, such as those between supporters and opponents of the Medici, were significant, the principal division that emerged within the office-holding class in this period derived from the understanding attached to the concept of liberty. Although the concept had survived the summer of 1512 intact, the pressures of the last years of the 1520s led to a rupturing of the previously unitary idea of libertà into two distinct, competing interpretations that increasingly—from 1527 into the 1530s—appeared to become mutually exclusive. The members of the office-holding class who abandoned the city before the siege, such as Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Strozzi, and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, demonstrated what might appear to be a political precocity. Their behavior was predicated on an understanding of liberty in which political independence trumped civic

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freedom, although they clearly did not aim to create a principality. Their compatriots who remained in Florence instead preferred to risk the city’s sovereignty and even its existence in order to preserve a civic republican form of government. The immediate response to the departure of the Medici in 1527, from both Florentines and outside observers, suggested that the form of government in the city had fundamentally altered as a result. “The government of this city,” the Venetian ambassador, Marco Foscari, reported, “has completely changed and [has been] placed in the hands of the citizens and the people.” In another letter, written the same day, he observed that “all authority [has been] removed from the Medici.”1 A Florentine observer more precisely wrote, “The Medici are deprived of the government. The balìa is extinct and the government is now in the Signoria and the Colleges not the Settanta and the balìa.”2 The principal distinction that both men made, separating the new stato from the Medicean one that had preceded it, lay in the role of the elected magistracies. They judged that Florentines now governed Florence, through civic republican mechanisms, and that the essentially external Medici regime no longer controlled the decision-making process of the city. Florence had regained its liberty, as both independence and a civic form of government. The unity of purpose that had coupled former supporters as well as opponents of Medici rule in the lead-up to the coup rapidly disintegrated once Cardinal Passerini and his youthful charges had departed. On 18 May, a group of young men led by Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi stormed the Palazzo della Signoria. They threatened to defenestrate the sitting executive, appointed under Medicean electoral controls, unless they resigned, and demanded the immediate restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore.3 This violent intervention set the tone for a political struggle within the city between what both contemporary and modern historians have broadly defi ned as a popular coalition of arrabbiati (the Angry: men driven by their hatred of the Medici) and piagnoni (the Bewailers: supporters of the Savonarolan cause) and an oligarchic party. 4 The formation of this coalition represented the merging of two previously hostile camps within Florence’s complex political topogra-

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phy. In the 1490s, the label arrabbiati had referred to the opponents of Savonarola. By 1527, however, the former enemies had found a common cause in opposition to the Medici, and the name came to identify the men most hostile to the previously dominant family and their supporters.5 Rather than playing out as a relatively simple confl ict over control of the government (as had occurred in 1494), in 1527 and the years that followed the principal battle within the office-holding class occurred over the nature of the stato. The reemergence of the piagnoni as a political force in 1527 highlights the enduring legacy of Savonarola in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century, as well as the extent to which the memory of the friar had become inextricably intertwined with the institution of the Consiglio Maggiore. The latter could not be revived in Florence in 1527 without awakening memories of the former. If anything, Savonarolism—as a political ideology and millenarian conviction in the city’s providential mission—had a far greater impact between 1527 and 1530 that it had during the Dominican preacher’s own lifetime. The election of Christ as king of Florence, which occurred in the Consiglio Maggiore with formal solemnity and by an overwhelming majority on 9 February 1528, embodied this posthumous triumph. Savonarola had urged the election of a divine monarch, as a cure to Florence’s factionalism and desire for leadership (so preventing a human tyrant), on 28 December 1494 but never saw it realized.6 The passage of some three decades since the friar’s death had, doubtless, softened much of the hostility that he had provoked in his lifetime. The geopolitical realities of Florence, standing alone and friendless against both Medici pope and Habsburg emperor, also suited the revival of Savonarola’s message of tribulations that would presage the city’s rise to glory as well as a conviction in divine succor. Finally, the absence of prominent but polarizing individual leaders, such as the Dominican himself or Francesco Valori, meant that Savonarolan ideas became more widely diffused within the regime and office-holding class. Savonarolism flourished in these years, providing ideological strength and spiritual sustenance to the opponents of the Medici, and so becoming a significant thread in the fabric of political confl ict.

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This confl ict was complex and multifarious. Despite the assertion by Niccolò Capponi—gonfaloniere di giustizia from June 1527 to April 1529—to the Estense ambassador that men such as Albizzi considered anyone “who has spoken but one time to the Medici” an enemy, no simple binary opposition between supporters and opponents of the Medici operated in determining the course of the struggle.7 Capponi himself had held office repeatedly between 1512 and 1527, including sitting on the Settanta, the Otto di Pratica, and serving as gonfaloniere di giustizia in the summer of 1526. 8 Nor, despite the jeers of several Mediceans that the stato of 1527–30 represented “the tyranny of the mob,” was it fought principally between socioeconomic estates.9 While the period did witness a minor broadening of participation in government by non-patricians, the leaders of the popular faction, Tommaso Soderini and Alfonso Strozzi, both descended from patrician lineages and possessed generous wealth, while men from the elite estates continued to hold a plurality of the most significant government offices.10 The confl ict increasingly coalesced instead into a struggle over the nature of the Florentine stato, fought in the language of liberty. The majority of the office-holding class, as they had done since 1494, remained politically agnostic in the battle, leaving it to a minority of committed protagonists. The complexity of the struggle, and the centrality of liberty as the hinge on which it turned, coalesces into clarity through an examination of the experiences of several prominent members of the office-holding class in the years between 1527 and 1530. The aftermath of the May coup witnessed the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore and the institution of the gonfaloniere di giustizia as an annual rather than bimonthly office. On 1 June, the Consiglio elected Niccolò Capponi as gonfaloniere, and did so again in 1528, a testament to the possibility for men prominent under the Medici to continue to hold significant sway in the new stato. Capponi confronted the difficult and thankless task of trying to balance internal and external political forces. Most notably, he had to negotiate Florence’s military commitment to the League of Cognac—which bound the city in alliance to Clement VII against Charles V—with the threat posed by the pope to the new stato.11 Capponi also had to attempt to mitigate the

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anger of the arrabbiati and the piagnoni as he struggled to hold the officeholding class of the city together to preserve Florence’s independence from imperial or papal control. On 25 July 1528, Alessandro Guarini, the Estense ambassador, reported Capponi as stating, “Nothing makes me favor the king of France over the emperor except the preservation of our affairs.” Two weeks later the Ferrarese representative informed Alfonso I that Baldassare Carducci had described the gonfaloniere as “wishing to unify all the citizens of this city.”12 Capponi’s attempts at preserving unity within the office-holding class faltered under the increasing pressure from the arrabbiati for punishment of men identified with the Medicean regime or perceived as supporting the papal cause. Men such as Francesco Guicciardini, Benedetto Buondelmonti, and even Filippo Strozzi, who had aided and encouraged the coup against Passerini, found themselves the targets of a variety of measures, ranging from suspicion, through the Florentine standard of punitive taxation, to prosecution for crimes, real or imagined. What distinguished these men was not their association with the Medici stato in Florence itself, but rather their ser vice to the family outside of the city. Compared with Niccolò Capponi, who continued to hold public office during the Medicean republic of 1512–27, Guicciardini, Buondelmonti, and Strozzi rarely sat on any Florentine magistracy. Guicciardini only held three offices in the city for the entire period: he was appointed to the Diciasette in place of his father on 17 March 1514, he sat on the Signoria for September–October 1515, and received a seat on the Settanta on 19 October 1524. Buondelmonti only held office twice in the Medicean republic. He sat on the Signoria for March–April 1523, and was elected to the Settanta at the same time as Guicciardini. Similarly, Strozzi had no history of office holding in Florence beyond three terms as a Monte official.13 Combined with their prolonged absences from the city, this lack of civic profi le had isolated them from the majority of the office-holding class in terms of experience and identity. Moreover, it made them targets of the suspicion and resentment of the arrabbiati, who saw them as agents of a hated, foreign regime. Guicciardini had acknowledged the distance between himself and his peers in Florence in a letter written during

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the summer of 1522. Because of his extended absence from the city, he wrote, “I am by now almost a foreigner.”14 The experience of Benedetto Buondelmonti provides a dramatic and illustrative example of the excesses to which this anger could lead. Buondelmonti had left Rome following the sack and traveled to Ancona, where his children had stayed out of danger. Filippo Strozzi and Zanobi Buondelmonti, however, persuaded him to return to Florence in the initial aftermath of the coup of May 1527.15 On the basis of certain account books dating from the 1510s, the syndics asserted that Buondelmonti owed the commune one thousand florins. He refused to pay and retired to his villa outside the city. On 24 October 1527, officers appointed by the syndics arrived to seize goods in lieu of payment. Buondelmonti’s servants apparently took up weapons to defend their master’s property, and some even threatened to raise the surrounding countryside by the ringing of church bells. The syndics’ constables withdrew, but sometime in November Buondelmonti was arrested and imprisoned in the Stinche, the communal prison. When the Otto di Guardia summoned him for interrogation, Buondelmonti found himself accused not only of refusal to pay his debt and of resisting public officers in the execution of their duties, but also of the murder of Andrea Buondelmonti, of having written to Clement VII before his return to Florence, and fi nally of having sought out and spoken with Francescantonio Nori (the gonfaloniere di giustizia deposed on 18 May). On 10 December, the Quarantia condemned him to four years’ imprisonment in the depths of the citadel at Volterra, with his subsequent liberation dependant on a three-quarter majority vote in the Signoria. A letter written by Buondelmonti shortly after his release expressed both the pathos and the personal costs of partisan persecution: he found his sister dead and his wife dying. “It amazes me that I have not died from grief,” he wrote, “had not the grace of God fortified me I could not possibly have tolerated all that I have endured.”16 Less dramatic, and so probably more representative, the experiences of Francesco Guicciardini and Filippo Strozzi provide the bestdocumented examples of the delicate line walked by men with close ties to the Medici, and the confl icting loyalties that drew upon them.

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Guicciardini’s earliest recorded response to the coup d’état of midMay 1527 came in a letter to Niccolò Capponi at the end of the month. “I love the popular government,” he wrote, “and the city’s liberty as much as anyone else.” However, he continued that they should not distract themselves with pleasant thoughts, which risked losing them both their political influence and personal positions.17 Despite his perception of the potential dangers of the situation to the oligarchic party, Guicciardini could do little to prevent his alienation from the corridors of power now that his principal patrons had lost their place in the city. His years of ser vice to both Medici popes, and especially his prominent roles in the fi nancial and military affairs of the League of Cognac, had left him too tainted for rehabilitation. So only four months after the departure of Cardinal Passerini, Guicciardini found himself alienated from office and subjected to punitive taxes. In September 1527, he wrote of his position in the second person: “I see that, because of the mood of the city you fi nd yourself completely excluded from the government.”18 As always in periods of political inactivity, he turned to writing, fi rst composing the Accusatoria, his imagined prosecution of himself for ser vice to the Medici popes: “Messer Francesco Guicciardini, thief of public monies, destroyer of our contado, a man consumed by ambition, desirous of the return of the Medici, lover of tyranny, occupier of your Palace, capital enemy of the common liberty.”19 In addition to revealing his distance from the office-holding class of Florence, the Accusatoria also reveals something of Guicciardini’s consideration of liberty in the immediate context of 1527. The juxtaposition of Medici tyranny with common liberty suggests more a sense of independence rather than civic freedom. All of the crimes that Guicciardini accused himself of related to his ser vice for Clement VII. In particular all his wrongs connected to the imperilment of Florentine sovereignty, physically from the proximity of the armies of both the league and Charles de Bourbon in April 1527, but also fi nancially, diplomatically, and militarily. The letter of 30 May 1527 to Capponi, in which Guicciardini separated and distinguished between the civic sense of liberty (“the popular government”) and Florentine independence (“the city’s liberty”) supports this conclusion.

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Guicciardini did not lose hope in his fall from grace, nor did he lose his faith in civic republicanism. He did not despair of his own abilities either. In the Consolatoria, written about the same time (but presumably after) the Accusatoria, Guicciardini assured himself that the same abilities that had made him attractive to his papal masters would soon return him to public life in Florence: “it is impossible that in such a famine of men [of virtù and experience] you would not be recognized.” The Consolatoria identified this lack of recognition since May 1527—his isolation from the public life of the city—as Guicciardini’s principal disappointment and source of grief. This pained him more, he emphasized, than the loss of his papal appointments. The foundation of his displeasure, he wrote, consisted “in being reduced to an inferior grade at great remove, I will not say from that which you used to have in years past, but to that which your equals have in your fatherland.”20 Guicciardini felt pained at his distance from his social peers, who held and exercised office in the city. He desired to return to public life, and in September 1527 he saw civic government and communal offices as a vehicle to enable this return. So Guicciardini continued to linger in or around Florence until the middle of 1529. His correspondence to his brothers for this period originated from the city, from Guicciardini villas or other locations in the contado. Tensions soon began to emerge, however, as Guicciardini struggled to balance his desire to serve and aid the stato with his frustration and even anger at the direction in which the city was headed. In May 1528, his aristocratic prejudice spilled over in two letters to his elder brother, Luigi. On the eighth of the month he wrote from Florence: “They have made the Ottanta. I understand little about it; but I have been told that they are all well trusted by the stato and there are more men of no significance than men of great houses. From our house there is no one, nor any of the Capponi.”21 The council, elected on 7 May, in fact contained a majority of men from patrician lineages. Guicciardini was correct about the absence of men from his own family, although Niccolò di Braccio Guicciardini later replaced Bartolomeo Marsili.22 For Guicciardini, ever the proponent of a restricted, aristocratic form of republican government, the minimal broadening of participation that

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occurred between 1527 and 1530 was too much. On 11 May, he wrote again to Luigi, in a letter that as much as it gave vent to Guicciardini’s bigotry also testified to the very limited changes in the social makeup of the office-holding class: “This morning they voted in the council to give the beneficio to many who pretend to possess it in their family: not one of sixty-five won it.”23 Filippo Strozzi, meanwhile, despite his prominent role in persuading Cardinal Passerini and Ippolito to leave Florence peacefully, soon fell into disgrace. Assigned the task of acquiring the fortresses at Pisa and Livorno from their Medicean castellans, Strozzi failed completely and also, through his negligence, allowed Ippolito to flee to neutral Lucca. Combined with his substantial fi nancial losses from the sack of Rome, as well as the illness of his wife, Clarice, this embarrassment left Strozzi obviously embittered and dissatisfied in Florence. Never one to choose the prosaic when a more dramatic turn of phrase presented itself, he wrote to his brother, Lorenzo, on 23 November 1527: “I understand very well that my happy days have passed, and that all the remainder of my life will be for me more bitter than death.”24 In the middle of 1528, Filippo obtained license to leave Florence and travel to Lyon to attend to his commercial interests. As always when outside of Florence, Strozzi maintained a regular correspondence with his elder full brother, Lorenzo. Lorenzo’s position in Florence and his responses to the events of 1527–30 were more complex than Filippo’s. Unlike his younger brother, Lorenzo held office regularly in the Medicean stato: he held the position of Monte official twice, sat on the Signoria once, was drawn as gonfaloniere di giustizia while too young to hold the office, was elected to the balìa on 22 July 1522, and sat on the Cento regularly. He would be called to the pratiche in 1529, becoming a regular participant, and following the return of the Medici he again received a position in the balìa elected on 8 November 1530.25 Lorenzo Strozzi represented, in short, the perfection of the political agnosticism aspired to by the majority of the Florentine office-holding class in the troubled and confused years of the early sixteenth century: a man too important to ignore but too insignificant in his ideological

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persuasions to threaten any particular faction; a man who held office without aspiring to public life. Lorenzo himself neatly encapsulated his feelings and his position in a letter to Filippo, written on 23 May 1529 following his fi rst election to a pratica. “I am not well pleased by this,” he wrote, “because, however much I have recovered my strength, difficulties offend me nor have I found anything that delights me more than [fresh] air and for this [office] it is necessary to stay assiduously in the city because never do three days pass without the pratica meeting on account of the Signori or of the Dieci.” He continued by describing how he would prepare himself for office: “I will force myself not to lack in my debt toward the fatherland and I will strip myself, as I usually do, of every passion.”26 As always in Florence, multiple forces operated on political actors, asserting competing and sometimes confl icting demands.27 Lorenzo Strozzi’s position enabled him to intercede regularly on Filippo’s behalf: petitioning their half-brother Alfonso or other prominent men to relieve Filippo’s tax burden and provide him with a license to travel to Rome.28 Following the return of Clement VII, in October 1528, the Roman economy had begun to revive, and Filippo, whose fi nances entwined with those of the pope’s, desired to restore his own fortunes. Pierfrancesco Portinari, who held almost every significant office between 1527 and 1530, also lobbied on behalf of Filippo Strozzi. He wrote to the banker: “I have not lacked in doing all that I judged beneficial to you. As in all of your affairs, I am always ready to do what a friend should, as I am obliged.”29 When Rinaldo Corsini, a second cousin of Francesco Vettori, became one of the syndics appointed to investigate the fi nances of the Medicean republic, Vettori intervened on behalf of Filippo Strozzi. “I spoke to Rinaldo Corsini,” he wrote, “and he promised sincerely and I hold him a good man who would not promise what he did not wish to do.”30 When the Signoria seized and sold the property of Medici supporters who had left Florence, Lorenzo Strozzi purchased, by proxy, many items belonging to his brother-inlaw Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, “with the intention of saving them for Palla.”31 The period between 1527 and 1530 proved no more immune to the ubiquitous sottogoverno than any other in the republic’s history. The

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demands of family and friends infi ltrated and influenced the decisionmaking processes as much as religious or ideological motivations did.32

Whatever the nature of internal political motivations, however, external events largely conditioned the course of affairs in Florence, heightening anxieties about the future liberty—both as civic republicanism and political independence—of the city. Niccolò Capponi fell victim to this disquiet. The revelation of correspondence between Jacopo Salviati, as always at the side of Clement VII, and the gonfaloniere led to his deposition on 17 April 1529.33 The new head of the government, Francesco Carducci (elected the same day) confronted a rapidly deteriorating geopolitical situation. On 29 June, Clement VII and Charles V had concluded the Treaty of Barcelona, in which the emperor promised to aid the return of the Medici to Florence.34 At the same time negotiations had begun between Charles and Francis I of France that would result in Peace of Cambrai (5 August 1529), under the terms of which the French king surrendered all his claims and interests in the Italian peninsula. The betrayal of their most powerful ally combined with the détente between their two principal enemies left the Florentine stato confronting the possibility of a war with both the pope and emperor. This situation brought the question of liberty to a head in an open debate in the pratica on 19 July 1529 over the wisdom of preserving the civic republican form of government at the risk of losing Florence’s independence. The Signoria asked the men summoned for counsel on that summer day whether “it should take one alternative more than another for the health of the city or seek to save well liberty with those means that it can”35 The request presented a dichotomy that distinguished between protecting the physical city or defending the civic republican form of government—in the barest terms, between either negotiating or fighting. By pursuing diplomacy, the Signoria could protect “the health of the city.” This meant not only the physical edifice of stone, wood, and mortar, but also the sociopolitical status of the office-holding class, whose identity depended on the survival of Florence as an independent

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state. A negotiated settlement with the emperor, who was en route to Genoa, would probably preserve both the physical city as well as the social preeminence of the elite. The price, implied in the distinction offered by the Signoria, would be the civic republican government. As result of the Treaty of Barcelona, a settlement would require the restitution of the Medici to their position of political predominance. Approving the second option would not guarantee either the physical or social survival of the city, but would satisfy pride and honor, as well as meeting the ideological demands of both the arrabbiati and the piagnoni. Unlike in the debates held in the pratiche during the summer of 1512, during which liberty had remained an essentially unspoken given, a unifying concept that lay behind the issues of the health, honor, and dignity of the city under discussion, the Signoria on this occasion made libertà the object of the debate itself. In doing so, it asked the men present to consider a possible divergence between liberty and the health of the city. Opinion within the pratica almost uniformly supported military preparations. Lorenzo Strozzi, speaking toward the end of the session, summed up the prevailing sentiment with his brief contribution: “that the city arm itself.”36 However, Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, another member of the consultative body, while noting that such contingencies should be provided for, argued eloquently in favor of negotiation. Invoking the recent past, he attacked those who spoke against diplomatic efforts: “The obstinacy in which we fi nd ourselves seems to me most reprehensible.” He continued that the Signoria should recall the embassy sent to Emperor Maximilian I in 1502: “We should meet with Caesar [Charles V] in order to insure the city.”37 The pratica ended inconclusively. But it reconvened in the evening of the same day. Albizzi had taken advantage of the interruption to put his thoughts on paper, and rose to deliver a lengthy oration. Not only does this speech demonstrate that Albizzi’s character was more complex than Benedetto Varchi’s summation of the same—“haughty, proud, and restless”—more importantly, it provides the single most detailed and significant exposition on the meaning of liberty produced by a prominent figure in the stato of 1527–30.38

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Albizzi addressed both interpretations of liberty—civic republicanism and political sovereignty—in a lengthy exegesis on the problems of past regimes, and the necessary decisions that the Signoria ought to make in the present. Despite his close association with opponents of the Medici since the late 1510s, Albizzi argued for the preeminence of independence over the political freedoms of civic republicanism. Two significant points underlay Albizzi’s argument. First, he linked the twin concepts of liberty together, arguing that a civic form of government represented the best means of preserving and defending the city’s independence. Second, in a remarkable admission for a Florentine, Albizzi acknowledged that Florence did not possess a monopoly on the idea of liberty and that all the other cities in Tuscany (many of which were subject to Florentine rule) also had concepts of their own sovereignty. Albizzi began by demanding why the city’s governors had continually involved Florence in wars and confl icts “not only without any profit but to its great detriment.” In doing so the city expended “an infi nite treasury” and also incurred, through its military adventures, the enmity of either one prince or another, who then threatened Florence. Albizzi continued that he could fi nd only one reason to explain this behavior: “that the city has almost always been subject either to a tyrant or to a few powerful citizens.” The decision-making process of Florence, therefore, advanced only the interests of these men, rather than considering the “universal well-being of their Fatherland.” The obvious conclusion to draw from this, Albizzi argued, was “that Republics can never be well counseled by great and powerful Citizens” because their ambition would lead them to friendship with foreign princes, whom they would seek to cultivate and satisfy instead of protecting and advancing the real interests of the city: namely, its continued independence and survival. To protect Florence from the depredations of foreign potentates, to preserve the city’s sovereignty, he concluded, a “legitimate popu lar government” was necessary. This meant, he explained, a regime in which “Magistrates and not particular Citizens” controlled the processes of government.39 That is to say, that

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Florence’s liberty (as sovereignty) depended upon the maintenance of its liberty (as civic freedom). Albizzi’s diagnosis of the problems of Florence’s past should not be read as a call for social revolution, but for cultural reformation. He had no intention of stripping the traditional office-holding class of its role, nor less of depriving himself and other patricians of their prominence and influence. The speech was historically specific to 1529. The “great and powerful” in Albizzi’s estimation did extend to include the entire elite, but embraced only the Medici, their friends, and their relations. His diatribe against Florence’s involvement in wars that did not concern it appears specifically to criticize the city’s participation in the military adventures of the two Medici popes since 1513. More than anything else, Albizzi’s depiction of “legitimate popular government” resembles Matteo Palmieri’s description of the vita civile in the mid-fi fteenth century. The distinction that Albizzi made between the person of the magistrate, a term that referred to all public offices, not just judicial positions, and the personal interests of the citizen echoed Palmieri’s injunction from some fi fty years earlier: “He who sits among the magistrates, before anything else, knows that he is stripped of his own person.” In this way, “retaining the public persona of the whole civil body,” Palmieri continued, the magistrate could serve, sustain, and defend the city in its entirety. 40 Albizzi reconnected the stato to the myths of civic humanism, to its Ciceronian inheritance of selfless public ser vice and virtù. He invoked and sought to revitalize the imagined community of a commonwealth of officeholders, all equal and virtually indistinguishable one from the other in their red robes of state. In particu lar, Albizzi called on the memory of the administration of Piero Soderini between 1502 and 1512. Rather ironically, given his own role in the downfall of Soderini, but apparently without embarrassment, Albizzi declared: “In this city in the entirety of its history never did a Republic exist except from two to twelve.”41 However, Albizzi blamed the fall of the stato in September 1512 in a large part on the gonfaloniere’s refusal to negotiate with the Spanish viceroy. All the more reason, he argued, why the Signoria should now

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“break this ice” and engage Charles V diplomatically. Mixing his metaphors, he continued that, “if we are more obstinate, we will find ourselves closer to the fire.” Albizzi argued that Florence should negotiate with the emperor regardless of the status of the imperial-French talks (Albizzi’s speech predated the Peace of Cambrai by some three weeks). The city could not rely on its allies, and historical precedents existed for dealing with the emperor in spite of Florence’s ties to the French monarchy. The city should seek to drive a wedge between Charles and Clement VII, as the pope and the emperor were natural enemies as compatible as “water and fi re.” Florence, and the current stato in particular, Albizzi continued, should consider the emperor a friend, not an enemy, and seek to persuade Charles to this understanding also. If divine will was the principal cause for the city regaining its liberty (as both civic freedom and sovereignty) in 1527, then the “coming of the Imperial army” came a close second. 42 Failure to negotiate could have catastrophic consequences, not least of which, Albizzi argued, would be the disintegration of the Florentine dominion. The Signoria should not fool itself. Charles V, arriving in Italy “with such Reputation and force,” would be able raise the majority of Florence’s state in rebellion against the city “with just one trumpet blast.” Not only were many of Florence’s subject cities naturally inclined to support the imperial cause in Italy—here Albizzi named Pisa, Arezzo, Cortona, Volterra, and Montepulciano—but they each also possessed “that most sweet desire for liberty.”43 This remarkable acknowledgment—that the cities conquered by Florence each had preserved a notion of their own liberty as freedom from Florentine rule— lies at the heart of Albizzi’s exegesis. He placed sovereignty as the preeminent form of liberty. Albizzi valued a civic republican form of government because it represented, in his estimation, the best means of protecting Florence’s independence. The rule of the Medici had compromised this sovereignty by subsuming the city’s interests in favor of the policies of the papacy. Albizzi’s commitment to civic republicanism was not so much ideological as practical. In the mythologized civic humanist ideal that he invoked, the interests of the office-holding class as a whole would trump the personal desires of individual magistrates.

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In this way, the decision-making process would be objective and practical, pursuing the surest path to protecting the city’s independence, which in this case meant achieving a negotiated settlement with Charles V. Despite Albizzi’s eloquence, almost a full month of wrangling occurred before instructions for the embassy were determined in the pratica and ambassadors appointed. 44 The embassy, which departed on 16 August and met Charles V in Genoa, failed, as the emperor made it clear the city had to agree to terms with the pope, not with himself. 45 On the same day that the ambassadors left Florence, an army, led by Philibert de Châlon, Prince of Orange and imperial viceroy at Naples, departed Rome to enforce the return of the Medici agreed in the Treaty of Barcelona. The Signoria had previously appointed Malatesta Baglione as governor general of Florence’s troops. 46 Baglione had the double advantage of being signore of Perugia, which placed an obstacle in path of any imperial advance, and an enemy of Clement VII. However, he did not halt Orange’s approach for long. On 10 September, Baglione surrendered Perugia to the viceroy, who in turn chivalrously permitted him to withdraw unmolested with his forces intact and gave them one day’s head start in the march to Florence. 47 Leaving Perugia on 12 September 1529, Baglione joined forces with the two thousand men under the command of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi at Arezzo. On 17 September, the city of Cortona—fulfi lling Albizzi’s prognostication of two months earlier—surrendered to Orange. Albizzi then earned lasting notoriety by abandoning Arezzo. Together with Baglione he withdrew his forces and retreated to Florence. Historians, both contemporary and modern, have speculated over Albizzi’s motivations, the general consensus being that he had secret instructions from the Signoria to abandon the city. 48 This certainly fits the pattern of Florentine policy in 1529. The Signoria left most of the dominion thinly defended by choosing to concentrate all its efforts on Florence itself, as well as Livorno, Pisa, Empoli, Prato, and Pistoia. This plan, while it ensured channels of communication and the supply of grain, let Orange advance to the walls of Florence without a serious fight.

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Albizzi’s decision to leave Arezzo also fits the thinking he outlined on 19 July, and the speech provides the best explanation for his behavior. Albizzi recognized, even before it had begun, that Florence could not win a fight against the combined might of the emperor and the pope. Nor could the city hope to maintain the loyalty of its subject communities in the face of such a threat. Albizzi perceived no point in seeking to defend Arezzo, and perhaps even hoped that bringing the threat of Orange’s army even closer to Florence itself would fi nally spur the negotiation of a settlement. In any event, the withdrawal cost him whatever political credit he had in Florence. Soon after his return to the city, Albizzi purchased a license to leave and joined the growing body of Florentines residing in Lucca, the proximity and relative neutrality of which made it an attractive location. The Quarantia later tried and acquitted him in absentia. Around mid-September, as the imperial army advanced into the Florentine dominion, Francesco Guicciardini decided to leave Florence also, traveling toward Bologna. On 20 September 1529, he wrote to his brothers, Luigi and Jacopo, from the Casentino, that he had actually reconsidered and had prepared to return to Florence, with Alessandro Pazzi. At the last moment, however, when the two men were mounted and ready to depart, word arrived of the surrender of Cortona and the abandonment of Arezzo, which, “multiplying the danger” of their intended journey, caused them to reconsider. 49 This letter, and several that Francesco later wrote to Luigi from Bologna, capture the tensions felt by a man trapped between his own fears and desires. If Lorenzo Strozzi was content to remain in Florence and hold office (albeit reluctantly) in order to protect his own and his family’s interests, Guicciardini felt it in his personal interests and also the best interests of Florence to flee the city, but struggled with his decision to do so. “If I could, by staying in Florence, bear any fruit for the city and its liberty,” he wrote to his brothers, “God knows that I would risk my own life to do so.” He continued by asserting his desire to obey the government and to be seen as faithful to Florence.50 But Guicciardini clearly felt that his person, and possibly life, was at risk by remaining in the city. His fears of persecution were probably well founded. In early

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October, with Orange’s forces drawn up a day’s march from Florence but not yet engaged, a special commission of six men identified and detained individuals suspected of sympathizing with the enemy. The men arrested and imprisoned in the Palazzo della Signoria included Ottaviano de’ Medici, Filippo de’ Nerli, and Prinzivalle della Stufa.51 In late October, Francesco Guicciardini joined Clement VII at Rimini, as the pope journeyed to Bologna in order to crown Charles V in fulfi llment of his obligations under the Treaty of Barcelona. Guicciardini, unlike Filippo Strozzi, who had returned to Rome in August 1529 and recommenced loaning money to Clement, did not immediately resume ser vice with his old master.52 Instead, Guicciardini sought to aid the Florentine ambassadors, including his brother Jacopo, who had followed the papal relocation. He helped the embassy in gaining an audience with the pope, and also a promise that all Clement desired was the return of his family to Florence as private citizens and the restitution of their possessions.53 In exchange, the imperial army would withdraw. “God knows,” Francesco wrote to Luigi, on 3 December 1529, “that if ever I had occasion to do so, I have served the city well . . . in such a way that the city will remain free and well-assured of maintaining its liberty.”54 The Florentine government, however, rejected the pope’s offer, because, according to the Estense ambassador, the regime did not trust Clement to honor his word.55 Even as he sought to protect Florence and struggled with his decision to abandon the city and his desire to remain (in appearance at least) a loyal citizen, Guicciardini began to express fears for the future of Florence and anger at the policies of the stato. He began to identify the current government, and not the papal-imperial alliance, as the greatest threat to the city’s liberty and security. As early as 30 September, in a letter written jointly with Alessandro Pazzi to the papal secretary Giovanbattista Sanga, Guicciardini wrote that the men of the new stato were “persons of the least faculty and quality, together with a certain part of the tremulous and desperate youth.” He continued that “it would not be surprising, if they do not fall fi rst, that they see matters reduced to the ultimate extremity.”56 On 19 December, he confided to Luigi that “I do not see any escape from the ruin of the city.”57

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On 3 December 1529, Francesco wrote to Luigi, who had also left Florence for the relative safety of Pisa. “I have the greatest displeasure in understanding the damages done to you and to others,” wrote Francesco, referring to the depredations wrought on the countryside surrounding Florence by the besieging army. They were, he continued, “things to break the heart of anyone born in that city.”58 On 19 December, he condemned the provisions made for the property of rebels as “atrocious . . . breaking fidei commisi and donations.”59 The actions of the stato, in pursuing partisan retribution, were tearing at the social fabric and unity of the office-holding class. Between September and December an increasing number of men had their names cited by the Otto di Guardia for leaving the city without license. In mid-November, the magistracy declared several men, who had ignored orders to return to the city, rebels, and their property was seized and sold by the Ufficiali dei Ribelli.60 In late November, the Otto cited Francesco Guicciardini himself to appear before them. While he refused to return to Florence, he did attempt to negotiate with the magistrates and justify both his past and present actions. On 14 December, Francesco informed Luigi that he had told the Otto that he would leave Bologna if his presence in that city displeased them and they suspected that he had taken ser vice with Clement VII: “I would go to whatever place they designated.”61 Five days later, Francesco wrote that he had considered relocating to Lucca so that “those in Florence who wish to direct my life cannot say that I am ignoring them.”62 Even as his displea sure and his despair at the course of events increased, Guicciardini continued to do his best to follow a fi ne line between obedience and rebellion. He remained into December 1529, confl icted over where his loyalties lay. As in 1527, Guicciardini still had faith in the civic republican government in Florence despite what he saw as the growing threat to the city’s independence posed by the Signoria’s policies.

In late October 1529, Orange fi nally moved his forces to within striking distance of the walls of Florence. Daily artillery duels and skirmishes

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began in earnest.63 Until late December, the balance of the military confl ict favored the Florentines over the imperial army. Orange’s forces were encamped only on the southern bank of the Arno, so the siege effectively embraced only half the city. In preparation for the oncoming confl ict the walls and gates of the city had been reinforced with earthworks, and the bell-tower at San Miniato al Monte had been transformed into an artillery post. The Signoria also ordered the destruction of any building as well as all crops within a one-mile radius of the city’s wall, thereby disproving the judgment of former Venetian ambassador Marco Foscari that the Florentines would never fight because they would not be able to bear the destruction of their “sumptuous and magnificent” villas.64 Vincenzo Fidele, secretary to the current ambassador from La Serenissima, noted with wonderment the unity of the city in these preparations. He observed that the shops were closed and “the great and small of every condition work continually on the bastions.”65 As a result the besieging army initially endured greater hardship than the besieged. Money, food, and munitions ran short in the imperial camp. The almost continuous rain only increased the misery of the besiegers. The situation was so dire that when Alessandro Vitelli, one of Orange’s colonels, received a wound in combat he had to turn to the city in search of medical attention. Baglione pointedly replied that he could not send a doctor to the camp because his own wounded required assistance, but he invited Vitelli to enter the city, “which has every comfort.”66 Pontormo most likely painted the portrait of Francesco Guardi (Figure 3.1) during this period of the siege, which Fidele described as colored by hope and relative levity within the walls.67 Against a murky green background, Guardi stands contrapposto: his body angled toward the left of the image with his head turned directly toward the viewer. Guardi’s right elbow juts assertively out of the image, a fairly common motif for defiance, self-assurance, and masculine integrity. The phallic sword-hilt and oversize codpiece magnify the assertive virility of the gesture. The positioning of the body appears to quote Donatello’s marble David, from the previous century (Figure 3.2).68 The colors of

Figure 3.1. Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (Francesco Guardi?) (1528–1530). Oil on panel transferred to canvas, 92.1 × 72.1 cm. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum. (Photo: The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles.)

Figure 3.2. Donatello, David (1409). Marble, height 191 cm. Florence: Museo Nazionale del Bargello. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.)

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the Florentine republic, red and white, appear in Guardi’s clothes. Over a white shirt he wears a doublet of cream-colored fabric. His crimson hose match the beret that completes the outfit.69 A gold chain of fairly large links hangs about his neck, while pinned to his hat is a medal depicting Hercules and Antaeus, behind which hangs a feather. The Greek hero, like the biblical King David, held a special place in the iconography of Florence, representing the triumph of virtù over seemingly insurmountable odds.70 Antaeus remained invincible while his feet touched the ground, until Hercules (as the medal depicts) raised his opponent in the air and crushed him to death. In all, through its iconographic and physiognomic elements, the portrait provides a visual analogy to Vincenzo Fidele’s laudation of “the valorous youth of the militia of this city, who are all noble and ingenious.”71 The Consiglio Maggiore had created the civic militia on 6 November 1528. Divided into sixteen companies—one for each gonfalon of the city—each with its own captain, the force was commanded by Stefano Colonna da Palestrina. Four other professional soldiers received appointments as sergeants major, one for each quarter. Male citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-five could enroll in the militia, but only those thirty-six or younger served on active duty. The formation of the militia did not represent the arming of the city, only of the youth of the office-holding class. In this respect, it constituted a revolutionary break. For the first time in the republic’s history the disenfranchised youth of the city’s elite received an institutional and symbolic place in the community.72 During the siege, the militia was charged with guarding the city walls and gates. They also paraded through the city on significant occasions, such as their fi rst assembly in November 1528 or the belated appointment of Baglione as captain general of the republic on 26 January 1530.73 In this way they both physically and ritually embodied the traditional Florentine conceit of youthful virtù defending liberty. Pontormo captured this embodiment effectively in his portrait of Guardi and linked it explicitly with the earlier iconography through the medal of Hercules. In 1529, however, the threat to Florentine liberty was no longer abstract. The enemy, quite literally, was at the gates.

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The government charged the militia with defending the physical city, the civic republican form of government, and most importantly the imagined community that linked the two together and provided the office-holding class and the patriciate especially with their identity and sense of self. All three remained tightly wrapped in the traditional imagination of the city’s elite that conceived of themselves as an egalitarian commonwealth of magistrates, whose sociopolitical preeminence arose in part from their ability to shape the urban landscape and whose continued predominance depended on the independence of Florence. In the context of 1529, the members of the office-holding class who remained in Florence delegated to their sons, nephews, younger cousins and brothers the task of defending the liberty of Florence, which they explicitly defined in terms of the freedom of civic republicanism. In a pratica held on 28 September 1529, in the last weeks before the siege began in earnest, men spoke one by one on behalf of their gonfalons on the issue of whether to fight or negotiate. Francesco Lenzi reported that thirty-six men had met in the neighborhood of the Unicorn, of whom all but two or three “desired more swiftly to take this chance and defend themselves, having Justice in our corner.” Alessandro Malegonnelle stated that all seventy men from the White Lion agreed that “one ought to defend liberty because it is living according to the law.” These men couched their responses not in terms of defending Florence’s independence but rather in terms of fighting to protect the civic republicanism of the current stato. Between September and December 1529, during the early months of the siege, men speaking in the pratica again and again counseled against “selling” or “altering” the liberty of the city in exchange for peace. Several asserted their willingness to sacrifice their lives in the cause. On 28 September, Andrea Niccolini reported that he and his neighbors “would sooner die free than live in servitude.”74 This commitment toward defending by force the civic republican government of Florence expressed by men such as Lenzi and Malegonnelle received a visual affi rmation in another painting produced by Pontormo in the summer of either 1528 or 1529: an altarpiece featuring the Virgin with an infant Jesus accompanied by Saint Anne and four other saints (Figure 3.3). Commissioned by the captain of the

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Figure 3.3. Pontormo, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints (ca. 1528–1529). Panel painting, 228 × 176 cm. Paris: Musée du Louvre. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence.)

Palazzo della Signoria for the convent of Sant’Anna in Verzaia, the image appears at fi rst glance to be a conventional sacra conversazione.75 The seated Virgin, dressed in red and blue, holds a restless infant Jesus. From behind the mother and child a matronly Saint Anne stares out at

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the viewer over Mary’s left shoulder. Three of the male saints who surround the Holy Family are readily identifiable: Saint Peter at the front left, clutching his ubiquitous keys; Saint Sebastian behind him, pierced through the neck by an arrow; and Saint Benedict at the front right (the nuns of Sant’Anna followed the Benedictine rule). Art historical consensus holds that the remaining figure, behind Saint Benedict, with the visible stigmata, depicts the Good Thief. What makes the image remarkable is the overt political message given it by the small tondo beneath the feet of the Virgin, which depicts a procession of Florentine officeholders with banners, trumpets, and other symbols of state (Figure 3.4). The location of the image, at Sant’Anna in Verzaia, also had significance. Annually, since 1370, the sitting Signoria of Florence paraded from their palazzo to this convent located outside the Porta San Frediano on 26 July, Saint Anne’s Day, in commemoration of the revolt that occurred on that date in 1343 against Walter of Brienne, the nominal Duke of Athens and then signore of Florence. In one of only two brief experiments with seigniorial rule, prior to the sixteenth century, the Florentine government had appointed Brienne lord of the city in September 1342. The French nobleman soon lost the support of the office-holding class, which led an uprising against him on 26 July 1343 that culminated in the duke’s expulsion from the city eleven days later. The coincidence between the commencement of the successful rebellion with Saint Anne’s Day soon led to the adoption of the Virgin’s mother as one of Florence’s principal protectors and patrons.76 Pontormo probably completed his altarpiece for the anniversary of the revolt against Brienne in 1528 or 1529. The Signoria’s request, in March 1529, that another incomplete image of Saint Anne, begun by Fra Bartolomeo in 1510, be installed in the palazzo makes the latter year more likely.77 In the increasing tensions of the spring and summer of that year the figure of the Virgin’s mother and her role in Florence’s pantheon of protectors gained new significance. The visual juxtaposition of the figures of the Florentine magistrates with Saint Anne in Pontormo’s altarpiece, together with the geographic location of the image—at the culmination of a procession by the highest mag-

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Figure 3.4. Pontormo, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints—detail (ca. 1528– 1529). Panel painting, 228 × 176 cm. Paris: Musée du Louvre. (Photo: © Erich Lessing Culture and Fine Arts Archive.)

istracy of the city, in Saint Anne’s homonymic church—emphasized her role as a defender of Florence’s liberty. Specifically the image alludes to liberty as civic republicanism, represented by the figures of the officeholders, that the expulsion of Brienne restored in 1343 by force and violence.

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The martial spirit expressed by the participants of the pratiche and captured in Pontormo’s altarpiece entered the population of the officeholding class more generally and had effect in the significant realm of appearance. The anonymous chronicler who continued Luca Landucci’s diary observed that during the siege men began to abandon the traditional cappuccio (hood) in favor of hats and berets. They also cut their hair short and grew beards.78 Scholars who have noted this striking observation have linked it, obviously, to an assertion of masculinity in the face of a military crisis.79 While correct, their conclusion remains rather unreflective, posing masculinity as a universal rather than a cultural construct. As imagined by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s (Figures 1.1 and 1.3), the uniform of the clean-shaven mature males, in their red robes and hoods, provided a visual analogue to the idealized egalitarian community of civilian magistrates united in public ser vice. The masculine identity of the office-holding class had been closely bound up with notions of virtù and the governance of the city. Altering this uniform had repercussions for the imagined community of the office-holding class and the conceptions of masculinity that underlay it: changing how men dressed in Florence changed their role and identity. While on one level, the adoption of short hair, beards, and hats rather than hoods represented simply the adoption of the fashions sported by the professional soldiers hired to defend the city, at a deeper level it made possible a reconception of elite identity. Fashion is not a mere epiphenomenon. It alters in relation to social values and expectations. The shift in appearance during the siege suggested that the identity of the male office-holding class could become detached from its existing basis of public ser vice and fraternal egalitarianism. It represented a new idea about what it meant to be a man in Florence for members of the city’s elite, one detached from the practice of civic governance. Virtù, it seemed, could be served not only by serving as a civilian magistrate but through the exercise of a more rugged, militaristic manhood—a virtù that did not protect or serve civic republicanism but which defended the city’s independence, as the members of the militia patrolled the walls of Florence keeping the enemy at bay.

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The anonymous chronicler gave no indication of how broadly the shift in clothing and hairstyles penetrated the male population of the city. However, it seems likely that such a change in fashion manifested fi rst and most strongly among the young men of the militia, who daily rubbed shoulders with the professional soldiers protecting the city. The mature males of the office-holding class who still met in councils and commissions to discuss and direct the policy of the besieged city would have, presumably, felt less urgency about expressing a new, different role and virtù, while the traditional civic republican forms still served them well. The situation has echoes of the behavior of the circle of giovani attached to Lorenzo de’ Medici in the previous decade, who also abandoned the cappuccio in favor of soldierly garb. Both incidents also appear to conform to Lodovico Alamanni’s speculation in 1516 that it would be far easier to seduce young men into abandoning “civic dress” and to shape them into courtiers and ministers than the old. 80 The emergence of a new notion of masculinity during the siege, then, occurred in competition with the older, established idea of the role and public presentation of the elite males in Florence. It suggests a degree of generational confl ict, which, as Alamanni astutely observed, could serve anyone wishing to alter the form of the Florentine stato. The tension between the defense of civic republicanism and the preservation of Florentine independence only increased as the siege continued. Some five months after Orange made his initial attack, the discussion in the pratiche no longer made mention of justice or rule by magistrates, that is of liberty as civic republicanism, but only of sacrifice and duty toward the sovereign existence of the city. On 18 February 1530, Malegonnelle exhorted the Signoria and the Dieci to assemble the militia because “together they will think of virtù and their debt [to the city].” Moreover, he continued, “the said giovani will incite themselves in wishing to demonstrate their virtù.” Pierfrancesco Portinari, speaking for the gonfalon of Vaio, counseled that the members of the militia “present themselves as a sacrifice, fi rst purged of every desire omitting every passion, offering their soul to God and their Body to the fatherland.”81 In the same period, more men began to distinguish

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in their speech between the liberty of Florence (by which they clearly meant the city’s independence) and the civic republican government. 82 On 20 February, Lodovico Martelli and Dante da Castiglione issued an open challenge to all Florentines serving in the imperial army, accusing them of having mocked the civic militia as a paper army and denouncing them as “traitors, for coming [in arms] against their dear fatherland.” The two youths offered to duel any three Florentines under Orange’s command in order to prove the military worth of the militia and the treachery of its opponents.83 The language of late 1529, which had emphasized the need to defend the legality and justice of civic government, had given way to words that exhorted the preservation of Florence’s independence through physical sacrifice and that valued the courage and virtù of the city’s youth above the practices of their fathers in the councils of state. Not coincidently, around the same time proposals began to emanate from the Signoria about circumscribing the extent of civic freedom in the city by limiting the size of the pratiche. On two occasions, speakers in these forums even made cautious allusions to the ancient Roman practice of appointing a dictator in times of crisis as a mechanism that the current Florentine government should consider. 84 By this stage, the initial heady days of the siege had become a distant memory. In late December 1529, a second imperial army under the command of Ferrante Gonzaga, younger brother of the Marquis of Mantua, and Alfonso d’Avalos, the Marquis del Vasto, had arrived on the northern bank of the Arno. Pontoons, extended across the river, united the two armies, completely encircling Florence. The financial difficulties of the besieging forces continued, but with Florence now isolated and the dominion rapidly falling under imperial control, Orange eased his problems by reducing the number of troops under his control. In early March 1530, with his now thinned army, the viceroy abandoned any further attempts at a military assault and ordered his men to dig in and blockade the city. The shortage of food and currency soon became a principal topic of debate in the pratiche in Florence.85 The grim situation within the city, however, did not lead to an immediate change in course by the stato. On the contrary, the increasingly

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dire outlook only served to fuel the fervor of the piagnoni that had reignited with the coup of 1527 and the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore. Friars such as Fra Zaccherino da Lunigiana promoted a Savonarolan-inspired message that the hardships of the siege were tribulations sent by God to purge and renew Florence. 86 Speakers who subscribed to the belief in the city’s providential mission and divine favor came to monopolize the pratiche, assuring one another that at the fi nal moment God would intervene to save his chosen people. The influence of Savonarola’s millennial vision inspired and encouraged the resistance of the Florentines in the city. It cast the defense of the civic republican constitution as a sacred duty, and so as something not to be cast aside lightly. From outside the city walls, the picture appeared very different. The increasingly desperate situation in Florence became a constant refrain in Francesco Guicciardini’s correspondence during the summer of 1530. On 17 March of that year, the Quarantia in Florence had declared him a rebel and seized his property. The following day he departed Lucca for Rome, returning to active ser vice with Clement VII. 87 At the end of June, Francesco wrote to Luigi, now in Lucca himself: “thus things go, consuming and reducing themselves to the ultimate ruin.” 88 The apparently imminent demise of Florence had altered Guicciardini’s perception and position. While at the siege’s beginning he had clearly identified himself with Florentine government—speaking of “our soldiers” in reference to the abandonment of Arezzo—by the summer of 1530 he referred to the stato contemptuously as “those inside.”89 According to this distinction, the fi rst-person plural came to refer, in his correspondence, only to those Florentines outside the city—either actively assisting the papalimperial coalition or staying in guarded neutrality in Lucca: “Our misfortune is having to witness total ruin through the fault of a few miserable men.”90 As his correspondence makes clear, Guicciardini, by the summer of 1530, did not think the stato in Florence capable of saving the city. On the contrary, the governors of the city threatened the ruin of Florence. On 1 July, he wrote to Luigi Guicciardini: “Everything that gives hope

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to those inside causes them to persevere in their obstinacy and reduces things to a place from whence I do not know what could suffice to save us from the sack and complete destruction of that city.” At the end of the month, he observed that “obstinacy does not allow men to recognize necessity.”91 Just as men such as Alessandro Malegonnelle and Pierfrancesco Portinari saw themselves defending Florence by urging sacrifice on the civic militia, Guicciardini perceived supporting Clement VII and his allies as the only way to protect the city. When news reached him in Rome of a decisive victory for the imperial army in early August, Guicciardini wrote to Luigi that “today the Prince [of Orange] advanced a good distance along the road toward saving the city from destruction.”92 In a similar fashion, the chronicler Girolamo Ughi reported that Florentines serving in the besieging army mocked and derided their compatriots within the city by claiming “to be better citizens than them.”93 Guicciardini serves, for historians, as the spokesman for those members of the office-holding class who sided with the Medici during the siege. The predominant perception of the military events of 1529– 30 as the projection of papal-imperial power against Florence obscures the extent to which they also consisted of a civil war within the city’s elite. The debate over the meaning of libertà was not a mere exercise in semantics. Vocabulary had a real political force in these years, and language served to distinguish opposing sides in the struggle. Crucially, however, the siege did not consist of a civil war fought between proponents and opponents of monarchy, discounting the Medici themselves. Those who sided with Clement VII, such as Guicciardini and Filippo Strozzi, did not aim to create a principality. Even at this late date, the Florentine office-holding class remained almost entirely republican in its political imagination. What the Francesco Guicciardinis wanted was not the elevation of the Medici as princes but the restoration of a Medicean republic—although presumably one that looked more like the stato of the 1480s than that of the 1510s—as the best means of protecting Florence’s future independence and their own status. The bitterness of the historian Bernardo Segni, several years later, over the end of the civic republic testified to the continuing resentment pro-

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voked by the civic struggle that accompanied the siege. Although not a supporter of the Medici, Segni clearly felt that the oligarchically inclined patricians bore less blame for the fall of the republican system than their popularist opponents who controlled the stato during the siege. “Among the causes of the republic’s ruin, not the least were the citizens who favored and made themselves the leaders of the popolo,” he accused, before making comparisons to the Gracchi and Julius Caesar in ancient Rome. Anyone who read history judiciously, he said, would see that the Roman republic fell more because of the machinations of “the popular citizens . . . than of those who favored the Senate.”94 Malatesta Baglione and Stefano Colonna, the two principal generals in the pay of the Florentine government, shared Guicciardini’s concerns that the path chosen by the government would lead to the city’s destruction. From around the middle of June 1530, they had begun to seek a means to extricate themselves honorably from an increasingly desperate situation. All their attempts faltered, however, on Orange’s demand that the Medici return to the city not as private citizens but with the authority they had held prior to May 1527. The Signoria continued to urge their generals to fight, while the two condottieri continued to defer, demanding that the Consiglio Maggiore vote on the matter.95 The deadlock broke in early August when news reached Florence that the city’s fi nal military hope—a relief column advancing from Pisa—had suffered a decisive defeat at the village of Gavinana.96 When the Signoria insisted that Baglione and Colonna continue to fight despite this defeat, the two generals led a mutiny. Seizing control of the bridges over the Arno, they turned their artillery on the city and threatened to admit the imperial army. In addition to the majority of the professional soldiers in the city, Baglione and Colonna’s coup received support from a detachment of the civic militia. While some among the remaining brigades of the militia urged a fight against the rebels, cooler heads prevailed. The Signoria reappointed Baglione as captain general, effectively handing control of the city to the Perugian condottiere. On 8 August, Lorenzo Strozzi and Pierfrancesco Portinari together with Bardo di Giovanni Altoviti and Jacopo di Girolamo Morelli ventured into the imperial camp to negotiate the city’s surren-

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der with Ferrante Gonzaga, who had assumed command of the besiegers after the death of Orange in the battle at Gavinana. The fi nal capitulation was signed on 12 August, in the billet of Bartolomeo Valori, the papal commissioner.97 The principal terms of the treaty stated that Charles V would decide the future form of the city’s government within four months, with the stipulation that its liberty be preserved; that all men imprisoned, exiled, or declared rebels for political reasons since 1527 be released from their bans; that Florence had to pay an indemnity of eighty thousand scudi to the imperial army (at least forty to fifty thousand in cash) before the siege would be lifted; and that Gonzaga would return all Florentine possessions captured since the summer of 1529.98 The records of the pratiche cease on 2 August. However, it seems certain— given the outcome—that confronted with the assured destruction of the city or at least with its conquest by an imperial army, the majority of the office-holding class who remained in Florence opted to sacrifice civic freedom to preserve their independence. This was certainly the impression, at a distance, of Francesco Guicciardini, who reported on 5 August that “the disposition of many [in Florence]” supported negotiating to end the siege.99 Bernardo Segni, in his Storie fiorentine, also alleged that once Baglione rebelled, “the majority of the captains of the militia, of the nobility of the youth, of the most qualified citizens, collected in Santo Spirito publicly shouting that they wanted peace.”100 Indeed, the course chosen by the men who controlled the stato in 1529–30 had never enjoyed total support. In September 1529, speakers in the pratiche cautioned that the government needed to unify the city behind its decision to fight the papal-imperial army rather than negotiate, implicitly acknowledging that such unity did not exist. A minority of voices in the early months of the siege expressed doubts and fears about the wisdom of favoring combat over diplomacy.101 By the summer of 1530, the now-restricted pratica had become a forum only for radical supporters of the stato, and the oppositional voices had disappeared. But even so, reading between the lines, the continued presence of contrary opinions within Florence emerges. On 23 July, Lorenzo Ridolfi cautioned that a revolt might occur in the city should the Si-

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gnoria itself ride out to battle. In the absence of the government the opposition might attempt to take control. On 2 August, Antonio Davanzati noted the existence within Florence of “serpents and traitors,” who supported Baglione and Colonna in their attempts to conclude a treaty with the besiegers rather than continuing the war.102 In the face of the grim realities of siege warfare, the bold assertions of the previous autumn that offered life and property in the defense of liberty had withered and muted. As the impending catastrophe of starvation or sack took hold, the majority of Florence’s office-holding class chose instead to preserve themselves and the city. This choice was not, obviously, freely undertaken. The role of force, exerted by a foe that Florence had no realistic chance of defeating, proved central in the collapse of the civic republican system. The brutal realities of siege warfare pushed the Florentine office-holding class into taking the decision that spelled the end of the republic—a decision that was perhaps not surprising, given the alternative, but which was significant for what it suggested about the expectations and attitudes of the office-holding class, and especially the patricians. The commitment of the elite of the office-holding class to civic republicanism would always be limited and never total. In the fi nal analysis, the preservation of the imagined community, of what could be termed the partially fictive but also partly material res publica that bound the patriciate together, would always trump an ideological commitment. The sociopolitical elite of Florence, like their peers in other Italian citystates, consisted of natural political agnostics.103 But, crucially, in August 1530 the majority who chose surrender did not do so because they aspired to a princely form of government. Indeed, even at this late hour, they probably did not conceive of the action as choosing monarchy over civic republicanism, but as fi nding the best means to preserve a stato that they could continue to control and share among themselves. Their model remained the Medicean republic of the late fifteenth century. The capitulation, whatever its ultimate motivations, saved Florence; but only just. The imperial blockade, plague, and the predictable damages of warfare had reduced the city to desperate necessity. In early

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August, before the surrender, Baglione had informed the Signoria, “We are now two months without meat, one month without wine, and there is little or no oil.”104 On 29 September 1530, following his return to Florence, Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, the papal treasurer, “[The] miseries of the city and the contado . . . are much greater than one could imagine.” He continued that his own personal affairs “were much more ruined than I believed, because [the estate of ] Poppiano I found completely reduced, almost to nothing, and [that of ] Santa Margherita is even worse.”105 Concerning the family estate of Poppiano, Girolamo Guicciardini wrote in more detail to Luigi Guicciardini, on 18 October: “At Poppiano things are going as in most of the contado: many peasants are dead, and moreover a bit of plague has commenced in many places, there little is sown and many farms are without workers.”106 Jacopo Guicciardini, several days later, informed Luigi that some five hundred houses in the city had plague cases. He continued with a litany of misery: “Wine is very expensive, meat similarly and there is a great shortage of chicken and eggs. In the contado the peasants are suffering and many of them are dead. Almost all are ill.”107 Florence had sustained damages that would take years to repair. The need to pay the indemnity to the imperial army only increased the fi nancial difficulties of the city. In December, Francesco Guicciardini wrote again to Lanfredini, observing that “the City is most exhausted. . . . If you passed through San Martino you would see that of the sixtyfour shops that were open there before the war, all but twelve of them are closed. . . . And it is the same in all other industries.”108 At the same time, Jacopo Guicciardini informed Luigi that the city’s revenues had fallen markedly: “Customs dues make little, the gates little, the [gabelle on] salt is short and [that on] contracts provides nothing.”109 On 5 January 1531, Giovanni Vettori, the commissioner of Volterra, received notification from his brother Francesco of events in Florence. As well as recording the continuing famine in the city, the letter recorded the government’s reliance on lines of credit from outside sources: “Here we are waiting to put an end to our hunger, which with money mainly from Filippo Strozzi has eased a little but we have so many debts that

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we are constrained to fail.”110 Late in 1533, the government of the city still received petitions for tax relief as a result of the damages and shortages wrought by the siege.111 In the weeks and months immediately following the surrender of the city, those who could turned to the returning Medici in search of fi nancial support. On 31 August, Cristofano Sernigi petitioned Francesco Vettori seeking office in the dominion, or as provveditore (bursar) to the Otto di Pratica, or ambassador to Milan or Venice, where he had commercial contacts and interests: “I pray you to recommend me to Our Lord [Clement VII] and to messer Jacopo Salviati.”112 Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini seeking reappointment as president of the Romagna so that he could meet his fi nancial obligations: “If Our Lord does not provide me quickly with that which, by his grace, he promised me, I can no longer [loan money to the city].”113 Filippo de’ Nerli petitioned Francesco Vettori in early October: “You should desire to take up my protection strongly, considering that this destruction has so disordered my life that where I was once a man of quality with little need, now it is necessary that I have help.”114 On 22 August, Raffaello Velluti wrote to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, “Recommend me to the magnificent Jacopo, to whom I have written, that regarding those offices for which I am eligible and suitable, both in and outside the city, he remembers me as his friend.”115 Lucrezia received a similar petition from Piero di Leonardo Salviati two days later: “I wrote a letter to your magnificent Jacopo recommending myself to His Lordship beseeching him, and so I pray you beseech him, that in the honors and offices of the City . . . I am not forgotten.”116 With the exception of Francesco Guicciardini, all these petitioners sought office in Florence, not directly in the Papal State or in the curia. They sought support and security within the traditional framework of the Florentine office-holding class: in the ser vice of the commune that had provided the basis for the identity and survival of the elite for over two hundred years. In the aftermath of the siege, the majority of the city’s office-holding class sought guarantees for their personal wellbeing and for their continued position among the ranks of the civilian

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magistrates. They sought to protect the fi nancial, political, and social bases for their preeminence in Florence. They had, in various ways, chosen to sacrifice the city’s civic republican government in return for its continued existence and independence and so for the preservation of their elite status. They sought continuity, not change, and hoped to benefit from their choice. The returning Medici and their supporters also recognized the need to preserve the office-holding class as the social and political center of Florence. They proceeded against their enemies from the stato of 1527–30 with this as the starting point. This produced two striking effects. The fi rst was a concern to prove that the regime of 1527 had acted illegally and with contempt for the traditions of the city. Second, the majority of the mature office-holding males who served in the regime escaped punishment entirely. The Mediceans visited their wrath largely on the revolutionary youth. Only fragments from the interrogations of leading members of the 1527 stato survive, and these provide only responses and not the questions. The sense or direction of the latter, however, can be derived from the former. Among predictable issues—such as the arson attacks against the Medici villa at Careggi and a country estate belonging to Jacopo Salviati, as well as the plot to poison Clement VII—both Jacopo Gherardi and Francesco Carducci responded to questions about the legality of their actions in office. Gherardi also received several demands about the role of the youthful members of the militia and their access to the Palazzo della Signoria. While their answers are not reliable indicators of the actions of the government, they do testify to the Medicean concern to frame the previous regime as corrupt and dangerously subversive of the traditions of Florentine republicanism. Carducci confessed, under torture, to holding discussions on many occasions with Salvestro Aldobrandini about provisions for money, urging him to ensure that the bills won passage through the necessary magistracies. On occasion, Carducci recalled that when Aldobrandini reported that a provision had not passed “by one or two votes he said to messer Salvestro make it so that the three were more than enough. . . . Messer Salvestro recounted the votes and said perhaps it had passed.”

