3
SAVONAROLA WOULD HAVE entered Florence in 1482 by the Porta San Gallo, the northernmost gate in the city walls, and less than half a mile down the main Via Larga he would have come to the monastery of San Marco.fn1 After pulling the bell beside the gate in the wall, he would have been admitted to the enclosed precincts.
The monastery of San Marco, which stood just two blocks north of the Palazzo Medici, had been founded in the thirteenth century. However, it had been completely renovated and considerably expanded by Lorenzo the Magnificent’s grandfather Cosimo de’ Medici just thirty years previously. Cosimo had used his favourite architect Michelozzo Michelozzi, and incorporated the work of the resident monk Fra Angelico, one of the great early Renaissance artists. Michelozzi would be responsible for some of the finest early Renaissance architecture in Florence, including the renovation of the Palazzo della Signoria and the design of the Medici villa at Careggi. For his part, Fra Angelico’s ethereal paintings would heavily influence Michelangelo, whose depiction of God’s finger passing on life to Adam in the Sistine Chapel was directly inspired by the artist-monk. The work of Fra Angelico and Michelozzi came together at San Marco in the delightful shaded San Antonio cloister, whose delicate pillars and colourful frescoes enclosed a tranquil green garden in the midst of the monastery.
Cosimo de’ Medici had undertaken the renovation of San Marco late in his life, intending it as absolution for the sin of usury, which had enabled him to accumulate his fortune as a banker. Yet there had also been a less manifest reason for Cosimo’s benevolence, one that explained why in particular he chose to lavish his wealth on San Marco, rather than other similarly prestigious monasteries in the city. Before the 1433 coup which had removed Cosimo from power in Florence, almost costing him his life, he had managed in the nick of time to transfer secretly to San Marco a large quantity of the funds held in the Medici bank in Florence. After Cosimo’s banishment into exile, his enemies had raided all Medici premises, as well as those of known supporters, but had been unable to discover the whereabouts of these funds, which had been held on trust, without a word, by the monks at San Marco.
In consequence, Cosimo had spared no expense on the rebuilding of San Marco, which eventually cost 30,000 florins – an unprecedented sum at the time. The monastery had been furnished with a library, together with many hundreds of religious manuscripts, intended for public use – the first lending library in Europe. Instead of the usual communal dormitory, each monk was assigned his own cell, many of which contained frescoes painted by Fra Angelico and his assistants. These were mainly portrayals of angels and biblical scenes. A special double cell, sumptuously frescoed, had been created for Cosimo’s personal use, to which he would often retire for periods of contemplation. However, he had taken a more active role in the creation of the gardens across the street from San Marco: as a man who delighted in retiring to the countryside, he had done his best to create a pastoral space here within the walls of the city. These gardens would in turn become a favourite spot of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who began decorating the shady spaces with pieces of ancient classical sculpture. It was here, as he walked along the paths between the beds of greenery and marble relics, that according to legend Savonarola would first catch sight of Lorenzo the Magnificent from the window of his cell across the street.
The monastery of San Marco was hardly the kind of religious institution to which Savonarola aspired, or indeed to which he had been accustomed. The Florentine Dominicans no longer lived in poverty, or depended upon the charity of their congregation. The cells of the individual monks were for the most part well furnished, and indeed the librarian and the prior lived in some luxury, with meals served privately in their cells, where on occasion they would entertain leading citizens with sumptuous meals served on dishes and plates bearing the Medici crest. All the food for the monastery was supplied by Lorenzo the Magnificent – with olives, wine, bread, fish, fruit, oil and eggs provided in abundance. By special dispensation from Lorenzo, all such produce for the monastery was imported into the city free of the usual customs charges. Even the monks’ robes and silk vestments were specially tailored by Lorenzo’s appointed haberdashers – the very ones who also ran up the costumes for his carnivals and popular entertainments.
Savonarola saw these entertainments, when they were laid on for the high days and holy days, and quickly decided that they were not to his taste. Instead, we gather from remarks in his later sermons that he began taking long walks through the streets of the city. In those days one could walk from the Porta San Gallo, in the northern walls, right across the city to the southernmost Porta Romana at the limits of the Oltrarno district in half an hour, and Savonarola had soon explored all the various districts and neighbourhoods in between. He insisted that he was not overawed by the large piazzas, palaces and churches that he saw in the centre of the city – he was used to such buildings in his native Ferrara. But Florence’s larger population, and the commercial success of its leading families, produced greater contrasts between the palazzi of the rich and the backstreet tenements and narrow lanes of the slums occupied by the poor. These crowded dwellings mainly housed the families of the many dyers and cloth workers employed as day-workers in the textile industry for which the city was famous throughout Europe. Here, in the mean alleyways, Savonarola encountered the destitute: the haggard beggars who tugged at his sleeves and the blind with their pitiful cries. His regime of self-denial and abstinence had taught him what it was like to starve, yet as he would recount in his later sermons, he soon became heart-rendingly aware of the contrast between his Dominican ‘poverty’ and this genuine poverty, which he came across amongst the inhabitants of the squalid teeming slum districts. Worse still, he found that these people actually resented his presence when he walked amongst them in his distinctive black robes – the Dominicans were seen as ‘Lorenzo’s men’, their friars regarded as his spies, Lorenzo’s eyes and ears amongst the public. In Ferrara, the Dominican Black Friars had been regarded as friends of the poor.
