NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

From a Civic World to a Court Society:

Culture, Class, and Politics in Renaissance Florence, 1480-1550.

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of History

By

Nicholas Scott Baker

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2007
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© Copyright by Nicholas Scott Baker 2007

All Rights Reserved
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ABSTRACT

From a Civic World to a Court Society:

Culture, Class, and Politics in Renaissance Florence, 1480-1550.

Nicholas Scott Baker

This dissertation examines the transformation of the city-state of Florence from a republic to a

principality during the first half of the sixteenth century. It explores how this fundamental

change in political organization altered the culture and society of the Florentine office-holding

class. The dissertation describes the course of socio-cultural change as a shift from a civic world

to a courtly one – from a social imagination in which the men of the city’s elite conceived of

themselves as an egalitarian commonwealth of civilian magistrates into one in which they

became courtiers in the personal service of a prince and subject to his grace and favor. The

dissertation argues that, contrary to the Machiavellian paradigm that still predominates in studies

of early-modern political thought, these social worlds and the political systems of republicanism

and monarchy did not exist in binary opposition in Renaissance Italy. Rather they co-existed as

two points on a continuum of political experience. The change from republic to monarchy in

Florence occurred not via a revolutionary break but by a process of re-conceptualization. Many

of the images and ideals of the republican system survived under the principality – but with new

meanings and understandings attached. The dissertation examines these cultural and intellectual

shifts in relation to political events and social changes – arguing that in Renaissance Italy the

cultural, the social, and the political must always be considered and understood as

interdependent.
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This study combines the prosopographical techniques of collective biography with the

close reading and interpretative methods of cultural history. To understand the course of socio-

cultural change in sixteenth-century Florence it focuses on the experiences of members of the

office-holding class born between 1480 and 1500. It traces the meanings that these individuals,

as representative of the broader elite, attached to their experiences through analysis of a wide

variety of materials, both printed and archival – taxation and electoral records, letters and private

diaries, paintings and sculpture, political treatises and contemporary histories. Through analysis

of these sources the dissertation traces how the office-holding class of Florence transformed

themselves from a commonwealth of citizen magistrates into a society of courtiers under a

prince.
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Acknowledgements

Contrary to appearances the work of the historian is anything but a solitary enterprise. Over the

past three years I have, like some Dickensian protagonist, amassed numerous debts of gratitude,

which I now gladly acknowledge. Naturally, all my creditors have a claim only to what is good

and sound in my dissertation – all the errors and problems belong solely to me.

My principal intellectual debt is owed to Edward Muir, my advisor. Ed’s generosity,

enthusiasm, and integrity have made him a wonderful mentor who teaches as much by example

as by word. He has encouraged me to write exactly what I mean and to perceive my own work

with a critical and objective eye. I am grateful also to the other members of my dissertation

committee – Sarah Maza, Ethan Shagan, and Sharon Strocchia – whose candor and intellectual

rigor helped to write more efficiently and effectively.

At Northwestern University I am grateful to Timothy Breen – who taught me a great deal

about the art of writing during my first year as a graduate student – and to Lyle Massey and

Claudia Swan – who taught me to look at and talk about works of art. In the office of the History

Department Paula Blaskowitz, Susan Hall, Laura O’Mara James, and Kryzstof Kozubski helped

to keep the wheels of the university bureaucracy turning in my favor. I am especially grateful to

Kryzs for his invaluable assistance with my many long-distance fellowship applications during

the year I was in Italy.

A Graduate Student Research Grant from the Graduate School of Northwestern

University and additional monies from the History Department financed an initial research trip to

Florence in the summer of 2004. The nine wonderful months that I spent submerged in the

archives and libraries of the city of the Arno in the academic year 2005-06 were made possible
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by a Research Fellowship from the Graduate School of Northwestern University and a grant

from the History Department. Finally, I devoted an entire year to writing free from any

obligation to teach thanks to a Dissertation Year Fellowship from the Graduate School of

Northwestern University.

The staff of the Archivio di Stato and the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Florence and

of the Inter-Library Loan Department of the Northwestern University Library all helped make

the process of research run as smoothly as possible. I am particularly grateful to the functionaries

of the Sala di Studio and Distribuzione in the ASF, who accomodated my mistakes and tolerated

my Italian with patience and good humor.

Generations of scholars have testified to welcoming and collegial atmosphere of the Sala

di Studio in the ASF. I am happy to report that my own experience accords with their judgments.

Indeed, too many people contributed to making the Archivio a pleasant and friendly place for

research to name them all here. But I would be remiss if I did not thank the following scholars

for taking the time to discuss my project and offer their advice (not mention often buying me

lunch into the bargain!): Alison Brown, Judith Brown, John Henderson, Dale Kent, Nerida

Newbigin, Elizabeth Pilliod, Lorenzo Polizzotto, Brenda Preyer (who deserves more than a

passing acknowledgment), Sharon Strocchia (who also deserves a double thank you at the very

least), and Louis Waldman. I am also very grateful to Lia Markey for her assistance when the

hard drive on my iBook died.

Transferring a family of four from Evanston to Florence and back again in the space of

twelve months was no easy task. It would have proved almost insurmountable, I am sure, without

the friendship and generosity of Kathleen and Jim Corydon, Robin and Rick Hain, Sarah

Maddox, Glenda and Ted Nash, Lisa and Garret Ryan, and Christopher Sparshott.
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In proper Ciceronian style I have saved my most important debts to last: those owed to

my family. My parents, Ian and Pam Baker, have provided intellectual encouragement and

emotional and financial support not only through five years of grad school but also throughout

my entire life. Max and Alex have helped me to keep my work in perspective and to remember

that today is always more exciting than the study of someone else’s yesterday. Finally and most

importantly, it is no exaggeration to say that this dissertation would not exist without the

patience, generosity, love, and support of Camilla.

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Contents

List of Illustrations 9

Preface 10

1. Introduction: Culture, Class, and Politics. 11

2. Imagining Florence: The Social World of the Quattrocento Office-Holding Class. 24

3. Between Florence and the World: The Place of the Medici in the Office-Holding Class,
1480-1527. 78

4. Defending Liberty: The reggimento of 1527-30 and the Siege of Florence. 144

5. Re-Fashioning the Common Good: The Struggle for Florence, 1532-37. 205

6. Re-Imagining Florence: The Office-Holding Class Under the Medici Principate

during the 1540s. 273

7. Conclusion: An Essay on the Politico-Cultural Legacy of Renaissance Florence. 324

Appendices
• A: The Generation of 1480 341
• B: Partial Reconstruction of the Office-Holding Class of Florence, ca. 1500 390
• C: The Medici reggimento, 1512-27 407
• D: The reggimento of 1527-30 423
• E: The fuorusciti: Rebels and Exiles, 1530-37 441
• F: Genealogical Tables 451

Bibliography 453
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List of Illustrations

1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius
III 38
2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son 38
3. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Annunciation of the Angel to Zacharias 42
4. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Birth of the Virgin 42
5. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Visitation of the Virgin 44
6. Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple 44
7. Filippino Lippi, The Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Bernard 47
8. Benozzo Gozzoli, Detail from The Journey of the Magi 48
9. Filippino Lippi, Detail from De’ Nerli Altarpiece 57
10. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of Francesco Sassetti with his son Teodoro 72
11. Piero di Cosimo, The Liberation of Andromeda 98
12. Pontormo, Joseph in Egypt 124
13. Pontormo, Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio, pater patriae 126
14. Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier 179
15. Donatello, David 180
16. Pontormo, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints 185
17. Detail of Figure 16 186
18. Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli 254
19. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Il bastoniere 255
20. Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute 257
21. Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book 258
22. Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady in Red 261
23. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Young Man with Gloves 274
24. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Letter 295
25. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Handkerchief 297
26. Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Sword 298
27. Giovanmaria Butteri, Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, John the Baptist, and Five Saints
325
28. Michelangelo Buonarotti, David 331
29. Donatello, David 333
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Preface

Notes on Style and Content

All translations are the author’s, except where noted. The original text of material quoted from

an archival or manuscript source appears in the footnotes.

All dates are given in the modern style: in the sixteenth-century the New Year began in Florence

on 25 March.

The partitive “di” in names indicates descent and stands for “son/daughter of” so the name

Lorenzo di Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici means Lorenzo son of Piero son of Cosimo de’ Medici.

The names of buildings, institutions, and formal offices where they appear in the text in the

original Italian are not italicized. Individual words that appear in the text in the original Italian

are italicized. In both cases a translation appears in parentheses following the word or in a

footnote, when no simple English equivalent exists, at its first usage.

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Chapter One

Introduction: Culture, Class, and Politics.

“Personal and political are interdependent but not one and the same thing. The realm of
imagination is a bridge between them, constantly refashioning one in terms of the other.”
-Azar Nafisi, Reading Lolita in Tehran.

The origins of this dissertation lie in the consideration of paintings produced in Florence during

the late-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries. In an essay from 1985 Elizabeth Cropper,

discussing a series of portraits produced by Bronzino, mused that around 1540 “it was as difficult

to portray a Florentine as to be one.”1 This remark induced some thought about the relationship

between social identity and art, as well as about what it meant to be Florentine during the period

of the Renaissance. The introduction, by means of comparison, of frescos painted by Domenico

Ghirlandaio in the 1480s added a further layer of questions. The images produced by Ghirlandaio

depicted a snapshot of the social world of the late fifteenth century: presenting group portraits of

male and female figures from the elite of Florence in public – often identifiably Florentine –

spaces. Ranks of men, all dressed in the red robes of public office holders, appear prominently in

many of the images. The portraits painted by Bronzino some fifty years later, by contrast,

depicted solitary male figures in enclosed, often private yet still definitely Florentine, spaces.

The men painted by Bronzino wore black and appeared in the pursuit of literature, music, or art.

Even the material context of the images had changed from the 1480s to the 1530s. Ghirlandaio’s

paintings decorated chapels in two of the most prominent churches of Florence: a public display

1
Elizabeth Cropper, “Prolegomena to a New Interpretation of Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Renaissance
Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrogh, et al., (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1985), 157.
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to the widest possible audience. Bronzino’s portraits, instead, presumably hung in domestic

interiors, a permeable but still semi-private space: open to a more restricted viewing public.

Comparing the images produced by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s with those produced by Bronzino

in the 1530s raised questions about changes in the presentation of social identity, as well in

social organization and identity itself, and how these shifts related to political transformations: in

short, questions about the intersections of culture, class, and politics in Renaissance Florence

between the late fifteenth- and early-sixteenth centuries.

Endemic warfare and political turmoil marked the decades between 1494 and 1559 for

the city-states of Italy, as the peninsula became the principal battleground for the dynastic

ambitions of the French and Spanish monarchs. This in turn, formed part of a larger conflict

between the Habsburgs (of Spain and Austria) and the Ottoman Empire for control over the

Mediterranean basin. The experience of Florence in these years ranked among the most volatile:

the city oscillated between more and less restrictive forms of republican government, endured

several violent regime changes, and came close to being sacked by foreign armies on at least

three separate occasions. This turmoil culminated in the collapse of the 250-year old republican

constitution of Florence and the creation of a principality in its place. In 1529, the exiled Medici

family – which had dominated Florentine politics for the better part of a century – allied

themselves with the Habsburg Emperor, Charles V. In August 1530, following a ten-month-long

siege of the city the Florentine government surrendered to an imperial army and accepted the

return of the Medici. Previously the family had maintained their pre-eminence in Florence by

manipulating but not abandoning the republican institutions and traditions. In 1532, however, the

family and their supporters permanently altered the governmental institutions of the city:

abolishing the republican structures and creating, in their place, a hereditary Medici principate.
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This dissertation explores the relationship between this fundamental change in the

political organization of Florence and the shifts in social identity traceable in the paintings by

Ghirlandaio and Bronzino. It tells a story about the change in political culture that accompanied

the shift from a republican to a princely form of government; and how this change altered the

way in which the office-holding class of Florence understood and imagined their social world

and position. The cultural shift that occurred, at its basic level, involved a transition from a civic

to a courtly culture: from a socio-political organization and imagination in which the office-

holding class of Florence were civilian magistrates with ultimate control over the decision-

making processes (in which, they were – in essence- the government of the city) to a system in

which the city’s elite became appointed officials and courtiers subject to the decisions of a

prince. The analysis and discussion in this dissertation focuses on how this change in political

culture, with its accompanying shift in social imagination, occurred. It examines how members

of the Florentine office-holding class understood and gave meaning to their experiences.

Accounting for the experiences of Florence in the sixteenth-century became a

fundamental problem for early-modern European political thought due in a large part to the

profile of two Florentine thinkers: Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini. Both

members of the office-holding class who lived through most of the period of turmoil in the city

(Machiavelli died in 1527 and Guicciardini in 1540), these men distilled their experiences into

political writings. In their thought they grappled, principally, with the need to reconcile the

republican principles of liberty and equality with the requirements of social order and effective

government.2 More recently, Florence’s republican experiment and the works of both

2
See principally, but not exclusively: Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed.
Roberto Palmarocchi, (Bari: Laterza, 1932); Francesco Guicciardini, Scritti politici e ricordi, ed. Roberto
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Machiavelli and Guicciardini have attracted the interest of some of the leading intellectual

historians of political thought – such as Felix Gilbert, John Pocock, and Quentin Skinner.3 The

interpretations of these scholars, and others, have considered the Florentine experience in terms

of a Machiavellian paradigm, which posited republics and principalities as antithetical. This

conceptualization understood the events of the sixteenth century in Florence in terms of a

struggle between republican liberty and Medici tyranny, posed as binary opposites, and missed

the more nuanced reading of Guicciardini – who saw the two as different means to similar ends

to be judged by results not institutions or ideologies. More profoundly, most of the scholarly

consideration has focused on the contribution that Florence’s neo-Roman republicanism had on

the development of later political ideas and practices, rather than on its immediate cultural

context. The Florentine influence on what Pocock called “the Atlantic republican tradition” – the

emergence of republican ideas in seventeenth-century England and eighteenth-century America –

in particular, has dominated the discussion.4 Despite its eventual failure, intellectual historians

and political scientists have considered the Florentine republic – largely as elucidated by

Palmarocchi, (Bari: Laterza, 1933); Niccoló Machiavelli, Il principe, ed. Mario Martelli, (Rome: Salerno, 2006); and
Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed. Francesco Bausi. 2 vols. (Rome: Salerno,
2001).
3
Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence, (New York:
Norton, 1984); J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of
Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., Vol. One: The Renaissance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
See also Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare
Cristolfini, (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970).
4
In addition to the works cited immediately above see also: David Armitage, “Empire and Liberty: A Republican
Dilemma,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine
Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62,
no. 4 (2001); Paul A. Rahe, ed., Machiavelli’s Liberal Republican Legacy, (New York: Cambridge University Press,
2006); and Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
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Machiavelli and Guicciardini – as an essential stepping-stone to the emergence of pluralist

democracy in North America and Europe.5

This dissertation tells a different story – and it does so because it does not analyze the

intellectual contributions of Machiavelli and Guicciardini but rather the social, political and

cultural contexts in which both men lived and worked. In doing so, it demonstrates that the

politico-cultural legacy of Renaissance Florence extends beyond the “Atlantic republican

tradition” to its antithesis: the authoritarian state, whether republican or monarchical. The

experiences of Florence during the first-half of the sixteenth century help to explain, not only the

eventual development of participatory government in Europe, but also the attraction of

authoritarian regimes and the bases of their popular support and success.

Contrary to the Machiavellian paradigm, Renaissance republics and principalities did not

exist in a binary opposition. Rather they co-existed as two points on a continuum of political

experience. The court society of the Medici principate did not destroy or replace the civic world

of fifteenth-century Florence; it evolved from it. By focusing not on institutions or ideologies but

on the intersections of culture, society, and politics this dissertation demonstrates that concepts

central to the republican civic tradition – liberty, the common good, public service – served to

create, promote, and bolster the Medici principality in the 1530s and 1540s. The office-holding

class did not abandon these concepts – which had been central to their social identity for over

5
Perhaps the biggest claims in this tradition were made by Robert Putnam – who argued that the medieval
communes of north-central Italy constituted the direct precursors to the practices of everyday democracy and
civicism in twentieth-century Italy: Robert D. Putnam with Robert Leonardi and Raffaella Y. Nanetti, Making
Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 121-51. A forum
discussing, debating, and critiquing Putnam’s ideas appeared in two issues of The Journal of Interdisciplinary
History (Vol. 29, Numbers 3 and 4). Among the many articles in this forum, in specific relation to the communal
traditions of Renaissance Italy see: Gene A. Brucker, “Civic Traditions in Premodern Italy,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999); and Edward Muir, “The Sources of Civil Society in Italy,” Journal of
Interdisciplinary History 29, no. 3 (1999). See, in turn, the response to Brucker and Muir in Mark Jurdjevic, “Trust
in Renaissance Electoral Politics,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 34, no. 4 (2004).
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two centuries. Instead they re-conceptualized their understandings of liberty, the common good,

and public service in ways that supported their own collective interests as well as furthering the

creation of a government antithetical to Florentine traditions.

In making this broad argument, the analysis addresses three central issues – culture, class,

and politics. The dissertation does not examine these areas in isolation, but focuses on the

intersections between them. Indeed one of the central conceptual contentions of the dissertation

is that the cultural, the social, and the political cannot be considered apart in Renaissance Italy

but must always and necessarily be understood as interdependent and interrelated.

Odd as it may sound, given the prominent place that Florence holds in the cultural canon

of Western Europe, the historical analysis of Florentine culture during the Renaissance has

remained strangely underdeveloped.6 Certainly art historians have produced and continue to

produce reams of discussion about artists and art works produced in the city between the

fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. But these analyses, understandably and properly, devote their

energies toward art historical questions – such as iconography, style, attribution, or influence.

Only rarely do these works pose broader historical questions or attempt to link the realm of the

artistic to the social and political contexts of Renaissance Florence.7 Conversely, historians of the

6
I am talking, at this moment, about culture in a more traditional, artistic, sense rather than in the anthropological
sense that dominates in current historical discourse. But even in this latter sense, of cultural history or history after
the “cultural turn,” the field of Florentine studies has lagged behind the curve of historical interest, with the notable
exception of Richard Trexler’s groundbreaking study of public ritual – Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in
Renaissance Florence, (Ithaca NY & London: Cornell University Press, 1980; reprint, 1991). – and a few more
recent studies, see for example: William J. Connell and Giles Constable, Sacrilege and Redemption in Renaissance
Florence: The Case of Antonio Rinaldeschi, (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2005);
Silvia Mantini, Lo spazio sacro della Firenze medicea: Trasformazioni urbane e cerimoniali pubblici tra
Quattrocento e Cinquecento, (Florence: Loggia de’ Lanzi, 1995); and Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships:
Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence, (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
See also the works listed at note 9 below, which analyze cultural history in both senses of the term.
7
See recently Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence,
(University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004); and Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols:
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Florentine Renaissance, until very recently, have focused their attention on questions of political,

social, or intellectual interest devoid of any consideration of how these elements intersected with

the cultural production of the city. Over a quarter century ago, Edward Muir (a historian of

Renaissance Venice) noted that scholars of Florence would eventually have to unite their socio-

political interests with the realm of the cultural and attempt to answer the central question of how

a relatively small city in central Italy managed to produce such an outpouring of artistic and

literary production in the space of two or three generations.8 Only in the last decade have

historians (and some art historians) given systematic and sustained consideration to the links

between Florentine socio-political organization and cultural production.9

This dissertation makes a contribution to this nascent interest in the connections between

Renaissance Florence’s artistic production and its socio-political structures. Paintings provided

the initial starting point for the research and thinking that led to this study, and an image or series

of images frames each chapter. The dissertation argues that changes in the artistic presentation of

members of the Florentine office-holding class (from Ghirlandaio’s frescos in the 1480s to

Bronzino’s portraits in the 1530s) cannot be understood solely in terms of shifts in style or

function. The artistic production of the period between 1480 and 1550 existed in dialogue with

Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,
2002). See also the venerable, and now dated, contribution of Martin Wackernagel, The World of the Florentine
Renaissance Artist: Projects and Patrons, Workshop and Art Market, trans. Alison Luchs, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981).
8
Edward Muir, “New Light on Old Numbers: The Political and Cultural Implications of Les Toscans et leurs
familles,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 11, no. 3 (1981): 485.
9
In addition to the monographs by Burke and Randolph listed above, at note 7, see also: Giovanni Ciappelli and
Patricia Lee Rubin, eds., Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000); Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, eds., Renaissance Florence: A Social History, (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2006); Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s
Oeuvre, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000); and F.W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of
Magnificence, (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).
 18
the social and political changes that occurred in these years – reflecting and responding to them,

but also helping to shape and fashion them in turn. In addition to possible devotional, aesthetic,

or personal motives the patronage and creation of an artwork in Renaissance Florence was also

always and necessarily a political and a social act. The clearest expression of this lay in the

profound intertwining between cultural production and social organization in the city: between

culture and class.

One of the principal reasons why the integration of Florence’s cultural production into

the narratives of the city’s social and political history has such importance lies in the central role

that the material culture and built environment had in determining social place and identity

during the Renaissance: in determining class.10 The use of the term “class” deserves some

explanation in reference to pre-modern Europe. The almost overwhelming legacy of Marxian

thought conditions historians – and other scholars – to think of class as a modern phenomenon,

as a creation or discovery of the nineteenth century. This traditional paradigm would explain

European social organization prior to the French Revolution in terms of status or estates. The

shift from a society of estates to a society of classes, from a political economy of privilege to one

of property, constitutes an essential process of modernization, according to this viewpoint. 11 In

the wake of the political failure of Marxism, and therefore also its historical failure, historical

10
Scholars have just begun to explore the symbiotic relationship between culture and socio-political organization in
Florence: Burke, Changing Patrons; Jill Burke, “Visualizing Neighborhood in Renaissance Florence: Santo Spirito
and Santa Maria del Carmine,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006); Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici; and Dale Kent,
“Michele del Giogante’s House of Memory,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence., ed. William J.
Connell, (Berkeley, Los Angles & London: University of California Press, 2002). See also the essays by Michael
Linghor, Stephen Milner, John Najemy, and Sharon Strocchia in Crum and Paoletti, eds., Renaissance Florence.
11
See for example Roland Mousnier, Social Hierarchies: 1450 to the Present, trans. Peter Evans, (London: Croom
Helm, 1973). Note, that even scholars who avoid or disavow Marxian terminology and concepts still tend to
associate class and the emergence of class consciousness with modernity: see for example Leonore Davidoff and
Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850, Revised ed., (London &
New York: Routledge, 2002); and William H. Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from
the Old Regime to 1848, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).
 19
discourse needs to dispose of the correlation between class and modernity to find a more flexible

understanding. This is particularly true for scholars of pre-industrial Europe, who – as Thomas

Brady pointed out almost thirty years ago – need to conceive of society in terms of both class and

status simultaneously.12 This dissertation depicts the society of Renaissance Florence as

consisting of two broad classes – simply put, those with access to politico-economic power and

those without – within which multiple status groups existed.

This dissertation argues that the office-holding class of Florence, especially among the

higher status groups, had a profound, existential, connection to the physical city. Members of the

city’s elite fashioned and expressed social roles, built relationships, and reinforced their position

and preeminence through the construction of family palaces, the decoration of chapels, the

commissioning of portraits and paintings. Beyond this immediate and rather obvious level of

connection, however, a much more profound sense of belonging operated. The office-holding

class of Florence was a fluid body – individuals and families could rise and fall within its various

status groups, and new members constantly entered the class by obtaining citizenship.

Membership was not determined by statute, blood, or title. This meant that members of the

higher status groups, the patricians, in order to justify their social, political, and economic

predominance had to inscribe themselves upon the material fabric of the city. In turn, the built

environment reproduced and reinforced the prevailing social organization. Without the city of

Florence the office-holding class had no status. This had significant effects on the political

behavior of the Florentine elite. In order to protect their social position the office-holding class

had to preserve the physical and political independence of Florence.

12
Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555, (Leiden: Brill, 1978), 21-33.
 20
At its heart then, this dissertation is a political history. But it is not a history of

institutions, ideologies, or personnel but a history of political culture: a history of the values and

expectations of the office-holding class, and how these values and expectations changed. The

institutional political history of Renaissance Florence has received a great deal of attention from

scholars.13 As such the narrative of this dissertation avoids lengthy digressions about such details

– with the exception of an analysis of the institutional changes wrought between 1530 and 1537,

which have remained obscure even to specialists of Florentine history. It focuses instead on how

the office-holding class of the city experienced and understood the structures and processes of

Florentine politics; how they expressed these understandings in letters, paintings, and practices;

how these understandings – and the values and expectations that conditioned them – altered in

relation to changes in the same political structures. This dissertation offers a contribution to the

small, but growing, number of studies of Florentine political culture during the Renaissance.14

13
A by-no-means exhaustive sample of books only includes: Antonio Anzilotti, La costituzione interna dello Stato
Fiorentino sotto il duca Cosimo I de’ Medici, (Florence: Francesco Lumachi, 1910); Antonio Anzilotti, La crisi
costituzionale della Repubblica fiorentina, (Rome: Multigrafica, 1969); Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early
Renaissance Florence, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); Gene A. Brucker, Florentine Politics and
Society, 1343-1378, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962); H.C. Butters, Governors and Government in
Early Sixteenth-Century Florence, 1502-1519, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); Giorgio Cadoni, Lotte
politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502, (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo,
1999); Roslyn Pesman Cooper, Pier Soderini and the Ruling Class in Renaissance Florence, (Goldbach: Keip
Verlag, 2002); Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici, (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese,
1976); Guidubaldo Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni politiche nella Repubblica Fiorentina dal 1494 al 1512, 3
vols., (Florence: Olschki, 1992); Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434, (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1978); R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-
1790, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the
Medici (1434-1494), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966); and J.N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine
Republic, 1512-1530, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
14
Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1991); John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400,
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in
Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); and Trexler, Public Life. Two works produced before historians
began to talk about the cultural or identify political culture as an object of analysis offer what can be described as
politico-cultural arguments: Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and
Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, Second ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966);
and Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, (Princeton:
 21
This dissertation argues that the fundamental change in political organization that

occurred in Florence during the first half of the sixteenth century can only be fully

comprehended in terms of culture. Such a dramatic reorganization of the institutions and

structures of the city had to occur with the office-holding class it could not simply be imposed

upon them by the Medici and the Emperor Charles V.15 Understanding the course of Florentine

political history in this period therefore necessitates a narrative that accounts for the experiences

of the city’s elite and the meanings they gave to these experiences. It requires explaining how

these meanings influenced the course of political change, and how in turn political events shaped

the understandings of the office-holding class. In this intersection of politics, class, and culture

the questions provoked by the comparison of Bronzino’s portraits from the 1530s with

Ghirlandaio’s frescos from fifty years earlier find their answers.

The central methodological problem for this dissertation was finding a means to access

how the people who experienced the transformation of Florence from a republic into a principate

understood this transition and how they gave meaning to their experiences. The research began

with a deployment of a broad prosopographical method in order to identify individuals active in

the political life of the city. Rather than focus on handpicked individuals or on one or more

Princeton University Press, 1970). Several works from fields beyond Florentine studies have influence my own
thought about political culture: Richard J. Evans, Rituals of Retribution: Capital Punishment in Germany, 1600-
1987, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); François Furet, Interpreting the French Revolution, trans. Elborg
Foster, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French
Revolution, (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); and Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in
Renaissance Venice, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).
15
Compare with two analogous arguments made about processes of political change in Peter Fritzsche, Germans
Into Nazis, (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1998); and Ethan H. Shagan, Popular Politics
and the English Reformation, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
 22
16
families – methods deployed previously by historians of Florence to answer various questions -

this technique enabled the research to consider a wider range of possible experiences. The end

result of this process, as well as a more detailed discussion of it, appears in Appendix A as a

database of seventy-nine individuals. This database provided a lens through which the otherwise

overwhelming mass of paper in the Archivio di Stato in Florence could be filtered.

This prosopographical technique provided a means to access a wide spectrum of

experiences, and so a broad array of interpretations, of the political transformation of Florence

between 1480 and 1550. At the same time, however, it suffered from the usual limitations of the

method.17 Readers will notice, at first glance, that all of the seventy-nine individuals in the

database are males from the highest status groups of the office-holding class. In a certain sense

this is inevitable. This study explicitly focuses on the experiences and understandings of

individuals drawn from the office-holding class involved in the public life of the city. The social

and political worlds of the Florentine elite during the Renaissance were hyper-masculine

constructs that actively excluded not only women, but also slaves, foreigners, youths, and all

men who did not meet the economic and social criteria for office holding. As a result, the sources

for studying the political culture of the city reside to a greater extent, although not exclusively, in

exchanges between elite males. The work of Samuel Cohn, David Rosenthal, Natalie Tomas, and

16
Three works, in particular, that deployed such a method concetrate on the same period as my own work: Melissa
Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980); Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine
Citizen and Medici Servant, (London: Athlone Press, 1972); and Mark Jurdjevic, “Citizens, Subjects, and Scholars:
The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1608” (PhD, Northwestern University, 2002). See also, on
different questions: Paula Clarke, The Soderini and the Medici: Power and Patronage in Fifteenth-Century
Florence, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Richard A. Goldthwaite, Private Wealth in Renaissance
Florence: A Study of Four Families, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968); F.W. Kent, Household and
Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and Rucellai, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1977); and Sergio Tognetti, Il banco Cambini: Affari e mercati di una compagnia mercantile-
bancaria nella Firenze del XV secolo, (Florence: Olschki, 1999).
17
See the nuanced critique in Lawrence Stone, “Prosopography,” Daedalus 100, no. 1 (1971).
 23
Richard Trexler, however, reminds scholars that women of all social estates, as well as men

deprived of access to public office still engaged with and experienced the political realm.18 The

stories of how the change from the republic to the monarchy affected the urban plebeians, the

peasantry of the Florentine dominion, and women from all walks of life, however, must await

another day to be told.

The story that this dissertation tells recounts how men of the office-holding class

experienced the transition from the civic world of the Florentine republic to the court society of

the Medici principate. Their experiences, and the meanings they attached to them, reveal that the

political cultures of Renaissance republics and monarchies were not antithetical; that the

boundaries between them were permeable. Significant changes occurred in the creation of the

Medici principality during the 1530s and 1540s, but not a radical or revolutionary break. The

same images and concepts that had featured prominently in the republican tradition of Florence

served to justify and aid the abolition of the republic’s institutions and the formation of a

monarchical system in its place. This failure of the Florentine republic, and the manner in which

the Medici principate emerged, suggest that the political heritage of Renaissance Italy extends

beyond the pluralist and liberal democratic traditions with which scholars have most readily

associated it.

18
Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and Rebellion, 1384-1434, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1999); Samuel K. Cohn, The Laboring Classes in Renaissance Florence, (New York: Academic
Press, 1980); David Rosenthal, “Big Piero, the Empire of the Meadow, and the Parish of Santa Lucia: Claiming
Neighborhood in the Early Modern City,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006); David Rosenthal, “The
Genealogy of Empires: Ritual Politics and State Building in Early Modern Florence,” I Tatti studies: Essays in the
Renaissance 8 (1999); David Rosenthal, “The Spaces of Plebian Ritual and the Boundaries of Transgression,” in
Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006); Tomas, The Medici Women; and Richard C. Trexler, Power and Dependence in Renaissance Florence,
3 vols., (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1993).
 24

Chapter Two

Imagining Florence:

The Social World of the Late Quattrocento Office-Holding Class.

During the decade of the 1480s, Domenico Ghirlandaio and his workshop decorated chapels

belonging to the Sassetti and Tornabuoni families with elaborate fresco cycles. The resulting

images are among the most brilliant and memorable creations from late fifteenth-century

Florence. Ghirlandaio and his assistants interwove biblical and hagiographic narratives with

scenes and figures from contemporary life. In this way, the frescos served a purpose beyond their

immediate devotional context by reflecting and reproducing the social world of the office-

holding class in Florence at the end of the Quattrocento. The ranks of mature men dressed in the

red robes of state, the elegantly attired females, the potentially disruptive youths lingering on the

peripheries, the emphasis given to appearance, the articulation of gendered divides, and the

indication of bonds of family and friendship all combined in Ghirlandaio’s paintings to give

expression to an imagined community that was produced by the social and political organization

of the city, and so in turn reinforced and reproduced the same.

Societies do not exist solely in institutions, practices, economic functions, or relationships

and networks. They exist also in the realm of the imagination.1 The individuals and collectivities

1
My most obvious debt here is to Benedict Anderson: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Second ed., (London & New York: Verso, 1991). But my thinking about the
relationship between the social and the imaginary has also been influenced by Bronislaw Baczko, Les imaginaires
sociaux: Mémoires et espoirs collectifs, (Paris: Payot, 1984); Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans.
Richard Nice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the
French Revolution, (Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984); and Sarah Maza, The Myth of
the French Bourgeoisie: An Essay on the Social Imaginary, 1750-1850, (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard
University Press, 2003). Specifically on social imagination in Renaissance Italy see: Jacques Le Goff,
“L’immaginario urbano nell’Italia medievale (secoli v-xv),” in Storia d’ Italia, Annali 5: Il paesaggio, ed. Cesare
De Seta, (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1982); Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Practiced Place,”
 25

that form any society do not perceive their social world only in terms of objective structures.

They also imagine it and idealize it. This imagination – most clearly and usually expressed in

stories, images, rituals, beliefs, values, and expectations – is not purely subjective; but functions

as both a product and a producer of the material and more objective manifestations of

community. The form of government, nature of the economy, marriage and kinship practices,

and a myriad of other factors, all work to shape the social imagination and are in turn shaped by

it. Of course, not all the members or groups of any given society imagine their world in the same

way. The imagined community expressed by the Ghirlandaio frescos was but one of probably

several imagined communities that existed in fifteenth-century Florence.2 The images in the

Sassetti and Tornabuoni chapels depicted a limited, gendered, and specific imaginary – that of

the city’s office-holding class; and more precisely, of the elite orders of that class: the patricians

of Florence.

