Authors: Miles J. Unger
By the spring of 1467, Piero and Lucrezia had made their choice. Lorenzo would marry a girl from one of the preeminent Roman families, the fifteen-year-old Clarice, daughter of Jacopo Orsini, lord of Monte Rotondo, and niece of the powerful Cardinal Latino Orsini. So powerful were great Roman clans like the Orsini (and their chief rivals, the Colonna) that the Medici bank refused to lend them money because, as a virtual law unto themselves, no power in heaven or earth could force them to repay what had been borrowed.
In the early months of 1467, Lucrezia traveled to Rome in order to conduct some minor diplomatic business for her husband and, more important, to pass her observant eye over the girl.
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Her sharp, unsentimental observations were not initially of the kind to set a young man’s heart aflame. “On the way to S. Peter on Thursday morning I met Madonna Maddalena Orsini, sister to the Cardinal [Latino Orsini], with her daughter, who is about fifteen or sixteen years old,” she wrote to Piero. “She was dressed in the Roman fashion with a
lenzuolo
[long loose shawl or cloak]. In this dress she seemed to me handsome, fair, and tall, but being covered up I could not see her to my satisfaction.” A second meeting at the cardinal’s house was arranged so that Lucrezia might make a closer inspection of her prospective daughter-in-law:
We talked for some good time and I looked closely at the girl. As I said she is of good height and has a nice complexion, her manners are gentle, though not so winning as those of our girls, but she is very modest and would soon learn our customs. She has not fair hair, because here there are no fair women; her hair is reddish and abundant, her face rather round, but it does not displease me. Her throat is fairly elegant, but it seems to me a little meager, or to speak better, slight. Her bosom I could not see, as here the women are entirely covered up, but it appeared to me of good proportions. She does not carry her head proudly like our girls, but pokes it a little forward; I think she was shy, indeed I see no fault in her save shyness. Her hands are long and delicate. In short I think the girl is much above the common, though she cannot compare with Maria, Lucrezia, and Bianca.
Lucrezia’s businesslike tone was appropriate for a transaction that resembled nothing so much as the merger of two corporations. For Piero and Lucrezia the political and financial standing of the bride’s family counted for more than charm or grace. Clarice’s malleability was an asset, as Lucrezia pointed out, since it meant she would more easily adapt herself to Florentine ways. Perhaps Lucrezia overplayed the role of dispassionate observer; in one letter she was forced to defend herself against Piero’s accusation that she was less than enthusiastic. “You say I write coldly about her,” Lucrezia wrote. “I do it not to raise your hopes too high: there is no handsomer girl at present unmarried in Florence.” Even her detailed descriptions of Clarice’s face and figure, which have all the precision of someone in the market for a prize cow, speak less to her sexual allure than to the wife’s principal function, which was to bear her husband many healthy heirs.
It is telling that in the selection of his future wife Lorenzo never showed the least inclination to defy his parents’ wishes. This was a decision that not only affected him personally but one that was vital to the future of the entire family. For someone in his position, marrying rashly for love was unthinkable. Compensating for this rather impersonal arrangement was the expectation that he would continue to find emotional and sexual fulfillment outside the matrimonial bed. When Lorenzo, composing verses for his lady love, lamented, “O that the marriage bond had joined our fate, / Nor I been born too soon, nor thou too late!” few were shocked by the reference to amorous passion outside the bonds of matrimony. For Florentine men marriage was but one of many outlets for their sexual energies, though the only one that served the interests of the family through the production of legitimate heirs. Lorenzo’s own laconic note, written years later in a brief autobiographical sketch, suggests how little a part his feelings played in the selection of his future wife. “I, Lorenzo, took to wife Clarice, daughter of the Lord Jacopo Orsini, or rather she was given to me.”
