The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici by Christopher Hibbert
Authors: Christopher Hibbert
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to take shape in 1451. 19
A few years later Michelozzo began work on yet another Medici villa. This was at Fiesole where Cosimo’s son, Giovanni, chose to reconstruct the castle-like villa known as Belcanto. 20 The land around it was steep and stony, useless for farming, as Cosimo disapprovingly observed, cross with his son for spending so much money merely toenjoy a view. But, as Giovanni protested, that was the whole point of Fiesole. His villa there would be built for pleasure alone: on summer evenings he and his family and friends would be able to sit upon the shaded terrace looking down upon the roofs of Florence.
But this was not Cosimo’s idea of a pleasant outlook. As he told Giovanni, he far preferred looking out from the windows at Cafaggiolo where all the surrounding land belonged to him. Besides, he was growing old, too old to think about new houses. When work on the Villa Medici at Fiesole was finished in 1463 he was seventy-four. For thirty difficult years he had been controlling the foreign policy of the Republic and the strain had weighed heavily upon him.
VI
WAR AND PEACE
‘
Rencine? Rencine? Where is Rencine?
’
C OSIMO’S SUPREME importance as arbiter of Florence’s foreign policy had never been in doubt. Official correspondence was conducted through the
Signoria
; but no important decision was ever reached without reference to the Medici Palace. Foreign ambassadors were frequently to be seen passing through the gateway; Florentine ambassadors invariably called upon Cosimo before taking up their appointments.
For years his main preoccupation had been Milan. Patiently, doggedly, he had done all he could to persuade the Florentines that their standard policy of hostility to the Duchy was misguided and inexpedient, that they would be far better off with the Milanese as their friends even at the cost of antagonizing their traditional allies, the Venetians. At the beginning of the century Venice had enormously increased her possessions by conquering Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Belluno and Feltre, and, after defeating the Turkish fleet, had extended the frontiers of the Most Serene Republic far down the Dalmatian coast. In those years Florence had been thankful to have so powerful and rich an ally in her festering quarrel with Milan whose Duke, Filippo Maria Visconti, had been encouraged to make war on Florence by friends of the exiled Albizzi.
This Visconti was widely believed to be mad and was certainly unbalanced. He had been known on summer days to strip the rich clothes from his grotesquely fat and dirty body and to roll about naked in his garden. So ugly that he refused to have his portrait painted, so weak on his deformed legs that he could not rise from hischair without leaning on a page; so nervous that he had been known to scream at the sight of a naked sword; so frightened of thunder that he had a sound-proof room built in his palace; so fond of practical jokes that he would suddenly produce a snake from his sleeve when talking to an unsuspecting courtier, he was also wilful, secretive and inordinately suspicious. Nevertheless, he was undeniably an astute politician who, during the thirty-five years of his rule, succeeded in recovering much of the territory in Lombardy which his father had conquered but which had been lost while he was still a boy. His attempts to extend the Duchy southwards into Tuscany were not, however, so successful, despite assurances from the Albizzi and other Florentine exiles that he had merely to appear in force in the territories of the Republic for the people to take up arms against their oppressors, the Medici. His invading forces were defeated in 1437 at the battle of Barga; they were thwarted again in 1438. And in June 1440 one of his most talented
condottieri
, Niccolò Piccinino, was routed by an army of Florentine mercenaries in a savage battle near Anghiari on the Arno. After this defeat, Piccinino and the remnants of his army marched quickly out
A few years later Michelozzo began work on yet another Medici villa. This was at Fiesole where Cosimo’s son, Giovanni, chose to reconstruct the castle-like villa known as Belcanto. 20 The land around it was steep and stony, useless for farming, as Cosimo disapprovingly observed, cross with his son for spending so much money merely toenjoy a view. But, as Giovanni protested, that was the whole point of Fiesole. His villa there would be built for pleasure alone: on summer evenings he and his family and friends would be able to sit upon the shaded terrace looking down upon the roofs of Florence.
But this was not Cosimo’s idea of a pleasant outlook. As he told Giovanni, he far preferred looking out from the windows at Cafaggiolo where all the surrounding land belonged to him. Besides, he was growing old, too old to think about new houses. When work on the Villa Medici at Fiesole was finished in 1463 he was seventy-four. For thirty difficult years he had been controlling the foreign policy of the Republic and the strain had weighed heavily upon him.
VI
WAR AND PEACE
‘
Rencine? Rencine? Where is Rencine?
’
C OSIMO’S SUPREME importance as arbiter of Florence’s foreign policy had never been in doubt. Official correspondence was conducted through the
Signoria
; but no important decision was ever reached without reference to the Medici Palace. Foreign ambassadors were frequently to be seen passing through the gateway; Florentine ambassadors invariably called upon Cosimo before taking up their appointments.
For years his main preoccupation had been Milan. Patiently, doggedly, he had done all he could to persuade the Florentines that their standard policy of hostility to the Duchy was misguided and inexpedient, that they would be far better off with the Milanese as their friends even at the cost of antagonizing their traditional allies, the Venetians. At the beginning of the century Venice had enormously increased her possessions by conquering Verona, Vicenza, Padua, Belluno and Feltre, and, after defeating the Turkish fleet, had extended the frontiers of the Most Serene Republic far down the Dalmatian coast. In those years Florence had been thankful to have so powerful and rich an ally in her festering quarrel with Milan whose Duke, Filippo Maria Visconti, had been encouraged to make war on Florence by friends of the exiled Albizzi.
This Visconti was widely believed to be mad and was certainly unbalanced. He had been known on summer days to strip the rich clothes from his grotesquely fat and dirty body and to roll about naked in his garden. So ugly that he refused to have his portrait painted, so weak on his deformed legs that he could not rise from hischair without leaning on a page; so nervous that he had been known to scream at the sight of a naked sword; so frightened of thunder that he had a sound-proof room built in his palace; so fond of practical jokes that he would suddenly produce a snake from his sleeve when talking to an unsuspecting courtier, he was also wilful, secretive and inordinately suspicious. Nevertheless, he was undeniably an astute politician who, during the thirty-five years of his rule, succeeded in recovering much of the territory in Lombardy which his father had conquered but which had been lost while he was still a boy. His attempts to extend the Duchy southwards into Tuscany were not, however, so successful, despite assurances from the Albizzi and other Florentine exiles that he had merely to appear in force in the territories of the Republic for the people to take up arms against their oppressors, the Medici. His invading forces were defeated in 1437 at the battle of Barga; they were thwarted again in 1438. And in June 1440 one of his most talented
condottieri
, Niccolò Piccinino, was routed by an army of Florentine mercenaries in a savage battle near Anghiari on the Arno. After this defeat, Piccinino and the remnants of his army marched quickly out
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