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Gherardi, in a written statement he submitted replying to interrogatories, asserted that “all my actions in office, on the Signoria and the Otto and the Dieci were all done by common consensus.”117 Their interrogators clearly hoped to establish that certain men in the regime had acted illegally: fi xing votes or defying the wishes of the majority. They sought to prove that these individuals had not represented the consensus of the office-holding class. Gherardi also gave a lengthy description of the role and duties of the guard formed by the giovani for the Palazzo della Signoria. Created by the Signoria in December 1527, under pressure from the youths, this company represented an innovation in Florentine institutions. Gherardi’s interrogators seemed to have been particularly concerned about the ability of the guard to influence, by menace or coercion, the selection of magistrates. Gherardi stated: “You will never fi nd that, on my account, any giovane ever entered the palazzo nor did I ever induce any to do so.”118 The Medici and their supporters appear, from these responses, to have placed a premium on discrediting the former regime. In particular they sought to find evidence of illegal activity—vote rigging and intimidation—making a mockery of the stato’s claims to the rule of law by impartial magistrates. The returning Medici paid particular attention to the role of the youth whose revolutionary irruption into the social imagination and political world previously dominated by mature males tore at the social and cultural fabric of the office-holding class. The concern that the palace guard could have influenced or intimidated magistrates aided the new Medicean stato in preserving the continuity of the community and of the actual structure of the office-holding class. It allowed a means of explaining and forgiving the culpability of magistrates between 1527 and 1530: they had acted under the threat of violence from a revolutionary and extra-constitutional group, a group of youths who had no place in public life. This did not constitute the only attempt by the Medicean regime of 1530 to obscure or conceal the activities of the previous government. An annotation on the fi rst page of the records from the pratiche of 1529 reveals that Agnolo Marzi, the bishop of Assisi who held powerful bureaucratic posts under both Alessandro and

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Cosimo I, held the book in secret, “in order not to release material damaging to those who gave counsel in that time.”119 This concern to dilute the blame, to preserve the office-holding class as intact as possible, to ensure the continuity of the city’s elite revealed itself most clearly in the punishments delivered by the Otto di Guardia in the fi nal months of 1530. Of the ninety-eight most prominent men in the stato of 1527–30—men who sat on the significant decision-making bodies of the regime at least three times—only twenty-one received sentences from the internal security magistracy. Six men were beheaded and had their estates confiscated. Raffaello Girolami, the last gonfaloniere di giustizia of the regime, escaped death, but was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment in the citadel at Volterra, apparently following the intervention of Ferrante Gonzaga.120 A further twelve men, including Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, received sentences of exile to various places, and two were condemned to five years’ imprisonment in the Stinche, only to be released by a unanimous vote on the Otto.121 A further 179 men received sentences of exile, of whom only 43 had held office either in the traditional magistracies or in the militia between 1527 and 1530. Some of the remaining majority, 68 percent of the total number of men punished by the Otto between August and December 1530, may have been punished only by accident of their birth—such as the several members of both the Soderini and the Da Castiglione exiled—while others who are identifiable as the sons of officeholders may have been exiled in lieu of dead fathers. A few were exiled by default, for having left the city without license.122 Young men—the revolutionary giovani and probably rank-and-fi le members of the militia—constituted the preponderance of the exiles. The new Medici regime sought, above all else, stability, continuity, and security in Florence. They punished very few of the men who served in communal offices between May 1527 and August 1530, focusing instead on the youths who played such a prominent role in the disturbances and revolutions of the period, the young men who had no place in public life or the imagined community of mature officeholding males. The practical consideration that young men with military training and experience posed the greatest threat to any government

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also probably contributed to the desire to remove them from the city.123 From September 1530, the chief men in the new stato recognized the need to preserve as much continuity as possible in the public life of the city. The security of the new government depended upon the stability of the office-holding class. Toward the end of the month, several weeks before the Otto issued its fi rst sentences on 24 October, Francesco Guicciardini observed to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, “I believe we shall have more concourse with the huomini da bene [gentlemen] than perhaps we thought, especially if the form of the government and its future procedure is honest and moderate in its direction.” On 6 November, after the initial executions, Guicciardini wrote again that the men as yet unpunished “do not remain through personal interests, but because [their presence] seems necessary to us for the security of the State.” To punish too many men, he continued, “would diminish too much the little virtù that remains in the city, which the weaker it is the weaker the Government will be.”124 Toward the end of the month, Girolamo Guicciardini wrote, more poetically, that the Otto di Guardia needed to proceed “as a prudent doctor, who has a weak patient full of too many humors on his hands.” The application of “strong medicine” would potentially kill the invalid, so the doctor needed to proceed slowly and with caution “to bring this patient to where his life is no longer in doubt.”125 Finally, on 3 December, after nearly all the sentences of exile had been issued, Francesco Guicciardini wrote that “we believe that, if among other things the state is well governed, that this suffices for security.” He also observed that to exile all the men who had any association with the previous regime would leave the city desolate.126 Francesco Guicciardini was one of the most prominent and influential men in Florence in the months immediately following the city’s surrender to the imperial army, having reached the city on 24 September. In a letter dated 2 September, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai listed Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli as the men who knew Clement VII’s mind and intentions.127 Toward the end of November, Niccolò di Luigi Guicciardini informed his father:

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“Messer Francesco has much authority here, as do Roberto [Acciaiuoli] and Francesco [Vettori] and these others, and especially Bartolomeo Valori.”128 Francesco Guicciardini’s thoughts, as written to Lanfredini, represented the consensus of opinion among those men who led and consolidated the Medicean regime in the initial aftermath of the siege. Guicciardini and the other leading Mediceans did not seek a general amnesty. Those men who did receive sentences of death or exile— especially the twenty-one men prominent in the 1527 stato—were clearly identified as enemies of both the Medici and their supporters. Indeed, Guicciardini complained to Lanfredini on 10 October that Valori, the papal commissioner in Florence and nominal head of the regime, exercised too much leniency and that he often favored “manifest enemies of the house [of Medici].”129 The new regime clearly distinguished between inveterate foes and men who, although they had held office under the previous stato, constituted the core of the officeholding class. In the last months of 1530, with the future fate of Florence in the hands of the emperor as determined by the 12 August capitulation, not only the stability of the city but also its continued independence required a stable and effective office-holding class, capable of governing the city. By late 1530, the majority of the office-holding class of Florence supported a concept of liberty understood as political independence rather than as civic republicanism. This transition in political thinking did not occur as abstract theorizing but in relation to the experiences of Florence’s politico-military situation after May 1527. The changing understanding of liberty that emerged determined the political behavior of the office-holding class. This change developed gradually in a process of confl ict within the elite of the city, a confl ict that did not occur as binary opposition between two predetermined outlooks, and also one that did not cleave along preexisting factional divisions in the city. Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, who had actively supported the radicalization of the government on 18 May 1527 and whom the Medici identified as an enemy after August 1530, argued eloquently in favor of protecting Florence’s independence above its civic republican government in July 1529. He then abandoned the city and the stato he had helped to create

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before the siege began when it became clear that his compatriots did not share his vision. Francesco Guicciardini, by contrast, distrusted and persecuted by the popu lar government but central to the returned Medici regime after the siege, struggled with a personal confl ict over his desire to preserve Florence’s civic republicanism and his fears for the city’s future independence. The experiences, actions, and opinions of other men—such as the Strozzi brothers, Lorenzo and Filippo, Alessandro Malegonnelle, and Pierfrancesco Portinari—and the images produced by Pontormo during the siege demonstrate the continuum along which liberty was given meaning and understood by the officeholding class of the city between May 1527 and December 1530.

4 Neither Fish nor Flesh The Difficulty of Being Florentine, 1530–1537

; On the eve of his departure to study law at Padua, in 1536 or 1537, Ugolino di Luigi Martelli had his portrait painted by Bronzino (Figure 4.1). The young man appears momentarily distracted from the act of reading; his right index fi nger holds his place in an open book while he gazes off to the left side of the painting’s frame. This leisured and peaceful image, in which the architectural space cloisters the young man, contrasts with Pontormo’s martial depiction of Francesco Guardi (Figure 3.1) painted less than a decade earlier. The portrait of Martelli is even further removed iconographically and ideologically from the frescoes painted by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s (Figures 1.1–1.3). The differences that separate Bronzino’s presentation of a member of the office-holding class in the 1530s from the earlier images testify to the altered social world of Florence’s elite in the wake of the siege of 1529–30. Just as significant, however, as the obvious dissimilarities are the continuities between the images. Most noticeably, the portraits of Martelli and Guardi both include the Florentine mythico-religious icon of youthful virtù: via the hat badge of Hercules crushing Antaeus worn by the latter and in the sculpture of David with the head of Goli-

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ath that appears behind the former. The inclusion of this element in Bronzino’s portrait was not anachronistic, nor did it indicate the presence of an entirely new interpretation attached to this old icon. Rather it testified to the shifting understanding of the icon’s meaning. The office-holding class in the 1530s still thought of themselves as protecting Florentine liberty and serving the common good of Florence. But what they understood liberty and commonwealth to consist of had changed from the understandings of the fifteenth and earlier sixteenth century. The memory and residual effects of the violence and suffering unleashed on Florence in 1529–30 guided the refashioning of the identity of the city’s elite. The siege had almost destroyed the city, not only physically and fi nancially but also politically. A foreign army had all but taken the city by force, and the terms of the August 1530 surrender constituted a loss of sovereignty by consigning Florence’s future into the hands of Emperor Charles V. In the wake of this experience, the office-holding class sought to protect, as always, their own mutual benefit clothed in the language of defending the common good of the city. In the barest terms, they made the simple equation that the political freedoms of civic republicanism mattered less than the preservation of Florence’s independence and with it their own social status and prestige. As Bronzino’s depiction of Ugolino Martelli demonstrates, the office-holding class did not make this choice by abandoning the concepts, images, and language that had formed the basis of the fifteenthcentury social world and republican political culture. The same concepts continued to defi ne elite identity, but with refashioned meanings. For the city’s patricians the 1530s were a time of transition, of uncertainty and little confidence, as they shifted from the civic world of the late fifteenth century into a new but not yet defi nably courtly culture: a time when being Florentine was difficult.1 The social identity of the office-holding class was shifting as it confronted and adapted to the new political realities of the emerging Medici principality. The key concepts and images that had underpinned this identity—especially liberty and the common good—became contested as those members of

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the elite who remained in Florence confronted those who either chose or were forced into exile from the city. The most immediate concerns of the Medicean stato installed by force in August 1530 were practical. As papal commissioner in the besieging army, and in the absence of any representative of the Medici family, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori assumed control of the city and lodged in the Palazzo Medici.2 On 20 August, he ordered the summoning of a parlamento, the time-honored Florentine means of manufacturing consensus. In the Piazza della Signoria, guarded by soldiers under the command of Malatesta Baglione, this convocation elected a balìa of twelve men charged with full authority to reform the government of the city.3 The balìa reordered the magistracies of Florence over the next two months. It immediately replaced the serving Otto di Guardia, whose brief covered the sensitive realm of internal security, while new appointments for other significant offices occurred in September and October. It revived the Otto di Pratica, as the principal magistracy for foreign affairs, abolishing the Dieci di Pace e Libertà. 4 The balìa expanded itself with the addition of thirty-one men on 29 August 1530. On 8 November, this plenipotentiary council dissolved itself and appointed a new, much larger balìa of 144 men. All of the original twelve, except Raffaello Girolami, by then imprisoned at Volterra, returned in this council, but two-thirds of the men added at the end of August lost their seats.5 These two transformations indicate a desire to broaden the basis of the new stato analogous to the concern to minimize the number of mature men of office-holding age prosecuted in the same months, despite the rhetoric of Francesco Vettori, who the previous month had argued against increasing the membership of the balìa in favor of “holding the stato mostly by force.”6 These institutional changes, together with the persecution of certain men associated with the previous regime, while addressing necessary practicalities did nothing to restore the confidence of the city’s office-holding class, damaged by the partisan divisions and near-death experience of the siege. That the fate of the city rested in the hands of

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Emperor Charles V can only have added to the disquiet felt by many of the elite about the future of the city and its continued independence. As the representative of Pope Clement VII in the city, Bartolomeo Valori bore much of the brunt of elite discontent. On 10 October 1530, Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, the papal treasurer, concerning Valori’s position in the city. While observing that “there is not any one of us who, because of personal interest or ambition, would oppose Bartolomeo staying at the Medici palace as head of the State,” Guicciardini added, “we desire greatly to be reassured, other than with ambiguous and general replies, what the mind of His Holiness is; in order to accommodate ourselves to it most freely.”7 As the position of the office-holding class in Florence rested in part on a shared memory of their prominence in city’s government, considerable anxiety existed in the ranks of the elite about their continued status in the new order. The men who had sided with Clement VII during the war of 1529–30, as well as those who remained in Florence and decided, in August 1530, to negotiate rather than fight, had both made their choices based on the hope of protecting Florence’s independence and so preserving their own position. Francesco Guicciardini and others, therefore, expressed some concern about the arbitrary and temporary nature of Valori’s authority in the city. They desired a permanent solution to ensure the continued prestige of the office-holding class. On 24 January 1531, Girolamo Guicciardini opined to his brother, Luigi: “I cannot but lament with you that things are not understood by those responsible for our security.” Clement VII had dismissed Valori at the end of December and appointed in his place Nikolaus von Schönberg, the archbishop of Capua, whose arrival Girolamo eagerly awaited. “I think that with the arrival of the archbishop of Capua . . . will come some good resolution in such a way as to order things better than they are at present.” 8 Despite his being a foreigner, the officeholding class welcomed Schönberg because of his perceived experience and knowledge of Florentine affairs, fi rst as a friar at San Marco and then during the brief period in the 1520s between the death of Leo X and the election of Clement VII.9

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More than another papal representative, however, the office-holding class put their hope in the Medici family as a source of stability and security. By institutionalizing the position of the Medici in Florence— giving the family a permanent office in the city’s government—the elite hoped to anchor their own place also. A member of the Medici established as the legitimate head of state would bolster the sociopolitical orga nization of the city and would deter further foreign interference.10 The hopes of the office-holding class, and the dynastic ambitions of Clement VII, in 1530 rested on the person of Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Penne and the illegitimate son of the younger Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Duke of Urbino. Girolamo Guicciardini, in January 1531, expressed a hope that “with the arrival of His Excellency the duke whatever remains to be done will occur directly in such a manner, or even in the hope, that things will stabilize themselves in a manner in which we will be able to stay, if they have not already done so.”11 On 4 August 1531, Francesco Guicciardini, writing to Lanfredini, declared, “I do not see any other hope remaining for enabling the perpetuation of that stato except that the duke succeeds very well, which we desire.”12 Alessandro’s success, Guicciardini made clear, depended on governing the city well, which would revive the body politic. He observed “that city and state are as if consumed by an inferno of such magnitude that only the smallest amount of virtù remains, and if one does not manage it well . . . it will become a totally dead body.”13 Guicciardini hoped that with Alessandro as head of the republic, the patricians of Florence, and the office-holding class more broadly, could regain the virtù of the practice of government so essential to their identity. Alessandro could, not necessarily through his person but through his position, provide security and stability for Florence, which would in turn allow the social fabric of the office-holding class to weave itself back together. On 17 February 1531, the balìa habilitated Alessandro de’ Medici, then only around twenty years old, to every office and magistracy, making the duke eligible for all public positions, despite his youth and other impediments. The object of their generosity was not actually in

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Florence at the time but accompanying Charles V in the Low Countries. Only in the summer of that year, toward the end of June, did Alessandro return to Florence, accompanied by an imperial bull declaring him hereditary capo (head) of the Florentine republic. For fear of plague in the city he initially lodged at Prato. Then, on the evening of 5 July, accompanied by many citizens, Alessandro entered Florence and returned to the family palazzo on the Via Larga after hearing mass as Santissima Annunziata.14 The next morning, all the magistracies of the city assembled at the Palazzo della Signoria, in the hall now identified as the Sala dei Dugento. There Giovanantonio Muscettola, representing the emperor, declared Alessandro head of the republic and commanded the restoration of the Medicean stato that had governed until May 1527, on behalf of his master. Muscettola presented Francesco Campana, the fi rst chancellor, with an imperial bull dated 28 October the previous year authorizing these changes, according to the terms of the capitulation signed on 12 August 1530.15 Benedetto Buondelmonti, the serving gonfaloniere di giustizia, then spoke on behalf of the city. After thanking God, Buondelmonti declared the Florentine people devoted to Charles V, through whose grace the city “was liberated from hunger and sack, saving the lives and possessions of men and the honor of women, and regained once more its dear and most sweet liberty and dominion.” Behind the twisted logic of partisanship in this speech lay a clear identification of liberty with sovereignty alone. Buondelmonti had passed the ten months of the siege imprisoned in Volterra, in no position actively to support the papal-imperial military effort. Like the men who did so, however, he identified the cause of Clement VII with the preservation of Florentine liberty. Rather than permitting the military destruction of the city and instead of appointing a viceroy to control the city’s government, the emperor had restored the Medicean regime and returned all conquered territory to Florence. Charles V, Buondelmonti observed, had given the city “a head, from which all the members, not only will content themselves, but will remake themselves.”16 Buondelmonti emphasized a process of renewal, of reviving the body politic: both the office-holding class and their imagined community.

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However, the ceremonies and speeches of July 1531 did not satisfy either the Medici or their key supporters. The initiative behind the reforms of that summer came from outside the city. To obtain legitimacy and avoid the problems of the 1520s, when the Medici had appeared as foreign rulers dependent on external support, Alessandro’s position in the city required the legislative consent of the office-holding class. In January 1532, concerning the need for constitutional change, Francesco Guicciardini informed Bartolomeo Lanfredini that “it will satisfy me whatever [form] it is, so long as it ensures the stato and the greatness of the Medici, on which many of us by now depend.”17 The same month, Filippo Strozzi observed to Francesco Vettori that he and other Florentines in Rome had urged Clement VII to alter the government because in the current stato “one does not see that strength and stability that is necessary.”18 The settlement proposed by Charles V, meeting his obligations to the 12 August treaty, did nothing to institutionalize the position of Alessandro beyond offering imperial imprimatur to the situation that had existed prior to May 1527. To ensure the greatness of the family, as Guicciardini put it, and so to protect and preserve the position of the office-holding class in the city, the Duke of Penne needed to be domesticated into the political institutions and social world of Florence. These needs resulted in the constitutional changes of April 1532. Discussions concerning an alteration of the governing structures of Florence commenced in Rome during the later months of 1531. On 19 November, Filippo Strozzi reported to his brother, Lorenzo: “Yesterday evening I went, with some difficulty, to the palace to speak with the pope about many things.”19 Whether the future of Florence was discussed on that particu lar evening, Filippo does not mention; but the subject probably arose. In the winter of 1531–32, Clement VII held regular discussions with Strozzi, as well as other men residing in Rome: Bartolomeo Lanfredini, Roberto Pucci, Jacopo Salviati, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, Cardinal Niccolò Ridolfi , and Benedetto Buondelmonti, who had become the Florentine ambassador to the papal court in October. 20 Clement also solicited written opinions on the matter from Francesco and Luigi Guicciardini, Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli,

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Francesco Vettori, and probably Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi early in 1532.21 Above all, the pope wanted—through this consultative process—to appear as if the proposed constitutional changes occurred in response to the wishes of Florence’s leading citizens. Buondelmonti observed, in a letter to the serving gonfaloniere di giustizia Francescantonio di Francesco Nori, in January 1532, that Nori needed to proceed carefully, “without showing that this is either the wish of Our Lord [Clement VII] or his opinion; because we desire that . . . it appear that His Beatitude consents to it rather than orders it and [that] everything is done in order to satisfy the wishes of the Citizens.”22 The wishes of the citizens consulted by Clement VII, however, might not have accorded precisely with what the pope hoped to hear. The most striking aspect of the pareri written by the brothers Guicciardini, Vettori, and Acciaiuoli in 1531 or 1532 is their uniform resistance toward the creation of a monarchical form of government in Florence.23 All of the men recognized the necessity of maintaining the preeminence of the Medici in the city and also of limiting participation in the stato to the family’s friends and allies. While the spectrum of opinion on the actual role of the Medici in the new stato varied, not one of the pareri endorsed giving absolute power to Alessandro de’ Medici. Only Francesco Guicciardini, however, was bold enough to say so unambiguously: “As for transforming the government completely into a principality, I do not see that this would provide (for now) either greater power or more security.”24 The other men tended to temporize about how much authority the young duke should possess, although Roberto Acciaiuoli suggested a comparison to the kings of Sparta.25 In contrast, all the pareri commissioned by Clement VII in the winter of 1531–32 very clearly counseled maintaining some form of civil government, with the most important powers of the stato held by council of citizen magistrates, over which Alessandro might (Luigi Guicciardini) or might not (Francesco Vettori) have some form of veto. However, the men were clearly no longer advocating the continuation of Florence’s civic republican structures unchanged, nor even a return to the Medicean system of the fifteenth century. Instead, the vision presented in the pareri tended toward a tightly controlled,

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very restricted oligarchic stato that centered on the Medici family and their partisans. On 4 April 1532, the balìa passed a provision empowering a select committee to decide the future institutional structure of the city. The following day the Signoria, in line with this law, elected twelve men charged with this task: Francesco Guicciardini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Roberto d’Antonio Pucci, Francesco di Piero Vettori, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli, Matteo d’Agnolo Niccolini, Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi, Agostino di Francesco Dini, Giovanfrancesco di Ridolfo Ridolfi , Giovanni di Piero Capponi, and Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi. Giovanfrancesco de’ Nobili, the current gonfaloniere di giustizia, sat on the committee ex officio.26 These men represented the epitome of power and influence in the city: mature males who had held office for decades, nearly all over fifty years of age, all with patrician surnames. Every one of the thirteen had also held a prominent position in the Medicean stato either before or after 1530. On 27 April 1532, the new stato and constitution for the city emerged. The relatively short time frame in which the reformers formulated these fundamental changes suggests either a high degree of agreement and consensus among the thirteen men or (more probably) that the committee had met simply to flesh out the bones of a settlement predetermined in Rome. Indeed, a letter from Francesco Guicciardini, written on 16 April, suggests that the Riformatori had decided upon (or accepted) the basic structures of the new government by that point, and discussions now concerned details of who should actually sit on what council.27 The eventual provision, eleven days later, reveals the understandings and the expectations of the office-holding class for the future course of the city. Most significantly, and most clearly, these men did not conceive of the city becoming a centralized monarchy, but rather visualized a system analogous to the constitution of Venice: a permanent and aristocratic republic with a nominal prince. On paper, and in its initial context, the constitution of April 1532 represented not a triumph for the Medici, but for the office-holding class.

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The provision began with the most significant change: the abolition of the 250-year-old institution of the Signoria. This act possessed great symbolism, as much as it fundamentally altered the shape of the political landscape. Francesco Guicciardini observed that he could not conceive of “a greater novelty than removing the Signoria.” He continued, “It saddens many to deprive themselves of the dignity of gonfaloniere.”28 To become one of the eight priors or the gonfaloniere di giustizia, or even simply to learn that one’s name was included in the borse (electoral purses) for the executive, constituted the highest honor achievable under the republican constitution of Florence. Lineages, patrician or not, took pride in identifying their fi rst ancestor to sit on this executive body: the closer the year of this initial election to the foundation of the Signoria in 1282, the more prestigious. One of the foundations of the oligarchic regime that had controlled the city since the late fourteenth century had consisted in spreading the possibility of serving on the Signoria as widely as possible, no matter how slim the probability for the majority of the office-holding class of actually achieving this honor. The Medici perfected this process by including the names of ineligible men in the borse simply in order to have them “seen” (veduto) for office.29 To sit on the executive branch of the government combined all the essential components of the patrician self-conception: honor, appearance, memory, gender, public service, and personal interest. It represented the very core and epitome of the imagined community of the Florentine office-holding class: a selfreproducing elite of red-robed mature males dedicated to the commonwealth of Florence through holding public office. It was the same fraternity visualized by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s. If the new constitution of April 1532 removed one of the central components of elite identity by abolishing the Signoria, it sought to refound and redraw the institutional basis of this identity through the creation of two new councils to replace the older communal bodies: the Dugento (Two Hundred) and the Quarantotto (Forty-Eight), which also became known as the Senate. The creation of these two assemblies constituted a partial closure of the office-holding class. Their

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membership was for life, and sitting on the Dugento became a prerequisite for holding any of the three most prestigious and important offices of the new system: the Quarantotto itself, the Otto di Pratica, and the Ducal Council (later known as the Magistrato Supremo). In its initial conception, at least, the Dugento represented the permanent institutional analogy to the imagined community that the officeholding class had sought since the late fifteenth century. The Dugento evolved from the balìa created on 8 November 1530. To the members of this preexisting body the new constitution added all the men currently sitting on the Signoria who were not already members of the plenipotentiary council, as well as an additional ninety-five men. Observing that the size of this body, which numbered 242 men in its initial membership, “would make it very difficult to meet as often as necessary for the expedition of public affairs,” the constitution nominated forty-eight men from the Dugento to form an executive council: the Quarantotto.30 While the Dugento inherited the membership of the balìa, the Senate gained many of the plenipotentiary council’s powers, including control over fi nancial provisions, the election of the most important internal offices and magistracies as well as of the most prominent posts in the dominion, and the election of ambassadors and commissioners. The Quarantotto also had the responsibility of electing, from its own ranks, twelve accoppiatori, who in turn elected four ducal counselors (also drawn exclusively from the Senate). Both the accoppiatori and the counselors served three-month terms. The four counselors, who were to meet together with Alessandro or his lieutenant, replaced the Signoria as the key executive body of the city and the fi nal court of appeal. Unlike the older communal institution, however, its members had no obligation to live in the Palazzo della Signoria for the duration of their term, nor did their role exclude them from holding other offices, except those outside the city, which would have necessitated their absence from Florence.31 The provision of 27 April placed Alessandro de’ Medici at the summit of the new constitutional structure but addressed his role only after the powers and personnel of the new councils. The articulation of

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his position in the legislation was precise, and it tightly circumscribed his role as head of state: “And in order to give a head to the said counselors, in place of the gonfaloniere di giustizia . . . is and shall be Duke Alessandro de’ Medici.” The use of “Duke” here referred specifically and only to Alessandro’s Neapolitan title, as the legislation made clear: “in future he will be called Duce of the Florentine Republic, as is called the Doge of Venice.”32 While the constitution continued by noting Alessandro’s absolute power of legislative initiative and the hereditary nature of his position, the initial exegesis of his role and title suggests that the men who wrote the 1532 constitution saw him as a prince in name alone: an institutional necessity that provided a “head” to the governmental structures. The analogy that the provision made to the doge invited comparisons beyond the form of title, to the broader structures and relationships of government in the Venetian republic. Like the Doge of Venice, Alessandro’s position provided him potential power and influence, but it did so at the center of a web of structures and, more significantly, of dispositions that circumscribed and limited his authority.33 The institutions of the Florentine state had changed, but the social imagination of the office-holding class was still in the midst of transition in 1532. The constitution of that year did give Alessandro an objective position in the city: a permanent and institutionalized place and role in the structures of the state, visible and understandable both within and without Florence., Alessandro’s powers and status, unlike those of his fifteenth-century forebears, had a legal and constitutional provision. At the moment of the constitution’s promulgation, on 27 April, however, the new duke of the Florentine Republic did not yet have a place in the social world or imagination of the office-holding class. His position and title were unprecedented, and so unfamiliar. The pace of sociocultural change lagged behind the political transition of the city. The difficulties that arose from the ambiguity of the 1532 settlement and the unfamiliarity of Alessandro’s position in Florence fell broadly into two categories. The fi rst category embraced the city’s relationships with the emperor and the pope; the second, the perceptions that members of the office-holding class had of Alessandro’s place

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within Florence. The Duke of Penne owed his position in Florence to Charles V. The city had surrendered to Ferrante Gonzaga, the imperial captain general, on 12 August 1530. The terms of the capitulation had empowered the emperor to name his future son-in-law as head of state in Florence. Alessandro even owed his ambiguous title, duce of the Florentine republic, to imperial reticence: only the emperor could bestow a ducal title for the city.34 In the early 1530s, the emperor appeared, paradoxically, to be the best means of preserving Florentine independence. Charles V served as a key source of security and stability for Alessandro de’ Medici and the new regime.35 On 1 January 1535, Francesco Guicciardini observed to his eldest brother, Luigi, that the possible arrival of the emperor on the peninsula “would be an excellent [thing] and would stabilize the peace of Italy.”36 However, the imperial presence and support also contained an implied threat. Having installed Alessandro, Charles V could potentially remove him. The regime depended on imperial grace and favor, which compromised the sovereignty of the city. As Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi had warned in July 1529, friendship with princes brought obligation and danger.37 Supporters of the Medici and men associated with the regime kept a close eye on imperial doings, conscious that Charles’s support should not be taken for granted. In particu lar the advancement of the promised marriage between Alessandro and the emperor’s illegitimate daughter, Margaret of Austria, became a barometer for imperial favor. On 1 January 1535, Francesco Guicciardini observed that “His Majesty appears most favorable toward Florence under the duke, in such a manner that here no one doubts that he will give him his wife.” When Charles V embarked on his expedition against the Ottoman regent-governor Khayr ad-Din (Barbarossa) in North Africa later that year, Guicciardini prayed: “God willing the affair will succeed well, since for us there is no other foundation than his greatness.”38 Imperial support remained a key pillar of the Medicean regime in the 1530s, however much it contained an implied limit of Florentine sovereignty. But the emperor and his agents did not intervene in the affairs of the city. Florence’s relationship with Clement VII, until his

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death in September 1534, was markedly different. A widespread perception existed that the pope still controlled affairs in Florence, either personally or indirectly through familiars such as Archbishop Schönberg. It appeared that, as in the 1520s, a foreign regime based in Rome, not in the Palazzo della Signoria or even in the Medici palace, ruled the city. Benedetto Buondelmonti’s letter to Francescantonio Nori in January 1532 revealed not only the pope’s control over Florentine constitutional affairs, but also the level of his involvement in such matters. Buondelmonti wrote: “If Luigi [Guicciardini] will write you can assure him that his letters will not go from Herod to Pilate but only into the hands of His Holiness, and then into the fi re.”39 Clement VII’s interest in managing the details of Florentine government continued even after the arrival and appointment of Alessandro in July 1531. A week after the Duke of Penne’s installation as capo of the republic, Bartolomea Pandolfi ni beseeched Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati: “Recommend Giovanni, my husband, at the Feet of Our Lord; and beg His Beatitude to be pleased to offer such grace that this time he will be seen for the gonfaloniere di giustizia.”40 On 27 September, Filippo Valori informed his cousin Bartolomeo Valori: “Monsignore the Most Reverend [Archbishop] of Capua has made it understood that Our Lord desires that five new Monte officials be created.”41 However, Alessandro was not completely without independence. Concerning the appointment of Benedetto Buondelmonti as ambassador to Rome, Francesco Guicciardini observed: “I understand that Buondelmonti’s going to Rome originated with the Duke and that the pope did not expect it, having designated Domenico Canigiani.”42 As with the case of Charles V, the office-holding class viewed the pope’s role in Florentine affairs as generally beneficial. The extent to which Clement VII’s presence appeared to preserve the regime of Alessandro became most apparent as the pope neared death. News of the pontiff ’s illness during the summer of 1534 provoked a flurry of worried correspondence among supporters of the family. Echoing the fears that the death of Pope Leo X had aroused in 1521, this correspondence revealed the extent of Medicean concerns that Alessandro’s place in Florence might not survive his papal cousin’s death. On 29

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August 1534, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati observed to Filippo de’ Nerli that “I have heard, and feel the greatest pleasure concerning the good provisions made there [Florence] for the defense of the state whatever happens. But seeing Our Lord improve as well as he does, I hope that it will not be necessary to use them.”43 The most revealing correspondence came from Alessandro de’ Medici himself. On 27 July, he wrote to Francesco Guicciardini, “Your Lordship will have heard from other sources about the sickness of Our Lord and the danger everything is in.” The young duke continued, “Send me your judgment as to how I ought to govern myself concerning my place in this stato so that much better and more easily it can be maintained as you, my other friends, and I desire.” Almost a month later, Alessandro wrote again to Guicciardini, observing that “the death of [His Holiness] is expected with great fear.”44 Clement VII’s influence in Florence had a significant, but not totally determinative, influence on elite perceptions about Alessandro’s place in the city. In the early years of the young duke’s rule, until the pope’s death in 1534, the office-holding class sought familiarity in past practices. They conceived of the new stato as a renewal of that which had existed before May 1527. In this system Alessandro had no place despite the constitutional changes of 1532. Men seeking favor did not turn to their nominal prince; rather they petitioned other men and women of influence, often the same patrons that had wielded power during the 1520s. The social world of Florence’s elite did not yet include Alessandro. He had a place in the institutions of the city, but he remained outside the commonwealth of mature males and lineages that bound the office-holding class together: no regular disposition or practice existed in Florence for a hereditary prince. Members of the office-holding class sought to advance their interests through the same channels and in the same manner that had worked in the 1520s: by petitioning people close to the Medici and close to the papal court. On 25 September 1531, the balìa elected the Otto di Pratica to commence its six-month term the same day. One of the men elected, Zanobi di Nofri Acciaiuoli, thanked Bartolomeo Valori rather than Alessandro for the honor:

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“I recognize from your actions, the gentility of Your Magnificence and the love that you bear me.”45 More than any other person or family, however, the Salviati received recognition for their close connection with Clement VII, especially Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, the wife of Jacopo, and her daughter Maria, the widow of the condottiere Giovanni de’ Medici (better known after his death as Giovanni delle Bande Nere). They inherited the family’s mantle as a principal source of patronage from the 1520s. Lucrezia began receiving letters of recommendation within days of the surrender on 12 August 1530 from men seeking to ingratiate themselves with the Medici and hoping for preferment in offices. “This [letter] is to celebrate with Your Magnificence the recent events of the victory enjoyed in this City,” wrote Piero di Leonardo Salviati. He continued, “I tell [you] that through all the city no one does anything except shout Palle! Palle and bread!”46 Lucrezia still received letters seeking help even after the arrival of Alessandro in the city. Bartolomea Pandolfi ni requested that Lucretia petition Clement VII on behalf of her husband: “I pray Your Magnificence be pleased to do this deed, also with your Messer Jacopo, so that the desired effect occurs.”47 Letters from Bernardo Lanfredini, in his official capacity as podestà of Prato, testify to the influence wielded by Lucrezia and Maria Salviati early in 1533. Lanfredini acknowledged receipt of letters of recommendation from Maria, and promised to do all he could for the persons concerned. On 26 March 1533, Lanfredini himself became the petitioner, as he sought office in the Otto di Pratica following his term in Prato: “I desire that Your Ladyship would write of this to the Magnificent Jacopo Salviati, or truly to the magnificent Madonna Lucrezia, that they would be pleased for love of Your Ladyship to do what is necessary so that I might achieve my aim.”48 The continuing influence of Rome over Florentine affairs, as well as the perception that a diffuse patronage network including the extended relatives and friends of the Medici still had significant political clout, did have certain positive effects, the most significant being that it held in check the ambitions and defused the dissatisfactions of two men in particular: Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori and Filippo Strozzi.

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Both men had actively supported Clement VII during the siege of Florence: Valori as the pope’s representative with the imperial army and Strozzi as one of the principal fi nancial backers of the expedition. Following the surrender of the city, they had sought rewards in Rome. Valori became president of the Romagna, and Strozzi, in partnership with Bindo Altoviti, returned to his former role as chief fi nancier of Clement’s papal and dynastic policies. Both men received a seat on the Quarantotto at its creation in April 1532, but their personal ambitions and future prosperity depended more on close ties to the pope than their profi le among their peers in the city on the Arno. 49 After the death of Clement VII, as personal difficulties and resentments previously held in check began to surface for both Strozzi and Valori, their isolation from the social world of Florence only increased. Strozzi’s principal problems in Florence after 1530 arose from personal relationships, the same source of his wealth and status. More precisely, these difficulties emerged from personal confl icts involving his children. Strozzi’s elder sons were around the same age as Alessandro de’ Medici and appear to have associated with the group of riotous youths who formed the duke’s court, including Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori, Giuliano di Francesco Salviati, and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (Alessandro’s future assassin). In May 1531, two of Strozzi’s sons, Vincenzo and Roberto, together with three other young men, received an administrative slap on the wrist for abducting and raping a girl from Prato.50 In May 1533, the Otto di Guardia fined another Strozzi brother, Fra Leone, a knight of Saint John of Jerusalem, and several other young men for playing a violent practical joke on a doctor from Pavia.51 On these occasions the Otto di Guardia tolerated this behavior. The younger Strozzi, however, soon discovered the limits of their aristocratic license. One story, related in several places, tells of a carnivalesque game of football played on Christmas Eve in 1532 by several youths, including Roberto and Vincenzo Strozzi, that began at the Strozzi palace.52 As well as damaging merchandise in the Mercato Nuovo, the Mercato Vecchio, and along the Calimala, the youths apparently mocked Francescantonio di Francesco Nori, kicking and throw-

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ing the ball at him when he tried to intervene. According to the story, the Otto di Guardia arrested and imprisoned all the youths involved until Clement VII intervened to secure their release. This story has little documentary support. No record of arrest or release appears in the deliberations of the police magistracy, nor was Nori (as all the versions of the tale confidently recount) a member of this office in December 1532.53 This does not mean that the account is a complete fabrication. More importantly, it does not weaken the symbolic significance of the affair, which, as Varchi succinctly stated, punctured the illusions of certain patricians who thought they could be equals of Alessandro, not his subjects. More significant than the alleged game of football was the nocturnal assault on Giuliano Salviati. Salviati had publicly insulted the honor of one Filippo Strozzi’s daughters, Luisa—who also appears to have associated freely with the court of Alessandro de’ Medici—and so public opinion held that her eldest brother, Piero, together with Fra Leone and Maso di Carlo Strozzi, were the masked men who waylaid and attacked Salviati on the night of 13/14 March 1534 as he returned from the Palazzo Medici. This event did actually occur. Luigi Guicciardini recounted the ambush, together with an intimation of Piero’s guilt, in a letter to Francesco Guicciardini on 15 March. The Otto di Guardia held Piero and Maso Strozzi, together with Jacopo d’Antonio Pazzi and a Strozzi servant or familiar, Michele di Francesco, for investigation but released all four without charge on 30 March.54 Filippo Strozzi had departed Florence the previous September as papal nuncio for the wedding of Caterina di Lorenzo de’ Medici and the future King Henri II of France. He had a vested interest in the union, having loaned Clement VII the entire sum of Caterina’s dowry: 130,000 scudi. This loan overextended Strozzi’s fi nancial empire and left him dangerously exposed. Despite his best efforts—spreading the risk via a consortium and demanding triple securities on repayment— Strozzi still bore an 80,000 scudi debt from the dowry at Clement’s death, almost half of it unsecured and irrecoverable. Strozzi never returned to Florence, becoming embroiled in legal problems regarding his fi nancial dealings in Rome as he attempted to recover from the

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dowry loan. By January 1535, his sons too had departed the city and openly associated with the Florentine exiles in Rome.55 In October 1536, the Otto di Guardia declared Strozzi as well as his sons Piero and Roberto rebels.56 Bartolomeo Valori had difficulties of a more prosaic nature. While Benedetto Varchi recounts that Valori secretly hated Clement VII as early as 1531, the clearest evidence for his disaffection comes from several years later.57 Letters from his son Paolantonio—companion of the younger Strozzi—and his cousin Filippo di Niccolò, in the fi rst half of 1536, are replete with references to fi nancial troubles. On 14 April, Filippo Valori referred to “the very great fi nancial disorder and debt” in which Bartolomeo found himself. The same letter made clear that part of this difficulty arose from investigations into the fi nances of the Romagna during Valori’s tenure as president, which had ended with the death of Clement VII. Like Filippo Strozzi, Bartolomeo Valori lost his positions in the papal bureaucracy with the accession of the new pope, Paul III.58 Strozzi and Valori had built themselves positions of power and influence through their personal relationship with Clement VII, which had brought them political and fi nancial gains, but only outside of Florence. Once their benefactor and patron died, however, they found themselves without the cultural or social resources in Florence necessary to preserve their position. Indeed, in the transforming social world of the emerging principality, no place existed for men of such independent ambition and profi le. While Strozzi had the fi nancial capability to withdraw immediately from Florence and attempt to create a new life in Rome, Valori lingered in the city until 1536, when he too joined the Florentine exile community in the Eternal City.

The alienation of Filippo Strozzi and then Bartolomeo Valori precipitated a renewed struggle over the future of Florence and its form of government, as the Florentine exiles attempted to depose Alessandro and alter the political system in the city. Two principal points of confl ict occurred: one discursive, at Naples in 1535–36, and the second

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military, in the summer of 1537. The responses of members of the office-holding class within Florence to their compatriots’ actions reveal the extent of changes within the social world and political culture of the city’s elite. The majority of the 191 men exiled in the fi nal three months of 1530 had their sentences renewed in late November 1533 for an additional three years. Nearly all received new locations to serve their sentences in. Both Jacopo Nardi, who was one of these exiles, and Benedetto Varchi reported that assignment of new locations placed great difficulty on men who had created new lives for themselves since leaving Florence. Many ignored the new directive, automatically making themselves rebels against Florence: forfeiting their lives and any possessions in the Florentine dominion. These rebels initially began to congregate in Venice, Pesaro, and other locations in the Duchy of Urbino.59 Following the death of Clement VII, however, and the election of the anti-Medicean Pope Paul III, many Florentine exiles began to gather in Rome. With the arrival of Filippo Strozzi and his sons, two distinct factions formed in this diaspora. Strozzi, together with the Florentine cardinals, Giovanni Salviati and Niccolò Ridolfi , who had initially supported the Medici in 1530, formed a leadership group (called the maggiori by Nardi). At the urging of these men, the exiles made a common cause with Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, dissatisfied with being supplanted by his younger cousin.60 The exiles hoped to pry Charles V away from his support of Alessandro and to gain the emperor’s agreement to provide a new settlement for Florence’s government. Dissension and distrust between the maggiori and the other exiles, however, hampered diplomatic efforts. Clearly a significant divide (perhaps even more than one) existed in the exile camp, although its exact contours are difficult to trace. The belief in liberty as the freedom of civilian government had not extinguished in the hearts and minds of some Florentines, especially among the fuorusciti (exiles). Jacopo Nardi, whose Istorie della città di Firenze remains a testament to his political sympathies, most obviously desired the restoration of a civic republican stato. Others presumably shared

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Nardi’s values, but identifying them now is difficult. However, the maggiori—Strozzi, Valori, and the cardinals—who came to dominate the exiles’ cause after 1534 did not share this civic republicanism. Nothing in their past actions or sympathies lends credence to the notion that they experienced a sudden and genuine conversion to a political ideology that they had consistently rejected or even opposed for most of their lives. The most convincing explanation for their motivation comes from Bernardo Segni. Although writing about the cardinals alone, his judgment rings true for Strozzi and also Valori. After the death of Clement VII, Segni wrote, such men no longer felt themselves obligated to the Medici family, reduced as it was to an illegitimate youth and the wife of a French prince. The aristocratic prejudice of these men rose up, and “they could no longer endure serving a bastard.”61 Of legitimate birth themselves and descended from Lorenzo il Magnifico—through their mothers in the case of the cardinals and by marriage for Strozzi—they rejected Alessandro’s rule because of personal, not political, convictions. In many ways, the leading exiles represented the mirror image of those members of the patriciate, such as Francesco Guicciardini, who remained in Florence, helping to create the new princely stato: identical but reversed. They all shared a common goal of attempting to preserve the aristocratic, oligarchic dominance of the patricians in the city. They differed only over whether they believed this continued hegemony could be achieved with or without a nominal Medici prince. In January 1532, during the discussions about the constitution of Florence, Strozzi had outlined his views in a letter to Francesco Vettori. The “strength and steadiness of the stato seem to consist in creating a party that has no recourse to the popolo,” he wrote. The friends of the Medici should be declared noble, by public legislation, and only this nobility should govern, “excluding all others as plebeians.”62 Strozzi’s views did not appear to alter much, although he presumably abandoned friendship with the Medici as a defi ning element in his vision. Writing the cardinals, as they traveled to Florence in 1537 to undertake negotiations, Strozzi observed, “Your Lordships can assure those citizens who fear the governo libero by offering that we will be satisfied with

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any form [of government] that pleases them, so long as it does not aim at tyranny.”63 Which is a rather roundabout way of declaring his support for the restoration of an oligarchic republic. Filippo Strozzi may have deployed the language of liberty, but he did not intend to see a civic republican stato similar to that of 1527 restored in Florence. Tyranny, to him and the other maggiori, did not axiomatically equate to monarchy but simply to any limit on their own ambitions and freedoms.64 The exiles sent a double embassy to Charles V in Barcelona, with individual ambassadors for Strozzi, Cardinal Salviati, and Cardinal de’ Medici, as well as representatives of the greater body of exiles. Confusion over the aims of the embassy—whether the exiles would accept Alessandro’s replacement by Ippolito or only the restoration of the Signoria and the government of 1527–30—as well as the emperor’s desire to embark on his north African campaign against Khayr ad-Din, led to failure. But Charles did promise to hear the exiles’ case at Naples following his return. By the time this audience occurred, in January 1536, Ippolito de’ Medici had died, leaving the exiles without a nominal leader. Jacopo Nardi presented their case on three occasions, each time rebutted by Francesco Guicciardini on behalf of Alessandro. Despite some support in the imperial court for the exiles’ cause, Charles V denied the exiles’ requests and backed his future son-in-law.65 With this imperial blessing, Alessandro de’ Medici reached the pinnacle of his power in Florence. He had defeated, rhetorically, the Florentine exiles, and the emperor had assured his position in the city. In February 1536, the duke fi nally married Margaret of Austria, Charles’s illegitimate daughter. But he did not live to enjoy his triumph for any great length of time. On the night of 6 January 1537, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose mysterious motivation continues to baffle scholars, murdered Alessandro and fled Florence.66 As Alessandro lacked any legitimate offspring, and Lorenzo had removed himself from the succession through his actions, a hastily convoked meeting of the Quarantotto elected the next eldest Medici male as head of the city on 8 January: Cosimo I, the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere and Maria Salviati. 67 At the same time, the Florentine exiles, including

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Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Bartolomeo Valori, met in a council of war in Rome. After much hesitation and diplomacy, as well as an abortive attempt by Filippo Strozzi’s eldest son Piero to establish a bridgehead in the Florentine dominion, the exiles eventually committed to a military expedition against Florence in the summer of 1537. On 1 August, Florentine and imperial troops routed the outnumbered force led by the exiles at Montemurlo, northwest of Florence.68 The battle at Montemurlo marked the culmination of a breakdown of the consensus politics that had governed Florence since the late fourteenth century. This consensus had shaped the social world of the city’s office-holding class, laying the basis for the imagined community of the fifteenth century. Beginning with the unsuccessful Pazzi conspiracy against Lorenzo il Magnifico in 1478, this idea of consensus and the political culture of inclusion shaped by it began to fracture into two competing, exclusive visions of Florence: as either a stato governed by the Medici or one that excluded the Medici entirely. In both visions political opposition became increasingly intolerable and bloodshed became correspondingly acceptable.69 Following the coup d’état of 1527 and the siege of 1529–30, this rupture hardened into a cultural divide as the men exiled in the following months came to form a “contrary commonwealth”: a reconceived and relocated Florence existing outside the city walls.70 This cultural divide provoked a sense of alienation in Filippo Strozzi that led him to observe that he no longer knew if his former friends within Florence “are flesh or fish to me.”71 While this idiom would more readily translate as “fish or fowl” in English, this would only capture the material opposition between the terms. The confrontation between Carnival (flesh) and Lent (fish), which was so prevalent in early modern Europe, lent symbolic weight to Strozzi’s choice of words, capturing not just a difference in substance but also in culture. The word that Florentines used in the sixteenth century for exile was fuoruscito: literally, one who has gone outside. They inherited the term from the medieval period of communal government, when exile had initially meant removal beyond the walls of the city: an exile was one outside the city.72 Banishment from the city meant alienation from

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the principal sources of identity for members of the office-holding class: removal from the public magistracies, from the networks of friends, relatives, and neighbors, and from the physical city that underwrote their status and prestige. Dante Alighieri most eloquently captured the spiritual and mental anguish of exile: “How hard it is to tell what it was like, / this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn / (the thought of it brings back all my old fears), / a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.”73 More prosaically, Filippo Strozzi observed in 1537, “I would like to be restored to my fatherland . . . because the name of rebel greatly damages my business dealings. . . . Moreover, I would like to be able to fi nish the palace and reclaim my debts.”74 The exiles of 1530 were forcibly separated from the social fabric of the city by their sentences. This alienation affected not only their own experience— such as the feeling voiced by Dante in the fourteenth century—but also the perception of them by men still within the city. In Florence during the 1530s, the men exiled for political reasons after the siege became increasingly excluded from the reimagining of the city undertaken by the office-holding class. They lost their place in the social world and the imagined community of the elite. Men who remained in Florence began to recast their onetime fellow citizens, men who had once been friends, relatives, or neighbors, as an external other: a foreign threat to Florentine peace and stability. As early as 1531, Luigi Guicciardini, writing to his brother Francesco, referred to the exiles as “enemies.” On 10 June 1533, Luigi noted that “His Excellency of the Duke demonstrates, more every day, to be beyond his years in patience, understanding, and everything.” He continued, hoping that this pleased God “because no other good can we have, nor in any other consists the health of this city, our enemies being more obstinate and poisonous than ever.”75 The juxtaposition of “enemies” with the “health of the city” makes apparent the threat that Luigi perceived in the exiles: they challenged not only the Medici and their supporters but also the security and stability of the city as a whole. His choice of poisonous to describe the nature of this threat—implying noxious, external corruption—emphasizes its foreign, non-Florentine nature. In late 1534, Francesco Guicciardini used less confrontational language but

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still underlined the growing divide between those within Florence and those without. Regarding the exiles, he observed: “I have always judged that they have little foundation and that they proceed from madness and desperation.” He added, “I know that I cannot trust these dishonest and malicious men, nor could anything ever persuade me otherwise because I know that they hold me in the greatest hatred.”76 Francesco Guicciardini’s fi rst reply to the challenges of the exiles, made in Naples at the beginning of 1536, contained a more rhetorically devastating representation of the exclusion of the exiles from the social world of Florence. In this oration, he divided the fuorusciti into three categories and summarily dismissed each one as no longer having a stake in the city and so no longer possessing the right to intervene in Florentine affairs. Those who voluntarily departed the city and the Florentine cardinals had, through choice or vocation, abandoned any claim over the city and any role in its government. For the majority of the exiles, who had subsequently become rebels for breaking their bans following the extensions of 1533, Guicciardini saved his harshest language: “If these complaints are proposed by rebels, we do not know how appropriate it is to hear them, as they can no longer be recognized in that fatherland, of which, for their demerits, they were justly and legitimately deprived.”77 The exiles, Guicciardini argued, were no longer Florentines at all and so had no claim to a voice in the city’s affairs. Their act of rebellion, in not adhering to their new places of exile, had placed them outside the physical city, the political structures, the social world, and even the imagination of the office-holding class to which they had once belonged. Prior to the death of Alessandro de’ Medici in 1537, the Florentine exiles remained only vaguely threatening. Following the assassination of the duke, however, the possibility of military action against the city increased together with internal anxieties. On 15 January 1537, Francesco Vettori captured both the fears of warfare and the sense then present in Florence of alienation from the exiles when he wrote to Filippo Strozzi: “You are held to be French, your Piero was and is in the pay of the Most Christian King [Francis I]; if one were to make any mention of you, immediately we will come under suspicion and will

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have no means of dodging a Spanish governor; and even if the French were here in support, they would ruin the country and the imperials the city.”78 On 6 February, Girolamo Guicciardini wrote that the governors of Florence “are for doing everything in order to quieten external affairs with the exiles or others, in a manner that it will be easy to avoid war, but as it is one can judge the future badly.”79 Five months later, as the threat of warfare deepened following the failure of diplomatic efforts, Isabella Guicciardini, the wife of Luigi, informed her husband of her fears and ominous signs of impending danger: a monstrous birth and an earth tremor. 80 Around the same time Francesco Guicciardini observed, in relation to the city’s military preparations: “Here one sees nothing but darkness.”81 The most compelling evidence of the manner in which the exiles of 1530 came to appear a threat to the security and peace of Florence comes not from the correspondence of men committed to the Medici family, such as Francesco Vettori or the brothers Guicciardini, but from the letters written to Filippo Strozzi from his elder brother Lorenzo in the months leading up to the battle at Montemurlo. As had occurred throughout their adult lives, Lorenzo maintained the family presence in Florence while Filippo absented himself for lengthy periods, and eventually removed himself permanently in 1533. Lorenzo had received a seat on the expanded balìa of 29 August 1530; and he was one of the few additional members nominated to the new balìa of 8 November. 82 As such he automatically had a seat on the Dugento from its inauguration in April 1532, becoming part of the semi-closed officeholding class of the new principality. Lorenzo did not, however, hold any significant offices until after the death of Alessandro de’ Medici. This makes his correspondence more compelling. Lorenzo Strozzi was not a committed partisan of the Medici. Nor did he participate in the institutions of the new principate; but he shared opinions in common with men like Francesco Guicciardini who did. Lorenzo Strozzi’s letters present the voice of a man outside the stato but within the officeholding class. These letters need to be read with care, because they contain an element of rhetorical posturing: the brothers were alert to the continual

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danger of the interception of their correspondence. Lorenzo, particularly, wrote with an eye toward protecting his own life and position in Florence. 83 Nevertheless, after the assassination of Alessandro in January 1537 Lorenzo became the most frank conduit for patrician opinion to reach his younger sibling. A determination that his brother was wrong emerged with increasing urgency in Lorenzo’s letters, alongside his obvious affection and concern for Filippo. Lorenzo felt that Filippo’s military preparations threatened the stability and security of Florence, and that Filippo had placed personal interest and ambition above the common good of the city. In this regard, Lorenzo positioned himself rhetorically as the voice of the office-holding class. Lorenzo appealed to his brother to act as a citizen rather than an exile, and to protect Florence’s best interests rather than his own. Following notification of the death of Alessandro, Filippo had left Venice and traveled to Bologna, where he began to raise troops to complement those mustered by Cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi in Rome. On 4 February, Lorenzo wrote to his brother, urging him to “return to Venice and your commercial affairs, with whatever excuses occur to you, thus you will preserve the benevolence of all this City toward you and the credit that you have outside it.” Nine days later, Lorenzo wrote again: “I do not want to fail in recommending your fatherland to you, however much I have seen and continually wish [to see] by your actions the love that you bear it.” The following day, 14 February, he stated optimistically: “When you act I know, as if I were certain, that you will do more infi nite justice toward yourself and all us others, furnishing that security and quiet that every loving and good citizen ought to desire.” Almost a month later, toward the middle of March, Lorenzo warned Filippo, “It seems to me that men who place their own city in peril without any benefit are most imprudent.” On 26 May, Lorenzo expressed a hope that God would induce Filippo “so that you place public things before private affairs.”84 Lorenzo Strozzi’s correspondence with his brother articulated and emphasized the distance between the office-holding class within Florence and those members of it that had become exiles and rebels in the 1530s. Lorenzo continually invoked and reminded Filippo of the obli-

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gations and duties of the citizen toward the commonwealth. While Lorenzo remained optimistic about his brother’s patriotism and goodwill toward Florence, he no longer held these attributes as certain. Filippo had never fully belonged to the social world of the officeholding class, owing to his career outside Florence and his preference for commercial over political success. His participation in the military adventurism of the exiles in 1537, however, placed him so far from the expected behavior and disposition of the Florentine patriciate that even his own brother doubted him. The correspondence of Lorenzo Strozzi makes clear that the concept of the common good retained its potency and significance after 1530. He enjoined his brother to act as a “loving and good citizen” by placing the good of the city before any personal interests or ambitions. However, the common good referred to by Lorenzo in 1537 was not identical to that invoked by Leonardo Bruni at the beginning of the fifteenth century and by Matteo Palmieri in the 1440s, or even that embodied and envisioned by Ghirlandaio in the frescoes at Santa Maria Novella and Santa Trinita in the 1480s. The social imagination of the Florentine office-holding class was not immobile. Despite the lingering of residual practices and behaviors, as well as the continuing foreign influence over Florence, the city’s elite had begun to reimagine and reframe their social world in the face of the changes wrought in 1532. The Florentine office-holding class began to fi nd a new familiarity and a new regularity different from that of their fathers at the end of the fifteenth century. A new idea of the common good of the city began to emerge in the 1530s, one that emphasized peace and stability, that found strength in unity, that preferred a quiet life of civility—the pursuit of learning, literature, music, and the visual arts—over the demands of republican politics, and above all else, one that found its principal articulation in the defense of Florentine independence. Two key influences drove the reshaping and reimagination of the office-holding class and the common good after 1530. First, the changes in the objective structures of the city that occurred in 1532: the abolition of the Signoria, the creation of the two new councils that partially closed the office-holding class, and the institution of Alessandro as

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head of state with absolute and sole legislative authority as well as the prerogative to name replacements to both the Dugento and Quarantotto. The social imagination of the Florentine office-holding class did not simply reflect the institutions and structures of the city; it also reproduced and shaped them. These institutions could not alter, therefore, without a correlated shift in how the elite imagined themselves. But the values, expectations, dispositions, and practices of the officeholding class could not change with the stroke of a pen as the forms of government had done. Such a transition took time. If the new constitution appeared in April 1532 as a triumph of oligarchic power in the city, it did so as the result of a lag between the political and the social. The legislation altering the form of the government represented the last official expression of the old social world. Faced with a new political reality in which offices were bestowed rather than allotted and in which the office-holding class no longer reproduced itself but was increased at the whim of a prince, the Florentine elite had to find new ways of conceiving their social place. The changes in the institutions and structures of the city, mandated by the provisions of 27 April 1532, explain the why of the transformations in the social world that began to occur in the 1530s. The second influence over this process explains the how: the memory and legacy of the siege of Florence. The events of 1529–30 had brought the city to the brink of ruin: physical, fi nancial, and political. Florence had been nominally free from imperial control since the twelfth century—the fi rst record of consular government dates from 1138—and independent from interference by any emperor since the death of Emperor Henry VII in 1313. Over the next century and a half the city evolved from a self-governing commune into a territorial state controlling a large part of modern-day Tuscany. The arrival of French and imperial armies on the Italian peninsula at the end of the fi fteenth century, however, exposed the conceits and precarious balance of the Italian city-state system: all five of the self-declared great powers of the peninsula faced the prospect of oblivion. Two, Naples and Milan, became directly subject to foreign administration. In 1509, Venice lost (if not permanently) its mainland Italian empire; and the sack of Rome in 1527 humbled the

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papacy. Florence too, in 1529–30, lost virtually all its dominion to the besieging imperial army. By August 1530, the governors of the city faced a choice between either surrendering to the demands of Ferrante Gonzaga or risking a battle within the city walls, which could only end in either the destruction of Florence or its annexation into the Habsburg patrimony. The feudal nobility of the Kingdom of Naples and the Milanese state could transfer their allegiance to the emperor without any loss of position. They kept their titles, their rank and status, and all their privileges. 85 The office-holding class of Florence, however, had no other claim to their status than the city itself. The independence of the city was essential to the identity of the elite. Avoiding the loss of Florentine sovereignty became the key determinant of the practices and dispositions of the office-holding class in the wake of August 1530. The institutionalization of Medici rule, in the provisions of 1532, served as the objective basis for preserving this independence. The emergent reimagination of the elite and the concept of the common good produced by and in turn reproducing these new structures acted to provide a new familiarity and regularity for the office-holding class. The recognition of the need for continuity and stability in the city’s government and elite expressed in the actions of the new stato immediately after the siege continued into the 1530s, fueling a desire for unity within the office-holding class. Internal confl icts and factional strife, seen as partly responsible for the destruction of the siege and the threat to Florentine independence, became anathema. Between 1528 and 1531, most likely during his enforced political inactivity during the siege, Francesco Guicciardini wrote two politico-historical works that laid a particular emphasis on unity as a source of security and strength for Florence. The fi rst text, the Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli, consisted of a commentary and critique of Niccolò Machiavelli’s exegesis on the fi rst decade of Livy’s histories. Guicciardini condemned Machiavelli’s claim that class confl ict, preferably institutionalized in the structures of governance, provided the best means of protecting the civic freedoms and independence of a republic. “It was not . . . the division

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between the plebs and the Senate that made Rome free and powerful,” Guicciardini thundered. 86 Moreover, he continued, the Roman republic would have been better off had the reasons for this disunity never existed: “Those defects of the government, which were the cause for that city remaining full of tumults and sedition and the creation of the Tribunes, cannot be praised.”87 In the same period during which Guicciardini penned the Considerazioni he also wrote a second, brief, history of Florence: the Cose fiorentine. The problem of factional confl ict and internal divisions arose in this work also. Florence, Guicciardini observed, possessed the virtue and strong foundations necessary for the creation of the greatest empire on the Italian peninsula. Indeed, he continued, it would have acquired such a dominion, “if it had had the fortune of having within its walls a well-ordered government, the authority of which held the citizens united.” Alas, Florence, in Guicciardini’s opinion, possessed “this perpetual misfortune . . . of always being in civil sedition.”88 In his oration on behalf of Alessandro de’ Medici in January 1536, in Naples, Francesco Guicciardini connected the need for unity to the preservation of independence and to the constitutional changes of 1532. The reordering of the government occurred, he maintained, for “just reasons,” principally “to insure the fatherland” against the factional confl icts that had led to instability since 1494, which had in turn threatened the sovereignty of Florence. The thirteen reformers undertook the abolition of the Signoria and the elevation of Alessandro as permanent head of state for “the fortification and stability of [the government] and for its own security and benefit.”89 The creation of the Medici principate provided an institutional means for ending internal divisions in Florence by removing executive authority from the impermanent Signoria. Since the late fourteenth century, the office-holding class had sought to establish a means for manufacturing consensus in government, initially through electoral controls, then via the unofficial position of the Albizzi followed by the Medici as charismatic centers for the elite.90 At the end of the fifteenth century the governors of the city turned to institutional means, forming the Consiglio Maggiore in 1494 and appointing a gonfaloniere a vita in 1502. In

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Guicciardini’s estimation the creation of the Medici principate in 1532 constituted the culmination and perfection of this process. By 1536, Francesco Guicciardini had become the leading apologist for the Medici regime in Florence. Other members of the officeholding class, however, shared the desire for unity and the recognition that an end to internal confl icts could provide a bulwark against any recurrence of the events of 1529–30. Once again, the correspondence of Lorenzo Strozzi provides the principal example for opinions probably shared by the majority of his peers: men who were neither ardent supporters of the Medici nor vehemently opposed to them but who desired above all else the maintenance of their sociopolitical status. On 14 February 1537, Lorenzo wrote to Filippo Strozzi urging him to consider “the security and quiet” of the city. Using language analogous to Guicciardini’s defense of the constitution of 1532, Lorenzo linked the preservation of Florentine independence with the maintenance of civil unity. The military preparations of Filippo and the other exiles threatened to reopen the conflicts of 1529–30 within the city, as well as revisiting the damage of war wreaked in that period. Franceco Vettori was more direct in a letter penned the following day. “It is possible . . . that your nature has changed so much, that from being the most patriotic man I have ever known,” he rhetorically accused Filippo, “now you wish to become head of the exiles, to come to Bologna, to spend your money, and enter the Florentine territory and burn it, rob it, despoil it, and finally to imprison and kill its inhabitants.” Several days later, Lorenzo wrote once more to his brother. This letter not only deployed the same imagery and language of his previous epistle as means of appealing to Filippo not to threaten the internal peace of the city, but it also articulated the political agnosticism that motivated and underlay the desire for unity. Lorenzo observed that “I am writing, as always, as you know is my habit, for the benefit of the city and of who rules it.” Lorenzo identified with the city of Florence and its governors, which in both cases meant the office-holding class and especially the imagined fraternity of civilian magistrates, rather than with any faction. Lorenzo continued by urging Filippo to return to Venice, separating himself from the other exiles, who did not “desire the quiet and well-being of the fatherland as you [do].”91

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Concurrent with the expressions for unity and stability in the officeholding class, there emerged a growing rhetoric of withdrawal from public life. As early as 1529, Lorenzo Strozzi had expressed a preference for staying at his villa outside the city rather than submitting to the demands of public office: “Difficulties offend me nor have I found anything that delights me more than [fresh] air and for this [office] it is necessary to stay assiduously in the city.” He continued: “I have always desired to be in good grace with this government but I do not care to be adopted so quickly into something of such importance.”92 In the 1530s, such expressions became more common among members of the office-holding class. In the face of the tensions prevalent in that decade—the ambiguity of Alessandro’s position in the early years and the threat of the exiles later—the political agnosticism of the 1510s and 1520s deepened into a disposition that was rhetorically antithetical to political action. This language aimed at the avoidance of political confl icts rather than any real abandonment of office holding. The common good of the city was better served by unity and consensus than by the sort of factional and ideological disagreements that had fostered instability and led to the suffering of the siege. The holding of offices still remained prestigious as a source of honor and profit, the latter especially important in the ravaged economy after the siege. In his libro segreto, Luigi Martelli compiled a list of “all the offices of profit and honor that I, Luigi di Luigi d’Ugolino Martelli, have had.” He also carefully noted the salary that each paid post brought him, a central concern for a man with a large family.93 Possessing such magistracies continued to be a symbol of class distinction, becoming even more pronounced in this regard following the partial closure of access to such distinction that occurred in 1532. But office holding in the 1530s became a product of rather than a producer of status.94 On 22 December 1530, Girolamo Guicciardini expressed a wish that “we can pass the remainder of the time allotted us with more pleasure and leisure than we have done in the past.”95 Guicciardini penned this sentiment as a member of the Otto di Guardia appointed to begin their term in January 1531. His desire for a peaceful and pleasant existence stands in contrast to, and comments upon, the difficult duties of

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the previous Otto, responsible for the sentences of exile and execution passed in October and November 1530. In April 1536, Filippo Valori reported his stay in Certaldo—as a Florentine official—to his cousin Bartolomeo, in the following terms: “Being in this place of Certaldo most alone and deprived of doing and even less of hearing anything, I have taken great pleasure in freeing myself from both body and soul.”96 On 9 June 1537, Lorenzo Strozzi penned one of the clearest articulations of the disposition toward withdrawal from public affairs, while staying at the Strozzi villa of Santuccio. “I am inclined to recommend my lifestyle,” he informed Filippo, “of staying at the villa and enjoying the quiet.” He continued that he could not relate any news of events to his brother, because he stayed at the villa “not only on account of the air, but in order not to hear so often and so quickly infi nite things that displease me.”97 Jacopo Guicciardini found a similar attraction to life outside the city walls, pursuing not only a rhetorical but also a physical withdrawal from public life, although he intimated a lingering sense that this was impossible. On 12 August 1537, he wrote to his eldest brother, Luigi, concerning public life in Florence: “If the means of fleeing it were to depart from the city and the company of men . . . and to come to the country and lead a solitary life, which one could easily do here—which without a doubt is a paradise—I above all others would do it.”98 Even more compelling than the written testimony of this emergent rhetoric toward retirement from public life in favor of a private life of pleasant pursuits is the visual evidence from the same period. In the 1530s, Agnolo Bronzino produced a series of striking portraits of young patrician men in Florence. The paintings all share common pictorial elements: depicting solitary youths, dressed in black or dark clothing, in the act of, or surrounded by artifacts relevant to, cultural pursuits: art, literature, and music. Art historical analysis of these images has observed that these paintings appear to grapple with the problem of redefi ning identity following the siege of Florence.99 Even the most detailed exposition of these images, however, has analyzed only the internal visual evidence of the portraits without considering the broader social and cultural context of their production.

