The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici

Konrad Eisenbichler

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780754602675
• eBook ISBN: 9781351891912
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

When he suddenly came to power in Italy in 1537, the young Duke Cosimo I de' Medici amazed friends and foes alike with his ability to extricate himself from mortal danger, affirm his authority and revive a dying state. He doubled the size of his duchy and established a dynasty that ruled unchallenged for 200 years. This volume is the first book-length study in any language to approach the figure of Duke Cosimo I from the point of view of his cultural agenda. The contributors examine the political, economic, cultural and linguistic strategies that made Cosimo a successful leader, and in the process illuminate the cultural world of mid-sixteenth-century Tuscany.

Chapter 1
Francesco Vettori, Francesco Guicciardini and Cosimo I: the Prince after Machiavelli

Marcello Simonetta

On the night of 6 January 1537 Alessandro de’ Medici, Duke of Florence, was assassinated. The Florentine historian Benedetto Varchi suggests the atmosphere of panic and deception following the assassination. Before the news of the duke’s death was made public, four eminent citizens – including Francesco Vettori and Francesco Guicciardini – were called to a secret meeting in the Palazzo Medici and were asked what they would do if the duke were dead. They all remained silent: this could well have been either a trick on the part of the duke to test their loyalty or a threat by Lorenzino de’ Medici, who would very likely have been the killer.¹ As a matter of fact, Vettori had warned Alessandro that it was not safe for a prince to walk around the city without an escort and even less so to trust one particular person, Lorenzino.² The duke did not listen to this advice and was slaughtered in Lorenzino’s bedroom where, instead of finding a mistress, he met an unattractive hitman, Scoronconcolo. Had Alessandro followed Vettori’s counsel, he might well have been able to avoid such an untimely and violent death.

Vettori was renowned as a cittadino astutissimo, a most astute citizen, to use historian Bernardo Segni’s words.³ The day after the killing some unidentified representatives of the Florentine youth went to ask him if the time was right to raise their voice against the Medicean establishment. Vettori subtly discouraged them against violent action and promised instead further help. He then visited Guicciardini in order to calm things down and stop the revolt of the populace, ‘against which [Vettori and Guicciardini] were capital enemies.’⁴ The duplicity shown by such behaviour reveals a love for stability or at least for what the old and ‘astute’ oligarchs thought would be safer after the duke’s assassination.

Vettori’s position would become clear to all Florentines on 8 January during the public meeting of the ruling Council of Forty-Eight. Guicciardini had already drafted a document for Cosimo de’ Medici’s legal accession to power. The seventeen-year-old Cosimo was the only Medici heir who could assume power, for Alessandro’s son Giulio (b. 1533) was still only a child and Alessandro’s cousin, Lorenzino, had placed himself out of the running by his act of regicide.

In opposition to this plan, Palla Rucellai rose to criticize the Medici tyrants and, in a long oration, celebrate Florentine libertas.⁵ Vettori’s defense of Cosimo was not as wordy. He argued that Palla, having just risen from his sick bed, had recently purged his soul of his sins and therefore did not fear death, while he, Vettori, had instead heard the clash of arms in the street and the pro-Medici cries of ‘Palle, Palle’ and ‘Cosimo, Cosimo’ and had no wish to die unabsolved.⁶ Vettori did not miss the chance to pun on Palla and Palle: the juxtaposition of the singular name with its plural was indeed a rhetorical inversion of reality, for Palla Rucellai stood for democracy while the Medici palle represented instead the monarchic state. The pun turned into a joke when Palla, about to cast his negative vote, showed his fava bianca, at which point Vettori reminded him that his vote counted just for one.⁷

Immediately after having discounted Palla, Vettori pressed Guicciardini to vote in favour of his plan. Finding him too slow and cautious, Vettori said:

I am surprised that you, who have always been considered a prudent man, raise so many tiny doubts about electing this new Prince. In fact, if you place into his hands the guard, the army and the fortresses, what’s the point in stipulating that he cannot pass a certain limit? On my account, I wish Cosimo to be a good Prince. I vote for him, and I am willing to serve him and to support him, even when he might be bad and not observe any of the rules that are written here, [italics mine]⁸

The argument between Vettori and Guicciardini may have been a simple staging. It is hard to determine whether Vettori was acting out of fear or out of force. In fact, during that meeting, another more effective staging was going on. While the Forty-Eight were still deliberating whether or not to elect Cosimo as their new ruler, some soldiers paid by Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the guard, were clanging their arms in the courtyard and shouting ‘Palle.’⁹

The morning of 9 January 1536 the electoral agreement was presented to Cosimo. The seventeen-year old boy signed it and thus became Duke of Florence. Given his age and his lack of experience, ‘he could be expected to be all that more amenable to the wise counsels of Guicciardini and Vettori.’¹⁰