Yet there was an even more fundamental difference between the numerous poor of Florence and those of Ferrara. In Ferrara the poor had grown resigned to their lot. The d’Este ruled as tyrants, with every aspect of the administration under their strict control. There was no veneer of democratic government. But here in Florence things were different. The democratic process by which Lorenzo maintained power may have become a sham, but there was no denying that its ethos remained amongst the people. They still regarded themselves as equal citizens; quietly, they talked politics. Unlike in Ferrara, where dissenting voices were quickly despatched to the dungeons of the castello, the people of Florence were not afraid of airing their views, though for the most part only covertly and amongst themselves, especially in the case of the poor. Indeed, there remained a widespread feeling that one day things could change. As the little Black Friar passed alone through the back streets, he would have been aware of the odd catcall or insult called out behind his back.
Meanwhile Lorenzo the Magnificent had more pressing things to do than stroll amongst the statuary in his garden under the beady eye of a Ferrarese friar. In fact, he was attempting to deal with the very situation that had brought Savonarola to San Marco, namely the war between Venice and Ferrara. By the midsummer of 1482 this had escalated to the point where it threatened Florence’s eastern trade route acoss the Apennines to the Adriatic Sea. But the situation was not entirely one-sided. Duke Ercole of Ferrara was married to Leonora d’Aragona, the eldest daughter of King Ferrante of Naples, and when the Venetians had invaded the duke’s territory he had immediately called upon his father-in-law to come to his rescue. Knowing of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s constant attempts to maintain the balance of power in Italy, Duke Ercole also appealed for aid to Florence. Lorenzo responded positively, calling in his ally Milan, at the same time joining forces with his friend King Ferrante of Naples.
The troops of the allies were placed under the command of Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, the son of King Ferrante. In a subtle move, Alfonso now requested formal permission from Sixtus IV to march his troops north from Naples across papal territory towards Ferrara. Sixtus IV refused permission, thus bringing into the open his secret support for Venice. Alfonso advanced into papal territory nonetheless, but was then defeated by the pope’s forces. In response to this setback, King Ferrante immediately played on Sixtus IV’s unpopularity amongst the Roman nobility by inciting the Orsini and other noble families to rise up against him. In order to guard Sixtus IV, Girolamo Riario and the pope’s forces had to return from the papal territories to Rome itself. Meanwhile, Lorenzo directed his mercenary commander Duke Federigo of Urbino to march east to prevent the Venetians from overrunning all the territory ruled by Ferrara, whose troops were hampered by the untimely illness of Duke Ercole.
In September 1482 news reached Florence of the unexpected death of Duke Federigo of Urbino. Once again, it looked as if the Venetians were going to prevail. Girolamo Riario, who remained unable to fulfil his side of the secret pact with the Venetians by providing papal forces, sent word of this latest development to his ‘uncle’ Sixtus IV, who immediately realised the danger. If the Venetians took over Ferrara completely, and there was no military pact between them and his nephew, there would be nothing to stop them expanding to take over the papal territories ruled by Riario. In a lightning volte-face, Sixtus IV at once ordered the Venetians to halt their invasion, declaring that it had no just cause. The Venetians pressed forward nonetheless, and when news of this reached Rome the pope became so enraged that he excommunicated the entire Venetian Republic. But still the Venetians continued to advance, until finally by November 1482 they were laying siege to the city of Ferrara itself. At this stage Sixtus IV succumbed to a fever, his condition exacerbated by an incapacitating attack of gout.
In an effort to remedy the situation before it was too late, Lorenzo called a conference of the anti-Venetian allies at Cremona. Besides Lorenzo, the conference was attended by Alfonso of Calabria, Ludovico ‘il Moro’ Sforza of Milan, Ercole of Ferrara and the pope’s respresentative in the form of Girolamo Riario. It was soon agreed that Ludovico Sforza should launch his Milanese troops in a diversionary attack on Venetian territory, while Alfonso of Calabria led his remnant troops north in an attempt to relieve Ferrara before it fell into Venetian hands. These moves soon persuaded the Venetians to withdraw, and all parties now agreed that peace negotiations should be opened. But with the prospect of negotiating territorial gains, the fragile pact between the allies fell apart. Girolamo Riario persuaded Alfonso of Calabria to back his claim to add Ferrarese territory to the papal territories that he now ruled, but unbeknown to these plotters, Ludovico Sforza had entered into a secret agreement with the Venetians. When news reached Rome that peace negotiations were to open, Sixtus IV immediately understood that things had now slipped beyond his control. He was liable to lose everything he had set out to gain, while his enemies stood to gain everything at his expense. According to the diplomatic representative for Ferrara, the pope was beside himself with fury: ‘He uses the most terrible language in the world, and says that he has been deceived and betrayed.’1 Such were the difficulties faced by Lorenzo the Magnificent in his attempt to maintain the balance of power in Italy. All he could do was prevail upon the interested parties to conclude a reasonably balanced peace, in the hope that this would last.
