Patronage of Cosimo De Medici in Renaissance Italy

Cosimo De Medici

We know all about the de Medici family - one of the most important dynastic families in Europe and in particular concerning the cultural and artistic life of Italy and so of the continent. And yet, as Dale Kent makes clear in her authoritative (and fascinating) account of the family and in particular of the life of Cosimo De'Medici, we actually know less about the family than we think. Kent argues that common ideas - and common misconceptions -- about the De'Medicis reflect not only flawed knowledge about this family in particular but also more general flawed assumptions about their era and about prevailing attitudes of the time towards artistic patronage and indeed towards art.

Kent's book is as much an ethnographic exploration of the culture and society of fifteenth-century Florence as it is about Cosimo de'Medici himself - although in her telling the man and the historical context are in many ways the same. He would not have been the kind of art patron that he was in another age and (likewise) his era was changed because of the particular kind of man that he was: Florence created Cosimo even as Cosimo created Florence.

Kent argues, as this review of the book notes, that rather than being a rapacious political and banker with little true appreciation for the arts, Cosimo de'Medici was an educated and cultured man whose ability to sponsor important artistic projects was based on both his political and economic power and his real appreciation for the humanistic and neoclassical currents of Florentine Renaissance art and architecture:

How was Cosimo, a businessman and politician, able to appreciate and commission Christian and classical works of such sophistication, skill, and variety? While most scholars have focused on the 1450s and early 1460s, Kent looks at the early 1400s, when regular contact with scholars and artists supplied Cosimo's education. He studied under and was intimate with the humanists Niccoli, Bruni, Poggio, and Traversari, and the classizing artists Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Masaccio, and Donatello. Kent relies mostly on humanist correspondence referring to Cosimo, manuscripts copied for or presented to him, and biographies. She also found a surprising number of documents for the more difficult question of Cosimo's relations with artists. Relying on Albinia De La Mare's study of Cosimo's library, Kent discusses the Christian, classical, and humanist manuscripts that he owned; the dedications to him on manuscripts; and manuscripts ofmoral philosophy and history that he personally annotated (D'Elia 114).

Kent's book is a departure from many other studies of Cosimo de' Medici (as well as of the entire clan) because other scholars have tended to focus on Cosimo de' Medici's political power and his interests as a merchant. But while these elements of his life - his political and financial resources - are certainly a part of the picture that Kent presents, they remain only a part of the picture. And while others have tended to see Cosimo de' Medici's artistic patronage as a type of flamboyance, as a way of both flaunting the wealth that he had accumulated as well as a way of increasing his social position, Kent suggests that there was an different motivation for the man.

It is easy to cast aspersions at the church for being too worldly and too subject to the influence of money, but Kent suggests that there was at least for Cosimo de'Medici an altogether healthy mingling of the sacred and the mundane, as Boland (2000) points out in her review of the book. Cosimo de'Medici helped bridge the gap between the lay and religious worlds by using his worldly fortunes to fund churches, but he also did so by commissioning works like the fresco of the Journey of the Magi from the Medici chapel that is described below:

The chapel frescoes, by Benozzo Gozzoli and completed around 1459, were the culmination of Cosimo's long association with the cult of the Magi. They may be seen as imaging his own spiritual journey as a wealthy and powerful man, who enjoyed great authority in the city, but who in his gifts to the Church made offerings as the Magi did to the Christ child.

On this east fresco, the actual, clearly individuated portraits of the family and their relatives and retainers appear in the cortege following in the train of the young Caspar: Cosimo is in the front rank, mounted on a mule, which could be seen as a symbol of humility, often adopted by abbots and popes, but which family letters record was also an animal members of the de' Medici family rodeon their journeys between Florence and their villas. Cosimo is flanked by his sons Piero, Giovanni and the illegitimate Carlo. The son of Cosimo's Cicassian slave, Carlo is clearly distinguished by his dark skin, and by his exotic features and headdress. Above is the Adoration of the Magi painted around 1440 by Domenico Veneziano, and now in the Staatliche Museum, Berlin. As in the Medici chapel, this representation of the Magi offered an ideal opportunity for the inclusion of portraits of the patron and his friends. In this case the man in black and white at the centre of the group of Magi, standing slightly behind them, as if presenting them to the Holy Family, and to the viewer, portrays Piero de' Medici, the putative patron of the picture. He holds a falcon, his personal emblem and a symbol of the faithful who always return to their heavenly master. In this work the human aspects of the Magi story are emphasised as much as the divine.

This blending of the human and the divine marked Cosimo's work as an art patron as well as much of the culture of Florence at the time and even more broadly much of the early Renaissance church.

