<i>Giuliano de’ Medici, Machiavelli’s Prince in Life and Art</i>. By Josephine Jungić (Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), 298 pp. $44.95

Giuliano de’ Medici (1479–1516), the third son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was a major figure in Renaissance Italy, not least for his role as principal ruler of Florence on behalf of the Medici family from September 1512, when the family returned from eighteen years of exile, until May 1513. Nonetheless, Giuliano had never attracted a monograph, until Jungić (1942–2013) undertook the task. As an art historian, she might have been expected to focus on Giuliano’s close association with Michelangelo, Leonardo, and Raphael. But instead she chose to write a “political biography” (195), not only as a result of Giuliano’s intimate friendship with Machiavelli but also because he was the first dedicatee of The Prince.In the course of her research, Jungić made some remarkable discoveries. One of Machiavelli’s poems, the capitolo pastorale, “Poscia che a l’ombra, sotto questo alloro,” has long been a puzzle. Scholars have disputed whether it was written before November 9, 1494, for Giuliano, forming part of Machiavelli’s “Medicean prehistory.” Alternatively, it also could have been composed—or so it has been speculated—between 1514 and 1518 for Lorenzo, Giuliano’s eldest brother’s son (1492–1519), when he took the reins of Florentine government from Giuliano and ultimately accepted the duchy of Urbino from his other uncle, Pope Leo X (1475–1521), the second son of Lorenzo the Magnificent. Jungić has now definitively proven that Machiavelli wrote the poem for Giuliano at the time of their meeting at Cesare Borgia’s court in Imola during 1502: The allusion to “Cesar, duca alli altri duci,” hitherto taken to mean Julius Caesar, can refer, as Jungić points out, only to Borgia, duke of Valentinois, since Julius Caesar was not a duke and was consistently vilified by Machiavelli. At the end of the poem, Machiavelli declared that he would keep secret his affection for the recipient, an action germane only to Giuliano while a rebel in exile from Florence between 1494 and 1512.Equally puzzling has been the so-called Ricordo ai Palleschi, written by Machiavelli between November 1 and 7, 1512, immediately before he was dismissed from his chancery posts by the restored Medici regime. This text, actually entitled Notate bene questo scripto, was found among documents belonging to the secretariat of Leo X. Hence, it might have been directed to Cardinal Giovanni (as he was titled before his elevation to the papacy) personally (like another memorandum written by Machiavelli to Cardinal Giovanni after September 29, 1512). For her part, Jungić speculates that it was sent to Cardinal Giovanni’s brother, Giuliano.What is more important is the context of Ai Palleschi, once thought to have been Machiavelli’s warning to the Medici about the machinations of the aristocrats who were considered to be responsible for his dismissal from the chancery. The previous regime, headed by the gonfalonier Piero Soderini, with whom Machiavelli had been closely identified, had marginalized these aristocrats. The main theme of Ai Palleschi is that Soderini’s vehement detractors were not working for the benefit of the Medici but were entirely self-serving. Jungić points out, however, that the prominent aristocrats were not arch enemies of Soderini; Jacopo Salviati, their leader, actually received a visit from Soderini on his arrival in Rome, May 1513. The real intractable foes of Soderini were the young radicals who had physically ousted him from power on August 31, 1512. Jungić argues convincingly that this group, not the older Salviati faction, were Machiavelli’s targets in Ai palleschi.Jungić shows that Giuliano, unlike his more extreme brother Giovanni and even yet more militant nephew Lorenzo, was a moderate. Giuliano favored a constitutional republic for Florence, to be dominated by an aristocratic senate. His allies and supporters were the Salviati party. His older brother gradually undermined his position as leader of the Medici regime in Florence, eventually replacing him with the younger Lorenzo in May 1513. Pope Leo X’s new aim was to carve out a permanent principality for Giuliano in the Romagna, on the model of what the Borgia pope, Alexander VI (d. 1503), tried to do for his son Cesare. Machiavelli’s intention in The Prince was not to school the restored Medici in how to be princes of republican Florence but rather to emulate the ruthless example of Cesare Borgia in the Romagna. Jungić gives a new perspective on Machiavelli’s infamous advice—that it is intended to teach his friend Giuliano to put the conventional moderate political order, as upheld by the aristocracy, as well as the traditional moral and political virtues, to one side in order to survive and thrive as a new prince.Not all this book’s revisionist positions are indisputable—for example, the contention that Pietro Boscoli and Agostino Cappoini’s conspiracy of February 1513 was a hoax orchestrated by Cardinal Giovanni. Nevertheless, Jungić’s remarkable book needs to be taken seriously by Machiavelli scholars and Italian Renaissance historians alike.

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