Lorenzo de' Medici (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

Following his grandfather Cosimo (b. 1389–d. 1464) and father Piero (b. 1416–d. 1469), Lorenzo (b. 1449–d. 1492) was the third head of the Medici dynasty to use commercial wealth and international banking connections to lead Florence’s dominant political faction, to undermine its republican constitution, and exercise strategic influence over its relations with other states. As his copious correspondence confirms, Lorenzo was a significant diplomatic player in all the peninsular conflicts of his time, including the Pazzi War in the late 1470s, and the War of Ferrara and the Neapolitan Barons’ War in the 1480s. To the generation of Italians who lived through the French invasions of Naples in 1494 and Milan in 1499, and the lengthy conflicts they initiated fought by foreign powers on Italian soil, Lorenzo came to personify a lost golden age of peace, prosperity, and cultural efflorescence. His posthumous reputation was enhanced by the fact that his son Giovanni and nephew Giulio went on to be elected pope, as Leo X and Clement VII respectively, and that his great-grandson Cosimo was the first of a line of Medici grand dukes of Tuscany. Over the intervening centuries secular hagiography has gradually given way to a more balanced assessment of his achievements as a faction leader, statesman, and cultural patron.

Reference Works

By far the most valuable reference work for this subject is the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, publication of which is ongoing. Although Lorenzo’s extra-peninsular diplomatic and commercial contacts ranged were wide-ranging, they were concentrated in France, Florence’s most powerful ally, which renders the Dictionnaire de Biographie Française of greater relevance than other national biographical dictionaries. However, neither of these resources is likely to be completed for many years. Turner 1996 is a valuable point of departure for the all matters relating to the visual arts. Grendler 1999 is more chronologically focused and more diverse in content. Campbell 2003 serves a similar purpose, on a somewhat smaller scale.

Campbell, Gordon. The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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Contains brief entries on individual members of the Medici family and a longer one on Medici villas, together with entries on many of Lorenzo’s contemporaries and contacts, particularly artists, writers, and musicians.
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Dictionnaire de Biographie Française. 19 vols. to date. Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932–.
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The commercial links forged by the Medici with the kingdom of France provided the basis for a political alliance between France and the Florentine republic. Although the Dictionnaire de Biographie Française remains incomplete (the most recent volume ends with La Vallée), it can be consulted for individuals such as the regent Anne de Beaujeu and King Charles VIII.
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Dizionario biografico degli italiani. 77 vols. to date. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–.
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Vol. 73 (2009) contains the biographies of over forty members of the Medici family, including Ingeborg Walter’s entry on Lorenzo (113-124). The bibliography includes works published up to 2006. The text is also available online. The Dizionario biografico degli italiani remains a work in progress, but nevertheless contains entries on many of Lorenzo’s contemporaries.
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Grendler, Paul F., ed. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. Vol. 4. New York: Scribner, 1999.
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A standard reference work for the Renaissance, whether it is interpreted as a period of time or a cultural phenomenon. Contains biographical and thematic entries, with members of the Medici family featured in volume 4.
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Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. London: Macmillan, 1996.
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A detailed reference work of relevance for the various artists, sculptors, and architects whose names have been associated with Lorenzo, associations that may have involved direct patronage or may have consisted of recommendations to other patrons.
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Collections of Papers

Although there have been few recent biographies of Lorenzo, there has been no shortage of essay collections devoted to the “age of Lorenzo,” many of them either published to coincide with the fifth centenary of Lorenzo’s death or as proceedings of conferences held that year. Brown 1992 reproduces that scholar’s previous contributions to the subject, whereas Viti 1992 is a special number of a journal, commissioned as part of the Laurentian celebrations. Of the three volumes edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, only in Garfagnini 1992b are the contributions all in Italian. Garfagnini 1992a was largely inspired by the ongoing edition of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence), and Bullard 1994 is entirely the product of research for that project. Another of the Lettere editors, Michael Mallett, contributed a paper on the politics of horseracing to Mallett and Mann 1996. Like Mallett and Mann 1996, Garfagnini 1994 contains a balance of political and cultural topics, whereas Toscani 1993 tends toward the latter.

Brown, Alison. The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1992.
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Brown’s collected essays were published to mark the Laurentian fifth centenary but are not confined to studies of Lorenzo. The most relevant essays are “Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, 1430–1476: A Radical Alternative to Elder Medicean Supremacy?” “The Guelf Party in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” and “Public and Private Interest: Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Reformers.”
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Bullard, Melissa Meriam. Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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Bullard’s research for volumes 10 and 11 of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence) resulted in a number of articles, eight of which are brought together in this volume. The concentration is therefore on the later 1480s, especially regarding Florentine relations with Rome and the Medici-Cibo marriage, and the affairs of the Medici bank.
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Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, ed. Lorenzo de’ Medici: Studi. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1992a.
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The backbone of the volume is provided by contributions from the editors of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence)—Riccardo Fubini, Nicolai Rubinstein, Michael Mallett, Humfrey Butters, and Melissa Bullard—with additional material provided by Alison Brown, Paula Clarke, Mario Martelli, and Christine Shaw, among others.
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Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, ed. Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo tempo. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1992b.
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The slimmest of Garfagnini’s fifth-centenary collections. The contributors are Giuliano Tanturli, Mario Martelli, Daniela Delcorno Branca, Paolo Orvieto, Patrizia Salvadori and Andrea Zorzi. Martelli’s essay on “La cultura letteraria nell’età di Lorenzo” is the most substantial and also appears in Mallett and Mann 1996.
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Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, ed. Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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A substantial offering of twenty-two articles, including Luigi Beschi on antique sculpture, Alison Brown on public opinion, Gene Brucker on the Florentine economy, William Connell on the Florentine territorial state, Frank D’Accone on music, Sebastiano Gentile on Lorenzo’s Greek library, F. W. Kent on oligarchy, and Nerida Newbigin on feste.
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Mallett, Michael, and Nicholas Mann, eds. Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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Twenty papers delivered at a colloquium held at the Warburg Institute and the University of Warwick in 1992. Contributors include Robert Black, Alison Brown, Melissa Bullard, Peter Denley, E. B. Fryde, F. W. Kent, Jill Kraye, Kristen Lippincott, Kate Lowe, Nerida Newbigin, Linda Pellecchia, and Nicolai Rubinstein.
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Toscani, Bernard, ed. Lorenzo de’ Medici: New Perspectives. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
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Proceedings of a conference held at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York in 1992. Toscani’s own interests are reflected in the priority given to literary topics. Contributors include Vittore Branca on Lorenzo and Poliziano, Sebastiano Gentile on Ficino and Lorenzo’s Platonism, and F. W. Kent on Florentine patronage networks.
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Viti, Paolo, ed. “Special Issue: Studi su Lorenzo dei Medici e il secolo XV.” Archivio Storico Italiano 150 (1992).
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A themed issue of the leading journal, celebrating Lorenzo on the five hundredth anniversary of his death. The contributors include Mario Martelli, Ludovica Sebregondi, Konrad Eisenbichler, Armando F. Verde, Florence Elder de Roover, Riccardo Fubini, and Cesare Vasoli.
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Reputation

Lorenzo’s posthumous reputation as the heart and soul of 15th-century Florence (and even that of Renaissance Italy as a whole) has proved to be so long-lived and influential that it would be difficult to make a sharp bibliographical distinction between the mythmaking and the reality. With the exception of popular literature, the former has gradually given way to the latter, but only over the span of five centuries.

