The Renaissance

  No one cared to accept Pico’s multifarious challenge, but Pope Innocent VIII condemned three of the propositions as heretical. Since these formed so tiny a proportion of the whole, Pico might have expected mercy, and indeed, Innocent did not press the matter. But Pico issued a cautious retraction, and departed for Paris, where the University offered him protection. In 1493 Alexander VI, with his wonted geniality, notified Pico that all was forgiven. Back in Florence Pico became a devout follower of Savonarola, abandoned his pursuit of omniscience, burned his five volumes of love poetry, gave his fortune to provide marriage dowries for poor girls, and himself adopted a semimonastic life. He thought of joining the Dominican order, but died before he could make up his mind—still a youth of thirty-one. His influence survived his brief career, and inspired Reuchlin to continue, in Germany, those Hebrew studies which had been among the passions of Pico’s life.

  Politian, who admired Pico generously, and corrected his poetry with the most gracious apologies, was a man of less meteoric lure, but of deeper penetration and more substantial accomplishment. Angelus Bassus, as he originally called himself—Angelo Ambrogini, as some called him—took his more famous name from Monte Poliziano, in the Florentine hinterland. Coming to Florence he studied Latin under Cristoforo Landino, Greek under Andronicus of Salonica, Platonism under Ficino, and the Aristotelian philosophy under Argyropoulos. At sixteen he began to translate Homer into a Latin so idiomatic and vigorous that it seemed the product of at least the Silver Age of Roman poetry. Having finished the first two books, he sent them to Lorenzo. That prince of patrons, alert to every excellence, encouraged him to continue, took him into his home as tutor of his son Piero, and provided for all his needs. So freed from want, Politian edited ancient texts—among them the Pandects of Justinian—with a learning and judgment that won universal praise. When Landino published an edition of Horace, Politian prefaced it with an ode comparable in Latinity, phrasing, and complex versification with the poems of Horace himself. His lectures on classic literature were attended by the Medici, Pico della Mirandola, and foreign students—Reuchlin, Grocyn, Linacre, and others—who had heard, beyond the Alps, the echo of his fame as scholar, poet, and orator in three tongues. It was not unusual for him to prelude a lecture with an extensive Latin poem composed for the occasion; one such piece, in sonorous hexameters, was nothing less than a history of poetry from Homer to Boccaccio. This and other poems, published by Politian under the title of Sylvae, revealed a Latin style so facile and fluent, so vivid in imagery, that the humanists acclaimed him as their master despite his youth, and rejoiced that the noble language which they aspired to restore had been taught to live again.

  While making himself almost a Latin classic, Politian issued with fertile ease a succession of Italian poems that stand unrivaled between Petrarch and Ariosto. When Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano won a joust in 1475, Politian described La giostra in ottava rima of melodious elegance; and in La bella Simonetta he celebrated the aristocratic beauty of Giuliano’s beloved with such eloquence and finesse that Italian love poetry took on thereafter a new delicacy of diction and feeling. Giuliano tells how, going out to hunt, he came upon Simonetta and other lasses dancing in a field.

  The beauteous nymph who feeds my soul with fire

  I found in gentle, pure, and prudent mood,

  In graceful attitude,

  Loving and courteous, holy, wise, benign.

  So sweet, so tender was her face divine,

  So gladsome, that in those celestial eyes

  Shone perfect paradise,

  Yea, all the good that we poor mortals crave….

  Down from her royal head and lustrous brow

  The golden curls fell joyously unpent,

  While through the choir she went

  With feet well lessoned to the rhythmic sound.

  Her eyes, though scarcely raised above the ground,

  Sent me by stealth a ray divinely fair;

  But still her jealous hair

  Broke the bright beam, and veiled her from my gaze.