A principal socio-political division existed in Florence, as in all of Europe during the

early modern period, that divided the city into two broad classes: those with access to political

and economic influence – the office-holding class – and those without – the popolo minuto (little

people). The line of demarcation between these two groups was citizenship – a gendered, social,

and economic concept in Renaissance Florence. The citizens of the city constituted the office-

holding class. Only males over thirty-five years of age, enrolled in one of the city’s twenty-one

in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2006); and Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the Italian Renaissance,
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007).
2
See for example the robust subaltern community and social life revealed in Samuel K. Cohn, The Laboring Classes
in Renaissance Florence, (New York: Academic Press, 1980); David Rosenthal, “Big Piero, the Empire of the
Meadow, and the Parish of Santa Lucia: Claiming Neighborhood in the Early Modern City,” Journal of Urban
History 32, no. 5 (2006); David Rosenthal, “The Genealogy of Empires: Ritual Politics and State Building in Early
Modern Florence,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 8 (1999); and David Rosenthal, “The Spaces of
Plebian Ritual and the Boundaries of Transgression,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum
and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
 26

guilds (arti), who paid their taxes and whose ancestors had done so for at least thirty years could

become citizens. These mature men constituted the minority of Florence’s actual population

privileged with the possibility of holding office in the commune. A whole series of, often

overlapping, status groups or estates existed within this office-holding class – fluid categories

that distinguished grades of social, economic, and political prestige within the broader confines

of the class.3 These distinctions included the socio-economic gulf that separated men belonging

to one of the fourteen minor guilds from those enrolled in one of the seven major arti who

possessed, by statute, a majority on all important decision-making bodies in the city’s

government. Other estates included those distinguishing men from magnate lineages –

technically barred from office holding since 1293 – as well as the new men (gente nuova or novi

cives), those whose ancestors had held the highest executive positions of Florence only after

1343.4

In 1484, Piero di Jacopo Guicciardini – father of the historian and political theorist

Francesco – distinguished five estates within the office-holding class of Florence.5 At one

extreme, he placed the old noble houses of Florence, such as the Bardi and the Rossi – many of

3
On the need for historians to consider the social organization of medieval and early-modern Europe simultaneously
in terms of class and status see Thomas A. Brady, Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg, 1520-1555,
(Leiden: Brill, 1978), 24-31. See also the discussion about class, citizenship, and urban populations in Sergio
Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico nello stato-città medievale, (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1978), 6-8.
4
On the original definition of “magnate” and the purpose of the 1293 Ordinances of Justice, in which the term was
coined, see Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a Medieval Commune, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1991), Part Three especially. Within fifty-years or so of the original legal distinction the
term became a mechanism for barring political enemies in the factional wrangling of the Trecento. It fell into
abeyance in the early fifteenth century, and most magnate lineages recovered their political rights prior to 1450. On
the changing meaning of “magnate”, as well as the definition of gente nuova see Gene A. Brucker, Florentine
Politics and Society, 1343-1378, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962). It is worth emphasizing that I am not
using “class” in a Marxian sense, as determined by the material conditions of existence, but rather as a label for
identifying and demarcating a definable and coherent socio-political collectivity within a society.
5
Reprinted in Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434-1494), (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1966), 322-23.
 27

which had endured political bans as magnates following 1293. At the other extreme he

positioned the “ignoble” – artisans and other minor guildsmen who were eligible to sit on the

Signoria, the supreme executive body of the commune, but had not done so. Just above this

group came “the more noble artisans” as well as families belonging to the major guilds who had

only recently had a member win a seat on the Signoria. Immediately below the noble magnate

lineages, Guicciardini placed the “ancient noble popolani” – the heirs of those lineages that had

won of the political struggles of the late thirteenth century. This category included Guicciardini’s

own family as well as lineages such as the Albizzi, the Ricci, and the Corsini. Finally, at the

median point of the spectrum, he positioned those lineages “which although not yet noble,

nonetheless are not entirely ignoble, and that, although new, have nevertheless enjoyed all the

dignities [of public office].” This last estate contained families such as the Serristori and the

Lioni.

Guicciardini’s description underscored the fluidity of social position within the office-

holding class at the end of the Quattrocento. He noted that the second lowest estate consisted of

men “recently exited” from the ranks of the very lowest status. His emphasis that the median

estate was “not yet noble” implicitly acknowledged that its members could, in time, achieve

nobility. The yardstick that Guicciardini used for measuring the social place of these emergent

men was office holding. The lowest of the five estates contained men who had their names

included in the electoral rolls for the Signoria, but had not enjoyed the office itself. Above these

men came those who had only recently obtained a seat of the executive of the commune. The

median estate contained families that obtained regular representation in the most significant

public offices, but that could not claim a history of some two centuries of representation, such as

their social superiors possessed. Only when discussing the two groups that he declared to be
 28

“noble” did Guicciardini ignore political offices: in his eyes, the summits of social and political

prominence were indistinguishable. No need existed to relate the office holding of the two noble

estates because it went, axiomatically, with their nobility.

These two noble estates formed what is most conveniently described as the patriciate of

Florence: lineages whose social and political longevity assured their prominence and had

obtained a kind of eternity.6 As with all social categories in the city the constitution of the

patriciate remained fluid rather than closed. Beyond a minority of some twenty families who

held their position unyieldingly from the decade of the 1280s, its make-up altered from

generation to generation as political and economic fortunes rose and fell.7 This makes the task of

defining the membership of the patrician estate a difficult proposition, and one limited to short

periods of time only.8 Throughout the following study the terms patrician or patriciate will refer

6
On the use of the terms patrician and patriciate to describe urban elites in early modern Europe see, Marino
Berengo, “Patriziato e nobilità: il caso veronese,” Rivista storica italiana 87, no. 3 (1975); Brady, Ruling Class, 55-
56; Peter Burke, Venice and Amsterdam: A Study of Seventeenth-Century Elites, (London: Temple Smith, 1974), 15;
Alexander Francis Cowan, The Urban Patriciate: Lübeck and Venice, 1580-1700, (Cologne & Vienna: Böhlau
Verlag, 1986), 3-4; and Robert B. Notestein, “The Patrician,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 9, no.
2 (1968). See also the less self-reflective, but still illustrative, use of the terms in James S. Amelang, Honored
Citizens of Barcelona: Patrician Culture and Class Relations, 1490-1714, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1986); Gerald Strauss, Nuremberg in the Sixteenth Century: City Politics and Life between Middle Ages and Modern
Times, Second ed., (Bloomington & London: Indiana University Press, 1976); and Charles Zika, “Nuremberg: The
City and its Culture in the Early Sixteenth Century,” in Exorcising Our Demons: Magic, Witchcraft and Visual
Culture in Early Modern Europe, (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2003). Florentines, in the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries, rarely used the term “patrician,” preferring labels such as ottimati (the best or excellent ones) or uomini da
bene (gentlemen). For two examples of its contemporary usage, however, see the letters addressed to Piero di
Niccolò Ridolfi as “patritio fiorentino,” in the early 1520s: ASF, Acquisti e Doni, 68: 27 and 28. See also Jacopo
Nardi’s reference to “la volontà delli ottimati e patrizi” in Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore
Gelli. 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2: 15.
7
Compare with the situations in Barcelona (prior to 1510), Amsterdam, and Lübeck as described in Amelang,
Honored Citizens, 24-52; Burke, Venice and Amsterdam, 27; and Cowan, The Urban Patriciate, 39-48.
8
See, for example, the widely differing descriptions of the constitution of the Florentine patriciate offered in Samuel
Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato: 1530-1610” (PhD, University of
California, Berkeley, 1969); Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The Florentine Ruling Group Under the “governo popolare”,
1494-1512,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History VII (New Series) (1985); R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence
of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); and
 29

to those lineages (singly or as a collective) that came the closest to realizing the social, political,

and material presence imagined in Domenico Ghirlandaio’s frescos during the late fifteenth and

early sixteenth centuries.9

This chapter analyzes the social world and imagination of the office-holding class at the

end of the fifteenth century. It demonstrates how closely the identity of the city’s elite

intertwined with the republican system of government and its attendant civic humanist

mythology during this period. Despite the lengthy predominance of the Medici family during the

fifteenth century Florence the political culture and social imagination of the office-holding class

remained firmly civic in its nature. The men of the office-holding class imagined themselves as a

self-reproducing egalitarian community of civilian magistrates, dedicated to the service of the

common good of Florence. They inscribed this socio-political imagination and organization on

the physical substance of Florence – in palaces, churches, and the names of streets – reflecting

and reproducing the predominant order and so preserving their own place in Florence.

Francesco di Tommaso Sassetti and Giovanni di Francesco Tornabuoni, respectively,

commissioned the fresco cycles completed by Ghirlandaio during the 1480s. Both men belonged

to the office-holding class and were prominent associates of the Medici family, which had

dominated Florence since 1434. Sassetti worked as the general manager of the Medici bank from

1463 until his death. He served on the balìe of 1471 and 1480, the plenipotentiary councils

through which the oligarchic party, led by the Medici, controlled the city’s government. His

Anthony Molho, Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence, (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University
Press, 1994).
9
See Appendix B.
 30

daughters married into the Corsini, Carnesecchi, Capponi, Pucci, and de’ Nerli lineages.10

Tornabuoni managed the crucial Roman branch of the Medici commercial empire from 1464

until 1494, which explains his relative absence from public office in Florence. His brother

Filippo, however, served on both the balìe of 1471 and 1480 as well as being one of members of

the Settanta (the Council of Seventy) at is inception in 1480. Giovanni and Filippo’s sister,

moreover, was the wife of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici and the mother of Lorenzo il Magnifico

de’ Medici, the men who headed the Medici family from 1464 to 1469 and from 1469 to 1492,

respectively. The Tornabuoni were a branch of the magnate Tornaquinci lineage that had

changed their name in order to reclaim political rights in the city.11

Sassetti and Tornabuoni were not only professional associates, social peers, and

neighbors (both residing in the Lion Bianco district of Santa Maria Novella) but also rivals in

their chapel building enterprises. The Sassetti family had held patronage rights over the altar in

the main chapel of the Dominican basilica Santa Maria Novella until Giovanni Tornabuoni

outmaneuvered and outbid his colleague to gain control of the entire chapel.12 Perhaps Sassetti

obtained some measure of satisfaction in completing his chapel, relocated to Santa Trinita, first:

Ghirlandaio and his assistants painted the Sassetti chapel between 1479 and 1485, completing the

Tornabuoni cycle immediately afterwards between 1485 and 1490.

10
On Sassetti’s commercial career see Raymond de Roover, The Rise and Decline of the Medici Bank, 1397-1494,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). On his presence on the balìe see Rubinstein, The Government of
Florence. On his daughters see Eve Borsook and Johannes Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio at Santa
Trinita, Florence: History and Legend in a Renaissance Chapel, (Doornspijk: Davaco, 1981), 38-41; and Jean K.
Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2000), 230-36,
Cat. 16.
11
On Tornabuoni’s commercial career see Roover, Rise and Decline. On the office holding of his brother, Filippo di
Francesco Tornabuoni, see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence.
12
Patricia Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence,” in Patronage, Art, and
Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F.W. Kent and Patricia Simons, (Canberra/Oxford: Humanities Research Centre,
Australian National University/Oxford University Press, 1987).
 31

The commissioning of artists to decorate family chapels by men such as Sassetti and

Tornabuoni constituted more than an act of conspicuous consumption, a complex of motives and

desires operated in such an enterprise in a sustained and unified manner. As Dale Kent has

observed, Giovanni Rucellai’s oft-repeated dictum that he indulged in his mid-fifteenth century

building program “for the honor of God, the honor of the city, and the memory of myself”

reflected one cohesive impulse not three separate or competing desires.13 Giovanni Tornabuoni

echoed Rucellai in reference to the chapel at Santa Maria Novella, stating that its decoration

represented “an act of piety and love of God, to the exaltation of his house and family and the

enhancement of the said church and chapel.”14 The impulse to build and ornament public and

private edifices that so distinguishes Florence during the Renaissance involved a process of self-

definition for the patricians who acted upon it.15 In addition to creating the wealth of material

objects that still draw crowds of tourists to the city on the Arno, men such as Sassetti and

Tornabuoni constructed social identities and power relationships in bricks and mortar, in plaster

and paint.

In Italian the English term patronage is served by two distinct words: mecenatismo

(patronage of the arts) and clientalismo (political patronage and clientage). In the fifteenth

13
Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre, (New Haven & London:
Yale University Press, 2000), 9-13.
14
Cited in Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel,” 241. The translation is Simons’ own.
15
This is the central point of two recent lavish studies of Florentine patronage; see Jill Burke, Changing Patrons:
Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence, (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press,
2004); and Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici. On the relationship between material culture, consumption, and social status
see: Baczko, Les imaginaires sociaux, 36; Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,
trans. Richard Nice, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 100-01 and 170-75 especially; Mihaly
Csikszentmihalyi and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Helga Dittmar, The Social Psychology of Material Possessions: To
Have is To Be, (Hemel Hempstead/New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf/St. Martin’s Press, 1992); and Norbert Elias,
The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott, (New York: Pantheon, 1983), 41-65.
 32

century, however, Florentines did not make this same distinction. The world of politics and that

(in the modern sense) of fine arts intertwined inextricably in the Renaissance world and

imagination.16 This is not to say that all the artistic commissions paid for by Florentine patricians

constituted cynical manipulations of aesthetic sentiments for overtly political purposes. Indeed,

no contemporary of Sassetti and Tornabuoni would or could have articulated such an assessment.

Rather, the very act of building a palace, minting a medal, commissioning a portrait bust, or

decorating a chapel – in addition to aesthetic, materialistic, egotistic, and religious motives –

always and necessarily involved a political statement. The material and visual culture of

Renaissance Florence not only reflected socio-political organization but also actively structured

and constituted social and power relations within the city. The construction or purchase of an

urban palace or the ornamentation of the neighborhood church expressed a visible and tangible

assertion of status, influence, lineage, and prestige.17

The Renaissance palazzo (palace) was not simply a private family space: friends, clients

and neighbors circulated through the building. It constituted the physical center for a web of

local and citywide relations. The benches that line the external walls of many family palaces (see

16
See Burke, Changing Patrons, 10; and F.W. Kent, Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Art of Magnificence, (Baltimore &
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), 16. Dale Kent is somewhat more agnostic in her assessment of the
relationship between politics and art in Quattrocento Florence: see Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, ix-xi, 384.
17
See Burke, Changing Patrons, 9-10 and 18; Jill Burke, “Visualizing Neighborhood in Renaissance Florence:
Santo Spirito and Santa Maria del Carmine,” Journal of Urban History 32, no. 5 (2006): 699-700; F.W. Kent,
“Palaces, Politics and Society in Fifteenth-Century Florence,” I Tatti Studies. Essays in the Renaissance 2 (1987);
Michael Lingohr, “The Palace and Villa as Spaces of Patrician Self-Definition,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social
History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006); and Brenda
Preyer, “Florentine Palaces and Memories of the Past,” in Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, ed.
Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). In a recent essay
Stephen Milner offers a throughtful critique of overly hegemonic readings of place and space in Renaissance
Florence: Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria.” As David Rosenthal has demonstrated urban plebieans
also inscribed the space of Florence with physical markers and manifestations of social identity. Plebiean festive
companies erected tabernacles and marked their territories with stone insignia (lapidi): Rosenthal, “The Genealogy
of Empires,” 207-09. For comparisons with elite behavior in Strasbourg and Venice see, respectively, Brady, Ruling
Class, 233; and Patricia Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family,
(New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2004), 23-90.
 33

Figure 9 for example) provide a mute testimony to the organizational power of such edifices.18

The palazzo expressed the potential of its builder or owner to provide and protect – even if this

ability amounted to no more than the provision of a sunny place out of the wind for an aging

neighbor to rest. Similarly, the presentation of onomastic saints or the presence of a kneeling

donor in the decoration of a family chapel represented a fusion of sacred and temporal

intercession: the heavenly protection and salvation of the former mirrored the worldly patronage

of the latter.19 In November 1487, Giovanni Tornabuoni gave voice to this analogy with startling

clarity when he observed to Lorenzo il Magnifico: “I have God in heaven and Your

Magnificence on earth.”20 At a more complex level the beautification of the city stimulated

feelings of pleasure and civic pride across the social strata of Florence. The aesthetic and

emotional impact of the artistic patronage of patricians constituted an important organizing

principle of social hierarchies and relations.21

The ability to shape the urban landscape – to provide affective material objects – became

a central means for Florentine office-holding class, especially the patriciate, to demonstrate,

justify, create, and maintain its social prestige. Indeed, Jill Burke has recently proposed that in

addition to a history of political prominence, a recognized lineage, and economic success

18
See Yvonne Elet, “Seats of Power: The Outdoor Benches of Early Modern Florence,” The Journal of the Society
of Architectural Historians 61, no. 4 (2002).
19
Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 131-59. See also Eckart Marchand, “The Representation of Citizens in Religious Fresco
Cycles in Tuscany,” in With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530, ed. Eckart
Marchand and Alison Wright, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).
20
ASF, MAP, 40: 180. Letter from Giovanni di Francesco Tornabuoni to Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, 29 November
1487: “ò iddio in cielo et Vostra Magnificentia in terra.”
21
Burke, Changing Patrons, 10; Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici, 120. Even a cursory reading of extant writings reveals
the concern verging on obsession that many inhabitants of Florence had for the aesthetics of the urban environment.
See for example the first part of Leonardo Bruni’s Laudatio florentinae urbis. In the second part of her monumental
study of Cosimo il Vecchio’s patronage Dale Kent has convincingly argued that Florentines from a broad social
spectrum shared a common culture infused by civic, classical, commercial and Christian ideas.
 34

historians should add the possession of a palace and family chapel in a significant church to any

pre-requisites for determining membership of the city’s socio-political elite.22 To a certain extent

this tendency reflected the economic realities of fifteenth-century Europe. In the absence of

deposit banking, and given the tendency of Florentine merchants not to accumulate capital in

commercial enterprises, few other avenues for investment or expenditure offered themselves to

the wealthy. The patricians of Florence, like contemporary elites across Europe, invested their

cash in things – consumer commodities that, as well as reflecting and constituting their social

identity, could be transformed back into liquid capital should the need arise.23 The inventory

listing the possessions of the heirs of Puccio Pucci, compiled in 1449, recorded that investments

in real estate represented around thirty-one percent of the total value (5,771 florins). Clothing

and jewelry constituted a further forty percent of the total.24 Just as the relationship between art

and politics revolved around a complex of interacting impulses rather than simply reflecting

cynical or overt manipulation, so too the economics of material culture in Renaissance Florence

did not confine itself solely to investment needs and commodification.

Central to the intersection of economics and aesthetics in the Quattrocento was the

concept of magnificence: the celebration and justification of wealth and expenditure. The civic
22
Burke, Changing Patrons.
23
See the stimulating discussion of the commodification of clothing in Renaissance England in Ann Rosalind Jones
and Peter Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing and the Materials of Memory, (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 17-33. More generally see Carlo M. Cipolla, Before the Industrial Revolution: European Society and
Economy, 1000-1700, trans. Marcella Kooy and Alide Kooy, Second ed., (New York & London: W.W. Norton and
Company, 1980); and Evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance: Consumer Cultures in Italy, 1400-1600, (New
Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2005), 28-29. On the tendency for Florentine commerce to tend towards
fragmentation rather than capital accumulation see Richard A. Goldthwaite, “The Medici Bank and the World of
Florentine Capitalism,” in Bankers, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Variorum,
1995); and Richard A. Goldthwaite, “Organizzazione economica e struttura familiare,” in Banks, Palaces and
Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995). I will provide individual citations for the
essays collected in this volume because they follow their original pagination.
24
Carole Collier Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing, (Baltimore &
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 110-14.
 35

humanist political mythology of fifteenth-century Florence praised service to the common good.

Literature produced by the intellectuals who served as secretaries to the commune as well as

speeches made in the governing councils of the city fused ideas of liberty, civic virtue, and

public service adopted from classical learning into a potent mythology for the form, constitution,

and ambitions of the Florentine government. A basic element of this myth was the praise of

public service and the active life of a good citizen. Civic humanist writings embraced Cicero’s

concepts of civic duty and patriotism as well as the Roman philosopher’s rhetorical techniques.

The “noblest use of virtue,” he had asserted, “is the government of the State.”25 Matteo Palmieri

echoed this sentiment, in Vita civile (1449), concluding that the ultimate purpose of virtue was to

serve “the public government and universal health of the civic union and concord.”26

The same ideas that justified the political hegemony of a minority in Florence also

provided a defense for their economic preponderance. Poggio Bracciolini, who despite spending

most of his adult career in Rome formed part of the circle of Florentine humanists, had the figure

of Antonio Loschi in his dialogue De avaritia (late 1420s) observe: “money is very

advantageous, both for the common welfare and for civic life.” A little further on, the protagonist

Loschi argued that in the absence of private wealth the cultural life of cities would founder and

public ornamentation, such as churches or colonnades, would not exist.27 The construction of

palaces, the decoration of chapels, and the financing of public festivals or civic buildings

constituted part of the patrician notion of public duty and service. The wealthy had an obligation

25
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De re publica. De legibus, trans. Clinton Walker Keyes, (London: William Heinemann,
1959), 15. The translation is Keyes’s.
26
Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni, (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 53.
27
Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society,
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 258, 260. The translation is by Benjamin B. Kohl and
Elizabeth B. Welles.
 36

to spend at least part of their patrimony on beautifying the city, whether through personal or

civic commissions.28 “Magnificence,” wrote Palmieri in Vita civile, “consists in the great expense

of marvelous and notable works; for which reason this virtue cannot be employed except by the

wealthy and powerful.” In the fourth and final book he noted that the splendid lives and personal

ornamentation of private citizens formed an integral part of the civic life.29

At a more profound level, the identity of Florence’s patricians depended upon their

relationship with the physical city. Their social status and political prominence relied on a close

material association with Florence itself. Aside from their wealth the office-holding class of the

city on the Arno possessed none of the cultural resources available to most other elites in early-

modern Europe to justify their social, economic, and political predominance. Without titles,

nobility of birth, or even the juridical status enjoyed by comparable merchant aristocracies in

Venice and Nuremberg, the patricians of Florence relied upon their ability to shape the urban

geography of the city to support their power and influence. Building a palace, affixing a coat-of-

arms to the exterior wall of a chapel, or bestowing of a family name on a piazza all demonstrated

and cultivated a sense of possession by the city’s elite as well as a sense of inevitability or even

eternity that justified the arbitrary socio-political organization as the natural order of things.30

Florence belonged to the office-holding class, especially to the patriciate. In times of political

conflict within the city mobs attacked the houses and property of the elite and not the institutions

28
See Burke, Changing Patrons, 36 and 61; Burke, “Visualizing Neighborhood,” 693-94. For a comparative
impulse in Renaissance Nuremberg, see Zika, “Nuremberg,” 560. In addition to the less tangible rewards of civic
pride and pleasure, the artisans and laborers of Florence reaped very real economic rewards from patrician
expenditure on palace-building and other artistic commissions; see Richard A. Goldthwaite, “The Economic Value
of a Renaissance Palace: Investment, Production, Consumption,” in Banks, Palaces and Entrepreneurs in
Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995).
29
Palmieri, Vita civile, 147, 152-53, and 194.
30
Compare with the situation in sixteenth-century Strasbourg: Brady, Ruling Class, 229-33. See also Baczko, Les
imaginaires sociaux, 33 and 36; Bourdieu, Distinction, 72 and 76-77; and Bourdieu, Outline, 91, 95 and 163-64.
 37

of the commune itself. On 20 June 1378, during the Ciompi Revolt, groups of lower guildsmen

and popolo minuto sacked and burned palaces belonging to members of the office-holding class.

On 8 April 1498, gangs destroyed the homes of Francesco Valori and Andrea Cambini,

following the fall of Fra Girolamo Savonarola.31 The corollary of this close association, this

existential relationship between social status and the material city, was that the socio-political

prestige of the patriciate had no legitimacy outside of Florence.32 The fate of the elite, as a

distinct and predominant estate, depended on the fate of the city itself.

The frescos completed by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the 1480s provide a compelling

example of the splendor and personal ornamentation of private citizens in Renaissance Florence.

For Francesco Sassetti, at Santa Trinita, the painter and his workshop executed a series of images

from the life of the donor’s onomastic saint, Francis of Assisi. Of particular interest to an

assessment of the social imaginary of the Quattrocento elite are two of the scenes that decorate

the chapel: The Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III (Figure 1) and

The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 2).33 The narrative of the first image occurs

on the middle plane. Here, on the far right, a kneeling Saint Francis presents the rule of his order

to Honorius III. Behind this narrative plane, visible through a series of archways suggestive of an

31
On the Ciompi Revolt see most recently Alessandro Stella, La révolte des Ciompi: les hommes, les lieux, le
travail, (Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, 1993), 50-51. On the violence in April 1498 see Lucca
Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iacopo del Badia, (Florence:
Sansoni, 1985), 170-71. Compare with actions of the iconoclastic mobs in Strasbourg that targeted the material
symbols of aristocratic rule as well as those of the Catholic Church: Brady, Ruling Class, 200-01.
32
See the analysis of the Florentine need to create legitimacy and charisma for its government and the symbiotic
relationship between familial and communal honor in Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence,
(Ithaca NY & London: Cornell University Press, 1980; reprint, 1991), 9-43 and 224-40 especially.
33
For the details in the succeeding two paragraphs see, Borsook and Offerhaus, Francesco Sassetti and Ghirlandaio,
27-28, 36-41; Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 230-36, Catalog number 16; E.H. Gombrich, “The Sassetti Chapel
Revisited: Santa Trinita and Lorenzo de’ Medici,” I Tatti studies. Essays in the renaissance 7 (1997); Ronald G.
Kecks, Domenico Ghirlandaio, trans. Fiorella Kircheis Signorini, Paolo Santoro, and Nori Zilli, (Florence: Franco
Cantini, 1998); and Marchand, “The Representation of Citizens.”
 38

Figure 1. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Confirmation of the Rule of Saint Francis by Pope Honorius III
(ca. 1479-85). Fresco. Florence: Santa Trinita, Capella Sassetti.

Figure 2. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (ca. 1479-85). Fresco.
Florence: Santa Trinita, Capella Sassetti.
 39

ecclesiastical interior, lies the Piazza della Signoria of Florence: the Palazzo to the far left and

the Loggia (now the Loggia de’ Lanzi) in the center. The transposition of the scene from Rome

to the city on the Arno testifies to the power of the connection between elite status and the

physical city as well as tacitly acknowledging the developing axis between Florence and Rome

in the 1480s. The most striking aspect of this particular image consists in the figures who fill the

foreground. Consisting entirely of males, dressed in the uniform scarlet robes of the Florentine

office holding class, they ignore the sacred story unfolding behind them – a wooden railing

physically separates them from the meeting between Francis and Honorius. On the right-hand

side, from left to right, stand Antonio Pucci, Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, Francesco Sassetti

himself, and his youngest son Federigo, dressed in clerical garments. On the left-hand side, stand

Francesco’s three elder sons – Galeazzo, Cosimo, and a posthumous representation of Teodoro

the elder (who died in 1479). Between the two groups, the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico and their

tutors enter the scene. The youngest, Giuliano, leads the procession flanked by Angelo Poliziano.

Behind this pair come Piero, staring arrogantly at the viewer, Giovanni (the future Pope Leo X),

and finally two men tentatively identified as Luigi Pulci and Matteo Franco. Both Francesco

Sassetti and Lorenzo de’ Medici indicate their respective offspring: the former points across the

scene at the trio of his eldest sons, while the latter gestures towards the group emerging from the

stairs with his left hand.

In the second image, The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son, Ghirlandaio has once

again shifted the sacred narrative from the Eternal City to Florence. The miracle unfolds outside

the doors of the church in which the image resides in the Piazza Santa Trinita. The Romanesque

façade of the church is visible on the right, from which a group of figures emerges to witness the

resurrection, while to the left stands the Palazzo Spini. The narrative drama unfolds in the center
 40

foreground. Upon a bed the notary’s son, perhaps a portrait of the younger Teodoro di Francesco

Sassetti born the year his elder namesake died, rises from death under the blessing of the

heavenly Francis, who floats above him. Male and female religious surround the miracle,

witnesses to its occurrence. Two groups of contemporary portrait figures flank the sacred

narrative, only very slightly engaged with its unfolding. On the left-hand side, gather a group of

young men and women, whom art historians have agreed represent the daughters of Francesco

Sassetti with their actual or prospective husbands. The specifics of identity, however, remain

uncertain. None of the male figures has a secure identity; but they would be Luca Corsini,

Antonio Carnesecchi, Neri di Gino Capponi, Alessandro di Antonio Pucci, and Giovanbattista

de’ Nerli. Among the females, the most youthful girl wearing the blue dress, who gazes out at the

viewer, presumably represents Lisabetta, the youngest of Sassetti’s daughters. The other two

girls with uncovered hair – the one kneeling in prayer and the other dressed in a damask gown

with her hands folded over her belly – who flank the girl in blue are probably, Maddalena and

Selvaggia, both unmarried at the time of painting. Sassetti’s two married daughters, Violante and

Sibilla would then be among the other female figures gathered behind this more prominent

threesome. On the right-hand side gathers a group of more mature males, who appear completely

disconnected with the miracle unfolding in their presence. Only three of these bear certain

identifications. The balding man, with his back to the viewer, represents Neri di Gino Cappponi

the elder, the grandfather and namesake of the younger Neri, husband of Violante Sassetti. To

the extreme right, with his hand on his hip, stands the artist himself, Ghirlandaio, in conversation

with the man just to his left, his brother-in-law Sebastiano Mainardi.

For Giovanni Tornabuoni, Ghirlandaio and his assistants completed a series of images

from the lives of the Virgin Mary and of John the Baptist, Tornabuoni’s onomastic saint and
 41

patron of the city. One scene, The Annunciation of the Angel to Zacharias (Figure 3), holds

special interest, while three others, The Birth of the Virgin (Figure 4), The Visitation of the Virgin

(Figure 5) and The Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple (Figure 6), provide important clues.34

The first image, The Annunciation of the Angel, depicts an uncertain artificial space that appears

both civic and religious, both open and enclosed. In the background, on the right, a triumphal

arch opens through which a palace is visible. To the left, an overgrown wall topped by a relief-

adorned panel partially obscures a classically inspired palazzo. An imposing loggia, decorated by

antique reliefs and marble panels, dominates the center ground. It houses an altar at which the

sacred narrative occurs – an angel appears to Zacharias to announce the impending birth of his

son, John. Just to the left of this scene, on the same level but outside the loggia, stands a group of

four men dressed in the scarlet robes and cappucci (hoods) of the Florentine ruling elite. From

left to right they represent the three lineages that diverged from the ancestral line of the

Tornaquinci: the chapel’s patron, Giovanni Tornabuoni, Piero Popoleschi, Girolamo Giachinotti,

and Giovanni’s only surviving brother, Leonardo. To their left, a group of ecclesiastics and

secular figures gathers: from left to right and front to back, Gianfrancesco di Filippo Tornabuoni,

Luigi di Filippo Tornabuoni, Tieri di Francesco Tornaquinci, an unidentified priest, and the

chronicler, Benedetto Dei. In the front left, a quartet of prominent humanist scholars stands in

conversation, representing, from the left, Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano

(a portrait comparable to that in Figure 1), and Gentile de’ Becchi, whose figure some have

identified as Demetrio Chalcondilas. On the right-hand side of the sacred narrative stands a

gathering of five appropriately dressed mature males: from the left, Giovambattista di Marobotto

34
For the details that follow see, Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio; Kecks, Domenico Ghirlandaio; and Simons,
“Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel.”
 42

Figure 3. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Annunciation of the Angel to Zacharias (ca. 1485-89). Fresco.
Florence: Santa Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore.

Figure 4. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Birth of the Virgin (ca. 1485-89). Fresco. Florence: Santa
Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore.
 43

Tornabuoni, Giuliano di Filippo Tornabuoni, Giovanni di Francesco Tornaquinci, and Girolamo

di Marobotto Tornabuoni. Behind these men, almost under the triumphal arch stands a group of

four unidentified women. In the right foreground, three youths consider the gathering of their

elders, notably none belong to the extended clan of the Tornaquinci: Federigo di Francesco

Sassetti (here several years older than he appears in Figure 1), Andrea de’ Medici, and

Gianfrancesco Ridolfi.

The sacred narrative of The Birth of the Virgin occurs in an ornately decorated interior

space. Saint Anne lies in bed at the far right, while two servants and another woman of obviously

higher social status tend to the infant Virgin. On the left hand side, a staircase rises to an open

doorway at which a man and woman embrace. Below and parallel to the stairs an archway leads

off into further unseen rooms. Of particular interest is the girl, dressed in a damask gown

decorated with the diamond impresa (heraldic device) of Giovanni Tornabuoni, who stands in

the very center of the image leading a group of older, apparently married, well wishers. This

figure probably represents, Tornabuoni’s daughter Ludovica, betrothed to Alessandro Nasi.

The action of The Visitation of the Virgin, by contrast, occurs atop a hill overlooking a

waterside city. An improbable conjunction of architectural and geographical features surmounts

the hill, from which several youths gaze down at the cityscape below. In the center of the

foreground the Virgin, robed in her traditional blue, meets Elisabeth surrounded by eight female

attendants and onlookers. The trio of women on the far right depict, from the left, Giovanna degli

Albizzi Tornabuoni, a posthumous portrait of the wife of Lorenzo di Giovanni Tornabuoni,

Ginevra Gianfigliazzi Tornabuoni, the second wife of the same Lorenzo, and possibly Lucrezia
 44

Figure 5. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Visitation of the Virgin (ca. 1485-89). Fresco. Florence: Santa
Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore.

Figure 6. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Expulsion of Joachim from the Temple (ca. 1485-89). Fresco.
Florence: Santa Maria Novella, Capella Maggiore.
 45

Tornabuoni de’ Medici – the sister of the chapel’s patron and widow of Piero di Cosimo de’

Medici.35

The drama of The Expulsion of Joachim mimics that of The Annunciation of the Angel,

taking place in an ambiguous public-private interior-exterior space. To the rear stands an

impressive loggia flanked by twin classicized palaces. The temple of the narrative consists of a

large cross-shaped loggia in the center of which stands a raised pulpit. In the center foreground,

Joachim is forced from the temple still clutching his rejected offering, and watched indifferently

by two gatherings of contemporary male figures. Among the four youths on the left-hand side,

the figure turned toward the viewer represents Lorenzo di Giovanni Tornabuoni (the husband of

both Giovanna and Ginevra from Figure 5). Scholarly opinions differ as to the identities of the

other three young men. The group of four men to the right-hand side consists of Alesso

Baldovinetti, Sebastiano Mainardi, and Davide and Domenico Ghirlandaio – the artist presents

himself again self-confidently staring at the viewer with his hand on his hip, as he appears in

Figure Two.

The proliferation of contemporary portrait figures in the both the Santa Trinita and the

Santa Maria Novella frescos constitutes the most striking and, in analytic terms, valuable

element of the decorative schema in each chapel. They present to the viewer and to the historian

an assertion of social identity and place on the part of the men who commissioned the images.

The portrait types, full-length and generally utterly disconnected with the sacred narrative of the

painting, also represent an innovative departure from tradition. Donor portraits in the Florentine

style, while often separated from and marginal to the central action of a religious image, had

35
Note that throughout the text I will follow the convention of referring to married women by both their natal and
marital surnames, the former always preceding the latter.
 46

previously always directed their attention toward the sacred figures: presenting a guide to the

viewer rather than a distraction. In Filippo Lippi’s The Apparition of the Virgin to Saint Bernard

(Figure 7), Piero di Francesco del Pugliese, although obviously outside of the drama, had himself

presented as pious observer meditating on the scene. Even in fifteenth-century paintings in which

contemporary portraits appeared as participants within the narrative, such as Bennozzo Gozzoli’s

magnificent Journey of the Magi (Figure 8) that ornaments the chapel in the Medici palace, they

consisted essentially of faces and took the form of actors in a sacra rappresentazione (sacred

drama) recreating the story for the knowledge and benefit of the viewers.

