Medici Money: Banking, metaphysics and art in fifteenth-century Florence

Cosimo heard mass. Above the altar, there was Lippi’s lovely painting of the Virgin and Child, plus a reliquary with genuine fragments from Our Lord’s passion. Hard to come by. And to make the man feel even safer, there was a secret tunnel to escape through — to be carried through, that is — should anyone ever have the nerve to try the frontal assault. It was in this tiny chapel that Cosimo received the men of the regime, to discuss “the secret things of our town.” It was in the chapel that Francesco Sforza’s son, Galeazzo, found him in 1459. Likewise, the marquis of Mantua’s son in 1461. On the second occasion, both Cosimo and Piero were in too much pain from their gout to give the youngster a tour of the great house. Only Giovanni was mobile. Limping heavily, his arm hanging on a servant’s neck, the obese man insisted he would oblige, but gave up when it came to tackling the stairs. Money and magic were impotent here. Moving goods all over Europe, the Medici men rarely made it to the top floor.

Giovanni died in 1463. Depressed, Cosimo knew he was next. Burial arrangements were carefully negotiated. No doubt money changed hands. He would lie beneath the very center of the nave of the Church of San Lorenzo, in close proximity to the relics of the holy martyrs. Above the sarcophagus, a stone column would connect it to the tomb-marker on the church floor, a large white porphyry circle enclosing two crossed oblongs, a magical motif signifying, apparently, eternity. The effect, when one visits San Lorenzo today, is both unobtrusive and absolutely central: the banker’s vocation. Barely noticed, he is the ground beneath the communicant’s feet. A last generous endowment paid for a mass to be said for Cosimo’s soul 365 days a year in perpetuity, and quality funeral clothes for all the mourners, including four female slaves. It is the only news we have of them.

5. Blue Blood and White Elephants

During the hot days and nights of August 1466, an old drama played itself out in the streets and palazzi of Florence. Once again the city was divided into two armed camps. Once again a transfer of power was in the air. Yet the principal actors seemed strangely hesitant, as if reluctant to rehearse what had been done so many times before, or unsure perhaps as to how to proceed in these different times.

Cosimo had died and something had to change. “With Cosimo your plan is impossible,” the exiled Palla Strozzi had told Girolamo Machiavelli when the rebel came looking for support to overturn the banker’s regime. “Without him it will be unnecessary.” Cosimo was revered and he had had the money. Members of other old and wealthy families addressed him as “father.” Still, they had built the regime with him, they told themselves, not for him. And certainly not for his son. Piero had no hereditary right, no special charisma, nor perhaps so much money. The bank was in difficulty. Banks in general were in difficulty. So while in 1458 the challenge to the Medici had been launched through legal institutions, in line with the constitution, it now came, more seriously, from Cosimo’s ex-partners in the regime — the ones who for decades had manipulated the constitution on his behalf. Suddenly, four canny old men were talking about liberty.

Dietisalvi Neroni, one of Cosimo’s oldest collaborators and brother of the city’s new archbishop, had been annoyed when plans to expand the Medici palazzo threatened to take light away from his own. Such a slight would clearly be perceived as a comment on his diminishing importance. Immediately after Cosimo’s death, Neroni wrote to Francesco Sforza in Milan that just as Cosimo had been a father to other members of the reggimento, so they would now be fathers to Piero — i.e., the Medici are no longer the leading family. This is an oligarchy, not a principality.