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The Medici Family

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  1. The Medici Family
  2. Stella Fletcher
  3. Introduction
  4. Members of the Medici family were arguably the most-conspicuous social climbers of the Renaissance period. In the 15th century the principal branch of the family acquired great wealth from banking and commerce and used it to exercise political influence in the Florentine republic, but in the 16th century the republic gave way to a principate, with the Medici as dukes of Florence and grand dukes of Tuscany, a transformation made possible by the election of Medici popes. Whether as citizens or as princes, posterity has placed so much emphasis on their cultural patronage that they have often been cast as central figures of the Renaissance as a cultural phenomenon. This article opens with General Overviews, Reference Works, Collections of Papers, and Digital Resources, all of which span various generations of the family’s history, but then follows the example of so many works in those opening sections by taking a chronological approach to the subject. The section on the Earlier Medici takes the story up to the death of Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici in 1429. Thereafter, the article traces the family’s rising economic and political fortunes in the Generation of Cosimo il Vecchio, the initial reaction against their anti-republican instincts in the Generation of Piero il Gottoso, and the more determined but ultimately futile opposition in the Generation of Lorenzo il Magnifico. From that point the story is much more complicated, in part because there was a genuine difference of opinion about whether republican Florence was better off with or without the Medici, and in part because that portion of the dynasty known as the line of Cafaggiolo dwindled to a clerically-led rump. Those clerics were nevertheless the key to what happened next. The first Medici pope, Leo X, obtained titles of nobility for his kinsmen, and the second, Clement VII, ensured that his niece Caterina married into the ruling French house of Valois and that Alessandro de’ Medici, regardless of his illegitimate birth, became the first duke of Florence. Leo is featured among theChildren of Lorenzo il Magnifico; Caterina/Catherine and Alessandro, among the Other Descendants of Lorenzo il Magnifico to 1537, the year that began with Alessandro’s assassination by his kinsman Lorenzino de’ Medici. If anything, when Florence rejected its republican past and embraced a dynastic present and future, it created a model that other states followed: many a feature of what came to be regarded as the ancien régime could be seen first in the Tuscany of Cosimo I, Francesco I, and Ferdinando I. Their title may have been inflated from duke of Florence to grand duke of Tuscany, but by the Generations of Cosimo II and Ferdinando II, their realm was becoming a somewhat Ruritanian shadow of its former self, while the economic and political initiative was assumed by the Atlantic powers.
  5. General Overviews
  6. The history of any powerful or ruling family is so intimately bound up with that of the state in which they lived or over which they ruled that it can be difficult to make a hard and fast distinction between the individuals and their contexts. Consequently, this section of the article attempts to distinguish between the contexts provided by the Medici bank, Florence both as republic and duchy, the grand duchy of Tuscany, and the Italian peninsula as a whole (identified as Contextual), and the lives of the Medici family as a group (Multigenerational studies). It is a completely artificial distinction because many of the featured works could easily be claimed for either category.
  7. CONTEXTUAL
  8. The reader who seeks to approach the Medici by means of their political, social, and economic contexts would be wise to begin with secondary sources and then work toward their primary counterparts, rather than vice versa. Such a reader should start with Hale 1977, which is the only work in this selection to trace the history of the Medici from their earliest appearances in Florentine sources through to the death throes of the dynasty in the 18th century. For the 15th-century Medici,De Roover 1963 is an all-but-exhaustive account of their bank, and Rubinstein 1997 a no less important exploration of how the heads of the Cafaggiolo branch of the family succeeded in wielding so much political influence. In both cases the story ends abruptly in 1494, with the collapse of the bank and the exile of the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico. For an account of Florence with and without the Medici, without a break at 1494, Najemy 2006 provides an authoritative survey. In historiographical terms, the 1530s has tended to be regarded as the beginning of a new era, with scholars choosing to concentrate either on Florence “avanti il principato” or on Florence and Tuscany under the principate. For the latter, two guides are essential: Diaz 1976, for a comprehensive survey of Tuscan history from the 16th to the 18th century, and Cochrane 1973, a spirited reaction against the notion that the Medici-ruled state had been reduced to an economic and intellectual backwater. With those secondary sources mastered, one can better appreciate and, indeed, read between the lines of Machiavelli 1988, which traces Florentine history up to the early 1490s, and Guicciardini 1969, which picks up the story at more or less the point Machiavelli puts down his pen, and may, indeed, be a less daunting read if attempted after the secondary sources have adequately prepared the ground.
  9. Cochrane, Eric. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527–1800: A History of Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
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  11. Cosimo I is one of the key figures around whom Cochrane builds this work, which proceeds in episodic fashion, rather than telling a continuous narrative. As in his other work, Cochrane’s primary interest is in intellectual history, arguing that Florence—and Italy as a whole—did not become a cultural backwater after the Sack of Rome. A pioneering work that remains immensely useful.
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  13. De Roover, Raymond. The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397–1494. Harvard Studies in Business History 21. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963.
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  15. The Medici bank is generally associated with the heads of the Cafaggiolo branch of the family, from Giovanni di Bicci to Piero di Lorenzo, but over thirty members of the extended family are featured in De Roover’s classic text. They include the general manager Giovanni di Cosimo; the branch managers in Naples, Rosso di Giovanni and Fantino di Fantino; and the assistant manager in Bruges, Antonio di Bernardo. Republished as recently as 2001 (Ann Arbor, MI: ACLS History E-book Project).
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  17. Diaz, Furio. Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici. Storia d’Italia 13.1. Turin, Italy: UTET, 1976.
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  19. Volume 13, Part 1 of the mighty UTET Storia d’Italia. It starts with the transition from republic to principate, takes in Alessandro’s “tyranny,” Cosimo I’s consolidation of absolute power, institutional reforms and conquest of Siena, Tuscany in the age of the Counter Reformation and Spanish hegemony in Italy, the economic decadence and intellectual revival of Francesco I and Ferdinando I’s generation, and ends with general depression in the early 18th century. Reprinted as recently as 1987.
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  21. Guicciardini, Francesco. The History of Italy. Edited and translated by Sidney Alexander. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969.
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  23. The structure of Guicciardini’s celebrated history is determined by the personal histories of the Medici family: it opens with a picture of peace and prosperity immediately prior to the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico in 1492 and traces the story through to the death of Clement VII in 1534. In addition to these, the family members who feature most prominently are Lorenzo’s sons Piero, Giovanni, and Giuliano.
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  25. Hale, J. R. Florence and the Medici: The Pattern of Control. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977.
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  27. This volume traces the history of the family from their earliest appearances in Florentine sources,c. 1300, through to the death of Grand Duke Gian Gastone in 1737. The final chapter accounts for how the earlier Medici acquired mythical status, first in Florence and later among Italophiles beyond the peninsula. Hale’s effortlessly elegant prose makes it the best general work to mine for quotations. Paperback edition published in 1986.
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  29. Machiavelli, Niccolò. Florentine Histories. Translated by Laura F. Banfield and Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988.
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  31. In Book 3, Vieri de’ Medici refuses to accept princely dignity; in Book 4, Giovanni di Bicci acquires popular favor but Cosimo’s greatness arouses jealousy; in Book 7, Cosimo’s prudence is noted at his death, and opponents of the Medici muster; and Book 8 includes the Pazzi conspiracy and Lorenzo’s death. Electronic versions of the text include those available in.
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  33. Najemy, John M. A History of Florence 1200–1575. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
  34. DOI: 10.1002/9780470754870Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  35. The most recent English-language history of Florence during the late medieval and Renaissance period, this survey benefits from the extensive research conducted in Florentine archives throughout the second half of the 20th century. The Medici dominate the second half of the text, just as they dominated first the city of Florence and, later, the whole of Tuscany.
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  37. Rubinstein, Nicolai. The Government of Florence under the Medici (1434 to 1494). 2d ed. Oxford-Warburg Studies. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.
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  39. This classic work accounts for the family’s political dominance in the Florentine republic. Its four principal parts are identified with reference to Cosimo il Vecchio, Piero di Cosimo, Lorenzo di Piero, and Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici, but Rubinstein’s interest is in political machinations in the Palazzo della Signoria, rather than domestic life in the Palazzo Medici. First published in 1966.
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  41. MULTIGENERATIONAL
  42. The fact that the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany died out doubtless inspired the writing of complete histories of the dynasty: it is a story with an obscure beginning, a dramatic middle, and a definite end. In 1924 Colonel G. F. Young explained that there were then in English several lives of three or four members of the dynasty, but no histories, either in English or Italian, of the family as a whole. Even as Young 1924 approaches its ninetieth anniversary, it merits its place in this article because of the sheer scale and ambition of the work. Young’s statement was accurate but was rapidly countered in Pieraccini 1986, a work originally published in 1924–1925, and characteristic of that era in its emphasis on eugenics. Another multigenerational study followed on the heels of both publications: Maguire 1927, which charts the history of the wives of the heads of the Medici family in the 15th century. There followed a lull of some decades before the multigenerational approach was attempted again. Portraits of the Medici had not been given the same thorough treatment, so that gap was filled in Langedijk 1981–1987. Sodini 2001 explores the contribution of individual Medici and their fellow Florentines to early-17th-century warfare. Tomas 2003 returns to the territory previously explored in Maguire 1927, albeit with an eye on the tradition of women’s history and feminist scholarship that had developed in the intervening period. Innocenti 2008 unites the two most powerful of the Medici women, the French queens consort Caterina/Catherine and Maria/Marie.
  43. Innocenti, Clarice, ed. Caterina e Maria de’ Medici: Donne di potere; Firenze celebra il mito di due regine di Francia. Florence: Mandragora, 2008.
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  45. An amply illustrated exhibition catalogue containing essays by twelve authors, including Cristina Acidini. Taking its cue from the subject matter of tapestries, each of the two Medici queens is presented as a latter-day Artemis. This is a useful volume in which to spy portraits of other members of the Medici family.
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  47. Langedijk, Karla. The Portraits of the Medici, 15th–18th Centuries. 3 vols. Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1981–1987.
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  49. Volume 1 opens with a narrative history of the Medici family throughout the period of its dominance, as told in their portraits. The remainder of Volume 1 is a catalogue of portraits in various media, arranged alphabetically from Alessandro de’ Medici to Eleonora di Toledo. The catalogue continues in Volume 2, from Ferdinando I to Vittoria della Rovere. Volume 3 contains supplementary material.