Birth of the Laurentian Myth

One means by which Lorenzo created his own self-image is considered by Trexler 1978, but “Renaissance self-fashioning” had become a fashionable phrase by the time Bullard 1987 took a more rounded view of Lorenzo’s own image making. The first posthumous celebration of Lorenzo was the funeral lament “Quis dabit capiti meo aquam” (O that my head were waters), written by the poet Angelo Ambrogini (better known as Poliziano) and set to music as a motet by Heinrich Isaac, who was music tutor to Lorenzo’s sons. When those sons—Piero, Giovanni, and Giuliano de’ Medici—were expelled from Florence in 1494 and a new, broader constitution was introduced under the inspiration of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, Lorenzo’s posthumous reputation became that of the tyrant who had denied Florentines their “liberties.” Polizzotto 1993 provides a brief survey of the issues. Rubinstein 1996 has little to say on specifically 15th-century views of Lorenzo but should be consulted for authors whose impressions of him were formed before 1500 and published later.

Bullard, Melissa. “The Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici: Between Myth and Mythology.” In Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of H.G. Koenigsberger. Edited by Phyllis Mack and Margaret C. Jacob: 25–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523427Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Bullard identifies two image-making techniques consciously employed by Lorenzo: “the art of the well-chosen gesture” and playing on Florence’s growing reputation as a center of culture and learning. These techniques were aimed at both Florentine and non-Florentine audiences. Also included in Bullard 1994 (cited under Collections of Papers).
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Polizzotto, Lorenzo. “Lorenzo il Magnifico, Savonarola, and Medicean Dynasticism.” In Lorenzo de’ Medici: New Perspectives. Edited by Bernard Toscani, 331–355. New York: Peter Lang, 1993.
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Reflections by the historian of all things Savonarolan. After the expulsion of the Medici in 1494, generations of Florentines were exercised by the position of the Medici and whether or not they were too powerful and too inclined toward despotism to be allowed to return. Savonarola became the embodiment of the anti-Medicean cause.
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Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Lorenzo’s Image in Europe.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 281–296. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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This wide-ranging survey includes contemporary and near-contemporary accounts of Lorenzo, including that of Philippe de Commynes, who was sent as French ambassador to Florence in 1478 and whose Mémoires were first published in 1528.
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Trexler, Richard C. “Lorenzo de’ Medici and Savonarola, Martyrs for Florence.” Renaissance Quarterly 31 (1978): 293–308.
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As the title indicates, both Lorenzo and his protégé Girolamo Savonarola identified themselves as martyrs for Florence, though the former survived each of the assassination attempts against him and the latter was burned for heresy.
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Myth of Lorenzo in the 16th Century

In the early 16th century, Mediceans regarded the Florentine government headed by Piero Soderini as too broadly based to be effective and looked back nostalgically to the narrower regime crafted by Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo. In 1512 the Medici returned to Florence, and their dominant position was confirmed when Giovanni de’ Medici was elected pope early the following year. That provided the opportunity for Niccolò Valori to write his hagiographical vita of Pope Leo’s father, now edited as Valori 1991. For the role of the Valori family in Florentine politics, see Jurdjevic 2008. The myth of the Laurentian golden age evolved rapidly, fuelled by collective self-pity as Italy became the battlefield on which other European powers played out their rivalries. This golden age received its most famous expression in the opening chapter of Francesco Guicciardini’s History of Italy. Brown 1996 examines the treatment of Lorenzo in that text and in Guicciardini’s other works. In contrast to his friend Guicciardini, Niccolò Machiavelli rejected the Laurentian myth. Najemy 1982 discusses Machiavelli’s literary references to Lorenzo. When Lorenzo’s great-grandson Cosimo became duke of Florence, Lorenzo and the other 15th-century Medici were celebrated as illustrious forebears who lived like princes and were generous cultural patrons, not least in the Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, a collaborative work published in 1550 under the name of the painter Giorgio Vasari. Rubin 1994 examines Vasari’s treatment of Lorenzo. There is an extensive body of literature on the myth of Lorenzo, of which two further examples are listed here: Bullard 1987 as one of the more substantial contributions to the genre and Rubinstein 1996 for its geographical scope.

Brown, Alison. “Lorenzo and Guicciardini.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 281–296. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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Brown argues that Guicciardini’s depiction of Lorenzo remains consistent across the History of Florence, in which he appears as “a tyrant, albeit a very nice one,” the Dialogue on the Government of Florence, in which the speakers assess the strengths and weaknesses of Medicean “narrow” government, and the History of Italy.
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Bullard, Melissa. “The Magnificent Lorenzo de’ Medici: Between Myth and Mythology.” In Politics and Culture in Early Modern Europe: Essays in Honour of H. G. Koenigsberger. Edited by Phyllis Mack and Margaret C. Jacob: 25–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523427Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Opens with reflections on the nature of mythmaking and then looks at that phenomenon in practice. Although coverage includes Lorenzo’s lifetime, priority is given to 16th-century developments. Also included in Bullard 1994 (cited under Collections of Papers).
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Jurdjevic, Mark. Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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The Valori family was prominent in Florentine politics for five generations, but it was Francesco Valori’s close association with Savonarola’s anti-Medicean message in the 1490s that prompted Niccolò Valori to write his life of Lorenzo as a means of currying favor with the restored Medici in the 1510s.
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Najemy, John M. “Machiavelli and the Medici: The Lessons of Florentine History.” Renaissance Quarterly 35 (1982): 551–576.
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Najemy analyzes the texts of Machiavelli’s Discourse on Florentine Affairs after the Death of Lorenzo (1520) and lengthier Florentine Histories (1520–1525), highlighting his increasingly negative opinions about the role of the Medici as faction leaders in 15th-century Florence.
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Rubin, Patricia. “Vasari, Lorenzo, and the Myth of Magnificence.” In Lorenzo il magnifico e il suo mondo. Edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 427–442. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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A study of mythmaking in two and three dimensions, featuring Vasari’s posthumous portrait of Lorenzo and Michelangelo’s sculpture for Lorenzo’s tomb in the New Sacristy at San Lorenzo.
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Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Lorenzo’s Image in Europe.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 281–296. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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A brisk canter through the literature, beginning with Guicciardini and Machiavelli and accounting for the views of Brantôme and other 16th-century authors before moving on to later commentators.
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Valori, Niccolò. Vita di Lorenzo de’ Medici: scritta in lingua latina da Niccolò Valori; resa in volgare dal figlio Filippo Valori; a cura di Enrico Niccolini. Edited by Enrico Niccolini. Vicenza, Italy: Accademia Olimpica, 1991.
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Written in 1513–1515 and first published in 1568, Valori’s Vita presents Lorenzo as a “miracle of nature” and is the source for stories that constitute the “myth” of Lorenzo, including his youthful wisdom, his salvation from a succession of assassination attempts, and the “divine oracles” that marked his death.
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From Myth to Antimyth