  She, born and nursed in heaven for angels’ praise,

  No sooner saw this wrong than back she drew—

  With hand of purest hue—

  Her truant curls with kind and gentle mien;

  Then from her eyes a soul so fiery keen,

  So sweet a soul of love, she cast on mine

  That scarce can I divine

  How then I ‘scaped from burning utterly.19

  For his own mistress, Ippolita Leoncina, Politian composed love songs of exquisite grace and tenderness; and, overflowing with rhymes, he fashioned similar lyrics to be used by his friends as charms to exorcise modesty. He learned the ballads of the peasantry, and reshaped them into finished literary form; so rephrased they passed back into popularity, and have left echoes in Tuscany to this day. In La brunettina mia he described a village beauty bathing her face and bosom at a fountain, and crowning her hair with flowers; “her breasts were as May roses, her lips were as strawberries”; it is a hackneyed theme that never palls. Trying to recapture that union of drama, poetry, music, and song which had been accomplished in the Dionysian Theater of the Greeks, Politian composed—in two days, he vows—a little lyric drama of 434 lines, which was sung for Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga at Mantua (1472). It was called La favola di Orfeo—The Fable of Orpheus— and told how Orpheus’ wife Eurydice died of a snake bite as she fled from an amorous shepherd; how the disconsolate Orpheus made his way down to Hades, and so charmed Pluto with his lyre that the lord of the underworld restored Eurydice to him on condition that he should not look upon her until quite emerged from Hades. He had led her but a few steps when, in the ecstasy of his love, he turned to look upon her; whereupon she was snatched back to Hades, and he was barred from following her. In an insane reaction Orpheus became a misogynist, and recommended that men should ignore women and satisfy themselves with boys after the example of sated Zeus with Ganymede. Woodland maenads, furious at his contempt of women, beat him to death, flayed him, tore him limb from limb, and rejoiced tunefully in their revenge. The music that accompanied the lines is lost; but we may safely rank the Orfeo among the harbingers of Italian opera.

  Politian fell short of greatness as a poet because he avoided the pitfalls of passion and never plumbed the depths of life or love; he is always charming and never profound. His love for Lorenzo was the strongest feeling that he knew. He was at his patron’s side when Giuliano was killed in the cathedral; he saved Lorenzo by slamming and bolting the doors of the sacristy in the face of the conspirators. When Lorenzo returned from his perilous journey to Naples Politian welcomed him with verses almost scandalously affectionate. When Lorenzo passed away Politian mourned him inconsolably, and then gradually faded out. He died two years later, like Pico, in the fateful year 1494, when the French discovered Italy.

  Lorenzo would not have been the full man that he was had he not enjoyed some humor with his philosophy, some doubt with his faith, some license with his loves. As his son would welcome jesters and smile at risqué comedies at the papal court, so the banker prince of Florence invited to his friendship and his table Luigi Pulci, and relished the rough satire of the Morgante maggiore. That famous poem, so admired by Byron, was read aloud, canto by canto, to Lorenzo and his household guests. Luigi was a man of robust and uninhibited wit, who convulsed a palace and a nation by applying the language, idioms, and views of the bourgeoisie to the romances of chivalry. The legends of Charlemagne’s adventures in France, Spain, and Palestine had entered Italy in the twelfth century or before, and had been spread through the peninsula by minstrels and improvisatori to the delight of every class. But there has always been, in the common male of the species, a bluff and lusty self-ridiculing realism, accompanying and checking the romantic spirit given to literature and art by woman and youth. Pulci combined all these qualities, and put together—from popular legends, from the manuscripts in the Laurentian Library, and from the conversation at Lorenzo’s table—an epic t
hat laughs at the giants, demons, and battles of chivalric tales, and recounts, in sometimes serious, sometimes mocking verse, the adventures of the Christian knight Orlando and the Saracen giant who gives the poem half its name.*

  Attacked by Orlando, Morgante saves himself by announcing his sudden conversion to Christianity. Orlando teaches him theology; explains to him that his two brothers, just slain, are now in hell as infidels; promises him heaven if he becomes a good Christian; but warns him that in heaven he will be required to look without pity upon his burning relatives. “The doctors of our Church,” says the Christian knight, “are agreed that if those who are glorified in heaven were to feel pity for their miserable kindred, who lie in such horrible confusion in hell, their beatitude would come to nothing.” Morgante is not disturbed. “You shall see,” he assures Orlando, “if I grieve for my brethren, and whether or no I submit to the will of God and behave myself like an angel… I will cut off the hands of my brothers, and take the hands to these holy monks, that they may be sure that their enemies are dead.”