In Ghirlandaio’s frescos in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, however, especially in

The Annunciation of the Angel (Figure 3) and The Confirmation of the Rule (Figure 1) the

contemporary portrait figures dominate the images. Eckart Marchand has observed that the red-

robed figures almost obscure the narratives to the degree that the viewer has to deliberately

ignore them in order even to notice Zacharias and the angel or Saint Francis and pope Honorius

III.36 Aby Warburg speculated that these portraits served a purpose analogous to the life-sized

wax votives that Quattrocento Florentines placed in Santissima Annunziata – expressing

personal relationships between the represented person and the sacred figures.37 Without

discounting or displacing the very real spiritual motivations and concerns for salvation that drove

men such as Sassetti and Tornabuoni to ornament chapels, the images they commissioned from

Ghirlandaio, above all in the dominance of the portrait figures, captured a particularly legible

moment of social organization and imagination. They give visual form to the imagined

36
Marchand, “The Representation of Citizens,” 223.
37
Aby Warburg, The Renewal of Pagan Antiquity: Contributions to the Cultural History of the European
Renaissance, trans. Caroline Beamish, David Britt, and Carol Lanham, (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute for
the History of Art and the Humanities, 1999), 189-90. See more recently, Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 88-90.
 47

Figure 7. Filippino Lippi, Apparition of the Virgin tof Saint Bernard (ca. 1490). Panel painting,
208.4 x 195.7 cm. Florence: La Badia.
 48

Figure 8. Benozzo Gozzoli, Detail from The Journey of the Magi (ca. 1459). Fresco. Florence:
Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Capella della Trinità.
 49

community of the office-holding class. The organizing principles of the images consist of three

distinct concepts: family, appearance, and gender.

Family, in structure and as a concept, lay at the heart of the social world of patrician

Florence. The exact nature of the elite family during the Renaissance has also formed the basis of

debate between historians for some three decades now. The argument has centered on the

relative importance of the household (a domestic entity that could extend from one to three

generations and that included servants and slaves) compared with the lineage (family in the

broadest sense of the term, embracing all members who shared the same surname without regard

for domestic arrangements).38 Proponents for the increasing centrality of the household and the

decline of the medieval clan through the fifteenth century have focused their analysis largely on

economic evidence. The financial and commercial behavior of Florentine patricians, their thesis

holds, indicates that the lineage had become impracticable as an entity. Any ties that remained

between brothers or cousins, once they no longer lived under one roof, persisted through

convenience or economic utility alone.39 Proponents for the continuing importance of the lineage

throughout the period have favored a more cultural and social analysis, and argued that

household and clan co-existed as complementary rather than contradictory units. The lineage

38
The classic formulations of the two opposing schools of thought are, respectively, Richard A. Goldthwaite,
Private Wealth in Renaissance Florence: A Study of Four Families, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968);
and F.W. Kent, Household and Lineage in Renaissance Florence: The Family Life of the Capponi, Ginori, and
Rucellai, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Notably, both Goldthwaite and Kent take the pre-existence
of a medieval lineage that either fragmented or continued through the fifteenth century as a given. Only several
years after the publication of Kent’s monograph did a serious analysis of the structure and ideology of patrician
lineages in Florence between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries appear: Lansing, The Florentine Magnates.
39
See in addition to Goldthwaite’s seminal monograph, cited above: Roberto Bizzocchi, “La dissoluzione di un clan
familiare: I Buondelmonti di Firenze nei secoli XV e XVI,” Archivio storico italiano 140, no. 1 (1982);
Goldthwaite, “Organizzazione economica.”; and Sergio Tognetti, Il banco Cambini: Affari e mercati di una
compagnia mercantile-bancaria nella Firenze del XV secolo, (Florence: Olschki, 1999).
 50

continued to persist as a source of identity, a shared memory (often geographic or spatial), and an

economic and political patrimony.40

One significant transformation of this debate in recent years has been the shift in position

over what is at stake in the primacy of the household or the lineage. Whereas Richard

Goldthwaite explicitly connected the increasing isolation of the household with an emerging

aristocratic sense of dynasty, the most recent proponent of his thesis has argued just as strongly

that the central importance of the nuclear domestic unit represented the abiding mercantile and

commercial mentality of the Florentine patriciate and contributed to social mobility.41 While

F.W. Kent did not express a clear judgment on the nature of the Florentine elite, his thesis about

the family contributed to a broader argument in favor of the continuing importance of communal

and corporate bodies in fifteenth-century Florence. In more recent years, however, Anthony

Molho – writing exclusively about lineages rather than households – has argued that the familial

behavior of the patriciate became considerably more aristocratic and caste-like as the

Quattrocento progressed, helping to stifle social dynamism.42

The evidence of Ghirlandaio’s frescos would appear to support both models of family

structure, depicting the Sassetti household but the Tornabuoni/Tornaquinci lineage. In Santa

40
In addition to Kent, see for example many of the contributors to Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, eds.,
Art, Memory, and Family in Renaissance Florence, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
41
Compare Goldthwaite, Private Wealth, 272-75; Tognetti, Il banco Cambini, 20-21, 326-27. In later writings
Goldthwaite has also drawn connections between what he perceives as the dissolution of the lineage and the
enduring social and financial mobility of Florence, see Goldthwaite, “Organizzazione economica.”
42
Molho, Marriage Alliance, 344-47. On the broader context of Kent’s argument see his later writings, for example:
D.V. Kent and F.W. Kent, Neighbours and Neighbourhood in Renaissance Florence: The District of the Red Lion in
the Fifteenth Century, (Locust Valley, N.Y.: J.J. Augustin, 1982); F.W. Kent, “Il ceto dirigento fiorentino e i vincoli
di vicinanza nel Quattrocento,” in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento. Comitato di studi sulla storia dei
ceti dirigenti in Toscana. Atti del V e VI Convegno: Firenze, 10-11 dicembre 1982; 2-3 dicembre 1983, ed. Riccardo
Fubini, (Impruneta: Francesco Papafava, 1987); and F.W. Kent, “‘Un paradiso habitato da diavoli’: Ties of Loyalty
and Patronage in the Society of Medicean Florence,” in Le radice cristiane di Firenze, ed. Anna Benvenuti, Franco
Cardini, and Elena Giannarelli, (Florence: Alinea, 1994).
 51

Trinita, Francesco Sassetti appears with his sons and daughters only. By contrast, the images in

Santa Maria Novella include representatives of four divergent lineages that all descend from the

medieval line of the Tornaquinci –the Tornaquinci themselves, the Tornabuoni, the Popoleschi

and the Giachinotti. The latter three branches all separated themselves nominally from their

magnate ancestors during the fourteenth century in order to regain political rights in Florence.

The chapel commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni would suggest that they did not divorce

themselves from a less tangible sentiment of family community between all four lineages. Taken

together these two representations would appear to confirm Kent’s doubled-vision of the

Renaissance family: existing as both household and lineage concurrently. The decorative

schemes of the chapels in Santa Trinita and in Santa Maria Novella, despite their apparent

divergence, contain elements of both the dynastic household and the extended clan. This

occurred because the lineage remained of continuing ideological and political importance in the

later fifteenth century as a result of, not despite, the indubitable tendency toward economic

fragmentation within families and the associated socio-financial dynamism that makes

identifying the Florentine elite so difficult to begin with.

The lineage emerged in Florence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as means of

fostering co-operation between men who shared a common name and ancestry. In the absence of

civic institutions capable of monopolizing violence and in the face of competition from

neighboring families medieval patricians banded to together for mutual defense. Carol Lansing

has argued that the principal purpose of the lineage was military. Kin co-operated to construct

and maintain a defensible family compound in the city, and to coerce or threaten neighbors into

submission. Lineages owned urban property, as well as ecclesiastical patronage rights, in

common: every mature male received a share of the indivisible economic patrimony. In the later
 52

decades of the thirteenth century, however, as the guild-based government created stronger

institutions and the legal sanctions of the Ordinances of Justice, which explicitly targeted the

political culture of private violence and familial power, the lineage as a military entity became

unnecessary; even a liability. As a result the common patrimonies began to be divided and

alienated between individual members. Lansing contends that lineages only ever became

economic entities indirectly, as a result of the need for mutual defense. Commercial enterprises

and even agricultural properties tended not to appear as communal property, but were owned and

managed by individuals or households. 43

This commercial fragmentation received an additional impetus from the economic

catastrophe of the 1340s. The collapse of the super-corporations of the early Trecento, such as

the Bardi and Peruzzi banks that had dominated the market by tying the Florentine economy to

the English royal finances, provoked a reaction in form of commercial diversification and the

proliferation of smaller less-competitive companies. Individual entrepreneurship became the

basis for economic behavior.44 In this regard, the Medici were unique in maintaining one single

corporation continuously for three generations between 1460 and 1500. In the same period the

records of the Arte del Cambio (the Bankers’ Guild) registered eighty-four banks, of which

seventy-two ceased operations following the death of the original banker. Only seven of the

remaining twelve enterprises still survived in 1500, under the management of sons or heirs.45

43
See Lansing, The Florentine Magnates, 29-40 on the development of the medieval lineage, 46-63 on economic
strategies. On co-ownership of property as a transitional phase in familial development see also Kent, Household
and Lineage, 123-24.
44
This is the principal argument advanced by Goldthwaite in the first two sections of Banks, Palaces and
Entrepreneurs in Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Variorum, 1995).
45
Goldthwaite, “The Medici Bank”; and Goldthwaite, “Organizzazione economica.” Goldthwaite suggests that
genealogical accident may have played a role in the exceptional survival of the Medici bank as a single entity: the
premature deaths of Giovanni di Cosimo di Giovanni and of Giuliano di Piero di Cosimo precluded the division of
 53

More representative than the experience of the Medici bank was that founded by Niccolò and

Andrea Cambini. The younger sons of a small-time linen merchant, they became successful pan-

European bankers but their enterprise did not long survive their own deaths. Their elder brothers,

Bartolomeo and Cambino, pursued divergent economic paths. They remained minor guildsmen:

local manufacturers and wholesalers like their father before them. The four siblings pursued

independent and various commercial and economic careers, with little if any sense of a familial

financial obligation to each other.46

Arriviste merchant-bankers, such as Niccolò di Francesco Cambini, and the world of

commerce did not maintain a monopoly on economic behavior that favored self and household

over lineage. The Buondelmonti, one of the oldest Florentine noble houses, derived from the

rural feudatories the Montebuoni, resorted to litigation and even violence in quarrels over the

control of previously co-owned wealth. Ecclesiastical patronage rights, notably over the

significant rural parish of Santa Maria Impruneta, formed the basis of the lineage’s patrimony

making its division more difficult and thus more visible to the historian’s gaze.47 Conversely,

certain lineages did behave more altruistically with wealthier households supporting their poorer

relatives. Many patrician families also acted to preserve property within the lineage, even if it

was no longer owned communally. Many real estate transactions occurred between members of

the same clan. Similar behavior occurred in inheritance. Giovanni Rucellai and Filippo Pugliese,

for example, each ruled that his palace should in extremity be ceded to distant kinsman should

Cosimo’s patrimony, while equally the premature deaths in the younger branch of the family - Lorenzo di Giovanni
di Bicci and Pierfrancesco di Lorenzo di Giovanni - prevented the severance of commercial ties between the cousins
despite the increasing enmity between the two branches.
46
See Tognetti, Il banco Cambini.
47
See Bizzocchi, “La dissoluzione.”
 54

his immediate male line die out. However, both men initially favored their own household as

heirs over any other family member.48

The economic behavior of the Florentine patriciate fostered social and political dynamism.

While no exact correlation existed between wealth and power a significant correspondence is

visible between commercial and political success throughout the fifteenth century. The

constitution of the office-holding class, and specifically of the patriciate, remains so difficult for

historians to assess because it was fluid. Individuals, often on the basis of their mercantile

success, rose to local and then communal prominence. Correspondingly, once a member of the

elite ceased commercial activities – either willingly or through financial collapse – he normally

fell into political obscurity. Sergio Tognetti has traced this arc of socio-political development for

all four sons of Francesco Cambini, a linen manufacturer of little influence or prestige, albeit at

differing levels. Whatever the high-water mark of the prominence, for both Bartolomeo and

Cambino, who remained small-time merchants, as well as Niccolò and Andrea, who became pan-

European merchant-bankers, loss of wealth or commercial establishments translated into

obscurity in the corridors of power and prestige.49 Several other patrician lineages display

analogous developments. The Castellani, after playing a significant role in the oligarchic revival

of the 1380s and 1390s, fade from view among the most important offices of the republic after

1407. From the turn of the century their economic fortunes suffered a parallel decline.50 The

48
See the examples of the Capponi, Ginori and Rucellai recorded in Kent, Household and Lineage, 149-63. On
Giovanni Rucellai’s testament on his palace see specifically, 142-43. On Filippo del Pugliese’s testament, see Burke,
Changing Patrons, 28.
49
Tognetti, Il banco Cambini, 20-21, 83 especially.
50
Giovanni Ciappelli, “I Castellani di Firenze: dall’estremismo oligarchico all’assenza politica (secoli XIV-XV),”
Archivio storico italiano 149, no. 1 (1991). Note, that I am using the evidence produced by Ciapelli against his own
thesis. He resists any argument of a correlation between financial and socio-political success, noting that
genealogical accident resulted in a dearth of mature males among the Castellani in the early decades of the fifteenth
 55

Della Casa lineage charted the same trajectory. After consistently seating members on the

Signoria and its advisory colleges, the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve Goodmen) and the Sedici

Gonfalonieri (Sixteen Standard-Bearers), from the last decade of the Trecento until the 1430s,

the Della Casa disappear from the highest political offices (with one exception in 1474) until the

last decade of the fifteenth century. The wealth of the family, having expanded in the early

Quattrocento, reached a peak in the 1450s and then plunged in an analogous fall.51

All three lineages in these examples belonged to the fringes of the patriciate. None of them

were “ancient popolani houses,” as Piero Guicciardini described them: those lineages who had

formed part of the ruling elite from the foundation of the guild-based regime at the end of the

Dugento, who had sat on the Signoria before 1300 and continued to appear in records of the

highest offices since.52 The Cambini sat their first prior in 1399, the Castellani in 1326 and the

Della Casa in 1393.53 The very fact of the relatively late political appearance of these lineages,

combined with the trajectory of rise and decline that all followed, underlines the fluidity and

social dynamism of Renaissance Florence. According to one analysis, almost one quarter of the

lineages that formed the office-holding class in 1433 had achieved election to the Signoria only

after 1382; one century after the institution’s foundation.54 The predominance of these middling

lineages – those that Guicciardini described as “although not yet noble, nevertheless they are not

century. He does however concede that “le difficultà economiche” contributed substantially to the family’s absence
from public office by the later 1420s; see p. 81.
51
Michele Cassandro, “Due famiglie di mercanti fiorentini: i della Casa e i Guadagni,” Economia e Storia 21, no. 3
(1974).
52
Rubinstein, The Government of Florence, 323. See note 3 above.
53
See Appendix B. Francesco Cambini, the father of the four sons who form the object of Tognetti’s analysis was, in
fact, the first prior for his family – drawn the year before his death in 1400.
54
Dale Kent, “The Florentine reggimento in the Fifteenth Century,” Renaissance Quarterly 28, no. 4 (1975).
 56

totally ignoble”55 – in these examples of social dynamism also highlights the absence of the two

noble estates. These families, such as the Alberti, the Corsini, the Ricci, appear to have achieved

a relative immunity from socio-political decline, which their less prestigious peers did not.

Hence, Filippo di Matteo Strozzi endured three decades of exile and political ostracization after

1434 but retained his social prestige and increased his wealth during the same period – thanks in

no small part to the labors of his mother. The Medici themselves did not suffer a loss of political

influence or social prestige, if anything both increased, despite the floundering of the family

bank following the death of Cosimo il Vecchio in 1464.

A multitude of factors contributed to these outcomes and not all ancient patrician lineages

enjoyed the same success: the Guadagni fell into political and economic obscurity following

their exile and political ban in 1434.56 In general, however, these older families endured in large

part due to the ideology and concept of lineage. The very fact of their enduring political

prominence and their long genealogies provided an aura of immutability about these lineages.

Combined with their material and geographic impact on the city – through the construction of

palaces as well as the tendency for family compounds to lend their name to adjacent streets or

piazze – this fostered a memory of the lineage not only for the members themselves but for the

wider city.57 A visual vignette from the De’ Nerli altarpiece painted by Filippino Lippi around

1495 illustrates this (Figure 9). Here, Lippi’s patron, Tanai di Francesco de’ Nerli appears,

dressed in the traditional red cioppa and a broad-brimmed traveling hat, at the door of his palace.

55
Rubinstein, The Government of Florence, 323.
56
Cassandro, “Due famiglie.”
57
Compare with the discussion of the linkage between a new physical sense of property and the development of
lineages, as well as the centrality of longevity and endurance to familial success in the cities of northern Castile in
Teofilo F. Ruiz, From Heaven to Earth: The Reordering of Castilian Society, 1150-1350, (Princeton & Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2004), 87-99.
 57

Figure 9. Filippino Lippi, Detail from De’ Nerli Altarpiece (ca. 1495). Panel painting, 160 x 180
cm. Florence: Santo Spirito, Capella de’ Nerli.
 58

De’ Nerli appears at the moment of farewell – bending to kiss his daughter – as he departs on an

embassy to King Charles VIII of France: an African slave or servant prepares a horse for the

journey. The façade of the Nerli palace and the arch of the Porta San Frediano, looming in the

rear, are both clearly identifiable. These buildings combine with the figure of Tanai de’ Nerli in

an exposition of correlated wealth, political influence, and possession. The appearance of De’

Nerli underlines his political authority and importance through his role in a crucial diplomatic

effort. In addition to his robes of office, the recognizable front of his family palace indicates its

owner’s importance and status, as well as his wealth, and his claim to prominence in the wider

city, here represented by the neighborhood around the gate of San Frediano.

In a less immediately personal way, The Resurrection of Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 2)

indicates a similar assertion of status, through association with the material world, by Francesco

Sassetti. Again the identifiable Florentine location combines with the recognizable figures of

Sassetti’s daughters and their husbands or fiancés in a message of familial prestige and social

prominence. On this occasion it is not a palace but the church of Santa Trinita, visible on the left

of the image, in which the fresco was painted that serves as the material reinforcement of socio-

political identity. The depiction of the Piazza della Signoria with its imposing governmental

buildings similarly contextualized the appearance of the Sassetti men in The Confirmation of the

Rule of Saint Francis (Figure 1). The juxtaposition of the civic heart of the city with the

individuals testified to their claim over the levers of power in Florence. All three of these images

(Figures 1, 2, and 9), taken together, depict the urban geography of social identity. They present

three key nodes within the city where the office-holding class would appear: the family palace,

the local church, and the seat of government. While distinct these three spheres were

interdependent. They worked together, combining to underwrite and sustain the prestige and
 59

power of Florence’s elite at local, parish, and citywide levels. At each stage the material

supported and reinforced the social.58

Less prominent and less ancient lineages on an upward trajectory through the office-holding

class attempted to reproduce this air of enduring inevitability and power by putting their own

physical footprint on the urban space of Florence. Niccolò di Francesco Cambini may have felt

no financial obligation to his wider family, but in constructing a palazzo and decorating a chapel

in San Lorenzo, he appealed to a sense of lineage and hoped to define his family as powerful and

enduring.59 Certain socially ascendant men went even further in seeking to create an artificial

memory of their family. In 1464, the banker Giovanni di Bono Boni began construction of

family palace that included deliberately old-fashioned or anachronistic features in an effort to

cultivate a sense of ancient permanence. Some five years late, Francesco di Antonio Nori,

instead of building a new edifice, acquired a palace built around 1400, which was the largest

building in his neighborhood. While Nori enlarged and tidied up the structure he preserved the

pre-existing arms that decorated the palazzo’s exterior and also utilized non-current designs for

windows, arches, and a corner colonette.60

These men were not simply foolish or tactless arrivistes hopelessly mimicking the style of

their social betters. Rather, they deliberately sought to create a memory of their lineage: a sense

of continuity with the past, of permanency, of stability, of belonging. This was a political act –

these men hoped to construct such a memory and identity not only for themselves and their heirs

58
Compare with Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 85-107; and Sharon T. Strocchia, “Theaters of Everyday Life,” in
Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2006).
59
For Niccolò’s construction and patronage projects see Tognetti, Il banco Cambini.
60
See Preyer, “Florentine Palaces.”
 60

but also for their neighbors, enemies, friends, clients, and patrons. As Francesco Guicciardini,

who distilled so much of the aristocratic prejudice and culture of the Florence patriciate, would

observe in the early sixteenth century, “a good name is more valuable than great wealth.”61

In 1345, almost thirteen percent of registered creditors of the Florentine public debt, the

Monte Comune, identified themselves with a surname. In the records of the 1427 catasto, a tax

on direct income, the figure had increased to almost thirty-seven percent of 9,812 households. By

1480, just over forty-eight percent of the 8,414 households that submitted returns possessed

family names. Despite the increase in the number of households submitting catasto returns with

a surname in this fifty-year period the actual number of names remained static between 1,100

and 1,200.62

Anthony Molho has argued that the dramatic increase in the use of family names between the

mid-fourteenth and the mid-fifteenth centuries resulted from the convergence of two factors.

First, the guild-based government created at the end of Dugento, with the foundation of the

Signoria and the institution of the Ordinances of Justice, increasingly relied upon identifying

citizens in order to increase and maintain power. The most important section of the city’s

population subject to this taxonomic impulse were those who formed, or aspired to form, the

office-holding class. The need to distinguish between magnate and popolano lineages, to

determine consanguinity for purposes of political eligibility, and to identify creditors and debtors

of the commune constituted the principal factors driving this process. As the same prominent

lineages that formed the targets of this taxonomy also dominated the government, these men

61
Ricordi, serie C, numero 158: Francesco Guicciardini, Opere, ed. Vittorio de Caprariis, (Milan & Naples:
Riccardo Ricciardi, 1953), 130.
62
Anthony Molho, “Names, Memory, Public Identity, in Late Medieval Florence,” in Art, Memory, and Family in
Renaissance Florence, ed. Giovanni Ciappelli and Patricia Lee Rubin, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres,
2000), 239-41.
 61

were, in essence, identifying themselves, their allies, and their enemies. By regulating their own

political ambitions and economic position they could maintain a degree of equality of access and

wealth among their peers. Second, as a consequence, these socially and politically prominent

lineages came to consider possession of a surname a central component of their social identity

and self-conception. The government and the city, in the imagination of the office-holding class,

became a confederation of prominent families identified by possession of a family name.63 As

Matteo Palmieri, in Vita civile, observed, “the consortorie and copious families, who, giving and

receiving legitimate marriages, with their familial alliances and love comprise a good part of the

city.”64 Possession of a surname became a constitutive element of patrician status, and in doing

so appealed to a concept of lineage – of family beyond the household that could guarantee and

stabilize social and political place in the city through the vicissitudes of life.

The appearance of some 210 households with no family name in the ranks of the wealthiest

in the city in 1480, as well as the political prominence of individuals such as Antonio di

Bernardo di Miniato within the Medicean reggimenti, should caution against too fixed a

correlation between possession of a surname and politico-economic success and remind

historians of the high degree of social dynamism in Renaissance Florence.65 However, these

remain exceptions to a more pervasive trend. The 210 nameless households represented only

63
Ibid., 244-46. Notably, Molho sets the lineages and the “government” in something of a binary opposition,
without acknowledging that they were one and the same (with the exception of the politically-banned magnate
houses). Some of Molho’s ideas about the constitution of Florence as a collectivity of lineages receive an earlier
rehearsal in Molho, Marriage Alliance, 298-348. Compare with the political dynamic between familial and
communal honor posited in Trexler, Public Life, 19, 224.
64
Palmieri, Vita civile, 161. A consorteria was an association formed to protect common interests – more common
to the thirteenth century than the fifteenth. Although members were often related by blood or marriage it was not
exclusively restricted to a single family.
65
For the data on the wealthiest households from the 1480 catasto see Molho, Marriage Alliance, 213. On the
prominence of certain individuals, without surnames and mostly artisans, in the ruling elite between 1434 and 1494
see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence.
 62

fourteen percent of the wealthiest in the city and only eleven of the 190 individuals who

dominated the Medicean republic were not identified by a surname in the electoral records for

the accoppiatori and balìe between 1434 and 1494. The possession of a surname indicated the

enduring appeal of the concept of lineage: a sense of familial solidarity and identity extending

beyond the household, of common ancestry, and a public memory of belonging to the city and its

office-holding class.

The very act of patronizing and decorating a chapel within a prominent church, such as either

Santa Trinita or Santa Maria Novella, therefore constituted a public and material assertion of the

power of the family name. Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni Tornabuoni inscribed their lineage

and themselves upon the fabric of Florence. Sassetti appears with his immediate descendants –

his sons and daughters – asserting the continuing strength of the name and household. Moreover,

the appearance of the husbands and betrothed of the banker’s female offspring places his own

family within the web of alliances that constituted the patriciate, and recalls Palmieri’s

description of the city. Tornabuoni presents himself with some of his heirs but more immediately

with male kin from the four lineages descended from the medieval line of the Tornaquinci. The

images invoke a memory of shared ancestry, of over two hundred years of socio-political

prominence as well as evoking the current vitality of the family. In both churches, the assertion

of social prestige and political prominence working in the frescos through the concept of lineage

received reinforcement in the appearance of all the family members represented: that is, in the

clothes they wear.

Caroline Collier Frick has observed that fifteenth-century Florence was a “cloth-

sophisticated” society. The production of cloth, as well as clothing, constituted the major

industry of the city, employed a great proportion of the population, and formed the basis for the
 63

wealth of many patrician families. Within this milieu, minimal variations in grade, expense, cut,

and color could indicate shifts in wealth and prestige legible to much of the city.66 As Niccolò

Roberti, the Este ambassador to Florence, observed to the Duke of Ferrara on 11 March 1468,

“this is a city which sets greater store by clothes than by virtue or anything else.”67 When

discussing clothing in I libri della famiglia, Leon Battista Alberti observed through the voice of

Giannozzo: “Clothes, my Lionardo, do you honor.”68 The elite of Florence invested much of their

wealth in clothing and jewelry: material objects that represented and constituted their identity as

socially prominent and politically dominant. One scarlet cioppa (tunic), such as those worn by

most of the males in the Ghirlandaio frescos, would have cost around ninety-nine florins in 1450,

inclusive of cloth, dye, tailoring, and trimming with fur.69

The most striking aspect of the portrait figures in the images at Santa Trinita and Santa Maria

Novella is the uniformity of the mature men depicted by Ghirlandaio. Especially in The

Confirmation of the Rule (Figure 1) and The Annunciation of the Angel (Figure 3) only faces and

idiosyncratic arrangements of hoods or hats distinguish one man from the next. In contrast, the

female members of the two lineages appear individuated, each distinct in appearance and dress.

Given the sensitivity to and significance of clothing in Florence these details must have

66
Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 83. See the analogous observations on clothing and social status in
Renaissance Venice in Brown, Private Lives, 10-12.
67
Cited in Alison Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of
Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance Studies 16, no. 2 (2002): 121. The translation is Brown’s.
68
Leon Battista Alberti, Opere Volgari, ed. Cecil Grayson. 3 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1960), 202. See also Giannozzo’s
comparison between purchasing one expensive cioppa rather than two cheaper ones, p. 238: “Se io allora non avessi
scelto il migliore panno di Firenze, io dipoi n’arei fatte due altre, nè però sarei stato di quelle onorevole come di
questa.”
69
Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 95-114; Jones and Stallybrass, Renaissance Clothing, 34-58. The estimate
for one cioppa appears on pp. 103-04. See also the discussion about investment in material objects and the
commodification of clothing at note 23 above.
 64

constituted a deliberate choice by artist and client, based on a common understanding shared

with the wider audience of the images about how the office-holding class should appear. As

much as the possession of a palace or a family chapel, clothing fashioned identity in the social

world of Renaissance Florence. The axiomatic association of honor and nobility with the wearing

of red robes is revealed in the apocryphal quip, which Niccolò Machiavelli placed in the mouth

of Cosimo de’ Medici, that “two lengths of red cloth make a gentleman.”70 Francesco

Guicciardini similarly observed that the ranks of the patriciate could always be replenished “by

dressing the vile people in the crimson fabric produced in San Martino.”71

All the mature males in Ghirlandaio’s frescos appear dressed in variations of the one theme,

and in varying shades of red.72 They wear either a lucco or a cioppa, a calf-length tunic either

sleeveless or with full-length sleeves respectively. In the case of the former, a shirt and doublet

cover the arms. Mantles or cloaks in the same color and fabric as the tunics abound. In place of

shoes leather-soled hose cover lower legs and feet. In The Annunciation of the Angel most of the

men also wear the cappuccio, the complicated hood worn either folded or rolled often in

individual styles. Others wear hats or go bareheaded. The Florentine male of the office-holding

class cultivated an outward appearance of apparently egalitarian uniformity.73 In a manner

analogous to regulation of political ambitions – through mechanisms such as the divieto that

prevented close kin from holding office concurrently or consecutively – that fostered the use of

70
Niccolò Machiavelli, Istorie fiorentine, ed. Plinio Carli. 2 vols. (Florence: Sansoni, 1927), 2: 126.
71
Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi, (Bari: Laterza,
1932), 29. The San Martino district housed the shops of the Arte della Lana (Wool Guild) of Florence.
72
For the specific details of clothing items see Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 149-52, 160, and also the
useful glossary.
73
Ibid., 152, 218. However, variations of cut and color probably indicated gradations of expense no longer legible to
a modern observer: see note 65 above. See the similar observation about men within the Venetian patriciate in
Brown, Private Lives, 5-7.
 65

family names, the external sameness that characterized male apparel acted to reinforce the

equality of access that underlay the republican constitution of Florence. Legally, if not in

practice, all members of the office-holding class – those matriculated in one of the twenty-one

guilds, who paid taxes in the city, who were not under a political ban of some sort – possessed

the same political rights, although with an unequal division of places between the seven major

and fourteen minor guilds of roughly three to one in favor of the former. The uniform depiction

of the mature males in Ghirlandaio’s images formed a visual analogue to the ideology of the

civic world of Quattrocento Florence that conceived the city as a fraternity of citizens and

celebrated public service, liberty, and an egalitarian social organization.

Leonardo Bruni, chancellor of the city-state, encapsulated this mythology in his 1428 funeral

oration for Nanni Strozzi: “Equal liberty exists for all…the hope of winning public honors and

ascending [to office] is the same for all… This then is true liberty, this equality in a

commonwealth.”74 In his early fifteenth-century panegyric, the Laudatio florentinae urbis (ca.

1402) Bruni had described the government of Florence as consisting in “the action of the whole

citizen-body acting according to the law and legal procedure.”75 Similarly, Matteo Palmieri

almost half a century later observed that, “The state and firmament of every republic exists in

civil union: to preserve this, it is necessary to maintain the citizen body and order with equal

74
This translation is from Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and
Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, Second ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966),
419. Baron reproduced the original Latin text also, see p. 556.
75
Kohl and Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic, 170. The translation is by Benjamin G. Kohl. I am using the terms
“ideology” and “mythology” here in a sense analogous to that proposed by John Najemy to refer to a collective body
of beliefs that serve to obscure the incompatibilities between political ideals and realities: John M. Najemy, “Civic
Humanism and Florentine Politics,” in Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James
Hankins, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 80. On the concept of fraternity and the Florentine
government see, Trexler, Public Life, 19-33.
 66

justice.”76 The preservation of this myth existed not only in humanist treaties written for and by

the patriciate. In 1495, the apothecary Luca Landucci identified the concept of equal access to

public office, for all who qualified, as “the true manner of Florentine public life.”77 Beyond the

ideal concept of a fraternity of citizens, the deliberate sameness of the male figures represents

another defining element republican Florentine ideology: selfless public service. The men, in

fact, appear literally in the uniform of the Signoria – underlining the anonymity of the office

holder. According to Palmieri, every citizen elected to public office “before anything else

understands that he is not a private person, but represents the universal body of the whole city.”78

The ocean of red paint used by Ghirlandaio in the Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella

frescos indicates that this ideology of egalitarian fraternity and selfless public service formed a

key part of the patrician male self-definition. As much as belonging to an acknowledged lineage,

holding public office and doing so (at least in theory) in the name of the common good

constituted key components of the public identity of the office-holding class. At another level,

however, this mythology was just that: a mechanism that worked to conceal the underlying

socio-political reality. Historians commonly use the label civic humanism to describe this

particular element of the revival of classical learning in Florence. While scholars have disagreed

over the nature and development of this phenomenon, general agreement exists that during the

76
Palmieri, Vita civile, 132.
77
Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 110.
78
Palmieri, Vita civile, 131-32. See also, pp. 98-99: “Chi ne’ magistrati siede, inanzi a ogni cosa conosca essere
spogliato della propria persona, et ritenere la publica persona di tutto il corpo civile dovere sostenere et difendere la
degnità et sommo honore della publica magestà, servare la legge, di buoni ordini provedere, tutta la città conservare,
et continuamente ricordarsi la multitudine che è governata avere ogni cosa rimesso nella sua fede.”
 67

early 1400s a definable reformation had occurred in Florentine political culture and rhetoric.79

The older corporate social world, based on the representation of stake-holders in the city – the

guilds, the neighborhoods, the Guelf Party – was eclipsed by an emergent city-wide elite: the

oligarchs.80 These corporate institutions never entirely lost their role or influence in the civic life

of Florence, but their continuation occurred under the shadow of a new political order and

culture. In a mutually rewarding exchange the emergent oligarchy became infused with the ideas

and learning of revived classicism, practiced by the Florentine chancellor Coluccio Salutati and

his disciples. In the texts of these scholars and the speeches of government councils, a mythology

of civic virtue, public service, and republican liberty developed that celebrated and justified the

predominance of narrow section of Florence’s citizens.81

The mythology of a fraternity of mature males owing allegiance to some higher concept of

the public good, and its visual presentation in Ghirlandaio’s frescos, concealed the continuing

79
The principal protagonists in the debate over the formation of the “Renaissance state” in Florence and its
accompanying ideology of “civic humanism” remain Baron, The Crisis; Marvin Becker, Florence in Transition, 2
vols., Vol. Two: Studies in the Rise of the Territorial State, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1968);
Gene A. Brucker, “Humanism, Politics and Social Order in Early Renaissance Florence,” in Florence and Venice:
Comparisons and Relations, ed. Sergio Bertelli, Nicolai Rubinstein, and Craig Hugh Smyth, (Florence: La Nuova
Italia, 1979); and J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). More recently, see the reappraisals of the
Baron thesis collected in James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections,
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). See also the assessments of civic culture in England, the
Netherlands, Germany, and Poland during the early-modern period, which provide a valuable comparison to this
Florentine-centric debate, collected in Martin van Gelderen and Quentin Skinner, eds., Republicanism: A Shared
European Heritage, 2 vols., (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1: 85-166.
80
See the descriptions of this process in Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977); John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral
Politics, 1280-1400, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982).
81
My thinking on civic humanism has been particularly influenced by the thought of John Najemy. See Najemy,
“Civic Humanism”; and John M. Najemy, “Giannozzo and His Elders: Alberti’s Critique of Renaissance
Patriarchy,” in Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence., ed. William J. Connell, (Berkeley, Los Angles &
London: University of California Press, 2002). See also Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the
Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1999). The elusive chemistry of zeitgeist that bound the patrician
oligarchs and humanist scholars together receives some acknowledgement in the frescos of Ghirlandaio: in both The
Confirmation of the Rule and The Annunciation of the Angel the second generation of Florentine classicists are
prominent.
 68

operation of multiple social and economic ties that resulted in the individual being bound to a

variety of obligations that often conflicted. This eventuated in an atmosphere of distrust,

competition, and even paranoia.82 Not all the citizens of Florence did gain the honor of sitting on

the highest councils of government and of donning the red robes of state. Many men from the

lower orders of the office-holding class not only would never sit on the Signoria but also could

not afford the expensive garments depicted in Ghirlandaio’s images. If in the frescos at Santa

Trinita and Santa Maria Novella the appearance of the male figures operates as a visual analogue

to the ideology of civic humanism, that of the females speaks to the sottogoverno of influence,

alliance, sociability, and patronage that turned the wheels of power behind the ideology of the

public good.83

Female patricians, as Richard Trexler has observed, served their husbands or fathers as

mannequins for the display of wealth and success.84 The lavish costly damask gowns that feature

so prominently in Ghirlandaio’s frescos bear the weight of family honor and prestige: each one

would have cost several times the ninety-nine florins for a man’s cioppa. On public occasions,

festivals, holidays, and weddings, the women of patrician families embodied and transmitted the

spirit of competition between their lineages that the uniform appearance of their husbands and

fathers subsumed. On the feast of Saint John the Baptist, the city’s patron saint, the merchant

82
See Kent, “‘Un paradiso’“; Trexler, Public Life, 9-43, 85-128; Ronald F. Weissman, “The Importance of Being
Ambiguous: Social Relations, Individualism, and Identity in Renaissance Florence,” in Urban Life in the
Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F. Weissman, (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989); and
Ronald F. Weissman, Ritual Brotherhood in Renaissance Florence, (New York & London: Academic Press, 1982),
1-41. Compare with the nuanced discussion of the potential dangers of friendship and obligation in Renaissance
England in Alan Bray, The Friend, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 59-67.
83
The term sottogoverno literally translates as “under-government” – it possesses associations with corruption,
favoritism, and political horse-trading. It describes both the institutionalization of these activities and also
(collectively) the people pursuing them.
84
Trexler, Public Life, 249. See also Frick, Dressing Renaissance Florence, 218.
 69

aristocrats of Florence would display their wares and their wives in analogous splendor and style.