Sustained biographical interest in Lorenzo began with Fabroni 1784. Among Fabroni’s correspondents was William Roscoe of Liverpool, a wealthy Italophile who nevertheless declined to travel to Italy and relied on an agent to reproduce documents in the Florentine archives. The result was Roscoe 1795, the first English biography of Lorenzo. Roscoe’s impact on longer-term appreciation of Lorenzo as a cultural patron is assessed by Hale 2005. Gaja 2005 takes Roscoe as the starting point for a survey of 19th-century illustrations of Lorenzo. For Burckhardt 1860 Lorenzo was the model Renaissance man. The reaction against Roscoe’s cultural emphasis began to set in with Reumont 1876 and was confirmed when Armstrong 1896 also stressed Lorenzo’s political and diplomatic significance.

Armstrong, Edward. Lorenzo de’ Medici and Florence in the Fifteenth Century. New York: Putnam, 1896.
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As the founder of the popular special subject “Italy, 1492–1513” at the University of Oxford, Armstrong was more renowned as a teacher than as a published author. His biography of Lorenzo provided a neat corrective to Roscoe 1795 by emphasizing politics rather than culture.
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Burckhardt, Jacob. Die Cultur der Renaissance in Italien: ein Versuch. Basel, Switzerland: Schweighauser, 1860.
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Lorenzo does not loom disproportionately large in this highly influential work, but he did live toward the center of its time span (1300–1600) and is given prominence at the end of the text. The English translations of this work are so numerous that they discourage the recommendation of one over another.
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Fabroni, Angelo. Laurentii Medicis Magnifici vita. 2 vols. Pisa, Italy: J. Gratiolius, 1784.
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Fabroni was a prolific Tuscan biographer, among whose works were books on the lives of Lorenzo’s grandfather Cosimo il vecchio de’ Medici, published in 1789, and of Lorenzo’s son Pope Leo X, published in 1797. His emphasis was on Lorenzo as a master of enlightened statecraft.
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Gaja, Katerine. “Illustrating Lorenzo the Magnificent: From William Roscoe’s The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici Called the Magnificent (1795) to George Frederic Watts’ Fresco at Careggi (1845).” In Victorian and Edwardian Responses to the Italian Renaissance. Edited by John E. Law and Lene Østermark-Johansen, 121–144. Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005.
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The examples mentioned in the title of the article are the deliberate softening of Lorenzo’s features by Matthew Haughton to create the image of a philosopher-prince. This image matched Roscoe’s text and Watts’s fresco depicting the mythological story of Lorenzo’s doctor being drowned in a well for failing to save his patient’s life.
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Hale, John R. England and the Italian Renaissance: The Growth of Interest in its History and Art. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005.
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This fascinating survey traces its subject from accounts of 16th-century English travelers to Italy through to the work of John Addington Symonds and other 19th-century historians. Lorenzo’s part in the story is firmly dictated by Roscoe 1795 and its abiding influence.
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Reumont, Alfred von. Lorenzo de’ Medici: The Magnificent. 2 vols. Translated by Robert Harrison. London: Smith, Elder, 1876.
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Roscoe 1795 remained the standard biography until Reumont’s appeared, originally in German in 1874. Reumont was a Prussian diplomat who spent many years in Italy. The significance of his biography lay in its emphasis on Lorenzo as a figure of political and diplomatic significance, in contrast to Roscoe’s poet-patron.
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Roscoe, William. The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Called the Magnificent. Liverpool, UK: J. M’Creery, 1795.
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Roscoe’s eulogistic biography emphasizes Lorenzo as a poet and cultural patron rather than as a major political figure. It was a best-seller and created a popular impression that Lorenzo was the central figure of the Renaissance, which itself appeared to be a phenomenon invented by Roscoe. His Life of Pope Leo X followed in 1805.
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Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Lorenzo’s Image in Europe.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 281–296. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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Following his coverage of Lorenzo’s reputation in the works of 16th-century authors (see Myth of Lorenzo in the 16th Century), Rubinstein analyzes the Lorenzo of Voltaire—for whom the age of Lorenzo was as golden as those of ancient Greece and Rome and the France of Louis XIV—Roscoe and Sismondi, Macaulay, Pastor, and Burckhardt.
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Lorenzo after 1900

Interest in Laurentian Florence has inspired numerous popular histories in recent decades, while Lorenzo himself has been featured in various historical novels, but more discerning readers should opt for Hale 1977 and Najemy 2006, both of which provide good overviews of the Medici dynasty in its Florentine context. Although Ady 1955 and Hook 1984 are biographies by highly regarded historians of Renaissance Italy, they do not draw heavily on archival sources. Kent 1996 is a biography in miniature, covering the first twenty years of Lorenzo’s life; the rest of his life lasted little more than twenty-two years. A thoroughly scholarly biography may well not be attempted until all the volumes of Lorenzo’s correspondence have been published (see Correspondence).