While Florence in the early Renaissance was certainly a place of commerce and political intrigue in which attention to social alliances and the ability to spot a good bargain were essential skills for most of those people who would make themselves successful, it was also a place in which the traditional power of the Catholic Church was being invigorated (as much as it was being challenged) by the rising tide of humanistic art and inquiry.

Cosimo de'Medici, like other Florentines of his generation, was both educated and a populist, a man of the world and a man who devout Christian faith guided him through that world, as Edmonds (2000) summarizes in praising Kent's book:

Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) a man to whom patronage was a way of life, was in every respect a devout man. In his library, in addition to the Christian classics there were bibles, books of hours, Latin editions of the classical texts - including the naughty tales of Ovid without which no educated European male could get along. There were also maps of the world - or at least, as much of it as was known.

Cosimo was certainly no pedant. The list of vernacular books in his possession shows that he read what the majority of literate Florentines read. But when it came to classical writing Cosimo was an enthusiast, annotating lavishly his copies of the writings of the orator Cicero.

Cosimo de' Medici - Kent argues - was a part of both of these elements of Florentine culture. He was a man of the world, active in both politics and commerce. But he was also a man of faith, and his patronage of artists and of art was as much motivated by his faith and his spiritual beliefs as by his desire to solidify the financial, political, and social position of himself and his family. Kent argues throughout his book that Cosimo de' Medici devoted substantial resources to the arts as an expression of his devotion to his religion - as well as his devotion to his city, to beauty itself, and to his family. He was able to do this because in Florence during the Renaissance it was possible to combine all of these aspects of life: Commerce and the church could work together, beauty and friendship were easily joined with each other, and politics ran through everything.

The overall portrait that emerges of Cosimo de' Medici is a man who was far less cynical than the stereotype of his whole family would lead us to believe him to be and the complex pleasures that he derived from patronizing the arts as well as the variety of rewards that he drew from doing so tell us a great deal about both this man and his moment in history.

He is also, in Kent's portrait of him, less autocratic in his choice of artistic patronage than might be popularly believed, for while his own tastes were certainly an important part of the choices that he made of artists and works, he was also influenced by broad popular tastes as well:

In addition to patron and artist, Kent stresses the role of audience in determining artistic commissions. Good schools and high literacy made the population of Florence a critical factor for the success of artists, writers, and musicians. From communal projects, such as Brunelleschi's cupola, to religious confraternities, processions, and plays, the Florentine people had a role in establishing taste and culture. Popular poets and musicians competed in the streets and participated in festivals; the best had their songs/poems transcribed and distributed. Performers talked about poverty, social mobility, responsibility, good government, and the libertas and patria of Florence (D-Elai 115).

But it must also be remembered that while Cosimo de'Medici was not a democratic leader in the modern sense of the term, it is also important - as Kent makes clear repeatedly - that the distinction between public and private was narrower in Cosimo's Florence than it is today. Cosimo's private garden, for example, was transformed into a kind of public academy for painters as were the gardens of other de'Medici family members (Jacobs, 2002). The homes and garden of Cosimo deMedici existed in an almost seamless whole with the public commissions that he made.

Together, the collected works "were like a school and academy for young painters and sculptors, as well as for all others who attended the arts of design."16 Michelangelo was among this privileged group.17 The life of Mariotto Albertinelli (1471-1515) mentions another garden, "full of feminine and masculine torsi that were not only lo studio of Mariotto but of all the sculptors and painters of his time," situated "on the side toward San Lorenzo," that is, behind Cosimo's palace. The instructional as well as aesthetic function of these gardens-or rather, this composite garden-best explains the prominent position afforded the portal pictured between the scene of Lorenzo welcoming Michelangelo (presumably to his garden) and the image of the David on the catafalque erected for the great master's obsequies.

Cosimo De'Medicis

Before we explore further the points made in Kent's book - as well as looking at how her work was received by others - we should perhaps pause here briefly to provide an overview of the life of Cosimo de' Medici, who was the progenitors of one of the main lines of the Medici family, which would rule over the independent city-state of Florence from 1434 to 1637.

Cosimo, who came from a relatively prosperous Florentine family, rose to personal power first by the Medici bank to the Council of Constance and then as manager of the finances for the Papacy - where he worked both to increase the revenues to the church as well as to himself, having obtained a monopoly to a group of alum mines from Pius II. Alum was an essential element in the city's financial success since it was used in most of the key dyeing processes in a city that depended upon the textile trade.