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  51. Maguire, Yvonne. The Women of the Medici. London: Routledge, 1927.
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  53. A late addition to the late-19th- and early-20th-century vogue for English-language works on Italian Renaissance women. The focus is firmly on the generations already identified as “early”: “Contessina the housewife, Lucrezia the helpmeet, Clarice the foreign wife, Alfonsina the clever but unsympathetic ruler” (p. 196). It is heavily based on their correspondence, from which numerous quotations are made. The letters are listed in an appendix.
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  55. Pieraccini, Gaetano. La stirpe de’ Medici di Cafaggiolo: Saggio di ricerche sulla trasmissione ereditaria dei caratteri biologici. 3 vols. Florence: Nardini, 1986.
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  57. Originally published in 1924–1925, this work is overtly eugenical in nature. Volume 1 traces the family from its origins to the early 16th century. Each individual is provided with a biography, followed by an analysis of his or her character and health. Volume 2 does likewise for family members from the immediate family of Cosimo I through to Gian Gastone. Volume 3 analyses Florentine demography, inherited diseases, and related topics.
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  59. Sodini, Carla. L’Ercole tirreno: Guerra e dinastia medicea nella prima metà del ‘600. Serie I, Storia, Letteratura, Paleografia 300. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2001.
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  61. Sodini charts the contributions of members of the Medici dynasty to the various interrelated conflicts of the early 17th century, up to and including the Thirty Years’ War. Featured individuals include Don Giovanni and Don Francesco, sons of Cosimo I; Don Antonio, son of Francesco I; and Don Francesco and Don Lorenzo, sons of Ferdinand I.
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  63. Tomas, Natalie R. The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence. Women and Gender in the Early Modern World. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003.
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  65. Covers the period 1434–1532, which means that the women featured include Contessina de’ Bardi, Lucrezia Tornabuoni and her daughters, Clarice Orsini and her daughters, Alfonsina Orsini, and Maria Salviati. Tomas argues that the history of the republic would be incomplete without them, but the very fact that they exercised power, influence, and authority was surely a measure of the republic’s vulnerability.
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  67. Young, G. F. The Medici. 2 vols. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1924.
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  69. Volume 1 covers the history of the Medici to 1537, presents the period from 1494 to 1512 as an “interregnum,” and accords an entire chapter to Clarice de’ Medici (b. 1493–d. 1528). Volume 2 opens with two chapters on Caterina/Catherine, continues with three on the cadet branch up to Giovanni “delle Bande Nere,” and proceeds to cover the reigns of the dukes and grand dukes through to Gian Gastone. Republished as recently as 2001 (Honolulu, Hawaii: University Press of the Pacific).
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  71. Reference Works
  72. Members of the Medici family are most readily traced through potted biographies, of which Litta 1819–1883 is easily the most comprehensive, treating as it does all branches of the family as potentially of equal interest, even if there happens to be considerably more information about some lines than about others. The significance of Litta 1819–1883 is confirmed in Grassellini and Fracassini 1982, which attempts to provide a handy summary of the earlier work. In both cases, the objective is to account for as many individual Medici as possible. Dizionario biografico degli italianitakes a different approach, focusing on the most prominent members of the family, especially those for whom there have been recent studies. The focus is narrowed yet further with Miranda 1998–, an online resource that aims to provide comprehensive coverage of its chosen subject but is not overly discriminating as far as quality and clarity is concerned. The narrowest biographical focus of all is provided in Bray 2000, though the Medici family was nevertheless unusually prolific in the production of popes. Potted biographies of the most prominent Medici can also be found in Grendler 1999, but this is a better resource for identifying basic information about their various associates, particularly men of letters or practitioners of the visual arts. The latter can be found in greater depth in Turner 1996, which also includes entries on significant patrons, not least the Medici. Bibliographies of varying lengths can be found throughout these reference works, but only Camerani 1964 has the distinction of being a bibliography exclusively devoted to the Medici family. For the most recent bibliographies, readers should consult Dizionario biografico degli italiani, which covers the subject up to 2009.
  73. Bray, Massimo, ed. Enciclopedia dei papi. 3 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia italiana, 2000.
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  75. The three Florentine Medici popes—Leo X (elected 1513, died 1521), Clement VII (elected 1523, died 1534), and Leo XI (elected and died 1605)—together with their distant Milanese relative Pius IV (elected 1559, died 1565), are all featured in Volume 3 of this work, which includes guides to archival and bibliographical sources but focuses more on pontificates than on papal families.
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  77. Camerani, Sergio. Bibliografia medicea. Biblioteca di Bibliografia Italiana 45. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1964.
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  79. The thematic part of this bibliography includes sections on archives and libraries, palaces and villas, artistic and scientific collections, portraits, life at court, theatre and music, and tombs, before dividing the material by individual family members, arranged chronologically. It contains 1,488 items in total and is an excellent guide to works published up to 1964.
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  81. Dizionario biografico degli italiani. 76 vols. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1960–.
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  83. Volume 73 (2009) contains the biographies of over forty members of the Medici family who lived between the late 14th and mid-17th century. These include entries by Dale Kent on Cosimo il Vecchio and Ingeborg Walter on Piero il Gottoso and Lorenzo il Magnifico. Titled nobility such as the dukes of Florence and grand dukes of Tuscany are listed by their Christian names, the Medici popes by their papal names. Also available online.
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  85. Grassellini, Emilio, and Arnaldo Fracassini. Profili medicei: Origine, sviluppo, decadenza, della famiglia Medici attraverso i suoi componenti. Florence: Libreria SP44, 1982.
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  87. Hundreds of members of the Medici family, across twenty-one generations, appear first in a chronological list—some meriting a paragraph of biographical coverage, most merely a sentence—and then in an alphabetical list, with the relevant sources of information. The latter starts with a 14th-century Medici, Africhello di Alamanno di Lippo, and goes through to a 17th-century Dominican, Zanobi di Paolo di Antonio. Two bibliographies deal with the Medici and contextual reading respectively.
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  89. Grendler, Paul F., ed. Encyclopedia of the Renaissance. 6 vols. New York: Scribner’s, 1999.
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  91. A standard reference work for the Renaissance, whether it is interpreted as a period of time or as a cultural phenomenon. Contains biographical and thematic entries, with members of the Medici family featured in Volume 4.
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  93. Litta, Pompeo. Famiglie celebri italiane. 16 vols. Milan: Giulio Ferrari, 1819–1883.
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  95. A treasure trove of genealogical tables and biographical information about 150 notable dynasties. The “Medici di Firenze,” arranged in twenty-one tables, are in Volume 6. Also of relevance are the Acciaioli (Vol. 1), Orsini (Vol. 6), Pazzi (Vol. 7), Strozzi (Vol. 9), Tornabuoni (Vol. 9), Capponi (Vol. 11), Pucci (Vol. 15), and Soderini (Vol. 16). After Litta’s death in 1852, the work was continued by others.
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  97. Miranda, Salvador. Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church. 1998–.
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  99. An online resource that provides biographical information about cardinals from the emergence of the office through to the present day. In chronological order, the Medici cardinals were Giovanni (created 1489), Giulio (1513), Ippolito (1529), Giovanni Angelo (of Milan, 1549), Giovanni (1560), Ferdinando (1563), Alessandro Ottaviano (1583), Carlo (1615), Gian Carlo (1644), Leopoldo (1667), and Francesco Maria (1686).
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  101. Turner, Jane, ed. The Dictionary of Art. 34 vols. London: Macmillan, 1996.
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  103. Whether or not the cultural patronage of certain members of the Medici dynasty was as significant as Vasari might have us believe, their cultural connections were certainly numerous enough to justify the inclusion in the bibliography of this multivolume work, a comprehensive guide to the visual arts. Entries on the Medici are in Volume 21. See also Oxford Art Online.
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  105. Collections of Papers
  106. For the most part, this selection of works would be set out in the same order whether it were arranged alphabetically by author, chronologically by subject matter, or chronologically by date of publication. Ames-Lewis 1992 is the only collection of papers devoted to Cosimo il Vecchio, just asBeyer and Boucher 1993—a series of essays in German and English—is for Piero il Gottoso. The fifth centenary of the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico was marked by numerous conferences, each of which duly resulted in a volume of essays, but the two chosen for inclusion here contrast with Ames-Lewis 1992 and Beyer and Boucher 1993 in being the collected essays of individual scholars. Alison Brown has an acute eye for textual details and is a prolific author on 15th-century Florentine humanists and their patrons: Brown 1992 has the advantage of bringing together some of her essays on Cosimo and Lorenzo. A sizeable proportion of the work presented and published in connection with the Laurentian fifth centenary was generated by the publication of Medici 1977– (cited underGeneration of Lorenzo il Magnifico). Some of the editors of that series have written spin-off articles or even spin-off books, but so far only Melissa Bullard has produced a spin-off collection of papers:Bullard 1994. Lorenzo’s children have not received similar treatment, but his nephew Giulio—Clement VII—has been the subject of considerable reassessment between the covers of Gouwens and Reiss 2005. Before his death in 1534, Clement had the satisfaction of seeing his kinsman Alessandro installed as duke of Florence, but it fell to Cosimo I to quash opposition to Medicean rule in Florence and to create a centralized state supported by a clear cultural policy. Eisenbichler 2001brings together the political and cultural dimensions of his reign. In Cosimo’s time, Florence and Tuscany acquired a grand-ducal court. In contrast to republican states, courts and court culture had a strong female presence. This new dimension in Florence is marked in Eisenbichler 2004, a collection of essays on Cosimo’s consort Eleonora di Toledo, the woman depicted by Bronzino in the most striking of brocade gowns. Building on this literary achievement, Calvi and Spinelli 2008 is a collection of essays about the Medici women in whichever courts, Italian or French, they happened to find themselves.
  107. Ames-Lewis, Francis, ed. Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’ Medici, 1389–1464: Essays in Commemoration of the 600th Anniversary of Cosimo de’ Medici’s Birth. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
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  109. Papers by Nicolai Rubinstein, George Holmes, Robert Black, Dale Kent, James Hankins, Alison Brown, A. C. de la Mare, Caroline Elam, Crispin Robinson, John Paoletti, Rab Hatfield, and Susan McKillop, delivered at the sexcentenary symposium in 1989, with an introduction by E. H. Gombrich. The nature of the sources means that, with few exceptions, emphasis is placed on Cosimo’s public role and semipublic patronage, rather than on his family.