Gregorio Dati observed on such occasions that the streets were “full of young women and girls

dressed in silk and decorated with jewels and precious stones and pearls.”85 Similarly, an

anonymous poet recorded seeing “women,/who seemed like columns/Each more beautiful from

the Prato to San Piero:/In their splendid dress/ I saw that day a thousand queens.”86 Through the

exchange of women and wealth, via marriage, patrician lineages formed alliances, extended their

family, and ended feuds. Anthony Molho has argued that this circulation of women among the

families of the ruling elite cultivated a sense of common interests, of shared identity. The

practice of homogamy became a material form of self-definition.87

Women of the social elite became most visible at the time of their marriage, when they

bore the honor of their natal and affinal families literally on their backs. In 1447, Alessandra

Macinghi Strozzi made note of the counter-trousseau lavished on her daughter, Caterina, by

Marco Parenti at their engagement: “And as if married, he had a gown of crimson figured velvet

made; and also a dress of the same fabric: and it is the most beautiful fabric there is in Florence.

…when she goes out, she will wear more than four-hundred florins in her back.”88 Almost twenty

years later, when Alessandra’s eldest son Filippo sought a wife, she instructed him: “Being

beautiful, and the wife of Filippo Strozzi, she will need beautiful jewels; as you have honor in

85
Gregorio di Stagio Dati, Storia, reprinted in Cesare Guasti, Le feste di San Giovanni Batista in Firenze descritte in
prosa e in rima da contemporanei, (Florence: R. Società di San Giovanni Batista, 1908), 5.
86
Unknown fifteenth-century poet reprinted in Ibid., 14.
87
Molho, Marriage Alliance, 344-451. Molho calculates that among those lineages that he classifies as High Status
both men and women married their socio-economic peers at a rate of around seventy percent: see the extended
analysis of patrician marriage patterns, pp. 233-97.
88
Alessandra Strozzi, Lettere di una gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. Cesare Guasti,
(Florence: Sansoni, 1877), 5.
 70

other things, so in this she does not wish to lack it.”89 The three female figures attired in the

exquisite damask gowns in the Ghirlandaio frescos – either Maddalena or Selvaggia Sassetti in

The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 2), Ludovica Tornabuoni in The Birth of

the Virgin (Figure 4), and Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni in The Visitation (Figure 5) – are

all young women, either betrothed or recently married. In fact, they probably appear in their

wedding gowns. The Ghirlandaio frescos create a dichotomy of appearance in which the male

figures celebrate an anonymous unity of brotherhood while the females bespeak more specific

and identifiable unions – those between houses and families that fostered competition and

paranoia.

The distinct public identities created for the male and female figures, through their

material appearance, reinforced and reproduced the gender and power dynamic operating in

Renaissance Florence. Historians have described the culture of the city on the Arno, and that of

early modern Europe more generally, as patriarchal.90 Such a term has a fairly limited analytic

use. It suggests a binary opposition between men and women, between separated male and

female spheres, as well as also carrying associations of hierarchical division of power based only

on horizontal distinctions of rank and status.91 The abundant records produced by Florentines

during the Quattrocento do not support such concepts or conclusions.

89
Ibid., 446.
90
See, for example: Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici; and Najemy, “Giannozzo and His Elders.”
91
Note, I am not asserting that either Kent or Najemy explicitly pursue or support any of these concepts. Nor am I
denying the analytic sophistication of their various studies. The point I am trying to make is one about language and
self-consciousness of analytic terms. I do not think patriarchy really describes the interaction of gender and social
relations, as these scholars themselves have discussed it, in Renaissance Florence. I am also concerned that the use
of this term carries cultural baggage in a twenty-first century context that can obscure rather clarify historical
analysis. See Mary Laven’s comments on the inadequacy of patriarchy as an analytic term for scholars of early
modern Europe in Diarmaid MacCulloch, Mary Laven, and Eamon Duffy, “Recent Trends in the Study of
Christianity in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” Renaissance Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2006): 718-19.
 71

This is not to deny the misogyny so prevalent Renaissance Florentine culture: one need look no

farther than the well-thumbed pages of Machiavelli’s Il principe, with its use of domestic

violence as an acceptable metaphor for male assertiveness in the world. Nor should such a

consideration obscure the exclusion of women from public office, indeed from even entering the

palace of the city’s government: witness the surprise and novelty accorded to Argentina

Malaspina Soderini, when she moved into the Palazzo della Signoria in 1503 to live with her

husband, Piero, the newly elected gonfaloniere a vita.92 Nor, finally, should it preclude a

consideration of the idealized image of paternity and the father: a cultural topos captured in

another Ghirlandaio commission for Francesco Sassetti – a portrait of the banker with his son,

Teodoro completed around 1485 (Figure 10). The tendency for patrician males to postpone

marriage resulted in a sizeable age difference between men and women at the time of their first

nuptials. The same impulse also resulted men fathering children at the relatively advanced age of

forty, on average, for the first birth. As a consequence, only exacerbated by the pan-European

nature of Florentine commerce, especially at the level at which most patrician men engaged in

business, their children often grew up with the absence of their biological father: a situation that

fostered the idealization of paternal power and prestige.93 However, in terms of analyzing the

social and political culture of fifteenth-century Florence the unself-conscious application of the

term patriarchy obscures more than it reveals, not least because it refers to an ideology rather

92
Landucci, Diario fiorentino, 254.
93
David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and Their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of
1427, trans. David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1985),
210-23, 247, and 363-64. Note, that Jean Cadogan has hypothesized that the Ghirlandaio portrait represents not
Sassetti and his youngest son, Teodoro (who would have been six years old in 1485) but rather that it presents an
idealized envisioning of Sassetti with the elder Teodoro (who died in 1479) as they would have appeared in the
1460s. Much of the painting’s iconography supports this argument. See Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Cat. 47,
278-79. In a sense, then the portrait reverses the idealization: celebrating the hypothetical and historical relationship
between a son, now dead, and his father, still living.
 72

Figure 10. Domenico Ghirlandaio, Francesco Sassetti and His Son Theodoro (ca. 1485). Panel
painting, 73.6 x 50.8 cm. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 73

than a social form. “Patriarchy” does not explain how this society functioned – only how men

idealized its functioning.

An analysis of how the social and political culture of Florence valued male friendships,

and of how the city accordingly constituted itself as a male homosocial sphere, better serves

historical understanding. The office-holding class of the city on the Arno conceived, imagined,

and visualized their world as formed by institutional and affective relationships between men.94

These bonds existed on multiple and overlapping levels – ranging from the purely fictive, such as

the fraternity of equal citizens, through the religious, such as lay confraternities, the functional,

such as patron-client bonds, and the affective, such as friendships or family ties. Such

relationships also evolved on a fluid gender scale – a spectrum of possible positions and

relations, rather than a fixed opposition between man and woman, or between hetero- and

homosexual. Certainly, at its most extreme and imagined the Florentine homosociability

constructed the city, as Richard Trexler has observed, as a self-reproducing community of

mature males from which both women and younger men were marginalized as dangerous and

liminal figures.95

Ghirlandaio’s Confirmation of the Rule (Figure 1) presents the visual analogue of this

imagined brotherhood. Francesco Sassetti and Lorenzo de’ Medici indicate their respective sons,

94
Art historians have produced the strongest analyses and theorizing of homosocial relations and homosociability in
Florence and in early-modern Europe more broadly, see for example Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols:
Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,
2002); and Patricia Simons, “Homosociality and Erotics in Italian Renaissance Portraiture,” in Portraiture. Facing
the subject., ed. Joanna Woodall, (Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 1997). See, however, the
important contributions of Bray, The Friend; Alan Bray, “Homosexuality and the Signs of Male Friendship in
Elizabethan England,” in Queering the Renaissance, ed. Jonathan Goldberg, (Durham & London: Duke University
Press, 1994); Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence,
(New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), Chapter 5 especially; and Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love, 85-
87 and 97-98.
95
Trexler, Public Life, 277-78.
 74

who appear almost by force of the paternal gesture alone. No female portrait figures complicate

the process of regeneration. The giovani (youths) are safely under their father’s authority and

tutelage. They also appear as modest, subdued, and serious future citizens rather than potentially

threatening figures who would occupy their time with “youthful games” avoiding the “business

of the city” – criticisms that Piero Parenti would make against Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici in

1493.96 This agamogenesis occurs simultaneously on two levels. The generation of sons secured

and assured the continuation of family. Concurrently, the depiction of the palace and loggia of

the government in the background of the image – the civic heart of Florence – also suggest the

continuation of the city itself through a new generation of office-holding males.

The dominant discourse and the validation of male relationships in everyday life did not,

however, exclude women. Females could act as agents through and within the bonds created by

male relationships as easily as men. Indeed, women often served as the conduit through which

certain homosocial relations occurred – such as that between lineages united in marriage – hence,

the axiomatic depiction of the current or future husbands of Francesco Sassetti’s daughters in

The Resurrection of the Roman Notary’s Son (Figure 2). Through his female descendants, the

banker could form or renew relationships and alliances with other patrician males. Marriage

existed as a relationship between two men, as much as it did between husband and wife. When

his son Bernardo married Nannina de’ Medici in 1461, Giovanni Rucellai recorded: “the other

96
Piero di Marco Parenti, Storia fiorentina (1476-78, 1492-96), ed. Andrea Matucci, (Florence: Olshcki, 1994), 55.
Recording that Piero di Lorenzo had won a joust in June of that year, Parenti dourly observed: “La qual cosa
reputazione non li aggiugneva nella città, imperò che assai in simili giovanili esercizi di tempo occupava, e manco
all pratiche della città attendeva.” On the dangerous nature and marginalized position of giovani in Renaissance
Florence see Trexler, Public Life, 387-99.
 75

grace that God has conceded me was that he made me a relative of the said Cosimo [de’

Medici].”97

In their position as wives and mothers women did not exist solely as objects of male dynastic

policies. Instead women could exercise agency and influence through the same bonds as their

husbands by virtue of their marital relationship. Rather like the intercessory role accorded to the

Virgin Mary in contemporary religious practice, potential clients of powerful men would often

approach them through their wives. Natalie Tomas has argued that the women of the Medici

family, both natal and affinal, could exercise power by virtue of their relationships with the men

of the family: as wives, sisters, or mothers.98 Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi tartly observed to her

son Filippo: “I see that Mona Lucrezia, Piero’s wife, has written you a fine letter for love of the

linen [you sent her]. She would do well to reward you in a manner that would cost her nothing

but words, that is by recommending you to Piero.”99 Similarly, she speculated that a fellow exile,

Niccolò Ardinghelli, had received a permit to enter Florence for twelve days because his wife,

Lucrezia Gondi, was the lover of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici: “Perhaps it will be more useful to

have a beautiful wife, than the entreaties of [Ferrante, king of Naples].”100

Beyond operating through male relationships, women in Renaissance Florence also no doubt

fostered and developed female bonds of homosociability. The ties between women remain one of

97
Giovanni Rucellai, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro Perosa. 2 vols. (London: The Warburg
Institute, 1960), 118. On marriage in early modern Europe as heterosexual relationship that united two men see also
Bray, “Homosexuality,” 49.
98
Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). See
especially Chapters One and Two: pp. 14-83.
99
Strozzi, Lettere, 396. The “Mona Lucrezia” in question was Lucrezia Tornabuoni de’ Medici, wife of Piero di
Cosimo de’ Medici. Alessandra hoped that Lucrezia would exert her influence to have Filippo’s exile reversed.
Cesare Guasti reprints Lucrezia’s letter to Filippo on p. 398.
100
Ibid., 386. In the original text Alessandra encrypted the name of King Ferrante, whom Filippo had cultivated as a
patron. The use of ciphers to conceal politically sensitive material was widespread in Florentine correspondence.
 76

the least-studied facets of Florentine society and culture, perhaps because they also represent a

difficult area to access and reconstruct.101 At multiple levels, then, Ghirlandaio’s images

reproduced and constituted the prevailing homosocial discourse of social organization. They did

so not only in terms of an imagined fraternity of males or of marital alliances, but in a myriad of

ways: the conception of the lineage as a collectivity of men sharing the same surname, the

potentially transgressive groups of youths who cluster on the fringes of The Expulsion of

Joachim and The Annunciation of the Angel, the self-portraits included by Ghirlandaio that

indicate the commercial relationship between painter and client, the bonds of clientage and of

friendship posited between Lorenzo de’ Medici, Francesco Sassetti and Antonio Pucci by their

shoulder-to-shoulder grouping in The Confirmation of the Rule.

The audience of the frescos in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella, both within and

without of the office-holding class, did not necessarily view the contemporary portrait figures

depicted in the images as individuals. While most of the social peers of Sassetti and Tornabuoni,

as well as many of their neighbors from any social strata, could probably name each of the

represented family members and onlookers, the overall impression of the image was more central

to the constitution of social and political culture in the city than the individual elements. The

figures existed as representatives of lineage, of wealth, of power, of the homosocial bonds that

constructed the social world – in short, as social persons representative of the agreed and

understood public identity of the patricians at the end of the Quattrocento.102

101
See, however, Tomas, The Medici Women. See also the recent analysis of female networks and homosociability
in seventeenth-century Spain in Lisa Vollendorf, The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain,
(Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005). For a literary analysis of female homosociality in the period see
Winfried Schleiner, “La feu caché: Homosocial Bonds Between Women in a Renaissance Romance,” Renaissance
Quarterly 45, no. 2 (1992).
102
See Simons, “Patronage in the Tornaquinci Chapel,” 238-39, 241.
 77

In the dedication to Vita civile, Matteo Palmieri praised Alessandro di Ugo degli Alessandri

as an “honored and excellent citizen.” Palmieri justified this laudation and his presentation of the

text to Alessandri by observing: “You are born from noble stock, generated by an excellent

father, learned in the study of the good arts, in habits you are elegant, modest, liberal, and proven

by true praise, to all dear and an exemplum for good men.”103 This passage serves in many ways

as a written analogue to the images created by Ghirlandaio in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria

Novella. Both constituted a process of self-definition and promotion by the patriciate of

Florence. They not only reflected but also created the social world of the city’s ruling

confederation of lineages. The frescos, in particular, demonstrated the multiplicity of roles and

associated bonds that formed the world of the office-holding class – from the imagined fraternity

of citizens dedicated to selfless public service, through the ties of lineage, household, patronage,

and neighborhood that, among others, operated through and behind the mythology of civic

humanism. Ghirlandaio’s paintings, in their very existence, also served as a material expression

of social place and prestige. In decorating a family chapel, Francesco Sassetti and Giovanni

Tornabuoni along with so many of their peers, both reinforced and constituted their position in

the city. Similarly, the act of writing or reading a text such as Vita civile contributed to a shared

culture and intellectual identity. Both written and visual creations purposely depict a static

portrait of the social world of Quattrocento Florence – for the patricians and other contemporary

observers part of the value of such material objects consisted in a sense of timeless order. In the

imagination of the office-holding class and in the mythology of civic humanism Florence was an

eternal city: a self-reproducing collective of mature office-holding males linked through

obligations of marriage and friendship and directed toward the common good of the city.

103
Palmieri, Vita civile, 9.
 78

Chapter Three

Between Florence and the World:

The Place of the Medici in the Office-Holding Class, 1480-1527.

Carnival in Florence during the winter of 1513 was celebrated with particular relish by the

friends and supporters of the Medici family: after almost twenty years in exile the sons and heirs

of Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici had returned to the city in September of the previous year.

For the carnival season Giuliano di Lorenzo and Lorenzo di Piero (Il Magnifico’s namesake and

grandson) had created two festive companies of young men – Il Diamante (The Diamond) and Il

Broncone (The Severed Bough), both named after Medici heraldic devices. Around the time of

Carnival Filippo Strozzi, almost certainly a member of the Broncone brigade, commissioned The

Liberation of Andromeda (Figure 11) from the painter Piero di Cosimo. The panel bears the

emblem of the broncone itself – the dry, broken, yet flourishing bough – in the center

foreground. In the context of the recent return of the Medici the image appears to carry a fairly

clear iconographical and ideological message: the Medici (Perseus) had rescued Florence

(Andromeda) from the threat of the Spanish army (the sea monster) that had sacked Prato and

menaced the city on the Arno during the summer of 1512. The painting united two prominent

iconographical themes that had long traditions in Florence: the image of a virtuous youth

defending liberty and representations of the Medici as both protectors and suitors of Florence. In

doing so, the image commented upon the expectations and understandings held by the office-

holding class of the place of the Medici in the city: protectors, rather than princes, whose profile

and prestige could preserve Florence from foreign interference and threats.
 79

The Medici family had dominated Florentine politics for most of the fifteenth century.

Cosimo il Vecchio de’ Medici and his cousin Averardo had created a powerful political faction

during the 1420s, which by the early 1430s could command a significant number of leading

members of the office-holding class. The family and their partisans survived the short-term exile

of the two Medici cousins in 1433; and following his return in September 1434 Cosimo il

Vecchio became the principal citizen of the city and its unofficial head of state. His eldest son,

Piero, and grandson, Lorenzo il Magnifico, inherited both his position and preeminence in

Florence in 1464 and 1469, respectively.1 Despite the predominance of the family the city

remained in both practice and culture a republic. As the previous chapter demonstrated, the

social world of the office-holding class during the final two decades of the Quattrocento

remained firmly civic in its imagination. Despite the indubitable ascendancy of the Medici within

both society and government Florence was never, during the fifteenth century, ruled by one man;

but by an oligarchic regime with the Medici at its head: “the gang,” as Lorenzo il Magnifico

termed it in his most personal correspondence.2 The Medici were not above or separate from the

social world and the imagined community described in Chapter Two – they were members of the

office-holding class themselves and their position in the city was always negotiated.

Piero di Cosimo’s image of Perseus, with its attendant ideological meanings, appealed to

the memory of this earlier Medicean reggimento. Francesco Guicciardini remarked, about the

1
See Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence, 1426-1434, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978);
and Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici (1434-1494), (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1966).
2
See for example, Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere (1481-1482), ed. Michael Mallett, (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 1990),
115, 125, 175-76, 194, and 211; Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lettere (1487-1488), ed. Melissa Meriam Bullard, (Florence:
Giunti-Barbèra, 2004), 273 and 527. Lorenzo used the term brigata (gang) consistently, but sparingly, to refer to the
ruling group in Florence. See also Melissa Bullard’s iconoclastic reference to Lorenzo as a “committee” in Melissa
Meriam Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance, (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 127.
 80

same time that Filippo Strozzi commissioned the painting, referring to Cardinal Giovanni and

Giuliano, the surviving sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico: “these Medici…need to demonstrate to

everyone that they are the sons of their father.”3 Guicciardini did not doubt the paternity of the

two men. Rather his reference emphasized his wish that they prove themselves as adept at

governing as their father. In his Storie fiorentine, written 1508-09, Guicciardini had described

Florence under Lorenzo il Magnifico as enjoying “the summit of peace…the summit of

tranquility and quiet.” He had continued that, “one can say that in his time the city was not free,

although [it was] most rich in all those glories and felicities that can be in a city.”4

This chapter will demonstrate how the expectations of the office-holding class about the

nature of the restored Medici regime after 1512 diverged from their experiences in the following

years. The Medici family became increasingly separated from both the physical city and the

social world of the elite. The interests of the family, tied to the papacy for two decades from

1513, and the city diverged to such an extent that by the second half of the 1520s, far from being

the principal protector of Florence from external threats the Medici became the primary reason

for such menaces. As a result, in 1527 many of the family’s closest supporters turned against

them.

Other scholars have already recounted, in great detail, the institutional story of Florence’s

government, with and without the Medici, from the early fifteenth century until the end of the

3
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Valladolid, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 9 January 1513: Francesco
Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (1499-1513), ed. Pierre Jodogne, (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età
Moderna e Contemporanea, 1986), 331.
4
Francesco Guicciardini, Storie fiorentine dal 1378 al 1509, ed. Aulo Greco, (Novara: Istituto geografico de
Agostini, 1970), 113 and 115. Compare his later assertion, in the Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze (ca. 1521-24),
that governments ought to be judged by results and not by their legitimacy: Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogo e
discorsi del reggimento di Firenze, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi, (Bari: Laterza, 1932), 18 and 25 especially.
 81

third decade of the sixteenth.5 The concern of this chapter is not the structures of Medicean

control but how the office-holding class experienced and understood these. The broad outlines of

the political narrative will be recounted, in so far as it shaped and was, in turn, shaped by these

understandings and experiences. While the period between 1480 and 1512 will be considered

briefly this chapter focuses mainly upon the years between 1512 and 1527. Two principal

concerns have determined this focus. First, the decade and a half after 1512 remains under-

studied and explored – especially in terms of cultural and social history – in comparison to the

earlier period. Second, and more importantly, only toward the end of the first decade of the

sixteenth century did the individuals who form the basis of this study begin to appear in and

contribute to public life in Florence.

By 1480 the Medici family had dominated Florence for a half century. Lorenzo il

Magnifico now led the party created by his grandfather, Cosimo. The position of the Medici

within Florentine government and society had evolved over time: Lorenzo possessed far greater

authority and reputation than either his father or grandfather had done. The diarist and insatiable

gossip Luca Landucci mentioned Cosimo only once, and then only to record that, “the whole

world called him the great merchant, as he had businesses everywhere.” By contrast, when

Lorenzo died in 1492 Landucci reported that, “this man was, according to the world, the most

glorious man there was – the richest, the most powerful, and most prestigious.”6 The apocethary

5
See Gene A. Brucker, The Civic World of Early Renaissance Florence, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1977); H.C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence, 1502-1519, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985); Roslyn Pesman Cooper, Pier Soderini and the Ruling Class in Renaissance Florence,
(Goldbach: Keip Verlag, 2002); Arnaldo D’Addario, La formazione dello stato moderno in Toscana da Cosimo il
Vecchio a Cosimo I de’ Medici, (Lecce: Adriatica, 1976); Kent, The Rise of the Medici; Rubinstein, The Government
of Florence; and J.N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine Republic, 1512-1530, (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1983).
6
Lucca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iacopo del Badia,
(Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 2-3 and 65.
 82

had begun several years earlier to record births, deaths, and other significant occurrences related

to the Medici family. He also darkly intimated that his own brother, Gostanzo, had unfairly lost

the Palio of Siena because the judges feared upsetting Lorenzo if they did not name the Medici

horse the winner.7

The basis of the Medicean predominance, however, remained essentially the same

throughout the period: the systematic use of a corrupted electoral system and arbitrary taxation to

reward friends and punish enemies. In the middle of the century Tommaso Soderini observed to

that the Medicean system depended upon “the balìa, the electoral purses, and taxes.”8 This

statement not only reveals how the system worked, but also it indicates, implicitly, the central

paradox of the family’s position and power in Florence. The Medici sought to advance and

protect their own familial interests using Florence as vehicle. However, as they could not control

the city on their own the Medici required the continual support of their partisans and allies. “[I]n

7
Ibid., 50. Landucci asserted that his brother’s horse had beaten Lorenzo’s by a head, according to popular acclaim.
Gostanzo Landucci did not, however, protest when the judges named Lorenzo the winner.
8
ASF, MAP, 20: 93. Letter from Tommaso Soderini, to Piero de’ Medici, 5 June 1454: “la balìa, le borse et ‘l
catasto.” A balìa was a plenipotentiary short-term council that possessed authority to alter the constitution and
institutions of the commune. On the corruption of the electoral process, which predated the Medici predominance,
see Anthony Molho, “Politics and the Ruling Class in Early Renaissance Florence,” Nuova rivista storica 52 (1968);
John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400, (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 1982), 263-300; and Rubinstein, The Government of Florence. On the Medici use of
arbitrary and often punitive taxation see Elio Conti, L’imposta diretta a Firenze nel Quattrocento (1427-1494),
(Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1984); and Lauro Martines, “Forced Loans: Political and Social
Strain in Quattrocento Florence,” Journal of Modern History 60, no. 2 (1988). More generally on the close
relationship between political power, communal finance, and personal wealth in Renaissance Florence see: Marvin
Becker, Florence in Transition, 2 vols., Vol. One: The Decline of the Commune, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1967); Alison Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Monte: Another Note,” Rinascimento Seconda
serie 38 (1998); Alison Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte and the Seventeen Reformers: Public and Private Interest,” in
The Medici in Florence: The Exercise and Langauge of Power, (Florence/Perth: Olschki/University of Western
Australia Press, 1992); Giovanni Ciappelli and Anthony Molho, “Lorenzo de’ Medici and the Monte: A Note on
Sources,” Rinascimento Seconda serie 37 (1997); Samuel K. Cohn, Creating the Florentine State: Peasants and
Rebellion, 1384-1434, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Richard A. Goldthwaite, “Lorenzo Morelli,
Ufficiale del Monte, 1484-88: interessi privati e cariche pubbliche nella Firenze laurenziana,” Archivio storico
italiano 154, no. 4 (1996); L.F. Marks, “The Financial Oligarchy in Florence Under Lorenzo,” in Italian
Renaissance Studies. A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E.F. Jacob, (London: Faber and Faber, 1960); and
Anthony Molho, Florentine Public Finances in the Early Renaissance, 1400-1433, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1971).
 83

certain things friendship is useful and necessary,” Dietisalvi Neroni observed to Piero de’

Medici, “and especially in politics.”9

At the heart of Neroni’s observation lay the recognition that the Medici family’s position

in Florence depended upon the support of their allies. Moreover, the reggimento also required the

consent of the majority of the office-holding class to survive. To maintain the former, the

Medicean system had to reward and benefit the family’s supporters as much as it did the family

itself. Giovanni di Paolo Rucellai, once he became close to the Medici, observed: “I have

enjoyed and enjoy their happiness and prosperity together with them.”10 For all Lorenzo il

Magnifico’s ill-temper at the constant demands of friends – “I have more letters from those who

wish to sit on the Signoria than there are days in the year,” he complained in April 1485 – he

made certain that petitioners had their wishes granted wherever possible.11 That the greatest

threats to the Medici hegemony came from disgruntled former allies, rather than from popular

uprisings, highlighted the cost of failing to satisfy the family’s friends.12

9
ASF, MAP, 137: 596. Letter from Dietisalvi Neroni to Piero de’ Medici, undated: “in qualunche cose l’amicitia è
utile e necessarie e maxime negli stati.”
10
Giovanni Rucellai, Giovanni Rucellai ed il suo Zibaldone, ed. Alessandro Perosa. 2 vols. (London: The Warburg
Institute, 1960), 1: 121.
11
Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici, at Bagno a Morbo, to Niccolò Michelozzi, in Florence, 17 April 1485: Lorenzo
de’ Medici, Lettere (1484-1485), ed. H.C. Butters, (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 2001), 163-65. In the same letter,
Lorenzo instructed Michelozzi that (in response to requests) Filippo Carducci should sit on the next Signoria and
Francesco Gherardi should be veduto (seen, that is have his name drawn for an office he could not hold) for
gonfaloniere di giustizia in the same sortition. Both men had their names drawn, as Lorenzo ordered, at the end of
the month: see David Herlihy et al., Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282-
1532. Machine readable data file (Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG, Brown University, 2002).
12
No decade passed between 1434 and 1494 without a significant challenge to the Medici predominance. The most
complete account of these threats remains Rubinstein, The Government of Florence. For more detailed analysis of
specific moments of opposition see, Alison Brown, “Lorenzo and Public Opinion in Florence: The Problem of
Opposition,” in Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo. Covegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9-13 giugno 1992),
ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, (Florence: Olschki, 1994); Paula Clarke, The Soderini and the Medici: Power and
Patronage in Fifteenth-Century Florence, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 38-94 especially; Margery A.
Ganz, “Perceived Insults and Their Consequences: Acciaiuoli, Neroni and Medici Relationships in the 1460s,” in
Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence., ed. William J. Connell, (Berkeley, Los Angles & London:
 84

Maintaining consent among the broader office-holding class required a balancing

between access to the honors and rewards of public life and protection of Florentine

independence. The city’s elite, including Medici partisans, accepted the political and financial

corruption that furthered the family’s hegemony in return for the preservation of Florence free

from foreign rule. As Guicciardini intimated in his Storie fiorentine, civic freedom was curtailed

in the Medicean republic but the city remained unmolested by external threats and at peace to

grow wealthy in economic and cultural terms.13 From their foundation under Cosimo il Vecchio

in the 1420s the family’s political and financial preeminence had depended upon their ties

beyond the walls of Florence.14 This ability to negotiate and associate with princes and popes,

which exceeded the capabilities of any other Florentine family, gave the Medici prestige and

authority in the city. In 1482, the ambassador for Duke Ercole d’Este of Ferrara observed, “the

reputation of the aforesaid Magnificent Lorenzo rests on the esteem afforded him by the princes

of Italy and elsewhere; but for this he would not possess the estimation that he has [in

Florence].”15

Beyond increasing his personal prestige, Lorenzo il Magnifico proved himself capable of

protecting Florence through his ability to woo foreign princes. The alliance he forged with King

Ferrante of Naples in 1479, by famously travelling alone and unprotected to the King’s court,

University of California Press, 2002); and Lauro Martines, April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
13
See note 4 above.
14
Anthony Molho, “Cosimo de’ Medici: Pater patriae or padrino?,” Stanford Italian Review 1 (1979): 29-30.
15
Lorenzo de’ Medici and et al., “Lettere e notizie di Lorenzo de’ Medici detto il Magnifico conservate
nell’Archivio Palatino di Modena con notizie tratte dai carteggi diplomatici degli oratori estensi a Firenze,” ed.
Antonio Cappelli. I (1863): 265. See the nuanced analysis of Lorenzo’s image-making both in Florence and abroad
and his ability to weld his personal prestige and reputation to that of the city in Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico, 28-31
and 43-79.
 85

ended the Pazzi War that Florentines could not win militarily. In the later 1480s Lorenzo ended

several years of hostility between Florence and the papacy through the personal relationship he

formed with Pope Innocent VIII.16

On occasions Lorenzo il Magnifico’s correspondence reveals a self-consciousness about

the extent to which his own, and his family’s, position in Florence rested on his personal

diplomatic skill and ability to defuse foreign threats. He implicitly acknowledged the

vulnerability of the Medici hegemony should he fail to meet the expectations of the office-

holding class that he would protect and preserve the city and its territory. In September 1485,

after initially resisting pressure to involve himself personally in negotiation with Genoa, Lorenzo

conceded to the Dieci di Balìa (the Ten of War), “I will reply with the formal words that you

send me…[but] this resolution of yours does not please me, because you place too much weight

on my shoulders.”17 During the negotiations to end the Barons’ War – in which Florence had

supported the Neapolitan King, Ferrante, against an alliance of rebellious vassals and the papacy

– Lorenzo took great care to conceal his attempts to gain a disputed ecclesiastical benefice for his

son Giovanni from even his closest allies. “When you show my letters from the field to Piero

Filippo [Pandolfini] or Bernardo [Rucellai],” he instructed Michelozzi, “skip over this part about

16
See Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico, 28-31 and 48-49. On the Pazzi War, which stemmed from the unsuccessful
conspiracy to assassinate Lorenzo in 1478 (the conspirators did kill his younger brother Giuliano) see Martines,
April Blood, 174-96. On the relationship between Lorenzo and Ferrante see H.C. Butters, “Lorenzo and Naples,” in
Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo mondo. Convegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9-13 giugno 1992), ed. Gian Carlo
Garfagnini, (Florence: Olschki, 1994). On the relationship between Lorenzo and Innocenzo VIII, cemented by the
marriage of Maddelena di Lorenzo de’ Medici to the Pope’s nephew, Franceschetto Cibo, see Melissa Meriam
Bullard, “In Pursuit of honore et utile: Lorenzo de’ Medici and Rome,” in Lorenzo de’ Medici e il suo mondo.
Covegno internazionale di studi (Firenze, 9-13 giugno 1992), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, (Florence: Olschki, 1994).
17
Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici, at Bagno San Filippo, to Pierfilippo Pandolfini, in Florence, 23 September 1485:
Medici, Lettere (1484-1485), 299. Lorenzo’s initial refusal is printed at 283-84.
 86

[the abbey of] San Germano.”18 Possession of the abbey of San Germano and Montecassino,

located in papal territory but occupied by Ferrante’s troops, had become a point of contention

among diplomats with every major player in the conflict wanting a say in who would assume the

abbacy. Lorenzo obviously feared accusations that he had placed the career of his son, and the

prestige of his family, above the interests of Florence.19 The rapid collapse of the Medicean

system in 1494, once Lorenzo’s sons failed to protect Florence’s sovereignty, testifies to the

precarious balance that underwrote the consent of the office-holding class.

