Lorenzo de' Medici and the Art of Magnificence

Like his grandfather Cosimo il Vecchio, Lorenzo de' Medici, known as il Magnifico, is an endless source of fascination and study for historians and art historians alike.The dilemma the Medici family faced throughout the Quattrocento was how to assert their pre-eminence in Florence without unduly offending the city's republican sensibilities.Central to all their enterprises was the mobilization of a vast network of kin, friends, and neighbours; and the painters, sculptors, architects, and writers who constituted one part of this clientele produced a massive body of work which celebrated the family and advanced the Medici cause.As F. W. Kent observes in his introductory chapter, "the myth of Lorenzo de' Medici" as the "wise and munificent statesman" was accepted unquestioningly until the 1960s when it came under attack from a group of revisionists who created a "contra-myth" by arguing that Lorenzo's patronage of contemporary artists was really quite meagre and that the lionization of Lorenzo was little more than "humanist rhetorical exaggeration, or amplificatio, and partisan deference" (p.3).In the flurry of scholarly work produced in the 1990s to commemorate the five-hundredth anniversary of Lorenzo's death, the contramyth itself came under attack, although, as Kent observes, the effort "to recreate the superman described in the Renaissance rhetoric," often on the basis of very shaky evidence, is "little short of nauseating" (p.4).In this book, which the author describes as "a historian's contribution to the art-historical debate on Lorenzo de' Medici and the visual arts" (p.xi), Kent seeks to restore Lorenzo's reputation as a discerning and active patron of the arts, without provoking a "new mythic explosion" (p.5).The result is a rich and rewarding study which offers a sympathetic biographical portrait of Lorenzo.For those who are not specialists in Florentine history, Kent's study offers something else: it provides a model for thinking about the various activities which constituted Renaissance patronage and for discerning the multiple objectives of patrons.As regards Lorenzo, the picture that emerges from Kent's book is of a man forever chasing after the image and achievements of his grandfather.Raised in the palace built by Cosimo and surrounded by precious things, Lorenzo early on developed a discerning eye and a deep appreciation of luxurious objects."Opulent beauty," according to Kent, "was his birthright" (p.19).A trip to Naples in 1466 sparked his lifelong interest in antiquities.But Lorenzo also adopted at an early age another family tradition-that of serving on various opere or works' committees, including two stints as one of the city's Canal Officials, a board of men expert in matters both hydraulic and military.Service with this body gave the young Lorenzo a deep understanding of military architecture.Kent notes as well Lorenzo's efforts as a poet and concludes that he "was a genuine intellectual with broad yet educated and discriminating tastes" (p.42).

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