Ady, Cecilia M. Lorenzo dei Medici and Renaissance Italy. London: English Universities Press, 1955.
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An accessible biography in the tradition established by Ady’s mother, Julia Cartwright, though the subject matter provides a link between the work of Ady’s Oxford tutor Edward Armstrong and her protégé J. R. Hale, thereby confirming the centrality of Lorenzo de’ Medici in British perceptions of Renaissance Italy.
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Hale, J. R. Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.
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Lorenzo does not loom overly large in a work that traces the dynasty from its rise to wealth and power in the early 15th century through to the death of Grand Duke Gian Gastone in the 18th. The bibliography contains judicious comments and laments the “absence of a satisfactory biography of Lorenzo.”
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Hook, Judith. Lorenzo de’ Medici: An Historical Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984.
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This work represents a clear attempt to fill the biographical void identified by Hale 1977. Although Laurentian studies have made great advances since 1984, particularly through the publication of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence), this biography should nevertheless be preferred to the various popular lives that have appeared in the meantime.
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Kent, F. W. “The Young Lorenzo, 1449–1469”. In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Politics and Culture. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 1–22. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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Following the model set by André Rochon (La jeunesse de Laurent de Médicis, 1449–1478. Paris: Les belles lettres, 1963), this is a wide-ranging survey of Lorenzo’s literary, intellectual, diplomatic, and political apprenticeship, including his part in the suppression of the anti-Medicean conspiracy of 1466.
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Najemy, John M. A History of Florence, 1200–1575. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
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A general history of the city, written in the light of the considerable quantity of scholarship published since Hale 1977. Of greatest relevance to Lorenzo is chapter 12, on the Medici and the Ottimati, Florence’s sociopolitical elite.
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Correspondence

Del Piazzo 1956 lists a vast number of Lorenzo’s letters, but even this is not a complete record. A more selective list is provided by Ricci and Rubinstein 1964, a preparatory work for the multivolume edition of Lorenzo’s letters that began to appear thirteen years later, under the general editorship of Nicolai Rubinstein, and features here as Medici 1977–2007. After three volumes had appeared, covering the years 1460 to 1479, Fumagalli 1980 found fault with the editors’ methodology. A fourth volume had been published by the time Cherubini 1985 offered more sympathetic comments on the project. The quantity of commentary on each letter easily outweighs the letter itself and has generated numerous articles on related topics. Some of the research material gathered by Michael Mallett and Humfrey Butters can be consulted online: see The Letters of Lorenzo de’ Medici, 1480–1486. Mallett 2005 records one editor’s reflections on the project. The final volumes in the series have yet to be published. For correspondence relating to Lorenzo’s collection of objets d’art, see Fusco and Corti 2006.

Cherubini, Paolo. “Note alla pubblicazione dell’epistolario di Lorenzo de’ Medici.” Rassegna degli Archivi di Stato 45 (1985): 457–476.
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Observations on the Lettere project (Medici 1977–2007) by the editor of the correspondence of Cardinal Jacopo Ammannati Piccolomini (d. 1479).
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Del Piazzo, Marcello, ed. Protocolli del carteggio di Lorenzo il Magnifico per gli anni 1473–4, 1477–92. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1956.
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A list of nearly fifty thousand letters dating from 1473–1474 and 1477–1492. It includes lost letters and was rejected as too unmanageable to form the basis of the Lettere (Medici 1997–2007).
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Fumagalli, Edoardo. “Nuovi documenti su Lorenzo e Giuliano de’ Medici.” Italia medioevale e umanistica 23 (1980): 115–164.
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Prints some correspondence relating to the Medici bank. In his article “The Letters of Lorenzo de’ Medici and of the Medici Bank: Problems of Authorship” (Rinascimento 22 [1982]: 277–279), Nicolai Rubinstein responded to Fumagalli’s criticism by explaining that the Lettere project (Medici 1977–2007) deliberately excludes impersonal correspondence relating to the bank
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Fusco, Laurie, and Gino Corti. Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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The core of the book is provided by 173 previously unpublished letters regarding Lorenzo’s collections of coins, hardstone vases and gems, mosaics, and ceramics, as well as metalwork and sculpture.
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The Letters of Lorenzo de’ Medici, 1480–1486.
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Research material accumulated by Michael Mallett and Humfrey Butters for volumes 5–9 of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007) forms the core of this online resource, which is arranged biographically but consists mostly of summaries of ambassadorial dispatches. The Mallett material relating to the years 1480–1484 is more detailed.
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Mallett, Michael. “Nicolai Rubinstein and the Lorenzo Letters.” In Nicolai Rubinstein in Memoriam. Edited by F. W. Kent, 25–34. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 2005.
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Part of a booklet produced under the auspices of the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Villa I Tatti. The other contributions are by Riccardo Fubini, one of Rubinstein’s earlier collaborators on the Lettere, and F. W. Kent, who succeeded Rubinstein as the project’s general editor in 2002.
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Medici, Lorenzo de’. Lettere. 12 vols. Edited by Riccardo Fubini, Nicolai Rubinstein, Michael Mallett, Humfrey Butters, Melissa Meriam Bullard, and Marco Pellegrini. Florence, Italy: Giunti Barbèra for the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1977–2007.
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The editors’ extensive commentaries are based in large measure on ambassadorial dispatches written by a range of Florentine and non-Florentine orators to their home states. The surviving correspondence is concentrated toward the end of Lorenzo’s life, as will be further confirmed when the final volumes of this series are published. The total number of letters is rather more than the 1,866 listed in Ricci and Rubinstein 1964.
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Ricci, Pier Giorgio, and Nicolai Rubinstein. Censimento delle lettere di Lorenzo de’ Medici. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1964.
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Regarding Del Piazzo 1956 as too unwieldy to form the basis of an edition of Lorenzo’s correspondence, Ricci and Rubinstein compiled their own list of 1866 extant letters, selecting only those that are actually dated or can be confidently dated from the content, together with another thirty undated items they ascribed to Lorenzo.
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Dynastic Interests

The interplay between the Medici dynasty and its banking and commercial interests was not merely part of Lorenzo’s inheritance from his father Piero and grandfather Cosimo. His maternal uncle Giovanni Tornabuoni was manager of the Rome branch of the bank. Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice Orsini, was the niece of Cardinal Latino Orsini, the head of the Camera Apostolica, the financial department of the Roman curia. de Roover 1963 is the classic study of the Medici bank throughout the 15th century, including the period of decline under Lorenzo’s leadership, but Goldthwaite 1987 supplements it in light of the author’s extensive research into the economic history of Renaissance Florence. Bullard 1994 is invaluable for the overlap of financial and dynastic affairs in the later 1480s. Lorenzo and Clarice’s children were Lucrezia, Piero, Maddalena, Giovanni (later Pope Leo X), Luisa, Contessina, and Giuliano. Lorenzo arranged marriages for Maddalena with Pope Innocent VIII’s son Franceschetto Cibo, for Piero with Alfonsina Orsini, and for Lucrezia with Jacopo Salviati. Shaw 1988 is a useful point of departure for Lorenzo’s relations with his Orsini in-laws, and Tomas 2003 is essential reading for each of Lorenzo’s female relatives. The most detailed study of the early years of any of his children is Picotti 1928. The senior branch of the Medici family has enjoyed such historiographical dominance that Brown 1979 is a refreshing reminder of the fortunes of their kinsmen.