Peace terms were finally agreed on 7 August 1484. Despite Lorenzo’s best efforts, these inevitably reflected the underhand pacts between the stronger of the negotiating allies. Although Venice had finished the war in retreat, it actually increased its territory at the expense of Ferrara, as did its covert ally, Milan; meanwhile Naples regained lost territory. At the same time Girolamo Riario gained nothing, and Duke Ercole of Ferrara had to be content with retaining just the city of Ferrara and a reduced surrounding territory. Sixtus IV, whose machinations had been responsible for the war, had not only lost any immediate prospect of adding to Riario’s papal territories, but was now distrusted by all – former allies and present allies alike. When news of the outcome of the peace negotiations reached Rome a few days later, the pope’s reaction was decidedly mixed. At a public audience with his cardinals he expressed, seemingly without qualm, his regret over the turn of events. ‘With great expense to ourselves have we carried on the war to save Ferrara, and to please the majesty of the King [of Naples] and the other allies, so we were ready to continue.’2 Yet when the ambassadors had withdrawn, his anger was such that he succumbed once more to his fever. He particularly blamed Ludovico Sforza of Milan for his ‘treachery’, since just a few months previously Sixtus IV had made his brother a cardinal, in the expectation of tying Milan to his cause. During the evening of 12 August Sixtus IV suffered a severe relapse and, in the words of the papal historian F. Ludwig von Pastor, drawing on a report by the Ferrarese ambassador: ‘That same night Sixtus died, denouncing the conditions of the peace with his last breath, declaring that Ludovico Sforza was a traitor.’3 As his contemporary Machiavelli drily remarked in his history of the period: ‘Thus at last this pope left Italy in peace, having spent his life ensuring that it was constantly at war.’4
News of these historic events soon reached the thirty-two-year-old Savonarola in his monastic cell at San Marco in Florence. The death of Sixtus IV, whom he had so long despised, inspired Savonarola to write another of his impassioned poems about the Church, appealing to the Lord even as the cardinals gathered in Rome to elect another pope:
Jesus, highest good and sweet comfort,5
Of all hearts that suffer,
Look upon Rome with perfect love …
Save thy Holy Roman Church
From the devil who tears it apart.
Savonarola still entertained hopes that the Church might yet return to its original state, ‘that peace she knew when she was poor’. Such hopes appeared patently unrealistic. Italy was now moving inexorably away from the simple poverty and timeless way of life that had been the lot of most people during the previous medieval era: an existence that, amongst many levels of society, retained a recognisable rapport with the earliest days of Christianity – in Judaea, in the Levant, and later amongst the slaves of Ancient Rome. But now, despite the wars and political uncertainties that racked Italy as the fifteenth century drew to a close, the transformations brought about by the Renaissance were entering a new phase. Classical knowledge and pre-Christian ideas had by this stage begun to stimulate an entirely new spirit of enquiry and consequent originality. New discoveries were being made in fields ranging from architectural technique to mathematics and pictorial perspective. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Florence, where the man who epitomised this phase of the Renaissance more than any other was the artist Botticelli. After being loaned by Lorenzo the Magnificent to Sixtus IV and completing the first frescoes to adorn the pope’s new Sistine Chapel, Botticelli had returned to Florence in 1482, the very year in which Savonarola had taken up residence at San Marco.
Botticelli once more renewed his contact with the intellectual circle associated with the Palazzo Medici, where he was particularly influenced by the Platonic idealism of the philosopher Ficino and the humanism of the poet Poliziano. As a result, Botticelli’s work underwent a spectacular tranformation. Instead of religious scenes, he began to depict pagan subjects from classical mythology. Typical of these was his Pallas and the Centaur, which depicts the goddess Pallas Athena grasping the hair of the mythical half-man half-horse, apparently restraining the repentant centaur. The scene is illustrative of how the Renaissance was beginning to emerge from its slavish mimicking of classical learning into an originality of its own. There is no classical legend involving Pallas Athena and a centaur, but Botticelli has used these two figures to suggest an encounter between wisdom (Pallas Athena) and lust (in the form of the half-man half-beast). It was intended to be an allegory depicting rational restraint overcoming animal sensuality.
This painting was commissioned by Lorenzo the Magnificent in 1482 as a gift to his nineteen-year-old cousin and ward, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, on the occasion of his marriage to Semiramide, daughter of Jacopo IV d’Appiano, Lord of Piombino. As was customary, this marriage had been arranged by Lorenzo, largely for political reasons. The city of Piombino occupied a strategic location on the coast seventy miles southwest of Florence, and its alliance to Naples during the war against Florence after the Pazzi conspiracy had represented a serious threat; with this marriage it would be permanently allied to Florence. As Jacopo IV was also a condottiere, it meant that his army would prove a useful addition to Florentine forces. On top of this, Jacopo IV’s territory included the island of Elba, which at the time contained the only iron-ore deposits being mined in the entire Italian peninsula. Medici control of this monopoly would represent a considerable income. The subject matter of Lorenzo’s wedding gift to his young cousin was intended as an exemplar of the benefits of marriage and the wisdom of restraint – a subtle hint that it was time for him to curb the wild behaviour in which he seems to have indulged.
