Florence in 1478

is prosperous, rich in money and talent.  Leonardo da Vinci is 26 years old.  He has recently returned to Florence from a self-imposed exile.  In a few years he will embark on the design of war machines for Duke Sforza of Milano, but at this time he can frequently be found working for the Medicis.  In January 1478 he has just received his first major commission to design an altar for the Capello di San Bernardo in the Piazza Vecchio.

Sandro Botticelli has already found his muse and lost her.  Simonetta Vespucci died on April 26, 1476 at the age of twenty-two.  She will be reborn in “Primavera” in 1482 and again in “La Nascita de Venere” in 1485.  Botticelli will never find another who moves him so.  Upon his death in 1510, he will be buried at the feet of Simonetta in the Vespucci family chapel at Chiesa Ognisanti.

Lodovico Buonarotti returned to Florence two years ago after losing his position as mayor of the town of Caprese.   Lodovico makes one bad investment after another as a businessman, having already run the Buonarroti family bank into bankruptcy.  He’s deep in debt and getting deeper.   He looks forward to his three-year old son Michelangelo eventually joining him and his older sons and helping with the turnaround of the family farm and their small marble quarry in Settignano.

Donatello’s bronze David has been standing on a pedestal in the Palazzo Medici for more than thirty-five years. Donatello himself has been in the ground for a dozen. The patron who commissioned the statue, Cosimo de Medici, preceded the artist in death by two years.  The statue is not so popular in Florence.  Florentines will decline the opportunity to place it in their main square as they search for something more magnificent to occupy that space.  A giant marble block sits in a stoneyard in Florence, the start of a commission by the city to Agostino di Duccio in 1466.  This latest attempt at such a civic monument has been abandoned, as the block’s twisted form has been deemed unlikely to yield anything worthy of Florence.

Since its full completion in 1461, Brunelleschi’s Duomo stands as a beacon of progress and prosperity for the Tuscan countryside and beyond.  The “efflorescence” of the city is led by the Medici family, though not without dispute.  The Pazzis and other families of noble heritage resent the Medici’s prominence and their elevation of certain individuals based on achievement as opposed to pedigree.

Cosimo de Medici built a banking empire from the business started by his own father.  Its success is predicated in no small part on the issuance of the fiorino d’oro, commonly known as the florin.  This coin, an eighth of an ounce of gold, proves to be one of the continent’s most reliable forms of currency. Cosimo amassed a handsome personal treasury through wise trading, initially in the wool for which Florence has become famous.  At the same time he became the banker of choice to many heads of state.  Upon his death in 1464 he was briefly succeeded by his son, Piero the Gouty, who soon succumbed to the illness captured in his name.

The weaknesses of the Medici Bank’s business model are just beginning to be discovered by the current generation.  For the past twelve years Piero’s sons Lorenzo, now twenty-nine, and Giuliano, now twenty-four, have run this far ranging banking and mercantile empire, assisted by a network of branch managers and especially through the support and guidance of their mother, Lucrezia Tornabuoni.  

The Medicis walk freely through the streets of Florence.  They live quite well in the Palazzo Medici on the corner of Via Cavour.  The building is another clever Brunelleschi design. It is richly furnished, though somewhat ordinary on the outside.  It will fall to later generations to exhaust the family fortune by building more elaborate palazzi in Florence and Rome and by commissioning and acquiring expensive artworks.

In a time of both promise and conflict, accurate information is the key to survival.  Kingdoms all over Europe employ spies and counterspies, as does the Vatican itself.   Life in Europe at this time – a mere eighty years after the black plague – is brutally hard.  Even so, with the population of Europe reduced by one third from the plague, there is opportunity. For some, it is worth risking everything to take advantage of the possibilities.