About 1465 Botticelli set up his own studio, and soon received commissions from the Medici. It was apparently for Lorenzo’s mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni, that he painted Judith; and for Piero Gottoso, her husband, he made his Madonna of the Magnificat and his Adoration of the Magi-hymns in color to three Medici generations. In the Madonna Botticelli pictured Lorenzo and Giuliano as boys of sixteen and twelve, holding a book upon which the Virgin—borrowed from Fra Lippo—writes her noble song of praise; in the Adoration Cosimo kneels at Mary’s feet, Piero kneels at a lower level before them, and Lorenzo, now seventeen, holds a sword in his hand as a sign that he has reached the age of legitimate killing.
Lorenzo and Giuliano carried on Piero’s patronage of Botticelli. His finest portraits are of Giuliano and Giuliano’s beloved Simonetta Vespucci. He still painted religious pictures, like the powerful St. Augustine in the church of the Ognissanti; but in this period, perhaps under the influence of Lorenzo’s circle, he turned more and more to pagan subjects, usually from classical mythology, and favoring the nude. Vasari reports that “in many houses Botticelli painted… plenty of naked women,” and accuses him of “serious disorders in his living”;32 the humanists, and animal spirits, had won Sandro for a time to an epicurean philosophy. It was apparently for Lorenzo and Giuliano that he painted (1480) The Birth of Venus. A demure nude rises from a golden shell in the sea, using her long blonde tresses as the only fig leaf at hand; on her right winged zephyrs blow her to the shore; on her left a pretty maid (Simonetta?), clad in a gown of flowered white, offers the goddess a mantle to enhance her loveliness. The painting is a masterpiece of grace, in which design and composition are everything, color is subordinate, realism is ignored, and everything is directed to evoking an ethereal fancy through the flowing rhythm of the line. Botticelli had taken the theme from a passage in Politian’s La giostra. From a description, in the same poem, of Giuliano’s victories in jousts and love the artist took his second pagan picture, Mars and Venus; here Venus is clothed, and may again be Simonetta; Mars lies exhausted and asleep, no rude warrior but a youth of unblemished flesh, who might almost be mistaken for another Aphrodite. Finally, in his Spring (Primavera) Botticelli expressed the mood of Lorenzo’s hymn to Bacchus (“Who would be happy, let him be!”): the auxiliary lady of the Birth reappears with her flowing robe and pretty feet; at the left Giuliano (?) plucks an apple from a tree to give to one of the three graces standing half nude beside him; on the right a lusty male seizes a maiden dressed in a little mist; Simonetta presides modestly over the scene; and in the air above her Cupid shoots his quite superfluous darts. These three pictures symbolized many things, for Botticelli loved to allegorize; but perhaps without his realizing it they represented also the victory of the humanists in art. The Church would now for half a century (1480–1534) struggle to regain her dominance over pictorial themes.
As if to meet the issue squarely, Sixtus IV called Botticelli to Rome (1481), and commissioned him to paint three frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. They are not among his masterpieces; he was in no mood for piety. But when he returned to Florence (1485) he found the city astir with Savonarola’s sermons, and went to hear him. He was deeply moved. He had always harbored a strain of austerity, and whatever skepticism he might have caught from Lorenzo, Pulci, and Politian had been lost in the secret well of his youthful faith. Now the fiery preacher at San Marco’s pressed upon him and Florence the awful implications of that faith: God had allowed Himself to be insulted, scourged, and crucified to redeem mankind from the guilt of Adam and Eve’s sin; only a life of virtue or sincere repentance could win some grace from that sacrifice of God to God, and so escape eternal hell. It was about this time that Botticelli illustrated Dante’s Divine Comedy. He turned his art again to the service of religion, and told once more the marvelous story of Mary and Christ. For the church of St. Barnabas he painted a masterly group of the Virgin enthroned, with divers saints; she was still the tender and lovely maiden whom he had drawn in Fra Lippo’s studio. Soon afterward he painted the Madonna of the Pomegranate— the Virgin surrounded by singing cherubim, the Child holding in His hand the fruit whose innumerable seeds symbolized the dissemination of the Christian faith. In 1490 he recapitulated the epic of the Divine Mother in two pictures: the Annunciation and the Coronation. But he was aging now, and had lost the fresh clarity and grace of his art.