A perfect storm of events converged in November 1494 precipitating the expulsion the

sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico from Florence: the military threat from the approaching army of

King Charles VIII of France, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici’s tactless disregard for the men who

had governed the city with his father, a growing discontent among the office-holding class that

the Medicean hegemony was no longer benefiting the city’s elite as a whole but only the Medici

themselves, and the millenarian tension cultivated by the fiery Dominican preacher Girolamo

Savonarola.20 Piero de’ Medici’s ill-conceived attempt to imitate his father’s famous voyage to

18
Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici, at Bagno a Morbo, to Niccolò Michelozzi, in Florence, 24 May 1486: Lorenzo
de’ Medici, Lettere (1485-1486), ed. H.C. Butters, (Florence: Giunti-Barbèra, 2002), 307.
19
Ibid., 307-08, notes 13 and 14.
20
On Charles VIII’s mission to claim the Kingdom of Naples and its political, military, and cultural impact see:
David Abulafia, ed., The French Descent into Renaissance Italy, 1494-1495: Antecedents and Effects, (Aldershot:
Variorum, 1995); and Jane Everson and Diego Zancani, eds., Italy in Crisis, 1494, (Oxford: European Humanities
Research Centre, 2000). Specifically on the Florentine context see: Guidubaldo Guidi, Ciò che accadde al tempo
della Signoria di novembre dicembre in Firenze l’anno 1494, (Florence: Arnaud, 1988). On the increasing tensions
within the office-holding class and members of the Medici party during the 1480s and 1490s see: Alison Brown,
“Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men and Their Mores: The Changing Lifestyle of Quattrocento Florence,” Renaissance
Studies 16, no. 2 (2002); Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte”; and Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Adumbrations of Power and
the Politics of Appearances in Medicean Florence,” Renaissance Studies 12, no. 3 (1998). On Fra Girolamo
Savonarola’s influence over Florentine politics, culture, and society in the 1490s see: Mark Jurdjevic, “Citizens,
Subjects, and Scholars: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1608” (PhD, Northwestern
University, 2002), 23-66; Mark Jurdjevic, “Prophets and Politicians: Marsilio Ficino, Savonarola and the Valori
Family,” Past and Present, no. 183 (2004); and Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and
Patriotism in the Renaissance, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
 87

Naples, by negotiating alone with the French King, ended in political humiliation. Piero’s

capitulation to all Charles’ demands – and especially the surrender of the Florentine fortresses in

the dominion – created a threat to the city’s sovereignty and so to the position of the office-

holding class. This in turn provoked the coup d’état of 5-9 November.

This uprising, like the upheaval of sixty years earlier that had propelled the Medici into

power, constituted a re-alignment within the office-holding class rather than a social or

ideological revolution. The government of Florence was no more nor less republican after the

expulsion of Piero and his brothers than it had been before. The same men dominated the

oligarchy and controlled the government. Even members of the Medici family not directly

descended from Cosimo il Vecchio retained their status – albeit briefly changing their surname to

Popolani. All contemporary records testify that many of the most prominent individuals from the

Medicean reggimento of the previous decades played key roles in ejecting the sons of Lorenzo il

Magnifico. Bartolomeo Cerretani observed that the promoters of the coup “were none other than

the leading citizens, who had always been friends, themselves, their fathers, and grandfathers of

[Piero’s] house.”21 Piero Parenti, whose vehement hatred of the Medici permeated his

interpretation of events, raged that, “all good citizens were saddened. They lamented that they

had taken up arms for liberty; however, they obtained not popular liberty, but the conservation of

the rule of the same men who had governed previously.”22 Of the twenty men appointed as

accoppiatori on 2 December to control the election of the Signoria for the next twelve months

21
Bartolomeo Cerretani, Storia fiorentina, ed. Giuliana Berti, (Florence: Olschki, 1994), 204.
22
Piero di Marco Parenti, Storia fiorentina (1476-78, 1492-96), ed. Andrea Matucci, (Florence: Olshcki, 1994), 150-
51.
 88

only one had not personally sat, or had a father who sat, on one of the Medicean balìa of the

previous sixty years.23

The years between the expulsion of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons in 1494 and their return

to Florence in 1512 witnessed a plurality of political currents and struggles – between supporters

and opponents of the Medici, between supporters and opponents of Savonarola, and especially

between those men who favored the continuation of the Medicean oligarchy (without the Medici)

and those who favored a broader distribution of political access.24 All of these conflicts occurred

within the office-holding class itself and no faction really favored a return to the corporate

republicanism of the fourteenth century. The struggles of the period occurred within attempts to

give an institutional shape to the culture of consensus that had colored Florentine politics since

23
The twenty men were: M. Domenico di Baldassare Bonsi, Tanai di Francesco de’ Nerli, Piero di Gino Capponi,
Ridolfo di Pagnozzo Ridolfi, Antonio di Sasso di Antonio, Niccolò di Andreuolo Sachetti, Giuliano di Francesco
Salviati, Bartolomeo di Domenico Giugni, Bardo di Bartolomeo Corsi, Jacopo di Bartolomeo del Zaccheria,
Francesco di Martino della Scarfa, M. Guidantonio di Giovanni Vespucci, Piero di Niccolò Popoleschi, Bernardo di
Giovanni Rucellai, Andrea di Manetto di Andrea, Francesco di Filippo Valori, Braccio di M. Domenico Martelli,
Guglielmo di Antonio de’ Pazzi, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, and Francesco d’Andrea Romoli: ASF,
Tratte, 905: 175r. Giuliano Salviati was the lone individual with no previous representation on the Medicean balìe:
see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence. The accoppiatori controlled the electoral process under Florence’s
republican constitution – they scrutinized electoral lists and placed the names of eligible men in the various purses
(borse) for sortition. The use of the accoppiatori to keep tight control over who had an opportunity to hold key
offices was central to the oligarchic system that developed in the late fourteenth century: see note 8 above.
24
On the institutional and intellectual history of the period between 1494 and 1512 see: Sergio Bertelli, “Petrus
Soderinus patriae parens,” Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance 31, no. 1 (1969); Sergio Bertelli, “Pier
Soderini ‘Vexillifer perpetuus reipublicae florentinae’ 1502-1512,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hans Baron,
ed. Anthony Molho and John A. Tedeschi, (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971); Butters, Governors
and Government, 1-165; Giorgio Cadoni, Lotte politiche e riforme istituzionali a Firenze tra il 1494 e il 1502,
(Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1999); Cooper, Pier Soderini; Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The
Prosopography of the ‘prima repubblica’,” in I ceti dirigenti nella Toscana del Quattrocento. Comitato di studi sulla
storia dei ceti dirigenti in Toscana. Atti del V e VI Convegno: Firenze, 10-11 dicembre 1982; 2-3 dicembre 1983,
ed. Riccardo Fubini, (Impruneta: Francesco Papafava, 1987); Guidubaldo Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni
politiche nella Repubblica Fiorentina dal 1494 al 1512, 3 vols., (Florence: Olschki, 1992); and Nicolai Rubinstein,
“Politics and Constitution in Florence at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Italian Renaissance Studies. A Tribute
to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E.F. Jacob, (London: Faber and Faber, 1960). Two principal historiographical
debates drive this literature related to the key institutional innovations of the period: the creation of the Consiglio
Maggiore in 1494 and of the gonfaloniere di giustizia a vita in 1502. The first argument concerns whether the
formation of the Consiglio broadened access to political power or simply institutionalized the previously limited
system. The second debate concerns whether Piero Soderini, as gonfaloniere a vita, viewed his role in a princely or
a civic light.
 89

the 1380s.25 The principal point of difference concerned the constitution of the government: who

(from within the office-holding class) should belong to the institutional basis for consensus.

The oligarchs who had controlled the coup of November 1494 lost the initiative at the

end of December when the councils of the Popolo (on 22 December) and the Comune (the

following day) – with the moral support of Savonarola – voted to create the Consiglio Maggiore.

This constitutional novelty, whose membership was permanent and hereditary, to large extent

closed the office-holding class.26 While the Consiglio, which embraced 3,742 individuals for the

entire period between 1494 and 1512, was considerably larger than the 1,250 men who sat on the

Medicean balìe between 1434 and 1494 it represented less than seven percent of the estimated

total population of the city; and not even one-third of the office-holding class in its entirety.27 It

did, however, broaden access to the highest offices enough to earn the undying enmity of

aristocratic oligarchs, such as Francesco Guicciardini, who saw it as a vehicle for under-qualified

and politically ignorant men to gain positions of importance in the government.28 However, in

effect the creation of the Consiglio largely institutionalized the hegemony within the office-

holding class of men who already had access to the highest offices of the state: membership was

25
On the key shift from a political culture of corporatism to a one of consensus, which enabled the formation of the
oligarchic reggimenti of the fifteenth century, see Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus.
26
Guidubaldo Guidi has noted that very small percentages of the holders of major offices (from less than one
percent for the Ufficiali del Monte, the Dieci della Libertà, and Otto di Guardia, to a maximum of 4.05% for the
Signoria) were not members of the Consiglio Maggiore: Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni, 601-02. This disproves
Roslyn Cooper’s earlier assertion that the formation of the Consiglio represented a complete closure of the office-
holding class: Roslyn Pesman Cooper, “The Florentine Ruling Group Under the “governo popolare”, 1494-1512,”
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History VII (New Series) (1985): 71-72. Now reprinted in Cooper, Pier
Soderini.
27
Guidi, Lotte, pensiero e istituzioni, 4. Guidi estimates the total population of Florence in 1494 at 55,000, of whom
42,250 were excluded from political eligibility for reasons of sex, age, or legal impediment. Of the 12,750 mature
men, then, who formed the potential office-holding class only 29.35% sat on the Consiglio Maggiore (3,742). Note,
that Guidi mistakenly asserts that this final figure represents 29.35% of the total population when it is clearly only
6.8% of the population.
28
See for example Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 43-46.
 90

restricted to men aged over twenty-nine years, who had paid their taxes, and who possessed the

beneficato – either they, their fathers, or grandfathers had been previously drawn for one the

three highest executive offices (the tre maggiori).29

The oligarchs appeared to regain their predominance in 1502, with the election of a

lifetime gonfaloniere di giustizia on 22 September. Piero di Tommaso Soderini, who won the

final ballot in the Consiglio Maggiore, was the son of one of the most prominent members of the

Medicean reggimenti of the previous century. The government of Soderini effectively sidelined

the Consiglio Maggiore, placing more authority in the smaller council of the Ottanta (Eighty) as

well as the foreign affairs magistracy, the Dieci di Libertà e Pace (Ten of Liberty and Peace).

The Dieci remained the bastion of oligarchic power throughout the period of Soderini’s

reggimento: almost eighty percent of its members between 1502 and 1512 bore patrician

surnames and just thirteen men occupied over one quarter of the possible seats.30 Within the

Ottanta men from patrician families accounted for two-thirds of the sitting members for the

period.31

The office-holding class remained divided, however, in several shifting and often

overlapping factions. The struggles of this period were, once again, not social but political. Piero

Soderini and his brothers courted the interests of men who favored broader political participation

29
The provision that created the Consiglio did contain a clause permitting the entry of a limited number of men who
did have the beneficato; but only thirty-nine individuals gained a seat on the council under this measure. See
Cooper, “The Florentine Ruling Group,” 73, 78-79. The tre maggiori were the Signoria and its two advisory
colleges, the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve Goodmen) and the Sedici Gonfalonieri delle Compagnie (Sixteen
Gonfaloniers of the Companies).
30
167 of the 211 men elected to the Dieci between December 1502 and August 1512 had patrician surnames
(79.14%). For a possible two-hundred positions (twenty elections for a ten man magistracy) 113 men were elected.
Thirteen men were elected four or more times: 11.5% of the officers holding 27% of the seats. Sixty of the men
elected sat only once: 53% of the officers held only 30% of the seats. ASF, Tratte, 905: 125r-126v and 906: 47r-47v
31
1,016 of the 1,520 men who sat on the Ottanta between February 1503 and October 1512 had patrician surnames:
66.84%.
 91

among the office-holding class. The cousins, Jacopo and Alamanno Salviati, established

themselves as leaders of a party that sought a narrower and more aristocratic government.

Another group, which rejected the constitutional changes that had occurred since 1494, coalesced

around Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai. Finally, Cardinal Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici, from

afar, nurtured a growing party of Medicean partisans. The membership of these last three groups,

in particular, intermingled.32

During the last years of Soderini’s administration several younger men (born between

1480 and 1500), now in their early twenties, began to emerge into public life. In 1508, Filippo di

Filippo Strozzi shocked most of his family and disturbed Piero Soderini by marrying Clarice di

Piero de’ Medici – a match carefully orchestrated by her uncle, Cardinal Giovanni. Strozzi’s

father and grandfather had endured long years of exile from Florence for their opposition to the

Medici reggimento. Even when his father had returned, an extremely wealthy man, he had

remained politically suspect and absent from the inner circles of the regime. Despite attempts by

his elder half-brother, Alfonso, and by the gonfaloniere himself Strozzi escaped with only the

lightest of punishments for consorting with a family of rebels and exiles. In the process, he

became a close friend of his new wife’s brother, Lorenzo, and her illegitimate cousin, Giulio

(who would become Pope Clement VII).33

Around the same time another of Strozzi’s friends, Antonfrancesco di Luca degli Albizzi,

also began to associate with the Medici. Albizzi descended from a branch of his family that had

32
On the political conflicts of the period under Soderini see: Butters, Governors and Government, 66-74 especially;
and Cooper, Pier Soderini. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici had inherited the mantle of leadership for his family
following the death of his elder brother, Piero, in 1503.
33
On Strozzi’s marriage see Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in
Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 45-60. Strozzi had initially
been baptized Giovanbattista. He became know by his father’s name following the elder Filippo’s death.
 92

supported Cosimo il Vecchio in the political struggles of the 1430s. His grandfather, Antonio di

Luca, had sat on the balìe of 1458 and 1466. Both Albizzi and his father had frequented the

circle of Bernardo Rucellai in the early 1500s, which contained many past and present

Mediceans. According to Jacopo Nardi, Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici first earned Albizzi’s

gratitude by intervening in a dispute over the pieve of Remole, which Albizzi had undertaken on

behalf of an old family priest. Antonfrancesco then became entangled in the Cardinal’s plots to
34
restore his family to Florence. He soon became prominent among the conspirators, whom

Cardinal Giovanni’s secretary Bernardo Dovizi da Bibbiena alluded to as “those Citizens

inside.”35

The men of this designation almost certainly included Prinzivalle di Luigi della Stufa

among their number. Della Stufa had impeccable Medicean credentials – his grandfather had sat

on every balìa since 1455 and became one of the inaugural members of the Settanta in 1480. In

November 1510, Della Stufa approached Filippo Strozzi with an ill-conceived plan to assassinate

Piero Soderini. Strozzi, after giving Della Stufa time to leave the city, informed the gonfaloniere.

The Otto di Guardia, the magistracy responsible for internal security, having failed to locate

Della Stufa declared him a rebel in absentia, forfeit to both life and property. They did arrest his

34
Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli. 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2: 9-
11. A pieve was a rural baptismal church. On Albizzi’s association with the Rucellai circle see Rosemary
Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant, (London: Athlone Press, 1972), 56-59.
On his friendship with Filippo Strozzi, which resulted in him being investigated for his role in the 1508 marriage,
see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 4-5, 47, 49 and 53. See also the undated letter from Strozzi to Albizzi, which he clearly
wrote between July 1508 and January 1509 (based on internal evidence), in which he discusses the legal difficulties
provoked by the marriage: ASF, CS, Serie 3, 134: 51r-v.
35
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 5: 72. Letter from Bernardo da Bibbiena, in Rome, to Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, 4 March
1512: “quelli Cittadini di drento.” See also the letters from Bibbiena to Cardinal de’ Medici from the previous year,
which although still encrypted make clear the role of Medicean sympathizers and agents within Florence: CS, Serie
1, 6: 7r-8r, 27r-28r, 38r-39v, 68r, and 174r.
 93

father, Luigi, who had continued to hold offices under Soderini administration, and sentenced

him to five years in exile.36

Aloof from these various intrigues Francesco di Piero Guicciardini achieved prominence

by receiving an important ambassadorial post to the court of Ferdinand of Aragon in January

1512 at the youthful age of twenty-nine. Like Della Stufa, Guicciardini’s grandfather, Jacopo di

Piero, had held a prominent position in the Medici reggimento of the 1434-94 and his father held

important offices in recent years. Of greater significance for Guicciardini’s precocious

diplomatic appointment was his father-in-law: Alamanno d’Averardo Salviati. Together with his

cousin Jacopo di Giovanni, himself married to Lucrezia di Lorenzo il Magnifico de’ Medici,

Alamanno Salviati headed one of the principal political factions in the office-holding class

during the first decade of the sixteenth century. He also belonged to the select group of thirteen

individuals whose presence dominated the Dieci di Libertà e Pace between 1502 and 1512.37

The events of the summer of 1512, which led to the end of Piero Soderini’s government

and the return of the Medici to Florence, resembled those of 1494. A similar conjunction of

elements provoked a coup d’état in the city: the threat from a foreign army, dissatisfaction within

the office-holding class, and the machinations of the Medici and their supporters within the city.

In mid-August Giuliano de’ Medici, the youngest of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons, had purchased

the support of both the Emperor Maximilian I and the Spanish vice-roy in Italy, Ramon de

Cardona, for the return of the Medici to Florence. In addition to personal payments for both

Cardona and Cardinal Mattias Lang, the imperial ambassador to the Holy League formed to

36
ASF, OGBR, 148: 253v, 256v, 258r, 266v-67r, and 272r.
37
See note 32 above. Alammano d’Averardo Salviati sat on the Dieci on four occasions. He actually died early in
1510, prior to Guicciardini’s embassy to Spain, but his political legacy arguably influenced his son-in-law’s
appointment.
 94

drive the army of Louis XII of France from Italy, the Medici provided a subsidy of 80,000 ducats

to pay the Spanish army headed by the vice-roy.38 The Medici already had the support of Pope

Julius II, who not only favored Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, but also desired to punish the

government of Soderini: Florence had remained the only major Italian state not to join the Holy

League, continuing instead to hold to its alliance with Louis XII.39

With French power on the Italian peninsula broken after their pyrrhic victory at Ravenna

Florence had become isolated. On 28 August 1512, the Spanish army commanded by Cardona,

and accompanied by Cardinal Giovanni and Giuliano de’ Medici, laid siege to Prato, just north

of Florence. Two days later the vice-roy’s troops breached the walls and brutally sacked the city.

Francesco Guicciardini’s brother Jacopo estimated that they killed four thousand people: “it

would be a lamentable thing to narrate the great cruelty they did there: women raped and

ransomed, boys sodomized, and all the monasteries turned into brothels. Whoever was not killed

was imprisoned.”40

As early as 12 June, Jacopo had reported dissatisfaction with Soderini’s foreign policy

among the office-holding class.41 Following the sack of Prato, he informed Francesco: “the city

here was full of confusion and fear because the Gonfaloniere governed matters as usual…many
38
Cooper, Pier Soderini, 258. Following Charles VIII’s invasion of the Italian peninsula in 1494 Italy had become
the principal battleground for the French and Spanish monarchs and the German Emperor vying for predominance in
Western Europe and for possession of the Kingdom of Naples and the Duchy of Milan. On the course of the Italian
Wars see the useful analysis in Giuseppe Galasso, Dalla «libertà d’Italia» alle «preponderanze straniere», (Naples:
Editoriale Scientifica, 1997), 15-59.
39
The Florentine government had also agreed, reluctantly, to host a general council of the Church, against the
wishes of Julius II, at Pisa at the behest of the French king. On papal-Florentine relations under Soderini see,
Butters, Governors and Government, 140-65.
40
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28v. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September
1512: “sarebbe cosa lagrimosa a narrare la gran crudeltà che e v’anno facto / vituperate le donne et taglieggiatele /
soddomitati e fanciulli / et mandato a bordello tucti e munisteri / chi non v’è stato morto v’è prigione.” See also
Nardi, Istorie, 1: 424-25.
41
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 38r.
 95

uomini da bene were dissatisfied.” But Soderini still maintained the support of most of the

office-holding class.42 On the morning of 31 August, with fear growing in the city and more men

openly denouncing the gonfaloniere, a group of armed young men forced their way into the

Palazzo della Signoria demanding that Soderini resign.43 Their leaders included Antonfrancesco

degli Albizzi, Paolo di Piero Vettori, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, and the sons of Bernardo

Rucellai. The gonfaloniere left the Palazzo and sought refuge in the house of Paolo Vettori’s

brother, Francesco. The number of armed youths surrounding the seat of government increased.

Among their ranks were Antonfrancesco’s second cousin, Girolamo di Luca degli Albizzi, and

Benedetto di Filippo Buondelmonti. Girolamo's grandfather, Maso di Luca, had been a

prominent member of the Medici regime in the fifteenth century, and his mother, Caterina, was

the sister of Jacopo Salviati. Buondelmonti’s association with the family was more recent: his

father had frequented the circle of Bernardo Rucellai in the early 1500s and both father and son

were friends with Filippo Strozzi and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi.44 With the giovani in control

of both the Palazzo and the adjacent piazza the Signoria voted to depose Soderini. The ex-

gonfaloniere fled the city that night. On 1 September, Giuliano di Lorenzo il Magnifico de’

Medici entered Florence for the first time in nearly eighteen years. He stayed at the home of

Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi while the Medici palace on the Via Larga was made habitable.

42
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September
1512: “qui la ciptà qui drento era pieno di confusione et di timore perchè el Gonfaloniere govenare le cose
all’usato…molti huomini da bene ci erono mal contenti.” The text in italics was originally encrypted.
43
For details of the coup d’état see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 28r-29v and CS, Serie 3, 178: 67. See also Cooper, Pier
Soderini, 253-80; and Nardi, Istorie, 1: 427-30.
44
On Buondelmonti’s links with Strozzi and Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi see, Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 47 and 49.
On his father Filippo’s association with Bernardo Rucellai see Jones, Francesco Vettori, 59.
 96

The physical return of the Medici to the city of Florence did not guarantee the re-

establishment of the Medicean hegemony of the fifteenth century. While a small violent group of

the family’s supporters had precipitated the deposition of Piero Soderini the majority of the

office-holding class favored the continuation of the constitutional forms created after November

1494. Once again, as in 1494, the oligarchic party attempted to maintain control of the city

without having to concede pre-eminence to the Medici. On 2 September, the Consiglio Maggiore

elected Signoria’s advisory colleges, the Sedici Gonfalonieri and the Dodici Buonuomini. Jacopo

Guicciardini reported to Francesco, absent from the city on his ambassadorial mission, that those

elected “[w]ere all popular men and scrutinized with great care to ensure they were not friends

of the Medici.”45 Five days later the Consiglio passed legislation reforming the Florentine

constitution. In addition to maintaining its own role, the provision created a senate by enlarging

the Ottanta and mandated the appointment of the gonfaloniere di giustizia for a one-year term.46

In 1494 attempts to institutionalize an oligarchic regime without the Medici foundered on

the opposition within the office-holding class from men who favored a broader-based

government. In 1512 it folded in the face of resistance from the Medici and their closest

supporters. On 16 September, Giuliano de’ Medici accompanied by thirty-three armed men,

including Prinzivalle della Stufa and Girolamo degli Albizzi, entered the Palazzo della Signoria

and demanded the summoning of a parlamento. Ostensibly a general assembly of the entire

office-holding class, parlamenti had formed a crucial plank in the oligarchic system from the late

45
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 29r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September
1512: “Furno tucti huomini populari et squintittati con gran cautela che è non fussino amici de’ medici.” See also
CS, Serie 3, 178: 67. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Lucca, 2 September 1512:
“crearono stamani e collegi per el consiglio piagnoni tutti.” Piagnoni (Bewhailers) was a pejorative label applied to
the supporters of Savonarola.
46
See Butters, Governors and Government, 173-75.
 97

fourteenth century enabling the manufacture of consensus for constitutional or other changes.47

The citizens gathered in the Piazza, controlled by mercenary soldiers loaned from the Spanish

army in Prato, and approved the creation of a balìa, a plenipotentiary council the use of which

had been the basis of Medici control in the fifteenth century. The balìa included among its first

actions the abolition of the Consiglio Maggiore and the habilitation of several men, legally too

young to hold office, to all public magistracies. In addition to Giuliano de’ Medici himself, this

list included Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Benedetto Buondelmonti.48

Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromea (Figure 11), painted in 1513 for Filippo

Strozzi, clearly celebrates this restoration of Medici government in Florence as well as

commemorating the Carnival of that year presided over by the twin festive companies of

Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici – Il Diamante and Il Broncone – created in mid-November

1512.49 No list of the membership of either group had survived; however, their personnel can be

partly reconstructed. A late sixteenth-century document named Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi,

Palla and Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Paolo di Piero Vettori,

47
See Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus, 264-67 and 299-300. Importantly, a parlamento did not vote on
specific proposals. Instead the Signoria would request the election of a balìa empowered to consider and make any
changes.
48
ASF, Balie, 43: 2r. The seven men permitted to hold any office, despite their age, were Bartolomeo di Filippo
Valori, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Maso di Luca degli Albizzi, Benedetto di Filippo Buondelmonti, Giovanni
di Messer Guidantonio Vespucci, Antonfrancesco di Luca degli Albizzi, and Francescantonio di Francesco Nori.
Apart from Nori all these men can be identified as participants in the coup of 31 August. Nori’s distinction came
from his father, Francesco, who died defending Lorenzo il Magnifico from assassination in 1478.
49
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 43r. On the carnival festivities of this year see Giorgio Vasari’s descriptions of the floats
decorated by Pontormo for each Medici company: Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects,
trans. Gaston de Vere, 2 vols., (New York & Toronto: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), 2: 343-47. Some scholars have
objected that Vasari clearly identifies “Filippo Strozzi vecchio” as the patron of Piero di Cosimo’s panel – that is,
Filippo di Matteo, the father of the Filippo identified here as the painting’s patron. If the commission had come from
the older Filippo a dating of 1513 (twenty-two years after his death) would be impossible: see for example Mina
Bacci, Piero di Cosimo, (Milan: Bramante, 1966), 106-7. This argument fails to account for the fact that by the mid-
sixteenth century, when Vasari wrote the second version of the Vite, Filippo di Filippo (by then dead himself) could
reasonably be identified as “Filippo Strozzi vecchio” to distinguish him from his younger and still living namesakes:
Filippo di Matteo and Filippo di Carlo Strozzi.
 98

Figure 11. Piero di Cosimo The Liberation of Andromeda (1513). Panel painting, 70 x 123 cm.
Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi
 99

and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici (the future Pope Clement VII) as members of Giuliano’s

Diamante brigade.50 In addition to his brother-in-law, Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzo’s company most

likely also contained Benedetto Buondelmonti, Prinzivalle della Stufa, Giovanni Vespucci, and

Domenico Martelli – all of whom later received payments as gentlemen in Lorenzo’s military

company.51

In terms of style and iconography Piero di Cosimo’s panel recalls the sort of festive

decorations produced for Florentine Carnival celebrations. Its theme could possibly re-create a

masque performed by the Broncone for Carnival 1512-13.52 Andromeda was the daughter of the

King and Queen of Ethiopia, Cepheus and Cassiopea. Following an ill-advised boast by

Cassiopea that her daughter’s beauty rivaled that of the Nereids Poseidon, the god of the sea, had

sent a monster to ravage the kingdom. Oracles advised Cepheus that only by sacrificing

Andromeda to the beast could Poseidon’s rage be averted. At the last minute, however, Perseus

rescued the Ethiopian princess, having first extorted her hand in marriage. Piero di Cosimo’s

panel presents the narrative at multiple stages in the one image. At the top right Perseus, flying

through the air on his winged sandals, spies Andromeda’s plight. In the center ground, he slays

the monster that menaces the half-naked princess tied to a tree stump by the ocean shore,

50
Butters, Governors and Government, 207-08.
51
ASF, MAP, 132: 91r-94v See also Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (1514-1517), ed. Pierre
Jodogne, (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1987), 58-59.
52
On the association between The Liberation of Andromeda and Carnival see Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo
tempo, (Ponte alle Grazie: Banca Toscana/Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1993), 114-15; and Anna Forlani Tempesti and
Elena Capretti, Piero di Cosimo: Catalogo completo, (Florence: Octavo (Franco Cantini), 1996), 140-41. Compare
also the affinities between the panel and three surviving canvases from the 1513 Carnival produced by Andrea del
Sarto – Piero di Cosimo’s one-time student and still close associate: Andrea del Sarto 1486-1530: Dipinti e disegni
a Firenze, (Milan: Gruppo Zelig/D’Angeli Haesler, 1986), 106-07; John Shearman, Andrea del Sarto, 2 vols.,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965), 1: 29 and 79, 2: 213-14; and John Shearman, “Pontormo and Andrea del
Sarto, 1513,” The Burlington Magazine 104, no. 716 (1962). Strozzi and Piero di Cosimo had collaborated on
Carnival floats previously: Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 4-5; and Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 1: 652-54.
 100

watched from the bottom left by a despairing Cepheus (in the extravagant white turban) and his

court. At bottom right, a celebratory crowd engulfs the victorious Perseus and the newly-rescued

Andromeda.

The panel contains two overt Medicean symbols. The first is the broncone itself – the

broken yet flourishing bough. In this case interpreted literally as tree stump by the ocean’s shore

in the very center of the image, from which a leafy shoot emerges. The broncone had first

appeared as a Medici device used by Lorenzo’s father, Piero di Lorenzo il Magnifico, to refer to

the continuity and survival of his family: even if one branch were severed another would flourish

in its place.53 The boughs of laurel waved by the triumphant crowd at bottom right constitute the

second traditional Medicean icon in the image.54 The use of laurel (lauro or laurum in the Latin)

not only played upon the name Lorenzo it also had classical associations with glory and victory.

Its presence in Piero di Cosimo’s painting indicates that the figure of Perseus should be

associated with the Medici, and probably with the younger Lorenzo in particular.55 The image,

therefore, reads the return of the Medici in triumphalist terms as Lorenzo-Perseus liberating

Florence-Andromeda.56

The representation of the Medici as protectors of the city was, again, not a new concept.

In the aftermath of the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478 a medal had appeared depicting Lorenzo il

Magnifico with the inscription SALVS PVBLICA – the public well-being – drawing on the

53
See Karla Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 15th-18th centuries, trans. Patricia Wardle, 3 vols., (Florence:
Studio per edizioni scelte, 1981), 40.
54
Janet Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos, (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984), 17-27.
55
Compare with the use of laurel by Andrea del Sarto in the panels he executed for the 1513 Carnival: Shearman,
Andrea del Sarto, 2: 213-14; and Shearman, “Pontormo.”
56
Compare with Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 25.
 101

Ciceronian epigraph salus publica sola lex (the public well-being is the only law). Around 1490,

another medal bearing Lorenzo’s image on the obverse appeared. On the reverse it featured a

female personification of Florence seated beneath a tree holding three lilies with the inscription

TVTELA PATRIE FLORENTIA – guardianship or guardian of the Florentine fatherland.57

In the context of the previous summer, however, the concept assumed new immediacy in

1513. Jacopo Guicciardini had made clear the fear felt in Florence following the sack of Prato:

“when the news arrived here it produced so much horror and fear that one can not express it:

everywhere one heard wails and rumors, all the shops and houses emptied, the monasteries filled

with women, and many people fled.” Guicciardini also indicated that the government,

represented by Piero Soderini, bore the brunt of the blame for the situation: “seeing the manifest

danger and holding that this disorder eventuated only from the Gonfaloniere it began to be said

that the safety of one man was not worth danger to the whole population.”58 Capitalizing on this

perception that Soderini’s French alliance and opposition to the Holy League had endangered

Florence the Medici and their supporters presented their return as the liberation of Florence from

the threat of foreign control or intervention. The restoration of a Medici government had

prevented the sack of the city by the Spanish army.

The iconography of Piero di Cosimo’s painting heralded the return of the Medici as a

restoration of the golden age of Lorenzo il Magnifico, in which the family’s predominance

57
Langedijk, The Portraits of the Medici, 27-28, 1168-69, and 1171. Compare with the discussion of Lorenzo’s
public diplomacy and the need for the Medici to protect Florence at notes 16 to 19 above.
58
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 360: 29r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, 3 September
1512: “venuta che fu qui la novella dete a ciascuno tanto horrore et spavento che non si potrebbe exprimere per
tutto si sentiva pianti et romori sghomberavonsi tucte le boteghe / tucte le case et pienonsi e munisteri di donne et
assai s’uscirono di firenze…vedendo el pericolo manifesto / et reputandoso questo disordine solo venire dal
Gonfaloniere si comincio pel popolo a dire che per salvare un solo non era da mettere a pericolo un popolo.” Text in
italics was originally encrypted.
 102

protected and enhanced the city and the office-holding class. In institutional terms the system of

the fifteenth-century did reappear in full: in November 1513 the balìa revived the Medicean

councils of the Cento and Settanta as well as the older communal councils of the Comune and

the Popolo. The plenipotentiary body also replaced the Dieci di Libertà with its Medicean

equivalent, the Otto di Pratica.59 But the Medici system and party of the Quattrocento was not so

easily restored.

Well over one thousand men sat on the balìe for the total period between 1434 and 1494.

Of these, 190 sat on four or more of the plenipotentiary councils. Between 1512 and 1527 only

170 men sat on the balìa for the total period.60 The Medici in 1512 had no ready-made partisan

support base, such as Cosimo il Vecchio had developed in the 1420s. Most of their vehement

supporters, such as the men who staged the coups of August 31 and September 16 in 1512, did

not yet pass the minimum age requirements for holding the most important communal offices.