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  111. Beyer, Andreas, and Bruce Boucher, eds. Piero de’ Medici “il Gottoso” (1416–1469): Kunst im Dienste de Mediceer. Artefact 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.
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  113. A collection of nineteen papers on Piero as a politician and cultural patron. In addition to the editors, the contributors are Nicolai Rubinstein, Alison Brown, Robert Black, Lorenz Böninger, Katherine J. P. Lowe, Andreas Tönnesmann, Wolfer A. Bulst, Alison Wright, Michael Rohlmann, Amanda Lillie, Francis Ames-Lewis, John T. Paoletti, Wolfgang Liebenwein, Martina Hansmann, Shelley Zuraw, Michaela Marek, and Gunter Schweikhart.
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  115. Brown, Alison. The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Language of Power. Italian Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1992.
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  117. A collection of twelve essays divided into three parts, the first of which consists of “The Humanist Portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici, Pater Patriae” (pp. 3–52), “Cosimo de’ Medici’s Wit and Wisdom” (pp. 53–72; Brown 1992, cited under Generation of Cosimo il Vecchio), “Pierfranscesco de’ Medici 1430–1476” (pp. 73–102), “The Guelf Party in Fifteenth-Century Florence” (pp. 103–150), and “Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Reformers” (pp. 151–192), all previously published elsewhere.
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  119. Bullard, Melissa Meriam. Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance. Studi e Testi 34. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1994.
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  121. The eight chapters in this volume were previously published elsewhere but are united by the author’s work on the letters of Lorenzo de’ Medici: see Medici 1977– (cited under Generation of Lorenzo il Magnifico). Part 1, “Myth, Image and Language,” focuses on the figure of Lorenzo himself; Part 2, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and Rome,” deals with the Florentine-papal relations, particularly financial dealings, in the period around the Medici-Cibo marriage of 1487.
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  123. Calvi, Giulia, and Riccardo Spinelli, eds. Le donne Medici nel sistema europeo delle corti: XVI–XVIII secolo; Atti del convegno internazionale, Firenze, San Domenico di Fiesole, 6–8 ottobre 2005. Florence: Polistampa, 2008.
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  125. More than forty papers delivered at a conference in 2005 are arranged in the following sections: “Ritorno delle donne nella sistema di corte,” “Sacralità e religione,” “Nelle corti italiane ed europee,” “Stili e spazi di governo,” “Fra letteratura e storia,” and “Produzione del simbolico e quotidianità a corte.” The women in question include the two Medici queens of France, together with consorts and children of the grand dukes.
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  127. Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed. The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001.
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  129. A collection of fifteen papers on subjects including the Palazzo Medici as a political “mentor” in 16th-century Florence, and the myth of Cosimo in the time of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. The contributors are Marcello Simonetta, Mary Hewlett, Laura E. Hunt, Margaret A. Gallucci, Roger J. Crum, Paola Tinagli, Mary Weitzel Gibbons, Antonio Ricci, Mary Alexandra Watt, Deana Basile, Victoria Kirkham, Karen-edis Barzman, Domenico Zanrè, Philip Gavitt, and James Harper.
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  131. Eisenbichler, Konrad, ed. The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004.
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  133. A collection of ten papers, on subjects including Eleonora’s wedding, Bronzino’s portrait of her with her son Giovanni, the iconography of fecundity, and the duchess’s burial attire. The contributors are Mary A. Watt, Gabrielle Langdon, Bruce L. Edelstein, Ilaria Hoppe, Paola Tinagli, Pamela J. Benson, Robert W. Gaston, Chiara Franceschini, Mary Westerman Bulgarella, and Janet Cox-Rearick.
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  135. Gouwens, Kenneth, and Sheryl E. Reiss, eds. The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture. Catholic Christendom, 1300–1700. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005.
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  137. Part 1 of this collection deals with the character, politics, and family of Clement VII and includes T. C. Price Zimmermann’s analysis of Francesco Guicciardini and Paolo Giovio’s word-portraits of the pontiff (pp. 19–28), Barbara McClung Hallman’s positive reassessment of his pontificate, from which the Medici family made spectacular gains in the secular sphere (pp. 29–40), and an analysis of Clement’s female kin by Natalie Tomas (pp. 41–54).
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  139. Digital Resources
  140. Among online resources, a good introduction to the Medici and their world is provided by Palazzo Medici Riccardi. Published primary sources relating to specific members of the Medici family can be found throughout this article, but the digitization of archives means that such sources are in the process of becoming available on a larger scale than is realistic in print. For the Medici family there are two significant sets of sources available online: Mediceo Avanti il Principato for the period up to the 1530s, and the Medici Archive Project for the 1530s onward. In both cases the resource does nothing more—or less—than save the original documents from wear and tear. By way of contrast, the fourth resource featured here is decidedly interactive. The catasto of 1427 was the subject of numerous publications by David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, but Herlihy’s conversion of cadastral data into an electronic format made him one of the pioneers of computer applications in the study of history. His work is still available as the Online Catasto of 1427. Online resources that are also available in print are featured elsewhere in this article.
  141. Mediceo Avanti il Principato.
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  143. This website provides access to digitized images of archives in the Florentine Archivio di Stato that date from the 14th century to c. 1537. Most of its contents are political and diplomatic in nature, but a small portion of the collection consists of more private correspondence and records relating the Medici bank.
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  145. Medici Archive Project.
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  147. This website is the gateway to digitized images of the Medici Granducal Archival Collection (Mediceo del Principato) in the Florentine Archivio di Stato. The process is ongoing, but the objective is to digitize the entire collection, which consists of over four million letters from the period 1537 to 1743.
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  149. Online Catasto of 1427. Version 1.3. Edited by David Herlihy, Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, R. Burr Litchfield, and Anthony Molho. Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG, Brown University.
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  151. A machine-readable data file based on David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Census and Property Survey of Florentine Domains in the Province of Tuscany, 1427–1480 (Madison: University of Wisconsin, Data and Program Library Service, 1981). Thirty-one Medici households—three of them headed by women—can be traced in this resource. Those households were concentrated in the quarter of S. Giovanni, but the wealth of their heads differed markedly, with Giovanni di Bicci easily the wealthiest. He had ten mouths to feed.
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  153. Palazzo Medici Riccardi.
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  155. Includes a brief history of the site before Cosimo de’ Medici built his palace, together with the periods during and after its occupation by the Medici family. A guide to those rooms that are open to the public is linked to a short bibliography.
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  157. Earlier Medici
  158. If the rulers of grand-ducal Tuscany were “the Medici,” and Cosimo il Vecchio and his descendants in republican Florence were the “early Medici,” as many an author has presented them, then how should the Medici before Cosimo il Vecchio be collectively identified? For the purposes of the current exercise, they are the “earlier Medici,” rather than the “even earlier Medici.” All too frequently, Cosimo is the first real hero of the standard histories, with his father, Giovanni di Bicci (b. 1360–d. 1429), and grandfather Averardo (known as Bicci, d. 1363) appearing as little more than names. Neither of them merit their own entries in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (cited under Reference Works), in which the earliest Medicean biography is that of Vieri de’ Medici (b. 1323–d. 1395). Throughout the 14th century the Medici were not without significance in Florence. For example, between 1301 and 1330 they provided the republican government with nineteen priors and threegonfalonieri di giustizia. It was Gene Brucker’s wider interest in Florence’s turbulent 14th century that led him to reconstruct the history of the Medici in that period, the result being Brucker 1957, which covers various branches of the family. De Roover 1963, an acclaimed study of the Medici bank (cited under Contextual), does account for its foundation in 1397 by Giovanni di Bicci and his subsequent management of a phenomenally successful business empire, but it is the author’s briefer study of the banking career of Vieri de’ Medici, De Roover 1965, that is included here. Still addressing these works in chronological order of publication, Holmes 1968 keeps the focus on Giovanni di Bicci, examining the origins of the mutually beneficial arrangement whereby the main branch of the Medici family served as principal papal bankers. The post-De Roover decades saw considerable interest in 15th-century Florentine families, not least in the work of Richard Goldthwaite and F. W. Kent.Ricordanze were among the sources edited and trawled for evidence about family life. Tornaquinci 1981 is an edition of such a ricordanza but, being the creation of a Medici—in this case Filigno di Conte de’ Medici—it is a publication on which greater expense appears to have been lavished than might have been the case for a work associated with any other family. It was not until 1981 that the earlier Medici came under the art-historical spotlight. However, as Paoletti 2006 explains, there are few material remains, and many of their burial sites can be identified only from archival sources. The most recent study in the current selection is Ianziti 2008, which builds on the work of Arthur Field, James Hankins, and other specialists in 15th-century Florentine humanism. In the process it explores the 15th-century perspective of the Florentine chancellor Leonardo Bruni (b. 1370–d. 1444) on members of the Medici family in the previous century.
  159. Brucker, Gene A. “The Medici in the Fourteenth Century.” Speculum 32.1 (1957): 1–26.
  160. DOI: 10.2307/2849243Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  161. A group portrait drawn from chronicle, notarial, and other sources, both published and unpublished. The overall picture is of an unremarkable family, well connected by marriage but otherwise unexceptional. Brucker relates a saga of street brawls, recklessness, and disunity, accompanied by a general withdrawal from commercial life that contrasts starkly with the history of the Medici in the following century. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  163. De Roover, Raymond. “Gli antecedenti del Banco Mediceo e l’azienda bancaria di messer Vieri di Cambio de’ Medici.” Archivio storico italiano 123 (1965): 3–13.
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  165. Published in the wake of the author’s celebrated history of the Medici bank (De Roover 1963, cited under Contextual), this article reconstructs the career of wealthy Vieri di Cambio de’ Medici from the records of his bank, which appears to have had branches in Rome, Genoa, Bruges, and Venice. From Machiavelli, De Roover extracts material on Vieri as a popular hero who was offered the lordship of Florence in 1394.