  In the eighteenth canto Pulci introduces another giant, Margute, a jolly thief and mild murderer, who ascribes to himself every vice but that of betraying a friend. To Morgante’s question whether he believes in Christ or prefers Mohammed, Margute answers:

  I don’t believe in black more than in blue,

  But in fat capons, boiled or maybe roasted;

  And I believe sometimes in butter, too,

  In beer and must, where bobs a pippin toasted;…

  But mostly to old wine my faith I pin,

  And hold him saved who firmly trusts therein….

  Faith, like the itch, is catching;…

  Faith is as man gets it—this, that, or another.

  See then what sort of creed I’m bound to follow:

  For you must know a Greek nun was my mother,

  My sire, at Brusa mid the Turks, a mullah.21

  Margute dies of laughter after rollicking through two cantos; Pulci wastes no tear over him, but pulls from his magic fancy a demon of the first order, Astarotte, who rebelled with Lucifer. Summoned from hell by the sorcerer Malagigi to bring Rinaldo swiftly from Egypt to Roncesvalles, he accomplishes the matter deftly, and wins such affection from Rinaldo that the Christian knight proposes to beg God to free Astarotte from hell. But the courteous devil is an excellent theologian, and points out that rebellion against infinite Justice was an infinite crime, requiring eternal punishment. Malagigi wonders why a God who foresaw everything, including Lucifer’s disobedience and everlasting damnation, proceeded to create him; Astarotte confesses that this is a mystery which even a wise devil cannot resolve.22

  He was in truth a wise devil, for Pulci, writing in 1483, puts into his mouth an astonishing anticipation of Columbus. Referring to the old warning, at the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar), ne plus ultra—“go no further”—Astarotte says to Rinaldo:

  Know that this theory is false; his bark

  The daring mariner shall urge far o’er

  The western wave, a smooth and level plain

  Albeit the earth is fashioned like a wheel.

  Man was in ancient days of grosser mold,

  And Hercules might blush to learn how far

  Beyond the limits he had vainly set

  The dullest sea-boat soon shall wing her way,

  Men shall descry another hemisphere.

  Since to one common center all things tend,

  So earth, by curious mystery divine

  Well balanced, hangs amid the starry spheres.

  At our antipodes are cities, states,

  And thronged empires, ne’er divined of yore.

  But see, the Sun speeds on his western path

  To glad the nations with expected light.23

  It was part of Pulci’s method to introduce each canto, however full of buffoonery, with a pious invocation of God and the saints; the more profane the matter, the more solemn the prologue. The poem ends with a declaration of faith in the goodness of all religions—a proposition sure to offend every true believer. Now and then Pulci allows himself a timid heresy, as when he quotes Scripture to argue that Christ’s foreknowledge did not equal that of God the Father, or when he allows himself to hope that all souls, even Lucifer, will in the end be saved. But like a good Florentine, and the other members of Lorenzo’s circle, he remained externally faithful to a Church inextricably bound up with Italian life. Ecclesiastics were not deceived by his obeisance; when he died (1484) his body was refused burial in consecrated ground.

  If Lorenzo’s group could produce so varied a literature in one generation, we may reasonably suppose—and shall find—a like awakening in other cities—Milan, Ferrara, Naples, Rome. In the century between Cosimo’s birth and Lorenzo’s death Italy had accomplished and transcended the first stage in her Renaissance. She had rediscovered ancient Greece and Rome, had established the essentials of classical scholarship, and had made Latin again a language of masculine splendor and pithy force. But more: in the generation between Cosimo’s death and Lorenzo’s, Italy rediscovered her own language and soul, applied the new standards of diction and form to the vernacular, and composed poetry classical in spirit, but indigenous and “modern” in tongue and thought, rooted in the affairs and problems of its own day, or in the scenes and persons of the countryside. And again: Italy in one generation, through Pulci, had lifted the humorous romance into literature, had prepared the way for Boiardo and Ariosto, had even anticipated Cervantes’ smiles at chivalric fustian and pretense. The age of the scholars receded, imitation gave way to creation; Italian literature, which had languished after Petrarch’s choice of Latin for his epic, was reborn. Soon the revival of antiquity would be almost forgotten in the exuberance of an Italian culture leading the world in letters, and flooding it with art.