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco must have taken the hint and amended his ways, for his former tutors Ficino and Poliziano – who almost certainly suggested the painting’s subject matter to Botticelli – now both spoke highly of him. The enigmatic hunchbacked Ficino, in a characteristically florid Platonic turn of phrase, wrote of how Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s ‘mind and the radiance of his manners and letters [shine] like the sun among the stars’.6 Poliziano was equally gushing, speaking in a poem of how Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was lacking in ‘neither gravity, nor winning grace of countenance, nor the high honour of a lofty head, nor capacious genius equal to civil affairs, nor a tongue that can minister the ample riches of your mind’.7 Such fulsome flattery may not have been utterly sincere, but it does indicate that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was held in the highest regard by the man who employed these two silver-tongued intellectuals – namely, Lorenzo the Magnificent himself. Indeed, Lorenzo was so impressed by his young cousin that when he was just nineteen he began sending him on diplomatic missions, much as he himself had been sent by his father. As far as this aspect of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s life was concerned, Botticelli’s painting was evidently intended to serve much the same purpose as Piero the Gouty’s earnest letters warning his son about his ‘exuberance’.
The diplomatic tasks entrusted to the young Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco were of some importance, including as they did missions to the pope and Venice. The messages he delivered may have been written by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but under the circumstances Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco’s presence would have been deemed of considerable significance: he would to all intents and purposes have been regarded as a stand-in for Lorenzo the Magnificent’s firstborn son and heir Piero, who was just thirteen years old. And two years later Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco travelled all the way to France to represent Florence at the coronation of the nine-year-old Charles VIII at Rheims on 30 May 1484 – an event that was to prove of great significance to Italy over the coming years. France was the most powerful nation in Europe, and Lorenzo the Magnificent had long since realised how vital it was that France should be discouraged from taking any active part in the politics of weak and divided Italy.
Despite all this, it is possible with hindsight to recognise that Lorenzo the Magnificent may also have had other, less honourable financial motives for keeping his cousin away from Florence, although these would prove to no avail. On 4 August 1484 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco finally came of age and claimed the inheritance that had been left to him and his brother Giovanni by his father, money that had been entrusted for safekeeping to Lorenzo the Magnificent. Initially Lorenzo simply refused to pass on this inheritance, but it soon became clear that most – if not all – of it had already been spent. The cash value of this inheritance is difficult to ascertain, though it would certainly have been considerable. Lorenzo the Magnificent is said to have held the money in ‘thirteen leather bags’,8though precisely how much these contained is disputed. He certainly dipped into them during the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy, when the city was threatened by war and he made his celebrated dash to Naples. According to de Roover, the meticulous expert on Medici financial affairs:
Between May and September, 1478, Lorenzo de’ Medici, being in desperate straits, at different times took a total of 53,643 florins in coin which belonged to Giovanni and Lorenzo, the minor sons of Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose guardian he was.9
Others suggest that a further 20,000 florins were removed later. However, the two brothers claimed that together they were owed 105,880 florins, including interest, and applied to the city authorities for legal arbitration on this matter. That Lorenzo the Magnificent’s power in Florence was far from absolute is reflected in the verdict that the legal arbitrators handed down some two years later in 1486 – doubtless after much profound discussion and much covert pressure from the Medici faction. The verdict went against Lorenzo, but by this time the sum that he owed had been whittled down to 61,400 florins. His justification for this reduced sum was that his cousins, being shareholders in the Medici bank, were liable for at least some of the money needed to shore up the bank so that it could manage the large debts that it had recently been forced to absorb. These had been incurred when the London branch had been forced to close down, and when the assets of the Rome branch had been seized by Sixtus IV after the failure of the Pazzi conspiracy (when the pope had also reneged on his large overdraft at the Medici bank).
In the event, Lorenzo the Magnificent simply did not have 61,400 florins with which to pay off his cousins, and instead was forced to hand over to them the Medici villa at Cafaggiolo, and further much-treasured ancestral land, property and farms in the Mugello valley, across the mountains to the north of Florence, the original homeland of the Medici. This judgement provoked considerable acrimony between the two branches of the Medici family.
Despite Lorenzo the Magnificent’s apparent lack of liquid funds, he continued to live as lavishly as ever. His celebrated circle of poets, philosophers and artists continued to be maintained (and entertained) at the Palazzo Medici, exquisite items were added to his famed collection of jewels, and the populace of Florence went on being placated with extravagant entertainments and festivals. Much of this must certainly have come from public funds, though as mentioned earlier the details of the city’s financial transactions for this period were all later destroyed by the Medici family. What we do know is that Lorenzo by now had complete control of the financial affairs of the city, and of its exchequer, which had been placed in the hands of his close friend and associate Antonio Miniati, a man who incurred much hatred throughout the city. Finance was one of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s chief weapons against wealthy citizens who sought to oppose him. The amount of tax to be paid by each citizen was assessed by a panel of taxation officers, who took account of registered property, a reckoning of possessions, as well as declared income. Inevitably any such estimate was open to abuse, and enemies of the Medici were liable to be bankrupted by swingeing taxes, or forced into exile to avoid losing all their wealth.