The announcement of Lorenzo’s future bride came as a blow to Florentine families hoping to snare a Medici bridegroom for themselves, but even those without eligible daughters were dismayed since it suggested that the Medici thought themselves too good to associate with their compatriots. The connection with the Orsini would ultimately prove a classic case of overreaching. Machiavelli is perhaps exaggerating the case when he declares that Piero, in seeking a foreign bride for Lorenzo, had concluded “the city no longer included him as a citizen and that therefore he was preparing to seize a principate: for he who does not want citizens as relatives wants them as slaves.” But it is clear that the engagement with one of the great feudal clans of Italy marked a new stage in the aggrandizement of the Medici. In seeking a wife for Lorenzo abroad, Piero was following in the footsteps of royalty, that exotic breed whose superiority to their countrymen was such that they could find mates only in distant lands.
Given the potential for stirring up the animosity of the Florentine people, why did Piero and Lucrezia pursue an alliance with the Orsini? Domestically, the connection would put some distance between the Medici and their rivals. Marrying into a family that had already produced two popes—Celestine III (1191–98) and Nicholas III (1277–80), as well as a host of cardinals and powerful mercenary generals—would solidify the Medici’s place among the great clans of Europe. To the lilies of the king of France, already proudly displayed on their escutcheon, and the Sforza hound, they could now add the protection of the Orsini bear. Piero and Lucrezia expected this union would shore up the fortunes of the most important branch of the Medici bank. No family wielded more power in the halls of the Vatican than the Orsini, and with their blood flowing through Medici veins, the next generation would have easy access to the curia from whence much of the family wealth derived.
To the extent that Lorenzo himself was involved in the decision, his betrothal to Clarice Orsini marks the beginning of his personal obsession with Rome. While three generations of Medici had handled the papal finances, none staked so much there as Lorenzo, and both his greatest triumphs and tragedies were to be intimately bound up with that most spell-binding and devious of cities.
As for the Orsini, the advantages were more straightforward. According to Filippo de’ Medici, the archbishop of Pisa, who conducted the negotiations on behalf of his cousin, “their pleasure is not to be described.” The agreed-upon 6,000 florin dowry—to be paid out not only in gold but in jewels and richly embroidered dresses—was a small price for being able to dip their hands into the bottomless Medici coffers. The family business of soldiering (second only among the Orsini to a career in the church) also stood to gain by the connection to the ruling family of a state always in dire need of mercenary generals.
Negotiations, which involved both the archbishop of Pisa and Lorenzo’s uncle, Giovanni Tornabuoni, were completed by November 1468. With the hard bargaining behind them, all those involved now showed their softer side. Clarice’s uncle, Cardinal Latino, warmly embraced his new relations, calling Lorenzo “our nephew” and jocularly referring to Piero and himself as a couple of old men who could contemplate the blooming of young love with a benign twinkle. Lorenzo’s uncle, having dickered over every florin, now tried to sell his nephew on his bride’s charms in terms that the hard-nosed Lucrezia would have spurned. “Not a day passes that I do not see your Madonna Clarice, who has bewitched me,” Giovanni wrote Lorenzo in January of 1469. “[S]he improves every day. She is beautiful, she has the sweetest of manners and an admirable intelligence.” Admittedly, much was required before Clarice could equal Florentine girls in the quality of her mind and cultural attainments, but Giovanni makes it clear that she was hard at work improving herself. One detects in the letters of both Giovanni and Lucrezia a somewhat patronizing attitude toward this simple Roman girl: given her foreign birth, she could hardly be expected to meet the higher standards of Florence, cultural center of the universe, but with hard work those deficits might yet be remedied.
Lorenzo adopted a similar attitude toward his bride-to-be. Though Clarice was the daughter of one of the most illustrious families of the most fabled city of Europe, she was provincial by the standards of sophisticated Florentines. Over the years a genuine affection grew up between husband and wife, but there was never any question of a union of kindred spirits. Lorenzo, whose chauvinism was both sexual and nationalistic, never thought of his wife as his equal, and Clarice stood in awe of her accomplished and powerful husband. A pious, somewhat narrow-minded girl, she found the livelier atmosphere of Florence uncongenial, and the vibrant culture of the city largely passed her by.