In 1498 Savonarola was hanged and burned. Botticelli was horrified at this most distinguished murder of the Renaissance. Perhaps it was shortly after that tragedy that he painted his complex symbolism, Calumny. Against a background of classic archways and distant sea three women-Fraud, Deception, Calumny—led by a ragged male (Envy), drag a nude victim by the hair to a tribunal where a judge with the long ears of an ass, advised by females personifying Suspicion and Ignorance, prepares to yield to the fury and bloodthirst of the crowd and condemn the fallen man; while at the left Remorse, garbed in black, looks in sorrow upon naked Truth—Botticelli’s Venus once more, clad in the same reptilian hair. Was the victim intended to represent Savonarola? Perhaps, though the nudes might have startled the monk.
The Nativity in the National Gallery at London is Botticelli’s final masterpiece, confused but colorful, and capturing for the last time his rhythmic grace. Here all seems to breathe a heavenly happiness; the ladies of the Spring return as winged angels, hailing the miraculous and saving birth, and dancing precariously on a bough suspended in space. But on the picture Botticelli wrote in Greek these words, savoring of Savonarola, and recalling the Middle Ages in the height of the Renaissance:
This picture I, Alessandro, painted at the end of the year 1500, in the troubles of Italy… during the fulfillment of the Eleventh [Chapter] of St. John, in the second woe of the Apocalypse, in the loosing of the Devil for three years and a half. Later he shall be chained, according to the Twelfth of St. John, and we shall see him trodden down as in this picture.
After 1500 we have no paintings from his hand. He was only fifty-six, and might have had some art left in him; but he yielded place to Leonardo and Michelangelo, and lapsed into a morose poverty. The Medici who had been his mainstay gave him charity, but they themselves were in a fallen state. He died alone and infirm, aged sixty-six, while the forgetful world hurried on.
Among his pupils was his teacher’s son, Filippino Lippi. This “love child”* was loved by all who knew him: a man gentle, affable, modest, courteous, whose “excellence was such,” says Vasari, “that he obliterated the stain of his birth, if any there be.” Under his father’s tutelage and Sandro’s he learned the painter’s art so rapidly that already at twenty-three he produced in The Vision of St. Bernard a portrait that in Vasari’s judgment “lacked only speech.” When the Carmelite monks decided to complete the frescoes begun in their Brancacci Chapel sixty years before, they awarded the commission to Filippino, still but twenty-seven. The result did not equal Masaccio, but in St. Paul Addressing St. Peter in Prison Filippino achieved a memorable figure of simple dignity and quiet power.
In 1489, at Lorenzo’s suggestion, Cardinal Caraffa called him to Rome to decorate a chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva with scenes from the life of St. Thomas Aquinas. In the main fresco the artist, perhaps recalling a similar picture by Andrea da Firenze a century before, showed the philosopher in triumph, with Arius, Averroes, and other heretics at his feet; meanwhile, in the universities of Bologna and Padua, the doctrines of Averroes were gaining ground over the orthodox faith. Back in Florence, in the chapel of Filippo Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella, Filippino recorded the careers of the Apostles Philip and John in frescoes so realistic that legend told how a boy tried to hide a secret treasure in a hole that Filippino had represented in a pictured wall. Interrupting this series for a time, and replacing the dilatory Leonardo, he painted an altarpiece for the monks of Scopeto; he chose the old subject of the Magi adoring the Child, but enlivened it with Moors, Indians, and many Medici; one of these last, serving as an astrologer with a quadrant in his hands, is among the
most human and humorous portraits of the Renaissance. Finally (1498), as if to say that his father’s sins had been forgiven, Filippino was invited to Prato to paint a Madonna; Vasari praised it, the Second World War destroyed it. He settled down to marriage at forty, and knew for a few years the joys and tribulations of parentage. Suddenly, at forty-seven, he died of so simple an ailment as quinsy sore throat (1505).
VII. LORENZO PASSES
Lorenzo himself was not among the few who in those centuries reached old age. Like his father he suffered from arthritis and gout, to which was added a stomach disorder that frequently caused him exhausting pain. He tried a dozen remedies, and found nothing better than the passing alleviation given by warm mineral baths. For some time before his death he perceived that he, who had preached the gospel of joy, had not much longer to live.