As Lorenzo the Magnificent pleaded near-bankruptcy, he did not have to pay tax during these later years of his reign. In reality, by this stage his financial affairs had become so identified with those of the city that there was a considerable ‘overlap’ between the two. And although Lorenzo certainly benefited from this state of affairs, it is also undeniable that the citizens of Florence benefited from his stewardship of the city. Lorenzo, through his leadership and sheer force of personality, gave much to Florence. Its citizens may not have been entirely free, but the independence of Florence itself resulted largely from Lorenzo’s astute statesmanship. The assessment of the city some years later by the Florentine historian Francesco Guicciardini, who lived through these times, holds largely true for the coming years:
The city was in perfect peace, the citizens who made up the administration were united and the government was so powerful that none dared speak against it. The people were entertained daily with all manner of festivals, spectacles and novelties. The city had abundant supplies of all its needs, whilst its trades and commercial activities brought great prosperity. Men of intellect and talent were able to engage in literature, the arts and the sciences, which were all encouraged, such that their efforts were not only recognised but also well rewarded. While the city remained peaceful at home, it was held in the highest esteem abroad because she had a government and a leader of the highest authority, because her territory was expanded, and because she had the full support of pope Innocent VIII,fn2 as well as being allied with Naples and Milan, by which means she maintained the balance of power in Italy.10
Such a picture may appear somewhat idyllic in the light of the preceding descriptions – of the Ferrara war and poverty in the Florentine slums – but it had more than an element of truth. These were years of some prosperity for Florence, whose overseas trade had once again spread to the limits of Europe, and beyond. As we have seen, several decades previously Cosimo de’ Medici’s Florentine galleys had plied the sea route through the Straits of Gibraltar across the Bay of Biscay to Bruges and London, carrying the dyed cloth for which the city was famous, as well as alum and oriental spices. These spices had been shipped from the eastern Mediterranean; and despite stiff competition from Venice and Genoa, Medici agents had penetrated Egypt as well as other trading centres throughout the Levant. But with the Medici bank in decline, such opportunities were now being exploited by other Florentine merchants and banking families. Not least amongst these, in the coming years, would be Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother Giovanni, who would establish a number of successful international trading enterprises.
The divergence between the two branches of the Medici family was now evident to all. Yet for the time being, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother would eschew any direct competition or conflict with their cousin. Lorenzo the Magnificent and his side of the family would be concerned with political power, while Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his family would pursue commercial wealth. The di Pierfrancesco brothers were soon establishing ventures in Spain and then Flanders, and such was the success of their enterprises that for a brief time the brothers left Florence altogether and took up residence in Bruges. Here they branched into the lucrative oriental spice market, a move quickly followed by other Florentine merchants. Indeed, such was Florence’s commercial penetration of the East during these years that word of the city spread along the Silk Road as far afield as China, where it was assumed that Florence, with all its wealth and culture, was the capital of Europe. Nearer to home, in 1487 the Sultan of Egypt sent an ambassador to Florence, who brought with him greetings from various rulers, as well as an assembled menagerie of rare and exotic animals. The people of Florence were accustomed to the sight of lions: these were the city’s mascots, kept in a cage behind the Palazzo della Signoria on a street still known as Via dei Leoni. On the other hand, they were filled with genuine wonder at the sight of the tall, long-limbed animal they called cameleopardo, on account of it having the head of a camel and the spotted furry coat of a leopard. This was the giraffe that would end up in the grounds of Lorenzo’s country villa at Poggio a Caiano, which now became his favourite country residence after the loss of Cafaggiolo to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco.
There may have been a rift between the two branches of the Medici family, but Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and his brother continued to occupy their town residence attached to the Palazzo Medici on the Via Larga, and they also continued to mix with members of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s intellectual circle. Evidence of this can be seen in the fact that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco continued to commission work from artists attached to the Palazzo Medici, especially ‘Lorenzo’s artist’, Botticelli. A direct consequence of this was one of Botticelli’s most magnificent and most mysterious works – namely his Primavera (Spring).fn3 This painting suggests, as much as any other of the period, the happy state of the Renaissance city as described earlier by Guicciardini. The painting depicts a group of delicate classical figures in the shade of a woodland clearing. The golden apples hanging from the high branches of the trees identify this as the Garden of the Hesperides, the blessed isle inhabited by nymphs at the western edge of the world. The central figure is Venus, whose apparent pregnancy may symbolise fecundity. To the left of her the Three Graces, symbolising Joy, Beauty and Creativity, dance in their diaphanous robes whilst above their heads blindfolded Cupid is pulling back his bow, about to pierce one of them with his arrow – of love, or lust. To the left of them stands Mercury, the messenger of the gods with his phallic sword at his waist, while to the right of Venus stands Flora, the goddess of spring, her blonde hair crowned with flowers, resplendent in her flowered dress, in the act of scattering flowers that blend into the flowers amongst the grass at her feet.