The Medici instead had to rely on a group of older men who had established profiles in

Florentine public life. Almost half of the fifty-five men initially named on the balìa in September

1512 had sat on the Ottanta, the Dieci, or both under the previous reggimento; and the majority

of these men had appeared more than once on these councils.61 Even among the men who formed

the inner circle of the reggimento – the sixteen men who sat five or more times on the Otto di

Pratica between 1514 and 1527 – older and less partisan men dominated.62 Some of these men

59
Butters, Governors and Government, 225-27.
60
See Rubinstein, The Government of Florence.
61
Butters, Governors and Government, 188-89.
62
ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r-82v and 187r. The sixteen men were: Lanfredino di Jacopo Lanfredini (6), Jacopo di
Giovanni Salviati (9), Filippo di Lorenzo Buondelmonti (5), Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli (7), Lorenzo di Niccolò
Benintendi (5), Antonio d’Averardo Serristori (6), Pandolfo di Bernardo Corbinelli (8), Lorenzo di Matteo Morelli
(8), Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi (7), Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi (8), Luigi d’Agnolo della Stufa (9), Luca di
 103

did have previous connections with the Medici, six had fathers who were prominent in the

fifteenth century regime and two – Jacopo Salviati and Piero Ridolfi had married daughters of

Lorenzo il Magnifico. But only two of these sixteen did not hold a significant office at least once

during the period of the Medici’s exile from Florence – Piero Ridolfi and Matteo Cini – and

several of them were as prominent prior to 1512 as they were after.63

In this regard, the constitution of the office-holding class from the late fifteenth century

into the first decades of the sixteenth gives an overwhelming impression of continuity. While a

small party of committed Mediceans existed, most of who were too young to hold office in 1512,

the majority of the city’s elite maintained a position of political agnosticism toward the nature

and form of the government – whether it be a Medicean or a more civic form of republicanism.

Their political concerns would appear to have embraced the preservation of their own personal

position as well as that of the office-holding class more generally. In light of the profound

connection between the social status of the city’s elite and the physical city discussed in Chapter

Two this depended upon the continued independence of Florence. Rather than ideological or

partisan loyalties the acceptance of the return of the Medici in 1512 for most of the office-

holding class arose from a perception that the policies of Soderini’s administration had

threatened the sovereignty and survival of Florence rather than from ideological motives or

partisan loyalties – the same concerns that had fostered the coup d'état against the Medici in

1494.

Maso degli Albizzi (10), Piero di Niccolò Ridolfi (9), Matteo di Simone Cini (5), Matteo d’Agnolo Niccolini (6),
and Gherardo di Bertoldo Corsini (5). On the inner circle of the reggimento see also Ibid., 250-57 and 281-84. On
the increased importance and power of the Otto di Pratica after 1512 see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 39-40.
63
Defined as sitting on one of the tre maggiori, the Ottanta, or the Dieci: ASF, Tratte, 717: 167v-189r; 719: 3r-18v;
905: 125r-126v; and 906: 47r-47v; and Herlihy, Online Tratte.
 104

The place of the Medici themselves within the reggimento and the office-holding class

altered substantially in the years after 1512 from their role during the fifteenth century. While

never dominating the most significant offices of the commune in a manner commensurate with

the actual influence they possessed, the leading members of the Medici family had consistently

sat on various magistracies of the government between 1434 and 1494. After 1512, with

Giovanni and Giulio de’ Medici automatically excluded by their clerical status, the family’s

representation within the government of Florence fell to Lorenzo and Giuliano. While both men

sat on the balìa created in 1512 and Lorenzo subsequently appeared on the Settanta following its

revival in 1514, they were otherwise almost entirely absent from the most important positions

within the reggimento: Lorenzo sat on the Otto di Pratica twice and the Cento once.64

How Giuliano and Lorenzo avoided holding office testifies to the altered nature of the

reggimento after 1512. Lorenzo received a disqualification for owing tax payments on four

separate occasions – three times of the Cento and once as gonfaloniere di giustizia. Giuliano was

barred for the same reason the one time his name was drawn for the Cento.65 In all likelihood the

two men probably did not owe any money to the commune at all – despite Lorenzo’s repeated

complaints that his allowance did not meet his needs.66 Their disqualification probably represents

the use of a handy mechanism for avoiding holding undesirable or tedious offices. However, it

also represented a significant change in the culture of the Medicean system and projected an

image of separation from the office-holding class. In 1480 when Lorenzo il Magnifico had

actually failed to meet his tax debt the reggimento went to extraordinary lengths to conceal the

64
ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v, 66v, 81r-v; and 719: 21v.
65
ASF, Tratte, 719: 27v, 29r, and 35v. Lorenzo was also recorded as being absent on the only other occasions that
his name was drawn for the Cento: 25v and 37v.
66
See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 5v.
 105

fact.67 The leading men of the government worried more about the damage that could result if

Lorenzo’s weakened financial position emerged should his name be drawn for office and he be

disqualified, than about his possible absence from the magistracies of the commune. His son and

grandson’s cavalier use of fictional tax debts to shirk burdensome positions revealed a

disconnection between the Medici and the rest of the office-holding class, and a striking

disregard for the politics of perception.

Despite this Lorenzo de’ Medici maintained a tight grip over Florentine affairs. The

family archive from the 1510s reveals a continual parade of petitioners seeking favor and

advancement. While not all requests were satisfied, the recourse to Lorenzo reveals the extent to

which members of the office-holding class understood him to control the electoral process

absolutely. “As the [office of] gonfaloniere di giustizia returns next March to our quarter of

Santo Spirito,” wrote Filippo di Benedetto de’ Nerli in December 1514, “I would hope that my

father, Benedetto, would be promoted to such a dignity.”68 Following his election to the Signoria

for January-February 1515 Lorenzo di Antonio Cambi expressed his effusive gratitude to

Lorenzo for “the honor and dignity given me by my being raised to this sublime magistracy, by

which I see that you hold me one of your most faithful servants.”69

Although De Nerli’s hopes for his father came to nothing, extant sources substantiate the

perception that underlay his petition: that Lorenzo controlled the personnel of the most important

67
See Brown, “Lorenzo, the Monte.”
68
ASF, MAP, 116: 630. Letter from Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 27 December
1514: “havendo a marzo proximo ad venire el gonfalone della Justitia a tornare nel quartiere nostro di sancto spirito
desiderrei benedetto mio padre fussi a tale dignità parasso.” De’ Nerli literally says “the banner [gonfalone] of
Justice,” referring to its office through its principal symbol.
69
ASF, MAP, 116: 20. Letter from Lorenzo Cambi, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 4 January 1515:
“delo onore e degnità datami d’avermi asuntti a questo sublimo magistratto di che vegho m’avette nel numero de’
vostri fedelissimi servitori.”
 106

offices to a degree even exceeding that of his grandfather. The exact makeup of the highest

positions in the government appear to have been decided in advance and vetted by Lorenzo or his

agents. On 4 March 1517, Lorenzo’s principal secretary, Goro Gheri, wrote: “In this letter I am

sending Your Excellency the list for the new Dodici, which has to be imbursed on the ninth or

tenth of the present month.” The five or six day gap between Gheri’s letter and the proposed date

for placing the names of the chosen men in the appropriate allowed sufficient time for Lorenzo to

respond if necessary.70 One example of such a list, for the Signoria of March-April 1517 has

survived: an array of twenty-five names, divided by quarter, in the hand of Gheri. Short

annotations accompany several of the names – “Good and Secure” or “a familiar of Jacopo

Salviati.” Another hand, presumably that of Lorenzo, checked eleven names on the list, which

correspond exactly to the men drawn for the office.71

Despite the appearance of control, as well as Lorenzo’s indubitable ability to influence

the makeup of various Florentine magistracies, the combination of his frequent absences (the

reasons for which are discussed immediately below), his disregard for the sensibilities of the

office-holding class (revealed in his use of fictional tax debts to avoid certain magistracies), and

the political agnosticism of the city’s elite combined to undermine Medici control. All these

elements drove a wedge between Lorenzo and other members of the office-holding class, making

him less a part of their social world. The case of Antonio Gualterotti, which unfolded over

several months between late 1514 and early 1515, presents a revealing example of how

ineffective Medici control could be as a result.

70
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 9: 44. Letter from Goro Gheri, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rimini, 4 March 1517:
“In questa mando alla E[cellentia] V[ostra] la nota de’ nuovi xii che si hanno ad imborsar’ alli 9 /o/ alli x del
presente.” The drawing for the Dodici subsequently occurred on 12 March 1517.
71
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 9: 176. Undated document in the hand of Goro Gheri, ca. January-March 1517: “Buono et
Sicuro;” “chi sta con Jacopo salviati.” For the results of the drawing see, Herlihy, Online Tratte.
 107

Several years earlier the Altoviti bank in Bruges had failed. Several of the creditors of the

bank and the heirs of its owner, Cornelio Altoviti, had recently brought a suit against Gualterotti,

who had several outstanding credits with the Altoviti enterprise himself, charging that he had

defrauded them in the process of regaining their money. In September 1514, they had petitioned

the Signoria, which functioned as the final court of appeal, to hear their case; but the sitting

gonfaloniere di giustizia, Lorenzo di Matteo Morelli, declined.72 Toward the end of the month,

Benedetto Buondelmonti warned Lorenzo, “everyone held it as a mark…against the honor of

Your Lordship” that Morelli had refused the petition. Buondelmonti’s concern arose because the

other creditors were all “gentlemen” and Gualterotti was no friend of the Medici.73 On 11

October, Buondelmonti wrote again that he had unsuccessfully urged Morelli to take up the case.

The gonfaloniere, he intimated, was inclined “to avoid annoyances and especially where he

would have to labor between citizens.” Buondelmonti continued that an anonymous “friend” had

informed him that the interests of powerful men, Lanfredino Lanfredini and Jacopo Salviati,

were involved in the case and marriage negotiations of the Pucci family also complicated

matters.74 Ten days later, Buondelmonti wrote again, this time observing that Morelli had

ignored Lorenzo’s order to hear the case.75

72
ASF, MAP, 116: 322. See also Butters, Governors and Government, 261-63.
73
ASF, MAP, 116: 322. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 26
September 1514: “fu tutto reputati chosa…chontro all’honor di V[ostra] S[ignoria];” “huomini da bene.”
74
ASF, MAP, 116: 368. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 11 October 1514:
“fuggie brighe et maxime dove abbi a travagliar’ tra cittadini e cittadini.” It is unclear from Buondelmonti’s letter, at
least to my reading, whether the Pucci were negotiating with the Gualterotti or the Morelli. Lanfredini, however,
who was involved in the negotiations, did appear to be protecting Gualterotti to a certain extent.
75
ASF, MAP, 116: 419.
 108

Not until January 1515, following “many most heated letters” from Lorenzo, did the

Signoria finally give the issue a hearing.76 By that time, as Francesco Guicciardini observed,

Lorenzo’s absence from Florence and inability to influence events from afar had produced “so

many bad effects.” He continued that had Lorenzo actually been in the city “it would have all

been over in four days.”77 Whether Guicciardini’s judgment is correct or not, the affair

demonstrated the limits of Medici control where the interests of other powerful men intersected –

limits that Lorenzo’s absence only exacerbated. Lorenzo appears in the proceedings of the issue

as very much an outsider, dependant on Buondelmonti to navigate the intricacies and conflicting

interests of the social world of the city’s elite.

The election of Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici to the papacy, as Pope Leo X, in March

1513 constituted the single greatest factor contributing to the changed position of the Medici in

Florence. It shifted the base of the family’s power and influence from Florence to Rome, and

provided a larger stage for their ambitions. It also separated them, irrevocably, from the social

world of Florence’s office-holding class. From Leo’s accession, Rome and the potential rewards

of the papacy exerted an irresistible pull on the Medici and many of their closest supporters.

First, Giuliano and then Lorenzo abandoned Florence, which now appeared a provincial

backwater, in favor of the Eternal City at the center of Western Europe. “I think of nothing else,”

Lorenzo observed in October 1513, “nor do I have any other desire except to begin tasting some

of the fruits of Our Lord’s happiness.”78 When Francesco Guicciardini had his name drawn as

76
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3 January 1515: Guicciardini, Le
lettere (1514-1517), 18.
77
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 21 February 1515: Ibid., 31-32.
78
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 3: 13r. Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 29 October
1513: “altro non penso / nè altro desidero per cominciare a gustar’ qualche fructo della felicità di N[ostro]
 109

gonfaloniere di giustizia for March-April 1517 (an office he was still too young to hold) he sent

his thanks to Goro Gheri, but added: “nevertheless I pray that Your Lordship, when the time

seems right, will not forget to remind Rome that which matters more to me.”79

The capture of the papacy by the Medici transformed Florence from the center of the

family’s concerns to a satellite of papal policy. Guicciardini, in his 1516 Discorso del modo di

assicurare lo stato alla casa de’ Medici observed that with the election of Leo X “the

government of this city [Florence] seems to them [the Medici] a small thing, and one sees that

they consider it among the least of their possessions.”80 Whether Lorenzo resided in Florence or

not the reggimento became subject to the desires and needs of the family’s broader policy as they

sought to use the papacy to promote themselves into the ranks of European royalty through

marriage, diplomacy, and even military means.81

While the Gualterotti case demonstrated the limits of Medici control over Florence, its

evolution and eventual outcome displayed the way that Rome had become the center for

decision-making and the engine of policy over Florentine matters. A decision made in Rome to

S[ignore].” See also 37r: Letter from Lorenzo de’ Medici to Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici, 28 January 1514: “io mi
voglio dare piacere hora che io sono giovane et che io posso per havere un papa.”
79
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, to Goro Gheri, 3 March 1517: Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514-
1517), 419. As Guicciardini’s name does not actually appear to have been drawn for the position he was probably
most likely responding to a proposal that he been “seen” as gonfaloniere – perhaps misunderstood in its transmission
from Florence. Either way the actual outcome does not affect the significance of his open preferment for
advancement in papal rather than Florentine offices.
80
Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 269.
81
On the relationship between Rome and Florence and on Medici dynastic ambitions between 1513 and 1519 see:
Butters, Governors and Government, 187-307; Jones, Francesco Vettori, 85-142; and Stephens, The Fall, 95-163.
The behavior of the Medici, in relation to the papacy, was not unique, see Caroline Castiglione, Patrons and
Adversaries: Nobles and Villagers in Italian Politics, 1640-1760, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 18-
34; Peter Partner, Renaissance Rome, 1500-1559: A Portrait of a Society, (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London:
University of California Press, 1976), 10-11; Christine Shaw, Julius II: The Warrior Pope, (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993), 9-50; and Charles L. Stinger, The Renaissance in Rome, Second ed., (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana
University Press, 1998), 83-96.
 110

accept the case against Gualterotti eventually overrode the objections of members of the

reggimento in Florence. Other correspondence from the period demonstrates, again and again,

how policy set in the Eternal City affected or governed outcomes in the city on the Arno. In late

February 1515, Francesco Guicciardini noted that the drawing of names for the Signoria of

March-April that year had begun but “because until last night the order had not yet arrived from

Rome we do not yet know who will be gonfaloniere”82

From the summer of 1518 Benedetto Buondelmonti became the principal conduit for

instructions to pass from Rome to Goro Gheri in Florence. In late June, Buondelmonti informed

Gheri that, “we have the list for the new Signoria and the Most Reverend Monsignore [Cardinal

Giulio de’ Medici] approves everything.”83 In August after one Jacopo Bottegari had complained

to Cardinal de’ Medici about the rigorous pursuit of his tax debts, Buondelmonti wrote to Gheri

that, “[Bottegari] being a Servant of this Most Illustrious house it seems to His Most Reverend

Lordship that respect ought to be shown to him.”84 On other occasions, Florentine business faced

delays because of Buondelmonti’s difficulty in gaining access to either Leo or Cardinal Giulio.

“I have two letters from Your Lordship from the twelfth and the thirteenth, to which I have little

to reply,” Buondelmonti informed Gheri on 15 January 1519, “because Our Lord is in the castle

[Castel Sant’Angelo] and the Most Reverend Monsignore [is] with His Holiness.” The letter

82
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 23 February 1515: Guicciardini, Le
lettere (1514-1517), 37.
83
ASF, MAP, 143: 87. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 29 June 1518:
“La nota della nuova signoria se auta e mons[igno]re R[everendi]x[i]mo apruova tutta.”
84
ASF, MAP, 143: 118. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 4 August 1518:
“essendo lui Servitor’ di questa Ill[ustrissi]ma chasa par’ ad S[ua] S[ignoria] R[everendi]x[i]ma si debbi averlli
respetto.”
 111

continued that, “this morning His Most Reverend Lordship rode to his vineyard, where he is

having a wall built, so I could not confer with him about the contents of your letters.”85

Possession of the papacy did expand the ability of the Medici to reward friends and allies.

Many Florentines received paid positions within the papal household or employment within

papal government.86 Leo bestowed cardinal’s hats upon several Florentines and Medici servants

including his cousin, Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, and nephews, Giovanni di Jacopo Salviati,

Niccolò di Piero Ridolfi, and Innocenzo di Franceschetto Cibo.87 Francesco Guicciardini became,

first, governor of Modena and, then, of Reggio also. Filippo de’ Nerli followed Guicciardini in

the administration of Modena. Girolamo degli Albizzi became Captain of the Papal Horse.

Filippo Strozzi benefited, perhaps, more than most becoming Depositor General of the Apostolic

Chamber, which although not the most prestigious or even the most lucrative financial position

in the Roman court, placed its owner at the center of papal finances with numerous opportunities

for profit.88

However the resources of the papacy had a limit, and competition for benefices or other

offices often left the Medici and their agents in the unfavorable situation of choosing one

Florentine over another. This hampered the family’s ability to broaden its connection with the

office-holding class. In September 1518, Benedetto Buondelmonti became concerned about

“disorder and unhappiness in the house of Pandolfini” because they desired certain benefices

85
ASF, MAP, 143: 24. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 15 January 1519: “ho dua
di vostra S[igno]ria de xii e xiii alle quali farò poca risposta perchè N[ostro] S[ignore] è/ in chastello et con S[ua]
S[anti]tà mons[igno]r’ R[everendi]x[i]mo et questo giorno è/ chavalchato alla sua vignia dove fa murar’ in forma
non li possuto conferir’ il contenuto di essa vostra ad S[ua] S[igno]ria R[everendi]x[i]ma.”
86
See the examples listed in Stephens, The Fall, 127-28.
87
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 28-29 and 36.
88
See Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 91-118. See also the further discussion of Strozzi’s role in facilitating the
appropriation of Florentine public finances by the Medici papacy below.
 112

belonging the late Bishop of Pistoia, Cardinal Niccolò Pandolfini, which Leo X wanted to give to

the Pucci family.89 In February 1519, opposing claims by the Capponi and the Frescobaldi

became an issue.90

The experience of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, while a unique example, reveals the

dramatic effects that could result from the Medici failing to satisfy petitioners. Like so many

others Albizzi had sought preferment in Rome following the election of Leo X. He had requested

the customs farm for the Papal States. As the Genoese Sauli family still owned this office for

nearly three more years Albizzi initially had no competition and he submitted his petition

without making any payment up front. Despite initially agreeing to Albizzi’s request, Leo X

revoked his promise when the Sauli made a counter-offer with immediate payment in May 1513.

The pope offered Albizzi 4,000 ducats in compensation, but then reduced the amount to 3,000.91

Although Albizzi did later find employment in the administration of the Papal States the affair

over the customs farm cooled his ardent support for the Medici.92 In October 1513,

Buondelmonti distrusted Albizzi enough to set a spy on him when he departed Florence for his

villa.93 By 1517, Albizzi associated openly with men such as Luigi Alammanni, Zanobi

Buondelmonti, and Jacopo da Diaceto, who later attempted to assassinate Cardinal Giulio de’

89
ASF, MAP, 143: 4. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 19 September 1518: “disordine
et mala contentezza nella chasa de pandolfini.” See also 143: 5.
90
ASF, MAP, 143: 41-43.
91
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 178: 57.
92
See Buondelmonti’s references to Albizzi position in ASF, MAP, 143: 19 and 21.
93
ASF, MAP, 116: 368.
 113

Medici in 1522.94 Whether Albizzi had any knowledge of the plot remains unclear – he was not

among the men punished by the Otto di Guardia following its disclosure. But, according to the

confession of Niccolò di Lorenzo Martelli, the conspirators did believe Albizzi would support

their cause and named him as a member of the Signoria that would have assumed control if the

assassination had succeeded.95 While Albizzi represents the extreme example, his trajectory from

violent support for to equally violent opposition to the Medici demonstrates the potential for

possession of the papacy to weaken the family’s position in Florence.

The greatest risk to the Medici predominance that arose from the election of Leo X,

however, did not come from disgruntled petitioners. Rather it eventuated from the growing

divergence between papal and Florentine interests as the Medici sought to promote both Lorenzo

and Giuliano into the ranks of European royalty, and as the greater powers of Western Europe

continued to struggle for supremacy and for hegemony over the Italian peninsula.96 As discussed

previously, the Medici had founded their position in Florence during the fifteenth century in part

on their ability to present themselves as protectors and promoters of the city within the world of

Italian and European power politics. Piero di Cosimo’s The Liberation of Andromeda invoked

this role in its celebration of the family’s return. When the focus of Medici ambition and power

94
Niccolò Machiavelli, Machiavelli and His Friends: Their Personal Correspondence, trans. James B. Atkinson and
James Sices, (De Kalb: Northen Illinois University Press, 1996), 318 and 328.
95
On the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici see “Documenti della congiura fatta contro il Cardinale
Giulio de’ Medici nel 1522,” ed. Cesare Guasti. Giornale storico degli archivi toscani 3, no. 2-4 (1859). On the
place of Albizzi in the conspirators’ plans see specifically 243-45. On the debated role of Niccolò Machiavelli, as
intellectual mentor to the conspirators, see most recently Patricia J. Osmond, “The Conspiracy of 1522 Against
Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici: Machiavelli and ‘gli esempli delli antiqui’,” in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History,
Politics, Culture, ed. Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E. Reiss, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
96
On Leo X’s politico-military policies and the struggle for supremacy in Italy see most recently Maurizio Gattoni,
Leone X e la geo-politica dello stato pontificio (1513-21), (Vatican City: Archivio Segreto Vaticano, 2000); R.J.
Knecht, Renaissance Warrior and Patron: The Reign of Francis I, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
62-104, 165-248; and James D. Tracy, Emperor Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International
Finance, and Domestic Politics, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 39-49.
 114

shifted from Florence to Rome, however, the family’s policy favored the advancement of their

own interests without balancing the needs of the broader office-holding class. At the same time

the economics of power favored the interests of the papacy over those of the Florentine state in

matters of foreign policy. As a result, the diplomatic and military maneuvers of Leo resulted in

several serious threats to the city and its territory.

In 1515, Leo X inclined toward using military force to oppose Francis I of France in

northern Italy. This raised the uncomfortable proposition of Florentine troops, under the

command of Lorenzo de’ Medici (their newly-appointed Captain-General), fighting the city’s

traditional ultramontane ally. It also increased the prospect of a French invasion of Florence’s

dominion. In August that year, Guicciardini noted that reports indicated Milanese support for

Francis I and feared that, as in 1512, Florence would find itself isolated: “we are declared

[against the French] without any benefit, either for others or for ourselves.” He continued that

any approach toward Florence could provoke a revolution in the city, again raising the specter of

the summer three years earlier: “any tumult that occurred here would be the ultimate ruin and

end not only of the friends [of the Medici] but universally of the entire city.”97 In early

September, Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici warned her son, Lorenzo, that Antonio Serristori – one

of the leading men in the reggimento – had spoken openly against the pope’s military policy: “he

said that we should pray to God that things go well, and that when they go otherwise then he will

be among the first to run to the Piazza [della Signoria] shouting ‘popolo!’”98 Later in the month,

97
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 18 August 1515: Guicciardini, Le
lettere (1514-1517), 79.
98
ASF, MAP, 132: 669. Letter from Alfonsina Orsini de’ Medici, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 7 September
1515: “gl’usava dire che pregassimo idio che le cose andassino bene / et che quando andassino altrimenti / che lui
sarià de primi andare in piaza a gridar’ popolo.” The invocation of “popolo e libertà” (the people and liberty) was
the traditional rallying cry for revolution in Florence.
 115

the immediate threat of war had lessened with the prospect of an accord between Leo and

Francis. Guicciardini, however, observed that papal and Florentine interests diverged over the

treaty, which guaranteed the territorial integrity of the Florentine state but removed Piacenza and

Parma from the Papal States. The accord, he wrote, “is greatly desired here…[but] there is grave

fear that the pope will refuse it.”99

Leo X subsequently used the ambiguity exhibited by Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke

of Urbino and a papal vassal, during the confrontation with Francis I as an excuse to deprive him

of his possessions in March 1516. The pope promptly bestowed the duchy of Urbino on Lorenzo,

who took over his new realm by early June. This first Urbino war had few negative ramifications

for Florence or the Medici position: it was swift and successful. It did provide another distraction

that removed Lorenzo from Florentine affairs, and the city did finance the war, in which the

commune had no benefit or stake.100

From June 1515, in addition to being the Depositor General for Leo X, Filippo Strozzi

had become Depositor General for the Florentine Signoria – although the position nominally

belonged to Roberto de’ Ricci.101 The Depository of Florence served an analogous purpose to

that of the Apostolic Chamber – the office received monies from the funded public debt, the

Monte Comune, and then paid them out as required by the Signoria or the Otto di Pratica. In

practice the Depositor usually forwarded the necessary sums out of his own pocket and every six

months, with the approval of the Otto, wrote off his debts onto the commune. The significance of

Strozzi holding the same position in both Florence and Rome, as Melissa Bullard has pointed

99
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 28 September 1515: Guicciardini,
Le lettere (1514-1517), 105.
100
Stephens, The Fall, 103.
101
Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514-1517), 59.
 116

out, meant that the financial relationship between the Medici pope and the Florentine reggimento

became an internal affair of the Strozzi bank. This enabled the papacy to obtain funds directly

from Florence and to transfer its debts onto the books of the Signoria without external

oversight.102 It also enabled Strozzi – or rather Francesco di Piero del Nero who acted on his

behalf in Florence – to make payments, from communal funds, to individuals, including

Benedetto Buondelmonti who received 1,150 florins “by order of the Lord duke [Lorenzo,

following the investiture of Urbino].”103

While the initial conquest of Urbino proved relatively painless for both Florence and the

Medici, a second war over the duchy provoked further divisions between the family and the

office-holding class in the city. In January 1517, Francesco Maria della Rovere with the

assistance of Federico Gonzaga da Bozzolo and the connivance of Odet de Foix, viscount de

Lautrec and Marshal of France, launched an offensive to retake his old fief.104 Della Rovere and

Gonzaga reclaimed the territory almost as rapidly as Lorenzo had conquered it the previous year.

Within one month only the fortress of San Leo still held out. By May it appeared likely that

Della Rovere would invade the Florentine state and once again the prospect of a revolution in the

city provoked by an external threat emerged.

102
Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 40-42 and 87-89. Bullard’s book examines in detail the financial manipulations that
occurred between 1512 and 1527 under the egis of Strozzi. For a broader, if less thorough, examination of the
financial benefits reaped by certain individuals during the 1510s see Stephens, The Fall, 124-39.
103
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 49: 8r. List of individuals and other debts on the books of the Depositor, ca. May 1517: “per
ordine di S[igno]re duca.” A letter from Filippo Strozzi instructing Francesco del Nero to make this payment to
Buondelmonti, dated 22 October 1515, has survived at ASF, CS, Serie 3, 110: 11r. See also Benedetto’s reference to
a further payment of fifty ducats that he received from the Strozzi bank in Rome in February 1519: ASF, MAP, 143:
4.
104
On the second Urbino war see, Butters, Governors and Government, 293-97; Francesco Guicciardini, Storia
d’Italia, ed. Franco Catalano. 3 vols. (n.p.: Mondadori, 1975), 2: 619-25; and Francesco Vettori, Scritti storici e
politici, ed. Enrico Niccolini, (Bari: Laterza, 1972), 177-82.
 117

As early as 11 February, Francesco Guicciardini had presciently stated: “I most certainly

do not doubt…that this fire will have greater effects and burn more than perhaps many believe.”

He predicted that if Della Rovere succeeded in Urbino he would turn his army on Florence

“which would eventually be our ruin.”105 Two weeks later, as it became obvious that retaking the

duchy would require a long campaign, Guicciardini observed that lengthy wars often produced

unexpected results: “now that the fire is alight it could produce some new travail.” He bleakly

concluded that least damaging outcome for the conflict would be “an intolerable expense with

loss of reputation.”106

Guicciardini observed events at a remove from Modena. His brothers, Jacopo and Luigi,

however, kept him informed of events in Florence; and their correspondence from May 1517

reveals the depth of anxiety and anger felt in the city over the results of the Medici military

adventurism: the financial drain on Florence and the threat posed by the anti-Medici alliance

across the Apennines. The leading members of the reggimento and the elite of office-holding

class felt an increasing fear that discontent would provoke a rebellion in the city. “[T]he gang

here is upset,” Jacopo Guicciardini wrote on 12 May, alluding to the inner circle of the

government.107 Two days later he observed, more somberly, that, “In Florence there is discontent

among the poor, because they are dying from hunger as result of the absence of work, and among

the others, for many other reasons. So that, if they wished to do evil here they could do it without

105
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 11 February 1517.
Guicciardini, Le lettere (1514-1517), 399-400.
106
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 26 February 1517. Ibid., 409-
10.
107
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 56r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena,
12 May 1517: “la brighata ci è mal contenta.”
 118

any effort.”108 Luigi Guicciardini offered a subtle but biting criticism of the reggimento when he

observed that, “our affairs could not be in worse condition, due to the bad disposition of the

citizens and the lack of brains and money here.”109 Several days later he reiterated his judgment:

“here there is no money, no brains, no agreement, so that we should pray to God that great harm

does not follow.” Luigi reported rumors of open discord among members of the inner circle.110

Both Guicciardini brothers observed that the reggimento had doubled the guard on the Palazzo

della Signoria, and that around one hundred Pistoiese soldiers had been billeted in the Medici

palace.111 The fears of the office-holding class that the economic and social costs of the war

would provoke a rebellion if an immediate threat approached Florence were avoided on this

occasion. With the assistance of Francis I and King Charles I of Spain (the future Emperor

Charles V) Leo X reached a negotiated settlement with Della Rovere and bought off his

mercenary troops. The duchy returned to Lorenzo and Della Rovere withdrew.

Reactions in Florence to the military confrontations of 1515 and 1517 represented peaks

of concern among members of the office-holding class about the divergence of Medici and

Florentine interests and the growing separation between the family and their Florentine peers.

Discontent bubbled along at lower levels throughout the period of Lorenzo’s administration of

the city. Much of it focused on the continued and prolonged absences of the erstwhile head of the

108
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 59r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena,
14 May 1517: “In firenze /è/ mala contentezza ne poveri chè si muoiono da fame respecto alle poche faccende ci si
fanno / et nelli altri per molte altre cagione in modo che se costoro ci vogliono fare male/ lo possono fare sanza
alcuna fatica.”
109
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 62r. Letter from Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, 18
May 1517: “le cose nostre non potrebbono essere in peggiore conditione per la dipositione cattiva de’ ciptadini / et
per esserci mancamento di cervello et danari.”
110
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 67r. Letter from Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Modena, 22
May 1517: “qui non è ducati / nè cervello nè unione: in modo che e da preghar’ iddio che tanto male non segua.”
111
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 130: 62r-v and 63r
 119

government – either in Rome, seeking preferment, or in Urbino, or in France, for his marriage to

Madeleine de la Tour d’Auvergne. In March 1515, Francesco Guicciardini complained: “we

need the Magnificent [Lorenzo] to return, but no one knows when he will be here.”112 One month

later, when Lorenzo still had not arrived in Florence, Guicciardini observed that his absence

produced many unwanted results: “there is no check on those who take to much license, nor any

particular distinction or notice of those who comport themselves well; and moreover it has

enabled a few bad sorts to belabor the others.”113

A lack of direction and control resulted from Lorenzo’s interrupted presence in the city –

provoking dissention and disunity in the reggimento. On 17 May 1515 Benedetto Buondelmonti

wrote a lengthy letter to Filippo Strozzi warning him that several men in Florence, including

Francescantonio Nori and Galeotto de’ Medici, whom Lorenzo had left in charge of affairs in the

city, hated him and feared his influence with Lorenzo.114 In July 1518, Buondelmonti himself

bore the enmity of other men – whom he did not name – as he lamented to Strozzi: “I do not

want to have worry at every hour that every little ribald and unfortunate will do me harm,

because I am thirty-nine years old and I would like, by now, to be know as a man and not a

boy.”115 The position of Galeotto de’ Medici, during Lorenzo’s absences prior to the summer of

1515, and of Goro Gheri, in the years after, also galled the patricians in the office-holding class –

as neither belonged to the social elite of the city. When Galeotto fell from grace with Lorenzo in

112
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 4 March 1515. Guicciardini, Le
lettere (1514-1517), 40.
113
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 2 April 1515: Ibid., 44.
114
ASF, MAP, 108: 147.
115
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 134: 136r. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Filippo Strozzi, Gherardo
Bartolini, and Francesco [Vettori?], “at the side of the Most Illustrious Lord Duke,” 20 July 1518: “non vorrei aver’
a ogni hora a dubitar’ che ogni ribaldello o/ schiaghurato mi havessi a nuocer’ perchè mi truovo 39 anni et vorrei
horamai dar’ nome di me di homo et non di uno putto.”
 120

June 1515, Francesco Guicciardini brutally observed that, “his fall appears to have pleased

almost all the principal [men].”116

Even when Lorenzo was in Florence, his presence did not necessarily calm the situation.

