The Medici Family and The Renaissance: A Research Paper Excerpt
Article By Brooke Wright
This is an excerpt from a larger research paper about the Medici family of Florence and their connection to the Italian Renaissance.
The Medici family led the government of Florence, Italy for centuries before and during the Italian Renaissance. Florence is widely known as a sort of center for the Renaissance because of the large number of artists who lived and worked there. Many of these artists had direct ties to the Medici family. Whether they were commissioned by members of the family, close friends with the family, or even opposed the family, it is challenging to find people who weren’t involved with the Medici at that time. The Medici were known for commissioning great artists to create works we still hold dear today, like Botticelli’s Primavera, as well as convincing their colleagues to commission work as well. Through their personal commissions and direct support of artists, as well as their friend’s commissions, the Medici family of Florence were vital in bringing on the Renaissance, and their influence is still seen today. It would be tough to talk about every important Medici family member within this paper, so I will be focusing on the height of the Renaissance, which includes Lorenzo the Magnificent and his immediate family, notably his mother Lucrezia.
Sandro Botticelli, “Primavera,” or “Spring,” c. 1480.
Tempera grassa on wood. Image courtesy of The Uffizi Gallery.
Lorenzo the Magnificent was a great supporter of the arts in Florence during the time of the Renaissance. He played a direct role in the lives of many famous artists, including, but not limited to, Botticelli, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci. Lorenzo was “groomed from birth to rule Florence,” and came into his power at age 20 (Davis 111). Having been significantly influenced by his mother, Lorenzo came to be a great lover of the arts, but Lucrezia was not his only influence here. Lorenzo received “the finest humanist education available,” in which he studied the poet Ovid, the Greek language, and Plato’s philosophy, as well as attended meetings of the Platonic Academy (Strathern 148-149). This education instilled within him the humanist values that were a major driving force of the Renaissance. Lorenzo didn’t just appreciate and support the arts, he created them as well because Lorenzo was also a poet. He wrote in the Florentine dialect that Dante had popularized, and it is widely accepted that “several of the poems [he] produced… in his maturity would be of sufficient calibre to enter the canon of early Italian poetry,” (Strathern 149). Lorenzo’s upbringing as part of the Medici family was a vital part of what drove his love of the arts and desire to support them, which in turn would aid the development of the Renaissance.
Lorenzo cared so greatly about the arts that he surrounded himself with many great creators of the time. This habit was begun in part by his mother Lucrezia, who invited the painter Botticelli to live at the Palazzo Medici. Botticelli, who was only five years younger than Lorenzo, ate and traveled with the family, and even attended meetings of the Platonic Academy (Strathern 184). Botticelli was such an important figure in Lorenzo’s life that he was entrusted “to paint the hanging Pazzi conspirators on the wall by the Palazzo della Signoria,” (Strathern 186). Lorenzo surrounded himself with other creative talents in addition to painters. He became great friends with the poet Angelo Poliziano, who also received a wonderful humanist education. Lorenzo was first attracted to his “epigrams in Greek,” and the two “became very close, sharing a ready wit, lively intelligence and a sheer zest for life,” (Strathern 173). Poliziano was even trusted to tutor Lorenzo’s son Piero just two years after he had moved into the Palazzo Medici. Poliziano and Lorenzo were very close friends, and he was likely a great influence on Lorenzo’s children as well (Strathern 173). Lorenzo would become close friends with another poet during the later half of his life: Pico della Mirandola. He is somewhat known as “the most precocious and spectacular of all the intellectual talents who gathered at the Palazzo Medici,” (Strathern 179).
Della Mirandola is yet another Renaissance creator who benefited from Lorenzo’s patronage. This support even extended to when della Mirandola was charged of heresy by the Church, and Lorenzo had to intervene to allow him to remain in Florence (Strathern 182). Although Lorenzo loved to surround himself with artists and creators, “his patronage of them was not as widespread as that of his father Piero,” (Strathern 186). Lorenzo was able to recognize great artists of the time and encourage others to commission works from them, but he himself often “preferred his collection of jewels to paintings,” (Strathern 186). This preference, however, is not to say that Lorenzo didn’t do anything else to aid the great artists of the Renaissance. Part of Lorenzo’s support was getting his personal favorite artists commissioned by other powerful families and people such as the Tornabuoni family, Tommaso Soderini, and the Vespucci family (Strathern 185). The Medici family support of the Renaissance and its artists extended beyond their own commissions and into the commissions of others.
One of Lorenzo’s greatest, and shortest-lived, accomplishments was his art garden, also called his sculpture garden or humanist school. The garden was housed at the Piazza San Marco in Florence, and the school was started in 1489 and ended in 1492 with Lorenzo’s death (Strathern 195). The garden was populated by the Medici collection of antique statues and sculptures, and its major function was to teach student sculptors and painters, who would learn by copying pieces in the collection (Elam 55, Strathern 195). The most famous student at the art garden was Michelangelo, who began his studies at the garden when he was only 14 years old (Strathern 195). Michelangelo was recognized early in his life for his great talent in the arts, and he was taught at the gardens by the sculptor Bertoldo, who was himself a student of Donatello (Elam 60). Michelangelo was eventually invited by Lorenzo to live and work at the Palazzo Medici, where he would remain for four years. During this time, Michelangelo, like other artists before him, was invited to join meetings of the Platonic Academy where he would come to be greatly inspired by Platonic philosophy (Strathern 196). Two works that are known to have been created during Michelangelo’s time with the Medici and at the gardens are the Madonna of the Steps and Battle of the Centaurs; both are relief sculptures (Elam 58). Lorenzo’s art garden and the subsequent education and influence of Michelangelo is perhaps one of the best examples of how the Medici were vital in bringing on the Renaissance. Without the Medici recognizing the talent of a young Michelangelo and then supporting and encouraging him, he likely wouldn’t be so well loved and remembered today.
REFERENCES:
Davis, Robert C., and Beth Lindsmith. Renaissance People: Lives that Shaped the Modern Age. Getty Publications, 2011.
Elam, Caroline. “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Sculpture Garden.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, vol. 36, 1992, pp. 41-84. Jstor, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27653323. Accessed 14 Feb. 2022.
Strathern, Paul. The Medici: Power, Money, and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance. Pegasus Books, 2017.
Brooke Wright is Creative Writing major and History Minor at Queens University of Charlotte. She is graduating in December 2022, and planning to move to Salem, Massachusetts. She spends her free time reading and writing anything from historical research to poetry to short stories. Her favorite painting is Botticelli's Primavera.