Primavera has prompted all manner of interpretation through the centuries. Some have identified it as a scene from classical myth; others have read it as an ingenious political allegory; while many contemporaries hinted at personal identifications (Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco as Mercury, his wife Semiramide as the apparently pregnant Venus). At the same time, it is undoubtedly infused by the philosophy of Ficino, with the figures as embodiments of Platonic ideas; paradoxically, it is also characterised by the realistic humanism of Poliziano’s poetry. Unlike so much of the painting that had preceded it, Primavera depicts an unmistakably secular, even pagan scene. Here is a touching humanity completely devoid of religious overtones, in no evident Christian setting.
In the event, Botticelli seems to have intended no precise allegory or ‘meaning’ in his Primavera, seeing it more as a starting point: an object of aesthetic contemplation and philosophical reflection. Its very mystery may be seen as the mystery of what was happening to human consciousness (and self-consciousness) at this point of profound and subtle transformation in our evolution. These are the elements of our burgeoning humanity: inspired by the philosophical and poetical suggestions of Lorenzo de Medici’s trusted intellectual circle and realised by Botticelli.
Of the figures within the Florentine cultural community, Ficino was enjoying an unprecedented ascendancy. His expert knowledge of Plato had now begun to attract widespread attention. No less a figure than Pico della Mirandola had already opened a correspondence with him. Pico’s quest to understand the early religious ideas that had inspired Christianity had extended beyond Judaism to include the ideas of the Ancient Greek philosophers. Scholasticism, the official philosophic backing of medieval Christianity, may have been deeply imbued with many of the ideas of Aristotle, but Pico now sought to discover Christianity’s links with Platonic idealism. In pursuit of this quest Pico arrived in Florence in 1484, expressly in order to study under Ficino, who quickly introduced him to the intellectual circle at the Palazzo Medici. Here he was rapturously received. According to Poliziano:
He was a man, or rather a hero, on whom nature had lavished all the endowments both of body and mind … Of a perspicacious mind, a wonderful memory, indefatigable in study … Intimately conversant with every department of philosophy, improved and invigorated by the knowledge of various languages, and of every honourable science.11
For his part, Pico was similarly impressed by Lorenzo the Magnificent. He would go on to dedicate his Apology to Lorenzo, and upon reading Lorenzo’s poetry he judged it superior to that of Dante – its humanism more reflective of the age than Dante’s religious subjects.fn4
Ficino was deeply grateful that such a distinguished scholar as Pico della Mirandola should champion his Platonism in the face of the vehement criticism it was receiving from some orthodox Aristotelians. A number of these theologians had even gone so far as to suggest that Ficino’s ideas were heresy, though this was largely on account of his dabbling in certain hermetic ideas that he had found in later Platonic texts. Despite Ficino’s adherence to Plato’s philosophy, he remained deeply religious, and he would regard Pico della Mirandola’s ability to convince devout humanist adherents of classical philosophy that they belonged in the Christian fold with such admiration that he called him a ‘fisher of men’.12
However, this great and enthusiastic meeting of minds at the Palazzo Medici was based upon a profound misunderstanding. Pico della Mirandola, with his elegant manners and deep philosophical learning, may have appeared as the embodiment of the new humanism, but this was a misreading of his intellectual stance. Although Pico was willing to embrace Platonism, this did not mean that he rejected orthodox scholastic Aristotelianism. On the contrary, the aim of his philosophical quest was inclusive – he wished to discover true religion as it manifested itself in all these different sources. This becomes clear in a letter that he wrote as early as 1485 to the Venetian scholar Ermolao Barbaro, in which he explained that when he travelled to Florence to study with Ficino he went ‘not as a deserter’13 from Aristotle, ‘but as a spy’. In fact, the Latin word he used for ‘spy’ wasexplorator, whose English connotations come closer to conveying what he actually meant. Pico della Mirandola certainly had no hostile intent in coming to study with Ficino, though the possibility of deception remains. The fact is that the Medici court accepted him as a fellow humanist. This would seem to indicate either a secrecy that was alien to Pico’s flamboyant nature, or that he was simply content to go along with Lorenzo the Magnificent, Poliziano, Ficino and the others in their erroneous assumption, because this better enabled him to understand their thinking. For there can be no doubt that, certainly at this stage, the assumption made by Lorenzo and his circle was erroneous. This can be seen from the other company that Pico kept during his residence in Florence. Besides becoming a favourite of the liberal intellectual circle at the Palazzo Medici, it is known that Pico also renewed his contact with Savonarola. Regarding his visits to the austere cell at the monastery of San Marco, the twenty-one-year-old Pico would later write of how he spent his time ‘piously philosophising’14 with the earnest thirty-two-year-old monk. The worldly philosopher and the ascetic theologian – in so many ways such opposites – indubitably continued to have one thing in common: the exceptional depth of their theological knowledge.