Brown, Alison. “Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, 1430–1476: A Radical Alternative to Elder Medicean Supremacy?” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42 (1979): 81–103.
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Cosimo de’ Medici’s nephew Pierfrancesco was a politically, diplomatically, and commercially active member of the dynasty; he was also older than Lorenzo and lent Lorenzo substantial sums of money. Brown demonstrates Pierfrancesco’s resentment at belonging to a junior branch of the dynasty and examines the limits of familial loyalty. Also included in Brown 1992 (cited under Collections of Papers).
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Bullard, Melissa Meriam. Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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The second half of this collection includes considerable emphasis on the affairs of the Medici bank in Rome in the later 1480s, the period in which Lorenzo arranged a marriage for his daughter Maddalena with the son of Pope Innocent VIII and browbeat the cardinals into allowing his teenage son to join their elite ranks.
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de Roover, Raymond. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
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De Roover’s 1948 study The Medici Bank: Its Organization, Management, Operations, and Decline (New York: New York University Press) was rendered obsolete by the discovery of substantial quantities of newly discovered material. This classic work is vital for an understanding of Lorenzo’s business activities and his contribution to the bank’s decline.
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Goldthwaite, Richard A. “The Medici Bank and the World of Florentine Capitalism.” Past and Present 114 (1987): 3–31.
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The emphasis is more on Cosimo’s lifetime than that of Lorenzo, but the purpose is to fill a gap in de Roover’s analysis by examining the relationship between money and power. This is also a pendant to Goldthwaite’s The Building of Renaissance Florence: An Economic and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
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Picotti, G. B. La giovinezza di Leone X. Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1928.
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Lorenzo’s second son, Giovanni, was sixteen when his father died but had long been central to Lorenzo’s ecclesiastical ambitions. Picotti traces the means by which Lorenzo gained numerous Tuscan and French benefices for Giovanni and wore down opposition to his receipt of a cardinal’s hat. The original edition was reprinted in 1981 (Rome: Multigrafica Editrice).
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Shaw, Christine. “Lorenzo de’ Medici and Virginio Orsini.” In Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein. Edited by Peter Denley and Caroline Elam, 33–42. London: Westfield College, 1988.
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Virginio Orsini was head of the Bracciano branch of his dynasty between 1480 and 1497, Lorenzo’s kinsman-by-marriage, and a notable condottiere. Although he protested loyalty to Florence, the fluidity of interstate relations meant that he and Lorenzo were not always technically on the same side.
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Tomas, Natalie R. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003.
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At the risk of appearing to dismiss the central figures in this study as mere adjuncts to their male relatives, the women who are placed center stage include Lorenzo’s mother Lucrezia Tornabuoni, wife Clarice Orsini, sisters Bianca, Lucrezia, and Maria—who married into the Pazzi, Rucellai, and Rossi families—and his four daughters.
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Lorenzo and the Florentine Elites

From the 1430s onward, Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de’ Medici enjoyed a dominant position in Florentine government and society through their management of a faction. They also oversaw a systematic narrowing of the politically active elite, ensuring that power and influence lay with members of their faction. Rubinstein 1966 is the classic account of this narrowing process. Although Rubinstein eschewed the biographical genre, many subsequent studies of individual Florentines began as University of London theses supervised by him. Clarke 1991 provides one such example. Alison Brown’s work on Florentine political elites builds on that of Rubinstein but is also inspired by Ernst Gombrich and Paul Oskar Kristeller, and consequently emphasizes the significance of humanists and their texts. Brown 1979 is the monograph that established her reputation. Brown 1980 explores one facet of Florentine factionalism in the time of Lorenzo, and Brown 2002 develops her work on Bartolomeo Scala by looking at the culture of other Medicean servants. Bullard 1998 takes its cue from Rubinstein’s studies of the Florentine government and its working environment. Gregory 1985 is also a study in political history inspired by one of Florence’s architectural landmarks.

Brown, Alison. Bartolomeo Scala, 1430–1497, Chancellor of Florence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.
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In the manner of many a Renaissance prince, Lorenzo relied on “new men” who owed everything to him. One such was Bartolomeo Scala, chancellor of Florence from 1465 to 1497. Brown’s study of his career provides a detailed examination of the workings of Florentine government throughout Lorenzo’s adult life.
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Brown, Alison. “The Guelf Party in Fifteenth-Century Florence.” Rinascimento 20 (1980): 41–86.
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In the absence of any Ghibellines, the Florentine Parte Guelfa was apparently redundant in the 15th century. However, it could still be used as a cover for political opposition to the Medici and was consequently targeted by Lorenzo in the wake of the Pazzi Conspiracy. Also included in Brown 1992 (cited under Collections of Papers).
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Brown, Alison. “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence.” Renaissance Studies 16 (2002): 113–142.
DOI: 10.1111/1477-4658.t01-1-00008Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
An important essay. The “new men” were members of Lorenzo’s inner circle, most of them his personal secretaries or “secretary-notaries”: Niccolò Michelozzi, Francesco di ser Barone, Piero Dovizi, Andrea da Foiano, Antonio da Colle, and the banker Filippo da Gagliano. They were nonpatricians, and many were from Florence’s subject territory.
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Bullard, Melissa. “Adumbrations of Power and the Politics of Appearances in Medicean Florence.” Renaissance Studies 12 (1998): 341–356.
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The Otto di Pratica and the Dodici Procuratori, who dealt respectively with foreign and domestic affairs, were two of the centralizing bodies created in the wake of the Pazzi Conspiracy. Here Bullard seeks to reconstruct the working environment of the Otto di Pratica and other organs of Medicean government.
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Clarke, Paula C. The Soderini and the Medici: Power and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991.
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The two Soderini in question were the brothers Tommaso and Niccolò. Tommaso was married to Dianora Tornabuoni, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s maternal aunt, and was regarded as a father figure by Lorenzo. This study is therefore an examination of the exercise of power at the very apex of the Florentine political elite.
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Gregory, Heather. “The Return of the Native: Filippo Strozzi and Medicean Politics.” Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985): 1–21.
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In the wake of F. W. Kent’s brief look at the architectural expression of Medici-Strozzi rivalry (see Visual Culture), Gregory examines the way in which Filippo Strozzi accommodated himself to the Medicean regime in the decades after his return from exile in 1466.
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Rubinstein, Nicolai. The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434–1494). Oxford: Clarendon, 1966.
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The essential work on Florentine politics during the sixty years of Medicean dominance. Particular attention is devoted to the means whereby the Medici from Cosimo il vecchio to Lorenzo subverted the republican constitution by ensuring the election of their supporters to public offices. A new edition was published in 1997.
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Pazzi Conspiracy

Following the assassination of Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza in the Milanese church of Santo Stefano on 26 December 1476, enemies of the Medici were inspired to plot the assassination of the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici in the Florentine duomo on 26 April 1478. This proved to be too ambitious. Giuliano was slain, but Lorenzo survived and exacted a bloody revenge on the Pazzi family and their associates. Kohl, et al. 1978 contains Poliziano’s classic contemporary account of the conspiracy, the work of an arch-Medicean. The modern accounts, Acton 1979 and Martines 2003, are both readable and informative, but there is relatively little to say about the plot itself and Martines is particularly reliant on contextual material.