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  167. Holmes, George. “How the Medici Became the Pope’s Bankers.” In Florentine Studies: Politics and Society in Renaissance Florence. Edited by Nicolai Rubinstein, 367–380. London: Faber, 1968.
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  169. In the 1390s and 1400s the Medici formed one of four prominent Florentine banking families at the Roman curia; from the 1410s they were predominant in that role. Holmes identifies two reasons for this evolution: the personal connection between Giovanni di Bicci and Baldassare Cossa (“John XXIII”) and the emergence of the office of depository, a strong financier to a weak papacy.
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  171. Ianziti, Gary. “Leonardo Bruni, the Medici and the Florentine Histories.” Journal of the History of Ideas 69.1 (2008): 1–22.
  172. DOI: 10.1353/jhi.2008.0009Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  173. Ianziti counters the argument that Bruni, the Florentine chancellor, was an anti-Medicean in the later 1430s, by examining his treatment of the Medici in his History of the Florentine People. The cowardly behavior of an unnamed Medici in 1351 is carefully avoided, and the controversial role of Salvestro de’ Medici, gonfaloniere di giustizia at the time of the Ciompi revolt (1378), is examined with particular care. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  175. Paoletti, John T. “Medici Funerary Monuments in the Duomo of Florence during the Fourteenth Century: A Prologue to ‘The Early Medici.’” Renaissance Quarterly 59.4 (2006): 1117–1163.
  176. DOI: 10.1353/ren.2008.0538Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  177. A detailed analysis of Medici funerary and commemorative monuments in S. Maria del Fiore, from the tomb slab of Giovanni d’Alamanno (d. 1352) to the stone inscription for Alamanno di Bernardo (d. 1498). Although the monuments themselves have not survived, Paoletti argues for a dynastic strategy regarding burial in the cathedral, particularly before Giovanni di Bicci made S. Lorenzo the site for burials of his branch of the family. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  179. Tornaquinci, Giovanni Biondi de’ Medici, ed. Libro di memorie di Filigno de’ Medici. Florence: Studio per Edizioni Scelte, 1981.
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  181. The ricordanza of Filigno di Conte de’ Medici, which he began in 1373–1374, exists in the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, Medici avanti il Principato (MAP), no. 152, and covers twenty-six folios. In this large-format edition, the original and a transcription appear on facing pages. Its contents are typical of the genre, being essentially financial. The introduction sets Filigno in the context of his wider family.
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  183. Generation of Cosimo il Vecchio
  184. The Medici of this generation who have entries in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (cited underReference Works) are Benigno (b. 1372–d. 1472), a religious; Nicola (b. c. 1384–d. 1455) and Cambio (b. 1391–d. 1463), sons of Vieri di Cambio; and Cosimo (b. 1389–d. 1464), son of Giovanni di Bicci. Cosimo’s wife appears as “Bardi, Lotta, detta Contessina”; his younger brother Lorenzo (b. c. 1395–d. 1440), founder of the cadet branch that led, in the male line, to the grand dukes of Tuscany, does not merit an entry. Cosimo’s mercantile career and business relationships with members of his family are charted in De Roover 1963 (cited under Contextual). Assessments of Cosimo as an individual tend to derive from one particular source: the memoirs of the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci: Vespasiano da Bisticci 1997. The only full-scale biography published in the modern era is Gutkind 1938, which ekes out the relatively limited material on Cosimo as an individual by taking a “life and times” approach. Whether as a banker, political player, or cultural patron to whom the revival of learning was somehow attributable, Cosimo was reasonably well known before he became the focus of career-long research by Dale Kent. Her articles on how Cosimo emerged as the most powerful man in Florence appeared regularly throughout the 1970s and culminated in Kent 1978, a monograph that has profoundly influenced appreciation of Florentine political factionalism. Kent 2000 is the author’s characteristically thorough analysis of Cosimo’s cultural patronage. Two contributions from Ames-Lewis 1992 (cited under Collections of Papers) have been selected for inclusion in this section: Brown 1992 because it reveals most about the man himself, and Paoletti 1992 because it is the only study to focus on works of art and architecture commissioned jointly by Cosimo and his brother Lorenzo. Lorenzo predeceased his elder brother and tended to be airbrushed out of a literary tradition that attributed too much to the successive heads of the dynasty and too little to their kinsmen. In the wake of Kent 2000, a particularly weighty tome, scholars have turned their attention to other members of the family. Letters to and from Contessina de’ Bardi are explored in Gori 2001. Zaccaria 2007 dares to venture away from the Cafaggiolo line of the family to introduce a Medici who was not exiled in 1433: Nicola di Vieri has the potential to serve as an anti-Medicean Medici, much as the descendants of Lorenzo di Giovanni are known to have done in the later 15th and early 16th centuries.
  185. Brown, Alison. “Cosimo de’ Medici’s Wit and Wisdom.” In Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’ Medici, 1389–1464: Essays in Commemoration of the 600th Anniversary of Cosimo de’ Medici’s Birth. Edited by Francis Ames-Lewis, 95–113. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
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  187. Sources for this study include Vespasiano da Bisticci 1997, which refers to Cosimo’s “salty replies,” and Machiavelli’s Istorie fiorentine, in which a quarter of the coverage given to Cosimo is devoted to his anecdotes and pithy one-liners. Brown’s analysis of Cosimo’s wit reveals him to have been wise and shrewd, rather than the life and soul of the party. Reprinted in Brown 1992 (cited underCollections of Papers).
  188. Find this resource:
  189. Gori, Orsola. “Contessina moglie di Cosimo ‘Il Vecchio’: Lettere familiari.” In Scritti in onore di Girolamo Arnaldi, offerti dalla Scuola nazionale di studi medioevali. Edited by Andrea Degrandi, 233–259. Nuovi Studi Storici 54. Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 2001.
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  191. A small collection of letters sent between Contessina and her blood relatives Alberto, Alessandro, Sozzo, and Gualterorro Bardi di Vernio. The eighth text included and analyzed by Gori is the ricordoof Piero de’ Medici on the death of his father, detailing the cost of cloth for funeral attire. Genealogies of the Medici and Bardi are provided.
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  193. Gutkind, Curt S. Cosimo de’ Medici, Pater Patriae, 1389–1464. Oxford Studies in Modern Languages and Literature. Oxford: Clarendon, 1938.
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  195. Cosimo’s membership of the Medici dynasty is not a top priority in this biography, in which chapters are devoted to the Florentine commonwealth c. 1400, the struggle for power in Florence from 1400 to 1434, Cosimo as primus inter pares, Florentine domestic politics and foreign affairs from 1434 to 1464, Cosimo’s business interests (including the various bank branches), and only then his private life. Republished as recently as 1979.
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  197. Kent, Dale V. The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence 1426–1434. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
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  199. Part 1 includes sections on the Medici family and the use of marriage to create the Medici faction. Over sixty members of the Medici family are featured in the text, and many more appear in the genealogy. Whether the Medici are considered as individuals or in various kinship combinations, this is an extremely detailed study of the family in the late 14th and early 15th centuries.
  200. Find this resource:
  201. Kent, Dale V. Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000.
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  203. Although this substantial, lavishly illustrated work purports to deal with only one dimension of Cosimo’s contribution to Florentine civic life, Kent argues that cultural, political, and personal patronage were intimately related in 15th-century concepts of social responsibility. The text is supplemented by an extensive bibliography. Also published as Il committente e le arti: Cosimo de’ Medici e il Rinascimento fiorentino (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2005).
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  205. Paoletti, John. “Fraternal Piety and Family Power: The Artistic Patronage of Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici.” In Cosimo “il Vecchio” de’ Medici, 1389–1464: Essays in Commemoration of the 600th Anniversary of Cosimo de’ Medici’s Birth. Edited by Francis Ames-Lewis, 195–219. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
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  207. Paoletti provides a potted biography of Cosimo’s frequently overlooked brother Lorenzo and explains that they were joint patrons of numerous artistic commissions, including their parents’ tomb in the Old Sacristry at S. Lorenzo.
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  209. Vespasiano da Bisticci. The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century. Translated by William George and Emily Waters. Introduction by Myron P. Gilmore. Renaissance Society of America Reprint Texts 7. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997.
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  211. An accessible edition of the work first published in 1892–1893 as Vite di uomini illustri del secolo XV. Among the popes and rulers, cardinals, archbishops and bishops, statesmen, and writers recalled by the Florentine bookseller, Cosimo is featured first among the statesmen. Vespasiano da Bisticci emphasizes his education, the “prickings of conscience” that induced him to spend his wealth, and the author’s part in the formation of Cosimo’s library.
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  213. Zaccaria, Raffaella Maria. “Nicola di Vieri dei Medici.” In Alberti e la cultura del Quattrocento: Atti del Convegno internazionale del Comitato nazionale VI centenario della nascita di Leon Battista Alberti, Firenze, 16–17–18 dicembre 2004. Edited by Roberto Cardini and Mariangela Regoliosi, 415–439. Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2007.
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  215. Nicola di Vieri was born in 1384, so was five years older than his somewhat distant kinsman Cosimo. Zaccaria identifies a range of sources, including Nicola’s correspondence with Poggio Bracciolini and his appearance as a protagonist in a dialogue by Leon Battista Alberti, before reconstructing his governmental career up to and including his term as gonfaloniere di giustizia in September–October 1433, when other Medici were exiled.