Cosimo was, in Machiavelli’s terms, a principe nuovo, a new prince. He had to learn his way to power. He was the only Medici who could please the emperor; but he was also the nephew of Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, who supported the rebel faction led by Filippo Strozzi and had been exiled by Duke Alessandro. Cosimo had the delicate task of legitimizing his power among such struggles, and of doing it after a traumatic tyrannicide. Bernardo Segni was well aware of this problem when he started his chapter on Cosimo I by evoking a string of conspiracies against tyrants, from the assassination of Caesar to that of Galeazzo Maria Sforza.¹¹ Segni points out that most of these attempts were in vain and always proved to be more dangerous for the conspirators than for the powers they tried to destroy. The clear echo of Machiavelli’s Discorsi (III, 6) is reinforced by a comment attributed to Guicciardini, who is reported to have said: ‘Go on killing Princes, and you will see new ones rising.’¹²

Guicciardini is usually considered more ‘Machiavellian’ than Machiavelli himself: ‘It would have been naïve to suppose that those who had guided republics, advised popes, and ruled provinces would suddenly turn into submissive subjects.’¹³ In effect, Guicciardini was just following hisparticulare, that is, his personal interest. He had proposed to give his daughter Lisabetta in marriage to Cosimo. Although the plan eventually fell through, at the time of Cosimo’s election Guicciardini thought he would be able to exercise control over the state through family connection with the ruler. In his view, Cosimo’s regime would be a ‘Signoria limitata e molto civile,’ a limited and civil government functioning, in part, through family alliances. Cosimo, however, soon dismissed Guicciardini’s ‘costumi e consigli civili,’ tied himself firmly with the emperor by marrying Eleonora de Toledo, the daughter of his viceroy in Naples, and turned himself into absolute ruler of Florence. In a brilliant manoeuvre, Guicciardini’s plan was appropriated by Cosimo and turned against him.

Vettori was supposedly no less Machiavellian than Guicciardini. What, then, was Vettori’s peculiar position? His theoretical distinction between the ‘good prince’ and the ‘bad prince’ made in the election speech on behalf of Cosimo can be traced back in one of his major historical works, the Sommario della storia d’ltalia (1511–1527): ‘So, if a citizen takes power in the city, through force or through machination, and he is good, we should not call him a tyrant; if he will be bad, he can be called not only tyrant, but even something worse than that. ‘¹⁴ Even though it is difficult to imagine something worse than a tyrant, Vettori is making a more subtle point. According to him, the use of ingegno (wit) or arte (skill) – Machiavelli would simply say fraude (deceit)¹⁵ – in lieu of force seems to be a better way of proceeding.

After Alessandro’s assassination, constitutional law had been suspended. When Cardinal Niccolo Ridolfi objected to Cosimo’s election, Vettori responded: ‘Yes, we have to do this iniquitous deed of creating a tyrant, since in these times a lesser evil cannot be found.’¹⁶ The Machiavellian language is the language of political realism, or realpolitik. When we speak of Machiavelli, we are still stuck with the unresolved dilemma: where does he stand? In the Principe or in the Discorsil (One could argue: in the Istorie florentine) Vettori, however, seems to have overcome these distinctions. In order to clarify the origins of his political ideas, we have to examine his earlier career.

In the summer of 1507 Vettori had been sent as an ambassador to Emperor Maximilian I in Germany. Machiavelli had originally been selected for the posting, but the decision was then reversed because of chancery disagreements. The government’s preference for the less controversial Vettori somehow prefigures the destiny of the two men’s friendship. This was Vettori’s first mission; he did not have much experience and he spent most of his time drinking wine and listening to travellers’ stories, later collected in his Viaggio in Alamagna. When Machiavelli finally joined him in Germany, Vettori’s pen stopped and Machiavelli’s took over.

Vettori’s apparent indifference did not prevent him from being more Machiavellian than his friend. Unlike Machiavelli, Vettori managed to survive very well after the Medici return to power in 1512. He became Florentine ambassador to Rome – a key p...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Contributors
• 1 Francesco Vettori, Francesco Guicciardini and Cosimo I: the Prince after Machiavelli
• 2 A Republic in Jeopardy: Cosimo I de’ Medici and the Republic of Lucca
• 3 Cosimo I and the Anglo-French Negotiations of 1550
• 4 Cellini’s Trial for Sodomy: Power and Patronage at the Court of Cosimo I
• 5 Lessons from the Past: the Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in Sixteenth-Century Florence
• 6 Claiming a Place in History: Giorgio Vasari’s Ragionamenti and the Primacy of the Medici
• 7 Cosimo’s Cavallo: a Study in Imperial Imagery
• 8 Lorenzo Torrentino and the Cultural Programme of Cosimo I de’ Medici
• 9 The Reception of Dante in the Time of Cosimo I
• 10 Fasseli gratia per poetessa: Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici’s Role in the Florentine Literary Circle of Tullia d’Aragona
• 11 Cosimo and Eleonora in Shepherdland: a Lost Eclogue by Laura Battiferra degli Ammannati
• 12 The Accademia del Disegno and Fellowships of Discourse at the Court of Cosimo I de’ Medici
• 13 Ritual and Parody in Mid-Cinquecento Florence: Cosimo de’ Medici and the Accademia del Piano
• 14 An Experimental Culture: the Art of the Economy and the Economy of Art under Cosimo I and Francesco I
• 15 The High Baroque Tapestries of the Life of Cosimo I: the Man and His Myth in the Service of Ferdinando II
• Index