Acton, Harold. The Pazzi Conspiracy: The Plot against the Medici. London: Thames and Hudson, 1979.
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As a lifelong resident of Florence, Acton knew about the Medici in the Renaissance period as a matter of course; his villa, La Pietra, had been owned by Francesco Sassetti, general manager of the Medici bank in Lorenzo’s time. This work followed the arch-aesthete’s studies of the later Medici, the Bourbons of Naples, and Tuscan villas.
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Kohl, Benjamin G., and Ronald E. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles, eds. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978.
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Contains an English translation of Angelo Poliziano’s account of the Pazzi Conspiracy, which itself was inspired by Sallust’s account of the Catiline conspiracy of 63 BCE. The translation is from Angelo Poliziano, Della congiura dei Pazzi (Coniurationis commentarium), edited by Alessandro Perosa (Padua, Italy: Antenore, 1958).
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Martines, Lauro. April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.
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A veteran of Italian Renaissance studies, Martines tells the story of the Pazzi Conspiracy with assurance and is a reliable guide for a nonacademic readership. Contains one of the more recent Laurentian bibliographies, which takes into account the fifth-centenary publications produced in the 1990s.
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Financial Matters

Marks 1960 is part of a collection of essays designed to celebrate Lorenzo’s biographer Cecilia Ady (see Lorenzo after 1900), a collection that includes contributions by Nicolai Rubinstein on the Florentine constitution and Cecil Grayson’s “Lorenzo, Machiavelli, and the Italian Language.” Brown 1992 covers the same theme as Marks 1960, bringing to it the author’s characteristically meticulous employment of archival material.

Brown, Alison. “Public and Private Interest: Lorenzo, the Monte, and the Seventeen Reformers.” In The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power. Edited by Alison Brown, 151–211. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1992.
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The Seventeen Reformers were a new magistracy in Laurentian Florence and became a means whereby Lorenzo gained access to the state dowry fund. Brown argues that this created a precedent for the merging of state and princely finances in early modern states. Also included in Garfagnini 1992a (cited under Collections of Papers).
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Marks, Louis F. “The Financial Oligarchy in Florence under Lorenzo.” In Italian Renaissance Studies. Edited by E. F. Jacob, 123–147. London: Faber and Faber, 1960.
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An important study of the means by which the regime manipulated the Monte comune (state bank) and the Monte delle doti (state dowry fund) to meet the financial demands of employing mercenaries—either directly or indirectly via loans to allies—in the wars of the 1470s and 1480s.
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Florentine Territorial State

Arezzo, Pisa, Pistoia, and Prato were among towns subject to Florence in the 15th century, but the most blatant example of subjection came in 1472, when Lorenzo was involved in an attempt to fix the price of the alum mined at Volterra, the Volterrans resorted to arms and Lorenzo sent the famous military commander Federico da Montefeltro to subdue them. This convinced Lorenzo’s critics that he harbored dictatorial ambitions. Fubini 1994 provides a relatively recent assessment of the War of Volterra. Black 1996 and Milner 1996 each examine Lorenzo’s relations with one of the major subject towns. Lillie 1993 comes to the theme of Lorenzo’s relationship with the territorial state from the realm of art history and looks at his development of villas in the Florentine contado. The two most recent works listed in this section reflect the wealth of late-20th-century research into the Florentine territorial state in the Renaissance period, presented as a collection of essays in the case of Connell and Zorzi 2000 and as a monograph in that of Salvadori 2000.

Black, Robert. “Lorenzo and Arezzo.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 217–234. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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In keeping with Black’s long-term work on Arezzo and Aretines, this piece hinges on the role of key individuals, including Gentile Becchi, who had been Lorenzo’s tutor and became bishop of Arezzo in 1473. Thanks to Lorenzo’s involvement, the Medici came to be regarded as “exclusive patrons” of Arezzo.
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Connell, William J., and Andrea Zorzi, eds. Florentine Tuscany: Structures and Practices of Power. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511523120Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The sixteen essays in this volume were originally delivered at a conference in 1996. They cover a long 15th century, so that Lorenzo de’ Medici is merely part of a considerably wider story. The authors include Alison Brown, Samuel Cohn, Patrizia Salvadori, Lorenzo Fabbri, Oretta Muzzi, and Robert Black.
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Fubini, Riccardo. “Lorenzo de’ Medici e Volterra.” Rassegna volterrana 70 (1994): 171–185.
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A paper from the 1993 conference Dagli albori del comune medievale alla rivolta antifrancese del 1799. The same volume also includes Mario Martelli, “Il sacco di Volterra e la letteratura contemporanea: storia di un’operazione di politica culturale,” pp. 187–214.
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Lillie, Amanda. “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Rural Investments and Territorial Expansion.” Rinascimento 33 (1993): 53–67.
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One of a number of essays in which Lillie explores aspects of villa life in 15th-century Tuscany. In their desire to maintain rural estates inherited from their ancestors and to combine agricultural practicalities with the renovation of old farmhouses, the Medici were typical of the Florentine elite.
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Milner, Stephen. “Lorenzo and Pistoia: Peacemaker or Partisan?” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 235–252. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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As Milner explains, Lorenzo’s relations with the Florentine subject towns occupied the middle ground between domestic and foreign policy. In the case of Pistoia, which is within easy reach of Florence and was prone to factionalism, Lorenzo’s involvement was decidedly interventionist in all aspects of the city’s public life.
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Salvadori, Patrizia. Dominio e patronato: Lorenzo dei Medici e la Toscana nel Quattrocento. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000.
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The product not merely of Salvadori’s contributions to various collections of papers but also testimony to the wealth of recent research on Florentine Tuscany in the 15th century.
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Relations with Other States

The ongoing publication of Lorenzo’s Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence) is in large measure based on diplomatic correspondence and has therefore generated all the works listed in this section. Fubini’s edition of the first two volumes of Lettere, which cover the years from 1460 to 1478, is still in evidence in Fubini 1994 and the more chronologically concentrated study, Fubini 1995. Nicolai Rubinstein was general director of the Lettere project and personally edited the volumes covering 1478–1480, the period of the Pazzi War, when Pope Sixtus IV placed Florence under an interdict and allied with Naples against the republic. As Rubinstein 1977 explains, Lorenzo emerged from the war as a fully fledged statesman. Michael Mallett’s two volumes of Lettere deal with the years 1480–1484 and therefore with the formation of the alliances that entered the War of Ferrara in 1482. The nature of diplomatic practice in that period is emphasized in Mallett 1981. During the Ferrarese war Florence was a member of the anti-Venetian league, which provides the starting point for Mallett 1994, an examination of relations between the two republics. Turning from the power politics behind diplomacy, Bullard 1994 is more interested in the language and details of diplomatic correspondence. Bullard’s evidence is drawn from the years 1486–1488, the period covered by her two volumes of Lettere. Pellegrini 1999 is a development of material from his Lettere volume for 1488.