In the spring of 1515 the Settanta had elected Lorenzo Captain-General of Florence, and he

received authority to maintain a body of up to 500 men-at-arms. The election of a Florentine

citizen as military commander-in-chief broke with tradition and shattered a taboo that, looking

back to the example of Julius Caesar, viewed such an election as paving the way toward a

dictatorship. Benedetto Buondelmonti noted that in the opinion of some the vote represented “the

ruin of the city” by giving “too much authority” to Lorenzo.117

Francesco Guicciardini observed that symbolic changes in appearance accompanied the

investiture of Lorenzo as Captain-General: “He then removed his lucco and assumed more

military garb…today he is called more readily ‘Lord Captain’ than ‘Magnificent.’”118 As the

previous chapter demonstrated appearance bore great weight in Florentine society; and among

the office-holding class the wearing of the scarlet lucco provided a visual analogue to the

imagined community of fraternal and equal citizens. Clothing carried profound political and

ideological messages: a citizen wore a robe but a prince wore armor. Lorenzo proved himself not

116
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 14 June 1515: Guicciardini, Le
lettere(1514-1517), 59. On the hostility toward Galeotto de’ Medici and Gheri see Benedetto Varchi, Storia
fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib. 3 vols. (Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del
Varchi, 1843-44), 1: 77. The position of Medici agents and creatures in positions of influence had provoked
discontent during the 1480s and 1490s also. Following the expulsion Lorenzo il Magnifico’s sons the Signoria had
several such men arrested and one (Antonio di Bernardo Miniati) was summarily hanged. See the discussion of the
social tensions provoked by these Medici secretaries in Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s New Men.”
117
ASF, MAP, 108: 147. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, 17 May
1515: “la rovina della città;” “tanta autorità.” Buondelmonti ascribed this opinion to an unnamed woman, possibly
Lucrezia Salviati de’ Medici, who had expressed it in conversation with Bartolomeo Valori.
118
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 1 June 1515. Guicciardini, Le
lettere (1514-1517), 54-55. See also 58-59: “Lui ordinariamente va in habito militare.”
 121

entirely insensitive to these messages. Guicciardini noted that on “two or three occasions” when

he sat on communal magistracies such as the Settanta “he came [dressed] in a lucco as he used to

do before…this demonstration was pleasing to the universale.” He did observe, however, that

Lorenzo had acquired a following of twelve or fourteen young men, naming only Prinzivalle

della Stufa, “who dressed like courtiers.”119 Behavior such as this gave rise to rumors and fears

that Lorenzo intended to make himself prince of Florence further undermining the family’s

position and deepening the cleft between it and the office-holding class.120

Lorenzo’s premature death, probably from syphilis, on 4 May 1519 provoked a clamor

for a return to a more civic-style of government. Luigi Guicciardini informed Francesco that the

office-holding class expected a “better and larger government.” He continued that, in order to

avoid a potential uprising, Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici needed “to satisfy as many citizens as

possible and restore honor to the magistrates and do things with as much civic-mindedness

[civiltà] as possible.”121 Jacopo Guicciardini offered greater precision by stating that if the

Medici wished to preserve their position they needed to restore “a government similar to that of

Lorenzo the Elder [ie. Lorenzo il Magnifico].” Under such a government “the honor and dignity

of the city was continually considered, justice was well administered, citizens received their due

119
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 14 June 1515. Ibid., 58-59. The
term “universale” could refer either to that part of the office-holding class not considered patricians or to the entire
office-holding class – in this case it probably carries the former meaning but it could be either. See also 54-55: “ha
facto una brigata di giovani che usono là, tra’ quali è Prinzivalle et simili.” On this brigade of courtiers and its
probable correspondence to Lorenzo’s Broncone carnival company and the men who received payments from the
commune as gentlemen in his service see note 51 above. In the case of Della Stufa this was possibly a vocational, as
well as partisan, position: he continued to pursue a military career after Lorenzo’s death receiving a commission
from the Signoria to command thirty men-at-arms in June 1519: Francesco Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica
(gennaio 1519-giugno 1520), ed. Pierre Jodogne, (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età Moderna e
Contemporanea, 1991), 149-50.
120
See Guicciardini, Le lettere (gennaio 1519-giugno 1520), 172.
121
Ibid., 174.
 122

and, if not all, at least the majority of the wisest men in the city were admitted to all the dignities

and honors.”122

The sudden re-emergence of a discourse of civic government testifies to its continuing

presence throughout the second decade of the sixteenth century. Despite the contrary opinion of

some scholars, the office-holding class of Florence still clearly imagined itself in civic terms as

the community of mature citizens dedicated to the service of the city.123 Men, such as Benedetto

Buondelmonti who identified his own interests and those of Florence solely in terms of the

Medici, were exceptional in the 1510s and not the norm. Buondelmonti himself noted this when

he warned Goro Gheri, in September 1518, that, “the Consiglio Maggiore and that form of

government were more beloved [in their time] than that of today.”124

Throughout the years after 1512 men still identified the holding of communal offices as

central to their individual and familial honor and identity. In October 1514, Francesco

Guicciardini petitioned Lorenzo de’ Medici on behalf of a relative by marriage, Giovanni

Arrigucci, for his election to the Signoria. If Lorenzo could have Arrigucci appointed to the

commune’s highest body, Guicciardini said, “we will have great pleasure as we are joined by a

tight relationship.”125 In December the same year Filippo de’ Nerli wrote in favor of his father,

Benedetto, being elected as gonfaloniere di giustizia: “it seems to me almost necessary that,

122
Ibid., 178-79.
123
Alison Brown and Roberto Bizzocchi have both argued, with differing emphases, that a courtly mentality had
taken hold of the majority of the office-holding class by the early decades of the sixteenth century: Roberto
Bizzocchi, “La crisi del ‘vivere civile’ a Firenze nel primo Cinquecento,” in Forme e tecniche del potere nella città
(secoli XIV-XVII). ed. Sergio Bertelli, (Perugia: Università di Perugia, 1979-80); and Brown, “Lorenzo de’ Medici’s
New Men.”
124
ASF, MAP, 143: 154. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Viterbo, to Goro Gheri, in Florence, 25 September
1518: “quello consiglio grande et modo di reggimento era più amato che questo d’oggi.”
125
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 13 October 1514: Guicciardini,
Le lettere (1514-1517), 7-8.
 123

while my father still lives (he is by now at least sixty-five years old), he be honored with this

office so that after him I might assume his mantle and more easily enjoy and occupy the

honors.”126 Lorenzo Cambi, in January 1515, referred to his election to the Signoria as “the honor

and dignity given me.”127

The continued centrality of office holding and a civic social world to the office-holding

class of Florence received visual affirmation in the period also. In 1515, Salvi Borgherini

commissioned a cycle of paintings telling the narrative of Joseph from the book of Genesis in

celebration of his son Pierfrancesco’s marriage to Margherita Acciaiuoli. The fourth of the four

panels depicted the narrative of Joseph’s return to his father’s deathbed (Figure 12).128 At front

left Joseph, in a violet cloak and ochre tunic, presents his kneeling father, Jacob, to the Pharaoh.

To the middle ground to the right, Joseph receives news of Jacob’s illness while distributing food

to the Egyptians. In the center of the panel, Joseph and his sons, Ephraim and Manases, ascend a

staircase to greet Asnath, Joseph’s wife. Finally, at top right the dying Jacob blesses his

grandsons. Of particular interest is the sole contemporary figure in the painting: the man, dressed

in the scarlet robes of the Florentine elite, who stands on the stairs below Joseph, apparently

admonishing him. This figure remains unidentified, but given the patriarchal and familial

iconography it probably depicts the father of either Pierfrancesco or Margherita. Regardless of

his exact identity, the presentation of the figure as an office holder testifies to the continuing

126
ASF, MAP, 116: 630. Letter from Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 27 December
1514: “mi pare quasi necessario mentre mio padre vive che si truova oramai 65 anni o più che lui sia honorato di
questo segno acciochè io doppio lui con ‘l suo mantello possa più facilmente godere et faire li honori.”
127
ASF, MAP, 116: 20. Letter from Lorenzo Cambi, in Florence, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, in Rome, 4 January 1515:
“delo onore e degnità datami.”
128
See Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo, trans. Alberto Curotto, (Milan: Electra, 1994), 128-30; and Vasari, Lives of
the Painters, 2: 351.
 124

Figure 12. Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo. Joseph in Egypt (ca. 1518-19). Panel painting, 96 x
109 cm. London: National Gallery.
 125

strength of the civic basis of elite identity. While the painting lacks the presence of Ghirlandaio’s

frescos from the 1480s it appeals to the same imagination of mature males as self-sacrificing

public servants that underlay the earlier images.

An even more striking representation of this theme, given its subject, appears in

Pontormo’s Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio (Figure 13), painted around 1519. The portrait was

commissioned by Goro Gheri on behalf of either Leo X or Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici. As

the painting formed part of Ottaviano’s collection in the early 1530s, he is the more likely

candidate.129 Although Ottaviano shared a surname with the dominant family was only very

distantly related to them – their last common ancestor had died in 1320. His father, Bernardo di

Antonio, had appeared regularly in the balìe of the fifteenth century; but Ottaviano’s interests lay

more in commerce than politics. He had, however, earned the trust of his more powerful relatives

and in the early 1520s became responsible for the management of the family’s Florentine

patrimony.130

Pontormo’s portrait depicts Cosimo il Vecchio in profile, seated on a carved chair, with

his hands clasped together in his lap. To his left the broncone device appears as a laurel tree with

one severed and one flourishing branch. A scroll wreathed through the foliage declares,

paraphrasing Virgil: UNO AVVULSO NON DEFICIT ALTER – if one is torn away another takes its

place. Previously art historians have focused their interpretations on the obvious dynastic

iconography of the portrait, the commissioning of which coincided with the death of Lorenzo

129
Berti, Pontormo, 44-47; Costamagna, Pontormo, 150-52; and Vasari, Lives of the Painters, 2: 353.
130
Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537. 2 vols.
(Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 2: 18.
 126

Figure 13. Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo. Portrait of Cosimo il Vecchio, pater patriae (ca.
1519). Panel painting, 86 x 65 cm. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi.
 127

and the birth of the future Cosimo I.131 This interpretation misses the equally significant civic

symbolism of the image: Cosimo appears dressed in the uniform of the office-holding class – a

red fur-lined cioppa (the full-sleeved version of a lucco). In the context of 1519, with the

prevalent anger and desire for civic renewal noted by the brothers Guicciardini, this depiction

could hardly have been casual. The portrait carried a clear statement about the identity of the

Medici and the tradition of the family’s dominance: that the Medici were part of the social world

and imagination of the office-holding class, that they saw themselves as other members of the

city’s elite did as part of a community of equals. The message was profoundly civic and anti-

courtly.

In addition to the release of pent-up resentments the sudden death of Lorenzo in 1519 left

the Medici and their supporters with an awkward problem of succession. Lorenzo’s uncle,

Giuliano, had died equally prematurely in 1516. As a result Pope Leo X remained the only

legitimate male heir of Lorenzo il Magnifico living: the other males in direct descent were all

illegitimate – Cardinal Giulio, who was committed to an ecclesiastical career anyway, and the

bastard sons of Giuliano and Lorenzo, Ippolito and Alessandro respectively, who both were both

under the age of ten in 1519. Lorenzo left one infant daughter from his short marriage – Caterina,

the future queen of France.

Initially, Cardinal Giulio took over the management of affairs in Florence. But in 1523,

following the death of Pope Adrian VI – whose short-lived papacy followed that of Leo X – he

became the second Medici Pope in a decade, taking the name Clement VII. Although the new

Pope sent his young cousins, Ippolito and Alessandro, to the city he entrusted the government of

the city to Cardinal Silvio Passerini, a faithful servant of the Medici who had obtained his

131
See Cox-Rearick, Dynasty and Destiny, 41-59.
 128

cardinal’s hat from Leo X. This situation only magnified the tensions already present in Florence

in the previous decade and increased the separation between the Medici and the office-holding

class of the city.

Determining the nature of the reggimento in Florence during the 1520s poses more

problems than performing the same task for earlier decades: sources become much scarcer.132

However, enough material has survived to enable the drawing of some conclusions. Certain

elements remained the same: the tight control over and corruption of the electoral process. In

July 1522, Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici to thank him for

proposing that a member of the Guicciardini be appointed to the accoppiatori: “as for giving this

office to one of us more than another, I will leave it to Your Most Reverend Lordship to make

the decision.”133 Some indications exist that the inner circle of the reggimento broadened slightly

following the death of Lorenzo in 1519, perhaps in response to the discontent that followed. Of

the sixty-nine men who sat on the Otto di Pratica for the entire period between 1512 and 1527

fifty-six percent had their names drawn after 1519. Only six men drawn for the magistracy

before June 1519 sat only one time, whereas twenty-five men drawn from June 1519 sat just

once. The same sixteen men continued to dominate the office as had done between, 1514 and

132
Only two modern historians have attempted analysis of the period Jones, Francesco Vettori; and Stephens, The
Fall. See also Melissa Bullard’s consideration of the financial relationship between Florence and Rome in the early
years of Clement VII’s pontificate: Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 119-50. Stephens, on page 164 of his study, referred to
the years between 1523 and 1527 as “the hardest to describe in Florentine history of the early sixteenth century,
perhaps in all Florentine history since the fourteenth century.”
133
Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Parma, to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 5 July 1522: Francesco
Guicciardini, Le lettere: Edizione critica (aprile 1522-giugno 1523), ed. Pierre Jodogne, (Rome: Istituto Storico
Italiano per l’Età Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), 91.
 129

1519, but a greater number of individuals received an opportunity to share in this significant

position.134

More significant than the continuing corruption of the electoral process and the general

continuity within the ruling group is the manner in which control over these elements slipped

from Florentine hands. Under Clement VII – even more so than during the reign of Leo –

Florence increasingly became an appendage of the papacy, ruled from Rome rather than from the

Palazzo della Signoria. Filippo Strozzi, shortly after the election of the new Medici Pope,

predicted that Clement would bypass the communal offices with regularity in favor of family

agents. He hosed down suggestions that the Pope would incline toward the appointment of a

gonfaloniere di giustizia with a one-year term because such a move would give too much

authority and control to the commune: “it being necessary to shift affairs and to give reputation

completely to the house [of Medici] and not to the Palazzo [della Signoria]. Therefore he will be

more inclined to send there a Cortona [Cardinal Passerini] than to choose this other direction.”135

Letters from Strozzi the following the August indicate that although Passerini had not completely

subsumed the role of the Otto he had become central to the decision-making process in

Florence.136 Further evidence of Passerini’s influence emerges from other correspondence. In

November 1524, Jacopo Salviati wrote to his son, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, who was

134
ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r-82v and 187r. Certain of the sixteen individuals became more prominent after 1519 – Piero
Ridolfi, Matteo Niccolini, and Francesco Vettori most notably – and some became less so – Lanfredino Lanfredini,
Filippo Buondelmonti, and Antonio Serristori. One of the sixteen, Gherardo Corsini, did not sit on the Otto until
after the death of Lorenzo.
135
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 58r. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 23 December
1523: “essere necessario / girare le faccende et dare la riputatione a tutta alla casa et non al palazo / onde sarebbe più
inclinato al mandare costì un cortona che al pigliarla per questo altro verso.” Silvio Passerini was Bishop of Cortona
from November 1521. His title as Cardinal was actually San Lorenzo in Lucina (except for four months from
September 1520 to January 1521 when he held the title of San Piero in Vincoli) but contemporaries regularly
referred to him by his episcopal title instead.
136
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 64r and 65r.
 130

Clement’s legate in Lombardy, that any notice concerning military affairs (well within the

domain of the Otto) should be given directly to “the cardinal of Cortona so that he can make the

necessary provisions.” Salviati assumed that such authority belonged to Passerini without any

reference to the Florentine magistracies. In February 1525, when Giovanbattista da Verrazzano

sought to have his father, Lodovico, drawn for gonfaloniere di giustizia he petitioned Cardinal

Salviati observing that, “it will be easy for Your Most Reverend Lordship, with a letter, to obtain

this from the Most Reverend Monsignore of Cortona.”137

A particularly revealing letter from Filippo Strozzi, in the summer of 1526, offers a

glimpse into the process of electoral control as well as the tensions that it produced. He sketched

out a discussion that had occurred between himself, Clement VII, Jacopo Salviati, and,

apparently, other unnamed individuals over who should become gonfaloniere di giustizia for the

September-October term. The conversation took place in Rome and the Pope’s choice, Bernardo

d’Antonio Miniati, unsurprisingly won the day. Strozzi concluded the vignette by stating: “This

saddened me, because it seems to me a dishonor to that office to give it to a person who, neither

by birth nor by quality, deserves it; although I will always approve what I see determined by the

boss of the shop [maestro della bottega]. If it had been the work of Cortona I would really have

been upset.”138 This letter is revealing on many levels. It demonstrates the extent to which the

137
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 154: 204. Letter from Giovanbattista da Verrazzano, in Ferrara, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati,
in Piacenza, 21 February 1525: “che a quella sarà facile con una sua littera inpetrarllo dal R[everendi]x[i]mo
mons[igno]re di Cortona.”
138
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 89r. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Francesco Vettori, in Florence, 26 August
1526: “Duolmene / perchè mi pare sia un dishonorare quel segno mettendole in una persona / quele nè di casa / nè di
qualità /è/ in alchuno consideratione / pure approverò sempre quello vedrò determinato dal maestro della bottega / se
fussi opera di cortona / exclamerei.” On the origin and use of the term maestro della bottega to refer to a political
patron see, F.W. Kent, “Patron-Client Relationships in Renaissance Florence and the Emergence of Lorenzo as
‘maestro della bottega’,” in Lorenzo de’ Medici: New Perspectives. Proceedings of the International Conference
held at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, April 30-May 2, 1992, ed.
 131

decision-making process had shifted from Florence to a small un-elected coterie around the

Pope, and how Clement, who (although a Florentine) as Pope was a foreign prince, had become

the “boss of the shop” in the city on the Arno. It also testifies to the ever widening gap in values

and expectations between the Medici and the office-holding class; that even a man as close to the

ruling family as Filippo Strozzi voiced disappointment and disillusionment that Clement so

obviously favored a candidate whose only quality was loyalty rather than nobility or political

ability. Bernardo’s father had been Lorenzo il Magnifico’s financial mastermind – he was

hanged by the Otto di Guardia in December 1494.139 Finally, it gives voice to the resentment felt

toward Passerini among members of the office-holding class: Strozzi accepted the elevation of

Miniati because Clement desired it but noted that he would have responded more forcefully and

negatively had the decision come from the Cardinal of Cortona.140

The increasingly open rule of Florence from Rome occurred as much by necessity as

wish. Neither Ippolito nor Alessandro de’ Medici, despite living in Florence from early 1524,

could provide the family with a suitable presence in the city. Both were only just entering

adolescence – the years of their births are uncertain but fell somewhere between 1508 and 1511.

Clement promoted Ippolito, probably because he was older; although Benedetto Varchi stated

that he was preferred because the memory of Alessandro’s father Lorenzo was still too toxic.141

The balìa elected Ippolito to their ranks on 24 July 1524 and appointed him to the Settanta six

Bernard Toscani, (New York: Peter Lang, 1993). Miniati did become gonfaloniere di giustizia for September-
October 1526: Herlihy, Online Tratte.
139
See note 116 above.
140
On hostility toward Cardinal Passerini see also Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 1: 77-78.
141
Varchi, Storia, 1: 74-75.
 132

days later.142 Whether or not he ever actually sat on either body he probably did not assume any

role in the decision-making process. The Medici had no effective representation or presence on

the governing bodies of Florence. When Clement VII ordered the fortification of the city in May

1526, which he knew to be popular, he specifically desired that “the Magnificent [Ippolito] be

one of the men deputized [for the commission] in order to benefit the family’s name.”143 In the

absence of any legitimate and mature male from the Medici family in Florence the daughters of

Lorenzo il Magnifico and their husbands stepped into the void: Lucrezia and her husband Jacopo

Salviati, and the widowed husband of Contessina, Piero di Niccolò Ridolfi.144

Jacopo Salviati had a history of political prominence throughout the early decades of the

century, under Piero Soderini and then under the revived Medici regime. The Salviati family had

long association with the Medici bolstered through several marriages: Jacopo’s grandfather,

Alamanno, had married Caterina di Averardo de’ Medici (Cosimo il Vecchio’s cousin), he

himself had married a daughter of Lorenzo il Magnifico, and their daughter, Maria, married

Giovanni di Giovanni de’ Medici (who became posthumously known as Giovanni delle Bande

Nere). Several other prominent supporters or allies of the Medici also connected themselves with

the Salviati: Francesco Guicciardini, Luca di Maso degli Albizzi (who married Jacopo’s sister,

Caterina), Filippo de’ Nerli (who married Caterina di Jacopo), and Ottaviano de’ Medici (who

142
ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v and 66v.
143
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 87v. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 19 May 1526:
“el Magnifico sia uno degli huomini deputati / che spendendosi el nome della casa.”
144
On Lucrezia, and her daughter Maria, see Natalie Tomas, “All in the Family: The Medici Women and Pope
Clement VII,” in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. Kenneth Gouwens and Sheryl E.
Reiss, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); and Natalie Tomas, The Medici Women: Gender and Power in Renaissance
Florence, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), passim. See also John Stephens’ passing reference to the profile of Salviati
and Ridolfi between 1512 and 1527: Stephens, The Fall, 125-26.
 133

married Francesca di Jacopo). Lucrezia and Jacopo’s youngest son, Giovanni, received a

cardinal’s hat from Leo X.

Since Jacopo Nardi reported that Jacopo Salviati had opposed the younger Lorenzo de’

Medici during the 1510s and even fled to Rome to avoid him, scholars have traditionally argued

that Salviati led a loyal opposition to the Medici between 1512 and 1527 – seeking to moderate

their rule and preserve the civic government of the city.145 Little archival evidence seems to

support this conclusion. Salviati was one of the leading members of the Otto di Pratica

consistently throughout the period – sitting five times before June 1519 (or once per year) and

four times after. Salviati became one of Clement VII’s closest advisors in Rome. In March 1525,

Francesco del Nero informed Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, “I have letters from the magnificent

father of Your Most Reverend and Illustrious Lordship which order me on behalf of His Holiness

Our Lord that I…send you six thousand gold ducats.”146 In his letter regarding the choice of

gonfaloniere for September-October 1526, Filippo Strozzi noted that Salviati consistently

favored whichever candidate the Pope proposed.147 He was also one of the principal financial

beneficiaries of the Medici reggimento, which depended heavily on loans from private

individuals that were repaid (with interest) from communal incomes.148 Following the expulsion

of Cardinal Passerini and the Medici bastards in 1527 Jacopo Salviati’s villa in the Mugnone

145
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 37-38. See also Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2: 77-78. On the scholarly consensus see most
recently, Tomas, “All in the Family,” 45.
146
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 155: 118. Letter from Francesco del Nero, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Parma,
16 March 1525: “ho lettere dal mag[nifi]co padre di vostra R[everendi]x[i]ma et Ill[ustrissi]ma S[igno]ria quale mi
ordina per parte della S[anti]tà di nostro S[igno]re che io…mandi a quella ducati semila d’oro in oro.” This sum
probably formed part of the 10,000 ducat indemnity that Clement VII had to pay to Charles V following the Battle
of Pavia, 24 February 1525.
147
ASF, Serie 3, 108: 89r.
148
Stephens, The Fall, 128-35. On the wide discretion permitted to the Depositor General between 1512 and 1527 to
seek such loans see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi.
 134

valley endured an arson attack by a gang of Florentine youths – the only non-Medici property to

be targeted.149 Salviati did not necessarily agree with every decision made by Clement VII, but

he was (and contemporaries perceived him as being) closely tied to the Medici regime in

Florence.

Piero Ridolfi has a lesser profile than his brother-in-law, but indications exist that he had

a more partisan stance in support of his wife’s family. Benedetto Varchi named Ridolfi as part of

a group of Mediceans who feared the non-partisan majority in the office-holding class.150 Unlike

the judgment on Salviati, some evidence does appear to support this conclusion. Ridolfi never

held a significant public office until after the return of the Medici in 1512, and his political

influence appears to have increased following the death of Lorenzo in 1519. Ridolfi sat on the

Otto di Pratica three times before June 1519 but appeared on the magistracy on six occasions in

the following years. His son, Niccolò, received a cardinal’s hat from Leo X at the same time as

Giovanni Salviati. Ridolfi also benefited financially from the regime and his position within it.151

The most striking testimony of Ridolfi’s influence and position in the 1520s comes from

a series of letters from clients and petitioners addressed to him as “Piero Ridolfo de’ Medici.”152

Ridolfi had become so closely associated with the Medici that he became identified as a member

of the family. His wife’s lineage had subsumed his own, in these letters at least. Florentine men

had always sought to forge political and social connections with other powerful or influential

149
See the sentence of condemnation passed against the young men involved: ASF, OGBR, 231: 15v-16r. On the
targeting of the property of private individuals in times of political turmoil see Chapter 2 above.
150
Varchi, Storia fiorentina, 2: 77-78.
151
Stephens, The Fall, 129.
152
See ASF, Acquisti e Doni, 68: 12, 14, 21, 22, and 85.
 135

men through marriages.153 By the 1520s the Medici were not any longer simply another

Florentine lineage: they had become definably separate from their one-time peers among the

office-holding class. The position of the family had become more seigniorial than civic. Jacopo

Salviati, in Rome, and Piero Ridolfi, in Florence, had the appearance of princely consorts rather

than as citizens: as the letters addressing Ridolfi by his wife’s name demonstrate. Francesco

Guicciardini, in the early years of the 1520s, expressed the growing gulf between the Medici and

the office-holding class in particularly graphic terms. In his Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze

Guicciardini had the figure of Paolantonio Soderini argue that the dominant family were no

longer even Florentines having become “bastardized [by]…foreign blood, degenerated by alien

customs, and all too insolent and haughty towards our way of life.”154

During the 1520s the principal threat toward the Medici position in Florence remained, as

it had done in the 1510s, the divergence between papal and Florentine interests. If anything this

tension only increased during the years after the death of Lorenzo, who had often counter-

balanced Leo X’s policies with his own, which usually aligned more closely with the desires of

the office-holding class in the city. The geo-political position of both the papacy and Florence

became more urgent in the 1520s also, as first Leo and then Clement sought to play off Francis I

and the newly-elected Emperor Charles V in order to prevent either man obtaining total

hegemony over the Italian peninsula.155 This policy left Florence following the dizzying twists of

papal policy into alliances with or against each monarch in turn.

153
See the discussion on homosocial networks in Chapter 2 above.
154
Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 33.
155
On the course of the Italian Wars see note 96 above. No equivalent study of Clement VII’s military policy exists
for Gattoni’s analysis of the pontificate of Leo X. See, however, the consideration of Clement’s political objectives
in the period after 1527 in Barbara McClung Hallman, “The ‘Disasterous’ Pontificate of Clement VII: Disasterous
 136

Filippo Strozzi retained his dual role as Depositor General in both Rome and Florence

under Clement VII and, through his proxy Francesco del Nero, he labored once again to transfer

the cost of the Pope’s military adventures and misadventures onto the city on the Arno.156 On 8

April 1525, Del Nero offered a brutally frank, if obviously hyperbolic, assessment of the

situation: “I have emptied this city [Florence] of gold…so that not one ducat remains in either

pious or profane places. I have despoiled [everyone] up to the Jews; and all in order to satisfy

His Holiness Our Lord [Clement VII].”157 The strain of financing the Pope’s diplomatic and

military policies wore upon Del Nero. In the summer of 1526, Francesco Vettori informed

Niccolò Machiavelli that, “he does not have an hour’s rest, he is always in a bad mood, full of

complaints, and he cannot be spoken to. …I do not know how his brain holds up amid as many

things as he has to do.”158

The real cost in terms of support for the Medici in Florence came not from the financial

burden of Clement VII’s policies but from the physical threat that they posed to the city. The

Medici and many of their closest advisors had not absorbed the political lessons of 1494 and

1512: that the office-holding class of Florence would ultimately oppose and bring-down any

regime that endangered the independence of the city. The Florentine elite, as the previous chapter

for Giulio de’ Medici?” in The Pontificate of Clement VII: History, Politics, Culture, ed. Kenneth Gouwens and
Sheryl E. Reiss, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005).
156
On the details of the financial misappropriations that occurred under Clement see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 119-
50; Stephens, The Fall, 182-91.
157
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 156: 70. Letter from Francesco del Nero, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Parma,
8 April 1525: “io ho voto questa ciptà di oro…che non è restato ducati nè a luoghi pii nè a profani. Et ho spogliato
fino ad li hebrei / et tutto per satisfare ad la santità di nostro S[igno]re.”
158
Letter from Francesco Vettori, in Florence, to Niccolò Machiavelli, 5 August 1526: Machiavelli, Machiavelli and
His Friends, 394.
 137

demonstrated, had no objective status outside the city of Florence itself. Their political power

and social status depended upon their continued presence in and connection with the city.

In his Dialogo del reggimento di Firenze, written between 1521 and 1524, Francesco

Guicciardini had the person of Piero Capponi observe that three issues formed the crucial center

of Florentine political concerns: egalitarian administration of justice, broad enough distribution

of public offices, and the successful management of foreign affairs, “that is whatever pertains to

the conservation and augmentation of the dominion.”159 When Paolantonio Soderini, the voice of

civic neo-Roman republicanism in the dialogue, argued that the first two points were more

important as they “concerned our own existence” Bernardo del Nero (widely considered to voice

Guicciardini’s personal opinions) objected that he was fooling himself: the preservation of

Florence’s territory was the most crucial issue. “If you lose your dominion,” Del Nero argued,

“you will also lose liberty and the city itself, which were it to be attacked would lack the means

to defend itself.” Everything else derived from, and so was subordinate to, the maintenance of

Florence’s independent territorial state.160

Guicciardini had continued in his service to the Medici under Clement VII: becoming

President of the Romagna in 1524 and Lieutenant General of the Pope’s military forces in 1526.

Yet in the Dialogo written during the pontificate of Adrian VI, which briefly interrupted the

Medici hold on the throne of Saint Peter, he gave voice to the defining principle of the office-

holding class’s political agnosticism. The Florentine elite would support either a civic or a

159
Guicciardini, Dialogo e discorsi, 26.
160
Ibid., 72-73. At this particular point of the dialogue, Guicciardini transfers Machiavelli’s argument from Chapter
18 of Il principe – that the principal duty of government is the preservation of the state – to the particular and
specific context of Florence. On the various political positions of the four interlocutors in the dialogue and the
association of Del Nero with Guicciardini’s personal position see Francesco Guicciardini, Dialogue on the
Government of Florence, ed. Alison Brown, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), xi and xiii.
 138

corrupted Medicean form of republicanism equally, so long as the regime protected the

independence of Florence itself. Without Florentine sovereignty no one would be in any position

to enjoy the distribution of offices and administration of justice. Neither the increasingly

seigniorial pretensions of the Medici nor yet the financial burdens of papal policies proved the

undoing of the family’s predominance in Florence. Rather, their growing distance from the

office-holding class of the city, and especially from the elite’s values and expectations, left

Clement VII blind to the Florentine perception of the dangers that his policies left Florence

exposed to.

The turning point came with the Battle of Pavia, 24 February 1525, which saw French

military power in Italy broken and Francis I, himself, subjected to the humiliation of capture by

his arch-rival, Charles V. This victory left the Habsburg Emperor in a position to dominate the

entire Italian peninsula. Clement VII, after first scrambling to abandon his pro-French policy in

favor of friendship with Charles, initiated (in May 1526) the formation of the League of Cognac

against this imperial hegemony with Francis, Ercole II d’Este of Ferrara, Francesco II Sforza of

Milan, and Venice.161 Under the authority given to the Pope by the Otto di Pratica the previous

November Clement VII signed Florence to the anti-imperial alliance also.162 In response, while

Charles de Lannoy, the imperial vice-roy marched on Rome from Naples, Charles de Bourbon

161
On the League see most recently Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy
During the Italian Wars (1526-1528), (Pisa: Edizioni Plus - Pisa University Press, 2005).
162
Stephens, The Fall, 181. The provision, from November 1525, appointed Clement VII as syndic and procurator
for Florence, empowered to treat with all and any foreign power on behalf of the city.
 139

and Georg von Frundsberg led a second army south from Lombardy with the express intention of

sacking Florence.163

In April 1527, the army commanded by Bourbon and Frundsberg converged on the city

on the Arno as did the army of the League led by Francesco Maria della Rovere, duke of Urbino.

When Cardinal Passerini and Ippolito de’ Medici left the city to confer with Della Rovere, on

Friday 26 April, a rumor spread that they had abandoned Florence. This provoked the so-called

tumulto di venerdì (the Friday uprising), which saw a short-lived seizure of the Palazzo della

Signoria. The swift return of Passerini, together with artillery to besiege the seat of government

if necessary, led to the surrender of the rebels in return for a total amnesty. Cut off from Florence

by the League’s army Bourbon and Frundsberg pushed southward toward Rome instead. The

soldiers under their nominal command, by now months without pay, swiftly captured the Eternal

City on 6 May and subjected it to a brutal six-day sack. Clement VII took refuge in the Castel

Sant’Angelo. When news of the fall of Rome reached Florence on 11 May, the rule of the Medici

suddenly became a liability. The timely return of Filippo Strozzi and his wife, Clarice de’

Medici, persuaded Passerini to surrender the city without bloodshed. The Cardinal of Cortona

and Ippolito departed Florence on 17 May, meeting up with Alessandro, who had stayed at the

villa of Poggio a Caiano west of the city.164

The decision of Clement to adhere to the anti-imperial League, in the judgment of two of

the family’s previously prominent supporters, revealed to all the office-holding class of Florence

163
Alonso de Santa Cruz, Crónica del Emperador Carlos V, ed. Francisco de Laiglesia y Auser. 6 vols. (Madrid:
Real Academia de la Historia, 1920), 2: 285.
164
On the details of both the tumulto di venderdì and the coup d’état of May 1527 see Nardi, Istorie, 2: 114-22 and
124-26; Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols., (Bologna: Forni, 1970), 45: 136-41, 155-56; Varchi,
Storia fiorentina, 1: 130-78. Note that 26 April was also the anniversary of the unsuccessful Pazzi-led conspiracy
against the Medici in 1478 – I am grateful to John Paoletti who pointed this obvious correlation out to me.
 140

the gulf between their own interests and those of the Pope. Luigi Guicciardini observed that,

“even if the League were victorious, Florence stood to gain nothing, but were they to lose, it

would be her ruin.”165 Francesco Vettori ascribed more cynicism to the Pope: “although

[Clement] greatly loved the city of Florence, he loved himself more and…were he to be ruined, it

did not seem disadvantageous to him to put it in jeopardy, so that it would go to ruin with

him.”166

In less abstract terms, the experience of Filippo Strozzi between 1526 and 1527 provides

an illustration of the disaffection of the office-holding class provoked by Clement’s anti-imperial

policy. In September 1526, the Colonna – a Roman baronial family – at the instigation of the

imperial commanders in Italy had raided the city of Rome and driven the Pope into the Castel

Sant’Angelo. Obliged to buy his freedom Clement offered Strozzi and Cardinal Giovanni

Salviati as hostages to his good intentions. While Cardinal Salviati never surrendered himself,

Strozzi went willingly to Naples. He wrote to his brother, Lorenzo, on 27 September: “its seemed

to me that, being such a servant of Our Lord as you know, I neither could nor should fail him in

such urgent necessity – neither in this nor in anything else.”167 Strozzi appreciated the risk he

took, noting on 6 October, that, “nothing else can aid me expect the life and good will of Our

Lord.”168

165
Luigi Guicciardini, The Sack of Rome, ed. James H. McGregor, (New York: Italica, 1993), 41.
166
Vettori, Scritti storici, 276.
167
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 92r. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Ghinazzano, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 27
September 1526: “mi pareva sendo quel servitore a nostro signore sai / non potere nè dovere in sì urgente ncessità
sua mancargli nè di questo / nè d’altro.”
168
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 93Ar. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Pezuolo, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 6 October
1526: “nessuno altro mi può aiutare / che la vita et voluntà bene di nostro signore.”
 141

When Clement abused Strozzi’s trust – breaching both a promised amnesty for the

Colonna and the provisional truce between the League and the imperials – the banker became

involved in intrigues against the Medici from mid-December 1526. Principal among his co-

conspirators were Zanobi di Bartolomeo Buondelmonti and Battista di Marco della Palla, who

both had been involved in the 1522 conspiracy against Clement VII (when he was still a

cardinal) and were now associated with the imperial cause in Italy.169 At the end of December,

Strozzi explained his defection to Francesco Vettori and urged him to join the conspiracy: “this

boat of Saint Peter is about to sink – it is time to throw overboard certain parts in order to save

the rest.”170 Strozzi’s meaning was clear: the office-holding class had to jettison the Medici to

preserve Florence. Vettori apparently did join the plot against the Medici for Strozzi later assured

Buondelmonti and Della Palla that he would “do everything for the city [Florence] that one

expects from a good citizen.” In the same letter, Strozzi observed that if he ever doubted his own

resolve he reminded himself that, “I have been toyed with, without any respect, as if I were a

slave.”171 A phrase that probably captured the general sentiment of the office-holding class of

Florence, which had found itself deprived of any control over the destiny of the city. Strozzi

eventually bought his own freedom from imperial custody. He returned to Rome in time to whisk

his family to the relative safety of Ostia two days before the imperial army breached the walls of

169
On the 1522 conspiracy see note 95 above. On the links between the Florentine exiles and the imperials in Italy
see Sanuto, I diarii, 45: 26; Fra Giuliano Ughi, “Cronica di Firenze o compendio storico delle cose di Firenze
dall’anno MDI al MDXLVI,” ed. Francesco Frediani. Archivio storico italiano Appendice VII (1849): 140-41. The
earliest certain reference to Strozzi’s involvement with Della Palla and Buondelmonti is a letter of 22 December
1526 from Strozzi to Giovanni Bandini. However, a letter dated only as “the seventeenth” from Strozzi to the two
conspirators also exists. See ASF, Serie 1, 99: 18r-19r.
170
ASF, Serie 3, 108: 97v. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Naples, to Francesco Vettori, in Rome, 30 December
1526: “questa barca di san piero ha l’acqua allo orlo /è/ tempo di fare getto di qualche parte / per salvare el resto.”
171
ASF, Serie 1, 99: 20r, 21r-v. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Naples, to Battista della Palla and Zanobi
Buondelmonti, in Gaeta, 30 January 1527: “farà per la città ogni offitio si aspetta a buon cittadino;” “io sono stato
giocato senza rispetto alcuno come se uno schiavo fossi.”
 142

the city, from where they journeyed by boat to Livorno.172 From the Tuscan port he and Clarice

traveled to Florence to assume leading roles in the bloodless coup of 16-17 May.