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Figure 4.1. Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (ca. 1536–1537). Panel painting, 102 × 85 cm. Berlin: Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie. (Photo: © bpk / Gemaeldegalerie, SMB / Joerg P. Anders.)

The Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (Figure 4.1), which opened this chapter, provides one of the best examples. Ugolino sits in an ambiguous architectural space—neither internal nor external. His pose refers to (rather than directly quoting) Michelangelo’s Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, in particular the seated figure of Il bastoniere (Figure 4.2), as do many of

Figure 4.2. Michelangelo Buonarroti, Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, Duke of Nemours— detail (1526–1533). Marble. Florence: San Lorenzo, Nuova Sagrestia. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.)

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these images, in the arrangement of the hands and the contrapposto positioning. In the upper-right-hand corner, the bottom angle of a Michelangelesque “kneeling” window intrudes. Behind the youth’s right-hand shoulder, at the end of the physical space depicted, stands a statue of David with Goliath’s head. Ugolino appears as if momentarily distracted from the act of reading. He gazes off to the left side of the frame, his right hand resting lightly on an open book on the table before him, his index fi nger holding his place in the text. The text of the open book is legible, identifying it as the opening passages of Book Nine of The Iliad. This choice has great significance: the ninth book of Homer’s poem details the cost of disunity within the besieging Hellenic camp and the attempt by Agammenon to heal his quarrel with Achilles. Its inclusion in the image invites comparison with the damage wrought by the political confl icts of 1527–30 and the continued threat posed to Florentine unity by the exiles. Moreover, the fact that this is alluded to by the act of reading suggests a distance from the practice of public affairs: they remain consigned now to the realm of literature.100 Two other closed volumes also surround Ugolino. That on the table is an unidentified volume of Virgil, while that held in his left hand is a volume of Pietro Bembo. Even a cursory glance at this image, let alone the many other similar ones painted by Bronzino in the same period, reveals that a social world far removed from that which motivated frescoes created by Domenico Ghirlandaio during the 1480s produced and was in turn reproduced by these portraits. The vast differences in representation between the portraits of the 1530s and the frescoes of the 1480s bespeak a transformation of self-conception and identity among Florence’s elite. Even the material of the images themselves, panel paintings produced for private consumption, as opposed to frescoes painted in public spaces, reveals the inward turn and withdrawal of the officeholding class in the wake of the siege. The great public frescoes of the 1480s presented the men depicted to the daily gaze of their neighbors, both asserting and reproducing the social status and political role of the office-holding class. A painting such as the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli presumably hung on the walls of the family palace and had a more lim-

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ited audience and aim: the conjuring of an absent son, certainly, but also the reassurance of social position on a more intimate, familial scale. Martelli and Bronzino’s other portrait subjects appear not as part of a greater body—such as the imagined commonwealth of mature males depicted by Ghirlandaio—but as private individuals absorbed in solo pursuits. The emphasis of the paintings lies not on public ser vice as the defi ning characteristic of the sociopolitical elite, but rather upon education and the facility of time and leisure to follow cultural pursuits. The realm of cultural production and sophistication rather than of political activity appears as the place of elite practice.101 Certain pan-European currents of fashion also contributed to the depiction of Martelli: the popularity of solo portraiture and a preference for somber clothing promoted by courtly literature and the personal appearance of Charles V. To an extent, then, Bronzino’s images served as drivers of cultural change in Florence. They not only responded to shifts in the patrician imagination but also helped to produce a process of reimagining by presenting a new, different image of the elite, a depiction tied less to the political imperatives of Florence than to the cultural imperatives of a wider European scale. Like the changing appearance of men during the siege, Bronzino’s portraits suggest that youth occupied a front role in cultural shifts. A new generation was emerging, acculturated from their early years into a different way of being Florentine. While their fathers struggled with the anxieties and challenges of the decade, the young men of Bronzino’s imagining led the way forward to a more courtly society. As opposed to the purely masculine social world of the fifteenth century, however, this new disposition opened to women also. Bronzino produced comparable images of elite females in the same period, such as the Portrait of the Lady in Red (Figure 4.3). The subject of this painting is probably Francesca di Jacopo Salviati, an aunt of Cosimo I, around the time of her marriage to Ottaviano de’ Medici in 1533.102 The identification rests upon the Salviati colors of red and white, which the subject wears, as well as the peculiarly and specifically shaped diamond ring visible on the ring fi nger of her right hand. The form of this ring reproduces a Medici heraldic device used fi rst by Piero di Cosimo and

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Figure 4.3. Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady in Red (ca. 1533). Panel painting, 90 × 71 cm. Frankfurt am Main: Städel Museum. (Photo: © U. Edelmann—Städel Museum / ARTOTHEK.)

then by Lorenzo il Magnifico, indicating that the lady depicted is most likely a descendant of Lorenzo. Francesca was his granddaughter. The young lady sits on a richly decorated Savonarola chair, with small dog on her lap, presumably representing fidelity in her coming marriage.

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She wears an elegant gown of red with dark green sleeves over a white shirt. A gold chain adorns her neck, and rings grace each hand. Her left hand rests on the arm of the chair, while the right lies on a rosary in her lap. Like Bronzino’s male portraits, the positioning of her hands and body appear to refer to, without directly copying, Michelangelo’s Il bastoniere. The lady sits in an ambiguous architectural space predominated by a concave alcove behind her, neither defi nably internal nor clearly external. Behind her and to the right of the image, two closed books rest on what appears to be a stone bench, such as those that adorned the exterior of many Florentine palaces. The grotesque mascaron adorning the chair’s arm counters the poise and impassivity of the lady’s own features. Very little iconographical difference exists between this female portrait and that of Martelli. While the young lady does not appear actively involved in cultural pursuits, the presence of the books in the painting indicates her access to learning and refi nement. Her costume is more lavish than the appearance of Bronzino’s male portrait subjects, similar to the visual differences between the male and female figures in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes from fifty years earlier. However, the absence of any public role for the male figures, unlike the images of the 1480s, softens this distinction and underlines the greater similarity between male and female in the emerging social world of the office-holding class under the Medici principate. What these images share with the earlier imaginings of the fifteenth century is as significant as the differences. The principal commonality is the physical and symbolic presence of the city of Florence itself. The Ghirlandaio frescoes represented the public spaces of the city—the Palazzo and Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza Santa Trinita—in accordance with the very public nature of the social world of the officeholding class. The references to the city in Bronzino’s images from the 1530s are far more restrained, as befitted the growing rhetoric of withdrawal from public life. Nonetheless, while the spaces of the paintings are not always certain, their settings are unambiguously Florentine. Often this fiorentinità presents itself elusively as a lingering sense in the shape and color of the stonework.103 The quotation of Michelangelo’s

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Bastoniere, common not just to the two images discussed here, refers not only to the actual sculpture but also to it as representative of the material link between the space of the city and the office-holding class. It operated as a reminder of the patrician ability to shape the urban landscape. Michelangelo’s original was created for a Medici funeral monument at San Lorenzo. In the context of the 1530s, too, it carried an acknowledgment of the cultural and political predominance of the Medici in the city. In the Portrait of the Lady in Red and the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, however, the association is direct and specific. The stone bench behind the subject in the former image, as noted above, bears a direct resemblance to the public seating that encircled many patrician palaces in the city. The barred “kneeling” window in the upper right-hand corner of the latter image copies Michelangelo’s famous design for the closure of the corner loggia in the Medici palace. This design became hugely fashionable and was copied throughout the city. The identity of the officeholding class still remained tied very closely to the city itself. The material space of Florence helped to produce and bolster the social position of the city’s elite citizens through their ability to influence and shape the urban geography. Moreover, as the experience of 1529– 30 had brought into sharp relief, the city underwrote their status at an existential level. Should Florence cease to exist, completely or even simply in terms of political independence, the elite of the city would also lose their principal claim to social distinction and political power. In the rear of the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli stands the familiar Florentine image of David, triumphant with the head of Goliath at his feet: the embodiment of youthful virtù defending liberty. The presence of this potent representation could refer to lingering republican sentiment in the early 1530s. However, the images of Old Testament heroes defeating tyranny, not only David but also Judith, had always possessed a Medicean as well as a civic reading.104 Beyond a possible endorsement of Medici rule, the depiction of David with Ugolino Martelli indicates how the office-holding class of Florence reinterpreted and reformed older images and associations to fit the emergent social world of the principate during the 1530s. The figure of David still rep-

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resented the virtù of the city’s elite defending the liberty and common good of the city. But the meaning of these concepts had changed. In the wake of the siege, which had brought the city to the brink of destruction or the loss of independence, a consensus emerged in patrician thought that identified liberty with sovereignty alone, that identified the common good of Florence with the preservation of its independence. The office-holding class rearticulated notions of serving and protecting the common good to justify the installation of Alessandro de’ Medici as a hereditary prince. After the factional confl icts of 1527–30 had brought Florence into war with the two major powers remaining on the Italian peninsula—the emperor and the pope—an alliance with both the Habsburgs and the Medici and the fulfi llment of Clement VII’s political ambitions provided the only viable path toward securing the long-term stability and sovereignty of Florence. In April 1533, Luigi Guicciardini observed that both the church and Florence “have done well with the imperial party.” He continued, “I do not know what could be a greater error than giving it cause for suspicion and reasonable doubt of our faith.”105 The concept of liberty as civic republicanism did not disappear but lingered as an ideal, espoused principally by some of the Florentine exiles.106 In his defense of Alessandro’s regime, given at Naples in January 1536, Francesco Guicciardini made clear the meaning that liberty had acquired for the members of the office-holding class who had stayed in Florence. Replying to the exiles’ charge that the constitution of 1532 had broken the terms of the 1530 surrender, in which the emperor guaranteed the city’s liberty, he argued that the meaning of liberty in the document did not refer to any specific form of government: “The true sense of this clause is that His Majesty was given a free hand to ordain either a popular regime or that of the Medici, or whatever other form pleased him more.” Rather, liberty in the terms of the capitulation referred only to Florence’s independence. The treaty obliged Charles V “not [to] place the city, which was always free, under foreign dominion, depriving it of its ancient privileges, preeminence, and liberty.” Guicciardini concluded that “one cannot say that [the emperor] did not preserve liberty; rather, it is necessary [to say] that he ordered it

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much better than if he had restored a popular government.”107 The civic republicanism of the 1527–30 stato had not protected Florence’s liberty (independence). Rather, it had brought the city to the brink of ruin and of submission to foreign control. The installation of Alessandro as hereditary prince of the city would by contrast preserve the sovereignty of Florence. Supporting the Medici regime became, therefore, ser vice to the common good, to the res publica. Guicciardini dramatically made this point in a letter to Roberto Pucci on 19 May 1537. He speculated on rumors that the French, at the instigation of the Florentine exiles, would intervene militarily in Tuscany. “For us war will result in two terrible effects,” he wrote; “the destruction of the countryside, still suffering from the last war it will be reduced to nothing, and whatever remains in the end, whoever wins, will be the prize of the victors.”108 The correspondence between the Strozzi brothers following the death of Alessandro demonstrates how the concept of sovereignty motivated members of the elite within the city who supported Cosimo I and also some of the exiles, who opposed his accession. The principal concern espoused by both Lorenzo and Filippo Strozzi was that Charles V might fi nd an excuse or a reason to intervene in Florence and subject the city to direct imperial administration. This had occurred in Milan in 1533 when Francesco II Sforza died without a legitimate heir. As early as 20 January 1537, Filippo expressed concerns that “our city might easily fall into foreign hands.” At this stage, he expressed qualified support for Cosimo I, noting, “about the election of the capo I could not be more content as far as my private interests are concerned.”109 Although he did not clarify the distinction in this letter, Filippo obviously separated the personal benefit that he might acquire from the election of Cosimo I—annulment of his sentence of rebellion—and what he perceived to be the larger good of Florence. As the months passed, Filippo agonized over whether military action against the city would provoke an imperial coup de main or would in fact (if successful) prevent the government of Cosimo becoming a puppet for rule from Spain. In late February, Filippo considered that “moving with arms now would be the greatest ser vice to Caesar [Charles V], making him boss—with great justification—of all the important

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places in Tuscany.” He continued, observing that not only would military action make the exiles infamous but that it would “not liberate [Florence], but enslave it more than it is at present.” Around the same time, however, Strozzi also worried that “the city hurries toward its ruin and will become in short time, by necessity, the slave either of Vitello [Alessandro Vitelli] or of the Spanish or of the French, because Cosimo and the little bastard [Giulio di Alessandro de’ Medici] would govern in name alone.”110 Filippo shared this sentiment with other exiles. Under interrogation following his capture at Montemurlo, Filippino di Bartolomeo Valori reported seeing a letter written by his second cousin, Francesco Valori, to the effect that the arrival of the Count of Cifuentes, an imperial representative, in Florence was the prelude to “removing the state from Lord Cosimo and placing it in the hands of the Spanish.”111 Opposed to this fear was a sentiment within Florence itself that, far from threatening the city’s independence, friendship with the emperor was the only means of preserving it. Attempting to persuade his brother against military action, Lorenzo Strozzi implored Filippo that “whoever wishes liberty and not servitude, the health and not the ruin of this our fatherland, needs . . . to take the side of His Majesty, or at least to hold himself neutral.”112 The protection of Florence’s liberty—that is, its independence—could only be assured by the goodwill of the emperor, which in turn could only be assured by the rule of Cosimo I. Despite his concerns, Filippo Strozzi eventually decided that the risks of not acting outweighed the possibility of imperial intervention. His justifications for the military expedition against Florence demonstrated the cultural divide separating the exiles from their compatriots. The same language of public ser vice and common good that Lorenzo Strozzi and Francesco Guicciardini deployed in support of the Medici principality and the imperial alliance threaded Filippo Strozzi’s letters in 1537. To Francesco Vettori he asserted, “If you have always found me loving toward the fatherland, you should not doubt my mind now.” To his brother Lorenzo, Filippo wrote, “I will always do my duty to the fatherland.”113 By late July 1537, the Florentine exiles had amassed three thousand troops at Mirandola, under the command of Fra Bernardo

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Salviati, the younger brother of Cardinal Giovanni and a knight of Saint John of Jerusalem. A further twelve hundred infantry, commanded by Piero di Filippo Strozzi, had assembled at Bologna. The exact number of exiles involved in the military expedition remains unclear, but Jacopo Nardi’s estimate of fifty or sixty seems more likely than Benedetto Varchi’s of two hundred.114 Rather than waiting for Salviati’s detachment, Filippo Strozzi and Bartolomeo Valori led the exiles to Montemurlo, northwest of Prato, followed by Piero Strozzi’s forces. The exiles fortified the old castello above the town, while Piero ordered his troops at the crossroads beneath the mountain, where the road ran between Prato and Pistoia. He sent a detachment, commanded by Cecchino Tessitore and Sandrino da Filicaia, in the direction of Prato, hoping to ambush any approaching force. But troops dispatched by Alessandro Vitelli routed the ambuscade, leading Piero to ride to their aid. In the ensuing battle Piero lost his sword, and his troops became cut off from Montemurlo and had to retreat. The remaining exiles, trapped in the fortress, soon surrendered. Bernardo Salviati fi nally arrived only after the imperial force had withdrawn with a large number of prisoners. Heavy rains had delayed his march. Despite uniting with Piero Strozzi and his remaining troops, Salviati judged it prudent to withdraw. The imperial detachment that achieved victory at Montemurlo returned to Florence with fi fty-one Florentine prisoners. Several of these men were subsequently ransomed or freed by the individual commanders who had captured them. Several others escaped. Filippo Strozzi, whom Alessandro Vitelli claimed as his own prize, was imprisoned in the Fortezza da Basso at Florence, which the imperial colonel held in the name of Charles V. Cosimo I had thirteen of the captured exiles and rebels executed, including Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Filippo Valori, alongside Bartolomeo Valori and his two sons, Filippino and Paolantonio, on 20 August.115 Strozzi remained imprisoned in the Florentine fortress despite the efforts of his sons and many others to persuade Emperor Charles V to liberate him. On 29 November, Strozzi informed Cardinal Giovanni Salviati that he had offered Vitelli a fifty thousand scudi ransom, but

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that his gaoler wanted ten thousand more. Above all else, Strozzi feared being delivered to Cosimo I: “the fate of the others makes me and my friends fear greatly.” A month later, Strozzi wrote to his son, Roberto, who was petitioning the emperor in person for his father’s release: “Here my affairs are in the worst state . . . this is the last act of the tragedy.”116 Filippo Strozzi eventually met a suitably tragic end, apparently taking his own life on 18 December 1538 while still imprisoned in the Florentine fortress.117 Strozzi left behind a note claiming that he feared falling into the hands of Cosimo and being tortured into admitting things “prejudicial to my honor.” He begged that he be buried in Santa Maria Novella, beside his wife Clarice de’ Medici, if Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo approved of his interment in sacred ground. Finally, in his best theatrical style, Strozzi consigned his soul to God, “humbly praying that, even if he wishes to bestow no other grace, he will at least set it in that place where Cato of Utica and other similarly virtuous men have made their end.”118 Marcus Portius Cato the Younger had sided with Pompey against Julius Caesar during the Roman civil war. Following the latter’s victory at Pharsalus, Cato had killed himself at Utica in 46 b.c.e. Later writers, including Lucan and Dante, presented Cato as a moral force and guide to Marcus Brutus, who stayed above the factional confl ict at the end of the Roman republic and committed suicide to avoid taking sides in the confl ict that ended the republican system.119 Strozzi’s theatrical invocation of Cato was a revealing moment. On the one hand, it was a personal cry of despair: the conjuring of a metaphorical plague on both the Medici and the Florentine exiles. By comparing himself with a man who refused to take sides, Strozzi expressed a dying wish to take back the choices that he had made, which had led to his imprisonment and death. From a different perspective, Strozzi’s invocation of a man who refused to choose highlighted the fact that most of the office-holding class of Florence did make a choice in the wake of the siege of 1529–30. The imposition of the Medici principate was not done to the office-holding class of Florence, but with them. Most members of the patriciate chose to support and advance the establishment of a form of government antithetical to

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Florentine tradition. They saw in a Medici monarchy the best, and perhaps only, means of preserving the city’s independence and, so, their own status and prestige. This choice was not accompanied by a definitive break with the political culture of Florentine republicanism. Indeed, many of the concepts, language, and images that had supported the republican tradition appeared as justifications for and defenses of the new principate. In the 1530s the office-holding class undertook a process of refashioning the meanings and understandings attached to these concepts. This process was not yet complete in the summer of 1537. While the social world of the city’s elite was defi nably no longer in the civic tradition of the late fi fteenth century, it was not yet a court society.

5 Reimagining Florence The Court Society of the Mid-Sixteenth Century

; In the middle of the 1540s, the painter best known as Francesco Salviati spent several years in his home city of Florence, a brief interval in a career otherwise spent predominantly in Rome. In this period he completed numerous portraits of Florentine men, youths, and boys. These images of elegantly attired male figures bear obvious debts to the influence of Bronzino in the positioning and accoutrements of the figures, as well as the linear architectural backgrounds visible in many of them. Among these portraits, one, featuring a young man clasping a pair of gloves (Figure 5.1), stands out. Sometimes attributed to Michele Tosini and identified (improbably) as a posthumous portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici or (even more improbably) of the duke’s assassin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, this image is unique for the allegorical landscape behind the central figure. A drawnback green curtain reveals, to the left of the panel, a landscape dominated by hyperbolic clouds blushed pink by dawn. Almost immediately behind the sitter’s right shoulder an incongruous collection of figures gather on a hillside, all of whom refer to the city of Florence. The reclining nude male is a personification of the river Arno. Beside him an

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almost comical lion—the Marzocco, an old emblem of the city—peers out toward the viewer. To the left and in front of the river god, a female figure emerges in place of the stamen from a flower, which could possibly be a lily: an embodiment of the eponymous flourishing of Florence. To the right of the Marzocco, on a slight hillock, stands a broncone— the Medici emblem of the dry and broken yet flowering branch. This image presents no depiction of youthful virtù defending the liberty of the city, as the images produced by Pontormo (Figure 3.1) and Bronzino (Figure 4.1) in the previous two decades had done. The languid youth who is the painting’s central subject poses with grace but disinterest. Indeed, Florence (in its allegorical form) appears in no need of defenders. The iconography of the emblematic figures in the background suggests that the city flourishes, tranquil and peaceful, under the guardianship of the Medici, the turbulence of the decade between 1527 and 1537 forgotten. This image by Salviati contributed to and commented upon a reformation of the social world and imagination of Florence’s office-holding class that occurred in the 1540s as the political structures of the city stabilized into a monarchical form that would endure until the Risorgimento.1 When Filippo Strozzi met his desperate end in December 1538, the intertwined fates of Florence and of the city’s office-holding class remained uncertain. Spanish troops still occupied the fortresses of Florence and Livorno. The nominal head of the government, Cosimo I de’ Medici, was an untried youth, only nineteen years old. The threat of renewed warfare between the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France still hung over the city, not least because Filippo Strozzi’s eldest son, Piero, apparently eager for revenge, had taken military service with the French monarch (he would rise to become Marshal of France). More profoundly, the exact nature of the political structures of Florence and the social world of the city’s elite remained unclear. The ambiguities of the 1532 constitution continued unresolved: Was Florence a republic with a prince (like Venice and Genoa), or something more akin to the monarchies of France and Spain? A decade later the fortunes of Florence and the city’s elite appeared clearer and more confident. Cosimo I had proven himself an adept

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politician, regaining control over the Tuscan fortresses, freeing the dominion from a foreign military presence, and allying himself by marriage with one of the most powerful Spanish noble houses. 2 Cosimo also asserted, more forcefully than his predecessor had done, his position as prince of the city and its territory. Not only did this confidence end the political ambiguity of Alessandro’s reign; it also provided a point of objective political stability around which the office-holding class could coalesce and create a new familiarity of social practice and social place. The decade following the defeat of the exiles at Montemurlo witnessed a reimagining by the officeholding class of their role and status in Florence. Most significantly, the defi ning feature of this role—the act of holding office—ceased to be a political act in the 1540s, becoming instead a symbol of status and princely favor. The social world and imagination that emerged by 1550 was distinctly courtly and no longer civic in its conceptualization and figuration. The social world of the Florentine office-holding class evolved into a court society during the 1540s as the city’s elite reimagined their identity and position in order to accord with the political transformations of the previous decade.3 This Florentine court society emerged out of the civic world and imagination of the republican era. No radical break or revolution occurred in the society and culture of the city’s elite. The court society of the 1540s evolved as a culmination of the processes that began in the 1530s: central concepts of the earlier civic republican social imagination underwent a reconceptualization rather than being abandoned. In this decade, the lag between cultural and political change closed. As the new objective structures of the principality achieved stability under Cosimo I, the office-holding class completed the alteration of their practices and attitudes to fit the political realities. While this change appears very sudden and almost without impetus in the 1540s, this habituation was, in fact, the culmination of a decades-long process for the men born at the end of the fifteenth century, who by now were the mature males (entering their fifth or sixth decade) that had always dominated Florentine politics. The older generation who had known and participated in the civic republican

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stato of 1494–1512 (or even the Medicean republic that had preceded it) were dead. The men who in 1550 held the traditional gerontocratic hold on Florentine offices had only youthful or childhood memories of the fifteenth-century civic republic, at best. 4 In January 1537, Cosimo I enjoyed a position even more ambiguous than that of his murdered predecessor. Alessandro de’ Medici had received support from both Pope Clement VII and Emperor Charles V. In addition to his imperial title, as Duke of Penne, the constitution of April 1532 recognized Alessandro as duce of the Florentine Republic. The provision passed by the Quarantotto on 9 January 1537, electing Cosimo as the duke’s successor, however, acknowledged the new signore only as “head and principal of the government of the city of Florence and its dominion and the magistrates and offices of these.”5 Imperial recognition of the Quarantotto’s provision did not arrive until 28 October. The diploma’s phrasing followed that of the Florentine provision, recognizing Cosimo as “head and principal” of the government; but it also conceded to the new prince both the authority and the juridical position possessed by Alessandro at his death, including the late duke’s Florentine title: duce of the Florentine republic.6 Alessandro de’ Medici had never made any attempt to claim a ducal title for Florence from his father-in-law. His surviving Florentine correspondence from the 1530s appears routinely with the simple signature “Alex. Med.”7 Following the election of 9 January 1537, Cosimo I initially followed his predecessor’s practice, concluding his correspondence, “Cosmo Medici” or “Cosimo Medici,” as he had done prior his new position. 8 Corresponding to his assertive foreign and domestic policies, however, the new signore soon laid claim to the title of Duke of Florence for himself. By April 1541 he had abandoned his previous practice and now signed his letters “the Duke of Florence.”9 Cosimo, like Alessandro, never received imperial concession to assume this title. He simply claimed it of his own volition. In 1576, when the Emperor Maximilian II recognized Cosimo’s heir, Francesco, as Grand Duke of Tuscany, the imperial diploma referred to the Medici prince as “the Third dux of the Florentine Republic,” refusing to acknowledge his father’s arrogation.10

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The significance of Cosimo’s usurpation of the title of Duke of Florence extended beyond his own self-conception and political identity to affect the social imagination of the Florentine office-holding class as well. It provided a stability and clarity to the constitutional structures of the city, which the previous decade had lacked. In combination with the new signore’s program of institutional reform and his relations with the Spanish military presence in north-central Italy, the unilateral assumption of the ducal title helped to end the ambiguity of the 1532 settlement.11 It demonstrated that Cosimo’s position did not equate to that of the Venetian doge but rather to the dukes of Ferrara or Mantua and the kings of France or Spain. Under Cosimo the Florentine government, in the space of a decade, became thoroughly transformed from the aristocratic republic imagined by the thirteen reformers in 1532 into a monarchy. Notably, some Florentines began to address Cosimo as “duke” prior to 1541, when he began to use the title in his correspondence.12 In part this usage probably evolved from habit from Alessandro’s reign and also as a convenient shorthand for the Medici prince’s cumbersome official title. But it also represented an acknowledgment of the political realities of the stato and a desire for the permanence and clarity that Cosimo’s regime would bring. Cosimo’s own use of the title, then, may to a certain extent have responded to this usage by others. In May 1543, Charles V agreed to restore the fortresses of Florence and Livorno to Florentine control, ending the Spanish military presence in the territory. Later that same year Cosimo embarked on a program of administrative reorga nization that progressively removed power from the civilian magistracies—the Quarantotto, the Otto di Pratica, and the Ducal Counselors especially—in favor of appointed ministers, secretaries, and bureaucrats.13 Cosimo’s self-declaration as duke also demonstrated his independence. For the fi rst time in the sixteenth century—excepting the six months between 1 September 1512 and the election of Giovanni de’ Medici as Pope Leo X in March 1513—a Medici ruler of Florence had no immediate, formal bond to an external power that could limit or compromise the sovereignty of the city. The assumption of the title demonstrated that while Cosimo

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owed a debt of fealty to Charles V, he did not experience an obligation to submit every action to the emperor. This combination of clarity in the objective structures of Florence and vigorous assertion of Florentine independence from foreign control provided an atmosphere for the city’s office-holding class to reimagine their social world and identity. The constitutional changes of April 1532 resulted, initially, in the formation a more restricted office-holding class than had existed in the fi rst three decades of the sixteenth century. In the inaugural Dugento, only 63 of the 239 members did not possess patrician surnames, a little over 25 percent. In the Quarantotto only three non-patrician names appeared: Giovanni di Bernardo Buongirolami, Bernardo di Carlo Gondi, and Francescantonio di Francesco Nori.14 Compared to the distribution of seats on the comparable councils—the Ottanta from 1495 to 1512 and 1527 to 1530—these figures represent a tightening of access to the higher offices of the city. Forty percent of the men drawn for the Ottanta in its two manifestations did not bear patrician surnames.15 The percentage of patricians on the councils of the principate in 1532 do compare with the membership of the Settanta between 1514 and 1527. Just below 90 percent of the men who sat on this Medicean council had patrician surnames.16 In the later sixteenth century the office-holding class would become more diversified, as it evolved from an exclusively Florentine entity into a regional elite including patricians from other Tuscan cities as well as nobles from other Italian and European states. But in the initial decades of the Medici principate’s existence, until the 1560s, the office-holding class remained almost entirely Florentine and patrician.17 As a result, the officeholding class in the 1540s was probably more culturally and socially homogeneous than in any other period since the thirteenth century. Prior to the mid-sixteenth century, a discrepancy existed between the imagined community of fraternal citizens and the reality of socioeconomic divisions within the office-holding class as a whole. The frescoes painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the 1480s (Figures 1.1–1.3) represented a limited vision available only to a minority of the men

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eligible to sit on the commune’s magistracies. The restriction of the office-holding class after 1532, however, produced the potential for the imagination and actuality of the social world to accord more readily than they had under the republic. The constitutional changes that formed the principate also structured a more elitist and aristocratic officeholding class. Francesco Guicciardini noted that the Riformatori had laid particular emphasis on the social status of the members of both the Dugento and the Quarantotto. “The principal importance of what has to be done now,” he wrote in mid-April 1532, as the committee argued over who would receive a seat on each council, “consists in electing these men carefully, and in placing for the foundation of the stato people who matter the most.”18 This greater distinction and definition reproduced itself in the appearance of the city’s elite also. In January 1550, Francesco d’Andrea Buonsignori recorded that the Quarantotto had passed a provision mandating that the members of the Ducal Council should distinguish themselves when in public or undertaking official duties by wearing “a [black] lucco lined with colored cloth and velvet slippers and a hat of silk.” When a counselor rode through the city, the provision continued, he had to have two servants accompanying him and “velvet trappings and coverings” for the horse.19 Among this more restricted office-holding class, however, the most prestigious offices achieved a broader distribution than they had under the previous Medici regime of 1512–27. Between 1530 and 1550, 154 men, from a total possible of 320, sat on the Otto di Pratica, which remained the most important magistracy until its gradual eclipse by the appointed Pratica Segreta after 1545. This ratio greatly exceeded the distribution for the same office between 1514 and 1527, when only 69 men of a possible 208 sat on the Otto. An inner circle of favored men did develop under the principate, similar to that which had existed in the previous Medici regime, with twenty-one men appearing on the Otto on five or more occasions. However, the numerical predominance of these men was less than that of the seventeen men who monopolized the Otto between 1514 and 1527. The inner circle of the principate represented less than one-sixth of the membership of the

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magistracy and accounted for fewer than 40 percent of the total seats on the magistracy until 1550. By comparison, the inner circle of the earlier stato represented almost one-quarter of the Otto’s members for the period and held over half of all the possible seats. 20 Paradoxically, then, the office-holding class of the principate, although narrower, came closer to the egalitarian access to office imagined in republican Florence. This newly homogeneous office-holding class, under the emerging objective stability of Cosimo I’s rule, began to transform itself, consciously and actively, from citizens into subjects, from civilian magistrates into courtiers. New social practices and modes of behavior emerged in accordance with the political realities of princely government from the end of the 1530s. Most striking was the development of a pose of disinterest toward the political. Coinciding with the subsidence of the posture of rhetorical withdrawal that had colored elite correspondence in the 1530s, this learned disinterest represented the maturation of the earlier impulse. It also constituted a stark contrast to the behavior of the office-holding class in the republican era. The practice of governance in republican Florence, indeed the practice of civic republicanism itself, had been discursive. The exchange of ideas and opinions in a civic public sphere was essential to the formation of republican citizens and to the very notions of commonwealth and public good.21 Niccolò Machiavelli’s famous suggestion that class confl ict had fostered and protected the political freedom of pre-Augustan Rome had acknowledged that dialogue or argument between interested parties had formed the basis of republican liberty. Matteo Palmieri, in the middle of the fifteenth century, had similarly remarked that civic republicanism demanded “free, true, and open” counsel.22 Civic political discourse, then, constituted an essential part of the practice of governance and of civic republicanism in Florence prior to the late 1530s. The discourse occurred in many and multifarious ways, unfolding both within and without the actual magistracies of the state. In general, however, the discourse occurred off the record and so out of sight to historians. Except for the consulte e pratiche, the official records of Florentine institutions did not include debates or discussion.

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Beyond the official structures of governance, in the intensely face-toface and intimate social world of Renaissance Florence, most of the discourse again took place beyond the gaze of the historian: on the street corners, at the Mercato Nuovo, in taverns and homes, in the corridors of the Palazzo della Signoria.23 For this reason, letters between members of the office-holding class from the period prove so valuable, because they provide a record of the civic political discourse, of the interest that members of the sociopolitical elite took in the functioning of the government and the affairs of the day in Florence. The private correspondence of members of the office-holding class during the 1510s and 1520s, and even the early 1530s, is replete with political news, information, and opinion. Members of the city’s elite, absent from Florence on business or official duties, kept themselves informed about the news of state from home. Francesco Guicciardini and his brothers, one of whom was often absent on the ser vice of the city or the papacy, provide a particularly fertile source of correspondence. Similarly, Filippo Strozzi and his brother Lorenzo maintained a regular exchange of news with each other and close friends such as Benedetto Buondelmonti. While the trend of serial absences from Florence by at least one of the brothers Guicciardini continued under the government of Cosimo I, the political narrative that had sustained their correspondence dried up in the years after 1537. On 3 October 1539, Francesco Guicciardini reported to Luigi, serving as commissioner in Pisa, that “here things proceed as usual.”24 In January the following year, Girolamo wrote to Luigi detailing news of affairs from France and Flanders but no mention of Florentine events, concluding, “there is no other news.”25 Three years later, Jacopo Guicciardini sent Luigi, now in Castrocaro, a lengthy recitation of political news from England, Scotland, Flanders, and Sicily, but his mention of Florentine affairs consisted only of observations on the agricultural outlook.26 This tendency to discuss political events from elsewhere in Europe—predominantly rumors concerning the Ottomans or the ongoing struggle between Francis I and Charles V— while observing that nothing new had happened in Florence recurs throughout the correspondence between the brothers after 1537. Only

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with regard to agricultural or occasional bureaucratic difficulties did local affairs earn a mention.27 The lack of interest in Florentine political affairs discernible in the Guicciardini correspondence emerged under the impetus of two impulses: one, practical, and the second, cultural. In the fi rst place, the draining of political commentary reflected the increasing centralization of government in the hands of Cosimo I and appointed ministers or secretaries as opposed to the civilian magistrates of the officeholding class. As the city’s elite became excluded from the decisionmaking process, the Guicciardini brothers simply did not enjoy the same access to the corridors of power that had previously fueled their political knowledge. But this restriction of the role and competence of the office-holding class provides only part of the answer. The complex shift in political culture from the civic world of republican public life—of active engagement, debate, and competition—to the court society of a monarchical state had a more significant impact in determining the studied disinterest adopted by the Florentine office-holding class. Part of the mélange of impulses that underlay this cultural shift evolved from the still pervasive memory of the siege of Florence: a lingering fear of any return to the factional confl icts of republican politics that had resulted in the internecine bloodshed and suffering infl icted during and after the siege. This desire reached its pessimistic apotheosis in Francesco Guicciardini’s unfi nished Storia d’Italia, written between the end of 1537 and the author’s death on 22 March 1540. The narrative coherence of Guicciardini’s last historical work lies in the contrast that he makes between the peace and tranquillity of Italian affairs prior to 1494 and the violence and instability of the following decades. 28 He presents the unraveling of the Italian city-state system as a tragedy, as a course of events determined by the fl aws of political leaders, who then were unable to alter the path they had chosen: “Not remembering the frequent shifts of fortune and using the power given them for the common good for the harm of others, they made themselves, either through lack of prudence or through surfeit of ambition, the authors of new perturbations.”29

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Unlike his earlier histories, the Storia d’Italia did not focus on Florence specifically, but on affairs across the Italian peninsula as well as events in ultramontane Europe that influenced the Italian states. However, Guicciardini’s personal experiences of events in the city on the Arno, especially between 1527 and 1537, had a measurable impact on the Storia’s overwhelming condemnation of the avarice, ambition, and short-sightedness of political leaders who pursued confl ict as a tactic for their own advancement. Moreover, the Storia contained a pessimistic judgment about the futility of all political actions and intentions in the face of the variability of Fortune. Both these strands of Guicciardini’s narrative combined in the historian’s ironic description of the imprisonment of Lodovico Sforza, the deposed Duke of Milan, by Louis XII of France: “enclosing in a narrow prison the thoughts and ambitions of one whom the bounds of Italy had previously struggled to contain . . . so varied and miserable is the human condition, and so uncertain to each one is his future well-being.”30 Guicciardini presented a narrative of political failure and futility: an expression of the withdrawal from public life experienced by the officeholding class of Florence in the 1530s taken to its extreme conclusion. To this pessimistic view the historical writings of Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentari dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze, begun around 1534 but largely written between 1549 and 1552, provide a counterpoint, illuminating a newer impulse toward disinterest in the realm of the political. Nerli presents political activity and interest—that quintessence of republican citizenship—not as futile but as no longer necessary under the reign of Cosimo I. The title of Nerli’s history indicates his concern with tracing the “civic doings” ( fatti civili) of Florence from the early thirteenth century until the accession of Cosimo I and the battle of Montemurlo. Like most other contemporary Florentine historians, Nerli viewed the course of the city’s history as one of civil dissent and confl ict between various political factions: “This city never lacked reasons for scandal nor did it ever lack factions and civil sedition.”31 Beginning with the thirteenthcentury struggle between the pro-papal Guelf and pro-imperial Ghibelline factions, his narrative develops as a story of continuing civic

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discord in Florence until the accession of Cosimo I in 1537. Nerli presents this moment not only as the endpoint of his own narrative but also as the End of History in Florence. He argued that the victory of Cosimo and the defeat of the exiles at Montemurlo “seem to have put a stop and given an end to the many discords, ancient and modern, of our citizens.” He continued that having reached this point it no longer seemed necessary to continue to recount the fatti civili “because . . . our citizens should no longer have cause to contend politically over matters of state and government, all the sum of the government being reduced in the authority of one sole Prince and one sole Lord.” The creation of the Medici monarchy, in Nerli’s narrative, provided the only possible means to circumvent the endemic factionalism of the city. The rule of Cosimo I, by removing political authority and decision making from the office-holding class, removed the source of all internal confl ict and discourse: control over the city and its government.32 Nerli’s triumphalist account notwithstanding, the cessation of the discursive practice of republicanism did not occur only in response to the ontological necessity of princely rule, the singularity of the prince’s interest. Key to the development of political disinterest were the sociocultural imperatives of the office-holding class’s process of renewal, their transformation from citizens into courtiers. This provided a positive counterpoint to the negative impulse that underlay the fear of factionalism and the memory of the siege of 1529–30. Members of the Florentine elite actively learned to become disinterested as they reimagined their place in the society and political structures of the Medici principality. Such disinterest not only stood in stark contrast to the necessary interest of the republican citizen, but was also the quintessential characteristic of the courtier. Success in a court society depended on the negotiation of the rules of etiquette and social skills required. Above all, the courtier required the ability to subsume his or her own interests, emotions, and desires to those of the prince and the court at large. “You ought to know, that it becomes you to moderate and order your habits,” wrote Giovanni della Casa in Galateo (1558), his dialogue on courtly etiquette, “not ac-

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cording to your own judgment but according to the pleasure of those whose company you frequent.”33 Baldassare Castiglione had Federico Fregoso, in the dialogue of Il cortegiano (1528), caution prudence, discretion, and self-consciousness in every action: “Let him consider well whatever he does or says, the place where he does it, in whose presence, at what time, why he is doing it, his age, his profession, the end he is aiming at, and the means by which it may be achieved.”34 Such advice emphasized performance and the maintenance of an appropriate façade. It did not become the courtier to cultivate too open an interest or enthusiasm, for doing so without appearing ill-mannered and discourteous was difficult in the extreme. What court society required was a studied indifference, a calculated disinterest. Sprezzatura—the defi ning quality of Castiglione’s ideal courtier—translates more pointedly and accurately not as “nonchalance” but as “scornful indifference.”35 In the realm of action, the courtier scorned and appeared indifferent to the apparent difficulty of the task at hand, whether jousting, dancing, or conversing in a witty and erudite manner. In the realm of ideas, political or otherwise, the courtier appeared indifferent to ideological commitment. On several occasions in the Il cortegiano, Lodovico Canossa warns against pedantry: the social death of appearing too interested, too focused, too committed to a single idea or process.36 Indeed, when Lodovico himself and Federico become overly engaged in an argument about language, Emilia Pia (who directs the game of the dialogue) interrupts not once but twice to forbid further discussion: “This argument of yours is too long and tedious.”37 The protagonists had become too interested in the outcome of their disagreement, rather than keeping to the courtly role of providing entertaining conversation. The dialogic structure favored by Della Casa and Castiglione, as well as by the authors of most other courtesy books produced in the sixteenth century, represented the literary perfection of this attitude. Its open-ended, multivalent format permitted the presentation of multiple interests and points of view without the danger of the author appearing uncivil by closing off discussion and prescribing any one means to an end.38

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Of course, significant differences existed between the court of Urbino in the 1500s, as reimagined by Castiglione, and that of Florence in the 1540s. The holding of offices and the independent wealth of the Florentine patricians (from both land and commercial investments) made their position more secure and dignified than that of the courtiers of the Montefeltro. The Florentine office-holding class did not follow the advice of Castiglione as a prescription, but they responded to the same or similar cultural imperatives that structured Il cortegiano and that would inspire Della Casa’s Galateo. Castiglione’s text was published five times between 1528 and 1537 in Florence alone, and appeared in twenty-six Italian editions between 1530 and 1550. Something in the book spoke to the needs of the Florentine and other Italian elites.39 The elite also responded to the fact that the holding of offices itself, under the new monarchical system, ceased to be a political act in the same way that had it under the republican constitution. Prior to the institution of the principality, the distribution of offices had reflected the relative strength of various competing factions within the city’s office-holding class. The connections, loyalties, and alliances of the sottogoverno that operated behind the imagined fraternity of citizens determined an individual’s electoral success or failure. Political confl icts had occurred over control of the electoral mechanisms and inclusion in the electoral system. As De’ Nerli observed, with the removal of the republican system that distributed offices by lot among the officeholding class and its replacement by a process ultimately determined arbitrarily by a prince, the engine driving these confl icts disappeared. The economy of political power, which in the republican system constituted a relatively free market of competing and often overlapping social configurations, had become a monopoly in which competition for offices was restricted. 40 Previous factional allegiances, and even possible opposition to the Medici, did not preclude an individual from holding office under Cosimo, as the fortunes of men such as Antonio di Simone Canigiani and Luigi di Luigi Martelli testified. Canigiani had wed Argentina di Tommaso Soderini, and Martelli had married Margarita di Giovanvettorio Soderini. Under the Medici

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stato of 1512–27 this made both men politically suspect, and they suffered accordingly from exclusion from public office during the 1520s: Martelli held one position—as podestà of Borgo San Lorenzo in 1526— and Canigiani held none. In the republican system affi nal relationships could affect political fortunes. In 1519, Filippo Valori recorded that he had difficulty fi nding a bride because the Medici “suspected Niccolò my father.”41 Following the capitulation of the stato of 1527–30 to the papal-imperial army in August 1530, the Soderini again endured political reprisals for their prominent position among the antiMedicean alliance: eight members of the lineage were placed under bans of exile (more than any other single family), and one member, Luigi di Paolo, was executed in the fi nal months of 1530. The exiles included the father-in-law of Antonio Canigiani. 42 But under the Medici principate the fortunes of both Canigiani and Luigi Martelli flourished. Martelli, who enjoyed connections with Jacopo Salviati, began holding offices in January 1531, and in 1543 received a seat on the Dugento. 43 In 1546, Canigiani was appointed to the Dugento also, and he then held offices regularly, if less often than Martelli. 44 In a similar fashion, men such as Alessandro d’Antonio Malegonnelle, Alessandro di Niccolò Antinori, and even Lorenzo Strozzi, brother of the ill-fated Filippo, who had been politically prominent during the stato of 1527–30, continued to hold offices in the Medici principality. Antinori, who had an especially prominent record of office holding between 1527 and 1530, received seats on the balìe of August and November 1530 and was appointed to the inaugural Quarantotto in April 1532. He then held prominent positions every year, serving on the Otto di Pratica, the Ducal Council, and as a Monte official on multiple occasions. 45 Malegonnelle received a seat on the November 1530 balìa, automatically becoming a member of the Dugento in April 1532. In 1537 he led the interrogations of the men captured at Montemurlo and subsequently received a place on the Quarantotto the same year. Like Antinori, he then regularly appeared on the most prestigious magistracies. 46 Strozzi, like Malegonnelle, made the transition from the November 1530 balìa to the Dugento. Although he only held one prominent office subsequently, this occurred in 1539 following his

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brother’s unsuccessful armed rebellion, and the office was the most influential of all, the Otto di Pratica. 47 The experiences of these three individuals, as well as those of Antonio Canigiani and Luigi Martelli, testify to the extent to which the holding of offices became disconnected from the political traditions of the republic following the ascension of Cosimo I in 1537. One significant exception existed to the general atmosphere of amnesty that pervaded the office-holding class under Cosimo I. The rebels of the 1530s, either those captured at Montemurlo and imprisoned or those who had escaped, remained unforgiven and unreconciled. From 1537 and throughout the 1540s the Medici prince received numerous petitions from relatives of such men or from the individuals themselves seeking forgiveness for their offenses. Francesco di Niccolò Valori provided one particularly poignant example, imploring Cosimo to forgive “Filippo, my brother, [together] with the others of our house,” in a letter dated 20 August 1537, the day Filippo was beheaded. 48 Braccio di Battista Guicciardini wrote on behalf of his cousin and namesake, Braccio di Niccolò: “Confident in the beneficence and clemency of Your Excellency, humbly he beseeches you to deign to render him the grace of liberation from the prison where he has been held and presently fi nds himself.”49 Vieri di Bernardo da Castiglione launched a veritable letter-writing campaign in order to free himself: “[Your] most humble and miserable servant Vieri di Bernardo da Castiglione throws himself again at your most merciful feet, humbly beseeching that you should wish to deign for the love of Jesus Christ to do him the grace of releasing him from the Stinche.” This particular petition received only curt dismissal from Cosimo’s principal secretary, Lelio Torelli: “It is not yet time.” The others that followed received similar responses.50 The memory of these men remained so toxic that even individuals who had not played any role in the events of Montemurlo suffered punishment for associating with them. In 1547, ten years after the battle, Filippo di Lorenzo Gondi received a sentence of three years in exile for dining at the house of Piero di Filippo Strozzi in Venice.51 A distinction operated between individuals, such as Alessandro Antinori, who competed within the previous political framework, and those who had

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taken up arms to compete militarily with the monarchical system. This latter group remained very much political enemies of the Medici and the Florentine stato, while the former became fully integrated into the office-holding class of the principality. The changes in behavior and practice as they related to political affairs and activities, highlighted here across a variety of sources— the Guicciardini correspondence, the historical writings of Francesco Guicciardini and Filippo de’ Nerli, the political experiences of various members of the office-holding class—had a visual analogue in the portraits completed by Francesco Salviati during the 1540s. These images bear the obvious influence of the paintings completed by Bronzino during the 1530s. Salviati’s portraits present similar solitary male figures, elegantly attired in dark clothing. Several of the images also share linear architectural backgrounds that imply and conjure the Florentine urban landscape. But important differences separate these portraits from the 1540s from those by Bronzino of the preceding decade. The images produced by Bronzino had suggested a withdrawal from public life in favor of the cultural pursuits of art, literature, and music. A sense of interiority, seclusion, and uncertainty pervaded the images, the product of the ambiguous and unsettled political landscape of Florence in the years between the siege and the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici. The images produced by Salviati in the following decade enjoy a lighter, more open and confident feel. Moreover, the references to withdrawal in favor of artistic or literary practices have all but vanished. Although its striking allegorical background is unrepresentative, the Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman (Figure 5.1) does otherwise reflect the general visual tendencies and impact of Salviati’s other portraits. The youth sits contrapposto: his body angled toward the right of the image, his head turned to the left. The very stylized positioning of the hands, like so many of Bronzino’s earlier portraits, quotes Michelangelo’s Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici (Figure 4.2), loosely mimicking the placement in the earlier work. The youth wears a richly figured black overgarment— perhaps a cioppa or a long tunic—with a rose-colored doublet and white shirt beneath. His raised left hand, with a ring on the little fi nger,

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Figure 5.1. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman (1546–1548). Oil on panel, 102.2 × 82.6 cm. Saint Louis: Saint Louis Art Museum. (Photo: Saint Louis Art Museum, Museum Purchase. Accession No. 415:1943.)

holds pair of gloves with mannered ease. The Portrait of a Man with a Sword (Figure 5.2) is more typical of Salviati’s oeuvre, but also stylistically very similar. The subject appears standing in a half-length portrait, his body angled toward the right with his head turned back toward the viewer to present a three-quarter profi le. Behind him an

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Figure 5.2. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Sword (ca. 1543–1548). Panel painting, 75 × 58.5 cm. Naples: Museo e Galleria di Capodimonte. (Photo: © 2011. Photo Scala, Florence—courtesy of the Ministero Beni e Att. Culturali.)

elaborate linear architectural background frames and centers the viewer’s focus. The subject wears a dark doublet, hat, and lace-collared shirt. His right arm, bent at the elbow, crosses the bottom of the frame in front of his body. His right hand rests on the hilt of a sword,

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which appears to rest point downward. His left elbow juts away from his body and the viewer, suggesting that his unseen left hand rests on his hip. Several commonalities unite these images and the many other portraits of Florentines by Salviati, and while they share some of these harmonies with the portraits by Bronzino and even with the frescoes by Ghirlandaio from half a century earlier, the Salviati portraits clearly reflect and reinforce a different social world and imagination. The continued uniformity of appearance among the subjects constitutes the most obvious convergence between the images. The men depicted appear, with slight variations, in dark, simple yet elegant overgarments and lace-collared shirts. This uniform appearance, although markedly different in terms of detail, provides an analogous message to that of the ranks of red-robed men depicted by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s: it provides a sense of community and inclusivity. Like its fi fteenth-century forebear, the office-holding class of the midsixteenth century imagined itself as a homogeneous fraternity. In the social imagination, at least, no distinctions of hierarchy or rank separated the members.52 Similar to the images produced by both Ghirlandaio and Bronzino, the Salviati portraits also conjured a sense of place, of belonging to Florence, of association between the city itself and the identity of the city’s elite. Although, with the exception of the allegorical figures in the Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman, in Salviati’s images this fiorentinità appears as much through the mimicking of Bronzino’s own architectural forms as it does from any real sense of the Florentine urban landscape.53 Indeed the suggestion of Florence’s urban topography is so muted as to be negligible. Salviati’s images, unlike Ghirlandaio’s and Bronzino’s, are not singularly Florentine, but belong to a larger, panEuropean community of nobles and courtiers. As members of a princely court and government, the office-holding class of Florence fi nally possessed a transferable legitimacy and credibility: a status recognized and recognizable across sixteenth-century Europe. The appearance of the men in Salviati’s portraits resembles those depicted by Bronzino in the previous decade. But the accoutrements

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and props of the images indicate a shift in the social world and imagination of the Florentine elite. The gloves and the sword—which are common not only to the images discussed here but to many of the portraits produced by Salviati in Florence during the 1540s—indicate a dramatic reconception of identity by the office-holding class removed from the anxiety and uncertainty of the 1530s. The trappings of Salviati’s subjects bespeak not introverted artistic pursuits but public display. The careful mannered positioning of the figures, the composed self-possession of their faces, the deliberate yet casually elegant inclusion of the gloves and the sword all reflect and help to constitute a new, reimagined community for the office-holding class: a community not of active citizens but of courtly aristocrats. The objects included with the men quietly suggest status and prestige. The men themselves appear self-aware and conscious also of the viewer. A dialogue of display and response exists between the images— not just in the common appearance of their subjects, but also in the self-conscious public presentation of each man.54 The depicted individuals appear to respond to the cultural imperatives articulated by Baldassare Castiglione. The overall effect of the portraits is an air of cultivated, self-conscious disinterest, a studied ease—in a word, the sprezzatura demanded by Lodovico of the perfect courtier.55 In this regard, then, perhaps even more than Bronzino’s portraits from the previous decade, Salviati’s do not necessarily accurately reflect the reality of the men depicted. Instead they represent a vision of how both artist and subject thought a Florentine patrician should appear. In this sense, the images served as much to constitute as to reproduce the emergent courtly imagination. Like the Ghirlandaio frescoes, but unlike Bronzino’s portraits from the previous decade, these images represent assertions of identity and status to the viewer. They are far more open and public than the interior and introverted figures of the 1530s. Salviati’s subjects may be removed visually from the world of politics, but they are men engaged in public life. The public life of the office-holding class in the 1540s still revolved, as it had done in the fifteenth century, around their eponymous role as holders of public magistracies. Although the depiction and imagination

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of the city’s elite continued down the path set by Bronzino in avoiding representations of men as officeholders, the act of office holding reemerged as a defi ning feature of elite identity and honor. In the developing stability of the state and the government under Cosimo I, the holding of office became central once more, and the language of interiority and withdrawal that had colored the period of Alessandro’s rule disappeared. Participation in the public magistracies had always possessed an association with the personal honor of the individual. In 1472, Piero Capponi had begged Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici to ensure that he became eligible to hold office “because life without honor is a living death.”56 In the 1540s, receiving and exercising public positions continued to relate to the honor of the man chosen. But while Piero Capponi, in the 1470s, implied that the act of sitting on a prestigious magistracy endowed or increased one’s honor, and indeed that absence from such positions equated to a loss of honor, members of the Florentine elite in the mid-sixteenth century understood such an act as reflecting their preexisting honor. In the relatively closed and stable office-holding class that had emerged by the 1540s, office holding was a product of the elite’s social status, not a producer of their prestige. Domenico di Braccio Martelli, while serving as commissioner of Arezzo in 1537, equated his ser vice with his personal honor. In May, he reported a difference of opinion between himself and the local military commander over the punishment of a young man who had harassed and attempted to rape a married woman. The captain counseled that Martelli should not arrest the culprit and protested when he was in fact detained. Martelli felt that his own honor was impugned by the captain’s behavior.57 Several months later, Martelli wrote to Cosimo I to complain that the bargello (police official) for the Florentine contado had entered Arezzo to arrest one Guasparre Tondinelli without informing Martelli. An angry crowd of Tondinelli’s relatives and friends confronted Martelli, demanding to know the reason for his detention, embarrassing the commissioner, who felt his honor had suffered: “If Jacopo de’ Medici [the commissioner general] wants Guasparre, or any other man of this city,

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he has only to inform me.”58 On both occasions, Martelli implied that his position as commissioner reflected his standing, and so anything that infringed his ability to exercise this office harmed his honor and status. In May 1544, Bindo d’Antonio Altoviti wrote to thank Cosimo for his election as a Monte official: “It certainly pleases me to receive such an honorable office.”59 Once again the phrasing suggests that Altoviti saw the office not as constitutive but as reflective of his honor. His pleasure at the appointment derived from satisfaction that his status had been deemed worthy of such a position. As Altoviti went on successfully to decline the position, he obviously did not feel the need actually to hold the post in order to preserve his honor. Altoviti provides an illuminating example of how the elite of Florence understood office holding in the 1540s, through the persistent campaign that he waged to have a member of his family appointed to the Quarantotto. Like Filippo Strozzi, Bindo Altoviti had pursued a commercial rather than a political career, and his fortune and life centered on Rome and the papal court, not on Florence.60 Apart from one term on the Cento in 1527, and despite receiving a seat on the Dugento in 1532, Altoviti had only held the office of Monte official prior to 1546. 61 His apparent personal disinclination to pursue public office notwithstanding, as well as the tensions between the banker and Cosimo I over Altoviti’s relations with the Florentine exile community in Rome and his close association with the anti-Medicean Pope Paul III, Altoviti became a vociferous advocate for his family’s representation on the Quarantotto. No member of the Altoviti had received a seat on the inaugural senate, and neither Alessandro nor Cosimo had appointed a representative from the family to a position on the council in the succeeding years.62 Upon learning, in December 1540, that Cosimo I planned to appoint new members to the Quarantotto, Altoviti commenced petitioning the prince to choose his cousin Bardo di Giovanni as one of these. In January 1541, Altoviti equated a position on the Quarantotto with the honor and status of his entire lineage. He beseeched Cosimo to name Bardo to the senate “so that our house will no longer remain without such a dignity, not being inferior—neither in quality nor in ser vice to-

