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The chapter contains an analysis of the speech of Rinaldo degli Albizzi at an oligarchic rally at the church of Santo Stefano in 1426 and discusses the debates over a new tax, the catasto, in 1422–7, Florence’s unsuccessful war to subject Lucca, from 1429 on, the oligarchic coup of 1433, and the Medici coup of 1434. It argues that the catasto, a capital tax, was an antipopular oligarchic initiative, an attempt to force the more economically thriving to contribute more toward financing Florentine wars. The chapter includes an overview of Florentine debates over who should be eligible for government office. It describes the oligarchic coup (the parlamento of 1433) and arrest and exile of Cosimo de’ Medici, then the triumphant return of the Medici (the parlamento of 1434) and the establishment of the Medici regime.

Chapter 8 examines Machiavelli’s representation of Cosimo’s regime. As he acknowledged to friends, writing about the Medici required circumspection. Keeping Cosimo in the background, he underscores the regime’s repressive side: punitive banishments, executions, and the murder of the condottiere Baldaccio d’Anghiari, whose friendship with Neri Capponi Cosimo feared. Machiavelli dramatizes Capponi’s challenge to Cosimo’s support for Sforza and has Cosimo’s “friends” accuse Capponi of wanting to limit his expanding power. Harmful divisions occur with factions and partigiani, Machiavelli says: Cosimo built his faction with private methods; Capponi acquired renown with public methods. Machiavelli emphasizes the alternating success and failure of Cosimo’s faction in remaining united and loyal to him: after twenty years of success in imposing electoral controls, the faction split and lost power in 1455. Former allies, frightened by the popolo’s plan to revive the Catasto, begged Cosimo to retake power, and in 1458 he let Luca Pitti use force to restore controls and impose banishments. In 1465–6 Cosimo’s lieutenants—Pitti, Niccolò Soderini, Dietisalvi Neroni, Agnolo Acciaiuoli—tried to prevent Piero from succeeding to his father’s leadership role. Machiavelli considers the movement a conspiracy, emphasizing personal resentments and private ambition as the chief motives, and its challenge to Piero as a factional struggle. When Pitti broke ranks and accepted a deal, Piero used force to re-impose controls and banish opponents. Piero denounces both the greed of his party and the “betrayal” of the “conspirators.” Machiavelli harshly condemns the regimes that emerged from 1458 and 1466.

The chapter looks at how Poggio (1380–1459) went from early book hunting (the source of his fame today) to becoming the major ideologue of the Medici regime (without him, it was believed, Cosimo de’ Medici was feeble and weak). The chapter includes Poggio’s discussion of “true nobility” (nobility as revered by the traditionalists was nothing), the proper use of money, and the role of law and power. It explores Poggio’s materialist view of law, which is sometimes regarded as pre-Machiavellian. Also discussed are questions of gender and “social mingling,” what Burckhardt would later describe as the “equalization” of women and classes. Sources include Poggio’s letters, dialogues, and jokes (the Facetiae).

This chapter examines how Niccolò Niccoli (1364–1437), the humanist closest to Cosimo de’ Medici and hated by many scholars from his time to our own, represented a negation of contemporary culture—a negation not only of traditionalism but of those, such as Leonardo Bruni, who made compromises with it. Included here is a discussion of the origins of the humanist script, humanist orthography, and book hunting. For Niccoli, the intellectual legacy of the late Middle Ages had to be rejected upfront; then a new society could be created on the model of classical antiquity. The chapter argues that Niccoli’s notorious aversion to politics was simply an aversion to oligarchic politics and culture. He was always “political,” as a critic of the oligarchs, and as soon as the Medici took power he was more than happy to take political office.

This chapter describes the architecture of Florence during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and how it was shaped by a single family, the Medicis. In 1445, for instance, construction began on the building now known as the Medici–Riccardi Palace. The real force behind this extraordinary structure was not the architect Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, but Cosimo de’ Medici, a wealthy banker who, working largely behind the scenes, also controlled the city government. In 1516, a Medici pope, Leo X, commissioned a facade for the parish church of San Lorenzo from painter and sculptor Michelangelo. A generation after Michelangelo’s work at San Lorenzo, a member of a new generation of Medici, Cosimo I, commissioned architect Giorgio Vasari to build the Uffizi, an office building and one of the first monumental examples of the type.

This chapter approaches patronal relationships from the patrons’ viewpoint, with particular attention to the Estensi and Medici, to examine how patronage became the art of the powerful and ‘magnificence’ its aesthetic. While Humanists commonly promoted the cultivation of letters as an expression of true nobility, an equally forceful motive was blatant competition between families such as the Sforza, Gonzaga, Medici, and Estensi. The chapter considers the contrasting fortunes of Ugolino Pisani and Leon Battista Alberti at the court of Leonello d’Este, and the relationships between Ficino, Politian, and Lorenzo the Magnificent. Lorenzo’s own poetry is read in conjunction with Politian’s to reveal something of the conflicting ‘authorities’ that patronage invariably entailed.

This chapter presents four texts that express Machiavelli’s thoughts on different rulers. The first excerpt, from Florentine Histories, describes Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), a banker and de facto ruler of Florence for three decades, and one of the most representative figures of his time. The second excerpt, from Prince, focuses on Duke Valentino. The third text presents Machiavelli’s analysis of a rare moment of ‘caution’ of a leader — Pope Julius II — whom Machiavelli always takes as an example of ‘impetuosity’. The fourth excerpt from Prince is a portrait of Ferdinand II (ruler from 1479 to 1516).

In Robert Browning’s poem ‘Fra Lippo Lippi’, the painter is caught playing truant in the red-light district of Renaissance Florence. Lippi, a child of the streets who has attracted the patronage of the Catholic Church and the ruler of Florence, Cosimo de’ Medici, plays throughout his monologue with songs derived from a Tuscan folk-song known as the stornello. As he tells the story of his life to the officer of the watch who has arrested him, he quotes, or makes up, half a dozen of his own stornelli. He appropriates the form for his own purpose—but the stornelli say more about him than he intends. Browning’s appropriation of the stornello overrides Lippi’s; it becomes one of the indices of Lippi’s failure as an artist, one he attributes to his enforced dependency on the Church and the ruling class, but whose roots go deeper than he is willing to acknowledge.