I knew I must be nearing the Palazzo Medici and expected to see guards at its perimeter. But in the next moment the edifice was looming large—again on my right—and there was not a soldier or guard anywhere in sight.
I could see, at the end of a huge three-storied city mansion, crowds of men standing under and around its loggia that turned the corner at Via Gori, and sitting on stone benches built into the outer wall, talking loudly and gesticulating enthusiastically in making their points. Others stood with heads bent together, conversing with quiet urgency.
They were negotiating. There, under the corner loggia of the Palazzo Medici, men were doing business.
Now I could see others were entering and leaving through a grand front doorway on Via Larga. I moved close enough to touch the building. The ground floor had been built like a fortress with stone blocks so rough-hewn they looked as if they had just been chiseled from the quarry. Above this, the wall of the first floor, studded with a row of high rounded windows, was finer cut stone. The third, with even more windows, appeared smooth and polished.
Facing the wide-open grand entrance and marveling at its orgy of commerce, I was further surprised to see that the inner courtyard, a square bounded by graceful columns all around, boasted a statue of a naked man on a pedestal, one that could easily be seen from the street.
With no one stopping or questioning me, I passed through the door and emerged into the courtyard with the three stories of the palazzo rising four-square around me. Inside, above the powerful arches and columns, was a row of windows, and above that a railed terrace.
To the right of the entrance on the ground floor guildsmen came and went through an inner door, whose sign above read simply BANCO.
But of course,
I thought,
the Medici are bankers
. Where better to house the Florentine branch than here at the family fortress?
Drawn to the bronze statue, I saw it was the figure of a boy no older than Leonardo, and like my son modeling for Verrocchio, at his feet was the ghastly severed head of a giant.
This must be another artist’s rendition of David with the slain Goliath,
I thought.
Though I had seen little sculpture in my life, the genius of this artist was apparent to even my untrained eye. But except for the sword he carried and the stone for his slingshot, he was not at all as I had imagined David of the Old Testament. He wore a brimmed hat, with girlish hair that fell to his shoulders, and standing with hand on hip at a jaunty angle, he looked more tipsy from wine than having just beheaded a Philistine giant. He was strangely effeminate.
“The great Donatello,” I heard Lorenzo say behind me. I had come to recognize my new friend’s voice. “His
David
is the first freestanding statue created in a thousand years. He was, of all the artists my grandfather patronized, his most beloved. They asked to be buried next to each other . . . and were.”
My mind raced.
Would Lorenzo de’ Medici someday patronize my Leonardo? Would his art grace the walls of this palazzo?
I turned to him. “You invited me to supper at your ‘house.’”
“This
is
my house. Come upstairs and I’ll show you.” He tipped his chin at the line of merchants at the banco door. “They’ll soon be leaving to have their supper. Then we’ll reclaim the ground floor.”
I followed him up a broad, straight stairway. “I loathe the banking business,” he told me. “Of course we made our fortune as bankers—to kings and merchants and popes. But I have no interest in money for money’s sake.” He turned to me. “Does that seem odd?”
“Very.”
“I have no facility for it either. Thank goodness Giuliano likes numbers. We’ll rule together someday. He has his strengths. I have mine.”
I thought of the handsome sixteen-year-old I’d seen riding before Lorenzo at his wedding festival. Giuliano seemed so young to rule. But then, so did Lorenzo. He was barely twenty.
We reached the first floor and at once I was impressed by the quiet serenity that enveloped us. Just a story below was a seething financial marketplace. Yet here we were, as Lorenzo had promised, in a home.
Not, of course, just any home.
Every available space of wall, every niche, every inch of floor was itself a work of art in marble, gilded plaster, or finely carved wood. Monumental ceilings soared far above our heads. There were tapestries, paintings, sculptures, bas relief medallions, and exotic Ottoman carpets. I could not decide where to look first.
Lorenzo decided for me. He steered us into the first door at the top of the stairs, a salon that, by my rough calculations, stood above the open-air public loggia on the corner of Via Larga and Via Gori.