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ward Your Excellency and Your Most Illustrious ancestors—to the many other houses that have it.” In March 1541, Cosimo elected Bardo to the Otto di Pratica. While this pleased Bindo Altoviti—“holding his every honor as my own”—the banker did not refrain from again requesting that his cousin receive a seat on the Quarantotto, “for [the] honor of my house.” In October, Altoviti once more petitioned the Medici prince. Again he noted that the absence of the Altoviti from the senate implied that their standing did not equal that of the families represented on the council: “especially seeing [the dignity of the Quarantotto] conferred on many others, and on some more than once, which neither in quality nor in ser vice to Your Excellency and the ancestors of Your Most Illustrious House are superior to our House.”63 No member of the Altoviti received a seat on the Quarantotto in 1541. Altoviti recommenced his campaign in March 1546, again noting that his lineage equaled those already represented on the senate and so deserved a place among them.64 Altoviti clearly did not perceive a seat on the Quarantotto as constitutive of his family’s honor, but rather as reflective of it. The continual refrain that the Altoviti were not inferior to any of the Florentine lineages currently represented on the senate derived from an understanding of office holding as a product of an individual or family’s status and prestige. Bindo Altoviti saw his family as deserving of a position on the Quarantotto, not as needing a seat in order to reinforce or improve their standing. The persistence and rhetorical urgency of Altoviti’s petitions did reflect, however, a perception that status and honor manifested themselves most obviously and clearly in the holding of public offices. Altoviti’s letter writing ultimately succeeded, although Cosimo named Bindo himself, rather than his cousin, to the Quarantotto in 1546.65 Further important differences between office holding under the republican tradition and office holding under the monarchical system became manifest around the notion of honor. The officeholders under Cosimo I understood their position and the fulfi llment of their official duties not only in terms of their own personal and familial honor, but also in terms of the honor of Cosimo himself. In the complaints

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discussed above, Domenico Martelli noted that not only his own honor, but also that of Cosimo would suffer if the commissioner’s ability to perform his official duties was impinged upon. Regarding the harassment and attempted rape in May 1537, Martelli observed that if justice did not appear to be served, the affair “would not proceed with honor, neither Your Excellency’s nor my own.” In July, he wrote that the bargello’s arrest of Guasparre Tondinelli without notifying Martelli “seems to me to be honorable neither for Your Excellency nor for me.”66 Girolamo degli Albizzi also associated the honor of the Medici prince with the rule of law and the ser vice of justice in April 1541. Albizzi wrote to Cosimo I regarding the actions of Luigi di Piero Arrighi, who had attacked Francesco di Verdiano, a member of the rural militia, while he slept. Arrighi, being a Florentine citizen, was subject only to the jurisdiction of the Otto di Guardia and not of the local administrative official; but no prosecution had occurred. Albizzi beseeched Cosimo to see that Arrighi suffered punishment, “for your honor and as an example to your soldiers.” He continued, explaining that “one should not permit that they [members of the militia] should be so vilely offended by removing, moreover by law, the faculty of being able to recover their honor in any way.” To drive the point home, Albizzi had Francesco di Verdiano himself present the letter to Cosimo.67 In 1543, Francesco di Bartolo Zati, serving as commissioner for Pisa, confronted an analogous situation in which the interests of individual Florentine citizens clashed with the enforcement of law and, in Zati’s perception, the honor of Cosimo I. Zati wrote that on 14 December a scuffle had occurred at the Porta San Marco of Pisa involving the customs officers and a servant of Giulio da Ricasoli over goods belonging to his master. Zati wrote that “in order to preserve the honor of Your Excellency . . . I sent that servant to the Bargello, where he remains.” The commissioner continued, however, that both Niccolò Guicciardini, a noted lawyer and son of Luigi, and the vice-rector of the university had indicated that he should leave the matter alone. However, Zati observed that because the issue “touches the honor of

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Your Excellency” he desired to have clear instructions from Cosimo about how to proceed.68 All these examples present cases in which individual officeholders demonstrated a concern about interference with their ability to exercise their office freely or a concern that the administration of justice could be perceived as arbitrary or subject to privilege. Most of the cases also address a desire for the rule of law, with the exception of Girolamo degli Albizzi’s letter, in which case the rule of law appeared to infringe the operation of natural justice. In all the examples, uniformly, the officials present the rule of law or the operation of justice as relative to Cosimo’s honor as well as their own. The capability of these men to exercise their offices and their success (or failure) in doing so reflected not only their own virtù and standing but also that of the Medici prince.69 This constituted a profound shift in the office-holding class’s imagination of their social world and their understanding of their role in Florence. In the republican imagination, the office-holding class had conceived of themselves as a community of citizens dedicated to public ser vice. They rendered this ser vice to the idea of the common good— that is, to the mutual benefit of the citizenry. Florence existed, in this imagination, socially and politically as the collectivity of the officeholding class. Members of the city’s elite spoke of possessing a share in the state.70 While the fifteenth-century Florentine conception of “public” does not accord with modern understandings of a clear distinction between public and private spheres, it did conceive of Florence as a commonwealth. This public space, such as it existed in Renaissance Florence, occurred at the point of greatest convergence between the various competing personal and corporate interests that existed in the city: the administration and maintenance of Florence and its dominion, in short, in the holding of offices, in the practice of governance. The observations of the sixteenth-century officeholders, therefore, that this administration touched upon the honor of Cosimo I indicates that a significant repositioning had occurred in the imagination of Florence by the office-holding class. In place of the collectivity of the

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republican tradition, a sole prince had arisen. What their fifteenthcentury forebears had conceived of as public ser vice to the commonwealth, the officeholders of the 1540s understood as personal ser vice to Cosimo. The republic of Florence, literally the res publica (public things), had evolved into the possession of a prince. In a manner analogous to the recasting of liberty and of the common good during the late 1520s and 1530s, the notion of public ser vice evolved into one of personal ser vice as the imagination of the Florentine office-holding class had shifted from a republican to a monarchical form. This occurred not via a sharp distinction between the public and the personal, nor from a sudden shift from one to the other, but rather from the indistinct boundaries between the two.71 As Cosimo I became more assertive and more independent in his role, as the objective structures of the government became definably monarchical and the ambiguity of Alessandro’s reign disappeared, the conceptual basis of office holding shifted from a public to a personal role. The political collectivity that had previously existed and which the office-holding class had shared became accessible only through Cosimo, whose person and position became the point of greatest convergence between the interests of the various individual and corporate interests of the city’s elite. This new reality received a material confi rmation in 1540 when Cosimo moved his place of residence from the Palazzo de’ Medici on the Via Larga to the Palazzo della Signoria. Previously the seat of the communal government and so the physical manifestation of the collective interests of the office-holding class, the palazzo became the home of the Medici prince as well as the center of his new administration.72 The stato as conceived in the republican tradition as the mutual possession of the office-holding class had become subject to and the possession of Cosimo alone. In this reimagined social world and political order, to possess a share in the state one had to receive it from Cosimo. In the republican tradition the distribution of offices had occurred equally by recommendation and sortition.73 While the endpoint of the electoral process—the actual drawing of names from the borse (purses)—was in effect random, social standing and political connections determined

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the procedure by which the names found their way into the borse in the fi rst place. The accoppiatori, the committee of men charged with determining eligibility for public office and assigning names to the various electoral purses, made their decisions based on both statutory requirements and socio-cultural impulses. As well as residence, age, and taxation status, personal and familial connections, prestige, influence, and general social standing determined an individual’s chance of approval for office holding and also the number of times his name would appear in particular borse. Writers, when considering the distribution of seats on public magistracies in the republic, viewed the process as one that rewarded the virtù, wisdom, and quality of a man. Matteo Palmieri observed that men who displayed prudence, strength, temperance, and fortitude in their personal life and business dealings would eventually become the governors of Florence.74 Receiving an office through the republican electoral process, therefore, ultimately reflected the communal opinion of the office-holding class, fi ltered through the lens of the accoppiatori. The Florentine elite shared the government, the stato, among themselves. By the 1540s, however, in the new monarchical system and the reimagined court society of the city, the office-holding class perceived Cosimo as the sole source of offices, of the stato. Luigi Martelli noted in 1542 that “I was made [one] of the Lords Otto di Guardia by the above said Lord Duke Cosimo.”75 In August 1544, Lapo di Bartolomeo del Tovaglia, recently appointed podestà of Prato, referred to his post as “committed to me by Your Excellency.”76 Ottaviano de’ Medici, in January of the following year, thanked Cosimo “for having me reaffi rmed for a second year as an official of the grascia.”77 Antonio Canigiani, in his private diary, recorded in 1549 that “the Most Illustrious Lord Duke Cosimo appointed me captain of Cortona.”78 With the shift from an electoral process based on communal recognition and recommendation to one based on princely dispensation, the possession of a public office became a sign of Cosimo’s grace and favor. The receipt of a magistracy now reflected a man’s standing in the eyes

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of the Medici prince rather than his measure by the community of the office-holding class. The virtù, as outlined by Palmieri, that made an individual worthy of public office did not necessarily alter. But the opinion that Cosimo had of an individual’s virtù and merit mattered after 1537, rather than the communal perception.79 In March 1539, Domenico Martelli sent Cosimo I an impassioned plea for recognition. “I told Your Excellency the last time that the Otto di Pratica was selected that I had never been [chosen],” he wrote, “and that I alone remained [thus] of the members of the Quarantotto, and that I desired it greatly; especially as it would be noted that I was not entirely out of favor with you.”80 Ottaviano de’ Medici, in 1545, expressed his appreciation for his princely cousin’s assessment of his merit, noting that he would ensure “with all my abilities [that] my actions correspond in the meantime with the great faith [that] I recognize you have in me.”81 More simply, Bindo Altoviti in his many petitions to Cosimo regarding the representation of the Altoviti on the Quarantotto urged the Medici prince “that you would be pleased to grace our house with one [of the seats on the Quarantotto].”82 Beyond specific requests for office, members of the office-holding class recognized that their future status and continued access to public magistracies depended on their standing in Cosimo’s eyes. Lorenzo d’Antonio Cambi, near the end of 1540, wrote to Lorenzo Pagni, one of Cosimo’s secretaries, expressing his desire that “Your Magnificence will preserve me in the good grace of His Excellency.”83 Filippo de’ Nerli, three years later, observed to Cosimo: “I see that fortune always runs against me, so that it will be necessary—as long as I live—that the happy hand of Your Excellency oppose it and through your grace alone resist my ill fortune.”84 These shifts in the office-holding class’s understanding of office holding—as a personal ser vice to a prince who controlled access to the stato and bestowed magistracies in recognition of his own favor and of the holder’s merit—were accompanied by the emergence of a new rhetoric among the Florentine elite: a language of courtliness that replaced the language of clientage of the civic world. Obsequious phrasing did

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not constitute a new phenomenon in Florentine public discourse. In 1472, Piero Capponi had written to Lorenzo il Magnifico: “I pray that you wish to work for me as for your servant [so] that I may be among the number of the eligible.”85 More strikingly, Giovanni Tornabuoni once compared Lorenzo’s influence in Florence with that of the divine in the world: “I have God in heaven and Your Magnificence on earth.”86 But as these two examples demonstrate, the discourse of clientage from the republican era followed individual inclinations and phrasing. Moreover, the language could be qualified: Capponi compares himself to a servant of Lorenzo but does not declare himself to be in the ser vice of his patron. By the 1540s, in contrast, the rhetoric of patrician correspondence to Cosimo I had become formulaic, reflecting and helping to constitute and reinforce the new political hierarchy. “Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Duke and Most Respected Patron,” Filippo de’ Nerli commenced in a letter penned in 1539 (notably before Cosimo had begun signing himself as Duke of Florence). He signed the same letter “Filippo de’ Nerli, Humble servant of your Most Illustrious Lordship.”87 In 1544, Lorenzo Cambi addressed the Medici prince: “Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, My Lord.” He too concluded his letter “Lorenzo Cambi, Servant of Your Most Illustrious Lordship.”88 The examples are too numerous to present here. Every letter addressed to Cosimo I from 1537 onward follows the same general formula saluting him as most excellent and most illustrious lord or duke and closing with an affi rmation of personal ser vice. Although the repetition appears limited almost to the point of rhetorical hollowness, the salutations and signatures possessed meaning and purpose. Every stroke of the pen helped to construct and reinforce the new political order of Florence and the reimagined place of the office-holding class. Every repetition strengthened the developing relationship between prince and courtier, reflecting and reproducing the elite’s new social identity as a courtly aristocracy in the personal ser vice of a monarch. The recognition of this new relationship and identity appeared also in another marked difference between the sixteenth-century language

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of courtliness and the earlier rhetoric of clientage. Even at its most obsequious, in Tornabuoni’s comparison of Lorenzo il Magnifico with God, the patron-client relationship existed as an externalized connection between self (client) and other (patron). The language and practice of such a relationship existed dialogically between two individuals with potentially confl icting needs and desires. The strains produced by this tension between patron and client produced the paranoia that colored the social world of the fifteenth-century elite as well as continually undermining the position of the Medici in Florence prior to 1532. In the 1540s, however, the line between self (courtier/client) and other (prince/patron) had blurred in the rhetoric of personal correspondence. As Cosimo subsumed the place previously occupied by the imagined community of citizen magistrates as the public sphere of Florence—the point of greatest convergence between the various personal and corporate interests that constituted the office-holding class—members of the city’s elite began to erase the line between their own wants and needs and those of the Medici prince. As Cosimo became the gatekeeper to the stato, to public office with its corresponding fi nancial and social benefits, the Florentine patricians began to identify their own well-being and interests with his. They spoke in a language of obligation, devotion, and ser vice, merging their mutual benefit with the personal good of Cosimo. Girolamo degli Albizzi observed, as early in Cosimo’s reign as July 1537, that “it pertains to one who depends on ser vice to his Lord to represent not only in the particular to which he has been deputized but also in each and every occasion to serve him.”89 Two years later, Domenico Martelli in his impassioned plea for a seat on the Otto di Pratica displayed an even greater rhetorical flourish: “I have never hesitated postponing my every need and comfort. . . . My wish has only ever been to serve, and that intention has always [displayed itself ] in my every action. Certainly if I had desired or should desire to serve God as much as Your Excellency I would rank above Saint John the Baptist.”90 Alessandro Malegonnelle, writing in the late summer of 1540, also effaced his own desires and thoughts in favor of Cosimo’s:

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“The intention of Your Excellency, which always loves the truth, is always sufficient for me and I never fail to follow it [in] my every affair.”91 Four years later, Lapo del Tovaglia sought guidance from the Medici prince about the particulars of his newly acquired post as podestà of Prato because, “being your true and faithful servant I have no greater desire than learning what you prefer and what are your thoughts.”92 Many other men wrote, less eloquently, of the “debt” that they owed to Cosimo to fulfi ll his wishes and to serve in particu lar offices to the best of their capabilities.93 While less fulsome, this was perhaps the most revealing usage of all. A generation earlier, at the end of the fifteenth century, members of the office-holding class had spoken of the debt they owed to the republic or the stato, to the imagined community of the commonwealth.94 The transfer of this debt, of ser vice and obedience, to Cosimo reflected the extent to which he had subsumed and replaced the republican commonwealth, becoming the stato himself. This language of indebtedness and rhetorical self-effacement testified to subtle changes in the nature of the patron-client relationship in princely Florence. The free market of the fifteenth century had disappeared. In its place arose a princely monopoly, in which the client/ courtier remained always dependent and lacked leverage because of the ontological supremacy of the prince.95 The relationship between a fi fteenth-century patron, even a member of the Medici family, and his client had always remained interdependent. The apparently servile language that clients deployed concealed the duress and sense of obligation that their petitions placed on the recipient.96 The unspoken threat behind such language was that the client would sever the relationship if expectations were not met and requests remained unfulfi lled too often. This tension had undermined and, ultimately, brought down the Medici stato of the fi fteenth century. In contrast, a prince could (and often did) acknowledge but not fulfi ll—at least not immediately or all at once—a courtier’s petition. Domenico Martelli had to wait six months to receive his desired seat on the Otto di Pratica. Bindo Altoviti devoted six years to seeking representation on the Quarantotto for his family before Cosimo granted his wish. Indeed, in a certain sense, a prince did not have to reciprocate, because as an ab-

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solute ruler he already owned everything: the ser vice or gift offered was not the courtier’s to give.97 The Florentine officeholders of the 1540s merely rendered a ser vice due, because it belonged to Cosimo already. Like the obsequious, formulaic salutations that opened letters to Cosimo, this rhetorical self-effacement helped to construct a new type of relationship in Florence between prince and patrician. Limits did exist, however, to the amount of work that rhetoric could achieve. These letters need to be read with care because at the same time as their authors were consciously contributing to the fashioning of Cosimo’s position and to the reimagining of their own social world, they did not suppress or deny their own interests entirely. Over the past two decades scholars have stripped bare the older historiographical picture of absolute monarchy and the decline of the nobility, to reveal the extent to which governmental centralization, the emergence of the modern state in Eu rope, and the practice of absolutism depended on collaboration and consensus between monarch and aristocracy.98 The Medici principate as it developed in Florence during the 1530s and 1540s also relied on a certain extent of mutual obligation between Cosimo and the office-holding class of the city, no matter how much the rhetoric of princely clientage obscured this. While victory at Montemurlo had defused the most immediate and potent threat to the Medici prince’s rule, the memory of the civic republican tradition of Florence did not evaporate. Most dramatically, the survival of civic republican notions of liberty found expression in the promotion or practice of violent resistance to the Medici principality. Sometime around 1540, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, the assassin of Duke Alessandro, penned and began to circulate a justification for his deed that invoked the values and expectations of the civic world of the fi fteenth century and also the classical image of tyrannicide.99 In 1543, a plot to kill Cosimo, by shooting him while he hunted, was discovered, leading to the execution and then dismemberment (at the hands the populace) of Giuliano Buonaccorsi, the would-be assassin.100 In the 1550s, the struggle between France and Spain for control of Siena took on a civic republican

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mantle with the appointment of Piero di Filippo Strozzi to lead the French defense of the city and the support of Bindo Altoviti, who personally hired three thousand infantry for the Franco-Sienese cause, outfitting them with banners inscribed Libertas.101 Even within Florence itself, where Cosimo’s rule generally found support or at least tolerance, a lingering sense of civic republican rights continued as a muted undercurrent beneath the courtly rhetoric. Although Cosimo enjoyed a stronger and more objective institutional position than both his immediate predecessor and his fi fteenthcentury forebears, he still relied on the support of the office-holding class for the preservation of his rule. Filippo de’ Nerli, around the end of 1541, gave a frank and clear assessment of the reciprocity required between the Medici prince and the Florentine elite. De’ Nerli observed that the distribution of offices needed careful management to avoid losing the active support of some members of the office-holding class or even rekindling “the desire for the civic life.”102 In return for their ser vice and devotion, and for sacrificing the political freedoms of the republican system, the elite of Florence expected regular access to public offices, which provided not only fi nancial rewards but, more important, a recognition and a reassertion of their social position in the city. The office-holding class, whatever their rhetoric might express, expected Cosimo to share the stato with them and so to preserve and protect their prestige.103 The office-holding class also continued to maintain their own economic interests behind the rhetoric and practice of courtliness. In no sense did the Florentine patricians become a landed, neo-feudal nobility. Their ties with the world of commerce remained strong.104 These mercantile interests continued not only among men such as Bindo Altoviti, living outside of Florence in the commercial capitals of Western Europe such as Rome or Lyons, but also among men who consistently held the most prestigious public positions in the principality. Federigo di Roberto de’ Ricci, one of the inaugural members of the Quarantotto and who regularly sat on important magistracies, owned a successful bank under his own name.105 His distant cousin Giuliano de’ Ricci observed that “the bank of Federigo . . . was truly the cash-box of

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everyone, so much so that one could say that no other bank handled any money except the Ricci.”106 Of the other forty families represented on the Quarantotto in 1532, thirty-three appear in the records of the Mercanzia (the Merchants’ Tribunal) registering 229 limited-liability business partnerships between 1531 and 1610.107 Research into the commercial activities of the Florentine elite in the sixteenth century remains underdeveloped compared with previous centuries, but the quantitative data that exists indicates continuity both in investment practices and profitability. This suggests that not only did Florentine patricians continue to pursue mercantile interests, but they also continued to do so successfully and seriously. Scholars have studied three family fi rms—the Bartolini, the Corsi, and the Riccardi—in some detail. The banking operations of all three—in Lyons, Florence, and Pisa respectively—had high annual earnings comparable to fi fteenthcentury enterprises. Both the Corsi and the Riccardi (who became the wealthiest family in grand-ducal Florence after the Medici themselves) had also invested substantial sums in wool shops by the century’s end. Brandolini profits from the textile trade remained modest, but their investment in and commitment to the industry persisted. Even the trend toward increasing landholdings in the countryside appears to have aimed at the consolidation of previously scattered properties into an estate from which higher commercial profits could be taken, rather than an aspiration toward becoming landed, rentier gentry.108 The interest that members of the office-holding class showed in maintaining the mercantile economy of Florence extended beyond their own personal investments and pursuits. In 1539, Francesco Rucellai expressed concern to Cosimo I about the potential damage a proposed tax increase would have on local businesses. Rucellai wrote to remind the Medici prince of the crucial role that merchants played in “maintaining the city alive and in flower.”109 The office-holding class of Florence remained essentially mercantile and commercial in their orientation in the midcentury, as Giovanni della Casa somewhat derisively noted in his dialogue Galateo.110 Indeed, sumptuary legislation from the later sixteenth century that commanded male members of the office-holding class to dress in a lucco acknowledged as much by

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permitting the wearing of more practical garments prior to noon, in order to permit business affairs to continue.111 Similarly, the 1562 statutes of the Order of Santo Stefano—the maritime military-religious order founded by Cosimo I—while mandating that candidates for membership could not have practiced any trade but must have lived as a gentleman, permitted the waiving of this (and other requirements) in exchange for the endowment of a commenda: an obvious accommodation for the Florentine elite. So much so, that Giuliano de’ Ricci observed that the majority of new recruits obtained their positions through such a purchase rather than via proof of nobility.112 The world of the office-holding class in the mid-sixteenth century also remained persistently homosocial. Marriage remained a bond between two heterosexual men as much as between husband and wife. Ottaviano de’ Medici, in a letter to Cosimo I in the autumn of 1540, discussed the plans of Luigi de’ Pazzi to fi nd a wife for his son. “His desire is to settle his son with a father-in-law [who is a] merchant,” Ottaviano observed, “so that, leaving him certain assets, he can—with the advice and direction of his father-in-law—succeed in business affairs.”113 Relationships between mature men continued to structure the shape of elite practices. As in the fifteenth century, these interactions occurred simultaneously at several levels—from the representational (the portraits painted by Salviati during the 1540s) to the institutional, from affective relationships between friends to utilitarian ones between patrons and clients. Despite the increasing centralization of public life around the person of Cosimo I, not all paths to sociopolitical advancement or benefit ran through the Palazzo della Signoria. Prominent and important men continued to operate within the familiar sottogoverno of influence peddling. In October 1539, Girolamo Guicciardini beseeched his brother Luigi to aid an unnamed friend, “for love of me and respect for him.”114 When Prinzivalle della Stufa petitioned Luigi Guicciardini to assist a client in the recovery of a debt, he observed that “all that will be done for him I will consider it [as done] for myself.”115 Della Stufa himself, several years later, intervened on behalf of a certain Francesco, sentenced to serve three years in the galleys for rape, who desired permission to purchase a slave to take his

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place.116 The office-holding class may have adopted and affected disinterest toward the political, but their social world remained one in which the structures and gradations of power determined the contours of daily life. The altered political landscape did offer new forms of relationship between elite men. Most obviously the person of the Medici prince constituted the central and most important connection for members of the office-holding class. To be in Cosimo’s grace and favor, to protect his honor and serve his interests became the essential conduit to status as well as the more tangible rewards of office holding itself. The relationship with the person of the prince—at the center of court, government, and society—represented a novelty: a permanent bond, both affective and institutional. In the 1540s too, the relative youth of the Medici prince constituted a significant reverse in the gerontocratic nature of the Florentine elite, even as the public role of the officeholding class continued as the preserve of mature men. The person of Cosimo’s wife, Eleonora di Toledo, represented an even greater innovation in the gender-power dynamic of Renaissance Florence.117 Bartolomeo Lanfredini, in August 1539, sought license from Cosimo to leave Pistoia, “in order to speak with [Your Excellency] and also in order to kiss the hand of her Most Illustrious Ladyship the Duchess, your consort and my Lady.”118 In 1544, Alessandro Malegonnelle concluded a letter to the Medici prince, “I humbly kiss the hand of Your Excellency and that of your most illustrious Lady consort.”119 Around the same time Domenica Centelli petitioned Eleonora to intercede with Cosimo in order to liberate Domenica’s husband, Giovanni, from prison, where he was held for failing to pay a ten lire fine.120 Letters such as these testify to a shift in the previously maledominated political institutions of the city. However, the imbalance in correspondence between Cosimo and Eleonora in his favor—the countless discursive kisses bestowed upon the hands of the Medici prince by the authors of letters and innumerable petitions for reprieve or mercy directed to him—suggests that many members of the officeholding class had not yet fully assimilated the role of the princely consort into their social imaginary at the midcentury. They continued,

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perhaps, to conceive of Eleonora in a sense not far removed from that which earlier generations had of Medici wives, mothers, and sisters: existing and operating within the male homosocial sphere rather than cultivating a parallel female network of relationships.121 Eleonora di Toledo certainly played a more active and symbolically important role in the stato of Cosimo I than her forebears. But possibly a degree of resistance toward this new position or perhaps some slippage between the intentions of Eleonora and Cosimo and the reception of her public persona existed.122 Despite the continuity of commercial interests and activities, the persistently homosocial society, and the key place of the act of holding public office in the social imagination of the Florentine elite, a significant change had occurred by the end of the 1540s in the way the officeholding class perceived and understood their identity and position in Florence. Following the political instability and ambiguity of the previous decade, the objective structures of the Medici principate cohered in the 1540s in a more secure and clear form. Under Cosimo I the government of the city and its territory demonstrably became a monarchy, increasingly organized and controlled by appointed ministers rather than the civilian magistracies of the republican era. In this new political reality the established social world of the office-holding class no longer provided sufficient meaning, its values and expectations no longer accorded with those necessary for social and political success. As a result the Florentine elite reimagined itself in a definably courtly manner. In did so, however, not by breaking with the inherited traditions of the republican era, but by reconceiving and shaping them to the new objective reality. As the person and institution of the Medici prince subsumed the previous notion of the common good—becoming the embodiment and point of access to the stato—what in the previous generation had been understood as public ser vice became personal ser vice to Cosimo I. The holding of office came to reflect the honor and status of the individual magistrate as a member of more defi ned and restricted sociopolitical elite. It also represented that man’s standing in the eyes of Cosimo I: the holding of public office, which remained a defi ning role in the elite’s self-conception, no longer represented com-

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munal recognition of an individual’s virtù and capability, but rather his favor with the prince. The act of office holding had ceased to possess a political function, becoming instead a function of social status, prestige, and proximity to the person of the prince. The community of civilian magistrates, the fraternity of red-robed mature males, which had existed in the fifteenth century, had transformed itself into a society of courtiers.

Conclusion Florence and Renaissance Republicanism

; On 22 June 1549, the inhabitants of Florence began preliminary celebrations for the feast of Saint John the Baptist, patron protector of the city, with a parade. The floats borne through the streets included one made by the Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael, which depicted the biblical battle between David and Goliath. The company halted at the doors of the Palazzo della Signoria, home to Cosimo I de’ Medici and his family. While the prince listened from a window above, the company recited in verse the story of the shepherd’s unexpected victory over the Philistine giant. The recitation emphasized Goliath’s pride, fearsome presence, and heathen religion, as well as David’s humility, youth, and piety. In the closing lines of the poem the members of the confraternity explicitly compared Cosimo with David: “Now you, illustrious and honored Prince, / by whose great valor beautiful Florence, / forgetting all the past woes, / rests now happy and content in peace, / you also follow in a like manner.”1 The figure of David, victorious over Goliath, had a long history and powerful resonance in Renaissance Florence as the perfect image of youthful virtù triumphing over impossible adversity. Along with varia-

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tions on the same theme, such as Hercules or Saint George, the Old Testament hero had embodied and manifested the virtù of the Florentine stato, of its civic republican government, of the men of the officeholding class. The same chemistry of social and political necessity that shaped so much of the urban landscape of the city, producing works such as Ghirlandaio’s Sassetti and Tornabuoni chapels, resulted in the multiplication of images of David and Hercules across the city during the fifteenth century as artists and craftsmen brought this imagining into muscular physicality. As a result, in 1549, the youths of the Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael performed their masque in the shadow of Michelangelo’s iconic imagining of David, which since 1504 had guarded the main entrance to the Palazzo della Signoria, and of Baccio Bandinelli’s much-maligned Hercules, which had balanced the earlier sculpture from the other side of the doorway from 1534. This image of youthful virtù has appeared repeatedly throughout the preceding pages: as Perseus (the classical analogue of Saint George) in Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromeda, in the mimicking of Donatello’s marble David and also the hat badge depicting Hercules in Pontormo’s Portrait of Francesco Guardi, and in the background of Bronzino’s Portrait of Ugolino Martelli. Fittingly, it appears again here, at the end as a demonstration of both the continuity and the change that had occurred in Florence between the end of the fifteenth century and middle of the sixteenth century. For while the meaning of the figure had remained unchanged between the 1504 installation of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture and the 1549 performance, Florentines had gradually altered what they understood by this meaning. David had undergone a political transubstantiation. The Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael, on 22 June 1549, built a careful analogy between David and Cosimo I de’ Medici in their song. They did not do so, as might be expected, by celebrating David’s role as king of Israel as an analogue of Medicean monarchy, but rather by focusing their recitation upon the slaying of Goliath, the very act that had the strongest republican associations. The verses described, in graphic terms, the felling and beheading of the Philistine giant. They celebrated the Medici prince as a contemporary David who had defeated

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threats to Florentine freedom. The Old Testament hero, they observed, in slaying Goliath, had demonstrated his “greater strength and valor” and had given Israel “peace and comfort.” The singers then used analogous language to describe Cosimo I, noting that through his “great valor beautiful Florence . . . rests now happy and content in peace.” The Medici had previously appropriated the image of David, during the fifteenth century, as a vehicle to express the family’s ser vice to the republic of Florence. Around 1430, inspired by Donatello’s marble David in the Palazzo della Signoria, Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici had commissioned the sculptor to make a bronze of the shepherd boy for the family palace on the Via Larga. This assumption of a communal icon for familial use represented an unprecedented act and demonstrated the extent to which the Medici consciously associated themselves with the Florentine stato in the mid-fifteenth century. However, the Medici adopted the image of the Old Testament hero within the established framework of understanding: as the defender of civic republican virtù. The inscription on Donatello’s bronze read: “The victor is whoever defends the fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! A boy overcame a great tyrant. Conquer, O citizens!”2 The description of Goliath as a tyrant and the evocation of “citizens” situated the image squarely in the civic imagination of the fi fteenth century. The 1549 celebration of Cosimo I as David, however, represented a reinterpretation of the imagery. The Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael depicted David not as exemplar of virtù to inspire the citizenry of Florence but as a heroic individual presented for praise and honor. While Donatello’s David urged the citizens of republican Florence to emulate his virtù, the David of the confraternity’s imagining simply encouraged the subjects of the principality to admire it. David was no longer a communal symbol but an avatar for the Medici prince. No mention of tyranny appears in the mid-sixteenthcentury lyrics. The verses depict Goliath instead as a threatening and invasive force: “the proud tall giant / before whom all Israel fled.” The singers emphasized David’s glory and victory, presenting him as the

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bringer of peace, as a defender of independence. In this way, the confraternity’s float lauded Cosimo I in a manner akin to Filippo de’ Nerli’s praise of the prince: as a man who brought an end to the factional confl icts and internal turmoil of the Florentine republic.3 Under the Medici prince, the verses observed, Florence remained at peace, having forgotten “all the past woes.” The image of David, in 1549, had lost its previous civic republican associations, becoming instead an embodiment of Cosimo I’s political success since 1537 in defending Florentine sovereignty. This transformation occurred without a shift in the details of the Old Testament hero’s representation, which, like the sculptures by Donatello and Michelangelo, focused on the act of slaying Goliath. The shift had occurred in how the imagery was understood in Florence. As this book has argued, this shift occurred because the transition from republic to monarchy in sixteenth-century Florence did not result from a revolution or a radical break with the past. The language and images of Florentine government remained largely unaltered. Italian Renaissance republics were not republican by virtue of the absence of a monarch—both Venice and Genoa had elected princes, while the Medici, Bentivoglio, and Petrucci families played princely roles without titles or institutions in fi fteenth-century Florence, Bologna, and Siena respectively—but by a commitment to and a promotion of the notion of res publica, the public things or commonwealth. 4 Such polities did not constitute the institutional and philosophical opposites of principalities. As a result the boundaries between these two forms of government, these two types of stato, were not clearly drawn, but remained fungible and permeable. The fundamental change from one system to the other occurred not in institutions or personnel but in political culture—in values, expectations, and behavior—which, in the Florentine case, endowed the concepts of liberty, the common good, and ser vice with new and very different meanings. In the 1530s, Lorenzo Strozzi and Francesco Guicciardini could speak of defending Florentine liberty, but what they meant by liberty differed fundamentally from the notion of civic republicanism that had predominated in the fifteenth century. Holders of public office in the 1540s were still

232

t h e fruit of libert y

motivated by a concept of ser vice, but what they understood this service to constitute was very different from the concepts that had existed in the previous century. This is not to say that the course of Florentine history in the fi rst half of the sixteenth century consisted solely in a play of meaning, in the deconstruction and reconstruction of terms and ideas. Blood was shed, fortunes were ruined, and lives destroyed. People fought and died in the struggle over the political culture of the city: from hunger or disease during the siege, in battle before Florence, at Gavinana and Montemurlo, on the executioner’s block, and, in the case of Filippo Strozzi, lonely and embittered, by suicide. The experiences of members of the office-holding class during the turbulent years of the Italian Wars from 1494 shaped the changes in Florentine political culture. The human and material costs of these years determined the behavior and practice of the Florentine elite. In the end, the cost of maintaining the civic republican tradition of the city proved too high. However, because the civilian magistrate of the republic was far closer to the courtier of the principality than intellectual and social historians have realized, the cost of transformation from one status to the other was a price most members of the office-holding class were prepared to pay. They sacrificed the internal political freedoms of the republic for the external freedom from foreign rule guaranteed by the Medici principality, which would preserve the social and economic predominance of the office-holding class. In a twist of historical irony, this in turn eventually resulted in the very thing the office-holding class had feared so much in the sixteenth century: the loss of Florentine independence to the Habsburgs. In 1737, when Gian Gastone, the last Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany, died, the state passed to Francis Stephen of Lorraine, husband of Maria Theresa of Austria (the future Holy Roman empress). This failure of Florentine republicanism and particularly the manner of the slippage between republican and princely cultures—preserving the language and concepts of the former—has remained largely unaddressed by historians. The two most significant studies of the period, by Anzilotti and Albertini, both presented the change from republic to

Conclusion

233

principate in terms of discontinuity. In their interpretations, a new, different political culture replaced the older, republican one as a necessary correlative of the change in the institutions of government. In Anglophone scholarship the lacuna is even more apparent. The Florentine Renaissance has held a special place in the historical imagination of the English-speaking world, due largely to the perceived connections between the city’s civic republican tradition and Anglo-American pluralist democracy. Confronted by the totalitarian dictatorships of the twentieth century, a generation of scholars after World War II found in fifteenth-century Florence a narrative that resounded with their own experiences.5 The city on the Arno became, in their eyes, the cradle not only of Renaissance art but also of concepts of liberty and civic government, preserving them from classical antiquity and transmitting them to future generations. As a result, an artificial divide has developed in the historiography of Florence. Taking August 1530 as the point of bifurcation, this division has separated the scholarship into two largely disconnected subfields: one examining the fourteenthand fifteenth-century republic, and another studying the Medici grand duchy.6 In this book I have attempted to surpass this divide and, in doing so, to broaden the historical perspective on the legacy of Renaissance Florence. The continuing significance of David as a politico-cultural emblem of the city in 1549 testifies both to the extent of the change that occurred between the end of the fifteenth century and the middle of the sixteenth and to the manner by which it happened. Like the language of civic republicanism—emphasizing liberty, ser vice, and the common good—the image of youthful virtù had maintained its outward form but shifted in its meaning. Similarly, the Florentine elite still defi ned themselves by their public positions and continued to fulfi ll their eponymous role as officeholders in the stato, but the significance of this behavior had altered. The fraternity of civilian magistrates dedicated to their commonwealth had transformed themselves into a society of courtiers dedicated to the ser vice of a prince, whose virtù the Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael manifested on that summer evening in 1549.

A PPEN DI X 1

A Partial Reconstruction of the Office-Holding Class of Florence, ca. 1500

; The following table lists 555 lineages with at least one seat on the Consiglio Maggiore, for the period between 1494 and 1512, based on the extant lists of membership compiled in 1496 and 1508. As such it constitutes a partial reconstruction of the office-holding class of Florence during the first decade of the sixteenth century. It excludes families matriculated in one of the arti minori (minor guilds) who had fewer than four members seated on the Consiglio. Note also (for purposes of simplicity and for lack of any defi nitive evidence either way) that where the same surname appears among members of both the arti minori and the arti maggiori (major guilds), I have made the (not necessarily correct) assumption that these men belonged to one and the same family. Many Florentine lineages had members dispersed across the socioeconomic strata of the city. The Cambini brothers mentioned in Chapter 1 provide a clear example of this. However, these could equally be different families entirely. Lineages marked with a double dagger (‡) are those identified as belonging to the patriciate during the fi rst half of the sixteenth century.

236

Appendix 1

As emphasized in the text, all status groups within the office-holding class were fluid, and indeed Renaissance Florence enjoyed a greater degree of social mobility than any other city on the Italian peninsula. As such any attempt to delineate one or another estate within its society is inherently limited and difficult. No claim is made that this list represents a definitive guide either to the office-holding class or to the patriciate of Florence; it represents both as they stood in the first decade of the sixteenth century only. Their constitution in the early fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would have looked markedly different. The lineages are identified by gonfalone (the district within the city in which they lived, see the key below) or in a few instances by quarter alone, by the year that a member of the lineage fi rst sat on the Signoria (fi rst prior), and by whether or not the lineage achieved the milestone of having representation on the Signoria on twenty or more occasions between 1282 and 1530 (20+ priors—the figure in parentheses indicates how many times the family had a member sit on the Signoria). For comparison, lineages with a member seated on the Quarantotto (48) and Dugento (200) in 1532 are also identified. An asterisk following the family name indicates families identified as magnate lineages, according to the 1293 Ordinances of Justice. Lineages that shared common ancestry are identified in the 20+ priors column. Lineages for which no information other than gonfalone or quarter is present only had members drawn from the arti minori.

Method I took as my starting point those families that possessed at least one seat on the Consiglio Maggiore (the Great Council). The formation of this institution in 1494 had, for the fi rst time in Florentine political history, partially closed the office-holding class of the city. Records of its membership, therefore, constitute the most complete source for determining which families belonged the office-holding class. Identifying the patriciate within this initial group of 555 lineages, however, was a more complex task. As mentioned in the Introduction, no consensus exists among historians about how to delineate sociopolitical status in

Appendix 1

237

Florence, because of the presence of at least three indicators of status— political, economic, social—and a lack of agreement on how to measure these. Rather than adding to the debate by proposing yet another series of metrics, I began instead by building upon the valuable studies of Roslyn Pesman Cooper, R. Burr Litchfield, and Anthony Molho. The quantitative works of the fi rst two scholars—on the “ruling group” between 1494 and 1512 and the patriciate during the period of the grand duchy—were particularly important, as they overlapped chronologically with my own research, while Molho’s fi ne-grained analysis is the most detailed and thorough examination of status of Florence during the Renaissance. The more recent work by John Padgett has complicated and nuanced Molho’s picture with even more precise variables for measuring status, but appeared too late for integration into my own metrics. I began simply enough by compiling a master list of all the lineages (906 in total) that appeared in the analyses by Cooper, Litchfield, and Molho. From this compilation I highlighted the 253 families listed by all three studies. These lineages constituted the center of a virtual Venn diagram on which all three authors agreed. As such they represented an ideal starting point for further elaboration. Working with this list, I added an additional layer of metrics specific to political power in the period between 1480 and 1550. I checked the records of the more restricted legislative councils for the period—the Cento and the Settanta (1480–94, 1514–27), and the Ottanta (1495–1512)—noting which families had representation on these bodies, not only among the 253 base lineages but also all 906 on the master list. I also added membership of the inaugural Quarantotto in 1532 to the variables. Finally, as a measure of longevity of political influence I noted when each family had fi rst seated a member on the Signoria (an important measure of status for Florentines during the Renaissance) and also which families had achieved the distinction of representation on the Signoria over twenty times during its 250-year existence. With these additional metrics I parsed out 159 lineages that appeared to be the most politically active and dominant in the early decades of the sixteenth century and that also possessed a long history

238

Appendix 1

of political prominence and participation. I have identified these families as forming the patriciate of Florence in the period between 1480– 1550. All but one of them appeared on the base list of 253 lineages that Cooper, Litchfield, and Molho agreed upon: the Tosinghi, whom Molho excluded. All but eight of them held a seat on the Signoria, the supreme executive office of Florence, twenty or more times between the creation of this body in 1282 and its abolition in 1532. Note that for this determination I counted extended lineages only once. The Tornaquinci/ Tornabuoni/Popoleschi/Giachinotti (all descended from the Tornaquinci family) sat on the Signoria fifty-five times between them. Only twenty-two of these lineages had not sat a member on the Signoria prior to 1382. Ten of these twenty-two were either magnate families or had split from a magnate family. Sixty-one of these lineages seated their fi rst prior between 1282 and 1302, the fi rst twenty years of the Signoria’s existence.

Key to the quarters (in italics) and gonfaloni of Florence: 10 = Santo Spirito 11 = Scala 12 = Nicchio 13 = Ferza 14 = Drago 20 = Santa Croce 21 = Carro 22 = Bue 23 = Lion Nero 24 = Ruote

30 = Santa Maria Novella 31 = Vipera 32 = Unicorno 33 = Lion Rosso 34 = Lion Bianco 40 = San Giovanni 41 = Lion d’Oro 42 = Drago 43 = Chiavi 44 = Vaio

Appendix 1 Lineage (Del) Abbaco Acciaiuoli‡ Adimari* ‡ Adriani Berti Agli Alamanneschi‡ Alamanni‡ Alberti‡ Albertinelli (Degli) Albizzi‡ Ser Albizzo Alderotti Aldobrandini‡ Alessandri‡ Allegri Altoviti‡ Amadori‡ Da Ambra Ambrogi/Ambruogi Amidei* Dell’Amorotta Dell’Ancisa Anselmi Dell’Antella‡ Antinori‡ Ardinghelli‡ Arnoldi Arnolfi‡ Arrighi Arrigucci* ‡ (Degli) Asini Della Badessa Bagnesi Baldi/Baldo Baldovinetti‡ Baldovini Balducci Balducci Pegalotti Banchi Bancozzi Bandini Banducci Barbadori Da Baberino

239 Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

48

200

31 44, 42 23 42 44 11 23 22 43 44 13 41 43 34 31 11 43 32 13 33 43 34 21 14 32 22 21 43 42, 44 21, 22 31 23 12, 13, 41, 42 31 44 23, 42 12, 14 11 23 33 12 22

1282 1286 1394 1285 1439 1354 1289 — 1282 1464 1364 1320 1376 ? 1282 1311 — 1440 — 1298 1475 1283 1282 1351 1282 1491 1318 1373 1375 1343 1287 1346

Yes (91) Yes (26) — — Yes (Adimari) Yes (22) Yes (57) — Yes (141) — — Yes (34) Yes (Albizzi) — Yes (118) Yes (31) — — — — — Yes (33) Yes (57) Yes (26) Yes (45) — Yes (21) — Yes (27) — Yes (28) —

Yes (2)

Yes (4) Yes

1287 1440 1477 1346 1305 1434 — 1295 1490

Yes (37) — — — Yes (23) — Yes (Baroncelli) — —

Yes

Yes Yes Yes Yes

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes Yes (2)

Yes Yes

Yes Yes (2) Yes

Yes

Yes Yes (continued)

240

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Bardi* ‡ Barducci (Cherichini) Barducci Ottavanti Baroncelli‡ Bartolelli Bartoli‡ Bartoli Filippi Bartolini (Salimbeni)‡ Bartolini Scodellari Barucci Beccanugi Becchi Del Beccuto/Beccuti Belchari Belfredelli Bellacci‡ Bellincioni Benazzi Benci Benci‡ Benci Guernieri Bencini Bencivenni Del Bene‡ Del Bene del Spinello Benincasa Benini

11, 23 11, 13

1282 1387

Yes (35) —

Yes

43 21, 24 32, 42 32 24 32

1372 1287 1395 1345 1361 1362

— Yes (63) — Yes (55) — Yes (39)

Yes

42 22 34 42 42 22 12 21, 23 13

1299 1364 1284 1437 1283 1454 1321 1342 1442

Yes (32) — Yes (46) — — — — Yes (26) —

42 41, 44 14 32 22, 31 31 32

1407 1302 1369 1345

— Yes (20) — —

1283 1420

Yes (23) —

1321

—

1345 1435 1382 1301 1365 1365 1438 1384 1363 1365 1385 1387 1441 1441

Yes (38) — — — — — — — Yes (31) Yes (33) — — — —

Del Benino (Naldi)‡ Benintendi Benivieni Benizzi Ser Benozzo Benvenuti Benvenuti Benvenuti Berardi‡ Berlinghieri‡ Bernardi Berti Berti (della Sala) Betti

20 14, 21, 33 13, 23 21, 32 44 12, 13 32 22 33 41 33 22 22, 24 22 11 32

48

200

Yes Yes

Yes (3)

Yes Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Appendix 1

241

Lineage

Gonfl .

Bettini Del Biada Del Bianco Biffoli Biliotti‡ Biliotti Bindi (Giunta) Bini‡ Bischeri Biuzzi Bizzeri Boccacci Bonafe/Buonafe Bonciani‡ Boni Boni (Meo) Bonsi‡

44, 24 34 44 22 12, 13 22 42, 44 11, 13 22, 44 13 22 32 43 31 42 24 14, 41, 43 41

Bonvanni/ Buonvanni Bordoni Borgherini Borghini (Taddei) Del Borgo Borgognoni Borromei Borsi Boscoli Boverelli Bracciolini Bramanti Brancacci Brandolini Brucioli Brunelleschi Brunetti Bruni Bruni Bucelli Bucherelli Del Bughaffa/ Bugliaffo Buglione Buini

First prior

20+ priors

1366 1412 1356 1299 1483 1451 1352 1309 — — 1342 1317 1286 1442 1384 1364

— — — Yes (68) — — Yes (20) — — — — — Yes (47) — — Yes (37)

1435

—

1282 1495/6 1340

Yes (37) — —

1393 1471 1345 1484 1284 1455

— — — — — —

1317 1393

— —

1468

—

41 22 22

1375 1443 1284

— — Yes (43)

13

1387

—

21

—

—

34 31 22 30 (?) 24 33, 44 43 24, 43 13 21, 43 12, 40 14 22 13 42

48

200

Yes Yes (2)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

(continued)

242

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Buonaccorsi/ Bonaccorsi Buonagrazia Buonaguisi Buonarroti-Simoni Di Buonaventura Buonavolti Buondelmonti/ Buondelmonte* ‡ Buongirolami Buoninsegni Del Buono Ricchi Busini‡ Buti Del Caccia‡ Caccini (Ricoveri)‡ Cafferelli Calandri Calderini Calvanesi Cambi (di Napoleone) Cambi (Figliagambucci)‡ Cambi (Importuni)‡ Cambi (Mercatanti) Cambini Cambini Di Cambio Della Camera Canacci‡ Cancellieri Canigiani‡ Cantucci (delle Stelle) Capitani Cappelli Capponi‡

13, 21, 42

1301/02

—

21, 42 23 32 33 31

1439 1343 — 1393 1442

— — — — Yes (22)

44 34 34 23 40, 31 24 23 23 43 30 13 12

1467 1393 1441 1345

— — — Yes (30)

1381 1350 1324 1386

Yes (44) Yes (26) — —

— 1439

— —

42, 44

1312

Yes (20)

32 32 13 41, 42 42 24 31, 32 11 11 42

1302 1437 1380 1399 1475 1383 1363 — 1282 1396

Yes (24) — — — — — Yes (31) — Yes (77) —

44 41, 42 11, 12, 13, 14 22 31 33, 43

1308 1326 1287

— — Yes (67)

1346 1380 1351

— Yes (41) —

42 21

1297 —

Yes (60) —

Carcherelli/Carchelli Carducci‡ Carletti Carnacci Carnesecchi‡ Carsidoni

48

200 Yes

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes (3)

Yes (2)

Yes (5)

Yes

Yes (3)

Appendix 1 Lineage Carucci Della Casa Da Casavecchia Cassella Castellani (di Altafronte)‡ Da Castiglionchio Da Castiglione* Cattani (Cavalcanti)* Cavalcanti* ‡

Cecchi Ceffi (Masini) Ceffi ni Cei Cenni Cennini (De) Cerchi* Cerretani‡ Di Chiarissimo Del Chiaro Ciacchi‡ Ciacciporci Ciai‡ Ciampelli Ciari Da Cignano Cini Ciofi Cioni Cischi/Cisti (Del) Cittadino/ Cittadini Cocchi Donati‡ Comi Compagni‡ Compagni Convenevoli Corbinelli‡ Corsellini‡

243 Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

23, 41, 42 13 41 21

1393

—

1384 1344 1326

— — Yes (38)

Yes (2)

1289 1461 1495 1450

— — — —

Yes

1412 1388 1469

— — —

1426 1285 1282 1300

— — Yes (40) —

1386 1408 1389

Yes (21) — —

1385 1344 1475 1346

— — — —

1348 —

— —

1376 1397 1289 — — 1289 1404

Yes (30) — Yes (21) — — Yes (59) Yes (20)

23 13, 34 41 21, 22, 23, 31, 33, 42 21, 33 24 22 22 10, 20 21 21 42 44 42, 43 21, 24 11, 13 13, 41, 42 21 41 13 44 32, 34, 41, 43 41, 42 32, 34 32 40 22 14, 33 32 43 34 12, 42 11, 13

48

200

Yes Yes

Yes (2) Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2) (continued)

244

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

48

200

Corsi‡ Corsini‡ (di) Corso Cortigiani* Coverelli Covoni (Betti)‡ Cresci Dati (Squacialupi) Davanzati‡ Dazzi/D’Azzo Dei Deti‡ Didino Dietifici Dietisalvi Neroni‡ Dini‡

22, 23 13

1354 1290

Yes (37) Yes (64)

Yes Yes

Yes Yes (3)

44 13 24, 44 44 13 32 33 13 11, 12

1285 1385 1303 1380 1380 1320 1437 1473 1335

— — Yes (30) — — Yes (54) — — Yes (22)

13 41 13, 21, 23, 42 22 44 44 33 42 32 23 11 11, 12 44 13, 14 23 12 33 32

1381 1291 1370

— Yes (36) —

1393 ? 1469 1389 1457 1313 1295 1327 1442 1282

— — — — — Yes (23) — Yes (22) — —

1376 1350 (?) 1346 1397

— — Yes (44) Yes (22)

Yes

14 23, 24, 43 21 43 24 32 13 43 31 33, 34

1299 1284

Yes (24) Yes (77)

Yes

1371 1344 1389 1296/98 1344 1386 1380 1403

— — — Yes (23) — — — —

Doffi Donati Doni Da Empoli Fabbrini Fagiuoli/Fagioli‡ Fagni Falconi Falconi Falconieri Fantoni Fati/Fatii Del Fede Federighi‡ Fedini Feodini Ferrucci‡ Da Filicaia‡ Della Fioraia Fioravanti Forese (Del) Forese Formiconi Fortini Franceschi Franceschi della Mercanzia

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes (4)

Yes

Appendix 1

245

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Della Frasca Frescobaldi* ‡

42 12, 13, 14, 33 41, 42 32 41

1417 1285

— —

1437 ? 1487

— — —

22 21, 22 13 24, 43 24 21 44

1381 1358 — 1410 1352 ? 1303

— — — — Yes (42) — Yes (28)

43 23

1343/45 1294

— Yes (35)

12 44 34 34

1372 1344 1443 1414

— — Yes (Tornaquinci) —

31 32 12 41 41 12, 24 41 43 34 21

1477 1381 1313 1344 1375 1435 — 1396 1282 1296

— Yes (36) Yes (25) Yes (31) — — — Yes (20) Yes (32) —

24 32 22, 33, 34 21 43 23 43 11 11

1291 1432 1438

Yes (68) — —

1450 1482 — 1289 1437 1488

— — — Yes (29) Yes (Bardi) —

Gaddi Gaetani* Da Gagliano Galiglaio/Galilaio Galilei Del Garbo Gazetti Gerini Gherardi‡ Gherardini* Gherardini della Rosa Gherucci Da Ghiacetto/ Diacetto ‡ Da Ghiachi/Giachi Ghinetti Giachinotti‡ Giacomini (Tebalducci) Giandonati* Gianfigliazzi* ‡ Gianni‡ Ginori‡ Del Giocondo Giovanni Giovanni Giraldi‡ Girolami‡ Girolami (Orlandini) Giugni‡ Giuntini Gondi Gori Grassi Ser Grifi Guadagni‡ Gualterotti‡ Del Guanto

48

200 Yes

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2) Yes

Yes (2) Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2) (continued)

246

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Guardi Guasconi‡ Gucci Guicciardini‡ Guidacci Guidetti‡ Guidi Guidi (da Prato Vecchio) Guidotti‡ Guiducci Guiducci‡ Iacopi/Jacopi Infanghati* Inghirami Lamberteschi Della Lana Landi Landini Lanfredini‡ Lapacini (del Toso) Lapi Lapi‡ Lapi Vaiai Larioni/Ilarioni* ‡ Lenzi‡ Leoni/Lioni‡ Libri Ligi Lippi (Neri)‡ Lorini‡ Lotti (Guidi)‡ Lottieri Lottini Luca Lucalberti Lulli Della Luna Machiavelli‡ Maciagnini/ Maciaghini Macinghi/Macigni Maffei Magaldi Magalotti

24 41 32 12 21 11, 12 42 42

1443 1314 1357 1302 1470 1346 1382 1470/71

— Yes (47) — Yes (57) — Yes (32) — —

42 23 32 23 43 41 21 33 42 23 14 34 43 44 41 11, 13 32 24 22 42 13 42 12 44 24

1400 1461 1344 1373 1518 1387 — 1453

Yes (23) — Yes (36) — — — — —

1334 1389 1374 1394 1376 1460 1386 1326 1531

Yes (24) — — Yes (21) — Yes (Bardi) Yes (26) Yes (28) —

1350 1327 1301 — 1360

Yes (26) Yes (33) Yes (28) — —

1345

—

1372 1283 1395

— Yes (66) —

1392

—

1305 1283

— Yes (93)

34 24 34 12 41 44 40 (?) 22 22

48

200

Yes (2)

Yes (3) Yes

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Appendix 1

247

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Da Magnale Magretti Malefici Malegonnelle‡ Mancini‡ Manelli/Manelli Galilei* Manetti Mangioni Mannini Mannucci Manovelli

22

1302

—

12 34 22, 23 11, 12

1371 1304 1284 1343

— Yes (42) Yes (Magalotti) —

14 34 23 21 14, 32, 42 44 41

1337 1289 1369 1379 1283

— Yes (27) — — Yes (21)

1389 1287

— Yes (28)

12 22 41, 42 14 14 23 41, 42 43

1307 — 1343 1473/74 1520 1349 1428 1373

— — Yes (46) — — — — —

1416 1394 1405 1377 1523 1291

— — — Yes (25) — Yes (96)

— — 1380 1361

— — Yes (20) —

1361 1394

— —

1484 1283 1479

— Yes (46) —

Marchi Marignoli/ Marignolli‡ Marsili Marsuppini Martelli‡ Martellini Martellini Martini Martini Martini Gucci/ Di Guccio Marucelli Masi Masini Mattei/Mazzei Mazzinghi* ‡ Mazzinghi De’ Medici‡ Mei Da Meleto Mellini‡ Da Mezzola Michelozzi Michi Migliori/De Migliore Milanesi Minerbetti‡ Mini

41 41, 44 14 44 31, 34 32 41, 42, 44 13 22 23 13 40 22, 33 42 42 33 43, 44

48

200

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes (2)

Yes (2)

Yes (7)

Yes Yes

Yes

Yes (continued)

248

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Miniati di Dino Da San Miniato Da San Miniato Monaci Monaldi Da Monterinaldi Monti

24 42 44 23 32 41 32, 34, 41 23 32, 34 23 11 43 21 11 41 32 11, 12 11 22 42 24 11 41 31

1357 1492 1493 1366 1283 —

Yes (35) — — — — —

1387 1300 1518 1326 1389 1350 1375 1348

Yes (45) Yes (28) — — — Yes (25) Yes (39) —

Yes

1437 1382 1372/77 1342 1356 1347 1344 1355

— Yes (30) — — Yes (56) — — Yes (43)

Yes

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes (3)

Yes

Yes

14, 42 24 23 42 33, 34 12, 21 22 11 22 44 13 33 11 42 43 22 41 24 42

1345 1286 1420 1409 1397 1475 1372 1477 1328/78 1473 1478 1354 1483 1381 1312 1440 1324 1351

Yes (26) Yes (25) — — — — Yes (Canigiani) — Yes (31) — — — — Yes (40) Yes (22) — — —

Morelli‡ Mori (Ubaldini)‡ Mormorai Mozzi Naldini Nardi‡ Nasi‡ Nelli Neretti De’ Nerli* ‡ Del Nero ‡ Nesi Niccoli Niccolini (Sirigatti)‡ Niccolini della Scala Di Nicolai/Nicola (De’) Nobili‡ Nome Nuti Orlandi Orlandini‡ Orlandini Ottavanti Del Pace Pacholi Paganelli‡ Pagnini Del Palagio Palarcioni Della Palla Del Pancia Panciatichi Pandolfi ni‡ Da Panzano Da Panzano Del Papa Parenti

48

200 Yes (3)

Yes (4)

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes

Appendix 1

249

Lineage

Gonfl .

Parigi Partincini Pasquini (De’) Pazzi*‡ Pecori/Peccori‡ Pedoni Pepi‡ Peri Perini Peruzzi‡ Da Pesciola Pescioni Petrini Petrucci Pieri Maestro Piero Pigli/Pilli* Pitti (Gaddi)‡ Pollini Popoleschi‡ Portinari‡ Pucci‡ Pucci del Chiassolino Puccini Del Pugliese Pulci* Quaratesi‡ Da Rabatta Da Rabatta Raffacani Raugi Redditi Redditi Della Rena‡ (Da) Ricasoli* ‡

11 33 33, 34 43, 44 42 13 23 23 33 23 41 34 13 33 11 12 21 12, 13 34 33, 34 44 44 41

Riccardi (De’) Ricci‡ Riccialbani‡ Ridolfi (di Borgo)‡ Ridolfi (di Piazza)‡ Rimabaldesi

40 14 21 11 42 24 33 24 31 24 43 21, 23, 31, 32 33 14, 24, 44 22 12 13 11

First prior

20+ priors

48

200

1400

—

1288 1284

— Yes (39)

1301 1359 1474 1283 1402 1368

Yes (29) Yes (20) — Yes (63) — —

1425 1407 — 1285 1283 — 1396 1282 1396 1408

— — — — Yes (68) — Yes (Tornaquinci) — Yes (33) —

1463 1282 1317 1321 1409 1285 1304 1397 1463 1305 1468

— — Yes (41) — — Yes (30) — — — Yes (21) —

Yes

Yes Yes

1451 1298

— Yes (67)

Yes

Yes

1294 1290 1321 1311

Yes (24) Yes (50) Yes (73) —

Yes (3)

Yes (3)

Yes

Yes (3)

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes (2)

Yes (7) (continued)

250

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Rinaldi (Generotti)‡ Rinieri‡ Rinucci Rinuccini Risaliti‡ Ristori Romoli Rondinelli‡ Del Rosselino (De’) Rossi* Del Rosso Vaiai Rucellai‡ Del Ruota Rustichi Rustichi Sacchetti‡ Del Saggina Sali Salterelli Salutati Salvetti Salviati‡

41, 42 44 13 22, 31 22 42 42 41, 44 24 12 43 33 11 32 23 22 34 41 21 31 22 22, 24, 43 42 13 22 12 34 11 31 33 14

1282 1284 1367 1347 1302 1357 1430 1296 1448 1285 1384 1302 — 1398 1475 1335 1299

Yes (27) — — — Yes (34) — — Yes (48) — — — Yes (98) — — — Yes (40) —

1291 1439 1435/36 1297

— — — Yes (84)

— 1387 1344 1351 1453 1302 1374 1363 1428

— — — — — Yes (25) — Yes (21) —

34 41 14 22 12 13 22 32 14, 23 23 34 22

1477 1441 1353 1379 1347 1436 1457 1390 1325 1392 1376 1376

— — — — Yes (34) — — Yes (28) Yes (27) Yes (37) — —

Di Sandro Sannini Di Santi Sapiti Sassetti Sassolini Scali* Della Scarfa‡ Scarlatti (Rondinelli) Scarlattini Dalla Scarperia Dello Scelto/Sceltro Schiattesi Segni‡ Serchelli Sermini Sernigi‡ Serragli‡ Serristori‡ Sertini Serzelli

48

200 Yes Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes (5)

Yes

Yes (4)

Yes (2)

Yes

Yes Yes Yes (2)

Appendix 1

251

Lineage

Gonfl .

