MAGNIFICENT LORENZO

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 992, 7 June 1930, Page 15

MAGNIFICENT LORENZO

TYRANT WHO MADE FRIENDS OF ARTISTS DA VINCI’S EARLY STRUGGLES Never, perhaps, has any man had greater capacity for enjoying himself than Lorenzo de’ Medici. And yet, worn out by a life of dissipation, he died, prematurely old, at the early age of forty-three. In "Lorenzo the Magnificent,” Mr. David Loth draws a skilful, if somewhat subdued, portrait of the greatest of that powerful family of Florentine bankers who had learned how to rule the State as autocrats while appearing to remain private citizens and apparently preserving republican institutions (says “John o’ London’s Weekly”). Lorenzo meant to enjoy himself; and, loving power, knew that he could best retain it by ensuring that all Florentines should enjoy themselves. He entered upon his reign with no higher ambition than to make Florence a paradise for polite worldlings. He dreamed of a city where all men would be devotees of love, learning, and laughter, -where good taste w’ould count for more than good intentions, where men and women w’ould hold perpetual carnival. So his carnivals, masques, and tournaments outshone anything Italy had ever seen; his racehorses, trained and i fed under his personal supervision, out-stripped all others on the course: his own verses were sung and his own mystery plays produced throughout the city; never had money flowed so freely. Painted By Botticelli Lorenzo spared no pains to entertain his friends and favourites. For Lucrezie Donati, in a fit of careless admiration, he arranged the most spectacular tourney ever known—artfully persuading his betrothed, Clarice Orsini, in far-off Rome, that the fete was really in her honour. A little later he bestowed his favour upon Simonette Vespucci, -whose beauty had been immortalised by Botticelli. But she proved a fickle mistress; Lorenzo was superseded by his brother in her favour, and when death carried off Simonetta in the bloom of youth, all Florence saw the ironic spectacle of the Medici brothers, “heads bowed, eyes streaming,” following her bier as chief mourners, whilst her husband “walked modestly at their heels.” It was as patron of the arts, however, that Lorenzo found most enjoyment and won fame; “The artists had been accustomed to winning their pay and their applause from men who believed patronage was a form of condescension to persons of inferior stamp. . . . Now they had to do with a man who believed the encouragement of art was a privilege, who took pains to understand what he was encouraging, who treated the artist as a friend. Art, Indeed, was introduced into every phase of life and politics. After the Pazzi plot, which encompassed the murder of Lorenzo’s brother and the wounding of Lorenzo himself. Botticelli was employed to paint the figures of the chief conspirators on the outer walls of the Palazzo Publico, hanging by head and feet. One conspirator, Bandini, who was not captured until later, was subsequently hanged from the window of the Palazzo Publico in exactly the position he occupied in Botticelli’s painting, while from the square below Leonardo da Vinci, his universal curiosity attracted by the prospect of studying a strangling man’s contortions, hastily sketched the scene.” One day Lorenzo discovered an apprentice in the gardens copying in marble a faun’s head. “You ought to know that the old never have all their teeth,” he remarked, and passed on. Some days later he strolled that way again, and was delighted to see the faun grinning toothlessly at him —so delighted -that he sought out the young Michelangelo’s father and had the boy established in the Medici Palace, a step that was to have far-reach-ing influence on Italian art. Yet it was strange that one who had shown himself so discerning in one case should in another pass by genius without recognising it. The Young Leonardo There was a young artist to whom Lorenzo had given small commissions. Lorenzo had noticed no particular merit in his painting, but had listened enraptured to his playing on the lute. So when Lorenzo wished to present a lute to Ludovici Sforza he commissioned the artist to take it to Milan. The artist consented, and, being disgusted with Florentine blindness to his talent and dreaming of fame in Milan, begged Lorenzo for a letter of recommendtaion to Sfroza. “I commend to you,” wrote the obliging Lorenzo, “the best lute player in all Italy.” The lute player, whose worth as a painter Lorenzo failed to appreciate, was Leonardo da Vinci! Lorenzo’s thirst for power, love of enjoyment, and enthusiasm for the arts left him little time for supervising the great banking business which his forbears had bequeathed him. Nevertheless, he had a shrewd eye for opportunities of money-making. The Sultan was paying 40,000 ducats a year to Louis XI. for keeping his brother, Prince Djem, a prisoner, a task which Louis was anxious to relinquish (on terms!) as the Pope was to acquire. Lorenzo craftily arranged the sale of the prisoner to the Pope, thereby a triple profit—commission from Louis, commission from the Pope, and interest on money loaned to his Holiness to enable him to complete the deal. But he nearly fell into disgrace over the dowry insuranec fund, into which the parents of every female child born in Florence deposited something, the State guaranteeing payment of the principal with compound interest on the day of the girl’s marriage. “Lorenzo looted this fund so consistently that the Monte suspended payment, and the marriage rate fell alarmingly. . . . Lorenzo’s anterooms were filled with fathers come to nlead with him to release their money so that their daughters might find husbands. . . . To the amusement of the childless and the indignation of all w’ho had marriageable offspring, he insisted on being informed of every courtship. Marriage negotiations became threecornered affairs with Lorenzo mediating authoritatively between the two families.”