He would become the wealthiest man in Florence through this concession as well as through the money made by the family bank, which had branches in all of the key financial and commercial centers of Europe. His influence - both in terms of the amount of gold that he had and the control that his bank had over the entire trading system of Florence - was substantial. His populist attitudes made that power threatening to other established families in the city, and one of these families - the Albizzi - accused him of the capital crime of setting himself above other free citizens. He was imprisoned (although he certainly could have fled) and the death sentence was set aside by an official whom one can only assume was the recipient of at least some portion of the de'Medici gold. That official banished Cosimo de' Medici to Padua and Venice, where his wealth and his contacts assured him an enthusiastic welcome. And at home, in Florence, other members of his family helped to doctor the next set of elections so that the Signoria (the city's council) would come into the hands of de'Medici supporters. Cosimo then returned to the city - and his enemies fled. The de'Medici dynastic principate had begun. As had Cosimo de' Medici's career as a patron of the arts, as Kent (pp. 15-16) argues.

Taking Advantage of the Moment

After his return from exile Cosimo de' Medici made a number of changes in the governing system of Florence that both helped him to consolidate his power and worked to ensure that that power could not be effectively challenged by others. These changes in the system of governance (which made the city somewhat less democratic, although it should be noted that it had not been a substantively democratic place to begin with) allowed him to spend less time and effort on continual consolidations of his political power and allowed him more time to concentrate his energy elsewhere, such as in grand cultural and artistic enterprises.

His belief in the importance of artistic expression, rather than alienating him from the people of Florence as a form of elitist enterprise, in fact drew him closer to the citizens of the city, with whom he shared cultural and artistic touchstones. Cosimo De'Medici's patronage was far more democratic in tone and in effect than it might intuitively seem to be:

Kent examines popular works read by Florentines of all social levels, including vernacular scrapbooks and miscellanies, poetry, devotional manuals and moral exempla, civic traditions, histories, and ethnographies. These often illustrated works formed the intellectual background and tastes of Cosimo and his audience. These common readings reveal that a large population of Florence would have been able to understand the Christian, classical, and literary themes in art. Following Baxandall and recent studies on ekphrasis, Kent demonstrates how devotional works trained people to identify with Christ and to use their minds rather than eyes when viewing religious art, and how rhetorical theories emphasized the relation of word and image. Again in opposition to Charles Hope, Kent argues that art was full of complex meanings and that ordinary people could understand and appreciate these meanings. Patrons, she asserts, responded as much to their audience and popular culture as to their own self-expression (D'Elai 116).

As soon as he has established his base of political power, Cosimo de' Medici began to push forward with his grand plans for architectural and artistic works. Kent stresses the fact that while we might now think of him as primarily a patron of the arts per se, his influence both in his own lifetime and afterwards

Cosimo required undivided power in order to carry out his plans as well as to satisfy his passions, above all his passion for building both secular and religious structures. Because Kent looks at every single one of the artistic and architectural commissions that he made during his life she allows the reader to get a sense of the relative weight of his architectural (compared to his artistic) commissions. The fact that he was both genuinely interested into contributing to the overall quality of life in Florence as well as interested in solidifying his own position tended to incline him to support architectural commissions as these had a far greater public impact than did commissions for paintings and sculptures (although of course he commissioned these as well, and it must also be remembered that architectural commissions - especially of churches - also contained sub-commissions for paintings and other artworks). His sincere dedication to civic improvements was a cornerstone of his patronage, as Boland (2000) notes:

Dale Kent's Cosimo de'Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: the Patron's Oeuvre,(Yale University Press) is exhaustive, full of insight, and liberally illustrated, and is the first comprehensive examination of the whole body of works of art and architecture commissioned by Cosimo and his sons. From the wealth of available documentation illuminating Cosimo de' Medici's life, Ms Kent identifies civic patriotism and devotion as the main themes of his oeuvre, and argues that religious imperatives may well have been more important than political ones in shaping the art for which he was responsible, and for its reception.

Kent presents us with a picture of Cosimo de'Medici as in many ways a man in the right place and time. His own personal ideas were very much reflecting in the general culture of the times - and because of this (and through his commissions) he was in turn able to influence his city - and from Florence the rest of Europe. To understand exactly how and why this is so we must look for a moment to the structure of the Renaissance itself.

The Renaissance began - as is probably true of so many large-scale social changes - both as the result of the accumulation of a number of small changes made by many people acting independently in a range of different arenas of society - merchants and artists, princes and sculptors, prostitutes and winemakers. But it was also given needed impetus by the fall of Constantinople in 1453.

Although it is of course an oversimplification of history to argue that the fall of Rome brought about the Dark Ages and the fall of Constantinople brought about the Renaissance it is not entirely inaccurate to use the destruction of these two great cities as markers for the beginnings of two eras. When Rome was overrun, many of its scholars and artists decamped to the Rome of the East, to the Byzantine Empire. And when Byzantium fell in turn, a millennium later, its scholars gathered together their most valuable possessions - including a number of Greek texts - along with their learning and came back to Italy.