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

But Lorenzo’s troubles are only beginning. The next two years will constitute the great formative crisis of his life. Not only have the fortunes of his bank plummeted, not only have his brother and one of his few efficient business associates been killed, but now the pope excommunicates him and everybody who defends him. Sixtus “fills all Italy,” all Europe, with letters aimed at destroying Lorenzo’s reputation and denying him support. Then the Papal States and Naples declare war on Florence and move rapidly on the offensive. Only Lorenzo is our enemy, they announce, willing the Florentine people to ditch their leader. But such tactics rarely work. Especially after a failed assassination attempt in church.

If life hasn’t prepared Lorenzo to run the family bank, there is probably no one in Italy better trained for a propaganda war. His letters to other heads of state are endless, intimate, and persuasive. This man was brought up on begging letters. Nothing comes more naturally. And he has a remarkable facility with words. In particular, Louis XI of France is encouraged to renew Angevin claims to the crown of Naples. Milan and Venice are called on to stop arguing with each other and send troops. Back home, Sandro Botticelli is employed to fresco the spectacle of the hanged conspirators — not inside a building, but on an outside wall near the Palazzo della Signoria. And it’s the Florentine government that pays the painter, not the Medici. Forty florins. Andrea del Castagno does a similar job on the façade of the Pazzi palazzo. “Natural portraits,” enthuses the sixteenth-century art historian Vasari, “and hanged upside down by their feet in strange positions, all different and bellissimi.” Apparently there is no limit to what can be made beautiful in art. The crime and its punishment will be spectacularly present to the public mind long after the corpses have rotted. The sculptor Verrocchio is ordered to make three life-size figures of Lorenzo to be displayed in various churches. What does a city have artists for? What a shame there are no machines to duplicate these works of art, no photographs, no posters.

Meantime, the brilliant poet and personal friend of Lorenzo’s, as well as tutor of his children, Angelo Poliziano, is given the task of writing the official version of the conspiracy, portraying the Pazzi and their accomplices in the worst possible light. The model he adopts is Sallust, the same text that the assassins of Sforza had been reading, except that here the conspirators are not given the role of brave republicans and friends of the poor. They are ignorant, selfish, cruel, grasping. Advantage is taken of the printing press, newly arrived in Italy, to have this travesty distributed as widely as possible. Even today, nothing is more swiftly published than the expedient lie. One way or another, Lorenzo will convince the Florentines.

But if the propaganda war is going well at home, the real conflict is another matter. The invading troops advance into Tuscany with relative ease. Clearly, this is not a moment for restructuring the Medici bank, or thinking about the crazy policies that have brought it to its knees. All the company’s assets in Rome and Naples have been confiscated, their staff expelled. There is scarcely a branch producing profits. Yet, for Lorenzo, getting hold of money was never easier. Since his father’s cousin, Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, the bank’s second largest shareholder, died in 1476, and since his surviving heirs, Lorenzo and Giovanni, are only fifteen and eleven, Il Magnifico, as their financial guardian, holds their fortune for them in thirteen leather bags. On May 1, 1478, he takes 20,000 florins. On May 3, he takes a further 5,000. On June 2, 8,000; August 8, 8,000; August 13, 1,600; September 27, 11,000. That’s the lot. Then at some point Lorenzo also begins to procure money, with no official authorization, from the public purse, the state. This is precisely what, until the assassination attempt, Renato Pazzi was convinced he couldn’t do. But Renato has been executed now. Lorenzo will take 75,000 florins from the Florentine state over the coming years. He even sinks to begging for cash from his own bank managers. Francesco Sassetti obliges. He has so much stashed away. Tommaso Portinari does not. This personal affront finally opens Lorenzo’s eyes as far as Portinari is concerned. He decides to sever the partnership between the families and close the Bruges and Milan branches of the bank.