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  217. Generation of Piero il Gottoso
  218. The Medici of this generation who have individual entries in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (cited under Reference Works) are Cosimo’s sons Piero (known as Il Gottoso, b. 1416–d. 1469) and Giovanni (b. 1421–d. 1463), together with Filippo (b. 1426–d. 1474), son of Vieri di Nicola de’ Medici, who became bishop of Arezzo and archbishop of Pisa. There is no Dizionario entry for Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, son of Cosimo’s younger brother Lorenzo, and yet it was Pierfrancesco who attracted the attention of Alison Brown and, in the form of Brown 1979, features in the earliest publication in this particular selection. The relative unattractiveness of Piero as a subject for research seems to be confirmed by the fact that the next piece to be published was Clarke 1991, in which the fortunes of the Medici and the Soderini are intertwined, both dynastically and politically. Only after Cosimo became the focus of a volume of essays (Ames-Lewis 1992, cited under Collections of Papers), and the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico inspired the production of publications on an industrial scale, was Piero finally accorded similar treatment, with Beyer and Boucher 1993 (cited under Collections of Papers). Three items from that collection have been singled out here. Brown 1993 keeps the focus firmly on Piero himself, featuring that infirmity for which he is principally remembered but presenting it as a political opportunity, rather than an impediment. Lillie 1993 performs the same function as Paoletti 1992 (cited under Generation of Cosimo il Vecchio), highlighting the patronage of a younger brother—in this case, Giovanni—who predeceased his elder sibling and was consequently neglected by posterity. Lowe 1993 does something similar, by using a piece on Piero as an opportunity to draw attention to the piety and patronage of his wife, Lucrezia Tornabuoni (b. 1425–d. 1482). That work was something of a trailblazer, because Lucrezia has outshone other members of that generation in the more recent literature. Tornabuoni 1993 is a collection of her correspondence, thereby bringing her into line with other members of the Medici dynasty, but Tylus 2001 is a reminder that Lucrezia stands out from all the other Medici women because of her poetry. In recent years there has been a glut of biographies of Renaissance women, whether or not the quantity of primary sources justifies such a phenomenon.Pernis and Adams 2006 is part of that trend: at least Lucrezia provided her biographers with more sources than most of her female contemporaries did for theirs.
  219. 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.
  220. DOI: 10.2307/751086Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  221. Drawing on financial and governmental records, ambassadorial dispatches, and the papers of Bartolomeo Scala, who served as Pierfrancesco’s secretary, Brown reconstructs the career of the closest legitimate family member to the line of his uncle Cosimo. In the crisis of 1466 and other episodes, she discerns signs of opposition to the main branch of the family. Also published in Brown 1992, cited under Collections of Papers. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  223. Brown, Alison. “Piero’s Infirmity and Political Power.” In Piero de’ Medici “il Gottoso” (1416–1469): Kunst im Dienste der Mediceer. Edited by Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, 9–19. Artefact 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.
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  225. Brown wonders whether Piero’s political incompetence has been exaggerated and whether his “infirmity” was not as disadvantageous as has been assumed. Not only did he overcome and survive his financial and political difficulties, but he could use his inability to visit or reside in the Palazzo della Signoria to conceal the nature of his power and create a deliberately enigmatic and ambiguous impression.
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  227. Clarke, Paula C. The Soderini and the Medici: Power and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.
  228. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198229926.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  229. The two families were so intimately connected that this study of the brothers Tommaso and Niccolò Soderini sheds considerable light on their Medici contemporaries. Tommaso (b. 1403–d. 1485) married Dianora Tornabuoni, sister of Lucrezia, and became a father figure to Lorenzo il Magnifico following the death of Piero in 1469. In stark contrast, Niccolò (d. 1474) joined Luca Pitti as one of the leaders of opposition to the Medici in 1465–1466. Available online by subscription.
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  231. Lillie, Amanda. “Giovanni di Cosimo and the Villa Medici at Fiesole.” In Piero de’ Medici “il Gottoso” (1416–1469): Kunst im Dienste der Mediceer. Edited by Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, 189–205. Artefact 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.
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  233. Lillie acknowledges the difficulty of attributing patronage to individual members of a family who did not make wills and who regarded building projects as their collective responsibility. In attempting to identify the patronage of Giovanni di Cosimo, who died in 1463, she finds that the Villa Medici at Fiesole, built between 1453 and 1457, offers the best option, because Cosimo is not mentioned in records relating to it.
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  235. Lowe, Katherine J. P. “A Matter of Piety or of Family Tradition and Custom? The Religious Patronage of Piero de’ Medici and Lucrezia Tornabuoni.” In Piero de’ Medici “il Gottoso” (1416–1469): Kunst im Dienste der Mediceer. Edited by Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, 55–69. Artefact 6. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993.
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  237. In contrast to the well-known motives for the cultural patronage of Cosimo il Vecchio, Piero’s commissioning of objects such as tabernacles and altarpieces has attracted little interest. In this essay, Lowe gives equal weight to the piety both of Piero and his wife, Lucrezia, which was expressed in almsgiving to the poor, bequests to religious communities, and ex-votos in Santissima Annunziata.
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  239. Pernis, Maria Grazia, and Laurie Schneider Adams. Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Peter Lang, 2006.
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  241. A work of fairly modest proportions, which pads out the relatively limited biographical material with discourses on each relevant generation of the Medici family, the Palazzo Medici and the various Medici villas, elite lifestyle, and Lucrezia’s fellow poets. For all these topics this volume acts as a useful introduction and, indeed, is the most obvious introduction if emphasis on a female figure is required.
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  243. Tornabuoni, Lucrezia. Lettere. Edited by Patrizia Salvadori. Studi e Testi 32. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1993.
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  245. A collection of 120 letters from the Medici avanti il Principato (MAP) section of the Archivio di Stato di Firenze, of which forty-nine are from Lucrezia to her husband, Piero, her son Lorenzo, or other members of her circle, with the other seventy-one being correspondence received by her.
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  247. Tylus, Jane, ed. and trans. Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici: Sacred Narratives. Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
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  249. The “sacred narratives” are Tornabuoni’s five vernacular storie sacre; versions of the apocryphal stories of Susanna, Judith, and Tobias; the Old Testament story of Esther; and a life of Florence’s patron saint, John the Baptist. Together with other poems translated for this edition, the storie sacreshed light on 15th-century female devotion. Ample commentary is provided by the editor.
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  251. Generation of Lorenzo il Magnifico
  252. For most purposes, this generation can be said to consist of Lorenzo il Magnifico (b. 1449–d. 1492) and Giuliano (b. 1453–d. 1478) their sisters Bianca (b. 1445–d. 1488) and Lucrezia (also known as Nannina, b. 1448–d. 1493)—the four children of Piero il Gottoso and Lucrezia Tornabuoni who survived to adulthood—together with their cousins Lorenzo (b. 1463–d. 1503) and Giovanni (b. 1467–d. 1514), the sons of Pierfrancesco. It can be extended to include their spouses: Lorenzo’s wife, Clarice Orsini (b. 1453–d. 1488); Bianca’s husband, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi; Lucrezia’s husband, Bernardo Rucellai (d. 1514); Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s wife, Semiramide d’Appiano of Piombino; and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco’s wife, Caterina Sforza (b. c. 1462–d. 1509). The cast of characters is relatively small and is even more intimately connected than at first appears, because the most dramatic episode in the late 15th-century history of the Medici family was surely the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, in which members of the Florentine Pazzi family sought to have Lorenzo and Giuliano assassinated in the cathedral church of Florence. Beyond Florence, the Pazzi had an important backer in Rome, the papal nephew Girolamo Riario, to whom Caterina Sforza was then married. Giuliano was slain, but Lorenzo survived. Lorenzo provided posterity with far more primary sources than did his father or grandfather. Medici 1977– is the ongoing edition of his letters, from which his political and diplomatic interests can be reconstructed in considerable detail. Biographies of Lorenzo are so numerous and vary so widely in character—from the hagiographical to the scholarly by way of the popular—that Hook 1984 has been selected as a particularly safe volume that avoids excess of any kind. For a little more depth on his early years, Kent 1996 may also be consulted. In addition toHook 1984, the drama of the Pazzi conspiracy can be traced in Poliziano 1958, which also serves to represent the hagiographical end of the range. Martines 2003 is aimed at a popular market but comes with the author’s long experience as a historian of Renaissance Italy. Clarice Orsini does not loom large in any account of her husband’s life, which makes Shaw 1988, an analysis of the evolving relationship between Lorenzo and one of his Orsini in-laws, all the more valuable. Lorenzo’s cultural patronage has often attracted attention out of proportion to other aspects of his life. Kent 2004 is a relatively recent contribution to a substantial body of literature on that theme. For additional reading on Lorenzo, see the separate Oxford Bibliographies article Lorenzo de’ Medici. Levi d’Ancona 1992is a curiosity: its subject is the patronage behind Botticelli’s Primavera and Birth of Venus, both of which have been associated with Lorenzo il Magnifico and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Levi d’Ancona rejects both these patronage options and, among other things, argues that the Primavera was commissioned by Giuliano de’ Medici shortly before his assassination. To complicate matters further, she claims that he had secretly married a Pazzi.
  253. Hook, Judith. Lorenzo de’ Medici: An Historical Biography. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1984.
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  255. A straightforward biography. Lorenzo has been the subject of numerous modern biographies, often aimed at a popular or at least semipopular market and with an emphasis on the visual arts. Hook’s emphasis on political history, with chapters on his cultural patronage and writing placed toward the end of the volume, seems to be more in line with Lorenzo’s own priorities.
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  257. Kent, F. W. “The Young Lorenzo, 1449–1469.” In Lorenzo the Magnificent: Culture and Politics. Edited by Michael Mallett and Nicholas Mann, 1–22. Warburg Institute Colloquia 3. London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1996.
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  259. A partial biography, covering almost the first half of Lorenzo’s life, this is a good place to look for references to the influence of his family. These include the fact that he was named after his grandfather’s late brother. His baptism on the feast of the Epiphany provided an exceptionally early introduction to the family’s burgeoning interest in the cult of the Magi.
  260. Find this resource:
  261. Kent, F. W. Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence. Johns Hopkins Symposia in Comparative History 24. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
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  263. With chapters on Lorenzo’s “aesthetic education,” the “temptation” to be magnificent, and the Florentine “building boom,” this book-length essay is “a historian’s contribution to the art-historical debate on Lorenzo de’ Medici and the visual arts” (p. xi). Kent’s purpose is to establish a chronology for Lorenzo’s cultural patronage and to set that activity in its historical context.
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  265. Levi d’Ancona, Mirella. Due quadri del Botticelli eseguiti per nascite in Casa Medici: Nuova interpretazione della “Primavera” e della “Nascita di Venere.” Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1992.
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  267. The first of these two short essays summarizes previous interpretations of Botticelli’s Primavera, before arguing that Giuliano de’ Medici was secretly married to Oretta (or Fioretta) de’ Pazzi and commissioned the painting in 1477/1478 to celebrate the imminent birth of his son Giulio (20 May 1478), the future Pope Clement VII. Levi d’Ancona associates the Birth of Venus with the birth in 1484 of Maria Margherita de’Medici, from a junior branch of the family.