Bullard, Melissa Meriam. “The Language of Diplomacy.” In Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance, 81–108. By Melissa Meriam Bullard. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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The editors of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence) were in great demand as conference speakers in 1992. This is a more fully developed version of Bullard’s material in the conference volumes Mallett and Mann 1996 and Toscani 1993 (both cited under Collections of Papers).
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Fubini, Riccardo. Italia quattrocentesca: Politica e diplomazia al tempo di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Milan: FrancoAngeli, 1994.
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This wide-ranging study of late quattrocento politics and diplomacy includes chapters on the Italian League and the peninsular balance of power circa 1469, on relations between Florence and Milan from 1464 to 1478, and on Federico da Montefeltro and the Pazzi Conspiracy.
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Fubini, Riccardo. “The Italian League and the Balance of Power at the Succession of Lorenzo de’ Medici.” Journal of Modern History 67 (1995): S166–S199.
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Chapter 7 of Fubini 1994 in English translation. It originally appeared in Origini dello stato: Processi di formazione statale il Italia fra medioevo ed età moderna, edited by Giorgio Chittolini, Anthony Molho, and Pierangelo Schiera (Annali dell’Istituto Storico Italo-Germanico 39, Bologna, Italy: Il Mulino, 1994).
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Mallett, Michael. “Diplomacy and War in Later Fifteenth-Century Italy.” Proceedings of the British Academy 67 (1981): 267–288.
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Mallett demonstrates that diplomacy constituted war by other means and illustrates differences between republican and princely states in their employment of ambassadors. Also included in Garfagnini 1992a (cited under Collections of Papers). Reprinted in Art and Politics in Renaissance Italy, edited by George Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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Mallett, Michael. “Lorenzo and Venice.” In Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo. Edited by Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 109–121. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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Throughout Lorenzo’s lifetime Florence’s principal Italian alliance was with Milan, which Cosimo de’ Medici had chosen in preference to one with Venice. Mallett covers Lorenzo’s visit to Venice in 1465, as well as personal contacts with Venetians led by Bernardo Bembo, with the Venetian-Florentine alliance of 1474–1480 and hostility between the republics thereafter.
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Pellegrini, Marco. Congiure di Romagna: Lorenzo de’ Medici e il duplice tirannicidio a Forlì e a Faenza nel 1488. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1999.
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The letters edited by Marco Pellegrini (see Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence) cover the period in which Lorenzo’s longtime enemy Girolamo Riario was murdered at Forlì on 14 April 1488 and Lorenzo’s ally Galeotto Manfredi was killed by his wife Francesca Bentivoglio at Faenza on 31 May 1488. Here Pellegrini explores these episodes in detail.
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Rubinstein, Nicolai. “Lorenzo de’ Medici: The Formation of his Statecraft.” Proceedings of the British Academy 63 (1977): 71–94.
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For this lecture Rubinstein drew on material from the first four volumes of the Lettere (Medici 1977–2007, cited under Correspondence) prior to their publication. Also included in Garfagnini 1992a (cited under Collections of Papers). Reprinted in Art and Politics in Renaissance Italy, edited by George Holmes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).
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Literary Culture

Although best known for his poetry, which he even supplemented with the commentary in Medici 1991a, Lorenzo wrote in a variety of genres. His complete works, Tutte le opere, were published in three volumes in 1958, although there have been more recent editions of selected works—for example, the popular songs in Medici 1990, poems and prose in Medici 1991b, and the sacra rappresentazione in Medici 2000. Lorenzo’s name has been routinely linked with many of the notable literary figures of his day, including Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico, Poliziano, and Luigi Pulci. A useful survey of that literary ambience is provided by Martelli 1996, but Hankins 1994 argues that it did not include a formal academy centered on Ficino and the Medici villa at Careggi, leaving Kraye 1996 to find an alternative pattern in Lorenzo’s relationship with the philosophers.

Hankins, James. “Lorenzo de’ Medici as Patron of Philosophy.” Rinascimento 34 (1994): 15–53.
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One of a number of articles in which Hankins argues that Ficino’s circle of friends did not constitute any sort of formal grouping and that the Platonic Academy was therefore a myth. Hankins also asserts that Lorenzo was marginal to that circle. Also included in James Hankins, Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, vol. 2 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2004).
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Kraye, Jill. “Lorenzo and the Philosophers.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 151–166. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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In the light of Hankins’s dismissal of the Careggi-based Platonic Academy and the void that leaves in popular appreciation of Lorenzo’s cultural ambience, Kraye offers his known participation in a theological debate led by Franciscan and Dominican friars on 23 June 1489 as being emblematic of Lorenzo’s philosophical interests.
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Martelli, Mario. “La cultura letteraria nell’età di Lorenzo.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 167–176. London: Warburg Institute: 1996.
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A good introduction to Lorenzo’s literary milieu. Also included in Garfagnini 1992b.
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Medici, Lorenzo de’. Laude. Edited by Bernard Toscani. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1990.
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Laude comprises immensely popular vernacular songs in Laurentian Florence, duly adapted by Savonarola in the 1490s for use in his spiritual crusade.
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Medici, Lorenzo de’. Comento de’ miei sonetti. Edited by Tiziano Zanato. Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki, 1991a.
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An edition of Lorenzo’s commentary on forty-two of his sonnets. Another edition, heavily based on this one, is by James Wyatt Cook: The Autobiography of Lorenzo de’ Medici the Magnificent: A Commentary on My Sonnets (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995).
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Medici, Lorenzo de’. Selected Poems and Prose. Edited and translated by Jon Theim. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991b.
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This selection of works in English translation includes “The Partridge Hunt,” “Symposium,” and “The Novella of Giacoppo.”
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Medici, Lorenzo de’. Rime spirituali; Rappresentazione di San Giovanni e Paolo. Edited by Bernard Toscani. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2000.
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A selection that includes Lorenzo’s only dramatic work, the Rappresentazione, which was written in 1491 for performance by the boys’ confraternity of which his son was a member.
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Festivals

Public spectacles, whether sacred or secular, offered opportunities for poets, painters, and musicians to combine their creative talents. Familiar as he was with the concept of “bread and circuses,” Machiavelli helped to create the impression that Lorenzo was responsible for a continuous round of festivities in Florence. Ventrone 1996 disentangles myth from reality on this subject. Two of the most notable festivals were the jousts won by Lorenzo himself in 1469 and his brother Giuliano in 1475. Dempsey 1999 is an exploration relating to the second of these.