They also had another, somewhat surprising, element in common: their extensive knowledge of unorthodox philosophical thinking. Pico della Mirandola was already beginning to show an interest in esoteric learning – such as the Kabbala (a mystical branch of Judaism) and Zoroastrianism (the early monotheistic religion of Persian fire worshippers). Although Savonarola’s religious interests are unlikely to have extended to such exotica, we know that his learning was not confined to orthodox Christianity. It was probably around this time that Savonarola completed his Compendium totius philosophae (A Brief Summary of all Philosophies), which would not be published until after his death. We now know that parts of this work, some of which elaborated an aspect of unorthodox religious thought, were lost, or possibly destroyed by overzealous followers who wished to eradicate all hint of heretical thinking from his works. Still, despite Savonarola’s early years of humanist education with Guarino at the University of Ferrara – an experience shared by Pico – there can be no doubt that by this stage Pico’s knowledge of unorthodox thinkers and philosophers was far greater than that of Savonarola. Yet as we shall see, Savonarola’s informed discussions and critiques of such thinkers would later play an integral part in Pico’s beliefs. For the time being, it seems, Savonarola and Pico merely exchanged their views and agreed to differ; for though Savonarola studied such matters, he remained deeply opposed to unorthodox thinking of any sort.
By this stage, Savonarola was already establishing something of a reputation for himself within San Marco, such that soon after his arrival he had been made master of the novices. His intellect, as well as his exemplary asceticism and fervour, had inspired a devoted following amongst those who attended his theological instruction – a following that included both the novices in his charge and his fellow monks. Despite this, the indications are that Savonarola was undergoing something of a spiritual crisis during this period. One of his fellow monks recounts how he would arrive to give his morning lessons with his eyes swollen from the weeping that had overcome him during the night-long vigils and hours of fervent meditation that he imposed upon himself. Regardless of Savonarola’s evidently distressed psychological state, ‘His teachings … raised men’s hearts above all human things.’ It seemed to his listeners ‘that from the time of the early Christian fathers no one equalled him in the teaching of the sacred books’. This comparison to the early days of Christianity would seem to be no accident: Savonarola’s stated aim was to return the Church to the physical poverty and utter spiritual devotion of its origins.15
Part of Savonarola’s duties involved delivering the occasional sermon at one of the many smaller churches in Florence. Evidently his sermons impressed, for in the spring of 1484 he was invited to deliver the Lenten sermons in the Church of San Lorenzo, one of the oldest and largest in Florence, which had recently been redesigned by Filippo Brunelleschi. This early Renaissance architectural masterpiece was the chosen burial place of the Medici, and the congregation was accustomed to erudite sermons delivered with some eloquence by leading preachers of the day. Savonarola’s lessons in the closed privacy of the monastery of San Marco had a miraculous effect upon his listeners, and he must have made a similarly inspiring impression with the sermons that he delivered in the smaller churches of Florence; yet outside such intimate surroundings he proved far from compelling. ‘The little friar’, with his heavy, dark eyebrows and his long, hooked nose, made an unprepossessing figure in the pulpit. His low, intense voice did not carry through the long, high-ceilinged nave, and his broad Ferrarese accent struck many as comical; at the same time, the fervour of his words was entirely dissipated in such vast echoing surroundings.
According to Placido Cinozzi, the fellow monk who was present at all of Savonarola’s Lenten sermons, his congregations gradually diminished, until all that remained were just twenty-five people, including women and the young children they had brought with them. As Savonarola himself later admitted:
I had neither the voice, nor the strength, nor the ability to preach; as a result everyone was bored when I delivered my sermons … just a few simple men on the one side of the aisle, and a few poor women on the other, came to hear me.16
Savonarola was so dispirited that he decided to abandon the whole idea of preaching sermons in public. This would have been a humiliating decision indeed – an admission of his failure as a monk, no less – for the Dominicans were a preaching order, and this fact must surely have been at the forefront of his mind when he chose to join the Dominicans, rather than an alternative order. Indicatively, one of the reasons Savonarola gave for abandoning preaching was that his sermons were so ineffectual they ‘couldn’t even have frightened a chicken’. This suggests that from the very start he conceived of his sermons with a particular purpose in mind: his words were not intended to enlighten, or to reassure, but to inspire the fear of God in his listeners.