First prior

20+ priors

Signorini Sinibaldi Dei Soderini‡ Solari* Soldani Del Soldato Soldi Solosmei Da Sommaia‡

32 22 14 11, 12 23 14 41 41 32, 33, 34 42 21

1387 1487 1283 — 1343 1388 1330 1364 1350

— — Yes (48) — — — — — Yes (22)

1333 1289

— —

23 21, 32 31 34 13 43 13 42

1327 1284 1494 1391 1330 — 1332 1438

Yes (46) Yes (46) — — — — Yes (21) —

33 41 41 23 43 41 44 33 42 13

1283 1328 1424 — 1451/52 1478 1283 1307 ? 1474

Yes (110) Yes (51) Yes (24) — — — Yes (23) Yes (24) — —

22 34 34 24

1318 1445 1284 1303

— Yes (Tornaquinci) Yes (55) Yes (39)

34, 42 42 41

1284 1285 1383

Yes (Tosinghi) Yes (23) —

Sostegni Spina Falcone/ Falconi Spinelli‡ Spini‡ Squarcialuppi* Dello Steccuto Stefani Bettoni Di Stefano Strada/Stradi‡ Strinati/Dello Strinato Strozzi‡ Della Stufa‡ Taddei (Mancini) Talani Tanagli/Tanaglia Tani/Tanini Tedaldi‡ Temperani‡ Tempi Tieri Da Tignano Tolosini Tornabuoni‡ Tornaquinci* ‡ Torrigiani Torsellini Della Tosa* ‡ Tosinghi* ‡ Del Toso da Fortuna Del Tovaglia Tozzi

21, 22

48

200

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes

Yes (2)

Yes (3) Yes (5) Yes (2)

Yes

Yes

Yes Yes (2) Yes

Yes

Yes (2) (continued)

252

Appendix 1

Lineage

Gonfl .

Tucci

11, 12, 14, 22 41, 43 13 42 13 11, 21 34 43 34 12, 13 40 34 34 11, 24 32 12 13, 14 33 42 21 14

Ubaldini Ubertini‡ Ughi Ugolini‡ Uguccioni (Lippi) Ulivieri Valori‡ Vecchieti* ‡ Velluti/Vellutti‡ Veneri Ventura/Venturi‡ Vernacci Da Verrazzano Vespucci‡ Vettori‡ Di Vieri Del Vigna/Vignaia‡ Villani (Stoldi) Vinacciesi Del Vivaio (Franceschi) Viviani Viviani (Della Robbia) Del Zaccheria (Di Jacopo) Zampalochi Zati

First prior

20+ priors

? 1382 1331/1485 1350 1434 1349 1322 1371 1283

— Yes (21) — Yes (20) — — Yes (Torrigiani) Yes (26) Yes (33)

1382/88 1290 1319 1350 1320 1349 1291 1300 1470 1388

Yes (26) — Yes (37) Yes (28) Yes (47) — Yes (22) — — —

31 42

1393 1306

Yes (20) —

22

1417

Yes (20)

14 24

1382 1438

— —

48

200

Yes Yes Yes (2)

Yes (2)

Yes (3) Yes Yes (2)

Yes

Yes Yes (2)

Yes

Note: The following names appear on either the Quarantotto or Dugento in 1532 but not on the Consiglio Maggiore. By 1532, then, these families or at least the specific individuals clearly belonged to the office-holding class also. Angiolini (200) Barbieri (200) Bartolomei (200) Cegia (200) Delle Colombe (200) Nori (48 and 200) Scala (200) Stefani (200) Del Troscia (200)

Appendix 1

253

Sources ASF, Tratte 907: 179r–181v, 188r, 192r. Cooper, Roslyn Pesman. “The Florentine Ruling Group under the ‘governo popolare,’ 1494–1512,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 (New Series) (1985): 69–181. Guidi, Guidobaldo. Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni politiche nella Repubblica fiorentina dal 1494 al 1512. 3 vols. Florence: Olschki, 1992. Herlihy, David, et al. “Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282–1532. Machine readable data fi le.” Florentine Renaissance Resources / STG, Brown University. Litchfield, R. Burr. Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Molho, Anthony. Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Najemy, John M. Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

A PPEN DI X 2

Biographical Information

; In its very early stages, I initially conceived the project that grew into this book as a prosopographical study of the generation of Florentine patricians born between 1480 and 1500. To that end I devoted many weeks to identifying individuals and then compiling biographical details. As the project developed it became less prosopographical in its structure and content. Nonetheless, I have preserved some of the information compiled in those early stages in this appendix, as a source of biographical information about the individuals who appear prominently in the text and also as a guide to some of the more quantitative research undertaken, which is largely obscured in the fi nal product. The process of identifying these individuals began with the identification of the most prominent lineages that formed the office-holding class in the early sixteenth century. I have discussed the details of this undertaking in Appendix 1. From the 159 patrician lineages identified by this process, I isolated 335 individuals, born between 1480 and 1500, who held office or were nominated for office on one of the three highest executives bodies: the Signoria and its two advisory colleges,

Appendix 2

255

the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve Goodmen) and the Sedici Gonfalonieri (the Sixteen Standard-Bearers), at least once between 1480 and 1532. The decision to pursue individuals born during this twenty-year period proceeded from the gerontocratic nature of the Florentine political system, which restricted access to the highest public offices until the age of thirty. More important offices—significantly that of gonfaloniere di giustizia—had higher age restrictions again. This meant that individuals born between 1480 and 1500 would begin to hold offices in the years after 1510. Also I wanted to survey the period up to the middle of the sixteenth century, and I estimated that, as a general rule, the majority of the individuals born between 1480 and 1500 would live until at least the 1540s (an assumption that proved correct). From this fi nal group of 335 individuals I identified 76 who appeared to be especially prominent in the offices and magistracies of Florence. Once I began my archival research, I added three more names of individuals who were not so prominent but who had left an interesting or abundant paper trail: Antonio di Simone Canigiani, Luigi di Luigi Martelli, and Filippo di Niccolò Valori. I used this list of seventy-nine individuals as a tool to fi lter the otherwise overwhelming volume of material in the various archives and libraries of Florence: tracing letters by or directed to these men, searching out account books, diaries, and other records left by them. Inevitably some individuals left nothing but electoral and taxation rolls to document their existence. But overall the process of selecting the individuals was random enough that the seventy-nine men targeted presented a range of experiences of the events of 1480 to 1550. Below, I present brief biographies of those individuals who feature most prominently in the narrative of this book.

A Note on the Decima The decima taxed income derived from real property. An individual’s residence was exempt, being income neutral. As such it provides only an imperfect economic portrait, but the records of the decime levied in 1498 and 1534 represent the only complete source of fi nancial

256

Appendix 2

information for the period. The figures included here represent the amount of tax paid by each individual (or his representative) for the two decime. The figures appear in florins, soldi, and denari: so a decima of 8.5.5 equals eight florins, five soldi, and five denari. For accounting purposes the Florentines used the currency system standard across Europe since Carolingian times in which one lira (pound) equaled twenty soldi (shillings), and one soldo equaled twelve denari (pence). In 1498 one florin was worth 135 soldi (or just under 7 lire) in actual currency. By 1534 the value of the florin had increased to 150 soldi (7.5 lire) in actual currency. In 1498, individuals declared their decima in fiorini di sugello (sealed florins), an outdated money of account worth less than the current value of an actual gold florin. In 1534 the decima declarations were not always as specific, but in general they continued to use the fiorino di sugello. In the biographies below a double asterisk (**) indicates that someone other than the named individual fi led the decima declaration (usually a father, mother, or grandfather in 1498, and a widow or heir in 1534). The use of a degree symbol (°) indicates that a joint declaration was fi led, usually with brothers, but sometimes also including cousins and other family members (such as the Strozzi declaration of 1498).

On Offices and Office Holding The public offices included in the following biographies represent the most important positions, magistracies, and councils of Florence for the period 1480 to 1550: the gonfaloniere di giustizia (1480–April 1532), the Signoria (1480–April 1532), the Sedici Gonfalonieri (1480– April 1532), the Dodici Buonuomini (1480–April 1532), the Otto di Pratica (1480–94, 1514–27, 1532–50), the Settanta (1480–94, 1514–27), the Cento (1480–94, 1514–27), the Dieci di Libertà e Pace (1494– 1512, 1527–30), the Ottanta (1494–1512, 1527–30), the Ducal Council (1532–50), the accoppiatori (1480–1550), the Ufficiali del Monte (1480–1550), the Dugento (1532–50), and the Quarantotto (1532–50). The biographies also include certain special magistracies such as the Medicean balìe (1512–27, 1530–32), the pratiche of the regime of 1527–30,

Appendix 2

257

and the special commissions appointed in May 1527 (here labeled balìe also). The term of office follows the name of the office. Where the office had a permanent membership (the Settanta and the Medicean balìe), only the year of an individual’s appointment appears. In the case of 1530, when two balìe were appointed with an addition of arroti to the fi rst, the specific month or status of the individual’s appointment is also noted. Note, as all these individuals would have been eligible for the Consiglio Maggiore—all having held or been seen for one of the tre maggiori—I have not included it. Where an individual did not actually hold the office, the reason why appears in parentheses following the term dates. Brief explanations for the various reasons appear below: Absent: Individual was not in Florence. Already in office: Individual already holding a different office. Until 1532 individuals could not hold more than one office concurrently. Divieto: Individual excluded because a close family member had held the same office within the previous year or was holding the same office concurrently. In speculo: Individual excluded because he owed money to the commune, usually tax payments. Other: The exact reason for an individual’s exclusion is unclear, but the individual did not hold the office. Under the Medicean republic of 1512–27 several clear examples of individuals being held back from one office so they could assume another (appointed a month or two later) could be seen in the database. Under age: Individual did not yet meet the minimum age requirement for holding the specific office. During the fifteenth century, men tended to have their sons inscribed on the electoral rolls as early as they possibly could, because honor accrued to the family and individual simply for having their name drawn for office, even if they could not hold it. This explains the multiple occurrences of individuals in the database having their names drawn for office when they were under ten years of age. The

258

Appendix 2

institution of the Consiglio Maggiore, with its double process of election and sortition, greatly reduced the incidence of under-age youths being seen for offices that they were years away from actually holding.

Antonfrancesco di Luca di Antonio DEGLI ALBIZZI 11 October 1486–20 August 1537 San Giovanni Married: Maddalena di Giovanbattista Ridolfi Decima 1498: 16.10.5**; decima 1534: 53.1.10 Office Holding: Cento, Jan–Jun 1519; Cento, Jan–Jun 1522 (absent); gonfaloniere di giustizia, Jan–Feb 1527 (divieto); Balìa of 120, May–Jun 1527; Ottanta, May–Nov 1527; Dieci di Libertà e Pace, Jul–Dec 1528 A habitué of the Orti Oricellari during the fi rst decade of the sixteenth century, Albizzi also became friendly with the exiled Medici, especially Cardinal Giovanni. On 30 August 1512, Albizzi was one of the principals in the coup d’état that overthrew Piero Soderini, the gonfaloniere di giustizia a vita. In subsequent days Albizzi escorted Giuliano de’ Medici from Prato to Florence and housed him until the Palazzo Medici was available for habitation. After falling out with Pope Leo X over the farming of customs duties for the Papal State, Albizzi distanced himself from both Florence and the Medici, becoming associated—in name at least—with the committed opponents of the family’s hegemony. Albizzi returned to Florence in May 1527 following the expulsion of Cardinal Passerini and the Medici bastards. He again led a violent intervention into the Palazzo della Signoria on 18 May demanding the dismissal of the current Signoria. He served as Florentine ambassador to the Marshal of France, Odet de Foix, Viscount de Lautrec, and as commissioner to Arezzo in 1529, which city he abandoned to the advancing imperial army. Albizzi himself left Florence before the siege began. Following the return of the Medici in August 1530, he was exiled to Spoleto, and when he traveled to Rome in 1534 (following the death of Pope Clement VII) he was declared a

Appendix 2

259

rebel. Albizzi did not participate in the exiles’ petitioning of Emperor Charles V in Naples, January 1536. But following the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici the following year, Albizzi became one the most vocal proponents of armed intervention by the fuorusciti. He participated in the desultory military expedition to Montemurlo, where he was captured by Cosimo I’s forces. Albizzi was beheaded in Florence on 20 August 1537. Additional information taken from A. Merola, “ALBIZZI, Anton Francesco,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Girolamo di Luca di Maso ALBIZZI 8 October 1485–24 April 1556 San Giovanni Married: Costanza di Troilo I de’ Rossi, marchese di San Secondo Decima 1498: 20.14.0**; decima 1534: 8.10.12 Office Holding: Dodici Buonuomini, Oct–Dec 1530; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Sep–Oct 1531 (in speculo); Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1533; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1534; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1534, May–Jul 1535; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1536; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1536; Ducal Council, Nov 1536–Jan 1537; accoppiatore, Nov 1537–Jan 1538, Nov 1538–Jan 1539, Nov 1539–Jan 1540; Ducal Council, Feb– Apr 1541; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1541, Nov 1541–Jan 1542, May–Jul 1542; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1543; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1543; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1543; Ducal Council— luogotenente (lieutenant), May–Jul 1544; Ducal Council, Nov 1544–Jan 1545; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1545; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1545; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1546, Feb–Apr 1547; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1547; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1547; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1547, Feb–Apr 1549; Ducal Council, Nov 1549–Jan 1550; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1550; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Feb–Apr 1550 There is little notice of Girolamo degli Albizzi’s life until 1512, when he participated in the coup d’état that overthrew Piero Soderini. Both

260

Appendix 2

he and his father, Luca, became prominent supporters of the Medici following their return, and Albizzi received the post of Captain of the Papal Horse from Leo X. Albizzi initially left Florence sometime after the coup of May 1527 but returned to the city when threatened with a sentence of rebellion. He was subsequently imprisoned for the duration of the siege owing to his well-known Medicean sympathies. Liberated following the return of the Medici in 1530, Albizzi repeatedly held prominent and important political offices for the remainder of his life under both Alessandro and Cosimo I, including holding the post of commissioner of the rural militia bands.

Bindo di Antonio di Bindo ALTOVITI 26 September/November 1491–22 January 1557 Santa Maria Novella Married: Fiametta di Tommaso di Paolantonio Soderini Decima 1498: ?; decima 1534: 57.3.8 Office Holding: Cento, Jul–Dec 1526 (absent), Jan–Jun 1527; Monte official, Mar 1527–Mar 1528, Mar 1528—term canceled; Signoria, Mar–Apr 1529 (absent), Sep–Oct 1529 (in speculo); Dugento, 1532; Monte official, Mar 1532–Mar 1533, Jun 1535— end of term unclear, Feb 1541–Mar 1542, Oct 1542–Apr 1543, Oct 1543–Apr 1544; Quarantotto, 1546; Monte official, Mar–Sep 1546; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1547; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1547; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1548; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1548–Mar 1549; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1549, Aug– Oct 1550 Altoviti was born in Rome, the son of a Florentine banker and Dianora Cibo, niece of Pope Innocent VIII; his life and wealth centered on the Eternal City rather than Florence. He enlarged upon the fortune and bank left by his father, Antonio, who died when Altoviti was only sixteen. Altoviti developed a complex fi nancial empire, centered on various papal enterprises, and patronized many of the leading artists of the period, including Raphael, Michelangelo, Cellini, and Vasari. He reached the pinnacle of his wealth and influence under Pope

Appendix 2

261

Paul III, whom Altoviti assiduously cultivated. As a result of his close ties to the anti-Medicean Farnese pontiff and also his links to the Florentine exiles in Rome, Altoviti fell under suspicion in Florence, but Cosimo I still appointed him to the Quarantotto in 1546. In 1548, however, the Medici duke prevented Altoviti’s son Antonio from assuming his post as archbishop of Florence. During the war for Siena, Altoviti fi nanced and armed three thousand infantry, captained by his son Giovanbattista, to fight alongside Piero Strozzi and the Sienese against Cosimo I’s forces. In retaliation, Cosimo confiscated all Altoviti’s Florentine goods, including his wife’s dowry. Altoviti died in Rome on 22 January 1557. Additional information taken from A. Stella, “ALTOVITI, Bindo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Alessandro di Niccolò di Tommaso ANTINORI 21 October 1481–1557 Santo Spirito Married: Giovanna di Lorenzo Tornabuoni Decima 1498: 26.5.2**; decima 1534: 80.10.6 Office Holding: Sedici Gonfalonieri, Jan–Apr 1487 (under age); Signoria, Jan–Feb 1491 (under age); Monte official, Mar 1513– Feb 1514; Dodici Buonuomini, Apr–Jun 1515; Monte official, Mar 1516–Feb 1517; Signoria, Mar–Apr 1516; Cento, Jan–Jun 1517, Jul–Dec 1520; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Mar–Apr 1521 (under age); Monte official, Jul 1521–Feb 1524; Cento, Jul–Dec 1523, Jul–Dec 1524, Jul–Dec 1525, Jul–Dec 1526; Balìa of 120, May–Jun 1527; Monte official, Apr 1528–Mar 1529 (other); Ottanta, Nov 1528–May 1529; Signoria, Jan–Feb 1529 (already in office); Signoria, Jul–Aug 1529; Balìa Arroto, 29 Aug 1530; Balìa, Nov 1530; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; Monte official, Jun 1532–Dec 1533; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1534; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1534; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1535; Monte official, Jun 1535–Oct 1536; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1536, Feb–Apr 1537; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1537; Ducal Council,

262

Appendix 2

May–Jul 1537; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1538; Monte official, Mar 1538–Feb 1539; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1538, accoppiatore–new scrutiny, 1539, May–Jul 1539; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1539; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Nov 1539–Jan 1540; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1540; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1540; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1541; Monte official, Oct 1541–Mar 1542; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1542; Monte official, Oct 1542–Mar 1543; accoppiatore, Nov 1542–Jan 1543; Otto di Pratica, Mar– Sep 1543; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1543; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1544, Aug–Oct 1544; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1545; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1545; Monte official, Nov 1545–Oct 1546; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1546; Monte official, Mar–Sep 1547; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1547; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1548; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1549; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1549; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1550; Ducal Council—luogotenente, May–Jul 1550; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1550 Like Altoviti, Alessandro Antinori inherited his father’s business interests. Antinori, however, while expanding his commercial activities from Lyons into Flanders, remained a resident of Florence and became a regular participant in Florentine political life from 1514, although he did spend some time in Lyons around 1521. Antinori remained active in both commercial and political affairs throughout his life. His three sons pursued divergent paths: Sebastiano inherited his father’s seat on the Quarantotto; Vincenzo became involved in the so-called Pucci conspiracy of 1559 against Cosimo I; and Lorenzo continued the family business in Lyons. Additional information taken from G. Miani, “ANTINORI, Alessandro,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Benedetto di M. Filippo di Lorenzo BUONDELMONTI 30 May 1481–8 September 1533 Santa Maria Novella Married: Lucrezia di Luca di Maso degli Albizzi Decima 1498: ?; decima 1534: 16.17.1

Appendix 2

263

Office Holding: Dodici Buonuomini, Oct–Dec 1511; Cento, Jul–Dec 1522 (in speculo); Signoria, Mar–Apr 1523; Cento, Jul–Dec 1523 (other); Settanta, 1524; Cento, Jan–Jun 1525 (in speculo), Jan–Jun 1526 (absent), Jul–Dec 1526 (absent), Jan–May 1527 (absent); Balìa, Nov 1530; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1531; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Jul–Aug 1531; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, Nov 1532–Jan 1533, Feb–Apr 1534 (dead) Like Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, Benedetto Buondelmonti frequented the Orti Oricellari during the 1510s. He also participated in the coup d’état of August 1512 that overthrew Piero Soderini and was rewarded with political favors by the Medici following their return to Florence. Together with his father, Filippo, Buondelmonti became one of the family’s staunchest supporters and one of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s most trusted and valuable servants. In the 1510s and 1520s, he undertook several delicate diplomatic missions first for Lorenzo and then for Giulio de’ Medici (as cardinal and later as Pope Clement VII). He represented Lorenzo in the 1515 negotiations with Francis I and in 1521 was sent by Giulio to France to communicate the cardinal’s personal good intentions after Leo X broke with the French king. Persuaded to return to Florence by Filippo Strozzi following the 1527 expulsion of the Medici, Buondelmonti became the target of politicized accusations and was sentenced to imprisonment in Volterra for four years by the Quarantia. Liberated by papal-imperial victory in 1530, Buondelmonti became Florentine ambassador to Pope Clement VII and played a leading role in negotiating the creation of the principality. He continued in his role as ambassador in Rome until his death on 8 September 1533. Additional information taken from G. de Caro, “BUONDELMONTI, Benedetto,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Lorenzo di Antonio di Bernardo CAMBI 11 Mar 1480–ca. 1554 Santa Maria Novella Decima 1498: 8.19.3**; decima 1534: 14.12.7

264

Appendix 2

Office Holding; Sedici Gonfalonieri, Jan–Apr 1514; Cento, Jan–Jun 1514 (divieto); Cento, Jul–Dec 1514; Signoria, Jan–Feb 1515; Cento, Jan–Jun 1517 (in speculo); Sedici Gonfalonieri, Sep–Dec 1517; Cento, Jul–Dec 1518 (in speculo); Signoria, May–Jun 1519; Cento, Jul–Dec 1519, Jul–Dec 1521; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Jul–Aug 1523; Balìa, 1524; Cento, Jan–Jun 1525 (other); Signoria, Mar–Apr 1525; Cento, Jan–Jun 1526, Jan–May 1527; Dodici Buonuomini, Jan–Mar 1527; Signoria, Sep–Oct 1530; Balìa, Nov 1530; Dugento, 1532; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1537–Mar 1538 Lorenzo Cambi, together with his brother Jacopo, inherited a wealthy commercial enterprise founded by their grandfather, Bernardo, when their own father died in 1498. Their business interests stretched across Europe, including fi rms in Bruges and London. A close associate of Piero di Lorenzo il Magnifico, Cambi received political offices in Florence and the Papal State following the return of the Medici in 1512 and the election of Leo X in 1513, all the while maintaining his commercial activities. Cambi became one of several Medici partisans imprisoned in Florence for the duration of the siege, but like Buondelmonti he received recognition and favors from the Medici following their return in 1530. He became a close friend of the future Cosimo I in 1536, when the two of them formed part of the entourage accompanying Emperor Charles V across Tuscany. After Cosimo’s accession, Cambi held a series of important administrative and diplomatic posts across the Florentine dominion, including serving as Florentine commissioner with the imperial forces present in Tuscany in 1537 and escort to Pope Paul III in 1538, during the pontiff ’s sojourn in Medici territory. He remained a loyal servant of the family until his death, around 1554. Additional information taken from P. Orvieto, “CAMBI, Lorenzo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

M. Francesco di Piero di Jacopo GUICCIARDINI 6 March 1483–22 May 1540 Santo Spirito Married: Maria di Alamanno Salviati

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265

Decima 1498: 33.2.11**; decima 1534: 93.10.0° Office Holding: Signoria, May–Jun 1487 (under age); Diciasette Riformatori, 1514; Signoria, Sep–Oct 1515; Cento, Jul–Dec 1518 (absent), Jan–Jun 1519 (absent), Jul–Dec 1520 (absent), Jan–Jun 1521 (absent), Jul–Dec 1522 (absent); Settanta, 1524; Cento, Jan–Jun 1526 (absent), Jul–Dec 1526 (absent); Otto di Pratica, Sep 1530–Mar 1531; Monte official, Oct 1530–Mar 1531; Balìa, Nov 1530; accoppiatore, Mar–Sep 1531, Feb–Apr 1532; Dodici Riformatori, Apr 1532; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, Nov 1533–Jan 1534; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1535; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1535; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1535; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1536; Monte official, Oct 1536–Mar 1539 (?); accoppiatore, Nov 1536–Jan 1537, accoppiatore–new scrutiny, 1539, Feb–Apr 1539; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1539; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1539; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1539–Mar 1540; Ducal Council—luogotenente, May–Jul 1540; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1540 (dead) The third-born of the eleven children of Piero Guicciardini and Simona di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, Guicciardini established a legal practice in Florence in 1505–6. In the later years of this decade he also commenced his lifelong habit of writing about politics, history, and his family. He was absent from Florence during the turmoil of 1512, serving as ambassador to the Spanish court at Burgos. Beginning in 1516, Guicciardini pursued an ambitious and glittering career in the ser vice of the Medici popes, Leo X and Clement VII, becoming, under the former, commissioner at Modena, then governor of Reggio, then (in 1521) commissioner general of the papal army; under the latter, president of Romagna in 1523, and lieutenant general of the papacy in 1526. This fi nal position saw Guicciardini play a leading role in the ill-fated attempts to halt the advance of Georg von Frundsberg and Charles de Bourbon on Rome. Suspect and subject to punitive taxation in Florence following the 1527 expulsion of the Medici, Guicciardini abandoned the city in September 1529 before the siege began. In March 1530, after the Otto di Guardia declared him a rebel, he returned to

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papal ser vice. He was prominent in the reorga nization of Florence following the end of the siege, before becoming governor of Bologna in 1531. Following the death of Clement VII, Guicciardini returned to Florence. He led the defense of Alessandro’s government against the accusations of the exiles at Naples, in January 1536, and promoted the election of Cosimo I, following the assassination of Alessandro. In his last years, although still holding public offices, Guicciardini became increasingly marginalized from real power and dedicated himself instead to composing his Storia d’Italia, which he left unfi nished at his death on 22 May 1540. Additional information taken from P. Jordgone and G. Benzoni, “GUICCIARDINI, Francesco,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Jacopo di Piero di Jacopo GUICCIARDINI 9 July 1480–1552 Santo Spirito Married: Camilla di Agnolo de’ Bardi Decima 1498: 33.2.11**; decima 1534: 93.10.0° Office Holding: Signoria, Jan–Feb 1487 (under age), May–Jun 1511; Cento, Jul–Dec 1520, Jul–Dec 1523 (in speculo); Signoria, Sep–Oct 1523; Cento, Jul–Dec 1524, Jan–Jun 1526 (other), Jul–Dec 1526 (absent), Jan–May 1527 (absent), May 1527—special election (absent); Balìa Arroto, Aug 1530; Monte official, Mar 1531–Mar 1532; Dugento, 1540; Monte official, Apr–Oct 1541; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1542; Monte official, Apr–Oct 1542 One of Francesco’s two elder brothers (the other was Luigi), Jacopo Guicciardini pursued the most active commercial career of his siblings, although they were often partners in the enterprises. He also participated in the political life of Florence and often substituted for Francesco in the various papal governorships during the latter’s absences. Guicciardini left indications of Savonarolan inclinations, compiling a miscellany of the friar’s letters and other writings. Guicciardini served as an ambassador for Florence to Clement VII during the siege and

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defended Francesco in front of the Quarantia. He fell somewhat into disfavor with Clement VII following the Medici restoration in 1530 but began holding offices again after 1540 under Cosimo I. His later years remain obscure. Additional information taken from P. Moreno, “GUICCIARDINI, Iacopo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Bartolomeo di Lanfredino di Jacopo LANFREDINI 30 January 1496–4 November 1544 Santo Spirito Married: Bartolomea (Baccia) di Jacopo di Pandolfo Corbinelli Decima 1498: 1.6.4**; decima 1534: 4.7.2 Office Holding: Signoria, Nov–Dec 1512 (under age); Balìa, 1522; Cento, Jan–Jun 1523, Jan–Jun 1524 (absent), Jan–Jun 1525; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Mar–Apr 1525 (under age); Signoria, Jan–Feb 1526; Cento, Jan–Jun 1526 (already in office), Jul–Dec 1526 (other); Sedici Gonfalonieri, Jan–Apr 1527; Cento, Jul–Dec 1527—term canceled (in speculo); Balìa, Nov 1530; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1532, Aug–Oct 1533, May–Jul 1534; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1535; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1535–Mar 1536; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1536, Feb–Apr 1537; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1537; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1537–Mar 1538; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1538, Aug–Oct 1538, May–Jul 1539, May–Jul 1540; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1540; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1541; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1542, Nov 1542–Jan 1543, Feb–Apr 1544, Aug–Oct 1544 The son of Lanfredino Lanfredini and Selvaggia di Piero Tornaquinci, Bartolomeo Lanfredini pursued a fairly typical Florentine career in both politics and commerce, the latter in the family’s bank. By the 1520s, Lanfredini had become a loyal servant of the Medici, and he spent the years of 1527–30 at the side of Clement VII. He served as depositario for the papacy until the death of Clement in 1534. Returning to Florence, Lanfredini continued to operate the family bank and repeatedly held public offices under both Alessandro and Cosimo I. He

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died in Pisa while serving as commissioner of that city, on 4 November 1544. Additional information taken from S. Calonaci, “LANFREDINI, Bartolomeo,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

M. Alessandro di M. Antonio di Piero MALEGONNELLE 25 February 1492–? Santa Maria Novella Married: Contessina di Lorenzo di Bernardo Cavalcanti Decima 1498: 35.2.10**; decima 1534: 7.1.10 Office Holding: Signoria, Jul–Aug 1522; Balìa, 1524; Sedici Gonfalonieri, May–Aug 1524; Cento, Jan–Jun 1526; Signoria, Jan–Feb 1527; Cento, May 1527—special election; Balìa, Nov 1530; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Mar–Apr 1532; Dugento, 1532; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1535; Quarantotto, 1537; Ducal Council, Nov 1537–Jan 1538; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1538, Aug–Oct 1538, May–Jul 1539; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Feb–Apr 1540; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1540, Feb–Apr 1541; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1541; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1541; accoppiatore, Nov 1542–Jan 1543; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1543; accoppiatore, Nov 1543–Jan 1544, May–Jul 1544; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1544; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1544–Mar 1545; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1545, Nov 1546–Jan 1547; Ducal Council, Aug– Oct 1547; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1548; Otto di Pratica, Mar– Sep 1548; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1548; Ducal Council, Aug– Oct 1547; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1549; Ducal Council, Aug– Oct 1549; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Feb–Apr 1550; accoppiatore, Nov 1550–Jan 1551 Alessandro Malegonnelle’s father was one of the three fi nal candidates for election as gonfaloniere a vita in September 1502, supported principally by Medicean partisans and sympathizers. A lawyer by training, Malegonnelle himself began holding public offices in the 1520s and continued to do so throughout his life despite the several changes in regime. Although somewhat suspected of Medicean sympathies during

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the stato of 1527–30, Malegonnelle was a regular speaker in the pratiche and personally donated three hundred ducats toward the city’s fi nances during the siege. Under Cosimo I, Malegonnelle became a regular holder of prominent political offices, and he also undertook the interrogations of the Florentines captured at Montemurlo.

Domenico di Braccio di M. Domenico MARTELLI 8 November 1486–6 December 1548 San Giovanni Married: Elisabetta di Jacopo Corsi Decima 1498: ?; decima 1534: 11.7.9 Office Holding: Signoria, Nov–Dec 1524 (in speculo); Balìa, Nov 1530; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1534; Ducal Council, Nov 1534–Jan 1535; accoppiatore, Nov 1535–Jan 1536; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1536; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1536, May–Jul 1537, May–Jul 1538; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1539–Mar 1540; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1540; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1540; accoppiatore, Nov 1540–Jan 1541, May–Jul 1541, Feb–Apr 1543; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1543; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1543–Mar 1544; accoppiatore, Nov 1543–Jan 1544, May–Jul 1544, May–Jul 1545; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1545; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1545–Mar 1546; accoppiatore, Nov 1545–Jan 1546; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Feb–Apr 1547; Ducal Council, Nov 1548–Jan 1549 Domenico Martelli’s father, Braccio di Messer Domenico, was one of the twenty accoppiatori appointed to control the city in the immediate aftermath of the expulsion of the Medici in 1494. Martelli himself appears to have been one of the young men who dressed as soldiers or courtiers and who formed Lorenzo de’ Medici’s entourage during the later 1510s. Payment records identify him as a gentleman in Lorenzo’s military company. By the late 1520s, Martelli had become a trusted associate of the Medici. In 1526, the regime sent him to take charge of fortifying Empoli against the approaching imperial army. Martelli also apparently sheltered Niccolò Ridolfi during the coup of May 1527,

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when the cardinal feared his role in the Medicean stato might have made him a target of popular anger. However, Martelli seems to have passed the years of 1527–30 relatively unscathed, only suffering a brief detention in August 1530 for his support of Malatesta Baglione during the Perugian condottiere’s mutiny. Appointed to the Quarantotto in 1534 by Alessandro de’ Medici, Martelli held prominent offices reasonably regularly for the remainder of his life.

Ottaviano di Lorenzo di Bernardo DE’ MEDICI 14 July 1482–28 May 1546 San Giovanni Married: Francesca di Jacopo di Giovanni Salviati Decima 1498: 33.13.6**; decima 1534: 43.7.9° Office Holding: Signoria, May–Jun 1489 (under age); Cento, Jan–Jun 1522, Jan–Jun 1524, Jan–Jun 1526, Jan–May 1527; Balìa, Aug 1530, Nov 1530; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Sep–Oct 1531; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1532; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1532; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1532–Mar 1533; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1533; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1535; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1535; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1535, Aug–Oct 1536; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1536–Mar 1537; accoppiatore, Nov 1537–Jan 1538; Monte official, Mar 1538–Mar 1539; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1538; accoppiatore, Nov 1538–Jan 1539, accoppiatore–new scrutiny, 1539; Monte official, Mar 1539–Mar 1540; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1539; Ducal Council— luogotenente, May–Jul 1539; accoppiatore, Nov 1539–Jan 1540; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1540; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1541; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Aug–Oct 1541; accoppiatore, Nov 1541–Jan 1542; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1542; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1542; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1542; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1543, Nov 1544–Jan 1545; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1545; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1545; accoppiatore, Nov 1545–Jan 1546 A very distant relative of the predominant and later ducal branch of the family, Ottaviano de’ Medici fi rst came to prominence in the

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1520s. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici appointed him to manage the family’s affairs in Florence early in the decade. Like his grandfather before him, who had served on the Medicean balìe of the fifteenth century, Medici became a confi rmed supporter of his more powerful relatives. Like many other prominent partisans, he was imprisoned for the duration of the siege of Florence from October 1529. Liberated by the papal-imperial victory, Medici became a member of the balìa elected in the immediate aftermath of the siege to reimpose a Medicean government on the city. In 1533, he reinforced his connections with the ruling branch of the Medici family by marrying Francesca Salviati, a granddaughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Ottaviano de’ Medici frequently held important and prominent positions under both Alessandro and Cosimo I until his death in 1546.

Filippo di Benedetto di Tanai DE’ NERLI 9 March 1486–17 January 1556 Santo Spirito Married: Caterina di Jacopo di Giovanni Salviati Decima 1498: 13.2.0**; decima 1534: 25.5.3 Office Holding: Sedici Gonfalonieri, May–Aug 1515; Signoria, Sep– Oct 1517; Cento, Jul–Dec 1520 (other), Jan–Jun 1521 (absent); Dodici Buonuomini, Jul–Sep 1521; Cento, Jan–Jun 1522; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Jul–Aug 1522 (under age); Signoria, Sep–Oct 1522; Cento, Jan–May 1527 (absent); Sedici Gonfalonieri, Sep–Dec 1530; Balìa, Nov 1530; Signoria, Jul–Aug 1531; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1532; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1532, May–Jul 1533; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1533; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1534; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1535; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1535, Aug–Oct 1536; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1537–Mar 1538; accoppiatore, Nov 1537–Jan 1538; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1538; accoppiatore, Nov 1538–Jan 1539; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1539; accoppiatore, Nov 1539–Jan 1540, Feb–Apr 1541; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1541–Mar 1542; Ducal Council, Nov 1541–Jan 1542; accoppiatore, Nov 1541–Jan 1542,

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May–Jul 1542; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Aug–Oct 1542; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1543; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1543; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1543; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1544–Mar 1545; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1545; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1545; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1546; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1546; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1547, Aug–Oct 1547; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1547–Mar 1548; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1548; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1549; Ducal Council, Nov 1549–Jan 1550; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1550; Ducal Council, Nov 1550–Jan 1551 The son of Benedetto de’ Nerli and Cassandra di Francesco Martelli, Filippo de’ Nerli frequented the Orti Oricellari during the 1510s, becoming close to Niccolò Machiavelli. In the same period he commenced regularly holding important public offices in Florence. He served both Medici popes, becoming governor of Modena after Francesco Guicciardini. Nerli was among the known Medici supporters imprisoned during the siege of Florence. Appointed to the inaugural Quarantotto, he then regularly held prominent offices under both Alessandro and Cosimo I. Nerli commenced writing his history of Florence, the Commentari dei fatti civili, in 1534 and received encouragement in this enterprise from Cosimo I. Sent as an ambassador to congratulate Pope Julius III on his election in 1550, he received a knighthood from the pope.

Francesco di Piero di Francesco DEL NERO 13 May 1487–12 July 1563 Santo Spirito Decima 1498: 4.9.7**; decima 1534: 1.10.8 Office Holding: Signoria, Nov–Dec 1516; Dodici Buonuomini, Apr–Jun 1518; Signoria, Mar–Apr 1522; Balìa, 1522; Cento, Jan–Jun 1522 (other); Dodici Buonuomini, Oct–Dec 1523; Cento, Jul–Dec 1523 (other); Monte official, Mar 1524–Mar 1526; Cento, Jan–Jun 1525, Jan–Jun 1526, Jan–May 1527 (other); Sedici Gonfalonieri, Jan–Apr 1527; Monte official, Mar 1527– Mar 1528

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The son of Piero del Nero and Ginevra di Clemente Guidotti, whose daughter Marietta from an earlier marriage became the wife of Niccolò Machiavelli, Francesco del Nero abandoned his father’s profession as a wool merchant in favor of finance. From 1514, he began investing money in the banking and commercial affairs of Filippo Strozzi. Del Nero served as vicedepositario for Florence on the recommendation of Strozzi, and the two men collaborated on an intricate series of transactions that enriched themselves and benefited the Medici. With Strozzi holding the office of depositor general of the papacy under Leo X and Clement VII, they transferred money between the two cities as required by the pope. Del Nero inevitably fell under investigation in Florence following the 1527 expulsion of the Medici. However, he succeeded in destroying almost all the evidence of the true nature of his role and so was convicted only of relatively minor charges. In the wake of this, Del Nero abandoned Florence for Rome and papal ser vice, becoming treasurer general of the Apostolic Camera. The death of Clement VII left Del Nero fi nancially exposed: he lost fifty thousand florins as one of the guarantors of the dowry for Caterina de’ Medici and received a fi ne of forty thousand scudi from Pope Paul III for financial irregularities. These difficulties notwithstanding, Del Nero built up a new fortune by banking activities in Naples and Rome and left his brother, Agostino, and his illegitimate son, Francesco, well endowed at this death. Additional information taken from V. Arrighi, “DEL NERO, Francesco,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Pierfrancesco di Folco di Averardo PORTINARI 4 June 1484/88–29 September 1531 San Giovanni Married: Marietta di Luigi di Paolo Soderini Decima 1498: 4.6.2**; decima 1534: 8.1.8** Office Holding: Sedici Gonfalonieri, Sep–Dec 1518; Cento, Jan–Jun 1522, Jul–Dec 1524, Jul–Dec 1525, Jan–May 1527; Ottanta, May–Nov 1527 (other); Sedici Gonfalonieri, Sep–Dec 1527;

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Dieci di Libertà e Pace, Jun–Dec 1529; Signoria, Jul–Aug 1529; Dodici Buonuomini, Apr–Jun 1530; Pratica, Jun 1530 Little is known of the life of Pierfrancesco Portinari prior to the coup of May 1527. An erudite litterato, Portinari became increasingly prominent following the expulsion of the Medici, although he was almost certainly not among their avowed enemies and had held offices during their regime of 1512–27. He received several important diplomatic positions, testifying to his eloquence, discretion, and gentlemanly presentation (qualities noted by Varchi). In the fi rst half of 1529 he traveled to England on an unsuccessful mission to obtain fi nancial support for Florence from King Henry VIII. Following his return, the Ottanta elected Portinari to an embassy sent to Clement VII during the early months on the siege, which attempted to negotiate a settlement. Finally, Portinari again represented the stato in August 1530 as one of the four men appointed to negotiate the city’s surrender with Ferrante Gonzaga. Portinari did not suffer any public reprisal or punishment following the return of the Medici, beyond disappearing from the ranks of the government. He died soon after in 1531.

Filippo (Giovanbattista) di Filippo di Matteo STROZZI 3 January 1489–18 December 1538 Santa Maria Novella Married: Clarice di Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici Decima 1498: 117.3.3°; decima 1534: 81.14.2 Office Holding: Monte official, Mar 1516–Feb 1517, Mar 1518–Feb 1519, Mar 1519–Feb 1520; Cento, Jul–Dec 1525 (absent), Jan– May 1527 (absent), May 1527—special election (absent); Balìa, Nov 1530; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1531–Mar 1532; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1532; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1532; Monte official, Jun 1532–Dec 1533; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1533, Aug–Oct 1534 (absent), Aug–Oct 1536 (absent) Although baptized Giovanbattista, Filippo Strozzi became known by his father’s name following the latter’s death. In the 1500s, he fre-

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quented the Orti Oricellari and, along with his friends Benedetto Buondelmonti and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, became drawn into the circle of young men that associated with the exiled Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici. Strozzi consummated this relationship by marrying Clarice di Piero de’ Medici in 1508, provoking consternation in Florence. But he remained cautious enough in his political affi liations to report Prinzivalle della Stufa’s plot to assassinate Piero Soderini in 1510 rather than joining it. Following the return of the Medici in 1512, Strozzi became one of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s closest associates and supporters. Strozzi had taken the lead role in maintaining his family bank and commercial activities and used his fi nancial acumen to enrich himself and further the plans of both Leo X and Clement VII. As a result he became one of the wealthiest men in Eu rope during the fi rst half of the sixteenth century. Strozzi remained, however, nothing if not opportunistic and equivocal in his political stance. He turned against his patron, Clement VII, in 1526–27, supporting the coup against the family in Florence. Distrusted by the subsequent regime in the city, Strozzi soon returned to Medici ser vice, helping to fi nance the papal-imperial siege of 1529–30. He was rewarded with prominence in the new principality, becoming one of the members of the inaugural Quarantotto. But Strozzi turned against Alessandro de’ Medici in 1534, for personal rather than political reasons, and became a leading figure among the Florentine exiles. He fi nanced and participated in the ill-fated military expedition of 1537. Captured at the battle of Montemurlo, Strozzi remained in imperial custody in the fortress at Florence despite Cosimo I’s repeated attempts to have him transferred into his own hands. In December 1538, while still imprisoned, Strozzi committed suicide, or perhaps was killed.

Lorenzo di Filippo di Matteo STROZZI 11 August 1482–1549 Santa Maria Novella Married: Lucrezia di Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai Decima 1498: 117.3.3°; decima 1534: 59.3.9

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Office Holding: Monte official, Mar 1514–Feb 1515; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Nov–Dec 1520 (under age); Cento, Jan–Jun 1521; Monte official, Jul 1521–Mar 1523; Signoria, Sep–Oct 1521; Cento, Jan–Jun 1522; Balìa, 1522; Cento, Jan–Jun 1523, Jul–Dec 1524, Jul–Dec 1525, May 1527—special election; Pratica, May 1529; Pratica, Jun 1530; Balìa Arroto, Aug 1530; Balìa, Nov 1530; Dugento, 1532; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1539 The elder brother of Filippo, and a partner in the family’s commercial enterprises, Lorenzo Strozzi preferred to pursue literary activities. He was probably the leading creative force behind the famous carro di morte made for the 1506 Carnival and later wrote a bizarre fantasy about Florence decimated by plague, Una pistola fatta per la peste, as well as his better-known Vita di Filippo Strozzi. Like his brother, Strozzi frequented the Orti Oricellari, but he never became an active and open partisan of the Medici. Indeed, he initially fled to Lucca upon the family’s return to power in September 1512. He held political offices under the Medicean stato of 1512–27 and the civic republican regime of 1527–30. He was, together with Pierfrancesco Portinari, one of the representatives elected to negotiate Florence’s surrender with Ferrante Gonzaga in August 1530. Strozzi was briefly detained in 1537, owing to his brother’s leading role in the Florentine exiles’ military enterprise against Florence.

Prinzivalle di M. Luigi di M. Agnolo DELLA STUFA 9 August 1484–19 May 1561 San Giovanni Decima 1498: 9.12.7**; decima 1534: 11.18.5** Office Holding: Signoria, Nov–Dec 1485 (under age); Cento, Jan–Jun 1519, Jan–Jun 1520 (other), Jul–Dec 1522; gonfaloniere di giustizia, Jan–Feb 1523 (under age); Cento, Jul–Dec 1523, Jan–Jun 1525 (in speculo); Signoria, Mar–Apr 1526; Cento, Jul–Dec 1526; Balìa, Nov 1530; accoppiatore, Nov 1531–Jan 1532; Dugento, 1532; Quarantotto, 1532; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1532; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1532–Mar 1533, Sep 1533–Mar 1534; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1534; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1534; accoppia-

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tore, Nov 1534–Jan 1535, Nov 1535–Jan 1536, May–Jul 1536; Otto di Pratica, Mar–Sep 1537; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1537; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1537; accoppiatore, May–Jul 1538, Feb–Apr 1540; Ducal Council, May–Jul 1540; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1540–Mar 1541; accoppiatore, Nov 1540–Jan 1541, May–Jul 1541, Aug–Oct 1543; Ducal Council, Aug–Oct 1543; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1543–Mar 1544; Ducal Council—luogotenente, Nov 1543–Jan 1544; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1545, Feb–Apr 1546; Ducal Council, Feb–Apr 1546; accoppiatore, Aug–Oct 1547; Otto di Pratica, Sep 1547–Mar 1548; Ducal Council, Nov 1547–Jan 1548; Ducal Council—luogotenente, May–Jul 1549; Ducal Council, Nov 1549–Jan 1550; accoppiatore, Feb–Apr 1550, Aug–Oct 1550 From youth Prinzivalle della Stufa was friendly with Filippo Strozzi and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi. With them he became part of the circle of Florentine giovani who supported the exiled Medici during the fi rst decade of the sixteenth century. Della Stufa, however, transformed his affection for Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici into a scheme to assassinate Piero Soderini, the gonfaloniere a vita, in the winter of 1510. The plot was revealed to the Florentine authorities by Strozzi, who allowed Della Stufa sufficient time to escape before doing so. Della Stufa was declared a rebel in absentia, and his father was arrested and imprisoned. Following the return of the Medici in 1512, Della Stufa was also able to reenter Florence, and he became part of the circle of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Unlike many other Medici partisans, Della Stufa opposed the coup of May 1527 and was imprisoned during the siege of the city. Under the Medici principate, Della Stufa repeatedly held prominent and important political offices. Additional information taken from V. Arrighi, “DELLA STUFA, Prinzivalle,” Dizionario biografico degli italiani.

Notes

Abbreviations The following abbreviations appear in the notes:

ASF

Archivio di Stato, Firenze

BNCF

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Firenze

CP

Consulte e Pratiche

CS

Carte Strozziane

MAP

Mediceo avanti il Principato

MDP

Mediceo del Principato

OGBP

Otto di Guardia e Balìa del Principato

OGBR

Otto di Guardia e Balìa della Repubblica

Introduction 1. With the notable exception of the recent, nuanced work on civic republicanism and office holding under the English monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries: Mark Goldie, “The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850, ed. Tim Harris (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 153–194; John F. McDiarmid, ed., The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England: Essays in Response to Patrick Collinson (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007); Phil Withington, “Citizens, Community, and Political Culture in Restoration England,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra

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Notes to Pages 3–5

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 134–155; idem, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). The seminal work of this dialogue was Patrick Collinson’s 1987 article “The Monarchical Republic of Queen Elizabeth I,” now reprinted in Patrick Collinson, Elizabethan Essays (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), 31–57. The phrase “Atlantic republican tradition” comes, of course, from J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). See principally, but not exclusively, Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza, 1932); idem, Scritti politici e ricordi, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza, 1933); Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi, 2 vols. (Rome: Salerno, 2001). In his reply to the Florentine exiles, delivered before Emperor Charles V in Naples, on behalf of Alessandro de’ Medici: Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, ed. Piero Guicciardini and Luigi Guicciardini, vol. 9, La prigionia di Clemente VII, la caduta della Repubblica Fiorentina, e la legazione di Bologna (Florence: Cellini, 1866), 358. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment. See also Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 721–743; Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). For a succinct survey of the Cambridge School method see Mark Jurdjevic, “Hedgehogs and Foxes: The Present and Future of Italian Renaissance Intellectual History,” Past and Present, no. 195 (2007): 252–258. This analysis, of course, built upon earlier studies of Renaissance republicanism that had made similar arguments in a different fashion: Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968). The largest claims of the more recent debate were made by Robert Putnam, who argued that the civic republicanism of Renaissance Italy provided a direct precursor to the civic practices of late twentieth-century Italy: Robert D. Putnam, with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Putnam’s thesis provoked an extended debate, in which three scholars specifically addressed the question in relation to the Renaissance context: Gene A. Brucker, “Civic Traditions in Premodern Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary

Notes to Pages 5–7

7. 8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

281

History 29, no. 3 (1999): 357–377; Mark Jurdjevic, “Trust in Renaissance Electoral Politics,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34, no. 4 (2004): 601–614; Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999): 379–406. Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfi ni (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970). Felix Gilbert made a similar, although by no means identical, argument on a more limited scale: Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984). Antonio Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale della Repubblica fiorentina (Rome: Multigrafica, 1969). For what follows, see Nicolai Rubinstein, “Notes on the Word stato in Florence before Machiavelli,” in Florilegium Historiale: Essays Presented to Wallace K. Ferguson, ed. J. G. Rowe and W. H. Stockdale (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971), 312–326; Alberto Tenenti, Stato: Un’idea, una logica (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1987), 15–97. See Samuel K. Cohn, The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980); idem, Women in the Streets: Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); idem, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1384–1434 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); David Rosenthal, “The Genealogy of Empires: Ritual Politics and State Building in Early Modern Florence,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 8 (1999): 197–234; idem, “Big Piero, the Empire of the Meadow, and the Parish of Santa Lucia: Claiming Neighborhood in the Early Modern City,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006): 677–692; idem, “The Spaces of Plebian Ritual and the Boundaries of Transgression,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 161–181; Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003); Richard C. Trexler, Dependence in Context in Renaissance Florence (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1994). I also owe a debt here to Ethan Shagan, who several years ago admonished me for referring to a “political class” and so provoked much rethinking of how I conceived Florentine society. For an insight into Shagan’s thought on the question see Ethan H. Shagan, “Rumours and Popu lar Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850, ed. Tim Harris (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 57–58. For an interpretation of Florentine political history as being driven by internal confl icts within the Florentine office-holding class from the late Middle Ages see John M. Najemy, A History of Florence, 1200–1575 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006). What Najemy identifies as two distinct classes—

282

Notes to Pages 7–9

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

the elite and the popolo—I would argue are two broad estates within one office-holding class. On the need for historians to consider the social orga nization of medieval and early modern Europe in terms of both class and status see Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 24–31. See also the discussion about class, citizenship, and urban populations in Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1978), 6–8. It is worth emphasizing that I am not using “class” in the Marxian sense here, as determined by the material conditions of existence and the relationship to the means of production, but rather as a convenient label for demarcating and identifying a defi nable, coherent sociopolitical collectivity within any given society. Printed in Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 363–372. See the illuminating discussion on reggimento and ruling class in Dale Kent, “The Florentine Reggimento in the Fifteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1975): 577–584. Valuable studies have delineated membership of the ruling group at particu lar moments in Florentine history: see Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The Florentine Ruling Group under the ‘governo popolare,’ 1494–1512,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 (New Series) (1985): 69–181; Kent, “Florentine Reggimento.” But see Appendix 1 for a partial, quantitative reconstruction of the office-holding class at the beginning of the sixteenth century and for a discussion of the metrics that lie behind my qualitative analysis. My thinking here is comparable, although not identical, to John F. Padgett, “Open Elite? Social Mobility, Marriage, and Family in Florence, 1282– 1494,” Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2010): 357–411, who—on the basis of far more rigorous statistical analysis than any I have attempted—suggests that historians need to reconceive “of the concept of elite, more as a fluidly reproduced ideal than as a stable demographic reality” (360). Quantitative studies are, and will always remain, extremely valuable for conceiving the shape and structure of Florentine social orga nization. But given the social mobility and political fluidity of the city, as well as the multiple possible status indicators for determining social place (there is no agreement among historians on these, as there was no agreement among Florentines of the Renaissance), it just as beneficial—in a different sense—to conceive of categories of social distinction qualitatively. Kent, “Florentine Reggimento,” 581; Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390–1460 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 18–84; Padgett, “Open Elite?” Padgett, “Open Elite?” 403.

Notes to Pages 10–11

283

20. The patrician families in the early sixteenth century are identified in Appendix 1. On the use of patrician and patriciate to describe urban elites in early modern Europe see Marino Berengo, “Patriziato e nobilità: Il caso veronese,” Rivista storica italiana 87, no. 3 (1975). See also the less analytical but still illustrative use of the terms in James S. Amelang, Honored Citizens of Barcelona: Patrician Culture and Class Relations, 1490–1714 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century: City Politics and Life between Middle Ages and Modern Times, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976); Charles Zika, “Nuremberg: The City and Its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 553–584. Florentines of the fi fteenth and sixteenth centuries themselves rarely used “patrician,” preferring instead labels such as ottimati (the best men), grandi (the great or the big men), and uomini da bene (gentlemen). It does occur, however, in contemporary usage; see, for example, ASF, Acquisti e Doni, 68: docs. 27 and 28, and Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2:15. 21. Ricordi, Series C, no. 109. The translation is taken from Francesco Guicciardini, Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi), trans. Mario Domandi (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 69. 22. From the later fi fteenth century, the patricians increasingly attempted to institutionalize their position in the form of a senate that could control, in particu lar, the external representation of the stato by ambassadors and other officials such as commissioners: see William J. Connell, “Il commissario e lo stato territoriale fiorentino,” Ricerche storiche 18 (1988): 591–617; Riccardo Fubini, Quattrocento fiorentino: Politica diplomazia cultura (Ospedaletto: Pacini, 1996), 11–98. 23. See, for example, the widely differing constitutions offered for the patriciate during this period in Samuel Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato: 1530–1610” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1969); Cooper, “Florentine Ruling Group”; R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994). My own delineation is, of course, different again, although I attempted to synthesize the fi ndings of Cooper, Litchfield, and Molho to a certain extent. A principal cause of this diversity is that we are all working with distinct ideas of what constituted elite status in Florence and what metrics provide the best measure of this status. No one method is incorrect, on its own terms. All are equally valid, but until a historiographical consensus is reached on how exactly to measure Florentine social status

284

Notes to Pages 11–16

24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

(and as the Renaissance Florentines themselves did not entirely agree, I do not expect such a resolution in short order), such attempts remain valuable in a strictly limited and comparative sense, including my own, naturally; hence, my preference for thinking about social categories qualitatively. On Sassoferrato see Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 1:9–12. On the influence of this political illegitimacy over Florentine social practice and government see Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 9–43 esp. See Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004); Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); idem, “Visualizing Neighborhood in Renaissance Florence: Santo Spirito and Santa Maria del Carmine,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006): 693–710; Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000); F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); Dennis Romano, The Likeness of Venice: A Life of Doge Francesco Foscari, 1373–1457 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007); Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, ed. Giorgio Manganelli and Claudio Milanini, 2nd ed. (Milan: Rizzoli, 1977), 89. See Appendix 2 for a more detailed discussion and brief biographies of the leading protagonists in my narrative. See, however, the perspectives on female and subaltern political agency and experience offered in the works listed above.

1. Imagining Florence 1. My most obvious debt here is to Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991). But my thinking about the relationship between the social and the imaginary has also been influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Bronislaw Baczko, Les imaginaires sociaux: Mémoires et espoirs collectifs (Paris: Payot, 1984); Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); Sarah Maza, The Myth of the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003). Specifically on social imagination in Renaissance Italy see Jacques Le Goff, “L’immaginario urbano nell’Italia medievale (secoli v–xv),” in Storia d’ Italia, Annali 5: Il

Notes to Pages 16–17

285

paesaggio, ed. Cesare De Seta (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1982), 5–43; Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Practiced Place,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 83–103; Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007). 2. See for example the robust subaltern community and social life revealed in Samuel K. Cohn, The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980); David Rosenthal, “The Genealogy of Empires: Ritual Politics and State Building in Early Modern Florence,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 8 (1999): 197–234; idem, “Big Piero, the Empire of the Meadow, and the Parish of Santa Lucia: Claiming Neighborhood in the Early Modern City,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006): 677–692; idem, “The Spaces of Plebian Ritual and the Boundaries of Transgression,” in Crum and Paoletti, Renaissance Florence, 161–181. 3. The principal protagonists in the debate over the formation of the “Renaissance state” in Florence and its accompanying ideology of “civic humanism” remain Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, 2nd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1966); Marvin Becker, Florence in Transition, vol. 2, Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968); J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); Gene A. Brucker, “Humanism, Politics and Social Order in Early Renaissance Florence,” in Florence and Venice: Comparisons and Relations, ed. Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein, and Craig Hugh Smyth (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1979), 3–11. More recently, see the reappraisals of the Baron thesis collected in James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For a useful, recent review of the state of the question about civic humanism and republicanism see Mark Jurdjevic, “Hedgehogs and Foxes: The Present and Future of Italian Renaissance Intellectual History,” Past and Present, no. 195 (2007): 242–268. See also the assessments of civic culture in England, the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland during the early modern period, which provide a valuable comparison to this Florentinecentric debate, collected in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1:85–166. 4. See the descriptions of this process in Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).

286

Notes to Pages 17–19 5. My thinking on civic humanism has been particularly influenced by the thought of John M. Najemy. See Najemy, “Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics,” in Hankins, Renaissance Civic Humanism, 75–104; idem, “Giannozzo and His Elders: Alberti’s Critique of Renaissance Patriarchy,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 51–78. See also Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1999): 994–1020. The elusive chemistry of zeitgeist that bound the patrician oligarchs and humanist scholars together receives some acknowledgment in the frescoes executed by Ghirlandaio for the Sassetti and Tornabuoni chapels, in which the second generation of Florentine classicists are prominent. On the relationship between artists such as Ghirlandaio, humanists, and their patrician patrons see, most recently, Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 43–50. 6. Marcus Tullius Cicero, De re publica. De legibus, trans. Clinton Walker Keyes (London: William Heinemann, 1959), 15. 7. Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 53. 8. See the discussion of the distinction between republican and respublican thought in early modern Eu rope in Phil Withington, “Citizens, Community, and Political Culture in Restoration England,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 139–140. 9. See for example Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi’s consideration of the worth of her future son-in-law, Marco Parenti, in which she reflected that his family “hanno un poco di stato”: Alessandra Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. Cesare Guasti (Florence: Sansoni, 1877), 3–4. 10. On Sassetti’s commercial career see Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). On his presence on the balìe see Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). On his daughters see Eve Borsook and Johannes Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa Trinita, Florence: History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel (Doornspijk, Netherlands: Davaco, 1981), 38–41; Jean K. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 230–236, Cat. 16. 11. On Tornabuoni’s commercial career see Roover, Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank. On the office holding of his brother Filippo di Francesco Tornabuoni see Rubinstein, Government of Florence.

Notes to Pages 19–20

287

12. On the influence and importance of Lucrezia and other women in the Medici family see Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003). 13. Patricia Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence,” in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons (Canberra/Oxford: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University / Oxford University Press, 1987), 221–250. 14. Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 9–13. 15. Cited in Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel,” 241. The translation is Simons’s. 16. This is the central point of Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici; Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004). See also Rubin, Images and Identity. On the relationship between material culture, consumption, and social status see Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 100–101, 170–175 esp.; Baczko, Les imaginaires sociaux, 36; Helga Dittmar, The Social Psychology of Material Possessions: To Have Is to Be (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992); Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 41–65. 17. See Burke, Changing Patrons, 10; F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 16. Dale Kent is more nuanced and careful in her assessment of the relationship between politics and art in Quattrocento Florence: see Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, ix–xi, 384. 18. See F. W. Kent, “Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 2 (1987): 41–70; Michael Lingohr, “The Palace and Villa as Spaces of Patrician Self-Defi nition,” in Crum and Paoletti, Renaissance Florence, 240–272; Brenda Preyer, “Florentine Palaces and Memories of the Past,” in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 176–194; Burke, Changing Patrons, 9–10, 18; Jill Burke, “Visualizing Neighborhood in Renaissance Florence: Santo Spirito and Santa Maria del Carmine,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006): 699–700. In a recent essay Stephen Milner offers a thoughtful critique of overly hegemonic readings of place and space in Renaissance Florence: Milner, “Florentine Piazza.” As David Rosenthal has demonstrated, urban plebeians also inscribed the space of

288

Notes to Pages 21–22

19.