“This is where the family gathers,” he said, “and where, in bad weather, we entertain.”
It was an enormous chamber with an azure and gold ceiling of staggering height, its many windows flooding it, even this late in the day, with enough light that all of the precious artifacts adorning it were clearly visible.
“Have you heard of the Pollaiuolo brothers?” Lorenzo asked.
I shook my head.
“Come look at their work.” He guided me to the first of three large paintings that graced the salon’s walls. “They are friendly rivals of Verrocchio. Aside from your nephew, their bottega boasts some of the best young talent in Florence.”
“But this is amazing,” I said, staring at its naked, beautifully muscled man, his warrior’s pelt headdress flying out behind him. One up-raised arm clutched the club with which he would momentarily bash in the brains of a many-headed beast, one of whose sinuous necks he clutched in his other hand.
“It is
Hercules and the Hydra
,” Lorenzo told me.
Two others by the Pollaiuolos were similarly alive with action and naked men. All the paintings and statues I had ever seen in my life had been of a purely Christian nature. These in front of me were mythical paintings, from Greek tales that my father had told me as bedtime stories. Ones that I was told never to share with other children.
But when I turned to Lorenzo to make the observation, I found him staring quite peculiarly at the rippling-muscled Hercules and perceived, for the briefest moment, that my host was embarrassed. When he felt my eyes on him he said quickly, “Come. There’s much more to see.”
He took me out into the hall above the courtyard again and we made our way to a set of massive carved doors. I could smell incense wafting up from the cracks beneath it.
“Is this a chapel?” I asked, intrigued. “
Inside
your house?”
“The first of its kind,” he answered. “The pope had to give us a special dispensation for it.” He swung open the doors and in we went. Here was a spectacular mural that surrounded us on three sides and climbed to the top of the high vaulted ceiling. My head spun with the fabulousness of the colors alone, no less the scene that the artist had rendered.
“What am I seeing here?” I said.
“Gozzoli’s
Procession of the Magi
.”
He led me first to the west wall. I had to crane my neck to see the details all the way to the gorgeously gilt ceiling, but I was determined not to miss a thing. Here, before a bright white mountain range that I could not discern as snow or ice or marble, was an immense procession indeed, all of the men on horseback and on foot. But there were animals, too—huge spotted cats—one of them oddly riding pillion behind a boy on horseback, and a great falcon standing on the ground.
“Who are these people?” I said, attempting to take in the complex and meticulously rendered faces and clothing, the weave and folds of the textiles, the facets of the gems, the luster of a silver spur. Every feather in the plumage of the birds, every petal of every flower, and each tree hanging with ripe fruit was in itself an ingenious work of art. The leaves of certain plants appeared to be painted in solid gold.
“Who they are,” Lorenzo began, “is a story within a story. It is, after all, Gozzoli’s painting of the three Wise Men journeying to the birth of Jesus. Ten years ago, when my grandfather and father hired him to paint the fresco, it was the fashion that models for the biblical figures should be men and women the artist knew and admired.”
“Their patrons?” I suggested.
“Patrons and families and friends. Important figures of the day. Even the artist himself. You can find Gozzoli three different times in the fresco. This is the Holy Roman Emperor as the Wise Man Melchior,” Lorenzo said, pointing to an old man whose headdress resembled a crown. “And here is Balthasar, the Wise Man from the East. Gozzoli used for his model John Palaeologus, the Eastern emperor. Both rulers were in Florence in 1439—it was quite a spectacular occasion—trying to bridge the schism between the two branches of the Catholic church. It ultimately failed. . . .”
“Constantinople was conquered by the Turks four years later,” I offered.
“Quite right. But the true outcome of the visit was wholly unexpected and even more stupendous. In John’s entourage were some of the greatest Greek scholars and thinkers and theologians of the time. During that conclave a great passion for classical learning was born. Florence was buzzing with debates between the best minds of Eastern and Western thought. It was how and when my grandfather’s obsession for gathering the art and philosophy of ancient times began. After everyone left he sent out scouts like Niccolo Niccoli and Poggio Bracciolini to find the lost manuscripts of antiquity.”
