Medici Family Portrait | Circle of Cosimo il Vecchio | Circle of Lorenzo | Court of Cosimo I | Court of Catherine | Popes as Patrons

The World of the MEDICI

A Family Portrait

Affluent merchants and moneylenders, the Medici became prominent in Florence during the early 13th century and entered public life around 1260.  After another 200 years, they were doing business extensively throughout Europe and numbered among Italy's wealthiest families ... yet their politics long remained populist.  (For a modern analogy, one thinks inevitably of the Kennedy clan.)

The family dominated Florentine politics for two and a half centuries, married into virtually every European royal house and ... most importantly for our purposes at MOFA ... presided over a cultural achievement equalled only by Athens in its Golden Age.   

Likely the richest Italian of his day, Cosimo dé Medici the Elder (1389 - 1464) nevertheless ran so far afoul of ruling aristocrats that he was banished from Florence in 1432.   He was recalled just a year later, however,  and took virtual control of government.  Without actually assuming public office, he ruled through adherents who exiled some of his enemies and crushed others by excessive taxation. On the positive side, Cosimo fostered peace by promoting a balance of power among major Italian states and averting foreign interference.  His agenda additionally encouraged agriculture, the silk industry and commerce generally.   He amasssed a superb humanist library, founded the famous neo-Platonic Academy through Marsilio Ficino and patronized important artists and architects both personally and by means of an aggressive public building program. Among these were Brunelleschi, Alberti, Donatello, Uccello and Fra Angelico, the Dominican monk renowned for fresco work at San Marco (Cosimo's favorite charity). His standard of connoisseurship and scholarship was emulated by his successors and rulers elsewhere.
The grandson of Cosimo I, Lorenzo dé Medici (1449 - 1492) continued the family tradition of disguised rule. Though officially a private citizen, he became de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic upon the death of his father, Piero (1416 - 1469), who outlived Cosimo the Elder by just five years. Lorenzo also succeeded then to directorship of the Medici bank. Dubbed "The Magnificent," he didn't earn that title for business acumen; family finances suffered from the expense of his government. He was a far more capable public administrator, diplomat and connoisseur than a banker. A gifted poet in his own right, Lorenzo surrounded himself with the leading artists and intellectuals of his day. Among those who enjoyed his patronage were the painters Botticelli, Ghirlandaio and Michelangelo, the poets Pulci and Poliziano and philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Lorenzo fathered three sons, including a Pope, but his heir Piero (1472-1503) ruled Florence for just two years. In 1494, after a French invasion of Tuscany, he accepted humiliating terms of peace and was driven out of the city to die in service to the French Army. Meanwhile Florence was torn by anarchy and the Taliban-like rule of Savanarola.
Expulsion ended in 1512, when French armies in Italy were defeated by the Spanish, who *persuaded* Florence to invite the Medici back. Piero's son, another Lorenzo, took the reins until 1519 and produced only one legitimate child, later Catherine of France. Born in the same year as Caterina was her cousin, another Cosimo. Known to history as Cosimo I ( 1519 - 1574), he was from a "junior" branch of the family but became Duke of Florence upon the assassination of Alessandro dé Medici (1510 - 1537), an illegitimate son claimed by Lorenzo but perhaps not his.  With Spanish support, Cosimo was able to secure his hold on Florentine territories, expand control regionally and gain the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from Pope Pius V in 1570 (which made him a sovereign ruler). Thwarting enemy schemes to overthrow him and advisors' attempts to control him, Cosimo I centralized the organs of government and justice, encouraged agriculture and industry and liberally patronized higher education and artists including Ammanati, Vasari, Pontormo and Bronzino.
The second Lorenzo's daughter, Catherine dé Médicis (1519-89), was Queen of France from 1547 until the 1559 death of her husband, Henri II.  Her eldest son, crowned Francis II, died a year later and she subsequently ruled France as regent for her second son, Charles IX, whose policies she influenced until his death in 1574.  Her third son, Henri III, then ascended the throne.  She was not only mother to all the last three Valois kings, but also to two queens:  Elizabeth, who married King Philip II of Spain, and Margaret, wife of Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV of France. Apart from her political role, which sadly included collusion in the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in which 50,000 died, Catherine is remembered as a patroness of fine cuisine and the arts.  French cookery was evidently nothing until she arrived with a battery of Florentine cooks, bakers and confectioners, and on her watch the Louvre got a new wing and both the Tuileries Gardens and the château of Monceau were created . Her personal library of  rare manuscripts was also renowned.
Il Magnifico's son in more than one way, Pope Leo X (1475-1521) gained fame for extravagance, as well as skill in politics and foreign affairs. Born Giovanni and raised in Medici style to appreciate arts and letters, he became Pope in 1513 and spent huge sums on projects by such masters as Raphael and Bramante.  His lavish rebuilding of Saint Peter's Basilica and the pomp of his court led indirectly to the Reformation movement.  The Church's *cash cow* ... sale of indulgences ... prompted a famously indignant response from Martin Luther in 1517. Luther and his followers were excommunicated by Leo in 1520, and the upheaval sparked Protestantism.  Leo's efforts nonetheless made the papacy the dominant political force in Italy. He drove invading French forces out of Italy and settled relations with France through a concordat in 1516. French relations were later cemented by the royal marriage of his nephew's daughter.
Another pope with Medici tastes ... Clement VII (1478-1534) ...  came by them rather less honestly.  The illegitimate son of Giulio, he was named for the father assassinated in the year of his birth and raised by his uncle Lorenzo (the first one, Leo's dad). Clement's papacy was marked by serious arts patronage, naturally ... along with a vain attempt to end the German Reformation, a ruling that English King VIII's marriage to Catherine of Aragon was valid (which created Anglicanism) and a major role in the power struggle between Francis I of France and Holy Roman Emperor Charles V.  Among artists he encouraged were Benvenuto Cellini, Raphael and Michelangelo. More than usual nepotism may have figured in his making Alessandro dé Medici the first Duke of Florence. Most historians agree Alessandro was *really* Clement's son (not the second Lorenzo's) ... the product of a youthful affair with an African serving woman. Since he was already a Cardinal then, though only 17, it wouldn't have looked awfully good to admit parentage. In 1513, Clement was named Archbishop of Florence by his cousin Leo X; he also acted as lord of Florence until elected Pope in 1523.