  V. ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE: THE AGE OF VERROCCHIO

  Lorenzo continued enthusiastically the Medicean tradition of supporting art. “He was such an admirer of all the remains of antiquity,” wrote his contemporary Valor, “that there was nothing with which he was more delighted. Those who wished to oblige him were accustomed to collect, from every part of the world, medals, coins… statues, busts, and whatever else bore the stamp” of ancient Greece or Rome.24 Uniting his architectural and sculptural collections with those left by Cosimo and Piero, he placed them in a garden between the Medici palace and the monastery of San Marco, and admitted to them all responsible scholars and visitors. To students who showed application and promise—among whom was the young Michelangelo—he gave a stipend for their maintenance, and awards for special proficiency. Says Vasari: “It is highly deserving of notice that all those who studied in the gardens of the Medici, and were favored by Lorenzo, became excellent artists. This can only be ascribed to the exquisite judgment of this great patron… who could not merely distinguish men of genius, but had the will and power to reward them.”25

  The key event in the art history of Lorenzo’s regime was the publication (1486) of Vitruvius’ treatise De architectura (first century B.C.), which Poggio had unearthed in the monastery of St. Gall some seventy years before. Lorenzo succumbed completely to that rigid classic, and used his influence to spread the style of Imperial Rome. Perhaps in this matter he did as much harm as good, for he discouraged in architecture what he was fruitfully practising in literature—the development of native forms. But his spirit was generous. Through his encouragement, and in many cases with his funds, Florence was now adorned with elegant civic buildings and private residences. He completed the church of San Lorenzo and the abbey at Fiesole, and he engaged Giuliano da Sangallo to design a monastery outside the San Gallo gate that gave the architect his name. Giuliano built for him a stately villa at Póggio a Caiano, and so handsomely that Lorenzo recommended him when King Ferdinand of Naples asked him for an architect. How well such artists loved him appears in the subsequent generosity of Giuliano, who sent as presents to Lorenzo the gifts that Ferrante gave him—a bust of the Emperor Hadri
an, a Sleeping Cupid, and other ancient sculptures. Lorenzo added these to the collections in his garden, which were later to form the nucleus of the statuary in the Uffizi Gallery.

  Other rich men rivaled—some surpassed—him in the splendor of their residences. About 1489 Benedetto da Maiano built for Filippo Strozzi the Elder the most perfect embodiment of that “Tuscan” style of architecture which Brunellesco had developed in the Pitti Palace—internal splendor and luxury behind a massive front of “rustic” or unfinished stone blocks. It was begun with careful astrological timing, with religious services in several churches, and with a conciliatory distribution of alms. After Benedetto’s death (1497) Simone Pollaiuolo* completed the building, and added a fine cornice on the model of one that he had seen in Rome. How excellent the interior of these seeming prisons might be we may surmise from their magnificent fireplaces—mighty marble entablatures supported by floral-carved pillars and surmounted with reliefs. Meanwhile the Signory continued to improve its unique and beautiful home, the Palazzo Vecchio.

  Most of the architects were sculptors too, for sculpture played the leading part in architectural ornament, carving cornices and moldings, pilasters and capitals, door jambs and chimney pieces, wall reliefs, altars, choir stalls, pulpits, and baptismal fonts. Giuliano da Maiano carved the stalls in the sacristy of the cathedral and in the abbey at Fiesole. His brother Benedetto developed the art of intarsia, and became so famous for it that King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary ordered from him two coffers of inlaid wood, and invited him to his court. Benedetto went, and had the coffers sent after him; when these arrived at Budapest and were unpacked in the presence of the King the inlaid pieces fell out, the glue having been loosened by the damp sea air; and Benedetto, though he replaced the pieces successfully, took a distaste to marquetry, and devoted himself thereafter to sculpture. There are few sculptured Virgins lovelier than his Enthroned Madonna, few busts that surpass his honest and revealing Filippo Strozzi, few tombs so fine as that of the same Strozzi in Santa Maria Novella, no pulpit more elegantly carved than that which Benedetto made for the church of Santa Croce, and few altars so near perfection as that of Santa Fina in the Collegiate Church of San Gimignano.