I was tempted in that moment to reveal my father’s connection to Poggio, but I held my tongue.
“Things in Florence were never the same again,” Lorenzo finished.
“Tell me about this one,” I said, moving to the east wall. This was by far the most crowded and detailed of the three frescoes, with dozens of men attending six men on horseback as they rode down from a castle at the top of the high white mountains. A dog chased a man on horseback, who himself chased a deer.
“Well, here you can see my family.” Lorenzo smiled at me. “No surprise. We were Gozzoli’s patrons.”
“This looks to be your father.” I pointed to a broad-cheeked man in rich red robes on a white horse. I felt myself suddenly embarrassed by my familiarity. “I saw him at your wedding festival.”
“Ah, the day you threw yourself under my horse.” Lorenzo had a way about him that made me feel at ease. “You are right, though. That is my father, Piero. And following right behind him on a brown horse in robes as humble as a monk’s is my grandfather, Cosimo.”
“And where are you?” I asked.
This time Lorenzo’s smile was wry. “I am in two places, actually. Here . . .” He pointed to a very young man on a magnificently caparisoned white steed. Unlike his father and his grandfather, he was clothed in royalty and wore a large bejeweled crown. The boy’s features were fine, almost pretty.
“This is the idealized version of Lorenzo de’ Medici as, I suppose, the artist expected the ruler of a great republic should be.” Then he pointed to another face nearly lost amidst a gaggle of scholars, all easily identified by their tall scarlet caps. “This is me as well. The
real
ten-year-old—jutting lip, squashed nose and all.” Lorenzo was matter-of-fact when he said this, with not a hint of injured vanity. “Listen, there’s something I want to show you before dinner.”
Lorenzo seemed on fire now. I followed him back down the stairway to the ground floor and its square colonnaded courtyard.
It was as Lorenzo had said it would be—emptied of the bankers, merchants, negotiators, and hagglers. Several servants were quietly sweeping the marble floor and another was polishing the heavy wooden doors that looked as though they could hold back a small army. It was, here in the Palazzo Medici, as serene and domestic now as it had an hour before been chaotic and mercenary.
We crossed the courtyard diagonally to a single unobtrusive door. But what was to be found inside it was anything but ordinary.
It was a magnificent library.
The tall fitted cabinets and shelves of inlaid cypress and walnut filled every inch of the four walls from floor to ceiling. They looked and smelled freshly constructed and finished. Many ornate pedestals had been built to accommodate large manuscripts. I turned to Lorenzo to find on his face an ecstasy in which tranquility and excitement were balanced in equal parts.
“Until this year the collection was lodged at the Monastery of San Marco. These are the books and manuscripts my grandfather and my father collected. Recently I’ve acquired some myself.” He looked around, beaming. “Where do I begin?”
I found his ardor infectious. “The earliest,” I suggested.
“Good. The earliest.” He didn’t have to think but a moment. He crossed the chamber and opened a stained-glass cabinet door. Then he withdrew from the shelf, with something akin to religious reverence, a scroll, the antiquity of which was clearly apparent. He placed it on a massive table and gestured for me to sit down before it. He unrolled it with a delicacy in those strong, muscular hands that seemed impossible.
I silently read the title, in Greek. I was hardly breathing.
“Is this . . . an original?” I finally said.
“Yes.”
I saw in front of my eyes words that had been inscribed fifteen centuries before. It was not a work that my father had ever translated or possessed, though he had told me of its existence. I read silently the opening lines of Sophocles’s
Antigone
. Lorenzo stood behind me, quietly inhaling my delight. I could have sat there for hours, reading this legendary play, but a few moments later I rolled it closed, slowly and with great care.
“I’ve a Greek treatise on surgery,” Lorenzo offered. “Or perhaps you’d like to see a manuscript of Cicero’s letters. Or Tacitus. I have two of his. All the classical and early Christian literature. . . .”
I turned and looked up at him. “May I come back again, when I have more time?”