At no time during the long engagement did Lorenzo make an effort to woo Clarice. He was too busy with his duties in Florence to go to Rome and showed little inclination to rearrange his life to conform to his new status. For all intents and purposes, Lorenzo and Clarice continuted to be strangers to each other, and repeated requests by Clarice and her family for him to make the journey south were met with evasions and delays.
The months between her betrothal and her departure for a strange city, and equally unfamiliar husband, must have been a time of cruel anxiety for Clarice. If Lorenzo had but a vague memory of her, Clarice’s recollection of Lorenzo was equally ill-formed. She may not have heard of his reputation for fast living, but even without specific knowledge of his peccadilloes Florence’s reputation as a city of luxury and vice would have given the shy, sheltered maiden reason to worry. Nor was the process itself conducive to peace of mind. The close inspection she endured beneath the penetrating gaze of Lorenzo’s formidable mother was an ordeal calculated to make even a more experienced woman tremble.
To break the tension of the months between the promise and the consummation, Clarice took up a correspondence with her future husband. It was no doubt a daunting task and her language betrays a certain hesitancy. The terms of their relationship were set early, with Lorenzo forced to excuse himself for neglecting her and Clarice expressing her delight when he showed the least bit of attention: “Magnificent consort, greetings, &c.,—I have received a letter from you and have understood all you write. That you liked my letter rejoices me, as I am always desirous to do what pleases you. Then you say that you write but little; I am content with whatever is your pleasure, living always in hope for the future.” The letter to which she refers is now lost, but others written shortly after their wedding are matter-of-fact, with little of the lighthearted banter that characterized his correspondence with his friends. Lorenzo gives the impression of a young man having too good a time to consider the feelings of his bride. There is little indication that Lorenzo understood or sympathized with the plight of a girl taken from her home and forced to live in a foreign land among strangers.
The truth is that during the months of their betrothal Lorenzo’s thoughts were less focused on his future bride than with the magnificent tournament he was now planning. Not only was Clarice not invited to this spectacle, calculated to outshine any held in the City of the Baptist for generations, but Lorenzo was to enter the lists as a champion of another woman—his reputed mistress, Lucrezia Donati. One can almost hear the petulance in Clarice’s voice when, despite the urging of Lorenzo’s uncle Francesco Tornabuoni, she refused to write to him because, as Tornabuoni reported, “she told me you were evidently extremely occupied with this tournament; and then arrived Donnino who brought no letter from you.” To assuage her hurt feelings, Francesco advised Lorenzo to “write to her often, it would give her great pleasure.” It was advice to which Lorenzo, as usual, paid little attention. While all of Florence turned out to celebrate Lorenzo’s feats of arms and gossiped while his ladylove presented him with a garland of violets, Clarice was left in Rome to work on her trousseau.
To be fair to Lorenzo the tournament was not simply a childish indulgence, though with its make-believe combat and elaborate costumes it resembled a boy’s fantasy grown to gargantuan proportions. The magnificent spectacle—which lived in the collective consciousness of Florentines long after those who had witnessed it were in their graves, primarily through Luigi Pulci’s epic poem
Stanzas on the Joust of Lorenzo
—was held in February of 1469. Occurring shortly before Lorenzo’s accession to power, this event was as close as the republic could come to the pageantry of a coronation.
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Its official purpose was to celebrate the peace following the Colleonic War, but it also marked in a very real sense the passing of the torch from father to son. Lorenzo’s wedding a few months hence would mark his proper entry into the responsibilities of adulthood, but the tournament in which he played the leading role gave the people of Florence an opportunity to take stock of and to cheer on their future leader.
On the morning of February 7, most of the population of Florence could be found in the grandstands set up around the Piazza Santa Croce or leaning from the windows of the four-and five-story buildings that bounded the square. Forming the eastern end of the great rectangle was the great Franciscan church of Santa Croce, its facade a grim expanse of unadorned brick casting its shadow across much of the field of battle.
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On the steps leading up to the basilica were tiers of seats where the red-robed judges and important dignitaries could sit in comfort. Among them were Lorenzo’s parents, along with the queen of the tournament, Lucrezia Donati, crowned with flowers and basking in the admiration of the assembled populace.