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  269. Martines, Lauro. April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.
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  271. Although this volume is pitched toward the popular end of the range, it is by one of the most reputable historians of Renaissance Italy, so it can be trusted to steer the reader not only through the Pazzi conspiracy itself, but also through the wider history of the period. The brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici are set in their dynastic and political contexts.
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  273. Medici, Lorenzo de’. Lettere. 12 vols. Edited by Riccardo Fubini, Nicolai Rubinstein, Michael Mallett, Humfrey Butters, Melissa Meriam Bullard, and Marco Pellegrini. Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 1977–.
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  275. War and diplomacy are the staples of Lorenzo’s copious extant correspondence, published in this major collaborative work, with members of his family making only rare appearances. To take Vol. 7 as an example, in the years 1482–1484 he mentioned his sons Piero and Giovanni once each and possibly alluded to his daughter Lucrezia on a single occasion. Vols. 1 and 2 edited by Fubini; Vols. 3 and 4, by Rubinstein; Vols. 5–7, by Mallett; Vols. 8 and 9, by Butters; Vols. 10 and 11, by Bullard; and Vol. 12, by Pellegrini.
  276. Find this resource:
  277. Poliziano, Angelo. Della congiura dei Pazzi (Coniurationis commentarium). Edited by Alessandro Perosa. Miscellanea Erudita 3. Padua, Italy: Antenore, 1958.
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  279. Poliziano’s account of the murder of Giuliano and the attempted murder of Lorenzo is effectively an updated version of Sallust’s account of the Catiline conspiracy of 63 BC. An English translation appears in in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, edited and translated by Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald E. Witt, with Elizabeth B. Welles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978; reprinted as recently as 1997).
  280. Find this resource:
  281. 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. Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies 2. London: Committee for Medieval Studies, Westfield College, 1988.
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  283. Noting that Lorenzo’s relations with his Orsini in-laws have not attracted much interest, Shaw proceeds to trace the relationship between Lorenzo and Virginio Orsini, by means of the latter’s agent in Florence, Santi di Curcumello. During Sixtus IV’s pontificate, Virginio had been close to Lorenzo’s enemy Girolamo Riario, but their interests converged during the Barons’ War and in the Medici-Cibo marriage alliance.
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  285. Children of Lorenzo il Magnifico
  286. The children of Lorenzo il Magnifico and Clarice Orsini were Lucrezia (b. 1470–d. 1553), Piero (b. 1472–d. 1503), Maddalena (b. 1473–d. 1528), Giovanni (b. 1475–d. 1521), Luisa (d. 1488), Contessina (b. 1478–d. 1515), and Giuliano (b. 1479–d. 1516). All but Luisa and Contessina merit their own entries in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (cited under Reference Works), with Giovanni listed under his papal name, “Leone X.” Between them they presented Lorenzo with enough dynastic opportunities to secure the support of the increasingly dissident cadet branch of the family, to maintain the tradition of alliances with other leading Florentine families, and to try his hand at dynastic politics outside the republic. Luisa had been promised in marriage to Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici (b. 1467–d. 1498), but died before the union could take place. Lucrezia and Contessina married within the Florentine patriciate, to Jacopo Salviati and Piero Ridolfi respectively. Piero followed his father’s example by marrying into the sprawling, many-branched Orsini dynasty, and Maddalena was sent to Rome as the wife of Innocent VIII’s unpromising son Franceschetto Cibo. For all his notoriety as the Medici who negotiated a bad deal with King Charles VIII in 1494 and suffered exile for his pains, Piero has attracted little scholarly interest. Brown 2010 seeks to fill this void—it would be interesting to compare and contrast the result with Kent 1996 (cited underGeneration of Lorenzo il Magnifico) on the young Lorenzo. The recent vogue for studies of Renaissance women means that Piero’s wife, Alfonsina Orsini (b. 1472–d. 1520), has fared rather better. Tomas 2000 is preparatory work for Tomas 2003 (cited under Multigenerational). WhereasTomas 2000 concentrates on Alfonsina as a powerful woman in a man’s world, Reiss 2001examines her cultural patronage. As a future pope, Giovanni is the child of Lorenzo and Clarice who has attracted the most attention. Picotti 1981, originally published in 1928, is a detailed reconstruction of his childhood and adolescence. Cox-Rearick 1984 deliberately places Giovanni’s cultural patronage at the center of a tradition spanning a number of generations of the Medici family.Ciseri 1990 seeks to reconstruct the festivities that greeted the first Medici pope when he returned to Florence in 1515. Minnich 2003 focuses on a group portrait of Leo X with his cousins, the future pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici, b. 1478–d. 1534) and Luigi de’ Rossi (b. 1474–d. 1519). The latter was the son of Leonetto de’ Rossi and Maria de’ Medici, an illegitimate daughter of Piero il Gottoso. The final work in this selection, McManamon 1991, analyzes the oration given at the death of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s youngest son, Giuliano, in 1516. Giuliano is perhaps better known as one of the speakers in Baldassare Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier. He may have frequented courts and held the title duke of Nemours, but he also gained a reputation for being as near to a man of the people as any of Lorenzo’s sons ever achieved, and was the original dedicatee of Machiavelli’s The Prince (it was transferred to Lorenzo, duke of Urbino).
  287. Brown, Alison. “The Early Years of Piero di Lorenzo, 1472–1492: Between Florentine Citizen and Medici Prince.” In Communes and Despots in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Edited by John E. Law and Bernadette Paton, 209–222. Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010.
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  289. A reconstruction of Piero’s first two decades, drawn from letters by him and about him. Although his teenage waywardness worried Lorenzo, Brown presents evidence of Piero’s sureness of touch in the period immediately after his father’s death. It was only the events of 1494 that caused him to panic. Also published in Alison Brown, Medicean and Savonarolan Florence: The Interplay of Politics, Humanism, and Religion (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2011), pp. 67–85.
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  291. Ciseri, Ilaria. L’ingresso trionfale di Leone X in Firenze nel 1515. Biblioteca Storica Toscana 26. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1990.
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  293. A detailed study of Leo X’s official entry into Florence on 30 November 1515, en route from Rome to Bologna and his meeting with Francis I. The event is featured in Vasari’s life of Andrea del Sarto and has received attention from various scholars, but this is the most extensive analysis of the decorations and festivities. Ciseri identifies an emphasis on ancient Rome and the heavenly Jerusalem.
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  295. Cox-Rearick, Janet. Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X, and the Two Cosimos. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984.
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  297. The focus of this study is on art created during the pontificate of Leo X; the “two Cosimos” are Cosimo il Vecchio and Cosimo I, though the entire scope extends as far as Francesco I. Across this broad canvas, Cox-Rearick traces recurring themes in Medicean art, including mythology and astrology. Particular works examined include Pontormo’s portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio and the terracotta frieze at Poggio a Caiano.
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  299. McManamon, John M. “Marketing a Medici Regime: The Funeral Oration of Marcello Virgilio Adriani for Giuliano de’ Medici (1516).” Renaissance Quarterly 44.1 (1991): 1–41.
  300. DOI: 10.2307/2862404Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  301. Less than four months after Leo X made his triumphal entry into Florence (see Ciseri 1990), his brother Giuliano died. This provided another opportunity to use public display in a bid to secure support for the Medici family. Adriani served as first chancellor of the republic. As McManamon explains, his eulogy urged reconciliation between Florentine factions and emphasized the collective virtues of the deceased’s illustrious ancestors. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  303. Minnich, Nelson H. “Raphael’s Portrait Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi: A Religious Interpretation.” Renaissance Quarterly 56.4 (2003): 1005–1052.
  304. DOI: 10.2307/1261978Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  305. Even though Minnich uses this article to argue for a “prophetic and devotional” interpretation of Raphael’s group portrait, his survey of the historiography relating to it is nevertheless useful for a study of the Medici family. The sitters were Giovanni de’ Medici, his legitimized cousin and future pope Giulio de’ Medici, and another cousin, Luigi de’ Rossi. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  307. Picotti, Giovanni Battista. La giovinezza di Leone X: Il papa del Rinascimento. Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1981.
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  309. A remarkably detailed study of the early life of the future pontiff, focusing on his education and acquisition of ecclesiastical benefices. The former was provided inter alia by Demetrio Calcondila, Angelo Poliziano, and the University of Pisa, the latter by Lorenzo, who used varying combinations of favors and brute force to acquire commendatory abbacies for his young son. First published in 1927 (Milan: U. Hoepli).
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  311. Reiss, Sheryl E. “Widow, Mother, Patron of Art: Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici.” In Beyond Isabella: Secular Women Patrons of Art in Renaissance Italy. Edited by Sheryl E. Reiss and David G. Wilkins, 125–157. Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies 54. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2001.
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  313. Alfonsina’s story oscillates between Florence and Rome, as she followed her husband into exile, returned to Florence with her son Lorenzo, and then retreated to Rome after his death. In addition to collecting antiquities, she can be connected with a number of building projects, including the foundation of the Palazzo Medici-Lante in Rome and work at the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano.
  314. Find this resource:
  315. Tomas, Natalie. “Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici and the ‘Problem’ of a Female Ruler in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence.” Renaissance Studies 14.1 (2000): 70–90.