His wife died in 1488; and though he had been unfaithful to her he sincerely mourned her loss and missed her helping hand. She had given him a numerous progeny, of whom seven survived. He had sedulously supervised their education; and in his later years he labored to guide them into marriages that might redound to the happiness of Florence as well as their own. The oldest son, Piero, was affianced to an Orsini to win friends in Rome; the youngest, Giuliano, married a sister of the duke of Savoy, received from Francis I the title of duke of Nemours, and so helped to build a bridge between Florence and France. Giovanni, the second son, was directed into an ecclesiastical career, and took to it amiably; he pleased everyone by his good nature, good manners, and good Latin. Lorenzo persuaded Innocent VIII to violate all precedents by making him a cardinal at fourteen; the Pope yielded for the same reason that made most marriages of royalty—to bind one government to another in the amity of one blood.
Lorenzo retired from active participation in the government of Florence, delegated more and more of his public and private business to his son Piero, and sought comfort in the peace of the countryside and the conversation of his friends. He excused himself in a characteristic letter.
What can be more desirable to a well-regulated mind than the enjoyment of leisure with dignity? This is what all good men wish to obtain, but which great men alone accomplish. In the midst of public affairs we may indeed be allowed to look forward to a day of rest; but no rest should totally seclude us from an attention to the concerns of our country. I cannot deny that the path which it has been my lot to tread has been arduous and rugged, full of dangers, and beset with treachery; but I console myself in having contributed to the welfare of my country, the prosperity of which may now rival that of any other state, however flourishing. Nor have I been inattentive to the interests and advancement of my own family, having always proposed to my imitation the example of my grandfather Cosmo, who watched over his public and private concerns with equal vigilance. Having now obtained the object of my cares, I trust I may be allowed to enjoy the sweets of leisure, to share the reputation of my fellow-citizens, and to exult in the glory of my native place.
But little time was left him to enjoy his unaccustomed peace. He had hardly moved to his villa at Careggi (March 21, 1492) when his stomach pains became alarmingly intense. Specialist physicians were summoned, who made him drink a mixture of jewels. He became rapidly worse, and reconciled himself to death. He expressed to Pico and Politian his sorrow that he could not live long enough to complete his collection of manuscripts for their accommodation and the use of students. As the end approached he sent for a priest, and with his last strength insisted on leaving his bed to receive the sacrament on his knees. He thought now of the uncompromising preacher who had denounced him as a destroyer of liberty and a corrupter of youth, and he longed to have that man’s for-giveness before he died. He despatched a friend to beg Savonarola to come to him to hear his confession and give him a more precious absolution. Savonarola came. According to Politian he offered absolution on three conditions: that Lorenzo should have a lively faith in God’s mercy, should promise to mend his life if he recovered, and should meet death with fortitude; Lorenzo agreed, and was absolved. According to Savonarola’s early biographer, G. F. Pico (not the humanist), the third condition was that Lorenzo should promise “to restore liberty to Florence”; in Pico’s account Lorenzo made no response to this demand, and the friar left him unabsolved.34 On April 9, 1492, Lorenzo died, aged forty-three.
When the news of this premature death reached Florence almost the entire city mourned, and even Lorenzo’s opponents wondered how social order could now be maintained in Florence, or peace in Italy, without his guiding hand.35 Europe recognized his stature as a statesman, and sensed in him the characteristic qualities of the time; he was “the man of the Renaissance” in everything but his aversion to violence. His slowly acquired prudence in policy, his simple but persuasive eloquence in debate, his firmness and courage in action, had made all but a few Florentines forget the liberty that his family had destroyed; and many who had not forgotten remembered it as the freedom of rich clans to compete in force and chicanery for an exploitive dominance in a “democracy” where only a thirtieth of the population could vote. Lorenzo had used his power with moderation and for the good of the state, even to the neglect of his private fortune. He had been guilty of sexual looseness, and had given a bad example to Florentine youth. He had given a good example in literature, had restored the Italian language to literary standing, and had rivaled his protégés in poetry. He had supported the arts with a discriminating taste that set a standard for Europe. Of all the “despots” he was the gentlest and the best. “This man,” said King Ferdinand of Naples, “lived long enough for his glory, but too short a time for Italy.”36 After him Florence declined, and Italy knew no peace.