20. 21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

Florence with physical markers and manifestations of social identity: Rosenthal, “Genealogy of Empires,” 207–209. For comparisons with elite behavior in Strasbourg and Venice see, respectively, Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520–1555 (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 233, and Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 23–90. See the stimulating discussion of the commodification of clothing in Renaissance England in Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 17–33. More generally see Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and Economy, 1000–1700, trans. Marcella Kooy and Alide Kooy, 2nd ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1980); Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400–1600 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 28–29. On the tendency of Florentine commerce toward fragmentation rather than capital accumulation see Richard A. Goldthwaite, “Organizzazione economica e struttura familiare,” and “The Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism,” in Bankers, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1995). Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 110–114. See the recent useful analysis of this concept in Rubin, Images and Identity, 34–42. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 258, 260. The translation is by Benjamin B. Kohl and Elizabeth B. Welles. See Burke, Changing Patrons, 36, 61; idem, “Visualizing Neighborhood,” 693–694. For a comparative impulse in Renaissance Nuremberg, see Charles Zika, “Nuremberg: The City and Its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 560. In addition to the less tangible rewards of civic pride and pleasure, the artisans and laborers of Florence reaped very real economic rewards from patrician expenditure on palacebuilding and other artistic commissions: see, most recently, Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), chap. 5 and conclusion, 601–607 esp. Palmieri, Vita civile, 147, 152–153, 194. Compare with the situation in sixteenth-century Strasbourg: Brady, Ruling Class, 229–233. See also Bourdieu, Outline, 91, 95, 163–164; idem, Distinction, 72, 76–77; Baczko, Les imaginaires sociaux, 33, 36.

Notes to Pages 22–23

289

26. On the Ciompi Revolt see, most recently, Alessandro Stella, La révolte des Ciompi: Les hommes, les lieux, le travail (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1993), 50–51. On the violence in April 1498 see Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iodoco del Badia (Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 170–171. Compare with actions of the iconoclastic mobs in Strasbourg that targeted the material symbols of aristocratic rule as well as those of the Catholic Church: Brady, Ruling Class, 200–201. 27. See the analysis of the Florentine need to create legitimacy and charisma for its government and the symbiotic relationship between familial and communal honor in Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 9–43, 224–240 esp. 28. The best general synthesis of the use and evolution of the term in the Italian context remains Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). See also idem, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Specifically on the Florentine context see Baron, Crisis; Pocock, Machiavellian Moment; Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001): 721–743; Nicolai Rubinstein, “Florentina Libertas,” Rinascimento Nuova Serie 26 (1986): 3–26. Most recently, on the controversy over Baron’s “crisis” thesis see Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism”; Hankins, Renaissance Civic Humanism. For other Italian contexts see John Larner, The Lords of Romagna: Romagnol Society and the Origins of the Signorie (London: Macmillan, 1965); William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968); Ian Robertson, Tyranny under the Mantle of St Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002). 29. See the discussion of the tensions between republicanism and imperialism in Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1978), 25–40; Edward Muir, “Was There Republicanism in Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 137–167. The republic of Lucca, from around the mid-fi fteenth century, would appear to be the exception in this case. The Lucchese sought to preserve their civic form of government by avoiding expansion and the confl icts that came with it: M. E. Brachtel, Lucca, 1430–1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 30. For the details in the succeeding two paragraphs see Borsook and Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti, 27–28, 36–41; E. H. Gombrich, “The Sassetti Chapel

290

Notes to Pages 26–32

31. 32. 33.

34.

35.

36.

37.

Revisited: Santa Trinita and Lorenzo de’ Medici,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 7 (1997): 11–35; Ronald G. Kecks, Domenico Ghirlandaio, trans. Fiorella Kircheis Signorini, Paolo Santoro, and Nori Zilli (Florence: Franco Cantini, 1998); Eckart Marchand, “The Representation of Citizens in Religious Fresco Cycles in Tuscany,” in With and without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage, 1434–1530, ed. Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998), 107–127; Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 230–236, Cata log no. 16. For the details that follow see Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel”; Kecks, Domenico Ghirlandaio; Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio. Marchand, “Representation of Citizens,” 223. Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European Renaissance, trans. Caroline Beamish, David Britt, and Carol Lanham (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), 189–190. See, more recently, Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 88–90. The relative status of household and lineage in Florence was previously subject to a vigorous debate in the historiography instigated in Richard A. Goldthwaite, Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence: A Study of Four Families (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968); F. W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977). Consensus now favors the doubled vision of family proposed by Kent. The research of Thomas Kuehn has moved the study of Florentine family beyond kinship structures into the spheres of law and fi nance. See, most recently, Thomas Kuehn, Heirs, Kin, and Creditors in Renaissance Florence (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008). Compare with the similar conclusion on the ideological importance of lineage for Florentines presented in John F. Padgett, “Open Elite? Social Mobility, Marriage, and Family in Florence, 1282–1494,” Renaissance Quarterly 63, no. 2 (2010): 402 esp. Compare with Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), which presents the concept of lineage as having a far more solid fi nancial and social reality: see 12–15, 344–347 esp. See Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 29–40 on the development of the medieval lineage, 46–63 on economic strategies. On co-ownership of property as a transitional phase in familial development see also Kent, Household and Lineage, 123–124. Sergio Tognetti, Il banco Cambini: Affari e mercati di una compagnia mercantilebancaria nella Firenze del XV secolo (Florence: Olschki, 1999), 20–21, 83 esp.

Notes to Pages 32–35

291

38. Giovanni Ciappelli, “I Castellani di Firenze: Dall’estremismo oligarchico all’assenza politica (secoli XIV–XV),” Archivio storico italiano 149, no. 1 (1991): 33–91. Ciappelli refutes a correlation between fi nancial and sociopolitical success, noting that genealogical accident resulted in a dearth of mature males among the Castellani in the early decades of the fi fteenth century. He does however concede that “le difficoltà economiche” contributed substantially to the family’s absence from public office by the later 1420s; see 81. 39. Michele Cassandro, “Due famiglie di mercanti fiorentini: I della Casa e i Guadagni,” Economia e Storia 21, no. 3 (1974): 289–329. 40. Rubinstein, Government of Florence, 368. 41. Dale Kent, “The Florentine Reggimento in the Fifteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1975): 575–638. 42. Rubinstein, Government of Florence, 368. 43. Cassandro, “Due famiglie.” 44. Compare with the discussion of the linkage between a new physical sense of property and the development of lineages, as well as the centrality of longevity and endurance to familial success in the cities of northern Castile, in Teofi lo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150–1350 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 87–99. 45. Compare with Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 85–107; Sharon T. Strocchia, “Theaters of Everyday Life,” in Crum and Paoletti, Renaissance Florence, 55–80. 46. For Niccolò’s construction and patronage projects see Tognetti, Il banco Cambini. 47. See Preyer, “Florentine Palaces.” 48. Ricordi, Series C, no. 158: Francesco Guicciardini, Opere, ed. Vittorio de Caprariis (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1953), 130. 49. Anthony Molho, “Names, Memory, Public Identity in Late Medieval Florence,” in Ciappelli and Rubin, Art, Memory, and Family, 239–241, 244–246. Notably, Molho sets the lineages and the “government” in something of a binary opposition, without acknowledging that they were one and the same (with the exception of the politically banned magnate houses). Compare with the political dynamic between familial and communal honor posited in Trexler, Public Life, 19, 224. 50. Palmieri, Vita civile, 161. A consorteria was an association formed to protect common interests, more common to the thirteenth century than the fi fteenth. Although members were often related by blood or marriage, it was not exclusively restricted to a single family. 51. John Padgett has recently argued that the spread of the use of surnames throughout Florentine society in the fi fteenth century suggests the

292

Notes to Pages 36–39

52.

53.

54.

55.

56. 57. 58.

59. 60.

61. 62.

63. 64.

diffusion of patrician ideals into lower social orders: Padgett, “Open Elite?” In the same way that upwardly mobile families acquired or built palaces, the transformation of a patronym into a cognomen (“di Ser Risotoro” into “Serristori,” for example) represented an aspiration toward or the achievement of higher social status. For the data on the wealthiest households from the 1480 catasto see Molho, Marriage Alliance, 213. On the prominence of certain individuals, without surnames and mostly artisans, in the stato between 1434 and 1494 see Rubinstein, Government of Florence. Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 83. See the analogous observations on clothing and social status in Renaissance Venice in Brown, Private Lives, 10–12. Cited in Alison Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 121. The translation is Brown’s. Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson, 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1960), 1:202. See also Giannozzo’s comparison between purchasing one expensive cioppa rather than two cheaper ones, 1:238: “Se io allora non avessi scelto il migliore panno di Firenze, io dipoi n’arei fatte due altre, nè però sarei stato di quelle onorevole come di questa.” Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 34–58; Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 95–114. Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. Plinio Carli, 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1927), 2:126. Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza, 1932), 29. The San Martino district housed the shops of the Arte della Lana (wool guild) of Florence. For further discussion of the cultural significance of the red lucco, in a variety of contexts, see Juliana Hill Cotton, “Il lucco del Poliziano ed altre allusione al lucco fiorentino,” Italica 43, no. 4 (1966): 353–368. For the specific details of clothing items see Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 149–152, 160, and also the useful glossary. Ibid., 152, 218. However, variations of cut and color probably indicated gradations of expense no longer legible to a modern observer. See the similar observation about men within the Venetian patriciate in Brown, Private Lives, 5–7. This translation is from Baron, Crisis, 419. Kohl and Witt, Earthly Republic, 170. The translation is by Benjamin G. Kohl. On the concept of fraternity and the Florentine government see Trexler, Public Life, 19–33. Palmieri, Vita civile, 132. Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 110.

Notes to Pages 39–40

293

65. Palmieri, Vita civile, 131–132. See also 98–99: “Chi ne’ magistrati siede, inanzi a ogni cosa conosca essere spogliato della propria persona, et ritenere la publica persona di tutto il corpo civile dovere sostenere et difendere la degnità et sommo honore della publica magestà, servare la legge, di buoni ordini provedere, tutta la città conservare, et continuamente ricordarsi la multitudine che è governata avere ogni cosa rimesso nella sua fede.” 66. I am using ideology here in the Althusserian sense: Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 162–166 esp. 67. See Trexler, Public Life, 9–43, 85–128; Ronald F. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1982), 1–41; idem, “The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 269–280; F. W. Kent, “ ‘Un paradiso habitato da diavoli’: Ties of Loyalty and Patronage in the Society of Medicean Florence,” in Le radice cristiane di Firenze, ed. Anna Benvenuti, Franco Cardini, and Elena Giannarelli (Florence: Alinea, 1994), 183–210. Compare with the nuanced discussion of the potential dangers of friendship and obligation in Renaissance England in Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 59–67. 68. I am grateful to John Paoletti, who emphasized these spatial distinctions in an e-mail to me. 69. The term sottogoverno literally translates as “under-government.” It possesses associations with corruption, favoritism, and political horse-trading. It describes both the institutionalization of these activities and also (collectively) the people pursuing them. 70. Trexler, Public Life, 249. See also Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 218. 71. See Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 103–104, 115–132. Such expensive garments often recirculated by being sold to a secondhand dealer or loaned. 72. Gregorio di Stagio Dati, Storia, reprinted in Cesare Guasti, Le feste di San Giovanni Batista in Firenze descritte in prosa e in rima da contemporanei (Florence: R. Società di San Giovanni Batista, 1908), 5. 73. Unknown fi fteenth-century poet, ibid., 14. 74. Molho, Marriage Alliance, 344–451. Molho calculates that among those lineages that he classifies as high status both men and women married their socioeconomic peers at a rate of around 70 percent: see the extended analysis of patrician marriage patterns at 233–297. See now the more fi ne-grained distinctions about patterns of endogamy across three distinct status indicators (as opposed to the one politico-economic criterion used by Molho) in Padgett, “Open Elite?”

294

Notes to Pages 41–45 75. Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna, 5, 446. 76. See for example Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici; Najemy, “Giannozzo and His Elders.” 77. Note that I am not asserting that either Kent or Najemy explicitly pursue or support any of these concepts. Nor am I denying the analytic sophistication of their various studies. The point I am trying to make is one about language and self-consciousness of analytic terms. I do not think patriarchy really describes the interaction of gender and social relations, as these scholars themselves have discussed it, in Renaissance Florence. I am also concerned that the use of this term carries cultural baggage in a twentyfi rst-century context that can obscure rather than clarify historical analysis. See Mary Laven’s comments on the inadequacy of patriarchy as an analytic term for scholars of early modern Eu rope in Diarmaid MacCulloch, Mary Laven, and Eamon Duffy, “Recent Trends in the Study of Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Eu rope,” Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2006): 718–719. 78. Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 254. 79. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427, trans. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985), 210–223, 247, 363–364. Jean Cadogan has hypothesized that the Ghirlandaio portrait represents not Sassetti and his youngest son, Teodoro, but rather an idealized envisioning of Sassetti with the elder Teodoro (who died in 1479) as they would have appeared in the 1460s. See Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cat. 47, 278–279. In a sense, then, the portrait reverses the idealization: celebrating the hypothetical and historical relationship between a son, now dead, and his father, still living. 80. On homosocial relations and homosociability in Florence and in early modern Europe more broadly see Patricia Simons, “Homosociality and Erotics in Italian Renaissance Portraiture,” in Portraiture: Facing the Subject, ed. Joanna Woodall (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 29–51; Adrian W. B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Alan Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in Elizabethan England,” in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1994), 40–61; Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), chap. 5 esp.; Bray, Friend; Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 85–87, 97–98. 81. Trexler, Public Life, 277–278. 82. On the dangerous nature and marginalized position of giovani in Renaissance Florence see ibid., 387–399.

Notes to Pages 46–50

295

83. See, most recently, Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 163–211. 84. On the political significance of virtù see Nicholas Scott Baker, “Power and Passion in Sixteenth-Century Florence: The Sexual and Political Reputations of Alessandro and Cosimo I de’ Medici,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 19, no. 3 (2010): 448–456; Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce”; Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 37–39; Skinner, Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 23–48, 69–112. 85. Palmieri, Vita civile, 52–53. 86. Giovanni Rucellai, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro Perosa, vol. 1, Il Zibaldone quaresimale (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), 118. On marriage in early modern Europe as heterosexual relationship that united two men see also Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs,” 49. 87. Tomas, Medici Women, 14–83 esp. 88. Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna, 396, 386. “Mona Lucrezia” was Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, wife of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici. Alessandra hoped that Lucrezia would exert her influence to have Filippo’s exile reversed. 89. See, however, Sharon T. Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009); Tomas, Medici Women. See also the recent analysis of female networks and homosociability in seventeenth-century Spain in Lisa Vollendorf, The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005). 90. See Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel,” 238–239, 241. 91. Palmieri, Vita civile, 9.

2. Great Expectations 1. See Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426–1434 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978). 2. See for example Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere (1481–1482), ed. Michael Mallett (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 1990), 115, 125, 175–176, 194, and 211; idem, Lettere (1487–1488), ed. Melissa Meriam Bullard (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 2004), 273 and 527. Lorenzo used the term brigata (gang) consistently, but sparingly, to refer to the ruling group in Florence. See also Melissa Bullard’s iconoclastic reference to Lorenzo as a “committee” in Melissa Meriam Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 127. 3. Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (1499–1513), ed. Pierre Jodogne (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1986), 331.

296

Notes to Pages 51–52 4. Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine dal 1378 al 1509, ed. Aulo Greco (Novara: Istituto geografico de Agostini, 1970), 113, 115. Compare his later (ca. 1521–24) assertion, in the Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza, 1932), 18 and 25 esp., that governments ought to be judged by results and not by their legitimacy. 5. The translation is from Patricia Lee Rubin, Images and Identity in FifteenthCentury Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 235–236. 6. ASF, CP, 72: 127r: “havendo i Medici nel xii fatto segno di civilità, et poi fatto il peggio che si potessi.” 7. The analysis of various political treatises produced between 1512 and 1527 in Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfi ni (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970), 27–103, demonstrates in a very literal sense how this construction and contestation occurred. 8. Other scholars have already recounted, in great detail, the institutional history of Florence’s government, both with and without the Medici during the fi fteenth and early sixteenth centuries. See Rubinstein, Government of Florence; Arnaldo D’Addario, La formazione dello stato moderno in Toscana da Cosimo il Vecchio a Cosimo I de’ Medici (Lecce: Adriatica, 1976); Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); Kent, Rise of the Medici; J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); H. C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence, 1502–1519 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Roslyn Pesman Cooper, Pier Soderini and the Ruling Class in Renaissance Florence (Goldbach: Keip Verlag, 2002). 9. Luca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iodoco del Badia (Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 2–3, 65. 10. Landucci was twenty-eight when Cosimo died, so he had lived at least a decade as an adult (in the modern conception of the term) during this fi rst period of Medicean predominance. He had also already begun to record the political life of Florence prior to 1464. 11. ASF, MAP, 20: 93, Tommaso Soderini, to Piero de’ Medici, 5 June 1454: “la balìa, le borse et ’l catasto.” A balìa was a plenipotentiary short-term council that possessed authority to alter the constitution and institutions of the commune. On the corruption of the electoral process, which predated the Medici predominance, see Anthony Molho, “Politics and the Ruling Class in Early Renaissance Florence,” Nuova rivista storica 52 (1968); Rubinstein, Government of Florence; John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 263–300. On the Medici use of arbitrary and often punitive taxation see Elio Conti, L’imposta diretta a Firenze nel Quattrocento (1427–1494) (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1984); Lauro

Notes to Pages 52–53

297

Martines, “Forced Loans: Political and Social Strain in Quattrocento Florence,” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 2 (1988). More generally on the close relationship between political power, communal fi nance, and personal wealth in Renaissance Florence see L. F. Marks, “The Financial Oligarchy in Florence under Lorenzo,” in Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E. F. Jacob (London: Faber and Faber, 1960); Marvin Becker, Florence in Transition, vol. 1, The Decline of the Commune (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967); Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finances in the Early Renaissance, 1400–1433 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1384–1434 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Alison Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Reformers: Public and Private Interest,” in The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Langauge of Power (Florence/Perth: Olschki / University of Western Australia Press, 1992), 151–211; Richard A. Goldthwaite, “Lorenzo Morelli, Ufficiale del Monte, 1484–88: Interessi privati e cariche pubbliche nella Firenze laurenziana,” Archivio storico italiano 154, no. 4 (1996): 605–633; Giovanni Ciappelli and Anthony Molho, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Monte: A Note on Sources,” Rinascimento, seconda serie 37 (1997): 243–282; Alison Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Monte: Another Note,” Rinascimento, seconda serie 38 (1998): 517–522. 12. Compare with the analogous position of the Bentivoglio family in Bologna and of Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena. See Ian Robertson, Tyranny under the Mantle of St Peter: Pope Paul II and Bologna (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2002), 113–137 esp.; Christine Shaw, Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 123–142. 13. Giovanni Rucellai, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, vol. 1, Il Zibaldone quaresimale, ed. Alessandro Perosa (London: Warburg Institute, 1960), 121. 14. Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere (1484–1485), ed. H. C. Butters (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 2001), 163–165. In the same letter, Lorenzo instructed Michelozzi that—in response to requests—Filippo Carducci should sit on the next Signoria and Francesco Gherardi should be veduto (seen, that is have his name drawn for an office he could not hold) for gonfaloniere di giustizia in the same sortition. Both men had their names drawn, as Lorenzo ordered, at the end of the month: see David Herlihy et al., “Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282–1532: Machine readable data fi le” (Brown University: Florentine Renaissance Resources / STG, 2002), www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/ (last accessed 6 July 2006). Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), analyzes the role of letters in creating and maintaining patronage networks in Medicean Florence.

298

Notes to Pages 53–54 15. No decade passed between 1434 and 1494 without a significant challenge to the Medici predominance. The most complete account of these threats remains Rubinstein, Government of Florence. For more detailed analysis of specific moments of opposition see Alison Brown, “Lorenzo and Public Opinion in Florence: The Problem of Opposition,” in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo: Covegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9–13 giugno 1992), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 61–85; Paula Clarke, The Soderini and the Medici: Power and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 38–94 esp.; Margery A. Ganz, “Perceived Insults and Their Consequences: Acciaiuoli, Neroni, and Medici Relationships in the 1460s,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 155–172; Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Again, compare with the similar source of opposition to Pandolfo Petrucci in Siena at the end of the fi fteenth century: Shaw, Popular Government, 132–136. 16. Anthony Molho, “Cosimo de’ Medici: Pater patriae or padrino?” Stanford Italian Review 1 (1979): 29–30. Compare with the analogous place of the Bentivoglio in fi fteenth-century Bologna: Robertson, Tyranny under the Mantle, 125. 17. Lorenzo de’ Medici et al., “Lettere e notizie di Lorenzo de’ Medici detto il Magnifico conservate nell’Archivio Palatino di Modena con notizie tratte dai carteggi diplomatici degli oratori estensi a Firenze,” ed. Antonio Cappelli, Atti e memorie delle RR. Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie modenesi e parmensi 1 (1863): 265. See the nuanced analysis of Lorenzo’s imagemaking both in Florence and abroad and his ability to weld his personal prestige and reputation to that of the city in Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico, 28–31, 43–79. 18. See Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico, 28–31, 48–49. On the Pazzi War, which stemmed from the unsuccessful conspiracy to assassinate Lorenzo in 1478 (the conspirators did kill his younger brother Giuliano) see Martines, April Blood, 174–196. On the relationship between Lorenzo and Ferrante see H. C. Butters, “Lorenzo and Naples,” in Garfagnini, Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo, 143–151. On the relationship between Lorenzo and Innocent VIII, cemented by the marriage of Maddelena di Lorenzo de’ Medici to the pope’s nephew Franceschetto Cibo, see Melissa Meriam Bullard, “In Pursuit of honore et utile: Lorenzo de’ Medici and Rome,” in Garfagnini, Lorenzo de’ Medici e il suo mondo, 123–142. 19. Medici, Lettere (1484–1485), 299. 20. On Charles VIII’s mission to claim the Kingdom of Naples and its political, military, and cultural impact see Jane Everson and Diego Zancani, eds., Italy in Crisis, 1494 (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000); David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494–1495:

Notes to Page 55

21. 22. 23.

24.

299

Antecedents and Effects (Aldershot, UK: Variorum, 1995). Specifically on the Florentine context see Guidubaldo Guidi, Ciò che accadde al tempo della Signoria di novembre dicembre in Firenze l’anno 1494 (Florence: Arnaud, 1988). On the increasing tensions within the office-holding class and members of the Medici party during the 1480s and 1490s see Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Adumbrations of Power and the Politics of Appearances in Medicean Florence,” Renaissance Studies 12, no. 3 (1998); Alison Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 341–356; Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte.” On Fra Girolamo Savonarola’s influence over Florentine politics, culture, and society in the 1490s see Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970); Mark Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 19–45. Bartolomeo Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, ed. Giuliana Berti (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 204. Piero di Marco Parenti, Storia fiorentina Vol. 1 1476–78, 1492–96, ed. Andrea Matucci (Florence: Olshcki, 1994), 150–151. The twenty men were M. Domenico di Baldassare Bonsi, Tanai di Francesco de’ Nerli, Piero di Gino Capponi, Ridolfo di Pagnozzo Ridolfi , Antonio di Sasso di Antonio, Niccolò di Andreuolo Sachetti, Giuliano di Francesco Salviati, Bartolomeo di Domenico Giugni, Bardo di Bartolomeo Corsi, Jacopo di Bartolomeo del Zaccheria, Francesco di Martino della Scarfa, M. Guidantonio di Giovanni Vespucci, Piero di Niccolò Popoleschi, Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai, Andrea di Manetto di Andrea, Francesco di Filippo Valori, Braccio di M. Domenico Martelli, Guglielmo di Antonio de’ Pazzi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, and Francesco d’Andrea Romoli: ASF, Tratte, 905: 175r. Giuliano Salviati was the lone individual with no previous representation on the Medicean balìe: see Rubinstein, Government of Florence. The accoppiatori controlled the electoral process under Florence’s republican constitution—they scrutinized electoral lists and placed the names of eligible men in the various purses (borse) for sortition. The use of the accoppiatori to keep tight control over who had an opportunity to hold key offices was central to the oligarchic system that developed in the late fourteenth century: see note 11 above. On the institutional and intellectual history of the period between 1494 and 1512 see Antonio Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale della Repubblica fiorentina (Rome: Multigrafica, 1969), 39–58; Nicolai Rubinstein, “Politics and Constitution in Florence at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E. F. Jacob (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), 148–183; Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The

300

Notes to Pages 55–56

25.

26.

27.

28.

Prosopography of the ‘prima repubblica,’ ” in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento: Comitato di studi sulla storia dei ceti dirigenti in Toscana. Atti del V e VI Convegno: Firenze, 10–11 dicembre 1982; 2–3 dicembre 1983, ed. Riccardo Fubini (Impruneta: Francesco Papafava, 1987), 239–255; idem, Pier Soderini; Sergio Bertelli, “Petrus Soderinus patriae parens,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 31, no. 1 (1969): 93–114; idem, “Pier Soderini ‘Vexillifer perpetuus reipublicae florentinae’ 1502–1512,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971), 333–359; Butters, Governors and Government, 1–165; Guidubaldo Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni politiche nella Repubblica Fiorentina dal 1494 al 1512, 3 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1992); Giorgio Cadoni, Lotte politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1999). On the key shift from a political culture of corporatism to one of consensus, which enabled the formation of the oligarchic reggimenti of the fi fteenth century, see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus. Guidubaldo Guidi has noted that very small percentages of the holders of major offices (from less than 1 percent for the Ufficiali del Monte, the Dieci della Libertà, and Otto di Guardia, to a maximum of 4.05 percent for the Signoria) were not members of the Consiglio Maggiore: Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni, 601–602. Ibid., 4. Guidi estimates the total population of Florence in 1494 at 55,000, of whom he assumes 42,250 were excluded from political eligibility for reasons of sex, age, or legal impediment. Of the 12,750 mature men, then, who formed the potential office-holding class, only 29.35 percent sat on the Consiglio Maggiore (3,742). Note that Guidi mistakenly asserts that this fi nal figure represents 29.35 percent of the total population when it is clearly only 6.8 percent of the population. The provision that created the Consiglio did contain a clause permitting the entry of a limited number of men who did have the benefi ciato; but only thirty-nine individuals gained a seat on the council under this measure. See Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The Florentine Ruling Group under the ‘governo popolare,’ 1494–1512,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 7 (New Series) (1985): 73, 78–79. Now reprinted in Cooper, Pier Soderini. The tre maggiori were the Signoria and its two advisory colleges, the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve Goodmen) and the Sedici Gonfalonieri delle Compagnie (Sixteen Gonfaloniers of the Companies). Francesca Klein has also observed that the preservation of the powerful office of the Auditori, which could amend legislation and was the only Medicean institution to survive the constitutional changes of 1494, also indicated the possibility for the continuation of closed, hegemonic power despite these innovations: Francesca Klein, “Il mito del governo largo: Riordinamento istituzionale e prassi politica nella

Notes to Pages 56–58

29. 30.

31.

32.

33. 34. 35.

36.

37. 38. 39.

301

Firenze savonaroliana,” in Studi savonaroliani: Verso il V centenario, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Sismel, 1996), 61–66. See for example Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 43–46. See for example the glowing praise of Bernardo Segni, born ten years after its creation and writing post-1550: Bernardo Segni, Storie fiorentine di Messer Bernardo Segni, gentiluomo fiorentino, dall’anno MDXXVII al MDLV, 3 vols. (Milan: Società Tipografica de’ Classici Italiani, 1805), 1:24–25. See Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999): 383–392; Hans Conrad Peyer, Città e santi patroni nell’Italia medievale, trans. Claudia Carduff (Florence: Le Lettere, 1998); Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005). See the nuanced discussion in Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 131–136. See Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 1–8, 49–50. Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence, 35–56. Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Aggeo con il Trattato circa il reggimento e governo della città di Firenze, ed. Luigi Firpo (Rome: Angelo Belardetti, 1965), 132, 224. For analysis of Savonarola’s poltical thinking see Gian Carlo Garfagnini, “La predicazione sopra Aggeo e i Salmi,” in Savonarola e la politica, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence: Sismel, 1997), 3–25; Guidubaldo Guidi, “La politica e lo stato nel Savonarola,” in Garfagnini, Studi savonaroliani, 23–34; Guidi, “Il Savonarola e la participazione alla vita politica,” in Savonarole: Enjeux, débats, questions, ed. Anna Fontes, Jean-Louis Fournel, and Michel Plaisance (Paris: Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur la Renaissance Italienne, 1997), 35–44; Claudio Leonardi, “Savonarola e la politica nelle prediche sopra l’Esodo e nel Trattato circa el reggimento e governo della città di Firenze,” in Garfagnini, Savonarola e la politica, 75–89; Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence. Savonarola, Prediche sopra Aggeo, 232. See also pp. 133, 135, 167–168, 214, 419. Ibid., 476–477. See Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 15–16, 135–139. Savonarola’s push for moral reform and greater charity also had an enduring legacy in sixteenthcentury Florence, outlasting the fi nal extinction of the Consiglio Maggiore in 1530. See, most recently, Nicholas Terpstra, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 113–147 esp.; Sharon T. Strocchia, “The Nun Apothecaries of Renaissance Florence: Marketing Medicines in the Convent,” Renaissance Studies 25, no. 5 (2011): 627–647.

302

Notes to Pages 59–61 40. The best description of these events remains Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 58–74. See also the interesting discussion on the differences over taxation and the manner in which fi nancial policy became a tool of partisan confl ict in Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 1–22. 41. Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 19; Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, 73–74. 42. On the political confl icts of the period under Soderini see Butters, Governors and Government, 66–74 esp.; Cooper, Pier Soderini. 43. On Strozzi’s marriage see Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 45–60. 44. Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2:9–11. A pieve was a baptismal church. On Albizzi’s association with the Rucellai circle see Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: Athlone Press, 1972), 56–59. On his friendship with Filippo Strozzi, which resulted in his being investigated for his role in the 1508 marriage, see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 4–5, 47, 49 and 53. See also the undated letter from Strozzi to Albizzi, which he clearly wrote between July 1508 and January 1509 (based on internal evidence), in which he discusses the legal difficulties provoked by the marriage: ASF, CS, Serie 3, 134: 51r–v. 45. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 5: 72, Bernardo da Bibbiena, in Rome, to Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, 4 March 1512: “quelli Cittadini di drento.” See also the letters from Bibbiena to Cardinal de’ Medici from the previous year, which although still encrypted make clear the role of Medicean sympathizers and agents within Florence: CS, Serie 1, 6: 7r–8r, 27r–28r, 38r–39v, 68r, and 174r. 46. ASF, OGBR, 148: 253v, 256v, 258r, 266v–267r, and 272r. 47. Alammano d’Averardo Salviati sat on the Dieci on four occasions. He actually died early in 1510, prior to Guicciardini’s embassy to Spain, but his political legacy arguably influenced his son-in-law’s appointment. 48. Cooper, Pier Soderini, 258. Following Charles VIII’s invasion of the Italian peninsula in 1494 Italy had become the principal battleground for the French and Spanish monarchs and the German emperor vying for predominance in Western Europe and for possession of the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan. On the course of the Italian wars see the useful analysis in Giuseppe Galasso, Dalla “libertà d’Italia” alle “preponderanze straniere” (Naples: Editoriale Scientifica, 1997), 15–59. 49. The Florentine government had also agreed, reluctantly, to host a general council of the church, against the wishes of Julius II, at Pisa at the behest of

Notes to Pages 62–64

50.

51. 52.

53. 54.

55.

56.

57.

58. 59.

60.

303

the French king. On papal-Florentine relations under Soderini see Butters, Governors and Government, 140–165. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28v, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September 1512: “sarebbe cosa lagrimosa a narrare la gran crudeltà che e v’anno facto vituperate le donne et taglieggiatele soddomitati e fanciulli et mandato a bordello tucti e munisteri chi non v’è stato morto v’è prigione.” See also Nardi, Istorie, 1:424–425. Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, 440–441. Raffaello da Ricasoli, in a letter dated 3 September 1512, also reported the figure of four thousand killed at Prato: ASF, Archivio Ricasoli, Parte Antica, Filza 51: doc. 32. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 38r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28r, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September 1512: “qui la ciptà qui drento era pieno di confusione et di timore perchè el Gonfaloniere govenare le cose all’usato . . . molti huomini da bene ci erono mal contenti.” The text in italics was originally encrypted. Bartolomeo Cerretani, Ricordi, ed. Giuliana Berti (Florence: Olschki, 1993), 276, 279. For details of the coup d’état see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28r–29v and CS, Serie 3, 178: 67. See also Nardi, Istorie, 1:427–430; Cooper, Pier Soderini, 253–280. On Buondelmonti’s links with Strozzi and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 47, 49. On his father Filippo’s association with Bernardo Rucellai see Jones, Francesco Vettori, 59. Bartolomeo Cerretani identified Filippo Buondelmonti as one of the staunchest partisans of the Medici in September 1512: Cerretani, Ricordi, 282–283. See Luca Gatti, “Displacing Images and Devotion in Renaissance Florence: The Return of the Medici and an Order of 1513 for the Davit and the Judit,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: Classe di lettere e fi losofia Serie 3, 23 (1993): 352, n. 9. Consulte e pratiche 1505–1512, ed. Denis Fachard (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1988), 316–365. On the institution of the pratiche see Felix Gilbert, “Florentine Political Assumptions in the Period of Savonarola and Soderini,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 20, no. 3/4 (1957): 187–195. Consulte e pratiche 1505–1512, 351, 353, 362. On the general lack of support for the family in Florence in September 1512 see the illustrative description of Cardinal Giovanni’s less-than-triumphant entry to the city on the fourteenth described in Cerretani, Ricordi, 285. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 29r, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September 1512: “Furno tucti huomini populari et squintittati con gran cautela che è non fussino amici de’ medici.” (The text in italics was

304

Notes to Pages 65–66

61. 62.

63.

64.

65.

66. 67.

68.

originally encrypted.) See also CS, Serie 3, 178: 67. Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Lucca, 2 September 1512: “crearono stamani e collegi per el consiglio piagnoni tutti.” Piagnoni (Bewailers) was a pejorative label applied to the supporters of Savonarola. See Butters, Governors and Government, 173–175. Cerretani, Ricordi, 282. Palleschi was the contemporary label for Medici partisans, referring to the six red palle (balls) of the family’s arms. See also Cerretani’s descriptions of the debates within the Mediceans about how to proceed, at 282–283, 285–286. See Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus, 264–267, 299–300. Importantly, a parlamento did not vote on specific proposals. Instead the Signoria would request the election of a balìa empowered to consider and make any changes. ASF, Balie, 43: 2r. The seven men permitted to hold any office, despite their age, were Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Maso di Luca degli Albizzi, Benedetto di Filippo Buondelmonti, Giovanni di Messer Guidantonio Vespucci, Antonfrancesco di Luca degli Albizzi, and Francescantonio di Francesco Nori. Apart from Nori all these men can be identified as participants in the coup of 31 August. Nori’s distinction came from his father, Francesco, who died defending Lorenzo il Magnifico from assassination in 1478. ASF, CS Serie 1, 360: 43r. On the Carnival festivities of this year see Nicholas Scott Baker, “Medicean Metamorphoses: Carnival in Florence, 1513,” Renaissance Studies 25, no. 4 (2011): 491–510. Some scholars have objected that because Vasari identifies “Filippo Strozzi vecchio” as the patron of Piero di Cosimo’s panel, the patron was actually Filippo di Matteo Strozzi, father of the Filippo identified here: see for example Mina Bacci, Piero di Cosimo (Milan: Bramante, 1966), 106–107. This argument fails to account for the fact that by the mid-sixteenth century, when Vasari wrote the second version of the Vite, Filippo di Filippo (by then dead himself ) could reasonably be identified as “Filippo Strozzi vecchio” to distinguish him from his younger and still living namesakes: Filippo di Matteo and Filippo di Carlo Strozzi. The overt Medicean elements seem more in keeping with the political and personal attachments of the son than with those of the father. Butters, Governors and Government, 207–208. ASF, MAP, 132: 91r–94v. See also Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (1514–1517), ed. Pierre Jodogne, vol. 2 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1987), 58–59. On the association between The Liberation of Andromeda and Carnival see Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo (Ponte alle Grazie: Banca Toscana / Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1993), 114–115; Anna Forlani Tempesti and Elena

Notes to Pages 67–68

69.

70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75.

305

Capretti, Piero di Cosimo: Catalogo completo (Florence: Octavo [Franco Cantini], 1996), 140–141. Compare also the affi nities between the panel and three surviving canvases from the 1513 Carnival produced by Andrea del Sarto—Piero di Cosimo’s onetime student and still close associate: Andrea del Sarto 1486–1530: Dipinti e disegni a Firenze (Milan: Gruppo Zelig / D’Angeli Haesler, 1986), 106–107; John Shearman, “Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto, 1513,” Burlington Magazine 104, no. 716 (1962): 478–483; idem, Andrea del Sarto, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 1:29, 79, 2:213–214. Strozzi and Piero di Cosimo had collaborated on Carnival floats previously: Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 4–5; Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston de Vere, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 1:652–654. On David and Hercules in Florentine iconography see Adrian W. B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002); Patricia Simons, “Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinities in Early Quattrocento Florence and Donatello’s Saint George,” in Rituals, Images, and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F. W. Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 147–176; Maria Monica Donato, “Hercules and David in the Early Decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio: Manuscript Evidence,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 54 (1991): 83–98. On the analogous use of David and also Judith in the civic iconography of Imperial Cities in Germany, see Robert von Friedburg, “Civic Humanism and Republican Citizenship in Early Modern Germany,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 134–135. See Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th–18th Centuries, trans. Patricia Wardle, 3 vols. (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte, 1981), 40. Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 17–27. Compare with the use of laurel by Andrea del Sarto in the panels he executed for the 1513 Carnival: Shearman, “Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto”; idem, Andrea del Sarto, 2:213–214. Compare with Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 25. Langedijk, Portraits of the Medici, 27–28, 1168–1169, 1171. ASF, CS Serie 1, 360: 29r, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September 1512: “venuta che fu qui la novella dete a ciascuno tanto horrore et spavento che non si potrebbe exprimere per tutto si sentiva pianti et romori sghomberavonsi tucte le boteghe tucte le case et pienonsi e munisteri di donne et assai s’uscirono di firenze . . . vedendo el pericolo manifesto et reputandoso questo disordine solo venire dal Gonfaloniere si comincio pel popolo a dire che

306

Notes to Pages 68–70

76.

77.

78.

79. 80. 81.

82.

83. 84.

85.

86.

per salvare un solo non era da mettere a pericolo un popolo.” Text in italics was originally encrypted. ASF, CS Serie 3, 178: doc. 67, Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Lucca, 2 September 1512: “vedono la città in evidente pericolo.” Strozzi is referring specifically to the Ottanta. See also Cerretani, Ricordi, 279; idem, Storia fiorentina, 441. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 178: doc. 90, Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, 18 September 1512: “tutto e loro inimici in palazzo”; “impedito ogni ingiuria contro alla rabbia di molti che gridoranno carne.” On the creation and promotion of the myth of the Laurentian golden age see E. H. Gombrich, “Renaissance and Golden Age,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24, no. 3/4 (1961): 306–309. Butters, Governors and Government, 225–227. Ibid., 188–189. ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r–82v and 187r. The sixteen men were Lanfredino di Jacopo Lanfredini (6), Jacopo di Giovanni Salviati (9), Filippo di Lorenzo Buondelmonti (5), Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli (7), Lorenzo di Niccolò Benintendi (5), Antonio d’Averardo Serristori (6), Pandolfo di Bernardo Corbinelli (8), Lorenzo di Matteo Morelli (8), Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi (7), Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi (8), Luigi d’Agnolo della Stufa (9), Luca di Maso degli Albizzi (10), Piero di Niccolò Ridolfi (9), Matteo di Simone Cini (5), Matteo d’Agnolo Niccolini (6), and Gherardo di Bertoldo Corsini (5). On the inner circle of the reggimento see also Butters, Governors and Government, 250–257 and 281–84. On the increased importance and power of the Otto di Pratica after 1512 see Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 101–102; Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 39–40. Defi ned as sitting on one of the tre maggiori, the Ottanta, or the Dieci: ASF, Tratte, 717: 167v–189r; 719: 3r–18v; 905: 125r–126v; and 906: 47r–47v; and Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 83–120. Francesco Vettori, “Tre pareri di Francesco Vettori, anno 1531–32,” ed. Gino Capponi, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 434. Vettori was explaining why abolishing the Signoria would succeed. Bartolomeo Cerretani consistently identified three-quarters of the city (by which he meant the office-holding class) as only tolerating and increasingly being disastified with the Medici stato of 1512–27: see Cerretani, Ricordi, 315–316, 377, 380, 393, 398, 417, 433. ASF, CS Serie, 1, 360: 39r, Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 23 October 1512: “l’universale veduto la liberalità et humanità de’ Medici si va assicurando et ha optima speranza habbino andare di bene in megl[i]o.”

Notes to Pages 71–73

307

87. On the office holding of the three men see Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” On Lorenzo’s role as an operaio see F. W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004). Both Cosimo and Lorenzo also served as canal officials: see p. 24. 88. ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v, 66v, 81r–v; and 719: 21v. 89. ASF, Tratte, 719: 27v, 29r, and 35v. Lorenzo was also recorded as being absent on the only other occasions that his name was drawn for the Cento: 25v and 37v. 90. See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 5v. 91. See Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte.” 92. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 13r, Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 29 October 1513: “altro non penso nè altro desidero per cominciare a gustar’ qualche fructo della felicità di N[ostro] S[ignore].” See also 37r: Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici to Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici, 28 January 1514: “io mi voglio dare piacere hora che io sono giovane et che io posso per havere un papa.” 93. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 419. As Guicciardini’s name does not actually appear to have been drawn for the position, he was probably most likely responding to a proposal that he be “seen” as gonfaloniere, perhaps misunderstood in its transmission from Florence. Either way the actual outcome does not affect the significance of his open preferment for advancement in papal rather than Florentine offices. For other examples of Florentines seeking preferment in Rome see ASF, CS, Serie 3, 134: 170r; MAP, 108: docs. 147–148. 94. Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 269. 95. On the relationship between Rome and Florence and on Medici dynastic ambitions between 1513 and 1519 see Jones, Francesco Vettori, 85–142; Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 95–163; Butters, Governors and Government, 187–307. The behavior of the Medici, in relation to the papacy, was not unique: see Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500–1559: A Portrait of a Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 10–11; Christine Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 9–50; Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, 2nd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 83–96; Caroline Castiglione, Patrons and Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640–1760 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 96. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 156: doc. 70, Francesco del Nero, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Parma, 8 April 1525: “io ho voto questa ciptà d’oro . . . che non è restato ducati nè a luoghi pii nè a profani. Et ho spogliato fi no ad li hebrei et tutto per satisfare ad la santità di nostro S[igno]re.” 97. Cerretani, Ricordi, 320. See also 350, 367.

308

Notes to Pages 73–75 98. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 37. 99. ASF, MAP, 143: doc. 87, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 29 June 1518: “La nota della nuova signoria se auta e mons[igno]re R[everendi]x[i]mo apruova tutta.” 100. ASF, MAP, 143: doc. 24, Benedetto Buondelmonti to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 15 January 1519: “ho dua di vostra S[igno]ria de xii e xiii alle quali farò poca risposta perchè N[ostro] S[ignore] è in chastello et con S[ua] S[anti]tà mons[igno]r’ R[everendi]x[i]mo et questo giorno è chavalchato alla sua vignia dove fa murar’ in forma non li possuto conferir’ il contenuto di essa vostra ad S[ua] S[igno]ria R[everendi]x[i]ma.” 101. See the examples listed in Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 127–128. Leo bestowed cardinal’s hats upon several Florentines and Medici servants, including his cousin Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici and nephews Giovanni di Jacopo Salviati, Niccolò di Piero Ridolfi , and Innocenzo di Franceschetto Cibo: see Nardi, Istorie, 2:28–29 and 36. Francesco Guicciardini became, fi rst, governor of Modena and, then, of Reggio also. Filippo de’ Nerli followed Guicciardini in the administration of Modena. Girolamo degli Albizzi became Captain of the Papal Horse. Filippo Strozzi benefited, perhaps, more than most, becoming Depositor General of the Apostolic Chamber: see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 91–118. 102. ASF, MAP, 143: doc. 4, Benedetto Buondelmonti to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 19 September 1518: “disordine et mala contentezza nella chasa de pandolfi ni.” See also 143: 5. 103. ASF, MAP, 143: docs. 41–43. 104. Barbara McClung Hallman, Italian Cardinals, Reform, and the Church as Property (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), analyzes one significant aspect of the way Italian elites’ fortunes became intertwined with the church’s in the sixteenth century. 105. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 178: 57. 106. See Buondelmonti’s references to Albizzi’s position in ASF, MAP 143: docs. 19 and 21. 107. ASF, MAP, 116: doc. 368. 108. Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans. James B. Atkinson and James Sices (DeKalb: Northen Illinois University Press, 1996), 318, 328. 109. On the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici see “Documenti della congiura fatta contro il Cardinale Giulio de’ Medici nel 1522,” ed. Cesare Guasti, Giornale storico degli archivi toscani 3 (1859): 121–150, 185–232, 239–267. On the place of Albizzi in the conspirators’ plans see specifically 243–245. 110. On Leo X’s politico-military policies and the struggle for supremacy in Italy see most recently R. J. Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign

Notes to Pages 76–78

111.

112. 113.

114. 115.

116.

117. 118.

119.

309

of Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 62–104, 165–248; Maurizio Gattoni, Leone X e la geo-politica dello stato pontificio (1513–21) (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000); James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 39–49. Biblioteca Riccardiana, MS 4133: 20r, Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, in Modena, to Pierfrancesco Portinari, 21 November 1527: “per satisfar’ alle sue passion particu lar’ et alla ambition’ di quelli.” See also 15v, 21r. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 79. ASF, MAP, 132: doc. 669, Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 7 September 1515: “gl’usava dire che pregassimo idio che le cose andassino bene et che quando andassino altrimenti che lui sarià de primi andare in piaza a gridar’ popolo.” The invocation of popolo e libertà (the people and liberty) was the traditional rallying cry for revolution in Florence. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 105. Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 103. Melissa Meriam Bullard examines in detail the fi nancial manipulations that occurred between 1512 and 1527 under the aegis of Strozzi: Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 40–42, 87–89. For a broader, if less thorough, examination of the fi nancial benefits reaped by certain individuals during the 1510s see Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 124–139. On the second Urbino war see Francesco Vettori, Scritti storici e politici, ed. Enrico Niccolini (Bari: Laterza, 1972), 177–182; Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, ed. Franco Catalano, 3 vols (n.p.: Mondadori, 1975), 2:619– 625; Butters, Governors and Government, 293–297. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 399–400, 409–410. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 56r, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, 12 May 1517: “la brighata ci è mal contenta” (see also 74v); ibid., 59r, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, 14 May 1517: “Qui si sta in gran’ Suspitione et in gran’ timore et ognuno c’è malcontento come meritono le qualità di questi tempi . . . in modo che se costoro ci vogliono fare male lo possono fare senza alcuna fatica.” Compare with the similar reports of dissatisfaction in Cerretani, Ricordi, 346; and even of hopes for a French victory that would lead to the expulsion of the Medici recalled by Niccolò di Luigi Guicciardini in a discourse written either in late 1518 or early 1519: Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 371. Ibid., 62r, Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, 18 May 1517: “nessuno dubita che noi siamo a discretione de’ nimici”; ibid., 67r, Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco

310

Notes to Pages 78–80

120. 121. 122. 123.

124.

125.

126.

127. 128.

129.

Guicciardini, in Modena, 22 May 1517: “qui non è ducati nè cervello nè unione: in modo che e da preghar’ iddio che tanto male non segua.” Ibid., 62r–v and 63r. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 40, 44. ASF, MAP, 108: doc. 147. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 134: 136r, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Filippo Strozzi, Gherardo Bartolini, and Francesco [Vettori?], “at the side of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke,” 20 July 1518: “non vorrei aver’ a ogni hora a dubitar’ che ogni ribaldello o schiaghurato mi havessi a nuocer’ perchè mi truovo 39 anni et vorrei horamai dar’ nome di me di homo et non di uno putto.” Bartolomeo Cerretani similarly recorded widespread dissatisfaction and dissension within the ranks of the Medici’s supporters: Cerretani, Ricordi, 315–316, 350. ASF, MAP, 108: doc. 147, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, 17 May 1515: “pieno d’invidia d’ambition d’avaritia de malignità.” Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 59. On the hostility toward Galeotto de’ Medici and Gheri see Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib, 3 vols. (Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843–44), 1:77. The position of Medici agents and creatures in positions of influence had provoked discontent during the 1480s and 1490s also. Following the expulsion Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons the Signoria had several such men arrested, and one (Antonio di Bernardo Miniati) was summarily hanged. See the discussion of the social tensions provoked by these Medici secretaries in Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men.” ASF, MAP, 108: doc. 147, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, 17 May 1515: “la rovina della città”; “tanta autorità.” Buondelmonti ascribed this opinion to an unnamed woman, possibly Lucrezia Salviati de’ Medici, who had expressed it in conversation with Bartolomeo Valori. Niccolò Guicciardini succinctly captured the attitude of the Florentine office-holding class toward this election and also the shadow cast by Roman history in the formation of this attitude in his 1518–19 discourse: Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 369. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 54–55. See also 58–59: “Lui ordinariamente va in habito militare.” Compare Cerretani, Ricordi, 327. Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, 444; Jacopo Pitti, “Storia fiorentina di Iacopo Pitti illustrata con documenti e note,” ed. Filippo-Luigi Polidori, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 103. See also Lodovico Alamanni’s comments (made in 1516) on appearance, government, and political ideology reprinted in Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 383. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 58–59. The term universale could refer either to that part of the office-holding class not considered patricians or to

Notes to Pages 80–83

130.

131. 132. 133.

134.

135. 136.

137. 138.

139. 140.

311

the entire office-holding class—in this case it probably carries the former meaning, but it could be either. See also 54–55: “ha facto una brigata di giovani che usono là, tra’ quali è Prinzivalle et simili.” Bartolomeo Cerretani named Prinzivalle della Stufa, Leonardo di Lorenzo Tornabuoni, Niccolò di Giovanni Orlandi, Giovanni d’Antonio Rucellai, Mariotto d’Agnolo Benevenuti, Iacopo di Lodovico Morelli, Iacopo di Dionigi Pucci, Alessandro della Casa, Francesco di Lodovico Capponi, Carlo Panciatichi, Antonio di Giovanni Bonaffè, Luigi di Domenico Alamanni, Gennaio “a silk dyer,” and Betto “a papermaker” as the young men who became Lorenzo’s courtiers, “abandoning the cappuccio and donning soldier’s clothing”: Cerretani, Ricordi, 327. See Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (gennaio 1519–giugno 1520), ed. Pierre Jodogne (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1991), 172. Ibid., 174, 178–179. Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 364. Antonio Anzilotti, Alison Brown, and Roberto Bizzocchi have all argued, with differing emphases, that a courtly mentality had taken hold of the majority of the patriciate by the early decades of the sixteenth century: Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 97–98 esp.; Roberto Bizzocchi, “La crisi del ‘vivere civile’ a Firenze nel primo Cinquecento,” in Forme e tecniche del potere nella città (secoli XIV–XVII), ed. Sergio Bertelli (Perugia: Università di Perugia, 1979–80), 87–103; Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men.” ASF, MAP, 143: doc. 154, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Viterbo, to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 25 September 1518: “quello consiglio grande et modo di reggimento era più amato che questo d’oggi.” On the enduring attachment to the Consiglio Maggiore see for example Bartolomeo Cerratani’s positive description of it: Cerretani, Ricordi, 270. See Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 67–85. Ibid., 33–36, 376–384. Lodovico was the brother of Luigi, who participated in the 1522 conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici. It is difficult to judge to what extent Lodovico’s discourse represented his actual views. I agree with Gilbert on this point: Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini, ix. Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 362. On Gheri’s use of “friends” and “friendship” see K. J. P. Lowe, “Towards an Understanding of Goro Gheri’s Views on amicizia in Early Sixteenth-Century Medicean Florence,” in Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein, ed. Peter Denley and Caroline Elam (London: Committee for Medieval Studies, Westfield College, University of London, 1988), 91–105. Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514–1517), 7–8. ASF, MAP, 116: doc. 630, Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 27 December 1514: “mi pare quasi necessario mentre mio

312

Notes to Pages 83–89

141. 142.

143.

144.

145.

146. 147.

148. 149. 150.

padre vive che si truova oramai 65 anni o più che lui sia honorato di questo segno acciochè io doppio lui con ’l suo mantello possa più facilmente godere et faire li honori.” ASF, MAP, 116: doc. 20, Lorenzo Cambi, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 4 January 1515: “delo onore e degnità datami.” Phil Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007): 1017–1018 esp. Arguably, during the period of 1494–1512 and again in 1527–30, the consulte e pratiche gave institutional form to this civic public sphere: on this point see Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 10; Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 90. As the pratiche did not meet during the Medicean regime of 1512–27, correspondence serves as the principal record of this exchange of ideas and opinions, which otherwise occurred only face to face. See other examples from the period: ASF, CS, Serie 1 360: doc. 39; Serie 3: docs. 109, 323; Archivio Ricasoli, Parte Antica, Filza 32: Fascio 1, Fascetto 4, doc. 1; Filza 51: Fascio 1, Fascetto 1, docs. 32, 34. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 16v, Lorenzo de’ Medici to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 2 November 1513: “per mantener’ le cose in più reputatione et monstrar’ di volere richerchar’ il consiglio et parere di quelli che sono proposti all Città delle cose della Città et volere maturamente examinare tucto . . . iudicato a proposito di non dare al presente altra commissione al prefato Messer Goro.” Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo, 44–47; Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo, trans. Alberto Curotto (Milan: Electra, 1994), 150–152; Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 2:353. Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537, 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 2:18. The original Virgilian text refers to the golden bough required as an offering to Persephone by any who would enter the underworld: Aeneid, bk. 6: 143–144. See Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 41–59. Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 33. Only two modern historians have attempted analysis of the period: Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic; Jones, Francesco Vettori. See also Melissa Bullard’s consideration of the fi nancial relationship between Florence and Rome in the early years of Clement VII’s pontificate: Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 119–150. Stephens, on page 164, referred to the years between 1523 and 1527 as “the hardest to describe in Florentine history of the early sixteenth century, perhaps in all Florentine history since the fourteenth century,” precisely because of the scarcity of archival sources in comparison with earlier periods.

Notes to Pages 89–92

313

151. Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (aprile 1522–giugno 1523), ed. Pierre Jodogne (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), 91. For additional examples see also ASF, CS, Serie 3, 110: 232v; and Acquisti e Doni, 68: doc. 32. 152. ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r–82v and 187r. Certain of the sixteen individuals became more prominent after 1519—Piero Ridolfi , Matteo Niccolini, and Francesco Vettori most notably—and some became less so: Lanfredino Lanfredini, Filippo Buondelmonti, and Antonio Serristori. One of the sixteen, Gherardo Corsini, did not sit on the Otto until after the death of Lorenzo. Bartolomeo Cerretani recorded the enlargement of office holding from 1520, much to the displeasure (he wrote) of the Medici’s most vehement supporters: Cerretani, Ricordi, 365, 369, 377 153. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 58r, Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 23 December 1523: “essere necessario girare le faccende et dare la riputatione a tutta alla casa et non al palazo onde sarebbe più inclinato al mandare costì un cortona che al pigliarla per questo altro verso.” Silvio Passerini was bishop of Cortona from November 1521, and contemporaries regularly referred to him by his episcopal title. 154. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 64r, 65r. 155. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 154: 204, Giovanbattista da Verrazzano, in Ferrara, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Piacenza, 21 February 1525: “che a quella sarà facile con una sua littera inpetrarllo dal R[everendi]x[i]mo mons[igno]re di Cortona.” For further examples of Passerini’s influence, see also CS, Serie 1, 152: 22r and 154r. 156. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 89r, Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 26 August 1526: “Duolmene perchè mi pare sia un dishonorare quel segno mettendole in una persona quele nè di casa nè di qualità è in alchuno consideratione pure approverò sempre quello vedrò determinato dal maestro della bottega se fussi opera di cortona exclamerei.” Miniati did become gonfaloniere di giustizia for September–October 1526: Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” Compare this episode with a similar one reported by Bartolomeo Cerretani in August 1521, when Giulio de’ Medici (still only a cardinal) overruled the wishes of the inner circle in order to install Antonio di Guglielmo Pazzi as gonfaloniere: Cerretani, Ricordi, 375. 157. On hostility toward Cardinal Passerini see also Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:77–78. 158. Ibid., 1:74–75. Note that Goro Gheri, in 1519 following the death of Lorenzo, had proposed Ippolito as the family’s resident figurehead in Florence: Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 361. He gave no reasons for this choice, so it would seem most likely that age was the only factor that he considered. 159. ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v and 66v.

314

Notes to Pages 92–95 160. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 87v, Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 19 May 1526: “el Magnifico sia uno degli huomini deputati che spendendosi el nome della casa.” 161. See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 17r, 42v. 162. No equivalent study of Clement VII’s military policy exists for Gattoni’s analysis of the pontificate of Leo X. See, however, the consideration of Clement’s political objectives in the period after 1527 in Barbara McClung Hallman, “The ‘Disastrous’ Pontificate of Clement VII: Disastrous for Giulio de’ Medici?” in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005), 29–40. 163. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 84v, Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Niccolò Machiavelli, in Florence, 24 March 1526: “Così el nostro è ne’ dadi ma habbiamo cattive volte.” See also 92v, 99r. 164. Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 26. 165. Ibid., 72–73. On the various political positions of the four interlocutors in the dialogue see Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogue on the Government of Florence, ed. Alison Brown (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi, xiii. 166. On the league see most recently Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526–1528) (Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Pisa University Press, 2005). 167. Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 181. The provision, from November 1525, appointed Clement VII as syndic and procurator for Florence, empowered to treat with all and any foreign power on behalf of the city. 168. Alonso de Santa Cruz, Crónica del Emperador Carlos V, ed. Francisco de Laiglesia y Auser, vols. 1–2 (Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, 1920), 2:285. Agostino Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini e il governo fiorentino dal 1527 al 1540 (con nuovi documenti), 2 vols. (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1896), 1:8, n. 1. 169. On the details of both the tumulto del venerdì and the coup d’état of May 1527 see Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols. (Bologna: Forni, 1970), 45:136–141, 155–156; Nardi, Istorie, 2:114–122, 124–126; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:130–178. On the May coup see also ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 30r–v. 170. Luigi Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome, ed. James H. McGregor (New York: Italica, 1993), 41. 171. Vettori, Scritti storici e politici, 276. 172. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 92r, Filippo Strozzi, in Ghinazzano, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 27 September 1526: “mi pareva sendo quel servitore a nostro signore sai non potere nè dovere in sì urgente necessità sua mancargli nè di questo nè d’altro.” 173. On the links between the Florentine exiles and the imperials in Italy see Sanuto, I diarii, 45:26; Fra Giuliano Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze o compendio storico delle cose di Firenze dall’anno MDI al MDXLVI,” ed. Francesco

Notes to Pages 95–100

315

Frediani, Archivio storico italiano Appendice 7 (1849): 140–141. The earliest certain reference to Strozzi’s involvement with Della Palla and Buondelmonti is a letter of 22 December 1526 from Strozzi to Giovanni Bandini. However, a letter dated only as “the seventeenth” from Strozzi to the two conspirators also exists. See ASF, Serie 1, 99: 18r–19r. 174. ASF, Serie 3, 108: 97v, Filippo Strozzi, in Naples, to Francesco Vettori, in Rome, 30 December 1526: “questa barca di san piero ha l’acqua allo orlo è tempo di fare getto di qualche parte per salvare el resto.” 175. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 99: 20r, 21r–v, Filippo Strozzi, in Naples, to Battista della Palla and Zanobi Buondelmonti, in Gaeta, 30 January 1527: “farà per la città ogni offitio si aspetta a buon cittadino”; “io sono stato giocato senza rispetto alcuno come se uno schiavo fossi”; “leggo continuamente Livio et la Politica d’Aristotile, che da l’uno mi pare trarre la pratica et dal’altro la theorica da huomo da bene et virile cittadino.” 176. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 111r.

3. Defending Liberty 1. Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols. (Bologna: Forni, 1970), 45:139, 137. 2. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 30v, G. Spina, in Florence, to Bernardo Spina, in Cesena, 17 May 1527: “e medici si sono privati del governo la balìa è extinta et il governo è hora ne’ signori et collegi nè 70 et balìa.” 3. Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib, 3 vols. (Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843–44), 1:237–239; Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2:127–128; Sanuto, I diarii, 45:170. 4. The essential contemporary accounts, by men who not only witnessed but participated in the events of 1527–30, are Varchi, Storia fiorentina; and Nardi, Istorie. For a general narrative of the period no modern historian has yet surpassed Cecil Roth, The Last Florentine Republic (London: Methuen, 1925), but Salvatore Lo Re, La crisi della libertà fiorentina: Alle origini della formazione politica e intellettuale di Benedetto Varchi e Piero Vettori (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2006) provides a detailed complement to Roth. See also the analysis offered in Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfi ni (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970); Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant (London: Athlone Press, 1972), 198–255; J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 203–255; Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 314–386.

316

Notes to Pages 101–102 5. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:230. See also Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 18, 104, 107. 6. On the election see Vincenzo Chiaroni, Il Savonarola e la Repubblica Fiorentina eleggono Gesù Cristo re di Firenze (Florence: AGAF, 1952), 14–15. For the initial suggestion: Girolamo Savonarola, Prediche sopra Aggeo con il Trattato circa il reggimento e governo della città di Firenze, ed. Luigi Firpo (Rome: Angelo Belardetti, 1965), 421–423. 7. Alessandro Guarini, in Florence, to Alfonso I d’Este, 8 July 1528, reprinted in Agostino Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini e il governo fiorentino dal 1527 al 1540 (con nuovi documenti), 2 vols. (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1896), 1:280. 8. ASF, Tratte, 906: 66r, 69v, 82v; ASF, Tratte, 719: 44r, 48r, 52r, 58r, 68r, 70r; David Herlihy et al., “Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282–1532: Machine readable data fi le” (Brown University: Florentine Renaissance Resources / STG, 2002), www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/ (last accessed 6 July 2006). 9. Fra Giuliano Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze o compendio storico delle cose di Firenze dall’anno MDI al MDXLVI,” ed. Francesco Frediani, Archivio storico italiano Appendice 7 (1849): 156. 10. Just over 60 percent of the most prominent and regular members of the most important and restricted offices of the 1527–30 period—the Ottanta, the Dieci di Pace e Libertà, and the pratiche—possessed patrician surnames. Just under half of the members of the tre maggiori in the period were patricians (averaging 45 percent over the period between June 1527 and August 1530), compared with a slightly higher figure of around or just above 50 percent for the years between 1512 and 1527, indicating a small broadening of office-holding among the ranks of non-patricians: Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” In 1534, Alfonso Strozzi declared income of 340 florins and 9 denari, and a decima of 28 florins, 6 soldi, and 9 denari: ASF, Decima Granducale, 3616: 38v. Alessandro and Paolantonio, the sons of Tommaso Soderini, declared income of 345 florins, 6 soldi, and 3 denari, and a decima of 28 florins, 15 soldi, and 6 denari: ASF, Decima Granducale, 3578: 151v. The decima was a tax on income derived from real property. As such it represents an incomplete guide to actual wealth, but the decima declarations for 1498 and 1534 constitute the only complete source for comparative analysis of the period. The median decima for (an albeit very limited) sample of seventy-five patrician men of similar age to Strozzi and Soderini declared in 1534 was twelve florins, suggesting that their wealth, although not immense, was above average. 11. On the vicissitudes of the League of Cognac after the sack of Rome and Florence’s increasingly strained relations with it see, most recently, Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526–1528) (Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Pisa University Press, 2005).