  316. DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-4658.2000.tb00372.xSave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  317. Tomas identifies Alfonsina Orsini, widow of Piero de’ Medici and mother of Lorenzo, duke of Urbino, as “ruler” of Florence between 1515 and 1519, arguing that her role was indicative of the increasingly “signorial” character of the family’s operations there and that her gender added fuel to the flames of opposition to the Medici. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  319. Other Descendants of Lorenzo il Magnifico to 1537
  320. Lorenzo il Magnifico’s eldest daughter, Lucrezia, gave birth to six sons and four daughters. Among these, Maria Salviati (b. 1499–d. 1543) married a Medici, the celebrated condottiere Giovanni “delle Bande Nere” (b. 1498–d. 1526), son of Giovanni di Pierfrancesco and Caterina Sforza; Francesca Salviati married another Medici and was mother of Pope Leo XI. The seven children of Lorenzo’s second daughter, Maddalena, were themselves the grandchildren of a pope, Innocent VIII. Turning to those grandchildren who bore the Medici name, Piero’s son was, according to Florentine tradition, named after his grandfather. This Lorenzo (b. 1492–d. 1519) is most easily distinguished from his namesake by the title duke of Urbino, which he received from Leo X in 1516. By that time Lorenzo had fathered an illegitimate son, Alessandro (b. 1511–d. 1537). The duke’s brief marriage to Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne (b. c. 1501–d. 1519) produced one legitimate child, the much-prized dynastic asset Caterina (b. 1519–d. 1589), who went on to marry into the French royal family. In addition to the younger Lorenzo, Piero de’ Medici and Alfonsina Orsini also had a daughter, Clarice (b. 1493–d. 1528), who married Filippo Strozzi and bore him ten children,. Legitimate heirs were in such short supply that not only did the duke of Urbino’s son prove to be a significant figure in Florentine history but so did the illegitimate son of Giuliano, duke of Nemours: Ippolito (b. 1511–d. 1535). In terms of subject matter, the earliest of the works in this section is Bullard 1979, which analyzes the political significance of the marriage between Clarice de’ Medici and Filippo Strozzi in 1508. Strozzi’s relationship with the Medici is continued in Bullard 1980, which combines biography with a study of papal finance in the early 16th century. The Renaissance was a period in which popes spent heavily on fortifications and employing mercenary captains. Among the latter, Leo X employed his kinsman Giovanni “della Bande Nere.” Guicciardini 1993 includes an account of Giovanni’s final campaign, fighting for the anti-imperial league of Cognac. When the imperialists sacked Rome the following year, 1527, the Medici fled from Florence once more. The Last Republic duly fell in 1530, the Medici returned, and the bastard Alessandro was recognized as “capo” of the state and, from 1532, as duke of Florence. There is no modern biography of Alessandro, butBrackett 2005 explores his parentage and racial descent. The other Medici bastard, Ippolito, enjoys biographical treatment in Rebecchini 2010. Nothing was as remarkable about Alessandro’s short life as the manner of his leaving it, killed by Lorenzino de’ Medici (b. 1514–d. 1548), a member of the Popolano line. Lorenzino’s own account of what he regarded as tyrannicide is justly famous: the most recent edition is Medici 2004. Lorenzino’s subsequent career and his own assassination is the subject of Dall’Aglio 2011. As regent of France, Caterina/Catherine de’ Medici’s association with bloodshed became a thing of legend, fiction, and many a biography. Of all the biographies, Cloulas 1979 has been chosen because of its author’s track record of writing on Franco-Italian subjects.
  321. Brackett, John K. “Race and Rulership: Alessandro de’ Medici, First Medici Duke of Florence, 1529–1537.” In Black Africans in Renaissance Europe. Edited by T. F. Earle and K. J. P. Lowe, 303–325. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
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  323. Portraits of Alessandro provide the most suggestive evidence for his mother being of African descent, yet, as Brackett argues, contemporaneous criticism of Alessandro appears to have focused on Simonetta’s humble social status rather than on her race.
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  325. Bullard, Melissa Meriam. “Marriage Politics and the Family in Florence: The Strozzi-Medici Alliance of 1508.” American Historical Review 84.3 (1979): 668–687.
  326. DOI: 10.2307/1855402Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  327. Although Bullard presents this “interesting case study of the political, social, and economic consequences of Florentine patrician marriages” (p. 670) as belonging to the body of scholarly literature on the family in Renaissance Florence, the heart of the piece is a blow-by-blow account of how the exiled Medici used Lorenzo il Magnifico’s granddaughter Clarice to reestablish themselves in the Florence of Piero Soderini. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  329. Bullard, Melissa Meriam. Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome. Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980.
  330. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511896651Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  331. A biography of that member of the Strozzi family who was most closely related to the Medici of Cafaggiolo. Following his marriage to Clarice de’ Medici (see Bullard 1979), Filippo became depositor general of the Apostolic Chamber, a loyal servant of the Medici popes. Bullard focuses on that period of his career, rather than on his later opposition to the regime of the Medici dukes, Alessandro and Cosimo. Republished as recently as 2008.
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  333. Cloulas, Ivan. Catherine de Médicis. Paris: Fayard, 1979.
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  335. The first of a series of biographies of Franco-Italian subjects, including Lorenzo il Magnifico, Julius II, and Cesare Borgia. Cloulas is more sensitive to the Italian dimension than most of Caterina/Catherine’s French biographers but nevertheless presents Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici as the illegitimate son of Clement VII, rather than of Giuliano, duke of Nemours. Republished as recently as 2002.
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  337. Dall’Aglio, Stefano. L’assassino del duca: Esilio e morte di Lorenzino de’ Medici. Biblioteca Storica Toscana 64. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2011.
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  339. In this intriguing reconstruction of the life of Lorenzino de’ Medici between the assassination of Alessandro in 1537 and the assassin’s own violent death in Venice in 1548, Dall’Aglio traces his activities as an agent of Francis I at a time when the French cause in Italy was all but lost. According to this account, the murder of Lorenzino was ordered by Charles V, rather than by the more bloodthirsty Cosimo I.
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  341. Guicciardini, Luigi. The Sack of Rome. Edited and translated by James H. McGregor. New York: Italica, 1993.
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  343. The last campaign of Giovanni “delle Bande Nere” can be traced in Guicciardini 1969 (cited underContextual), but another account of that campaign is provided by Francesco Guicciardini’s brother Luigi, whose text dwells at greater length on events leading up to the Sack of Rome than it does on the sack itself. Among the victims of the sack—on a temporary rather than a permanent basis—was another Medici, Clement VII.
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  345. Medici, Lorenzino de’. Apology for a Murder. Translated by Andrew Brown. London: Hesperus, 2004.
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  347. Lorenzino’s famous defense of his murder of Alessandro de’ Medici is available in a modern Italian edition, published together with his surviving letters, but this is the only English translation. Also included in this edition is a translation of Francesco Bibbone’s relazione of his murder of Lorenzino, together with some of the latter’s poems.
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  349. Rebecchini, Guido. “Un altro Lorenzo”: Ippolito de’ Medici tra Firenze e Roma (1511–1535). Saggi. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2010.
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  351. Part 1 is a straightforward biography, tracing Ippolito’s significance in the Medici family, and as vice chancellor of the church (not of the Camera Apostolica, as Rebecchini asserts) under Clement VII and Paul III. Part 2 is more thematic, including studies of Ippotito’s portraits, his cultural patronage, and his collecting of antiquities.
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  353. Cosimo I, Francesco I, and Ferdinando I
  354. If ever there was a prince who followed the advice set down by Machiavelli, it was Cosimo I (b. 1519–d. 1574), who proved to be utterly ruthless in securing and consolidating power. His marriage to Eleonora di Toledo (b. 1522–d. 1562), daughter of the Spanish viceroy of Naples, produced numerous children. Francesco (b. 1541–d. 1587), Isabella (b. 1542–d. 1576), Giovanni (b. 1543–d. 1562), Ferdinando (b. 1549–d. 1609), and Pietro (b. 1554–d. 1604) have individual entries in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (cited under Reference Works): Francesco and Ferdinando because they succeeded to their father’s grand-ducal title, Giovanni because (like Ferdinando) he was a cardinal, Pietro for his service to the Tuscan state and later life in Spain, and Isabella because she was murdered, presumably as punishment for infidelity, on the order of her husband, Paolo Giordano Orsini, duke of Bracciano. Cosimo’s illegitimate son, Giovanni (b. 1567–d. 1621), was born to Eleonora degli Albizzi between the death of Eleonora di Toledo and Cosimo’s second marriage, to Camilla Martelli (b. c. 1545–d. 1590). Also of relevance in this section are the consorts of Cosimo’s successors. Francesco I’s first marriage was to Giovanna d’Austria (Joanna of Austria, b. 1547–d. 1578). He began his relationship with the Venetian Bianca Cappello (b. 1548–d. 1587) during Giovanna’s lifetime and legitimized it in 1579. In this case it was not just the wife, but also the husband, who met a suspicious death. The beneficiary was Francesco’s brother Cardinal Ferdinando, the next grand duke of Tuscany. In 1587 he married Catherine de’ Medici’s granddaughter Cristina di Lorena (Christine of Lorraine, b. 1565–d. 1637) amid lavish celebrations. Among the three grand dukes, only Cosimo is the subject of a modern biography: Cantagalli 1985. The political dimension of his reign is also analyzed in Spini 1980. On the other hand, there has been tremendous interest in the court culture associated with all three rulers. Cosimo’s appreciation of the diplomatic value of the visual arts is the subject of Forster 1971, a pioneering work. Van Veen 2006 is a development of Forster 1971. Court culture had a strong female dimension: Langdon 2006explores the sudden explosion in the number of portraits of Cosimo’s family, not least those by Agnolo Bronzino (b. 1503–d. 1572). A high proportion of the Medici women seem to have met the sort of mysterious or violent ends that attract the interest of historians and biographers, Murphy 2008being a case in point. Scientists—the authors of Mari, et al. 2006—provide an interpretation of the deaths of Francesco I and Bianca Cappello. After that crisis, it was little wonder that Ferdinando I sought to reinforce the legitimacy of his rule, his marriage, and—he hoped—his heirs, by celebrating the arrival of his bride in exceptionally lavish fashion. Those celebrations have been reconstructed by musicians, but this article includes a literary reconstruction: Saslow 1996. The last marriage featured here is that of Cosimo’s illegitimate son Giovanni and his long-time lover. Dooley 2009 is an edition of their correspondence.
  355. Cantagalli, Roberto. Cosimo I de’ Medici granduca di Toscana. Storia e Documenti 63. Milan: Mursia, 1985.
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  357. A firmly political biography, the contents of which could hardly be more clearly stated in its five chapter titles, which deal, respectively, with Cosimo’s parents, infancy, and adolescence; his rise to power and its consolidation; the organization of an absolutist state; the territorial expansion of Tuscany; and Cosimo as a prince of the Counter Reformation.
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  359. Dooley, Brendan, ed. Amore e guerra nel tardo Rinascimento: Le lettere di Livia Vernazza e Don Giovanni de’ Medici. La Storia Raccontata 29. Florence: Edizioni Polistampa, 2009.