This humiliation brought Savonarola’s ongoing spiritual crisis to a climax. One day, late in 1484, he accompanied a fellow monk who was visiting his sister at the convent of San Giorgio. While Savonarola was waiting alone in the churchyard outside the convent, he was overcome by a sudden revelation, which he described as taking the form of ‘many reasons, at least seven, that a scourge of the Church was at hand … And from this moment on I fell to thinking much of these things.’17
Despite Savonarola’s desire to give up preaching, his superiors decided he should continue. But in order to prevent him from suffering any further humiliation in Florence, he was asked to deliver the Lenten sermons in the small hilltop town of San Gimignano, away in the rolling Tuscan countryside some thirty miles south-west of Florence. Here, with no pressure to ‘perform’, and filled with the inspiration of his recent revelation, Savonarola appears not only to have found his voice, but for the first time to have begun to express himself in the manner that was to become his own. Unfortunately, no record of these 1485 Lenten sermons has been found, but we can gather his state of mind from a letter he wrote during this period. On 9 March, in the midst of his succession of sermons at San Gimignano, Savonarola received word from his mother Elena in Ferrara that his father Niccolò had died. We do not know the exact words of Savonarola’s reply, but its general content and tone can be inferred from other letters that he wrote to her later during this period. Savonarola seems to have been utterly preoccupied with his vocation and the sermons he was delivering: he replied to his mother that she should no longer regard him as a member of the family, for his father was now Jesus Christ and his family was the Dominican order. As he later insisted again and again: ‘You should consider me dead.’18 Such words can hardly have consoled Elena, yet she persisted in regarding him as her son. Seven months later she wrote to inform him that her brother Borso had also died. Niccolò’s financial incompetence had left Elena struggling with debts, and Savonarola’s Uncle Borso had been the sole support for his mother and her two daughters. This time it appears that Savonarola did find himself moved by his mother’s sorrowful words and her pitiful plight. Addressing her as ‘Most honourable and most beloved Mother’,19 he explained that he could not send her the money for which she was asking because his vow of poverty meant that he had none. Instead he sent her all he could: a five-page letter that took him many days to compose. This was a curious blend of a sermon and advice on how to become a saint, complete with biblical references ranging from Psalms to Corinthians:
I want your faith to be such that you could watch [your children] die and be martyred without shedding a tear for them, as that most holy Hebrew woman did when seven of her saintly children were killed and tortured in front of her and she never cried, but instead comforted them in their death.
Parts of this tract can be read as an exhortation to himself and, when read in this light, its attitude towards its recipient appears utterly heartless and selfish. However, it is in fact a call to place one’s life completely in the hands of God. ‘It is better, therefore, to tolerate patiently our brief tribulations so as to have eternal joy and peace and glory everlasting.’ This last advice is certainly intended for his mother, rather than for himself. Yet it is not hypocrisy: Savonarola had come to see his own life as something more than striving for ‘eternal joy and peace’. His revelation at the convent had convinced him that he was intended to become a prophet. This would soon become evident in his sermons. Savonarola’s initial Lenten sermons at San Gimignano had proved so popular that he was invited back to deliver the 1486 Lenten sermons. For many years it was thought that the contents of these too had been lost; but in 1935, whilst searching through the Florentine archives, the Italian scholar Roberto Ridolfi came across some notes written in medieval Latin. On inspection, it became clear that these were Savonarola’s rough drafts for his 1486 Lenten sermons. In these, he elaborated upon his ‘revelation’, when he had learned of ‘at least seven’ reasons why ‘a scourge of the Church is imminent’, including the presence of evil ‘shepherds’ in the Church, the corruption of the Church, and simony (the selling of Church posts for money). This last was an obvious reference to the new pope, Innocent VIII, who had proved every bit as corrupt as his predecessor Sixtus IV. Not only had Innocent VIII been the first pope openly to acknowledge his own children, but he had also institutionalised the selling of holy offices. Savonarola may have lamented the papacy of Sixtus IV, but with the elevation of Innocent VIII to the papal throne he recognised that things had in reality gone from bad to worse. As he wrote in a poem at the time: ‘When I did see that haughty womanfn5 enter Rome’ it reduced him to a state of ‘constant weeping’.21
Savonarola also told the citizens of San Gimignano that God had sent prophets to warn mankind of what was about to happen – the coming of ‘the antichrist, war, plague or famine’. Despite being so specific, he insisted, ‘I do not warn you about this because I am a prophet, but because I can tell from reading the Bible that such a scourge of the Church is coming.’ Although he was undoubtedly performing the task of a prophet, he was not yet sure enough of himself to take on the mantle publicly.
After finishing his Lenten sermons at San Gimignano, Savonarola returned to Florence, where some months later he learned that he had been appointed a master of studies at the great Studium generale in Bologna. He would be returning to the very place where he had first studied theology; but now, just ten years later, he himself would be amongst the distinguished theologians of the teaching staff.
fn1 In fact, this is called the convent of San Marco, but as in English this term mostly refers to closed religious communities of women, in order to avoid confusion I have throughout used the usual English term for a building that houses a community of monks.
fn2 He had succeeded the duplicitous, warmongering Sixtus IV.
fn3 The precise date when Primavera was painted remains in dispute. Many favour the earlier date of 1482, immediately after Botticelli had returned from Rome, and some even favour 1477 when Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco would have been just fourteen. However, even if Primavera was not painted at the later date that I have favoured, other works confirm that the interaction between the intellectual circle of the Palazzo Medici and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco next door continued after the rift between Lorenzo the Magnificent and his cousin.
fn4 In all fairness, this was not mere flattery. Pico’s assessment was shared by a number of intellectuals of the time.
fn5 This was Simony personified, as Savonarola made plain by writing in the margin in his own hand: ‘the ambition for ecclesiastical honours’.