Lorenzo's City

Recently, I wanted to know more about one of the most famous Florentines, loved, hated, and feared, but whose loyalty to his home town was rarely questioned. Lorenzo de' Medici was a statesman who above all knew his duty to the Republic of Florence and to the Medici name, and throughout his short life not only succeeded in mapping conquerors out of the city, but prevented all-out war in the Italian peninsula. His methods were both diplomatic and ruthless, by today's standards, sometimes savage. Lorenzo however had a passion for philosophy, for art, literature, music, and dance; he is well-known as a great patron of artists whose means of survival depended entirely on wealthy and powerful supporters such as himself. What may be less know is that Lorenzo himself had a gift for poetry, and met frequently with the great minds of the day to converse about art and philosophy. He included many artists among his friends.

In the Palazzo Vecchio, which although is right next to the galleries of the Uffizi, I had never visited before, there are rooms dedicated to the Medici family members Cosimo the Elder, Lorenzo the Magnificent, his father Piero, and his son, the future Pope Leo X. These rooms are decorated with scenes from their lives. In the photos I have included below, the first is a scene of one of Lorenzo's most courageous diplomatic missions, to intercede with the ruthless and fickle King Ferrante of Naples in order to prevent Neapolitan support of a papal attack on Florence. In the second, a more relaxed and decidedly happier-looking Lorenzo is dining with a circle of talented and brilliant friends.

As I gazed at the frescos and paintings in these rooms, I realized that I may have admired them even without knowing the stories; but having read about the Medici family, I felt that I was "reading" the rooms like an illustrated text. Even the cameo of Lorenzo's brother Giuliano below the second picture of Lorenzo I have described had a particular significance. Before his murder at the hands of the Pazzi, Riario and the other conspirators, Giuliano too was a part of those intellectual gatherings. I felt fortunate to be able to see art in that intimate connection to history; I'm sure art historians take this for granted, but for me it was a revelation.

The Medici coat-of-arms is ubiquitous in the palace: six red balls in an inverted triangle. Hmmm...somewhat phallic. The role of women in 15th Century Florence was restrained.

Lorenzo interceding with Ferrante of Naples

 

Lorenzo in discussion with his intellectual circle

Giuliano dei Medici

I catch up to the past

Coming back to Florence this year I felt very much at home; almost as though I had never left, except for the obvious fact that my life, and those of friends and family, have gone through twenty years of change. Florence itself has changed in clearly measurable ways. So I spent my time there in a kind of paradoxical, euphoric bubble: knowing very well that it is no longer my home, yet feeling happily at home; feeling that some things have not changed at all, while knowing that change and time have left their inexorable effects on everything and everyone. I also felt for certain that this would not be a final visit, and also that I would almost certainly live there again. These certainties still have a dream-like quality in that I have no idea of the time frame or the how of these future occurrences; the fact is, though, that the certainty removed any wistfulness from our departure and return to Florida.

One of the most wonderful parts of the trip came as soon as I arrived. My long time friend and mentor, Raimonda Ugolini, came to meet me at the airport in Bologna. We got off the autostrada and took a back route to Florence. Our first stop, strangely enough, was a cemetery for German soldiers, at which Raimonda had attended a performance of The Trojans. It is in the heart of the Tuscan hills, on a quiet peaceful slope, and represents, to me, the impermanence of the emniities that inflame our heats and cause the mindless, ineradicable destruction that we call war.  At first, I felt strange being in a place that housed so many Nazi souls, but looking at the youth of many of the soldiers, I realized that they could just as easily have been young Americans in Iraq, fighting for an illusory ideology that had the power to convince them to lose their lives. It's not for nothing that I consider Raimonda one of my great life teachers.

The stone reads,"Two unknown German soldiers"