Dempsey, Charles. “Portraits and Masks in the Art of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Botticelli, and Politian’s Stanze per la Giostra.” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 1–42.
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As the title indicates, this is a cross-disciplinary lecture based on visual evidence from the works of Botticelli and literary evidence from Poliziano’s celebration of the joust for Giuliano de’ Medici. Its subject is the practice of masking, including a discussion of claims that Lorenzo invented the masquerade.
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Ventrone, Paola. “Lorenzo’s Politica festiva.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 105–116. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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After accounting for the popular impression of Lorenzo’s role in Florentine public spectacles, Ventrone examines the reality of his involvement in a range of performances and concludes that his “politica festiva” was conditioned by his position as a “signore without legal title.”
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Visual Culture

Reacting against the myth of Lorenzo as the Florentine Maecenas, scholars of the later 20th century integrated Lorenzo’s business and cultural interests and declared that he lacked the means to be much more than a benevolent presence or arbiter of taste. In the Anglophone tradition, this reappraisal is marked by Gombrich 1960. What could not be denied was Lorenzo’s association with a number of building projects. As Elam 1978 relates, the via Laura project remained unrealized. Aspects of Elam’s argument are countered by Pellecchia 1996. The villa at Poggio a Caiano, explored in detail by Bardazzi and Castellani 1981, is an extant testament to Lorenzo as an architectural patron, and Brown 1993 argues that he took a particularly active interest in that project. The architectural dimension of Florentine factional politics is explored by Kent 1977. The sheer quantity of scholarly literature on the theme of Lorenzo’s patronage of the visual arts, let alone the copious scholarship on the visual arts in later quattrocento Florence, is such that Kent 2004 provides useful bibliographical guidance, as well as a book-length study of Lorenzo and magnificence.

Bardazzi, Silvestro, and Eugenio Castellani. La Villa medicea di Poggio a Caiano. 2 vols. Prato, Italy: Edizioni del Palazzo, 1981.
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Lorenzo is associated with numerous villas in the Florentine contado, but art-historical interest has focused on Poggio a Caiano, where he commissioned Giuliano da Sangallo to transform the old Villa Ambra. Bardazzi and Castellani present an in-depth guide to the building.
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Brown, Beverly Louise. “An Enthusiastic Amateur: Lorenzo de’ Medici as Architect.” Renaissance Quarterly 45 (1993): 1–22.
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Explores what it meant to be an architect in 15th-century Italy and considers the precise nature of Lorenzo’s contributions to the design of the villa at Poggio a Caiano.
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Elam, Caroline. “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Urban Development of Renaissance Florence.” Art History 1 (1978): 43–66.
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Elam’s assertion that Lorenzo planned to build a large palazzo to the east of the Servite church of Santissima Annunziata, on what is now via Laura, provides a powerful corrective to the received wisdom that he lacked the financial resources to commission projects on such a scale. The plan was frustrated by his death.
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Gombrich, E. H. “The Early Medici as Patrons of Art: A Survey of Primary Sources.” In Italian Renaissance Studies. Edited by E. F. Jacob, 279–311. London: Faber and Faber, 1960.
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This article effectively opened a new chapter in appreciation of Medicean artistic patronage, though Lorenzo appears as an “enigmatic” patron in comparison to his father and grandfather. Also included E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form (London: Phaidon, 1966).
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Kent, F. W. “‘Più superba de quella de Lorenzo’: Courtly and Family Interest in the Building of Filippo Strozzi’s Palace.” Renaissance Quarterly 30 (1977): 311–323.
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A brief survey of eight letters written in 1489–1490, the title of which neatly conveys how the Medici-Strozzi rivalry was reflected in the building of the Palazzo Strozzi. The parallel political story is told by Gregory 1985 (cited under Lorenzo and the Florentine Elites).
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Kent, F. W. Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
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A slim volume that the author readily admits is a historian’s contribution to an art-historical debate. Various art forms are explored, but architecture was the most magnificent available to Lorenzo. The extensive notes, which take advantage of the plethora of fifth-centenary publications, make this study particularly useful.
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Pellecchia, Linda. “Designing the Via Laura Palace: Giuliano da Sangallo, the Medici, and Time.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 37–63. London: Warburg Institute, 1996.
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Returning to the drawings that inspired Caroline Elam’s study of the via Laura project, Pellecchia argues that they were made after the return of the Medici in 1512.
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Collecting

The spur provided by Gombrich 1960 to the study of Lorenzo as a collector of antique objects generated a fresh line of scholarly enquiry, resulting first in an exhibition of such objects in Florence in 1972. The two catalogues issuing from this are Dacos, et al. 1973 and Heikamp and Grote 1974. Since then the literature has multiplied, but this selection is confined to Rubinstein 1998, by an expert on classical images and objects in the Renaissance period, and Fusco and Corti 2006, which reflects the achievements of more than four decades of research into Lorenzo’s collecting.

Dacos, Nicole, Antonio Giuliano, and Ulrico Pannuti, eds. Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Vol. 1, Le gemme. Florence, Italy: Sansoni, 1973.
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Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1972. The exhibition placed a new emphasis on Lorenzo’s collecting—in this case, gems. The companion volume is Heikamp and Grote 1974.
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Fusco, Laurie, and Gino Corti. Lorenzo de’ Medici: Collector and Antiquarian. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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The core of the book is provided by 173 previously unpublished letters. The objects collected included coins, hardstone vases and gems, mosaics, ceramics, and metalwork, together with large-scale sculpture. Lorenzo is placed in a wider culture of collecting, and there is a strong bibliographical emphasis.
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Gombrich, E. H. “The Early Medici as Patrons of Art: A Survey of Primary Sources.” In Italian Renaissance Studies. Edited by E. F. Jacob, 279–311. London: Faber and Faber, 1960.
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Lorenzo’s patronage of the visual arts, Gombrich argues, was “indirect” in that he concentrated on purchasing antique objets d’art because income from his business empire declined. Also included in E. H. Gombrich, Norm and Form (London: Phaidon, 1966).
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Heikamp, Detlef, and Andreas Grote, eds. Il tesoro di Lorenzo il Magnifico. Vol. 2, Le vasi. Florence, Italy: Sansoni, 1974.
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Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1972. A companion volume to Dacos, et al. 1973.
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Rubinstein, Ruth. “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Sculpture of Apollo and Marsyas, Bacchic Imagery, and the Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne.” In With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage, 1434–1530. Edited by Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright, 79–105. Aldershot, UK, and Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 1998.
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Rubinstein’s is the only chapter in the collection relevant to Lorenzo. The essay is a fragment of the author’s oeuvre, which includes many works on antique objects in the Renaissance period.
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