CHAPTER V
Savonarola and the Republic
1492–1534
I. THE PROPHET
THE advantage of hereditary rule is continuity; its nemesis is mediocrity. Piero di Lorenzo succeeded without trouble to his father’s power, but his character and his misjudgments forfeited the popularity upon which the rule of the Medici had been based. He was endowed with a violent temper, a middling mind, a vacillating will, and admirable intentions. He continued Lorenzo’s generosity to artists and men of letters, but with less discrimination and tact. He was physically strong, excelled in sports, and took part more frequently and prominently in athletic competitions than Florence thought becoming in the head of an endangered state. It was among his many misfortunes that Lorenzo’s enterprises and extravagance had depleted the city’s treasury; that the competition of British textiles was causing economic depression in Florence; that Piero’s Orsini wife turned up her Roman nose at the Florentines as a nation of shopkeepers; that the collateral branch of the Medici family, derived from Cosimo’s brother Lorenzo “the Elder,” began now to challenge the descendants of Cosimo, and led a party of opposition in the name of liberty. It was Piero’s crowning misery that he was contemporary with Charles VIII of France, who invaded Italy, and of Savonarola, who proposed to replace the Medici with Christ. Piero had not been built to withstand such strains.
The Savonarola family came from Padua to Ferrara about 1440, when Michele Savonarola was invited by Niccolò III d’Este to be his court physician. Michael was a man of piety rare in medicos; he was wont to rebuke the Ferrarese for preferring romances to religion.1 His son Niccolò was a mediocre physician, but Niccolò’s wife Elena Bonacossi was a woman of strong character and high ideals. Girolamo was the third of their seven children. They set him in his turn to study medicine, but he thought Thomas Aquinas more absorbing than anatomy, and solitude with his books more pleasant than the sports of youth. At the University of Bologna he was horrified to find no student so poor as to do virtue reverence. “To be considered a man here,” he wrote, “you must defile your mouth with the most filthy, brutal, and tremendous blasphemies…. If you study philosophy and the good arts you are considered a dreamer; if you live chastely and modestly, a fool; if you are pious, a hypocrite; if you believe in God, an imbecile.”2 He left the Univers
ity, and returned to his mother and solitude. He became self-conscious, fretted over the thought of hell and the sinfulness of men; his earliest known composition was a poem denouncing the vices of Italy, including the popes, and pledging himself to reform his country and his Church. He passed long hours in prayer, and fasted so earnestly that his parents mourned his emaciation. In 1474 he was stirred to even severer piety by the Lenten sermons of Fra Michele, and he rejoiced to see many Ferrarese bringing masks, false hair, playing cards, unseemly pictures, and other worldly apparatus to fling them upon a burning pyre in the market place. A year later, aged twenty-three, he fled secretly from home, and entered a Dominican monastery in Bologna.
He wrote a tender letter to his parents begging their forgiveness for disappointing the expectations they had had of his advancement in the world. When they importuned him to return he answered angrily: “Ye blind! Why do you still weep and lament? You hamper me, though you should rejoice…. What can I say if you grieve yet, save that you are my sworn enemies and foes to Virtue? If so, then I say to you, ‘Get ye behind me, all ye who work evil!’“3 Six years he stayed in the Bologna convent. He proudly asked that the most humble tasks should be given him, but his talent as an orator was discovered, and he was set to preaching. In 1481 he was transferred to San Marco in Florence, and was assigned to preach in the church of San Lorenzo. His sermons there proved unpopular; they were too theological and didactic for a city that knew the eloquence and polish of the humanists; his congregation dwindled week by week. The prior set him to instructing novices.
It was probably in the next five years that his final character was formed. As the intensity of his feelings and purposes increased they wrote themselves upon his features in the furrowed and frowning forehead, the thick lips tight with determination, the immense nose curving out as if to encompass the world, a countenance somber and severe, expressing an infinite capacity for love and hate; a small frame racked and haunted with visions, frustrated aspirations, and introverted storms. “I am still flesh like you,” he wrote to his parents, “and the senses are unruly to reason, so that I must struggle cruelly to keep the Demon from leaping upon my back.”4 He fasted and flogged himself to tame what seemed to him the inherent corruption of human nature. If he personified the promptings of flesh and pride as Satanic voices, he could with equal readiness personify the admonitions of his better self. Alone in his cell, he glorified his solitude by conceiving himself as a battleground of spirits hovering over him for evil or for good. Finally it seemed to him that angels, archangels, were speaking to him; he accepted their words as divine revelations; and suddenly he spoke to the world as a prophet chosen to be a messenger of God. He avidly absorbed the apocalyptic visions attributed to the Apostle John, and inherited the eschatalogy of the mystic Joachim of Flora. Like Joachim he announced that the reign of Antichrist had come, that Satan had captured the world, that soon Christ would appear to begin His earthly rule, and that divine vengeance would engulf the tyrants, adulterers, and atheists who seemed to dominate Italy.