Notes to Pages 103–108

12.

13.

14.

15. 16.

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

317

Agostino Rossi provides a nuanced analysis of Capponi’s foreign policy as pragmatic and flexible: Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini, 1:106–115. Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini, 113, n. 2, 118, n. 2. In March 1529, Capponi similarly wrote to Baldassare Carducci, the Florentine ambassador to the French court: “I am neither Spanish nor French; but wish only the health of the city”: 109. ASF, Tratte, 906: 64v, 66r–v, 69v; Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” All three were also regularly drawn for the Cento, but they never actually sat on the council. Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (aprile 1522–giugno 1523), ed. Pierre Jodogne, vol. 7 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), 91. BNCF, Nazionale 2, 3, 433: 160r–164v. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 99r, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Colle, to Giovanni Vettori, in Volterra, 3 September 1530: “mi maraviglio non havere fi nito e giorni mia per dolore”; “che se la gratia di dio non mi havessi fortifichato era impossibile havessi tollerato quanto ho patito.” Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 226–227. Francesco Guicciardini, Opere, ed. Vittorio de Caprariis (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1953), 71. Ibid., 61–62. Compare the justificatory letter that Guicciardini sent the Otto di Guardia in December 1529: Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, ed. Piero Guicciardini and Luigi Guicciardini, vol. 10, Ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia e scritti vari (Florence: Cellini, 1867), 133. Guicciardini, Opere, 84, 75. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 176r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, at Poppiano, 8 May 1528: “Fecionsi di 80: n’ho inteso pochi: ma mi è stato decto sono tutti ben confiderati allo stato: et sono fra più spicciolati che di casate: in casa nostro è nessuno: et nè in casa e Capponi.” ASF, Tratte, 719: 80r–81v. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 177r, Francesco Guicciardini, at Santa Margherita, to Luigi Guicciardini, 11 May 1528: “stamani andorono a partito in consiglio per haver’ beneficio molti che nella linea loro pretendono haverlo non ne vinse nessuno da 65.” ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 114r, Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Prato, 23 November 1527: “che benissimo intendo li miei felici giorni esser passati et che ogni resto di mia vita m’ha essere più che morte amaro.” ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v, 69v–70r, 204r–v; Tratte, 907: 180r; Tratte, 719: 49r, 53r, 57r, 63r, 67r, and 75r; Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders.” ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: busta entitled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 gennaio al 1 giugno 1537,” doc. 54, Lorenzo Strozzi, in

318

Notes to Pages 108–109

27.

28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33.

34.

35.

Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Lyon, 23 May 1529: “non ne me sono molto rallegrato perchè quantunche io habbi recuperato le forze mie e disagi mi offendono nè trovo cosa che più mi giovi che l’aria & qui bisogna stare nella città & assiduo perchè non passa mai tre giorni che la pratica per conto della S[igno]ri o de’ dieci non si raguni. . . . Ingegneromi non manchare del debito verso la patria & spoglieromi come io son’ solito d’ogni passione.” Compare the discussion of political factionalism in the city after 1494 in Nicolai Rubinstein, “Politics and Constitution in Florence at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Italian Renaissance Studies: A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E. F. Jacob (London: Faber and Faber, 1960), 148–183. On the issues of taxation and forced loans see ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: busta entitled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 gennaio al 1 giugno 1537,” docs. 111, 132, 133. On the matter of Filippo’s desire to return to Rome see ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: busta entitled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 gennaio al 1 giugno 1537,” docs. 203, 255. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: busta entitled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 gennaio al 1 giugno 1537,” doc. 9, Pierfrancesco Portinari, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Lyon, 6 January 1529: “non ho mancato di fare quanto ho iudicato a benfitio vostro così in ogni altra vostra occurentia sono per fare sempre lo offitio dello amico come sono obbligato.” Portinari sat on the Signoria, the Ottanta, the Dodici, the Sedici, and the Dieci between May 1527 and August 1530. He also participated in the pratiche and served as an ambassador to Pope Clement VII in September 1529: ASF, Tratte, 719: 77v; 906: 49r and 204v; Herlihy et al., “Online Tratte of Office Holders”; Nardi, Istorie, 2:167–170; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:158. Jones, Francesco Vettori, 205, n. 52. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 105: 121r, Giornale e ricordanze personali di Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, 1528–36: “con intentione di salvarle a palla.” Strozzi did note, however, that he expected Rucellai to reimburse him for the expense. Compare with the observations about the endurance of social networks in spite of religious and political turmoil in sixteenth-century England in Alan Bray, The Friend (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 71. On the downfall of Niccolò Capponi see Nardi, Istorie, 2:147–151; Bernardo Segni, Storie fiorentine di Messer Bernardo Segni, gentiluomo fiorentino, dall’anno MDXXVII al MDLV, 3 vols. (Milan: Società Tipografica de’ Classici Italiani, 1805), 1:127–153, 3:339–346; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:544–552. On the papal-imperial negotiations see most recently Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors in Sixteenth-Century Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), 45–53. ASF, CP, 71: 46v: “se fussi da pigliare più uno partito che uno altro per salute della città o da cercare di salvare bene la libertà in quello modi che si potess’o.”

Notes to Pages 110–114

319

36. Ibid., 49r: “che la città si armi.” 37. Ibid., 48r: “la obstinatione in che noi ci troviamo mi pare reprehensibile molto . . . da farsi incontro ad Ces[a]re per assicurare la città.” 38. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:98. Varchi rarely had a nice word to say about any of his contemporaries, but this has not prevented his description becoming Albizzi’s epitaph among scholars: see most recently Carl Brandon Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004), 82. 39. ASF, CP, 71: 50r, 50v, 51r: “non solamente sanza profitto alcuno ma con grande detrimento di quella”; “un thesoro infi nito”; “la città è stata quasi sempre o in potere d’uno tirano o di pochi cittadini potenti”; “bene universale della Patria loro”; “che le Republicche non possino essere ben consigliate dai Cittadini grandi e potenti”; “legitimo populare governo”; “e Magistrati et non e Cittadini particulari.” 40. Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 98. 41. ASF, CP, 71: 50v: “in questa città in tutto el tempo della sua vita non fu mai forma di Republica se non dal dua al xii.” 42. Ibid., 52r, 53r, 54r: “Rompere questo ghiaccio”; “se faremo più obstinati: trovandosi il fuoco più vicino”; “sieno conpatibili questi dua principi insieme non altrimenti che sia l’acqua et il fuoco”; “[la] venuta dello ex[erci]to Imperiale.” See also 55r–v: “ci siamo opressi da quelli Tyranni da i quali Dio et la occaxione della venuta del suo ex[erci]to ci habb’ liberti.” 43. Ibid., 52r, 52v: “la arrivata di Ces[a]re con tanta Reputatione et forze in Italia da potere con uno solo trombetto . . . farci Rebellare le più parte dello stato nostro”; “quello dolcissimo desiderio della libertà.” 44. See especially the discussion on 13 August 1529: ibid., 65v–69r. 45. See Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:38–43; Nardi, Istorie, 2:167–170; Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 147–151. 46. Baglione did not receive the traditional title of captain general because Ercole d’Este, son of Duke Alfonso II of Ferrara, nominally held this position; but his father had refused to allow him to assume the post, fearing to alienate either the emperor or the pope: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1:498– 504 and 537–540; 2:37–38; and Nardi, Istorie, 2:159–160. Baglione belatedly received the title on 26 January 1530. 47. A copy of the accord between Baglione and Orange survives in ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 31v–32v. See also Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:141–146. 48. See ibid., 2:146–147; Nardi, Istorie, 2:162–163; Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 167–168. See also the discussion of Albizzi’s actions in the pratica on 27 September: ASF, CP, 71: 99v–102v. The almost complete absence of any criticism directed at Albizzi, or even at the surrender of Arezzo in the

320

Notes to Pages 115–117

49.

50.

51.

52.

53. 54.

55. 56. 57.

58.

abstract, lends credence to the notion that his actions conformed to the government’s wishes. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 179r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Casentino, to Luigi and Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, 20 September 1529: “mutliplicare el pericolo.” Ibid., 179r–v: “potere col’ stare in fi renze fare fructo alcuno alla ciptà et alla libertà sua, Dio sa che io ci mecterei la propria vita così.” Compare with the letters that Guicciardini wrote to the Otto di Guardia in December 1529 and March 1530, protesting his devotion to Florence but also his fear of persecution: Guicciardini, Opere inedite, 10:133–136, 141–142. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:197–198; Jones, Francesco Vettori, 219–220; Sanuto, I diarii, 52:137. A second round of detentions occurred later, beginning in early December. On this occasion Giovanni Vettori and Girolamo degli Albizzi were among the victims: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:325. Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 155–157; idem, “Bindo Altoviti, Renaissance Banker and Papal Financier,” in Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti, ed. Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano, and Dimitrios Zikos (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003), 21–57. By September 1531, Strozzi, in business with Bindo d’Antonio Altoviti, had loaned the pope over 180,000 ducats, in effect underwriting the papal-imperial military expedition against Florence. Guicciardini, Opere inedite, 10:137–138, 142–143. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 180r–v, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3 December 1529: “Dio sa se dove n’ho havuto occasione ho facio buono officio per la ciptà . . . in modo che la cità restarà libera et ben’ assicurava di mantenere la libertà.” See also 184v, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 14 December 1529: “io non sono a servitio del papa.” Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini, 1:292. The Franciscan chronicler Girolamo Ughi recorded this distrust: Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze,” 151. Printed in Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini, 1:289. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 186r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 19 December 1529: “non veggo scampo alla ruina della ciptà.” ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 180r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3 December 1529: “ho havuto dispiacere grandissimo per intendere e danni vostre et de altri . . . che sono cose da fare crepare el cuore a ognuno che è nato in quella ciptà.” Varchi reported that Luigi Guicciardini fled Florence soon after the fi rst detentions occurred in October 1529: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:198.

Notes to Pages 117–121

321

59. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 186r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 19 December 1529: “la provisione atroce che hanno facta contro a rebelli rompendo fideicommisi et donatione.” 60. See Stephens, Fall of the Florentine Republic, 249–251. On the confi scation of property see ASF, Capitani della Parte Guelfa, Numeri Rossi, 80: 158r– 169r; 84: 149v–165v. 61. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 185r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 14 December 1529: “andrei in qualunque luogo loro mi disegnassino” 62. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 186r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 19 December 1529: “chi mi avitatta in fi renze non potessi dire che io non tenessi conto di loro.” In the same letter, however, Guicciardini expressed his fear that his enemies in Florence would accuse him of traveling to Lucca to confide with the recently arrived papal and imperial representatives there. See also 181r. 63. On the details of attack and counterattack, and the many tales of valor and treachery about the siege of Florence, see “Diario d’incerto del 1529 e 1530 per l’assedio di Firenze,” ed. Umberto Dorini, Rivista storica degli archivi Toscani 4 (1932): 30–45, 140–152; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:132–536; Nardi, Istorie, 2:170–218; Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 184–321. 64. Angelo Ventura, ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 2 vols. (Rome: Laterza, 1976), 1:104–105. See the description of this process given by Vincenzo Fidele: Sanuto, I diarii, 52:330. 65. Sanuto, I diarii, 51:615. 66. Ibid., 52:175. See also Fidele’s observation on the damage wrought on the besiegers by the weather, at 137 and 216. 67. Ibid., 52:137–138, 215–216, 345–346. This portrait was, for many years, identified as representing Cosimo I de’ Medici, and dated to 1537. In 1997, Elizabeth Cropper convincingly argued that it in fact depicted Francesco Guardi during the siege of Florence: Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997). 68. On the meaning of the male elbow see Joaneath Spicer, “The Renaissance Elbow,” in A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 84–128. On the visual relationship between Pontormo’s portrait and Donatello’s sculpture, which is especially apparent in the preparatory drawings, see Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, 88–92; Cropper, Pontormo, 88–89. 69. Guardi’s costume closely matches the description given by Benedetto Varchi of the clothes worn by Lodovico Martelli and Dante da Castiglione on 12 March 1530 for the double duel they fought against Giovanni Bandini and Ruberto Aldobrandini, two Florentines serving in the imperial army: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:331. As one of the grounds for the combat, Martelli

322

Notes to Pages 121–123

70.

71. 72. 73.

74.

75.

and Da Castiglione alleged Bandini and others had insulted and mocked the fighting ability of the Florentine civic militia, and they proposed to prove the falsity of these charges in the duel. It seems probable, therefore, that the clothes worn by Martelli, Da Castiglione, and Guardi were the uniform of the militia. See also the description of the rural militia created, at the instigation of Niccolò Machiavelli, during the administration of Piero Soderini in Luca Landucci, Diario fi orentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iodoco del Badia (Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 273. See Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298–1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic Palace of the Florentine Republic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 54–55. Sanuto, I diarii, 52:330. Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980), 387–399, 522–540. See respectively, Nardi, Istorie, 2:138–139; Sanuto, I diarii, 52:565–566. On the dual civic and religious nature of civilian militia in medieval Italian communes see Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2005), 136. On the symbolic significance of city walls and especially their defense see Silvia Mantini, Lo spazio sacro della Firenze medicea: Trasformazioni urbane e cerimoniali pubblici tra Quattrocento e Cinquecento (Florence: Loggia de’ Lanzi, 1995), 25–66; Sharon T. Strocchia, “Theaters of Everyday Life,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 76. ASF, CP, 71, 104r: “vogliono più presto correr’ questa fortuna et defendersi havendo la Justitia dal canto nostro”; “che la libertà si debbe defendere perchè è uno viver’ secondo le legge”; “vogliono più presto morir’ liberi che vivere in servitù.” Similar sentiments, together with adjurations not to alter the liberty of the city, appear throughout the records of the pratiche for the period: 89v–132r. See Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo (Ponte alle Grazie: Banca Toscana / Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1993), 160–161; Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo, trans. Alberto Curotto (Milan: Electra, 1994), 204–206; Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston de Vere, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2:359–360. The public commissioning of an altarpiece for a conventual church was unusual, but the nuns of Sant’Anna could not have afforded the commission themselves—their community was too poor to support a chaplain—and the church itself had been fi rst built by public order in 1359: Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine divise ne’ suoi Quartieri (facsimile ed., 10 vols), vol. 4, Del Quartiere di S.M.a Novella Parte Seconda (Rome: Multigrafica, 1972), 222; Sharon T. Strocchia,

Notes to Pages 124–128

76.

77.

78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83.

323

“Taken into Custody: Girls and Convent Guardianship in Renaissance Florence,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 198, n. 76. See Roger J. Crum and David G. Wilkins, “In the Defense of Florentine Republicanism: Saint Anne and Florentine Art, 1343–1575,” in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 131–168; Richa, Notizie istoriche, 4:222; Strocchia, “Theaters of Everyday Life,” 66; Giovanni Villani, Cronica, ed. Ignazio Moutier and Francesco Gherardi Dragomanni, facsimile ed., 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Unveränderter Nachdruk, 1969), 4:37. See also the documents recording offerings made by the Signoria for this occasion in 1417 and 1461 cited in Jack Wasserman, “La Vergine e Cristo con Sant’Anna del Pontormo,” in Kunst des Cinquecento in der Toskana, ed. Monika Cämmerer (Munich: Bruckmann, 1992), 150, n. 11. See Crum and Wilkins, “In the Defense,” 150; Rubinstein, Palazzo Vecchio, 71–72. Pontormo must have painted the altarpiece prior to September 1529, when the church was demolished in preparation for the siege. Jack Wasserman has proposed instead that Pontormo actually fi nished the panel in the mid-1520s. His argument, however, is somewhat self-defeating, as Wasserman criticizes proponents of a 1528–29 dating for their reliance on Vasari but then proceeds to use the same source as his principal evidence for an earlier date: Wasserman, “La Vergine e Cristo.” Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 371. See Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 196; Trexler, Public Life, 540. On facial hair and gender in early modern culture more generally see Will Fisher, “The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,” Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001): 155–187. Reprinted in Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 383. ASF, CP, 73: 24r, 25r: “insieme pensaranno alla virtù et debito loro”; “si confortino i gioveni detti a volere mostrare la virtù loro”; “si offeriscono prima purgati ogni affetto omettendo ogni passione rivoltarsi con uno sacrificio con l’animo a dio del Corpo alla patria.” See also Francesco Carducci’s analogous sentiment at 21r. See for example ibid., 1v, 3r, 4r–5v, 28r, 29v. Silvestro Aldobrandini et al., “Cartelli di querela e di sfida tra Lodovico Martelli, Dante da Castiglione e Giovanni Bandini, Rubertino Aldobrandini al tempo dell’assedio di Firenze,” ed. Carlo Milanesi, Archivio storico italiano, nuova serie, 4 (1857): 11–12. See also Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze,” 156–157. On 11 March 1530 Martelli and Da Castiglione entered the imperial camp under safe conduct. The following day they fought Giovanni Bandini and Ruberto Aldobrandini respectively. As both Martelli and Aldobrandini lost their duels, and each subsequently died from the wounds he received, Orange declared the combat to have neither been won nor lost.

324

Notes to Pages 128–132 84. ASF, CP, 73: 47r, 48v; 47v, 62v. 85. See for example ibid., 15r, 20r–25r, 26r, 35v, 36v, 39v, 45v, 51r–52v, 55v. 86. “Predica fatta la domenica fra l’ottava dell’Epifania da fra Zaccheria da Lunigiana in Santa Reparata di Firenze,” ed. Carlo Gargiolli, Il propugnatore 12 (1879): 417–443. 87. Roberto Ridolfi , The Life of Francesco Guicciardini, trans. Cecil Grayson (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1967), 205–206. As Lorenzo Strozzi had done for Palla Rucellai, Jacopo Guicciardini purchased his brother’s library in order to save it. 88. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 188r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 28 June 1530: “così le cose si vanno consumando et riducendo al’ultima ruina.” See also 189r, 191r, and 192r. 89. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 179r, Francesco Guicciardini, in the Casentino, to Luigi and Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, 20 September 1529: “nostri soldati”; ibid., 189r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 1 July 1530: “quelli di drento.” 90. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 192r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 27 July 1530: “la disgratia nostra ci havendoci a vedere per colpa di pochi tristi tutta ruina.” 91. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 189r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 1 July 1530: “ogni cosa che da speranza a quelli di drento è causa che perseverino nella obstinatione et riduchino le cose in luogo che non so che cosa possa bastare a salvarci dal saccho et distrugere per sempre quella ciptà” (see also 188r, 191r, 193r); ibid., 192r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 30 July 1530: “la obstinatione non lascia cognoscere agli huomini la necessità.” 92. Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, ed. Piero Guicciardini and Luigi Guicciardini, vol. 9, La prigionia di Clemente VII, la caduta della Repubblica Fiorentina, e la legazione di Bologna: Carteggio dal 1527 al 1534, (Florence: Cellini, 1866), 157. 93. Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze,” 156. 94. Segni, Storie fiorentine, 1:233–34. 95. See the debates in ASF, CP, 73: 51v–54r, 60v–64r. 96. On the battle of Gavinana, in which both the Prince of Orange and the Florentine commander, Francesco Ferrucci, perished, see Nardi, Istorie, 2:204–208; Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 310–315; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:478–492. The Florentines’ compromised communications had doomed Ferrucci’s advance from the start—even Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, knew of the plan: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 190r. 97. On Baglione’s coup d’état and the fi nal capitulation of the city see Nardi, Istorie, 2:212–214; Roth, Last Florentine Republic, 315–320; Varchi, Storia

Notes to Pages 132–134

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103.

104.

105.

106.

107.

325

fiorentina, 2:497–513. A debate has existed, since 1530, on the extent of Baglione’s treachery. Nardi asserted that the Perugian general had promised Orange not to attack the imperial camp while the viceroy led the expedition to Gavinana: 2:220. Roth offers a nuanced discussion of Baglione’s confl icting loyalties at 299–309. The text of settlement is reproduced in Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:514–518. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 193r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 5 August 1530: “la dispositione di molti.” Segni, Storie fiorentine, 1:285. See for example ASF, CP, 71: 96r, 102r, 107r, 107v, 108r, 111r, 114v, 116r. ASF, CP, 73: 58r, 62r. See the similar acknowledgments by other speakers on the same day at 62v, 63v. See P. J. Jones, “Communes and Despots: The City State in Late-Medieval Italy,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th Series, 15 (1965): 71–96; Christine Shaw, Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), for similar analyses of the tendency toward oligarchy in all Renaissance Italian city-states, whatever their political structures. Notably, the evidence provided by Edward Muir (who does also acknowledge the inevitability of oligarchy) to argue that it did matter whether one lived in a republic or a principality in Renaissance Italy addresses the aspirations of urban and rural subalterns only: Edward Muir, “Was There Republicanism in Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 137–167. The evidence from Florence in 1530 would suggest that the closer one was to the actual levers of power, the less it mattered what form the government took. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 35v, Malatesta Baglione and Stefano Colonna to the Signoria, undated: “Sono ormai due mesi che siamo senza carne, un mese senza vino, olio poco o niente.” See also the reports of prices and deprivation recorded in Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze,” 166–167. Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine dell’assedio di Firenze al secondo covegno di Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea (Aquila: Vecchioni, 1926), 3–4. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: doc. 129, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 18 October 1530: “a pop[pia]no le coxe vanno chome nella maggior parte del contado nostro che vi muore assai contadini e ve di più chominciato un pocho del pesto in più luochi e vi si semina pocho e ve assai poderi sanza lavoratori.” ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: doc. 140, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 27 October 1530: “vini sono charissimi la

326

Notes to Pages 134–138

108. 109.

110.

111. 112.

113. 114. 115.

116.

117.

118. 119. 120.

carne el simile et di polli et uova carestia grande Ne contadi e contadini stentono et ne muore assai sono quasi tutti ammalati.” See also doc. 37: “noi siamo voti qua d’ogni cosa necessaria p’el vivere”; and ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 99v. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 39. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 198, Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 16 December 1530: “La doana fa poco le porte poco le sale mancho e contratti non nulla.” ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 127r, Francesco Vettori, in Florence, to Giovanni Vettori, in Volterra, 5 January 1531: “noi qui attendiamo ad fondarci dalla fame alla quale col credito maxime di fi lippo strozzi sia reparato in qualche parte ma habbiamo tanti debiti che siamo necessitati fallire.” See for example ASF, Consiglio dei Dugento, 128: 121r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 87r, Cristofano Sernigi, in Florence, to Francesco Vettori, in Rome, 31 August 1530: “priegovi mi raccomandiate a N[ostro] S[ignore] e a messer Jacopo Salviati.” Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 5. Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 182, n. 6. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 80r, Raffaello Velluti, in Florence, to Lucrezia Salviati, in Rome, 22 August 1530: “Al mag[nifi]co Jacopo al quale ho scripto mi racomandate che a quelle cose che io sono habile et buona nella ciptà et fuor’ della ciptà si ricordi di me come degli amici sua.” Ibid., 82r, Piero di Leonardo Salviati, in Florence, to Lucrezia Salviati, in Rome, 24 August 1530: “io ho scripto una al mag[nifi ]co Jacopo vostro raccomandandomi a Sua S[igno]ria preghandolo e così pregho voi lo preghiate che nelli honori e utili della Ciptà . . . non mi dimentichi.” ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana, busta 8, inserto 239, unfoliated: “non era vinta a una fava o dua disse a messer silvestro fate che della iii si erano tante . . . messer silvestro ando et riconto le fave et disse forse ella vinta”; “tutte le mie atione nel magistrato di signori et li otto et dieci si sono fatee tutte le chose di chomune chonsenso.” Ibid.: “Dicho che mai troverete che per mio chonto venissi mai giovane nessuno in palazo ne mai alchuno ne richerchai.” ASF, CP, 71: 1r: “per non dare materia di offensione ad chi haveva in quel tempo consigliato.” ASF, OGBR, 209: 31v–32v and 52r–53r; and OGBR, 231: 8v and 10v. Concerning Gonzaga’s intervention see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 47v, as well as Nardi, Istorie, 2:220–221. On 10 December 1530, the Otto commuted Girolami’s sentence to confi nement in the prisons at Pisa. The men executed were Francesco Carducci, Bernardo da Castiglione, Giovanbattista di Galeotto Cei, Jacopo Gherardi, Pieradovardo di Girolamo Giachinotti, and Luigi di Paolo Soderini.

Notes to Pages 138–143

327

121. ASF, OGBR, 231: 12v, 13r–14r, 15v, and 17v. The other men exiled were Neri di Tommaso del Bene, Girolamo di Francesco Bettini, Guido da Castiglione, Cherubino di Tommaso Fortini, Federigo di Giuliano Gondi, Andreuolo di Otto Niccolini, Piero di Bartolomeo Popoleschi, Giovanni di Simone Rinuccini, Tommaso Soderini, Alfonso Strozzi, and Bartolomeo di Leonardo Tedaldi. The two men imprisoned were Giovanni Ambruogi and Cino di Girolamo di Cino. Piero Popoleschi later received a sentence of death for his role in arson attacks on the Medici villa at Careggi and the Salviati villa in the valley of the Mugnone: see OGBR, 209: 89r–90v. 122. ASF, OGBR, 231: 8r, 11r–15v, 17v. 123. Francesco Vettori, in a letter of 1531 or 1532 to Nikolaus von Schönberg, specifically identified the giovani of the militia as enemies that the Medicean stato had to neutralize: Francesco Vettori, “Tre pareri di Francesco Vettori, anno 1531–32,” ed. Gino Capponi, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 437. 124. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 4, 21. 125. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: doc. 173, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 25 November 1530: “chome un medicho prudente che a alle mani uno malato debole e pieno di tanti umori”: “medicina gagliarda”; “riduranno questo malato in termine non sarà da dubitare della vita.” 126. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 28. See also the similar sentiment articulated in a letter from Francesco Vettori to Lanfredini, on 16 November 1530, printed in Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 441–443: “è impossibile levare della città tanti inimici quanti ci habbiamo, perchè ci rimarebbono pochi huomini.” 127. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 92r. 128. Jones, Francesco Vettori, 235, n. 68. The “others” would appear to refer to the other men sitting on the Otto di Pratica, elected on 26 September by the balìa: Luigi di Agnolo della Stufa, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, and Corso di Michele delle Colombe, who died in office (Bernardo di Francesco del Tovaglia replaced him): ASF, Tratte, 907: 67r. 129. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 7. A month before this letter, for example, Valori had written to Luigi Guicciardini, commissioner for Pisa, instructing him not to proceed against Paolantonio di Tommaso Soderini because his father had promptly paid large sums of money to the new regime. Valori stated that he felt obliged, therefore, to provide for the Soderini: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 4. Agostino Rossi provides a lengthy analysis of the internal tensions within the Medicean camp: Rossi, Francesco Guicciardini, 1:215–223.

4. Neither Fish nor Flesh 1. I owe the observation that the 1530s was a period when being Florentine was difficult to Elizabeth Cropper, “Prolegomena to a New Interpretation

328

Notes to Pages 144–146

2.

3.

4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

of Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrogh et al. (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1985), 157. On the events of August 1530 see Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib, 3 vols. (Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843–44), 2:513–545; Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2:222–223. On Valori’s residence at the Palazzo Medici and his position as de facto head of the regime see also Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine dell’assedio di Firenze al secondo covegno di Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea (Aquila: Vecchioni, 1926), 6. The twelve men elected were Ormannozzo di Tommaso Deti, Luigi di Agnolo della Stufa, Matteo di Agnolo Niccolini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Raffaello di Francesco Girolami, Leonardo di Bernardo Ridolfi , Filippo di Alessandro Machiavelli, Antonio di Piero Gualterotti, Andrea di Tommaso Minerbetti, Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Zanobi di Berto Bartolini, and Niccolò di Bartolomeo del Troscia: ASF, Tratte, 907: 179r. ASF, OGBR, 209: 1r; Tratte, 907: 56r and 67r. The fi rst Otto di Guardia of the new stato consisted of Jacopo di Pandolfo Corbinelli, Maso di Bernardo de’ Nerli, Donato d’Antonio Cocchi, Francescantonio di Francesco Nori, Lorenzo di Donato Acciaiuoli, Raffaello di Matteo Fedini, Domenico di Braccio Martelli, and Guido di Jacopo del Cittadino. The Otto di Pratica were Luigi d’Agnolo della Stufa, Francesco di Piero Guicciardini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, Francesco di Piero Vettori, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, and Corso di Michele delle Colombe. ASF, Tratte, 907: 179r–180v, 188r. Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfi ni (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970), 440. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 6. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 131r, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 24 January 1531: “non posso altro che dolermi con voi che le coxe non sieno intese da chi a fare chome saria il bixongnio per la sichurta nostra pure penso che alla venuta era dello arciveschovo di chapua . . . verra con qualche buon resoluzion in modo che si doverra pigliare migliore ordine alle coxe non si fa di presente.” Bernardo Segni, Storie fiorentine di Messer Bernardo Segni, gentiluomo fiorentino, dall’anno MDXXVII al MDLV, 3 vols. (Milan: Società Tipografica de’ Classici Italiani, 1805), 1:322–323. Compare with the discussion of the position of Andrea Doria in Genoa after 1528 in Thomas Allison Kirk, Genoa and the Sea: Policy and Power in an

Notes to Pages 146–147

11.

12. 13.

14.

15.

16.

329

Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559–1684 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 19–22. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 131r, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 24 January 1531: “alla venuta della ex[cellen]tia del ducha si doverra fare quello restassi in direto in modo o pure speranza che se non prima allora le coxe si stabiliranno in modo potremo stare.” See the similar sentiment expressed by Francesco Vettori, in April 1531: Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 453. According to some accounts Alessandro was the son of Clement VII. The actual truth of the Medici prince’s paternity remains impossible for historians to determine. Contemporaries, however (even his many enemies, who never missed an opportunity to denigrate Alessandro) accepted the fi rst Medici prince of Florence as the son of Lorenzo de’ Medici. More indications support this identification than the alternate view that the pope was his father, but then dynastic imperatives made it important for the Medici to promote him as such. If Alessandro was Lorenzo’s son, then he descended in a direct line of eldest-born males from Cosimo il Vecchio. If, however, he was Clement’s son, then Alessandro was the illegitimate son of an illegitimate son of the younger brother of Lorenzo il Magnifico. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 83. Ibid., 84. Guicciardini was in Bologna, hence his reference to Florence as “that” city and state. See also ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 198r and 202r. On the return of Alessandro de’ Medici to Florence in 1531 see Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:620–628. The appointment of Alessandro did not pass without some controversy. According to Varchi, Ippolito de’ Medici, to whom the pope had given a cardinal’s hat during the siege of the city, wanted to govern Florence himself. He apparently arrived in the city on 20 April 1531 with the intention of supplanting his still-absent cousin. However, Schönberg and the hastily dispatched Bartolomeo Valori persuaded the young cardinal to return to Rome within a week: ibid., 2:609–611. See also the letters of Francesco Vettori to Bartolomeo Lanfredini in late April and early May 1531, reprinted in Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 454–456. See Danilo Marrara, Studi giuridici sulla Toscana medicea: Contributo alla storia degli stati assoluti in Italia (Milan: Giuffrè, 1965), 4–6. A copy of the full text of the imperial bull exists in ASF, CS, Serie 1, 12: 215r–220v, and is printed in Lorenzo Cantini, ed., Legislazione Toscana (Florence: Pierto Fantosini e Figlio, 1800), 1:35–37. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:625. See also Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537, 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 2:192–196; Segni, Storie fiorentine, 1:328–332. Nerli was a

330

Notes to Pages 148–151

17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23. 24. 25.

26.

27.

28.

member of the Signoria for July–August 1531. Note that Segni mixes up the chronology of events. Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 118. See also the analogous expression by Luigi Guicciardini in April 1533: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56r. G.-B. Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1847), 183. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 130r, Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 19 November 1531: “Andai hiarsera con sì zoppo a palazzo per parlare al papa di più cose.” Filippo had injured his foot in late October: see 125v and 129r. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:633; Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 193–194; Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, 183. These are the well-known pareri (opinions) published in the fi rst volume of the Archivio Storico Italiano in 1842 and analyzed in Felix Gilbert, “Alcuni discorsi di uomini politici fiorentini e la politica di Clemente VII per la retaurazione medicea,” Archivio storico italiano 93, no. 2 (1935): 3–24; Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 187–192; Mark Jurdjevic, “The Guicciardinian Moment: The Discorsi Palleschi, Humanism, and Aristocratic Republicanism in Sixteenth-Century Florence,” in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher S. Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 113–139. BNCF, Manoscritti Palatini, 454: 19v, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Francescantonio Nori, in Florence, 21 January 1532: “senza mostrare che questa sia vogl[i]a di N[ostro] S[ignore] nè opinione sua perchè vorremo che . . . paressi che S[ua] B[eatan]ta lo consentissi et non ordinassi et tutto si faciessi per sattisfare alle vogl[i]e de’ Cittadini.” On this point see also Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 188–192. Francesco Guicciardini, “Discorso di Francesco Guicciardini a dì 30 gennajo 1531–32,” ed. Gino Capponi, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 456. Roberto Acciaiuoli, “Due pareri di Ruberto Acciaiuoli, anno 1531–32,” ed. Gino Capponi, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 448. The comparison with Sparta would suggest that Acciaiuoli saw Alessandro’s role as institutional, as a nominal prince, rather than as possessing actual monarchical power. ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 1v; Tratte, 907: 191v. In fairly typical Florentine fashion, by which the names of various committees and councils rarely reflected with any accuracy the actual makeup of the body, this committee was referred to as the Dodici Riformatori (the Twelve Reformers). Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 138–140. The fi nal constitution promulgated on 27 April looks very similar to that proposed by Francesco Vettori in his third parere: Francesco Vettori, “Tre pareri di Francesco Vettori, anno 1531–32,” ed. Gino Capponi, Archivio storico italiano 1 (1842): 442–445. Ibid., 146–147.

Notes to Pages 151–154

331

29. See John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280–1400 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 30. ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 1v–4v: “sarebbe molto difficile congregarlo tanto spesso quanto sarebbe necessario per la expeditione delle cose della ciptà” (2v). The Dugento’s actual membership exceeded its nominal membership. For the ninety-four additional members see ASF, Tratte, 907: 181r–v. This document is dated 28 April 1532 and differs from the original list of 27 April (recorded in the provvisione of the Senate), which listed only eighty-two names. 31. ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 3r–v. See also Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1976), 52–53; Giuseppe Pansini, “Le ‘Ordinazioni’ del 27 aprile 1532 e l’assetto politico del principato mediceo,” in Studi in memoria di Giovanni Cassandro, ed. Francesca Grispo (Rome: Ministero per i Beni e Attività Culturali, Direzione Generale per gli Archivi, 1991), 760–785. 32. ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 3v: “Et per dar capo a decti consiglieri in luogo del gonfaloniere di iustitia . . . essere et sia el duca Alessandro de’ Medici, el quale in futuro si habbi a chiamare il Duce della repubblica fiorentina come si chiama el Duge di Venetia.” Note that Cantini mistakenly transcibed this passage to read: “si habbia a chiamare il Duca della Repubblica Fiorentina”: Cantini, Legislazione, 1:9. The original manuscript provision clearly reads “duce,” easily distinguishable from the “duca” that precedes Alessandro’s name and the “duge” that refers to the Doge of Venice. Giuseppe Pansini published a corrected version in 1991: Pansini, “Le ‘Ordinazioni,’ ” 772–785. On the legal issues of Alessandro’s new title see Marrara, Studi giuridici, 11–12; Antonio Marongiu, Storia del diritto pubblico: Principi e istituti di governo in Italia dalla metà del IX alla metà del XIX secolo (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1956), 150–162. 33. On the position of the doge in Venice see Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1980), 109–162; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), 251–288. On the relationship between objective and subjective structures see Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 34. Marrara, Studi giuridici, 11. Compare with the similarly ambiguous position of the Visconti and then the Sforza in Milan: Giancarlo Andenna et al., Comuni e signorie nell’Italia settentrionale: La Lombardia (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1998), 710–728; Marongiu, Storia del diritto pubblico, 227–252.

332

Notes to Pages 154–156 35. Compare with the analogous relationships established with Charles V by the republican governments of Genoa and Lucca in the same period discussed, respectively, in Kirk, Genoa and the Sea, 14–22, and Stefano Tabacchi, “Lucca e Carlo V: Tra difesa della ‘libertas’ e adesione al sistema imperiale,” in L’Italia di Carlo V: Guerra, religione e politica nel primo Cinquecento. Atii del Convegno internazionale di studi, Roma, 5–7 aprile 2001, ed. Francesca Cantù and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (Rome: Viella, 2003), 411–432. 36. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 191r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 1 January 1535: “sarebbe optima et stabilirebbe la pace di Italia.” See also similar sentiments expressed by both Girolamo and Luigi Guicciardini: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 192v; Serie 1, 100: 56v. 37. ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 50r–51r. 38. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 165r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 1 January 1535: “S[ua] M[aes]ta si mostra molto inclinata al fi renze del duca in modo che qui nessuno non si fare dubio che gli dara la moglie sua” (see also 191r, another letter written on the same day expressing nearly identical sentiment); Serie 1, 129: 205v, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 3 June 1535: “Dio voglia che la cosa gli succeda ben che a noi non resta altro fondamento che la grandeza sua.” 39. BNCF, Manoscritti Palatino, 454: 19r, Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Francescantonio Nori, in Florence, 21 January 1532: “se Luigi scriverra lo potete assiqurare che le lettere non andrano da Herode a Pilato ma in mano solo di S[ua] S[anti]tà et poi al fuoco.” 40. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 226r, Bartolomea di Giovanni Pandolfi ni, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, in Rome, 14 July 1531: “Racomandare Giovanni mio marito a Piedi di Nostro Signore pregando sua Beatitudine sia contenta farli gratia che questa volta lui sia veduto gonfalonieri di justitia.” 41. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 206r, Filippo Valori, in Florence, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 27 September 1531: “M[on]s[igno]re R[everendi]x[i]mo di Capua ne fa intendere che nostro S[igno]re desiderebbe che si creassi 5 uficiali di monte di nuovo.” 42. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 47v, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 21 November 1531: “intedo del andate del buondelmonti a Roma nacque del Duca: et che al papa non l’aspetava: ma che haveva disegnato domenicho canigiani.” 43. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 37: 14, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Rome, to Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, 29 August 1534: “De le bone provisioni fatte costi per la defensione del stato in ogni caso che possa succeder; ne ho sentito et sento grandissimo piacere ma vedendo N[ostro] S[ignore] aiutarsi sì bene

Notes to Pages 156–158

44.

45.

46.

47.

48.

49.

333

come fa, io sperò che non sara bisogna usarle.” See also similar sentiments expressed by Ottaviano de’ Medici and Francesco Guicciardini during the summer of 1534: CS, Serie 1, 61: 123r; and 129: 198r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 16: 33r, Alessandro de’ Medici, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 27 July 1534: “per altra via V[ostra] S[igno]ria possa haver’ inteso la indispositione di N[ostro] S[igno]re et in che pericholo si trova tucta”; “mi risponda el juditio suo come io mi devo governar’ in nel esser’ mio circa questo stato acciochè tanto meglio et più facilmente si mantengha come io et voi altri mia amici desiderano”; ibid., 41r, Alessandro de’ Medici, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 23 August 1534: “lo exito della quale con gran timor si aspetta.” On concerns provoked by the death of Leo X, in December 1521, see ASF, Acquisti e Doni, 139, Insert 1: 36; and 302, Insert 1: unfoliated letter from Filippo Ridolfi , in Rome, to Gismondo Ridolfi , in Florence, 14 December 1521. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 214r, Zanobi di Nofri Acciaiuoli, in Florence, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 27 September 1531: “conoscho dall’opera la gientelezza di V[ost]ra Mag[nificen]tia et l’amore mi portate.” For Acciaiuoli’s election, see ASF, Tratte, 907: 67r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 82r, Piero Salviati, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, in Rome, 24 August 1530: “Questa per rallegrarvi con vostra Mag[nificen]tia delle cose successe della vectoria hauta di questa Ciptà”; “diro che per tutta la città non s’atenndo se non a dire Palle Palle e pane.” While probably exagerrated, Salviati’s report does suggest a degree of popu lar support for the overthrow of the stato of 1527–30 and the return of the Medici. ASF, Serie 1, 335: 226r, Bartolomea Pandolfi ni, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, in Rome, 14 July 1531: “priego V[ostra] Mag[nificen]tia sia contenta fare tale opera ancora con Messer Jacopo vostro: che tale effetto seghua.” ASF, MAP, 140: 156, 160, 172, Bernardo Lanfredini, in Prato, to Maria Salviati de’ Medici, in Florence, 26 March 1533: “desiderei vostra S[igno]ria ne schrivesi al ma[gnifi ]co Jachopo salviati ho si veramente alla ma[gnifi ]ca Madonna luchrezia che fusino chontenti per amore a vostra S[igno]ria adoperare in modo che io avesi questo mio atento.” In addition to sitting on the Quarantotto, Strozzi sat on the Otto di Pratica, the Ducal Council, and served as a Monte official—each one time only. He also was elected an accoppiatore on several occassions: ASF, Tratte, 907: 56r, 67r, 186r, 187r, 192r, 193r, 203r. Valori, as well as his seat on the Senate, served on the Otto di Pratica twice and the Ducal Council three times. He too was elected an accoppiatore on multiple occasions: ASF, Tratte,

334

Notes to Pages 158–160

50.

51.

52.

53. 54.

55.

56. 57. 58.

907: 67r, 68r, 186r–v, 187v, 193v, 202v, 203v. That Valori was elected to as accoppiatore in April 1537, when he had openly declared himself against the Medici, testifies to the scant importance of this office after 1532. ASF, OGBR, 211: 7r–v; 231: 30r. The other men involved were Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori, Jacopo d’Antonio Pazzi, and Bernardo di Lorenzo Jacopi: they were banned from the vicarate of Certaldo as a result of the crime. ASF, OGBP, 4: 11v, 15r–16r; 231: 112v. The other men involved were Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Giuliano di Francesco Salviati (the principal instigators of the affair), Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori, Paolantonio di Giovanni Mannelli, Giovantonio di Guglielmo Alessandri, Cosimo d’Alessandro Pazzi, Mutolo di Filippo da Ricasoli, Luigi di Francesco Machiavelli, Maso di Carlo Strozzi, and Cencio di Raffaello Guasconi. See ASF, Manoscritti, 125: 65r; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:19–24. Varchi relates that this was a tradition for Carnival, which begins on Saint Stephen’s Day (26 December) in Florence, as a means of ritually enforcing the closure of shops; but by the sixteenth century, protagonists generally warned merchants by sounding a horn before commencing the game. See also Michel Plaisance, Florence in the Time of the Medici: Public Celebrations, Politics, and Literature in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2008), 31. See OGBR, 231: 191v. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 52r–v; OGBP, 6: 75r. See also the letter of Filippo Strozzi to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 31 October 1534, printed in Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, 195 esp. Varchi provides a lengthy account of the entire affair beginning with a masked party at the home of Niccolò Nasi attended by Luisa Strozzi, Giuliano Salviati, and Duke Alessandro himself: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:65–76. In a macabre epilogue, Luisa died in December 1534, allegedly poisoned by the wife of Giuliano Salviati: ASF, Manoscritti, 125: 162r–163r. On the marriage of Caterina de’ Medici and the fi nancial damage it brought to Strozzi see ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 133r–134r, 137v; Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in SixteenthCentury Florence and Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 158–159 and 175; R. J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici (London: Longman, 1998), 15–17. On the presence of the younger Strozzi in Rome and their association with the exiles there see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 165v. ASF, OGBP, 14: 31r–v. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:611. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 336: 34v–35r, Filippo Valori, in Certaldo, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 14 April 1536: “disordine grandissimo di danari e debito.”

Notes to Pages 161–164

59. 60.

61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69.

70. 71.

72.

335

See also 9r and 66v: letters from Paolantonio Valori dated 12 February and 27 June 1536. On Strozzi’s difficulties see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 166–172. ASF, OGBR, 231: 140v–147r; Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2:579–582, 3:62–63, 98; Nardi, Istorie, 2:223–224, 254–257. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 191r. See also Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:88–90; Nardi, Istorie, 2:239–242. On Ippolito de’ Medici see Guido Rebecchini, “Un altro Lorenzo”: Ippolito de’ Medici fra Firenze e Roma (Venice: Marsilio, 2010). Segni, Storie fiorentine, 2:60. Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, 183. Ibid., 222. On this point see also Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica, 206, 222–223. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:105–112, 133–230; Nardi, Istorie, 2:244–248, 258–279. On the debate in Naples see also the account of Galeotto Giugni printed in Nardi, 2:355–391; Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, ed. Piero Guicciardini and Luigi Guicciardini, vol. 9, La prigionia di Clemente VII, la caduta della Repubblica Fiorentina, e la legazione di Bologna (Florence: Cellini, 1866), 331–395; ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 2”: doc. 40; Lucie de los Santos, “Guicciardini e la questione della libertà: La querela dei fuorusciti fiorentini davanti a Carlo V (1535–1536),” in Bologna nell’età di Carlo V e Guicciardini, ed. Emilio Pasquini and Paolo Prodi (Bologna: Mulino, 2002), 383–395. Ippolito de’ Medici died at Itri on 10 August 1535, traveling to petition the emperor in person. Both Benedetto Varchi and Jacopo Nardi in their histories, as well as the exiles at the time, accused Alessandro of having his cousin poisoned: Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:113–125; Nardi, Istorie, 2:249–254. See most recently Stefano Dall’Aglio, L’assassino del duca: Esilio e morte di Lorenzino de’ Medici (Florence: Olschki, 2011). ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 119r. Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:289–361; Nardi, Istorie, 2:285–306. See Nicholas Scott Baker, “For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici in Florence, 1480–1560,” Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 444–478. Randolph Starn, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982). ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere trovate fuori del serie nel fasciolo I”: doc. 40, Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 20 January 1537: “se mi sono carne o pesce.” The seminal study of exile in medieval and Renaissance Italy remains Starn, Contrary Commonwealth. More recently, see Christine Shaw, The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000);

336

Notes to Pages 165–167

73.

74.

75.

76.

77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

Alison Brown, “Insiders and Outsiders: The Changing Boundaries of Exile,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 337–383; Stephen J. Milner, “Exile, Rhetoric, and the Limits of Civic Republican Discourse,” in At the Margins: Minority Groups in Premodern Italy, ed. Stephen J. Milner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), 162–191; Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The Politics of Exclusion in Early Renaissance Florence (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007). Inferno, Canto 1: 4–7. The translation is from Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno: The Indiana Critical Edition, ed. Mark Musa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 19. The meanings of Dante’s “selva oscura” are, of course, multiple: the physical and mental experience of exile is but one of its referents. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 72, undated document in the hand of Filippo Strozzi (based on internal evidence written in 1537): “io desiderei essere restituito alla patria . . . perchè il nome di rebelle dannifica grandemente li traffichi et negotii miei mercantili . . . li oltre vorrei potere fi nire il palazzo et exigere dalli miei debitori.” The reference to the palazzo is to the Palazzo Strozzi, designed by Benedetto da Maiano for Filippo’s father, Filippo di Matteo. Begun in 1489, the palace was not completed until 1538. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 47v, 61v, Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 10 June 1533: “la Ex[cellenti]tà del Duca dimostra più l’un giorno che l’altro esse sopra la età sua patiente intendere et tutto”; “perchè altro bene non possiamo havere nè in altro consiste la salute di questa ciptà: essendo li inimici nostri più obstinati et più velenosi che mai.” See also ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56v; MDP, 333: 254r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 202r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 18 November 1534: “ho sempre giudichato che habbino poco fondamento et che precedino da’ pazzi et disperati”; “so non mi posso fidar’ di questi ribaldi nè cosa alcuna mai mi potrebbe persuader’ il contrario chè so che m’hanno in somo odio.” Guicciardini, Opere inedite, 9:354. Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, 217. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 217r, Girolamo Guicciardini to Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, 6 February 1537: “son per fare ongni opera per quietare le cose di fuora con e fuorusciti o altri in modo sarà facil cosa non avessimo ghuerra ma chome si sia si può male giudichare il futuro.” ASF, CS, Serie 1, 60: 107r. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 60: 104r, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pistoia, 19 June 1537: “qua non si vede altro che buio.” See also 173r and 174r. The correspondence of the Florentine exiles in the same

Notes to Pages 167–172

82. 83.

84.

85.

86.

337

time frame asserts the predominance of fear and confusion within Florence during the early summer of 1537: see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 27v, 37r. ASF, Tratte, 907: 180r, 188r. See for example ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 145r; Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: docs. 106, 121. Lorenzo was, in fact, briefly detained for the duration of the exiles’ ill-fated military expedition in the summer of 1537: see CS, Serie 1, 100: 37r. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209, busta titled “Lettere di diversi al mag.co Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal primo gennaio al primo giugno 1537, No. 8”: doc. 64, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 4 February 1537: “te ne ritorni a venetia alle tua faccende con quelle scuse che ti occorreranno così ti preserverai la benivolentia di tutta questa Città et il credito che di fuori hai”; 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 105, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 13 February 1537: “ne voglio mancare di raccomandarti la tua patria quantunche io habbi visto et voglia al continuo per l’opere tue l’amore che tu gli porti” (see also doc. 159, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 12 March 1537: “che l’amore della patria tua la qual quanto posso ti raccomando”); 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 106, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 14 February 1537: “quando tu operi so si come io mi rendo certo che tu facci più infi nite ragioni a te et a tutti noi altri arredierai quella sicurtà et quiete debbe desiderare ogni amorevole et buono cittadino” (see also doc. 121, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 23 February 1537: “quanto prima puoi tornartene a vinetia et levarti dagl’orredii quelle persone che tu giudichi che ti possino dare carico nè apestiscono la quiete et ben della patria come tu”); 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 159, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 12 March 1537: “ciascuno ti tene gl’occhi addosso et repeta che il bene et il male possi venire da te”; “parmi che sieno pochi prudenti che gli huomini che mettono a pericolo lo stato loro senza alcuno benefitio”; 1209, busta titled “Lettere di diversi al mag.co Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal primo gennaio al primo giugno 1537, No. 8”: doc. 242, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Venice, 26 May 1537: “così voi preporrete le cose publiche alle private.” See in the case of Naples, Tommaso Astarita, The Continuity of Feudal Power: The Caracciolo di Brienza in Spanish Naples (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Francesco Guicciardini, Scritti politici e ricordi, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi (Bari: Laterza, 1933), 10. The object of Guicciardini’s ire was book 1, chap. 4: Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi, 2 vols. (Rome: Salerno, 2001), 1 :33–36.

338

Notes to Pages 172–175 87. Guicciardini, Scritti politici e ricordi, 14. 88. Francesco Guicciardini, Le Cose Fiorentine, ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence: Olschki, 1945), 21–22. 89. Guicciardini, Opere inedite, 9:364. 90. On the theme of consensus see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus; Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1999): 994–1020; John M. Najemy, “Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics,” in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 75–104. 91. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 106, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 14 February 1537: “quella sicurtà et quiete”; Niccolini, Filippo Strozzi, 216; CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 121, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 23 February 1537: “scrivendo sempre come sai che è el mio costume a benefitio della città et di chi regge”; “nè apetiscono la quiete et ben della patria come tu.” See also doc. 169. 92. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209, busta titled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 gennaio al 1 giugno 1537”: doc. 54, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Lyon, 23 May 1529: “e disagi mi offendono nè trovo cosa che più mi giovi che l’aria & qui bisogna stare nella città & assiduo”; “io ho sempre desiderato d’essere in buona gratia con questo stato ma non mi curavo d’essere adoperato sì presto in cosa di tanta importantia.” 93. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v, Libro segreto di Luigi di Luigi Martelli: “tutty gl’ufi zy d’utile et onore che io luigi di luigi d’ugholino martelli o avuti.” In August 1541, Martelli petitioned Cosimo I for tax relief, as he had twelve living children: 176r. 94. The nature of office holding in the Medici principate is discussed further in Chapter 5. See also R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986). 95. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 215, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 22 December 1530: “possiamo consumare quello resto del tenpo ci avanza con più piacere e ozio non abiamo fatto il paxato.” 96. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 336: 34r, Filippo Valori, in Certaldo, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 14 April 1536: “essere stato in questo luogo di certaldo molto solutario et carestioso di commettere cosa nessuna e meno d’udirne et io ne ho preso piacere assai per getarmi sì dell’animo come del corpo.” 97. ASF, CS, Serie 3, 95: 203r–v, Lorenzo Strozzi, at Santuccio, to Filippo Strozzi, in Venice, 9 June 1537: “Ho caro commendi la vita mia dell starmi all Villa e godermi la quiete”; “sto non solo per conto dell’aria ma per non intendere sì spesso e sì tosto infi nite cose che mi dispiacciano.”

Notes to Pages 175–179

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98. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 60: 268r, Jacopo Guicciardini, at Poppiano, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pistoia, 12 August 1537: “s’el modo a fuggirlo fussi partirsi dalla ciptà et dalla frequentia delli huomini . . . & venirsene alle ville et tenere vita solitaria come si potrebbe facilmente far’ qui dove sanza dubbio è un paradiso io sopra tucti li altri lo farei.” 99. See Maurice Brock, Bronzino, trans. David Poole Radzinowicz and Christine Schultz-Touge (Paris: Flammarion, 2002); Cropper, “Prolegomena”; Elizabeth Cropper, “Pontormo and Bronzino in Philadelphia: A Double Portrait,” in Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, ed. Carl Brandon Strehlke (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004), 1–33; Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici. 100. Compare Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1997), 106. 101. Compare this observation with the thesis proposed in Ingrid D. Rowland, The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Rowland argues that by the seventeenth century the realm of cultural and intellectual production was the only vehicle remaining for the Tuscan elite to assert and justify their status and prestige. See also the analogous shift in material culture in Venice from a vehicle for expressing of moral values to one highlighting aesthetic values and refi ned taste detected by Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 56–59. Compare with the observations about Dutch portraiture in the seventeenth century in Ann Jensen Adams, “The Three-Quarter Length Life-Sized Portrait in Seventeenth-Century Holland: The Cultural Functions of tranquillitas,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered, ed. Wayne Franits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 158–174. 102. Gabrielle Langdon has recently and unconvincingly argued that this portrait depicts not Francesca but her sister Maria, the mother of Cosimo I, and dates it to 1526: Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 24–32. Apart from the fact that nearly all of the iconographic evidence that Langdon musters to support her identification could equally identify the sitter as Francesca—both being Salviati women married to Medici men—her dating presents a crucial problem. In order for Langdon to be correct (as she acknowledges herself ) Bronzino would have to have painted the portrait prior to the death of Maria’s husband, Giovanni de’ Medici, in November 1526, because after this she always appeared dressed as a widow. This is significant because the only evidence that Langdon presents to distinguish the sitter as Maria consists of the ribbons dangling from one of the books in the portrait. Langdon argues that these refer to

340

Notes to Pages 181–185

103. 104.

105.

106. 107. 108.

109.

110.

Giovanni de’ Medici under his nom de guerre—Giovanni delle Bande Nere (of the Black Bands)—and so identify the sitter as his wife. However, “delle Bande Nere” was a posthumous appellation, so no references to black bands would have had any resonance prior to Giovanni’s death, at which point Maria would have appeared as a widow rather than a faithful wife. The ribbons are also green, not black. On the myth of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, “the non-existent hero,” see Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy during the Italian Wars (1526–1528) (Pisa: Edizioni Plus—Pisa University Press, 2005), xiii–xvii. Brock, Bronzino, 116. Literally fiorentinità translates (very awkwardly) as Florentinity or Florentineness. See Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors for Medici Rule in Florence,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001): 32–47; Adrian W. B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002). Broadly on the mutability of the meanings attached to symbols and places in Renaissance Florence see Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Practiced Place,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 83–103. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56v, Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 6 April 1533: “ha fatto ben’ con la parte ghibellina”; “non so quale possa esse’ maggiore errore che metterla in sospetto et che ragionevolemente possa dubitare della fede.” See for example the juxtaposition and use of liberty and tyranny in the correspondence of Filippo Strozzi: ASF, CS, Serie 3, 95: 5v–6r. Guicciardini, Opere inedite, 9:356, 358. Francesco Guicciardini, Opere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini illustrate da Giuseppe Canestrini, ed. Piero Guicciardini and Luigi Guicciardini, vol. 10, Ricordi autobiografici e di famiglia e scritti vari (Florence: Cellini, 1867), 299. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere trovate fuori di serie nel fasciolo I”: doc. 40, Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 20 January 1537: “che facilmente la città nostra cadere in mano di externi”; “circa la election dal capo quanto alli miei privati interessi non potrei più contentarmene.” ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere trovate fuori di serie nel fasciolo I”: doc. 137, Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to an uncertain French correspondent, 27 February 1537: “il muovere l’armi hora sia grandissimo servitio de ces[are] facendolo patrone con grande justificatione delli lochi importanti di toscana”; “non liberala ma farla molto più schiava che non è al presente”; 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 79, undated document in the hand of Filippo Strozzi: “la città cammina per le poste alla

Notes to Pages 185–187

111. 112.

113.

114.

115. 116.

117.

341

ruina sua et diventera in breve di necessità schiava o del vitello o delli spagnoli o de franzesi perchè cosimo et il bastardino sono per prestare solo il nome a questa ragione.” See also Serie 5, 1209, busta titled “Lettere di diversi al mag.co Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal primo gennaio al primo giugno 1537 No. 8”: doc. 165. Giulio de’ Medici was the illegitimate son of the late Duke Alessandro. The condottiere Alessandro Vitelli had served as a colonel in the imperial army that besieged Florence. Ferrante Gonzaga left him in command of a detachment of soldiers in 1530 to control Florence for the Medici and the emperor. Following the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici, Vitelli siezed control of the fortezza in the name of Charles V. ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 509, Insert 3: 32r: “levare lo stato al S[ign]or Cosimo et metterlo nelle mani di spagnuoli.” ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”: doc. 169, Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 17 March 1537: “chi vuole la libertà et non la servitù la salute et non la ruina di questa nostra patria gli bisogna . . . camminare per la strada di sua M[aest]à o almanco tirarsi da parte.” Compare with Luigi Guicciardini’s analogous opinion of some four years earlier: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56v. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207, busta titled “Lettere trovate fuori di serie in fasciolo I”: doc. 40, Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 20 January 1537: “se voi mi havete trovato sempre alla patria affectionate non dovereste dubitare hora della mente mia”; Serie 3, 108: 145r, Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 17 February 1537: “farò mio debito verso la patria sempre.” Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 3:360–361; Nardi, Istorie, 2:299–306. On the exiles’ troop numbers see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 37r. On their movements see Serie 1, 60: 183r, 187r, and 195r, which also reveal how compromised the expedition was from the beginning. The imperial troops captured fi fty-one Florentines at Montemurlo: see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 95: 141r–142r and 98: 229r–232r. See ASF, CS, Serie 1, 95: 141r–142r and 98: 229r–232r. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207 busta titled “Lettere trovate fuori di serie in fasciolo I”: doc. 118–119, Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Ferrara, 29 November 1537: “l’esito degl’altri fa temere grandamente me e gl’amici miei”; doc. 125, Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Roberto Strozzi, at the imperial court, 22 December 1537: “le cose mie sono di qua in pessimo grado . . . questo è l’ultimo acto della tragedia.” An account of the discovery of Filippo Strozzi’s corpse and the circumstances of his death, signed by Cosimo I, survives in ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 54, Insert 34: 12r–13r. The death was assumed to be suicide, which Cosimo took as a sign of Strozzi’s “most vile soul.”

342

Notes to Pages 187–191 118. Nardi, Istorie, 2:324–325. See also Segni, Storie fiorentine, 2:212. The letter by Cosimo I describing the scene in Strozzi’s room when his corpse was discovered testifies to the presence of “a certain writing in his own hand . . . all bloody.” ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 54, Insert 34: 12v: “una certa scritta di sua mano . . . tutta insanguinata.” 119. See Manfredi Piccolomini, The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide during the Renaissance (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 8–16.

5. Reimagining Florence 1. In strict technical terms the Medici principate did not constitute a monarchy until after Cosimo I’s assumption of the title of grand duke in 1569. Throughout this chapter, however, I use the term “monarchy” to refer to a form of government, in an institutional sense, of rule by an individual, as distinct from the previous communal system of government. 2. The most lucid, if triumphalist, account of the fi rst decade of Cosimo I’s reign remains Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I e la indipendenza del principato mediceo, 2nd ed. (Florence: Vallechi, 1980). See also Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1976), 66–109; Olivier Rouchon, “L’invention du principat médicéen (1512–1609),” in Florence et la Toscane, XIVe–XIXe siècles: Les dynamiques d’un État italien, ed. Jean Boutier, Sandro Landi, and Olivier Rouchon (Rennes Cedex: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2004), 65–90. 3. I am using the term “court society” in a manner analogous to that delineated and explained by Norbert Elias, in The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott, vol. 2, Power and Civility (New York: Pantheon, 1982); idem, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon, 1983). Elias’s work remains fundamental for the notion of the court as a sociological and political entity despite (or perhaps because of ) the wealth of scholarship that has critiqued, criticized, and complicated his thesis: see for example Ronald G. Asch, Nobilities in Transition, 1550–1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and Europe (London: Hodder Arnold, 2003); Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in Languedoc (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Aldo Scaglione, Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991); Jay M. Smith, The Culture of Merit: Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600–1789 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996); Hillay Zmora, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300–1800 (London: Routledge, 2001).