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  361. Giovanni de’ Medici was the illegitimate son of Cosimo I and a veteran of the war against the Turks in the 1590s; Livia Vernazza was the daughter of a Genoese mattress maker. Their liaison lasted eleven years before they married in Venice in 1619. This edition of their correspondence is drawn from recently discovered material in the Archivio di Stato in Florence.
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  363. Forster, Kurt W. “Metaphors of Rule: Political Ideology and History in the Portraits of Cosimo I de’ Medici.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 15.1 (1971): 65–104.
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  365. Arguing that Cosimo recognized the value of art as an instrument of statecraft, Forster traces the parallel developments of Cosimo’s power in Tuscany and the portrayal of the Medici family past and present as rulers. The latter included Vasari’s depiction of Duke Alessandro as Alexander the Great. In his decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio, Forster states, Vasari subordinated aesthetic considerations to political judgment. Available online for purchase or by subscription.
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  367. Langdon, Gabrielle. Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love, and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
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  369. The chapters focus on portraits of Maria Salviati by Bronzino and Pontormo, the state portrait of Eleonora di Toledo, the daughters and wards of Cosimo and Eleonora, and Alessandro Allori’s portrait of Duke Alessandro’s illegitimate daughter Giulia, together with portraits of Cosimo and Eleonora’s daughters Lucrezia and Isabella and daughter-in-law Eleonora, but the book’s content ranges more widely than this summary suggests.
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  371. Mari, Francesco, Aldo Polettini, Donatella Lippi, and Elisabetta Bertol. “The Mysterious Death of Francesco I de’ Medici and Bianca Cappello: An Arsenic Murder?” British Medical Journal333.7582 (2006): 1299–1301.
  372. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38996.682234.AESave Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
  373. In October 1587 Grand Duke Francesco and his wife Bianca fell ill at Poggio a Caiano. After eleven days, they died within hours of one another. This brief scientific report presents the findings of toxicology tests on samples that certainly came from Francesco’s corpse and probably came from Bianca’s. Whereas malarial infection was the cause of death given at the time, the authors make a case for arsenic poisoning.
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  375. Murphy, Caroline P. Murder of a Medici Princess. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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  377. Aimed at a wide readership, this is a biography of Isabella de’ Medici rather than merely an account of her death in 1576. Many members of the family are introduced and presented in a manner suitable for nonspecialists. Includes illustrations.
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  379. Saslow, James M. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.
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  381. The marriage of Grand Duke Ferdinando I to Cristina di Lorena (Christine of Lorraine) took place in May 1589, and was celebrated with music and drama, processions, and tournaments. Saslow traces the preparations from September 1588, through the process of casting performers, making sets and costumes, and celebrating the bride’s arrival in Florence. This reconstruction of the celebrations is amply illustrated and supplemented by an appendix of genealogical tables.
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  383. Spini, Giorgio. Cosimo I e l’indipendenza del principato mediceo. 2d ed. Collana Storica. Florence: Vallecchi, 1980.
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  385. Part 1 focuses on the crisis of 1537, looking at the various interested parties, including Pope Paul III and Emperor Charles V. Part 2 traces the subsequent recovery of Florentine independence, as Cosimo played off the French and imperialists. It also charts Florentine relations with the papacy and the smaller Tuscan states, including Siena and Piombino. First published in 1945.
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  387. van Veen, Henk Th. Cosimo I de’ Medici and His Self-Representation in Florentine Art and Culture. Translated by Andrew P. McCormick. Cambridge, UK, and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
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  389. Van Veen takes Forster 1971 as his point of departure but argues for a more subtle analysis of Cosimo’s visual representations. Although he began as an elected leader with limited power, his earlier depictions emphasized royal and dynastic imagery. From the conquest of Siena in 1559 he took a radically different approach, embracing republican traditions. Celebrations for the entry of Joanna of Austria in 1565 are among the works featured.
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  391. Generations of Cosimo II and Ferdinando II
  392. The generation of Cosimo II included the children both of Francesco I and Ferdinando II. The former were Eleonora (b. 1567–d. 1611), Romola (b. and d. 1568), Anna (b. 1569–d. 1584), Isabella (b. 1571–d. 1572), Lucrezia (b. 1572–d. 1574), Maria (b. 1573–d. 1642), and Filippo (b. 1577–d. 1582), together with Antonio (b. 1576–d. 1621), Francesco’s son by Bianca Cappello. Of these, only Eleonora and Maria lived to become pawns in the dynastic marriage market: Eleonora married Vincenzo Gonzaga after he had divorced his first wife and duly became duchess of Mantua; Maria became the second consort of Henry IV of France in similar circumstances. Through her the royal houses of France, Spain, and England acquired Medici ancestry. The children of Francesco II were Cosimo II (b. 1590–d. 1621), Eleonora, Caterina (b. 1593–d. 1629), Francesco, Carlo (b. 1596–d. 1666), Lorenzo (b. 1599–d. 1648), Maria Maddalena (b. 1600–d. 1633), and Claudia (b. 1604–d. 1648). Cosimo married Maria Maddalena of Austria (b. 1589–d. 1631), Caterina married Ferdinando Gonzaga and became duchess of Mantua, Carlo went into the church and became a cardinal, and Claudia married successively Federico della Rovere, duke of Urbino, and Leopold V, archduke of Austria. The second generation covered by this section of the article is that of Cosimo II’s children: Maria Cristina (b. 1609–d. 1632), Ferdinando II (b. 1610–d. 1670), Gian Carlo (b. 1611–d. 1663), Margherita (b. 1612–d. 1679), Mattias (b. 1613–d. 1667), Francesco (b. 1614–d. 1634), Anna (b. 1616–d. 1676), and Leopoldo (b. 1617–d. 1675). In this generation the dynastic marriages were between Ferdinando and Vittora della Rovere of Urbino; between Margherita and Odoardo Farnese, duke of Parma; and between Anna and Ferdinand Charles, archduke of Austria. Gian Carlo and Leopoldo were the family’s ecclesiastical princes. To return to individual members of the family in the order in which they have just been introduced, the first study to be featured is Carmona 1981, a biography of Maria/Marie de’ Medici, a minor character in Florentine history but a significant one in that of 17th-century France. She sought but failed to secure a Medici marriage for her younger son, Gaston d’Orléans. One way in which she did prove to be a true Medici was in her patronage of the visual arts, which included the commissioning of paintings in which members of the Medici family were depicted. Her patronage is surveyed in Marrow 1982. Only her French marriage made Maria an attractive subject for a biography, and, indeed, biographies of individual members of the dynasty are not plentiful for this period. An exception is Maria’s half-brother Antonio, whose life is traced in Luti 2006. Another exception is Cosimo II’s consort Maria Maddalena, the subject of Galasso Calderara 1985. Whereas Antonio’s life was one of action, Maria Maddalena’s was quieter and revolved around her children. For the generation of Ferdinando II, Acton 1980 should be consulted as a general guide. Ferdinando and his brothers have proved to be of greater interest as cultural patrons than in other capacities, as can be seen in Goldberg 1983. The last of them to die was Cardinal Leopoldo in 1675: Fileti Mazza 1997 is an edition of the inventory made after his death, and it acts as a fitting conclusion to this bibliographical study of the Medici in the age of the Renaissance.
  393. Acton, Harold. The Last Medici. London: Macmillan, 1980.
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  395. Although this well-known volume focuses on the lives of the last two Medici grand dukes, Cosimo III (b. 1652–d. 1723) and Gian Gastone (b. 1671–d. 1737), and therefore ventures some way beyond the Renaissance period, the early chapters nevertheless provide a useful guide to the character, interests, and court of Ferdinando II. First published in 1932 (London: Faber & Faber).
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  397. Carmona, Michel. Marie de Médicis. Paris: Fayard, 1981.
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  399. A monumental biography in a much-respected series. Valuable though it is for an account of early 17th-century French history that does not have Richelieu quite at the center, the Florentine and Medici connections do not loom particularly large.
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  401. Fileti Mazza, Miriam, ed. Eredità del cardinale Leopoldo de’ Medici: 1675–1676. Strumenti e Testi 4. Pisa, Italy: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1997.
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  403. An edition of Biblioteca Riccardiana cod. 2443, an inventory of the cardinal’s apartment in the Palazzo Pitti, made after his death on 14 November 1675. The process of recording his possessions lasted until February 1676. Among the paintings there are works by many named artists, including Domenico Beccafumi and Antonio Caracci, and pieces that can be identified in Vasari’s Vite.
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  405. Galasso Calderara, Estella. La granduchessa Maria Maddalena d’Austria: Un’amazzone tedesca nella Firenze medicea del ‘600. Genoa, Italy: Sagep Editrice, 1985.
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  407. Like the forty-two years of its subject’s life, this is a relatively brief study, but useful because it deals with one of the family’s less remarkable characters and provides biographical sketches of her seven children. Maria Maddalena’s story allows for coverage of the last days of the Della Rovere as dukes of Urbino and of the Gonzaga as dukes of Mantua.
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  409. Goldberg, Edward L. Patterns in Late Medici Art Patronage. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983.
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  411. The Medici in question are Ferdinando II, Cosimo III, and Ferdinando’s younger brothers Cardinal Gian Carlo, Mattias, and Cardinal Leopoldo. Leopoldo in particular takes the story as far as Rome, and Cosimo takes it into the 18th century. Goldberg presents the Medici as “historically precocious” in their systematic use of the arts to create an “aura of personal splendour.”
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  413. Luti, Filippo. Don Antonio de’ Medici e i suoi tempi. Fondazione Carlo Marchi Quaderni 27. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2006.
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  415. A biography of the son of Francesco I, born to Bianca Cappello when Giovanna d’Austria was still alive, though subsequently legitimized as the grand duke’s heir. It was the child Antonio’s claim that his uncle Ferdinando successfully contested in 1587. Luti also relates Antonio’s adult career as a Knight of Malta who saw action against the Turks in the 1590s, though he later fell into obscurity.
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  417. Marrow, Deborah. The Art Patronage of Maria de’ Medici. Studies in Baroque Art History 4. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1982.
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  419. A slim volume that begins by emphasizing its subject’s unhappy childhood in the Palazzo Pitti before examining her early patronage, her building of the Luxembourg Palace, and commissions from Rubens, and finally identifies themes that can be traced in works by various artists, including myth and allegory, Marian iconography, images of marriage, and illustrious women.
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