Notes to Pages 192–194

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4. After 1550, the nature of the elite under the Medici principate began to change. While the old Florentine families still continued to dominate, the second half of the sixteenth century witnessed the creation of a regional, Tuscan elite: see Elena Fasano Guarini, “Principe ed oligarchie nella Toscana del ’500,” in Forme e tecniche del potere nella città (secoli XIV–XVII), ed. Sergio Bertelli (Perugia: Università di Perugia, 1979–80), 105–126; Giovanna Benadusi, A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the Creation of the State (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Franco Angiolini, I cavalieri e il principe: L’ordine di Santo Stefano e la Società toscana in Età Moderna (Florence: Edizioni Firenze, 1996). 5. ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 119r: “per capo et primario del governo della ciptà di Firenze et suo domino et de’ magistrati et offici di quelli.” Another provision the following day noted that Cosimo’s formal title, to appear in letters and other documents, would be “the Illustrious Lord Cosimo”: 119v. 6. ASF, Trattati internazionali, 1A–C; Danilo Marrara, Studi giuridici sulla Toscana medicea: Contributo alla storia degli stati assoluti in Italia (Milan: Giuffrè, 1965), 20–21. 7. See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 16: 30r–45r; 61: 87r, 99r, 126r, and 172r. 8. See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 70–74; MDP, 3: 67r, 84r, 91r, 132r; 345: 43v, 44v, 146r. 9. ASF, MDP, 3: 155v, Cosimo I de’ Medici, in Florence, to Pirro Musefi lo, in Naples, 8 April 1541: “el Duca di fiorenza.” This letter represents the earliest extant usage of this signature that I have located. In October 1540, Cosimo still signed his letters with his name only: ibid., 147r. 10. Marrara, Studi giuridici, 22. Pope Pius V granted Cosimo the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany on 27 August 1569, over the objections of both Philip II of Spain and Maximilian II. While Philip, who required Tuscan naval support in the Mediterranean, eventually conceded, Maximilian never conferred imperial imprimatur for the title until his recognition of Francesco. 11. On the reorga nization and institutional reform of the Florentine government and administration in the same period, see Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana, 85–109; Antonio Anzilotti, La costituzione interna dello Stato Fiorentino sotto il duca Cosimo I de’ Medici (Florence: Francesco Lumachi, 1910). 12. See for example ASF, MDP 335: 590r; 336: 206r; 337: 150r; 345: 96r, 264r; 346: 144r; 347: 26r; 349: 304r. Note, however, that many other correspondents continued to address him simply as “Signore” right through the 1540s. 13. See Spini, Cosimo I. 14. ASF, Tratte, 907: 179r–181v, 192r. 15. ASF, Tratte, 717: 167v–189r; 719: 3r–18v and 77r–89v. Of a possible 3,440 positions, 2,073 men with patrician names were drawn (60.26 percent).

344

Notes to Pages 194–196 16. ASF, Tratte, 906: 66r–v. Of the 225 individuals seated, 196 had patrician surnames (87.11 percent). 17. R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 24–51. A glance at the comprehensive tables of patricians under the principality from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries reveals the influx of families with non-Florentine and non-Italian names. Litchfield does note, however, that very few new citizens held offices prior to the 1560s. 18. Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine dell’assedio di Firenze al secondo covegno di Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea (Aquila: Vecchioni, 1926), 141. See also 139. 19. Francesco di Andrea Buonsignori, Memorie (1530–1565), ed. Sandro Bertelli and Gustavo Bertoli (Florence: Libreria Chiari, 2000), 49. On the important role that clothing played as a marker of social distinction from the mid-sixteenth century see Elizabeth Currie, “Clothing and a Florentine Style, 1550–1620,” Renaissance Studies 23, no. 1 (2009): 33–52. 20. ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r–82v, 187r; 907: 43r–44v, 67r–69v. For comparison, on the Dieci di Libertà e Pace between 1502 and 1512, 113 men of a possible 200, and between 1527 and 1530 64 of a possible 70 had their names drawn for the office: ASF, Tratte, 905: 125r–126v; 906: 46r, 47r–48v. On the inner circle of the regime of 1512–27 see Chapter 2 above. The twenty-one men who sat on the Otto di Pratica five or more times between 1532 and 1550 were Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli (6), Giovanni di Bardo Corsi (5), Raffaelle di Pandolfo Corbinelli (6), Agostino di Francesco Dini (6), Andrea di Tommaso Minerbetti (5), Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi (7), Luigi di Piero Guicciardini (6), Raffaelle di Francesco de’ Medici (6), Filippo di Benedetto de’ Nerli (6), Francescantonio di Francesco Nori (6), Luigi di Piero Ridolfi (5), Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici (6), Prinzivalle di M. Luigi della Stufa (7), Giovanni di Filippo dell’Antella (5), Ippolito di Giovanbattista Buondelmonti (5), Alessandro di Gherardo Corsini (6), Federigo di Roberto de’ Ricci (6), Taddeo di Francesco Guiducci (5), Alessandro di Niccolò Antinori (6), Giuliano di Piero Capponi (5), and Girolamo di Luca degli Albizzi (5). 21. Phil Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” American Historical Review 112, no. 4 (2007): 1016–1038. See also Antonio Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale della Repubblica fiorentina (Rome: Multigrafica, 1969), 90; Edward Muir, “Was There Republicanism in Renaissance Republics? Venice after Agnadello,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an Italian City-State, 1297–1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 137–167; Christine Shaw, “Counsel and Consent in Fifteenth-Century Genoa,” English Historical Review 116, no. 468 (2001):

Notes to Pages 196–201

22.

23.

24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

345

834–862; idem, Popular Government and Oligarchy in Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 171. Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi, 2 vols. (Rome: Salerno, 2001), 1:33–36; Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 69. On Florentine sociability and the nature of urban life see F. W. Kent, “ ‘Un paradiso habitato da diavoli’: Ties of Loyalty and Patronage in the Society of Medicean Florence,” in Le radice cristiane di Firenze, ed. Anna Benvenuti, Franco Cardini, and Elena Giannarelli (Florence: Alinea, 1994), 183–210; Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 85–107; Sharon T. Strocchia, “Theaters of Everyday Life,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 55–80; Ronald F. Weissman, “The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 269–280. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 15, Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3 October 1539: “Qui si prosede all’usato.” Ibid., 64, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 4 January 1540: “altro non ci è di nuove.” ASF, CS, Serie 1, 63: 97. For examples of letters devoted to foreign news to the exclusion of Florentine events see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 34, 40, and 49. For examples of local news being confi ned to nonpolitical affairs see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 35 and 49. Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (New York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 271–301. Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, ed. Franco Catalano, 3 vols. (n.p.: Mondadori, 1975), 1:3. Ibid., 1:150. Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537, 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 1:37. Ibid., 2:262. See also 2:172. Compare with the similar conclusions about the effect that the political culture of the principality had on history writing in Florence in Anzilotti, La crisi costituzionale, 113–115. Giovanni della Casa, Galateo, ed. Giorgio Manganelli and Claudio Milanini, 2nd ed. (Milan: Rizzoli, 1977), 60. Baldassar Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano, ed. Amedeo Quondam (Milan: Garzanti, 1981), 129. Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Per formances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s “Book of the Courtier” (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1978), 34–35.

346

Notes to Pages 201–204

36.

37. 38. 39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45.

46.

47. 48.

Rebhorn notes the etymological relationship between sprezzatura and sprezzare (to scorn or despise). Castiglione, Cortegiano, 46, 75, 82–83. On the trope of hostility toward pedantry in court society see also Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 288. Castiglione, Cortegiano, 85. See Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier, 288; Rebhorn, Courtly Per formances, 202. See Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996). Compare with the discussion of monopoly formation in Elias, Civilizing Process, 112–113. BNCF, Panciatichiani, 134, Insert 6: 2r, Ricordanze di Filippo di Niccolò di Bartolomeo Valori: “gravassino niccolò mio padre.” Niccolò Valori had been implicated in the 1513 conspiracy, led by Pieropaolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi, against the Medici family: see Niccolò’s own narrative of the plot and his subsequent imprisonment in BNCF, Panciatichiani, 134, Insert 1: 17v–18r. ASF, OGBR, 231: 10v, 11r, 13v, 15r. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v. Two of Jacopo Salviati’s sons-in-law and one of his sons stood as godfathers to three of Martelli’s children: ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1471: 104v, 113r. ASF, Canigiani, 123: 207v, 219r, and 220r; ASF, Tratte, 907: 8v. Antinori served on the Ufficiali del Monte seven times, the Otto di Pratica six times, the Ducal Council nine times, and as an accoppiatore seventeen times: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r–44r, 56r–58r, 68r–69r, 144v–145v, 146v, 147v, 175r, 179r, 188r, 192r, 193r–195v, 201v, 202v–203r, 204r–205v, 206v–207r, 238r, 239r, 240r. Malegonnelle served on the Otto di Pratica four times, on the Ducal Council nine times, and as an accoppiatore thirteen times: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r, 44r, 68r, 69v, 144v–145r, 146r–147v, 180r, 194r–195v, 204r–205v, 206v, 207r, 238r, 239r–240r. On Malegonnelle’s position during the interrogations after Montemurlo see ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 509, Insert 3. ASF, Tratte, 907: 69r, 180v. ASF, MDP 333: 352r, Francesco Valori, in Bologna, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 20 August 1537: “philippo mio fratello con gli altri nostri di casa.” See also 371r, Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 20 August 1537, on behalf of Antonio di Domenico Martelli; and MDP 351: 370r, Francesco and Bongianni Capponi, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 24 May 1541, on behalf of Giovanfrancesco di Lodovico Capponi.

Notes to Pages 204–211

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49. ASF, OGBP, 2215: 27: “confidato nella benignita et cementia di quella humilmente li supplica voglia degnarsi farli gratia di liberatione delle carcere dove è stato et di presente si truova.” See also OGB, 2221: 560 and 2222: 755. 50. ASF, OGBP, 2221: 36: “l’umilissimo et misero servo vieri di bernardo da castiglione di ricorrere ali sue clementissimi piedi humilmente suplicandole si voglie degniare per ll’amor di yhs xpo farli gratia di cavarlo delle stinche”; “Non è ancora tempo.” Castiglione had previously won the concession of having his sentence transferred from the fortress of Volterra to the Florentine communal prison, the Stinche. See also OGBP, 2215: unfoliated; 2220: 157; 2222: 806; 2223: 90, 172, 343. 51. ASF, OGBP, 2223: 4. Several other similar petitions from various individuals who had dealings with Florentine exiles—often from men who had taken military ser vice for the French crown under Piero or Fra Leone Strozzi—survive in the records of the Otto di Guardia. 52. Compare Ann Jensen Adams, “The Three-Quarter Length Life-Sized Portrait in Seventeenth-Century Holland: The Cultural Functions of tranquillitas,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered, ed. Wayne Franits (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 158–174. 53. On the influence of Bronzino and other artists on Salviati’s style see Philippe Costamagna, “La potraitiste,” in Francesco Salviati (1510–1563) ou la Bella Maniera, ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel (Milan/Paris: Electa / Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998), 47–52. 54. Compare with the discussions of court society, presentation, and social relations in Elias, Court Society; Rebhorn, Courtly Per formances. 55. Castiglione, Cortegiano, 59–60. 56. ASF, MAP, 28: 393, Piero Capponi, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 10 August 1492: “perchè la vita sanz’onore è un viver’ morto.” 57. ASF, MDP, 331: 239r. 58. ASF, MDP, 333: 79r, Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 16 July 1537: “se iacopo de’ medici voleva o guasparre o altro qualsivoglia huomo di questa città bastava ne scrivissi un motto.” 59. ASF, MDP, 365A: 842r, Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 21 May 1544: “piacemi certamente vegniare in tale ufitio honorevole.” 60. On Altoviti’s life and career see Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Bindo Altoviti, Renaissance Banker and Papal Financier,” in Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti, ed. Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano, and Dimitrios Zikos (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003), 21–57. 61. ASF, Tratte, 719: 73r; 907: 181r. Altoviti was elected as a Monte official seven times prior to 1546: ASF, Tratte, 906: 70v; 907: 56r–57r. Altoviti was drawn for the Signoria twice under the reggimento of 1527–30 but did not sit

348

Notes to Pages 211–214

62.

63.

64. 65. 66.

67.

68.

69.

on the magistracy on either occasion: David Herlihy et al., “Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282–1532: Machine readable data fi le” (Brown University: Florentine Renaissance Resources / STG, 2002), www.stg.brown.edu/projects/tratte/ (last accessed 6 July 2006). Jacopo Nardi’s allegation that Alessandro never replaced dead members of the Quarantotto, in order to centralize the appearance of authority in his own hands, is false: Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli, 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2:225. Alessandro appointed three men to the Quarantotto on 25 August 1534: Lorenzo di Bernardo Ridolfi , Domenico di Matteo Canigiani, and Domenico di Braccio Martelli: ASF, Tratte, 907: 192r. The fi rst extant letter of Altoviti’s campaign is dated 11 December 1540: ASF, MDP, 348: 38r. The quoted letters can be found at MDP 348: 154r, Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1 January 1541: “acciochè la chasa nostra non resti più sanza Tale dignità non sendo quella inferiore a molte altre chase che l’anno nè di qualità nè di servitù verso vostra Ex[cellen]tia et di sua Ill[ustrissi]ma antecessori”; MDP, 349: 235r, Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 26 March 1541: “reputando ogni honor’ sua come mio”; “per honor’ della casa mia”; MDP 355: 226r, Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 October 1541: “vedendola maxime conferita in molte altre et in alcune duplicatamente che nè di qualità nè di servitio con la Ex[cellen]tia vostra et antecessori di sua Ill[ustrissi]ma Casa sono alla Casa nostra superiore.” ASF, MDP, 372: 177r. ASF, Tratte, 907: 192v. ASF, MDP 331: 239r, Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 23 May 1537: “non passasi con onor’ nè di v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia nè mio”; MDP 333: 79r. Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 16 July 1537: “a me pare non sia nè con honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen] tia nè io.” ASF, MDP, 350: 130r, Girolamo degli Albizzi, in Castel Fiorentino, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 23 April 1541: “in honore di quella et in esemplo delli sua militi”; “non si debba comportare che sieno offesi tanto vilmente con torgli di più con le leggie la facultà di potere recuperare l’honor’ loro in modo alcuno.” Further details about the attack can be found at 131r. ASF, MDP, 364: 232r, Francesco Zati, in Pisa, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 December 1543: “per salvar’ l’honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia . . . mandai tal servitor’ al bargello dove si truova”; “si tratta del’honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia.” The word bargello refers both to the title of a police official and to the residence of such an official, which doubled as a jail. See also ASF, MDP 364: 692r; 365: 13r.

Notes to Pages 214–217

349

70. See for example Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi’s consideration of the worth of her future son-in-law, Marco Parenti, in which she reflected that his family “hanno un poco di stato”: Alessandra Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. Cesare Guasti (Florence: Sansoni, 1877), 3–4. 71. See Giorgio Chittolini, “The ‘Private,’ the ‘Public,’ and the State,” in The Origins of the State in Italy, 1300–1600, ed. Julius Kirshner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 34–61; Elias, Court Society. 72. See Roger J. Crum, “Lessons from the Past: The Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in Sixteenth-Century Florence,” in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001), 48. Compare with John M. Najemy, “Florentine Politics and Urban Spaces,” in Crum and Paoletti, Renaissance Florence, 51–54. 73. The most comprehensive analysis of Florentine electoral procedures remains Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494), 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997). 74. Palmieri, Vita civile, 52. 75. ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v, Libro Segreto di Luigi di Luigi Martelli: “Fu fatto de’ S[igno]ri otto di balìa dal sopra detto S[ignore] D[uca] Cosimo.” The full title of the Otto di Guardia was the Otto di Guardia e Balìa. Martelli used the same formula for every office that he received from January 1537. 76. ASF, MDP, 368: 259r, Lapo del Tovaglia, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1544: “comesomi da V[ost]ra Ex[cellen]tà.” 77. ASF, MDP, 370: 333r, Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 January 1545: “del havermi raffermo per il secondo ano in officiale di grascia.” 78. ASF, Canigiani, 123: 207v, Giornale e Ricordanze di Antonio di Simone Canigiani: “lo Ill[ustrissi]mo S[igno]re Duca cosimo mi elesse capitano di cortona.” Canigiani used the same phrase for his later appointments to internal magistracies, on the Otto di Pratica, the Sei di Mercanzia, and the Otto di Guardia: see 219r, 220r. 79. Compare with the discussion of merit and the royal gaze in seventeenthcentury France in Smith, Culture of Merit. 80. ASF, MDP, 335: 612v, Domenico Martelli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 2 March 1539: “Io dissi a V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia quando l’altra volta si feciono li otto di pratica che io non ero mai stato et che solo io restavo del numero de quarantotto et lo desideravo assai max[im]e perchè fussi noto che io interamente non ero fuori della gratia sua.” Martelli’s fall from grace possibly related to his cousin Antonio di Domenico Martelli’s involvement in the exiles’ military misadventure at Montemurlo: see CS, Serie 1, 95: 141v; MDP 333: 371r. Whatever the cause, his pleading did succeed.

350

Notes to Pages 217–219

81.

82.

83.

84.

85.

86.

87.

88.

89.

90.

Although he again missed out on a seat on the Otto di Pratica elected in the Quarantotto in March 1539, he received a seat on the magistracy appointed in September that year: ASF, Tratte, 907: 69r. ASF, MDP, 370: 333r, Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 January 1545: “con ogni mio potere le mia actione correspondino in parte alla gran’ fede cognosco haver’ in me.” ASF, MDP, 348: 38r, Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 11 December 1540: “gli piaccia farne gratia di uno alla casa nostra.” See also 154r and MDP, 372: 177r. ASF, MDP, 348: 61r, Lorenzo Cambi, in Pietrasanta, to Lorenzo Pagni, 17 December 1540: “che V[ostra] Mag[nificen]tia mi preservi nello buona gratia di sua Ex[cellen]tia.” ASF, MDP, 370: 241r, Filippo de’ Nerli, in Volterra, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1 March 1543: “Veggo che la fortuna mi va tutta via traversando de sorte che sarà necess[ari]o sempre mentre che io vivo che la felice mano di vostra Ex[cellen]tia sia opponga et per sua sola gratia resista alla mia trista fortuna.” ASF, MAP, 28: 393, Piero Capponi to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 10 August 1472: “vi pregho da vogliate operare per me chome per vostro servitore ch’io sia dela numero degl’inborsati.” ASF, MAP, 40: 180, Giovanni Tornabuoni to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 29 November 1487: “ò iddio in cielo et Vostra Magnificentia in terra.” On the language of clientage in the fi fteenth century see Paul D. McLean, The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 90–120 esp. ASF, MDP, 337: 150r–v, Filippo de’ Nerli, in Pistoia, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 31 May 1539: “Ill[ustrissi]mo et Ex[cellentissi]mo Duca et Patron obser[vissi]mo”; “Di vostra S[ignoria] Ill[ustrissi]ma Humill servitore Phi: de’ Nerli.” ASF, MDP, 365: 297r–v, Lorenzo Cambi, in Fivizzano, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 28 April 1544: “Ill[ustrissi]mo et Ex[cellentissi]mo S[ign]or’ S[ign] or’ mio”; “D[i] V[ostra] Ill[ustrissi]ma S[igno]ria Servitore Lorenzo Cambi.” ASF, MDP, 333: 127r, Girolamo degli Albizzi, in Pisa, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 25 July 1537: “s’apartiene a chi depende nel servitio di suo S[igno]re non solo nel particu lar’ dove stato deputato ma et in ogni gener’ di caso deposeli rapresenta.” ASF, MDP, 335: 612r, Domenico Martelli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 2 March 1539: “io non pensai mai postponendo ogni mio utile et comodo . . . la voluta mia non fu mai se non di servire et tale intentione è suta sempre in tutte le mie attioni et cierto è che se io avessi desidero o

Notes to Pages 220–221

91.

92.

93. 94. 95. 96.

97. 98.

99.

351

desiderassi servire a dio quanto a V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia arei la sedia sopra san giovanni batista.” ASF, MDP, 346: 290v, Alessandro Malegonnelle, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 8 September 1540: “mi basta sempre la intentione di V[ostra] E[ccellentia] qual sempr’ ama il vero et io ne mancho seguitar’ quella ogni mio affari.” ASF, MDP, 368: 259r, Lapo del Tovaglia, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1544: “sendo il vero fidelle suo servidore non ò altro magiore disiderio che sapere quel che più piacca e sia di mente sua.” See also additional examples of analogous sentiments expressed by many various individuals: MDP 333: 79v, 371r; MDP 335: 60r, 592v–593r; MDP 348: 61r; MDP 351: 447r; MDP 362: 415r; MDP 365: 488r; MDP 366: 413r, 527r; MDP 367: 271r; MDP 369: 479r; MDP 370: 233r; MDP 397: 133r. See for example MDP, 362: 545r; MDP 365: 297r; MDP 365A: 851r, 943r; MDP 368: 214r; MDP 369: 29r, 138r, 171r; MDP 394: 386r. See Consulte e pratiche della Repubblica fiorentina, 1495–1497, ed. Denis Fachard (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 2002). See the excellent analysis of the logic of princely patronage in Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier, 36–54. Melissa Meriam Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 109–130; Ronald F. Weissman, “Taking Patronage Seriously: Mediterranean Values and Renaissance Society,” in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons (Canberra/Oxford: Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University / Oxford University Press, 1987), 35 esp. Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier, 52–54. See for example Beik, Absolutism and Society; Ronald G. Asch, “Introduction: Court and Household from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries,” in Princes, Patronage and the Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450–1650, ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 1–38; Zmora, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State. Norbert Elias—to a greater extent than some of his critics give him credit for—does continually stress the interdependent nature of court society; but his analysis focuses almost exclusively on the relationship from the perspective of the monarch rather than from the “bottom-up” perspective of the aristocracy: see Elias, Court Society. Lorenzino de’ Medici, Apologia e lettere, ed. Francesco Erspamer (Rome: Salerno, 1991). On the language of tyrannicide and civic republicanism in the Apologia see Nicholas Scott Baker, “Writing the Wrongs of the Past: Vengeance, Humanism, and the Assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici,” Sixteenth Century Journal 38, no. 2 (2007): 307–327.

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Notes to Pages 221–223 100. BNCF, Conventi Soppressi, C7, 2614, unfoliated; Cronaca fiorentina, 1537–1555, ed. Enrico Coppi (Florence: Olschki, 2000), 18–19. The degradation of Buonaccorsi’s corpse by a mob following his hanging resembles the treatment of the body of Jacopo de’ Pazzi, executed for his role in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478: see Angelo Poliziano’s description of the latter reprinted in Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 321. 101. Paolo Simoncelli, “Florentine Fuorusciti at the Time of Bindo Altoviti,” in Chong, Pegazzano, and Zikos, Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker, 285–328. 102. ASF, MDP, 355: 285r, Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, either December 1541 or January 1542: “il desiderio del vivere Popu lar.” 103. Jean-Claude Waquet has suggested that, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this increasingly frustrated expectation served to promote corruption among Florentine officeholders, as a means for patricians to appropriate a share of the stato and its fi nancial rewards: Jean-Claude Waquet, Corruption: Ethics and Power in Florence, 1600–1770, trans. Linda McCall (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 64–84 esp. 104. On continuing commercial and mercantile character of the Florentine elite from the sixteenth through to the eighteenth century see Richard A. Goldthwaite, The Economy of Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 568–570; Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy, 203–232; Samuel Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato, 1530–1609,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 9 (1972): 1–15. Berner provides a clear, brief précis of the older thesis of the re-feudalization of Tuscany under the Medici principality at pages 4–6. 105. Ricci was an accoppiatore seventeen times between 1532 and 1550. In the same period he sat on the Otto di Pratica seven times, the Ducal Council ten times, and twice he served as a Monte official: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r–v, 44v, 57r, 58r, 67v, 68v–69r, 145r–v, 146v–147v, 186v–187r, 193r–v, 194v–195v, 202r, 203r–v, 204r–205v, 206v–207v, 238r, and 239r–v. On the Ricci bank see Goldthwaite, Economy of Renaissance Florence, 477–478. 106. Giuliano de’ Ricci, Cronaca (1532–1606), ed. Giuliana Sapori (Milan: Ricciardi, 1972), 225. See also 141. 107. Berner, “Florentine Patriciate,” 7. 108. Goldthwaite, Economy of Renaissance Florence, 60, 275–276, 543–544. 109. ASF, MDP, 336: 85r. Francesco Rucellai, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 27 February 1539: “mantenghando la ciptà viva et in flore.”

Notes to Pages 223–230

353

110. Della Casa, Galateo, 89. Della Casa observed that, in comparison to the nobility of Naples, the Florentines “per lo più sono mercatanti e semplici gentiluomini.” 111. Currie, “Clothing and a Florentine Style,” 44. 112. Angiolini, I cavalieri, 69–70; Ricci, Cronaca, 414. 113. ASF, MDP, 347: 26r, Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 7 October 1540: “il desiderio suo essere di accompagnare il figlio con uno suocero mercante acciò che lascandoli qualche mobile possa collo advito & indirizo di epso inviarsi in sulle faccende.” 114. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: doc. 31, Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 27 October 1539: “per mio amore e per suo rispetto.” 115. ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: doc. 108, Prinzivalle della Stufa, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 29 May 1540: “Tutto quello per lui farà lo reputerò a me proprio.” See also CS, Serie 1, 60: 10r, 22r–24r, 35r–36r, 73r; CS, Serie 1, 62: doc. 14. 116. ASF, OGBP, 2221: 305. 117. On the place of Eleonora see Ilaria Hoppe, “The Duchess’ Place at Court: The Quartiere di Eleonora in the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence,” in The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 98–118. 118. ASF, MDP, 338: 122r, Bartolomeo Lanfredini, in Pistoia, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1539: “per parlar con secho & anche per basciar’ la mano al Ill[ustrissi]ma S[ignor]ia D[uchessa] sua consorte & mia S[igno]ra.” 119. ASF, MDP, 368: 214r, Alessandro Malegonnelle, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 15 August 1544: “humilmente basio la mano a S[ua] Ex[cellentia] e della sua ill[ustrissi]ma S[ignora] consorte.” 120. ASF, OGBP, 2218: unfoliated. 121. See Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003). 122. On Eleonora’s patronage and public persona see Bruce Edelstein, “The Camera Verde: A Public Center for the Duchess of Florence in the Palazzo Vecchio,” Mélanges de l’École française de Rome: Italie et Méditerranée 115, no. 1 (2003): 51–87; idem, “La fecundissma Signora Duchessa: The Courtly Persona of Eleonora di Toledo and the Iconography of Abundance,” in Eisenbichler, Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, 71–98.

Conclusion 1. Cronaca fiorentina, 1537–1555, ed. Enrico Coppi (Florence: Olschki, 2000), 106–108. 2. Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors for Medici Rule in Florence,” Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001): 32–47; Luca Gatti,

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Notes to Pages 231–233

3. 4.

5.

6.

“Displacing Images and Devotion in Renaissance Florence: The Return of the Medici and an Order of 1513 for the Davit and the Judit,” Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa: Classe di lettere e fi losofia Serie 3, 23 (1993): 349–373; Christine M. Sperling, “Donatello’s Bronze David and the Demands of Medici Politics,” Burlington Magazine 134, no. 1069 (1992): 218–224. Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537, 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 2:172, 262. Compare Mark Goldie, “The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c. 1500–1850, ed. Tim Harris (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 153–194; Phil Withington, “Citizens, Community, and Political Culture in Restoration England,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 139–140 esp. On the period from the 1930s to the 1950s as one that established a still predominant paradigm for Renaissance historiography, and the influence of refugee German scholars, in particu lar, on the creation of this paradigm, see William J. Connell, “Repubblicanesimo e Rinascimento (nella storiagrafia anglofona del second Novecento),” Archivio storico italiano 161, no. 2 (2003): 343–362; Carl Landauer, “Erwin Panofsky and the Renascence of the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1994): 255–281; Anthony Molho, “The Italian Renaissance, Made in the USA,” in Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press: 1998), 263–294; Edward Muir, “The Italian Renaissance in America,” American Historical Review 100, no. 4 (1995): 1095–1118; Patricia Simons, “Separating the Men from the Boys: Masculinities in Early Quattrocento Florence and Donatello’s Saint George,” in Rituals, Images, and Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F. W. Kent and Charles Zika (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 151–155. See for the most immediate examples Samuel Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato: 1530–1610” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1969); R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530–1790 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986); Cecil Roth, The Last Florentine Republic (London: Methuen, 1925); J. N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). For one notable exception to this trend see Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494–1545 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Intellectual historians have considered the fi rst half of the sixteenth century as a continuum, but their interests have focused on the survival and transmission of republican ideas rather than on the evolution of the principality:

Note to Page 233 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 1, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 139–189; J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975); Mark Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

355

Acknowledgments

Financial support from several institutions over many years has made possible the eventual appearance of this book. A grant and later a Research Fellowship from the Graduate School at Northwestern University funded the initial archival investigations that underpin the text. A Dissertation Fellowship from the same institution supported the writing of the doctoral dissertation that was the book’s fi rst incarnation. A Renaissance Society of America / Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento grant enabled additional research and fact checking to occur. A generous publication subsidy from the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University helped to defray the costs associated with acquiring and publishing the images in the book. Ed Muir has provided guidance, encouragement, a critical eye, and innumerable perceptive comments throughout the lengthy process. He remains the very model of a professional and intellectual mentor. Bill Connell generously read the entire manuscript twice and provided invaluable suggestions on each occasion. Nick Eckstein and Liz Mellyn read portions of the text and offered useful advice, while an anonymous reader for Harvard University Press did the same for the whole manuscript. Discussions with other scholars at conferences in Toronto, Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles, as well at lunch or over post-archival drinks in Florence, always provided the opportunity to sharpen my ideas and clarify my thinking. In particu lar, John Najemy, John Paoletti, Brenda Preyer, and Sharon Strocchia have provided encouragement and support over several years. My colleagues in Modern History at Macquarie University have provided the very best environment—collegial, scholarly, and never dull—for the writing and revising of the manuscript. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the staff of several institutions across three continents. In particu lar, the staff at the Archivio di Stato in Florence have facilitated my research and tolerated my Italian for many years now. The Inter-Library Loan departments at both Macquarie and Northwestern universities tirelessly traced obscure

358

Acknowledgments

books and articles for me. I am also immensely grateful to the staff and community of Internet Archive (www.archive.org), who make research in the twenty-fi rst century so very convenient. At Harvard University Press, Ian Stevenson has been patient, prompt, and always helpful. I am grateful to Brian Ostrander at Westchester Publishing Ser vices and copy editor Glenn Novak for their assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. Some readers may experience a slight déjà vu as I have had the opportunity to discuss some of the ideas presented here in different contexts, in the following publications: “For Reasons of State: Political Executions, Republicanism, and the Medici, 1480–1560,” Renaissance Quarterly 62, no. 2 (2009): 444–478, © 2009 by the University of Chicago Press; “Medicean Metamorphoses: Carnival in Florence, 1513,” Renaissance Studies 25, no. 4 (2011): 491–510, © 2010 The Society for Renaissance Studies, Blackwell Publishing Limited. Family and friends—although not always perhaps understanding exactly what I was doing or indeed why I was doing it—have provided unfailing support. My parents, Ian and Pam Baker, have encouraged and aided my intellectual journey for as long as I can recall. My sons, Max and Alex—who await the appearance of this book with mystified anticipation—helped me maintain perspective by continually reminding me that however fascinating the past might be, today is always infi nitely more exciting. Finally, it is no exaggeration to state that this book would not exist without Camilla, whose love, patience, and continual support provide the foundation for all my endeavors. Needless to say, all these people are responsible only for what is sound in the book. All errors and problems remain mine alone.

Index

Acciaiuoli, Roberto di Donato, 139, 140, 148, 149, 150 Acciaiuoli, Zanobi di Nofri, 156 Accoppiatori, 55, 89, 152, 216 Adrian VI (pope), 89, 93, 97 Alamanni, Lodovico di Piero, 82, 127 Alamanni, Luigi di Piero, 81 Alberti (family), 33 Alberti, Leon Battista: I libri della famiglia, 37 Albertini, Rudolf von, 5–6, 232–233 Albizzi (family), 8, 172 Albizzi, Antonfrancesco di Luca, 13, 60, 65, 99, 138, 164, 186, 258–259; and 1512 coup d’état, 62–63; hostility to Medici of, 74–75, 100, 102; on liberty, 110–115, 140–141 Albizzi, Antonio di Luca, 60 Albizzi, Girolamo di Luca, 62, 65, 213–214, 219, 259–260 Albizzi, Maso di Luca, 62 Aldobrandini, Salvestro, 136 Alexander VI (pope), 58 Altoviti, Bardo di Giovanni, 131, 211 Altoviti, Bindo d’Antonio, 158, 211–212, 217, 220, 222, 260–261

Antinori, Alessandro di Niccolò, 203, 204, 261–262 Anzilotti, Antonio, 6, 232–233 Arezzo, 113, 114–115, 129, 210 Arrabbiati, 100–101, 103, 110 Arrighi, Luigi di Piero, 213 Arrigucci, Giovanni, 82 Baglione, Malatesta, 114, 118, 121, 131, 132, 133, 134, 144 Balìa, balìe: in fi fteenth-century Medicean republic, 52, 55, 56; of 1512, 65, 68–69, 71, 92, 100; of 1530, 144, 146, 150, 152, 156 Bandinelli, Baccio: Hercules and Cacus, 229 Barcelona, 163; Treaty of, 109, 110, 114, 116 Bartolini family bank, 223 Bologna, 115, 116, 117, 168, 173, 186, 231 Borgia, Cesare, 59 Botticini, Francesco: Assumption of the Virgin, 84 Bourbon, Charles de, 94, 105 Bracciolini, Poggio: De avaritia, 21 Brienne, Walter of (duke of Athens), 124–125

360 Broncone, 49, 88, 190; festive company of, 49, 50, 65–66; meaning of, 67 Bronzino, 189; Portait of Ugolino di Luigi Martelli, 142–143, 176–178, 190; portraits by, 175–181, 205, 208, 209, 210; Portrait of a Lady in Red, 179–181 Brucioli, Antonio, 81 Bruni, Leonardo, 169; funeral oration for Nanni Strozzi, 38–39; Laudatio florentinae urbis, 39 Buonaccorsi, Giuliano, 221 Buonarroti, Michelangelo: Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici, 176–178, 181–182, 205; “kneeling” window, 178, 182; David, 229, 231 Buondelmonti, Andrea, 104 Buondelmonti, Benedetto di Filippo, 13, 62, 104, 262–263; role in 1512 Medici regime, 65, 66, 73, 74, 79, 81, 103; role in the creation of the principality, 147, 148–149, 155 Buondlemonti, Zanobi di Bartolomeo, 75, 95 Buongirolami, Giovanni di Bernardo, 194 Buonsignori, Francesco d’Andrea, 195 Caesar, Julius, 79, 131, 187 Cambi, Lorenzo d’Antonio, 83, 217, 218, 263–264 Cambini (family), 32 Cambini, Andrea, 22 Cambini, Niccolò di Francesco, 34 Cambrai, Peace of, 109, 113 Canigiani, Antonio di Simone, 202–203, 204 Canigiani, Domenico di Matteo, 155 Capponi (family), 74, 106 Capponi, Giovanni di Piero, 150 Capponi, Niccolò di Piero, 102–103, 105, 109 Capponi, Piero di Gino, 92–93 Capponi, Piero di Giovanni, 210, 218

Index Cardona, Ramon de (Spanish viceroy), 61–62, 63 Carducci, Baldassare di Baldassare, 103 Carducci, Francesco di Niccolò, 109, 136 Castellani (family), 32 Castiglione, Baldassare: Il cortegiano, 201–202, 209 Cato the Younger, Marcus Portius, 187 Centelli, Domenica, 225 Cento, council of, 68, 71, 107, 211 Cerretani, Bartolomeo, 55, 65, 73 Châlon, Philibert de (prince of Orange, Spanish viceroy), 98, 114, 115, 116, 117–118, 127, 128, 130, 131–132 Charles V (emperor): alliance with the Medici, 2, 109, 110, 113–114, 116; and the Italian Wars, 78, 92, 93–94, 102; role in the creation of Medici principality, 132, 143, 145, 147–148, 154, 183–184, 192, 193–194; relations with Florentine exiles, 161, 163 Charles VIII (king of France), 54 Cibo, Innocenzo (cardinal), 187 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 17, 67, 112 Cini, Matteo, 69 Civic humanism, 16–17, 21, 23, 39, 46, 48, 81, 112, 113 Clement VII (pope). See Medici, Giulio di Giuliano (Clement VII) Clientage, 20, 45, 46–47, 217–221, 224 Clothing, 37, 126, 175, 179, 181, 205; and social identity, 37–38, 40–41, 195, 208–209; and political culture, 38, 79–80, 126–127 Cognac, League of, 94–95, 102, 105 Colonna (family), 95 Colonna, Stefano, 121, 131, 133 Common good: civic republican political idea of, 2, 16, 35, 41, 48, 143; changing meaning of, 168–169, 171, 183–185, 226. See also Commonwealth (res publica); Fraternity

Index Commonwealth (res publica): in civic republican political culture, 17–18, 21–22, 38–39, 112, 122, 179, 196; and the Medici (1512–27), 71–72; changing nature of, 156, 164, 214–215, 220, 231, 233. See also Common good; Fraternity Consensus, political idea of, 55, 164, 172–173 Consiglio Maggiore, 59, 64–65, 81–82, 121; creation of (1494), 55–58, 172; restoration of (1527), 100, 101, 102 Consulte e pratiche, 4, 69, 107–108, 137, 196; political debates in, 63–64, 109–110, 114, 122, 127–129, 132–133 Corsi (family), 223 Corsini (family), 8, 33 Corsini, Rinaldo, 108 Coup d’état: of 1494, 54–55; of 1512, 61–64, 70; of 1527, 94, 96, 102–105, 129, 164 Courtier, 80, 127, 158, 196, 200–202, 208–209, 217–221, 227, 232, 233. See also Court society Court society, 2, 14, 179, 191, 198, 216, 225–226. See also Courtier; Political culture Da Castiglione, Dante, 128 Da Castiglione, Vieri di Bernardo, 204 Da Diaceto, Jacopo, 75 Da Filicaia, Sandrino, 186 Da Ricasoli, Giulio, 213 Dati, Gregorio, 40 D’Avalos, Alfonso, Marquis del Vasto, 128 Davanzati, Antonio, 133 David (biblical king): in Florentine iconography, 67, 98, 121, 142–143, 182–183; in Medici iconography, 182, 228–231, 233 Della Casa (family), 32

361 Della Casa, Giovanni: Galateo, 200– 202, 223 Della Palla, Battista di Marco, 81, 95 Della Rovere, Francesco Maria (duke of Urbino), 76–78, 94 Della Stufa, Prinzivalle di Luigi, 60, 65, 66, 80, 116, 224–225, 276–277 Del Nero, Bernardo di Nero, 93 Del Nero, Francesco di Piero, 73, 272–273 Del Tovaglia, Lapo di Bartolomeo, 216, 220 De’ Nerli, Benedetto di Tanai, 83 De’ Nerli, Filippo di Benedetto, 13, 81, 83, 116, 135, 156, 205, 217, 218, 222; Commentari dei fatti civili, 199–200, 202, 231 D’Este, Alfonso I (duke of Ferrara), 103 D’Este, Borso (duke of Ferrara), 37 D’Este, Ercole I (duke of Ferrara), 53 Diamante, festive company of, 49, 65–66 Diciasette, 103 Dieci di Balìa, 54 Dieci di Libertà e Pace, 58–59, 61, 69, 108, 127, 137, 144 Dodici Buonuomini, 32, 64 Dodici Riformatori, 150, 195 Donatello: marble David, 118, 229; bronze David, 230–231 Dovizi, Bernardo, 60 Ducal Council (Magistrato Supremo), 152, 193, 195, 203 Dugento, council of, 151–152, 167, 170, 195, 203, 211 Eleonora di Toledo (duchess of Florence), 225–226 Exiles of 1530 ( fuorusciti): original sentences of, 138–139, 140, 203; attempts to return in 1537, 160–169, 173, 178, 183–186, 187

362 Family, 29–31, 40. See also Lineage; Surnames Ferrante (king of Naples), 53 Fidele, Vincenzo, 118, 121 Florence: historiography of, 5–6, 232–233; government of, 52–56, 69, 73, 82, 89–92, 150–153, 216–217; siege of, 117–118, 128–132 Foix, Odet de, viscount de Lautrec, 77 Foscari, Marco, 100, 118 Francesco di Verdiano, 213 Francis I (king of France), 76, 78, 92, 93–94, 109, 166, 190, 197 Fraternity: civic republican sociopolitical idea of, 16, 18, 38–39, 41, 47–48, 79, 84, 88, 151, 173, 202, 233; shifts in meaning of, 126, 194–195, 208. See also Common good; Commonwealth (res publica) Frescobaldi (family), 74 Frundsberg, Georg von, 94 Fuorusciti. See Exiles of 1530 ( fuorusciti) Gavinana, battle of, 131–132 Gender, and political culture, 7, 13–14, 41–45, 126–127, 179–181, 225–226. See also Masculinity Gherardi, Jacopo di Jacopo, 136–137 Gheri, Goro, 72, 73, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 88 Ghirlandaio, Domenico: frescoes in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, 15–16, 19, 23–28; and civic republican political culture, 38–41, 47–48, 126, 151, 194–195; and religion, 56–57; comparison to Bronzino potraits, 178–179, 181; comparison to Salviati portraits, 208–209 Giannotti, Donato, 81 Girolami, Raffaello di Francesco, 79, 138, 144

Index Gondi, Bernardo di Carlo, 194 Gondi, Filippo di Lorenzo, 204 Gondi, Lucrezia, 47 Gonzaga, Ferrante, 128, 132, 138, 154, 171 Gonzaga da Bozzolo, Federico, 77 Gozzoli, Benozzo: Procession of the Magi, 28 Guadagni (family), 33 Guarini, Alessandro, 102, 103 Guicciardini, Braccio di Battista, 204 Guicciardini, Braccio di Niccolò, 204 Guicciardini, Francesco di Piero, 3–4, 13, 34–35, 38, 56, 60–61, 73, 82–83, 99, 195, 197, 231–232, 264–266; Storie fiorentine, 50–51; on the Medici (1512–27), 72, 76–78, 79–80; Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, 89, 92–93; position in Florence after 1527 coup, 103, 105–107, 115–117; on the stato (1527–30), 129–130, 132; role after siege of Florence, 134–135, 139– 140, 141; on the Medici (after 1530), 145–146, 154; role in the creation of the Medici principality, 148–151, 163, 183–184; on the Florentine exiles, 165–166, 167; on the need for unity in Florence, 171–173; Storia d’Italia, 198–199 Guicciardini, Girolamo di Piero, 134, 145–146, 167, 174–75, 224 Guicciardini, Isabella, 167 Guicciardini, Jacopo di Piero, 62, 64, 68, 77–78, 80, 115–116, 134, 175, 197, 266–267 Guicciardini, Luigi di Piero, 115–117, 129, 134, 159, 183, 197, 224; on the Medici (1512–27), 70, 78, 80; on Clement VII, 94–95; role in the creation of the Medici principality, 148–149, 155; on the Florentine exiles, 165

Index Guicciardini, Niccolò di Luigi, 82, 139, 213 Guicciardini, Piero di Jacopo, 8, 10, 32–33 Henri II (king of France), 159 Henry VII (emperor), 170 Hercules, in Florentine iconography, 67, 98, 121, 142, 229 Holy League, 61, 63, 68 Homosociabilty, 44–47, 224, 226 Honor, 19–20, 40–41; in political discourse, 63–64, 69; and office-holding, 82–83, 151, 174, 210–214, 225, 226 Humanism. See Civic humanism Innocent VIII (pope), 53 Julius II (pope), 61 Landucci, Luca, 39, 52, 126 Lanfredini, Bartolomeo di Lanfredino, 134–135, 139, 140, 145, 146, 148, 225, 267–268 Lanfredini, Bernardo di Giovanni, 157 Lang, Matthias (cardinal), 61, 63 Lannoy, Charles de, 94 Lenzi, Francesco di Piero, 122 Leo X (pope). See Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo (Leo X) Letters and letter writing, 4, 83, 167–168, 197–198, 218–221, 225 Liberty: in civic republican political discourse, 2, 17, 38–39, 55, 56, 63–64, 122, 221–222; meanings of, 22–23, 53, 93, 99, 105, 111–114, 143, 147, 161–163, 231; iconography of, 49–50, 98, 125, 182; confl icts over meaning of, 51, 102, 109–110, 127–128, 140–141; in princely political discourse, 183–185. See also Republicanism; Sovereignty

363 Lineage, political and economic significance of, 30–36, 47–48, 151, 211–212. See also Family Louis XII (king of France), 61, 63, 199 Lucca, 107, 115, 117, 129 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 3–4, 13, 38, 42, 81, 92, 171, 196 Macinghi, Alessandra (Strozzi), 41, 46–47 Magistrato Supremo. See Ducal Council (Magistrato Supremo) Magnate, 8, 19, 30, 35 Magnificence, humanist conception of, 21–22 Malaspina, Argentina (Soderini), 42 Malegonnelle, Alessandro, 122, 127, 130, 141, 203, 219–220, 225, 268–269 Margaret of Austria, 154, 163 Marriage, 46, 224; strategies, 40, 73, 191; and social identity, 41 Marsili, Bartolomeo, 106 Martelli, Domenico di Braccio, 66, 210–211, 213, 217, 219, 220, 269–270 Martelli, Lodovico, 128 Martelli, Luigi di Luigi, 174, 202–204, 216 Martelli, Niccolò di Lorenzo, 75 Martelli, Ugolino di Luigi, 142–143 Marzi de’ Medici, Agnolo, bishop of Assisi, 137–138 Masculinity, 45–46, 118, 126–127. See also Gender Maximilian I (emperor), 61, 110 Maximilian II (emperor), 192 Medici (family), 2, 8, 130–131, 164, 172–173; predominance in fi fteenthcentury Florence, 16, 33, 49–55; bank, 18–19, 33; palace, 28, 63, 78, 144, 145, 159, 182, 215; stato of (1512–27), 61–62, 64–65, 70, 88, 96–97, 195–196; iconography, 65–68, 179–180, 182,

364 Medici (continued ) 190, 230; 1527 expulsion of, 98–100; return of (1530), 137–141 Medici, Alessandro di Lorenzo, 89, 91–92, 94, 137, 163, 166, 189; as ruler of Florence, 146–147, 149, 152–156, 172, 183, 192; court of, 158–159 Medici, Averardo, 50 Medici, Caterina di Lorenzo (Catherine), 89, 159 Medici, Clarice di Piero (Strozzi), 59, 94, 187 Medici, Cosimo I, 88, 138, 202, 204; becomes ruler of Florence, 163, 184–187, 190–191; achieves political independence, 192–194; and the reshaping of political culture, 196, 197–198, 199–200, 210–222, 223–226, 228–231 Medici, Cosimo il Vecchio, 38, 46, 50, 52, 53, 54–55, 60, 70, 88, 230 Medici, Galeotto, 79 Medici, Gian Gastone, 232 Medici, Giovanni di Giovanni (Giovanni delle Bande Nere), 157, 163 Medici, Giovanni di Lorenzo (Leo X), 25, 50, 59–60, 61, 71, 80, 83, 88–89, 145, 155, 193; problems in Florence caused by papacy of, 72–78, 90, 92, 97 Medici, Giuliano di Lorenzo, 25, 49, 50, 61, 62, 65–66, 71–72, 88 Medici, Giulio di Alessandro, 185 Medici, Giulio di Giuliano (Clement VII), 60, 65–66, 73, 75, 76, 81, 104, 135, 136, 139, 161, 162, 183; role in Florence (1519–21), 80, 89; problems caused in Florence by papacy of, 90–97, 102, 105; and the siege of Florence, 108, 109, 113–114, 116, 117, 129–130; role in the creation of the Medici principality, 145–146, 148–149, 154–160, 192

Index Medici, Ippolito di Giuliano, 80, 88, 91–92, 94, 161, 163 Medici, Jacopo, 210 Medici, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco (Lorenzino), 158, 163, 189, 221 Medici, Lorenzo di Piero, 49, 60, 65, 67, 71–72, 76–80, 82–83, 88, 127 Medici, Lorenzo il Magnifico, 19, 69; in Ghirlandaio’s frescoes at Santa Trinita, 24–25, 40, 45, 47; position in Florence (1469–92), 50, 52–54, 67–68, 70–71, 210 Medici, Lucrezia di Lorenzo (Salviati), 61, 135, 157 Medici, Lucrezia (Nannina) di Piero (Rucellai), 46 Medici, Ottaviano di Lorenzo, 88, 116, 179, 216, 217, 270–271 Medici, Piero di Cosimo, 19, 70 Medici, Piero di Lorenzo, 25, 54, 56, 59, 67 Militia, Florentine, 98, 121–122, 126–128, 130, 131–132, 136, 138 Miniati, Antonio di Bernardo (di Miniato), 35 Miniati, Bernardo d’Antonio, 91 Monte commune, 35 Montemurlo, battle of, 164, 167, 185–186, 191, 199–200, 203–204, 221 Morelli, Jacopo di Girolamo, 131 Muscettola, Giovanantonio, 147 Naples, 1, 53, 94, 95, 170–171; exiles’ appeal to Charles V at, 160, 163, 166, 172, 183 Nardi, Jacopo, 60, 81, 161–163, 186 Nerli, Filippo de’, 13, 81, 83, 116, 135, 156, 217, 218, 222, 271–272; Commentari dei fatti civili, 199–200 Niccolini, Andrea di Piero, 122 Niccolini, Matteo d’Agnolo, 150

Index Nori, Francescantonio di Francesco, 104, 149, 155, 158–159, 194 Nori, Francesco di Antonio, 34 Office holding, significance of, 38–39, 151, 174, 191, 202, 209–217. See also Honor; Office-holding class Office-holding class, 2; defi nition of, 7–12; and civic republican political culture, 15–18, 31–38, 48, 63–64, 80–88; status of, 22; and homosociability, 45; changing attitudes and expectations of, 51–52, 140–141, 143–144; political divisions within, 55–56, 58–60, 82, 99–100, 102–103, 132–133; political agnosticism of, 69–70, 97, 107–108, 133, 173–174; under the Medici principality, 151–152, 169–171, 178–179, 181–182, 194–196, 208–209, 226–227; place of exiles within, 164–166. See also Office holding Oligarchy, 17, 50, 54–55, 58–59, 65, 99, 149–150, 151, 162–163 Orange, prince of. See Châlon, Philibert de (prince of Orange, Spanish viceroy) Orsini, Alfonsina (Medici), 76 Orti Oricellari. See Rucellai gardens Ottanta, council of, 62, 64–65, 106, 194 Otto di Guardia, 60, 75, 91, 144, 213, 216; prosecutions by (1527–30), 104, 117; prosecutions by, after siege of Florence, 137, 138–139, 174–175; prosecutions of Strozzi family by, 158–160 Otto di Pratica, 135, 156, 157, 203, 212, 217, 219, 220; in the Medici stato (1512–27), 69, 71, 90; in the principality, 144, 152, 193, 195–196 Ottomans, 154, 197

365 Palaces and palace-building, 12, 16, 20–22, 33, 34 Palmieri, Matteo, 84; Vita civile, 17, 21, 35, 39, 46, 48, 112, 169, 196, 216–217 Pandolfi ni (family), 74 Pandolfi ni, Bartolomea, 155, 157 Pandolfi ni, Niccolò (cardinal), 74 Parenti, Marco di Parente, 41 Parenti, Piero di Marco, 55 Parlamento, 65, 144 Passerini, Silvio (cardinal), 89, 90–91, 94, 99, 100, 103, 105, 107 Patrician, 10–12, 20–22, 31–33, 35, 39–40, 48, 133, 194 Patronage: artistic, 19, 20, 36, 178–179; political, 156–157, 218–219, 224–225. See also Clientage Paul III (pope), 160, 161, 211 Pazzi, Alessandro, 81, 115, 116 Pazzi, Jacopo d’Antonio, 159 Pazzi, Luigi, 224 Pazzi Conspiracy and War, 53, 67, 164 Piagnoni, 100–101, 103, 110, 129 Piero di Cosimo: Andromeda Set Free by Perseus, 49, 65–68, 98 Pocock, John, 5 Political culture, 2–3, 4, 231–233; civic republican, 16–18, 22–23, 45–46, 63–64, 81–83, 196–197; courtly, 197–198, 201–202, 215–219, 225–226 Poliziano, Angelo, 25, 27–28 Pontormo: Joseph in Egypt, 85–86; Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio, 87–88; Portrait of a Halberdier, 98, 118–121, 142, 190, 229; Madonna with Child, 122–125 Portinari, Pierfrancesco di Folco, 108, 127, 130, 131, 141, 273–274 Prato, 114, 147, 157, 158, 186, 216, 220; sack of (1512), 49, 61–62, 68, 96 Public sphere, 18, 83, 196–197, 214, 219 Pucci (family), 74

366 Pucci, Antonio di Puccio, 24, 47 Pucci, Puccio, 21 Pucci, Roberto d’Antonio, 148, 150, 184 Quarantia, 104, 115, 129 Quarantotto, council of (Senate), 203, 211–212, 217, 220; creation of, 151–152, 158; election of Cosimo I by, 163, 192; role in government, 193, 194–195, 223 Religion, and politics, 56–58, 101, 122–125, 129 Renaissance: historiography of, 3–6, 232–233; meaning of, 12–13 Republicanism, 16–18, 22–23, 38–39, 196–197, 214–216; historiography of, 2–6, 232–233; endurance of, in the sixteenth century, 81–88, 100, 109–113, 122–123, 130–131, 133, 161–163, 221–222. See also Liberty; Political culture Riccardi (family), 223 Ricci (family), 8, 33 Ricci, Federigo di Roberto, 222–223 Ricci, Giuliano, 222, 224 Ridolfi , Giovanbattista di Luigi, 65 Ridolfi , Giovanfrancesco di Ridolfo, 150 Ridolfi , Lorenzo, 132 Ridolfi , Niccolò di Piero (cardinal), 148, 161–162, 168 Ridolfi , Piero di Niccolò, 69 Rome, 1, 23–24, 114; and papacy of Leo X, 72–74, 78; and papacy of Clement VII, 90–91, 95, 108, 116, 129–130, 148, 157–160; sack of (1527), 94, 96, 104; and Florentine exiles, 161, 164, 211; ancient history of, 172, 196 Rovere, Francesco Maria della (duke of Urbino), 76–78, 94 Rucellai, Bernardo di Giovanni, 59–60, 62

Index Rucellai, Francesco, 223 Rucellai, Giovanni di Bernardo, 65 Rucellai, Giovanni di Paolo, 19–20, 46, 52 Rucellai, Palla di Bernardo, 108, 139, 150 Rucellai gardens (Orti Oricellari), 81–82 Salutati, Coluccio, 17 Salviati, Alamanno d’Averardo, 59, 61 Salviati, Caterina di Giovanni (Albizzi), 62 Salviati, Fra Bernardo di Jacopo, 185–186 Salviati, Francesca di Jacopo, 179–181 Salviati, Francesco: Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman, 189–190, 205–206; portraits by, 205–209; Portrait of a Man with a Sword, 206–208 Salviati, Giovanni di Jacopo (cardinal), 90–91, 95, 148, 156, 161–162, 163, 168, 186 Salviati, Giuliano di Francesco, 158, 159 Salviati, Jacopo di Giovanni, 59, 62, 69, 90, 91, 109, 135, 136, 148, 203 Salviati, Maria di Jacopo (Medici), 157, 163 Salviati, Piero di Leonardo, 135, 157 Sanga, Giovanbattista, 116 Santo Stefano, military order of, 224 Sassetti, Francesco di Tommaso, 18–19, 23, 24–26, 30, 36, 40, 42, 45–46, 47, 48 Sauli (family), 74 Savonarola, Fra Girolamo, 22, 54–56; political ideas of, 57–58, 101; millennial vision of, 129 Schönberg, Nikolaus von (archbishop of Capua), 145, 155 Sedici Gonfalonieri, 32, 64, 70 Segni, Bernardo, 130–131, 132, 162

Index Sernigi, Cristofano di Chimenti, 135 Serristori, Antonio, 76 Settanta, council of, 19, 60, 68, 71, 80, 92, 100, 102, 103, 194 Sforza, Francesco II (duke of Milan), 94, 184 Sforza, Lodovico (duke of Milan), 199 Signoria: and social status, 8, 10, 18–19, 32, 39–40; piazza of, 33, 76, 144, 181, 228–229; palace of, 42, 62, 65, 78, 100, 116, 136–137, 147, 215; election to, 53, 55, 73, 82–83; during the siege of Florence, 108, 109–114, 118, 124, 127–128, 131, 134; and the creation of the principality, 150; abolition of, 151–152, 169, 172 Social identity, 2, 23, 28–29, 143–144, 171, 178–179, 208–210, 218–219; and place, 11–12, 20–22, 33–35, 181–182, 208 Social imaginary and imagination, 16, 28–29, 64, 88, 153, 169–170, 190–191, 193, 208, 225–226 Social mobility, 8, 10–11 Soderini, Argentina di Tommaso (Canigiani), 202 Soderini, Margarita di Giovanvettorio (Martelli), 202 Soderini, Paolantonio di Tommaso, 89, 93 Soderini, Piero di Tommaso, 59–62, 64, 68, 69–70, 96, 112 Soderini, Tommaso di Lorenzo, 52 Soderini, Tommaso di Paolantonio, 102 Sovereignty: significance to officeholding class, 22–23, 36, 53–54, 70, 93, 97, 99–100, 111–113, 147, 154, 171; Medici principality as defense of, 172, 183–184, 193, 231. See also Liberty Spini, Scolaio, 51 Sprezzatura, 201, 209 Stato, defi nitions of, 6–7

367 Strozzi, Alfonso di Filippo, 60, 102 Strozzi, Filippo (Giovanbattista) di Filippo, 13, 197, 232, 274–275; relationship with the Medici (1508–26), 49–50, 59–60, 65–66, 68, 90–92; role in 1527 coup, 94, 95–96; position in Florence after 1527 coup, 99, 103–104, 107; relationship with the Medici (1529–34), 116, 130, 141, 148, 157–160; as leader of Florentine exiles, 160–163, 164–165, 166–169, 173, 184–187 Strozzi, Filippo di Matteo, 33, 41 Strozzi, Fra Leone di Filippo, 159 Strozzi, Lorenzo di Filippo, 13, 107–108, 110, 115, 131, 141, 203–204, 231, 275–276; correspondence with Filippo Strozzi, 167–169, 173–175, 184–185, 197 Strozzi, Luisa di Filippo, 159 Strozzi, Maso di Carlo, 159 Strozzi, Matteo di Lorenzo, 149–150 Strozzi, Piero di Filippo, 159, 164, 186, 190, 204, 222 Strozzi, Roberto di Filippo, 158 Strozzi, Vincenzo di Filippo, 158 Surnames, 35–36, 47. See also Family; Lineage Taxes and taxation, 35, 58, 71–72, 135, 223; and political rights, 7, 38, 52, 56, 103, 216 Tessitore, Cecchino, 186 Tondinelli, Guasparre, 210, 213 Torelli, Lelio, 204 Tornabuoni, Giovanni di Francesco, 18–19, 20, 26–27, 30, 36, 48, 218–219 Tornabuoni, Lucrezia di Francesco (Medici), 19, 47 Tornaquinci (family), 19, 27, 30 Tour d’Auvergne, Madeleine de la, 78

368 Ufficiali dei Ribelli, 117 Ughi, Fra Girolamo, 130 Unity, in political discourse, 132–133, 169, 171–174, 178 Urbino, 76–78, 161 Valori, Bartolomeo (Baccio) di Filippo, 62, 65, 150, 156, 157–158; as papal commissioner at Florence (1529–30), 132, 140, 144–145; and Florentine exiles, 160, 162, 164, 186 Valori, Filippino di Bartolomeo, 185, 186 Valori, Filippo di Niccolò, 155, 160, 175, 186, 203, 204 Valori, Francesco di Filippo, 22, 101 Valori, Francesco di Niccolò, 185, 204 Valori, Paolantonio di Bartolomeo, 160, 186 Varchi, Benedetto, 92, 110, 159, 160, 161, 186 Velluti, Raffaello, 135 Venice, 1, 22, 23, 150, 170; doge of, 153, 231; and Florentine exiles, 161, 168, 173, 204 Verrazzano, Giovanbattista di Lodovico, 90–91

Index Vespucci, Giovanni, 66 Vettori, Francesco di Piero, 62, 70, 95, 108, 134, 139–140, 144; role in the creation of the principality, 148–150; correspondence with Filippo Strozzi (1537), 166–167, 173, 185 Vettori, Giovanni di Piero, 134 Vettori, Paolo di Piero, 62, 65 Virgil, 88, 178 Virtù, 127–128, 146, 214, 233; defi nition of, 45–46; political significance of, 46, 126, 216–217; iconography of, 49–50, 67, 98, 121, 142–143, 182–183, 228–230 Vitelli, Alessandro di Paolo, 118, 185, 186–187 Volterra, 104, 113, 134, 138, 144, 147 Wealth, and sociopolitical status, 11, 21–22, 31–33, 35–36, 37, 40–41 Youths ( giovani), 15, 45, 136–138, 179; place in Florence, 13–14, 121, 225 Zaccherino da Lunigiana, Fra, 129 Zati, Francesco di Bartolo, 213–214