The defection of Filippo Strozzi, who in 1513 had commemorated the return of the

Medici with the image of Perseus liberating Andromeda, epitomized the reasons for the collapse

of the family’s reggimento in 1527. In 1512, the Medici had returned as liberators of the city –

defending Florence from sack by the Spanish army stationed at Prato and freeing the office-

holding class from the administration of Soderini that had led the city into such peril. Fifteen

years later, however, the Medici family became the principal threat to Florence’s independence

and existence as the anti-imperial policy of Clement VII left the city militarily exposed and

financially drained. Over the course of their rule, from 1512 to 1527, the Medici had increasingly

lost touch with the majority of the office-holding class, becoming separated in terms of values,

expectations, and interests.

The Medicean predominance of the fifteenth century had worked because the family’s

interests were largely compatible and indistinguishable from those of their peers: the Medici

belonged to the elite of the city and shared the social world and imagination of the office-holding

class. As a result they also experienced and relied upon the existential bond between the city and

their elevated social status. Unlike other Florentine lineages, however, the Medici could use their

profile and prestige to protect the city and so preserve their own position along with that of the

rest of the office-holding class. The family’s hegemony balanced a loss of civic freedom with an

increased guarantee of Florentine independence from foreign powers. Following the election of

Leo X in 1513 the Medici diverged from Florence as the larger stage of papal politics held sway

in their attentions. The capture of the throne of Saint Peter by the family, which continued

172
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 111r.
 143

throughout the period with only the brief interruption of Adrian VI’s pontificate, pushed the

interests of the Florentine office-holding class aside in favor of the broader goals of papal policy

toward the ultramontane European monarchs. Florence became a source of finance to further

Medici dynastic ambitions and pontifical military adventures.

The majority of the office-holding class could endure the financial burdens and the

increasingly seigniorial pretensions of the Medici – although these certainly fostered resentment

– so long they used their prestige and authority to preserve the sovereignty and independence of

Florence. Once Rome fell to the imperial army and Clement was effectively imprisoned in his

own fortress, incapable of action, the government of the Medici became a liability. The Medici

had failed to heed to lessons of 1494 and 1512. The majority of the office-holding class was

politically agnostic about the family’s predominance in the city. Their political behavior was

motivated not by partisan loyalties or ideology but by self-preservation. The loss of Florence’s

independence to any foreign power would almost certainly result in the loss of the office-holding

class’s political power and social prestige. When the Medici reggimento failed to protect the city

and so the office-holding class they lost the consent on which their rule survived. In May 1527,

for the third time in a generation, Florence’s elite attempted to fashion an effective government

without the family that had dominated the city for almost a century.
 144

Chapter Four

Defending Liberty:

The reggimento of 1527-30 and the Siege of Florence.

Late in 1529, Pontormo painted a portrait of Francesco Guardi (Figure 14). The youth stares out

at the viewer with the sullen and casual insolence of adolescence. His right hand grasps the shaft

of a halberd, while the left rests on his hip. His elbow thrusts out rudely toward the viewer.

Adjacent to his left hand a sword hilt mimics the artificial virility of the over-sized codpiece just

beneath and behind it. While all these elements suggest the bravado, arrogance, and sexuality of

youth, around the face lingers the air of uncertainty and trepidation common to all Pontormo’s

portraits. The depiction of Guardi, dressed apparently in the uniform of the civic militia formed

in 1528, captures a moment of transition in Florence. The image restates a well-worked

Florentine theme – the personification of virtuous youth defending liberty. Pontormo’s depiction

of Guardi, however, did not clothe this representation in any of the mythico-religious forms –

such as David, Saint George, or Hercules – common to the preceding century. Instead, the

painting presents Guardi, in all his humanity, prepared to defend the physical city of Florence,

alluded to by the shadowy bastions of San Miniato al Monte that loom behind him. Following

the departure of Cardinal Passerini and the Medici bastards, the office-holding class of Florence

found themselves caught in a situation analogous to that experienced by their fathers in 1494,

forced to confront fundamental questions about the nature of Florentine society and government.

This second attempt to form a stable oligarchic regime without the Medici resulted in a decade

long cultural and military struggle: lines were drawn and sides chosen. Like Guardi, in

Pontormo’s portrait, the Florentine elite had to fight to defend and define their social world and
 145

identity. This conflict resulted in the demise of the late-medieval notion of civic communal

government in Florence and the rise of a discourse about liberty that valued political sovereignty

over freedoms of action and speech.

The defining ideological construct of the medieval Italian city-states, liberty (libertà or

libertas, in the Latin) had originally possessed two meanings. It meant both independence from

foreign rule, sovereignty, and also a form of government in which citizens themselves controlled

the decision-making processes, the civic freedom of a neo-Roman republic.1 In its first

emergence, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as the communes in the north of the

peninsula struggled for independence from the Holy Roman Emperor, the twin concepts existed

coherently. Indeed, in the context of a conflict for political and military freedom from imperial

rule they reinforced one another. As early as the thirteenth century, however, a divergence

developed as the majority of the city-states evolved into principalities. The ideology of many of

the first signori argued that the endemic factionalism produced by the neo-Roman form of civic

government, in fact, undermined and weakened sovereignty. Even in the surviving republican

regimes, most notably in both Florence and Venice, internal contradictions emerged as the

republics sought to protect their own sovereignty by depriving neighboring communes and
1
The best general synthesis of the use and evolution of the term remains, Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of
Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., Vol. One: The Renaissance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978).
See also Quentin Skinner, Liberty Before Liberalism, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Specifically
on the Florentine context see, Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance: Civic Humanism and
Republican Liberty in an Age of Classicism and Tyranny, Second ed., (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966);
Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the
Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001); J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian
Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1975); and Nicolai Rubinstein, “Florentina Libertas,” Rinascimento Nuova Serie 26 (1986). Most recently, on
the controversy over Baron’s “crisis” thesis see, James Hankins, ed., Renaissance Civic Humanism: Reappraisals
and Reflections, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of
the Medici,” Renaissance Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1999). For other Italian contexts see, William J. Bouwsma, Venice
and the Defense of Republican Liberty: Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation, (Berkeley & Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1968); John Larner, The Lords of Romagna: Romagnol Society and the
Origins of the Signorie, (London: Macmillan, 1965); and Ian Robertson, Tyranny Under the Mantle of St Peter:
Pope Paul II and Bologna, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).
 146

signori of their independence.2 In the wake of Charles VIII of France’s military expedition into

the Italian peninsula in 1494, and the correlated collapse of city-state system, the tensions

between maintaining a civic form of government and preserving political sovereignty increased.

The previous chapter demonstrated how fear of foreign domination over Florence provided a

pivotal motivation for political behavior in the city between 1494 and 1527.

This chapter will demonstrate how political and military events between 1527 and 1530 –

especially the ten-month long siege of the city from October 1529 – brought the concepts of civic

freedom and political sovereignty into conflict in Florence. While partisan distinctions – such as

those between supporters and opponents of the Medici – were significant, the principal division

that emerged within the office-holding class in this period derived from the understanding

attached to the concept of liberty. The members of the office-holding class who abandoned the

city before the siege, such as Francesco Guicciardini, Filippo Strozzi, and Antonfrancesco degli

Albizzi, demonstrated a political precocity. Their behavior was predicated on an understanding

of liberty in which political independence trumped civic freedom. Their compatriots who

remained in Florence proved far more resistant to this understanding, prefering to risk the city’s

sovereignty and even its existence in order to preserve a neo-Roman form of government. This

chapter will recount the broad political narrative of the years 1527 to 1530 while analyzing how

the experience of these events shaped the political behavior and thought of prominent individuals

in the office-holding class.

2
See the discussion of the tensions between republicanism and imperialism in Sergio Bertelli, Il potere oligarchico
nello stato-città medievale, (Florence: Nuova Italia, 1978), 25-40; and Edward Muir, “Was There Republicanism in
Renaissance Republics? Venice After Agnadello,” in Venice Reconsidered: The History and Civilization of an
Italian City-State, 1297-1797, ed. John Martin and Dennis Romano, (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2000). The republic of Lucca, from around the mid-fifteenth century, would appear to be the
exception in this case. The Lucchese sought to preserve their civic form of government by avoiding expansion and
the conflicts that came with it: M.E. Brachtel, Lucca, 1430-1494: The Reconstruction of an Italian City-Republic,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
 147

The immediate response to the departure of the Medici in 1527, from both Florentines

and outside observers, suggested that the form of government in the city had fundamentally

altered as a result. “The government of this city,” the Venetian ambassador, Marco Foscari,

reported, “has completely changed and [has been] placed in the hands of the citizens and the

people.” In another letter written the same day, he observed, “all authority [has been] removed

from the Medici.”3 A Florentine observer, more precisely wrote, “the Medici are deprived of the

government. The balìa is extinct and the government is now in the Signoria and the Colleges in

the Settanta and the balìa.”4 The principal distinction that both men made, separating the new

status from the Medicean reggimento that preceded it, lay in the role of the elected magistracies.

The sense of their judgments is that Florentines now governed Florence, through the offices of

the commune; and that an essentially foreign regime (as Chapter Three demonstrated) no longer

controlled the decision-making process of the city. Florence had regained its liberty – as both

independence and a civic form of government.

The observation that the balìa no longer ruled Florence, however, proved a little

premature. The plenipotentiary council remained in session, and continued as a bastion of

oligarchic power. The day before Passerini and Ippolito de’ Medici departed the city, 16 May

1527, it voted to appoint a special body of one-hundred and twenty men (thirty per quarter), who

would appoint all office-holders, ambassadors, and commissioners, as well as controlling all

financial matters until 20 June, the date scheduled for the restoration of the Consiglio Maggiore.

Furthermore, the balìa decreed that a commission of twenty men, elected by the Signoria and

Colleges combined with the Settanta and the new council of one-hundred and twenty, would
3
Marino Sanuto, I diarii di Marino Sanuto, 58 vols., (Bologna: Forni, 1970), 45: 139 and 137.
4
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 30v. Letter from G. Spina, in Florence, to Bernardo Spina, in Cesena, 17 May 1527: “e
medici si sono privati del governo / la balìa è / extinta et il governo /è/ hora ne’ signori et collegi ne’ 70 et balìa”
 148

determine the powers of the Consiglio.5 As in 1494 and in 1512, the oligarchic party that had

controlled the city since the late fourteenth century, with and without the leadership of the

Medici, attempted to assert control over the direction and shape of the future reggimento.

Once again, as in the previous generation, the careful pace of change desired by the

oligarchs failed to satisfy. On 18 May, a group of giovani (young men between adolesence and

maturity), led by Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, stormed the Palazzo della Signoria. They

threatened to defenestrate the sitting executive, appointed under the Medicean reggimento at the

end of April, unless they resigned and the Consiglio Maggiore met immediately, rather than in

one month’s time.6 This violent intervention set the tone for a political struggle within the city

between what both contemporary and modern historians have broadly defined as a popular

coalition of arrabbiati (the Angry: men driven by their hatred of the Medici) and piagnoni (the

Bewailers: supporters of the Savonarolan cause) and the oligarchic party.7

Initially, the oligarchs appeared to have the upper hand, despite the tumult of 18 May,

which did force the balìa to concede to the demands of the giovani. On 1 June the Consiglio

elected the oligarchic candidate, Niccolò Capponi, as gonfaloniere di giustizia for a one-year

term, over the two leading popular contendors: Alfonso di Filippo Strozzi and Tommaso di

5
ASF, Balie, 44: 488v. For membership of the council of 120, see, ASF, Tratte, 719: 76r-v. For the twenty men
appointed to determine the authority of the Consiglio Maggiore, see ASF, Tratte, 906: 201r.
6
Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli. 2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2: 127-
28; Sanuto, I diarii, 45: 170; and Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib. 3 vols.
(Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843-44), 1: 237-39.
7
The essential contemporary accounts, by men who not only witnessed but participated in the events of 1527-30 are,
Nardi, Istorie; and Varchi, Storia. For a general narrative of the period no modern historian has yet surpassed Cecil
Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, (London: Methuen, 1925). See also the analysis offered in Rudolf von
Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfini, (Turin:
Giulio Einaudi, 1970); Rosemary Devonshire Jones, Francesco Vettori: Florentine Citizen and Medici Servant,
(London: Athlone Press, 1972), 198-255; Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in
Florence, 1494-1545, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 314-86; and J.N. Stephens, The Fall of the
Florentine Republic, 1512-1530, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 203-55.
 149

Paolantonio Soderini. The following year Capponi received a second term. The gonfaloniere

confronted a difficult and thankless task of trying balance internal and external political forces:

most notably, of having to negotiate Florence’s military and diplomatic role in the League of

Cognac – which committed the city to an alliance that included Clement VII against the Emperor

Charles V – with the threat posed by the same Pope to the new reggimento.8 Capponi’s position

became more difficult following Clement’s flight from Rome, on 7 December 1527, which

enabled the pontiff to reacquire some influence and freedom of action. The increasing

rapprochement between the Pope and Charles V further complicated the Florentine government’s

foreign policy. The Emperor’s concurrent negotiations with King Francis I of France and the

defeat of the League’s army in the Kingdom of Naples in the summer of 1528 threatened to leave

Florence isolated. The growing extremism of the popular faction, however, constrained

Capponi’s ability to negotiate a practical and moderate solution to Florence’s military-diplomatic

entanglements.

Capponi attempted to preserve the unity of the office-holding class by reconciling

partisans of the Medici with the new reggimento. But, under pressure from the arrabbiati, men

identified with the previous regime faced increasing persecution. This ranged from the old

Florentine standard of punitive taxation, to prosecution for real or invented frauds and crimes

committed between 1512 and 1527. The persecution extended to the eight-year old Caterina di

Lorenzo de' Medici: prosecuted for frauds allegedly committed by her grandmother Alfonsina

Orsini de’ Medici. Francesco del Nero received a fine of 3,333 ducats in mid-September 1527

for defrauding the commune during his tenure as Filippo Strozzi’s proxy in the office of the

8
On the vicissitudes of the League of Cognac after the sack of Rome and Florence’s increasingly difficult position
within the alliance, see most recently Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy
During the Italian Wars (1526-1528), (Pisa: Edizioni Plus - Pisa University Press, 2005).
 150

Florentine Depositor General. The syndics appointed to investigate the finances of the Medicean

regime additionally declared Del Nero to owe over 7,000 florins to the commune from his

activities as depositor for the university in Pisa. Francesco Guicciardini received arbitrary

taxation assessments. Girolamo degli Albizzi was convicted for leaving the city without a

license, but returned to prevent being declared a rebel. Eventually, even Filippo Strozzi and

Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi fell afoul of the proverbial ability of a revolution to devour its own.

The case of Benedetto Buondelmonti provides a more dramatic example; more illustrative of

what one historian has termed the affinity between the excesses of the arrabbiati in Florence and

the actions of the Jacobins in revolutionary France.9

Buondelmonti had left Rome following the sack and traveled to Ancona, where his

children had stayed out of danger. Filippo Strozzi and Zanobi Buondelmonti, however,

persuaded him to return to Florence in the initial aftermath of the coup of May 1527.10 On the

basis of certain account books dating from the 1510s, the syndics asserted that Buondelmonti

owed the commune 1,000 florins. He refused to pay, however, and retired to his villa outside the

city. On 24 October 1527, officers appointed by the syndics arrived to seize goods in lieu of

payment. Buondelmonti’s servants apparently took up weapons to defend their master’s

property, and some even threatened to raise the surrounding countryside by the ringing of church

bells. The syndics’ constables withdrew, but sometime in November Buondelmonti was arrested

and imprisoned in the Stinche, the communal prison. When the Otto di Guardia summoned him

for interrogation, Buondelmonti found himself accused not only of refusal to pay his debt and of

resisting public officers in the execution of their duties, but also of the murder of Andrea

9
Albertini, Firenze, 124-27.
10
BNCF, Nazionale II, III, 433: 160r-164v.
 151

Buondelmonti, of having written to Clement VII before his return to Florence, and finally of

having sought out and spoken with Francescantonio Nori (the gonfaloniere di giustizia deposed

on 18 May). On 10 December, the Quarantia condemned him to four years imprisonment in the

depths of the citadel at Volterra, with his subsequent liberation dependant on a three quarter

majority vote in the Signoria. A letter written By Boundelmonti shortly after his release

expressed both the pathos and the personal costs of partisan persecution: he found his sister dead

and his wife dying. “It amazes me that I have not died from grief,” he wrote, continuing that,

“had not the grace of God fortified me I could not possibly have tolerated all that I have

endured.”11

Not only the retribution demanded by the arrabbiati but also the millennial influence of

the Savonarolan thought promoted by the piagnoni inhibited Capponi, and the regime more

broadly, from making objective political decisions. The Savonarolans embraced the increasing

threat posed by the negotiations between Clement VII and Charles V as a divine test that could

only hasten Florence’s rebirth as the new Jerusalem prophesied by the Dominican friar some

three and a half decades earlier.12 Lorenzo Polizzotto has argued that piagnoni influence grew

considerably in the reggimento of 1527, with their potent blend of anti-papal and millenarian

thought imbuing the entire character of the government and subsuming the anti-Medicean

sentiments of their coalition partners. Even erstwhile opponents of the friar’s followers, such as

11
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 99r. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Colle, to Giovanni Vettori, in Volterra, 3
September 1530: “mi maraviglio non havere finito e giorni mia per dolore;” “che se la gratia di dio non mi havessi
fortifichato era impossibile havessi tollerato quanto ho patito.”
12
On Fra Girolamo Savonarola’s prophetic mission and political influence into the sixteenth century see Mark
Jurdjevic, “Citizens, Subjects, and Scholars: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1608” (PhD,
Northwestern University, 2002); Polizzotto, The Elect Nation; and Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence:
Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
 152

Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, could be found ascribing the city’s troubles to the almost complete

loss of religion and devotion in Tuscany.13

Capponi, himself, seeking the support of the Savonarolans put forward a proposal in the

Consiglio Maggiore on 9 February 1528 to elect Jesus Christ as king of Florence. The motion

passed, according to one contemporary account, by a huge majority: only eighteen out of 1,100

votes opposed the measure.14 The records of the pratiche from the years 1529-30, extra

constitutional advisory bodies convened to answer questions posed by the Signoria, provide

glimpses of the devotional influence on the government’s decision-making process as various

individuals counseled recourse to God, often in lieu of practical advice.15 The same records do

also, however, bear testament to the limits such influence: on 25 April 1530, Pierfrancesco

Portinari observed that, perhaps, some contradiction existed between desiring to avert the wrath

of God and persisting in the sale of ecclesiastical property.16

Eventually, Capponi failed in his attempts to negotiate a balance between the geopolitical

realities of Florence’s position and the ideological demands of the populist faction in the city.

The revelation of correspondence between Jacopo Salviati, as always at the side of Clement VII,

and the gonfaloniere led to his deposition on 17 April 1529.17 The Consiglio Maggiore elected

Francesco di Niccolò Carducci as a replacement the same day. Two clauses attached to

13
Polizzotto, The Elect Nation, 342, note 108.
14
ASF, Libri di Commercio e Famiglia, 4742, 154r. There is surprisingly little historical analysis of this event. See
however, Silvia Mantini, Lo spazio sacro della Firenze medicea: Trasformazioni urbane e cerimoniali pubblici tra
Quattrocento e Cinquecento, (Florence: Loggia de’ Lanzi, 1995), 62-63.
15
See, for example, ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 64v (Lorenzo Strozzi), 100r (Lorenzo Segni); 73: 23v (Paolo
Bartoli), 48r (Paolo Bartoli), 52r (Pierfrancesco Portinari – with qualification).
16
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 73: 36v.
17
On the downfall of Niccolò Capponi, see Nardi, Istorie, 2: 147-51; Varchi, Storia, 1: 544-52.
 153

Carducci’s election stated that his term of office would last only eight months, and that he (and

all future gonfalonieri) would be ineligible for re-election for two years.

Niccolò Capponi was not the victim of a social conflict: the struggle between the

oligarchic and popular factions did not revolve around issues of status or position. The political

conflicts of the period 1527-30, like those of the early fifteenth century or of the period between

1502 and 1512, occurred largely within the office-holding class of Florence.18 The majority of

the most prominent members of the reggimento of 1527-30, the men who sat regularly in the

more restricted and powerful magistracies of the period – the Ottanta and the Dieci – and those

summoned to the pratiche, possessed patrician surnames.19 Of the ninety-eight men who

appeared at least three times in any of these bodies, sixty-two belonged to patrician lineages.

This figure, just under two-thirds, is slightly lower but very close to the proportions for the

Medicean balìe of the fifteenth century.

The years 1527-30, however, do stand in stark contrast to the periods immediately

preceding and following. In the Medicean republic of 1512-27, and then the early years of the

principate, fifty-eight men appear most prominent – based on their appearance in the balìa up to

1532 and the Quarantotto after. Of these only three men – Francescantonio di Francesco Nori,

Lapo di Bartolomeo del Tovaglia, and Niccolò di Bartolomeo del Troscia – did not possess

patrician names.20 Within the office-holding class considered more broadly the contrast is less

18
On the two earlier periods see, H.C. Butters, Governors and Government in Early Sixteenth-Century Florence,
1502-1519, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985); and Dale Kent, The Rise of the Medici: Faction in Florence,
1426-1434, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).
19
See Appendix D. Note, that statistical analysis of the regime in these years, compared with the Medicean
reggimenti of the fifteenth century or even of the period 1512-27, is somewhat limited given the short time span of
the government: some thirty-nine months.
20
In the period 1434-94, 134 of the 190 most prominent men in the regime carried patrician surnames, or 70.52%:
see Rubinstein, The Government of Florence. I have measured promience in this period based on appearance in the
 154

extreme. For the terms of office in the tre maggiori (the Signoria and its two advisory colleges,

the Sedici Gonfalonieri and Dodici Buonuomini) drawn or elected from 16 May 1527 until 12

August 1530, the proportion of patrician names hovered just beneath fifty percent except in

1529. Two randomly selected three year periods from the Medicean regime that preceded 1527,

produce a percentage that is slightly higher but still comparable: at or just above fifty percent.21

The patriciate then maintained at least a plurality in the upper tiers of offices and

magistracies during the reggimento of 1527-30. The lowest ebb of its political fortunes occurred

in the first four months of 1529 – the period immediately preceding Capponi’s dismissal. Two-

thirds of the total patricians nominated for the tre maggiori in the Consiglio Maggiore of that

year, received their nominations after the election of Francesco Carducci as gonfaloniere di

giustizia.22 Two possibilities suggest themselves to explain these figures. Perhaps the Consiglio,

dominated by arrabbiati and piagnoni, already distrustful of Capponi’s administration, sought to

limit his freedom of action by electing only a minority from the elite. This hypothesis would only

seem likely if a definite socio-economic distinction existed between the oligarchic and popular

factions. However, the two leading members of the opposition to Capponi – Alfonso di Filippo

Strozzi and Tommaso di Paolantonio Soderini – descended from distinguished patrician families.

balie, the Settanta, and the accopiatori. For the Medicean reggimenti of the sixteenth century, 1512-27, 1530-32, and
1532-58, see Appendix C. The percentage of patrician lineages for this period was 94.82%. Expressed as a
percentage, the figure for 1527-30 is 63.26%.
21
The full figures and percentages are as follows (year: total number of individuals drawn or proposed: number
individuals with patrician surnames: percentage of individuals with patrician surnames): 1515: 582: 304: 52.23%;
1516: 174: 98: 56.32%; 1517: 357: 201: 56.3%; 1522: 279: 152: 54.48%; 1523: 265: 135: 50.94%; 1524: 321: 159:
49.53%; 1527 (from June): 80: 39: 48.75%; 1528: 162: 77: 47.53%; 1529: 151: 57: 37.74%; 1530 (until September):
111: 52: 46.84%. Source: David Herlihy et al., Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders,
1282-1532. Machine readable data file (Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG, Brown University, 2002).
22
As the note above reveals, in 1529 only fifty-seven of the 151 men proposed for the Tre Maggiori possessed
patrician surnames (37.74%). Thirty-eight of these men (66.6%) were nominated after the 1 May election of
Francesco Carducci. Source: Ibid.
 155

Nor could one classify them as “poor cousins” seeking vengeance by siding against their peers.

Both Strozzi and the heirs of Soderini paid above-average decime in 1534.23 The most prominent

non-patrician lineage in the popular opposition to Capponi, the Da Castiglione, represented

principally by Bernardo and Guido di Dante, was also at least the economic equal of the more

aristocratic members of the faction.24 No real social or economic differences existed between the

supporters and opponents of Capponi.

The more probable explanation for the absence of patrician names from the rolls of the

tre maggiori in early 1529 would argue the inverse of the previous hypothesis. Far from being

muscled out of the most significant offices of the commune the elite lineages withdrew from

Capponi in the last months of his term. Significantly, the patrician plurality continued in other

important magistracies – the Dieci and the Ottanta – in the same period.25 While maintaining a

continuing presence within and influence over the reggimento, then, the patriciate minimized its

23
The decima was a tax on the income derived from real property. As such it is an incomplete guide to actual
wealth; however, the declarations for the decime of 1498 and 1534 constitute the only complete source that enables
comparative analysis for the period. Alfonso Strozzi declared income of 340 florins and nine denari, and a decima
of twenty-eight florins, six soldi, and nine denari: ASF. Decima Granducale, 3616: 38v. Alessandro and
Paolantonio, the sons of Tommaso Soderini, declared income of 345 florins, six soldi and three denari, and a decima
of twenty-eight florins, fifteen soldi, and six denari: ASF, Decima Granducale, 3578: 151v. Based on the decima
returns of the principal members of the generation of 1480 (see Appendix A), a decima of twenty florins or less
appears standard for patrician males. Note that, while the Granducale is not always as specific as the Decima
Repubblicana, in general the figures for income were declared in fiorini di sugello while the figures for the decima
owed were declared in fiorini larghi di grossi. These were both outdated monies of account by 1532, the former less
valuable than the latter. It is not clear why these values continued to be used rather than the current official money of
account: see Richard A. Goldthwaite and Giulio Mandichi, Studi sulla moneta fiorentina (Secoli XIII-XVI),
(Florence: Olschki, 1994), 58-60, 63-64.
24
In their joint declaration for the 1498 decima, the sons of Dante da Castiglione declared income of 318 florins,
twelve soldi, and five denari, and a decima of thirty-one florins, seventeen soldi, and three denari: ASF, Decima
Repubblicana, 24: 151v. In 1534, Guido declared income of 227 florins, nineteen soldi, and eleven denari, and a
decima of nineteen florins: ASF, Decima Granducale, 3623: 67v. In addition to their regular offices, Strozzi,
Soderini, and Bernardo da Castiglione were also the three most regular speakers in the pratiche, based on the extant
records from 1529: see ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: passim.
25
Only one of the Dieci elected for the six-month term beginning on 10 December 1528 did not possess a patrician
surname: ASF, Tratte, 906: 46r. Thirty-nine of the seventy-nine men seated on the Ottanta for the first half of 1529
came from patrician lineages: ASF, Tratte, 719: 82r-83v.
 156

association and contact with Capponi by avoiding the executive offices of the city: the eight

Priors together with the members of the two advisory Colleges lived and worked with the

gonfaloniere in the Palazzo. More specifically, that part of the patriciate still politically active in

the city pursued this course. Patrician men from whom Capponi could have expected support

were either viewed with the same suspicion as the gonfaloniere himself, such as Francesco

Vettori and Francesco Guicciardini, and so did suffer from active discrimination, or had already

departed the city, like Filippo Strozzi and Guicciardini’s elder brother, Luigi.

In September 1527, Francesco Guicciardini, tarnished in the eyes of the new reggimento

by his lengthy service under Clement VII, wrote of his position in the second person: “I see that,

because of the mood of the city you find yourself completely excluded from the government.”26

Strozzi, meanwhile, despite his prominent role in persuading Cardinal Passerini and Ippolito to

leave Florence peacefully, soon fell into disgrace. Assigned the task of acquiring the fortresses at

Pisa and Livorno from their Medicean castellans, Strozzi failed completely and also allowed

Ippolito to flee to neutral Lucca through his negligence. Combined with his substantial financial

losses from the sack of Rome, as well as the illness of his wife, Clarice, this embarrassment left

Strozzi obviously embittered and dissatisfied in Florence. He wrote to his brother, Lorenzo, on

23 November 1527: “I understand very well that my happy days have passed, and that all the

remainder of my life will be for me more bitter than death.”27 In the middle of 1528, Filippo

obtained license to leave Florence and travel to Lyon to attend to his commercial interests.

26
Francesco Guicciardini, Opere, ed. Vittorio de Caprariis, (Milan & Naples: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1953), 71.
27
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 114r: Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Prato, 23 November
1527: “che benissimo intendo li miei felici giorni esser passati / et che ogni resto di mia vita m’ha essere più che
morte amaro.” Strozzi was never one to shy away from an overly dramatic turn of phrase.
 157

The alienation of men such as Strozzi and Francesco Guicciardini, as well as the

prosecution of Benedetto Buondelmonti, does not mean that the political conflicts of 1527-30, if

not fought between social groups, consisted of a factional struggle between pro- and anti-

Mediceans. Prior allegiance or opposition to the once-dominant family certainly played a role in

the conflicts, and these past associations became an increasingly significant factor from late 1529

under the pressure of the war unleashed on Florence by Clement VII. However, the divisions

within the city were more complicated than a simple confrontation between two opposed camps.

As Chapter Three demonstrated the majority of the office-holding class remained politically

agnostic in their dealings with the Medici, and the family’s partisan base was smaller and less

stable in the sixteenth century than that of the fifteenth century. Correspondingly, the partisans of

the popular party between 1527 and 1530 remained small in number; and most of the city’s

office holders continued to hew to a path of factional neutrality. Once the Mediceans did regain

control of the city in August 1530, they identified only twenty-one of the ninety-eight most

prominent office holders in reggimento of 1527-30 as political enemies.28

As always in Florence, multiple forces operated on political actors, asserting competing

and sometimes conflicting demands.29 Filippo Strozzi’s elder brother, Lorenzo, interceded

regularly on his behalf: petitioning their half-brother Alfonso or other prominent men to relieve

Filippo’s tax burden and provide him with a license to travel to Rome.30 Following the return of

28
See Appendix D. For the various condemnations see, ASF, OGBR, 231: 8r-v, 10v-14v, 15r-16r, 17v. The
punishments and proscriptions meted out in the final three months of 1530 are discussed further below.
29
See Chapter 2 above. See also, by way of comparison, the discussion of political factionalism in the city after
1494 in Nicolai Rubinstein, “Politics and Constitution in Florence at the End of the Fifteenth Century,” in Italian
Renaissance Studies. A Tribute to the Late Cecilia M. Ady, ed. E.F. Jacob, (London: Faber and Faber, 1960).
30
On the issues of taxation and forced loans see ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 1, 111, 132, and 133. On the
matter of Filippo’s desire to return to Rome see ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 1, 203 and 255.
 158

Clement VII, in October 1528, the Roman economy had begun to revive and Filippo, whose

finances entwined with those of the Pope’s, desired to restore his own fortunes.31 Pierfrancesco

Portinari, who held almost every significant office between 1527 and 1530, also lobbied on

behalf of Filippo Strozzi. He wrote to the banker: “I have not lacked in doing all that I judged

beneficial to you. As in all of your affairs, I am always ready to do what a friend should, as I am

obliged.”32 When Rinaldo Corsini, a second cousin of Francesco Vettori, became one of the

syndics appointed to investigate the finances of the Medicean republic Vettori intervened on

behalf of Filippo Strozzi. “I spoke to Rinaldo Corsini,” he wrote, “ and he promised sincerely

and I hold him a good man who whould not promise what he did not wish to do.”33 When the

Signoria siezed and sold the property of Medici supporters who had left Florence Lorenzo

Strozzi purchased, by proxy, many items belonging to his brother-in-law Palla di Bernardo

Rucellai, “with the intention of saving them for Palla.”34 The period between 1527 and 1530

proved no more immune to the ubiquitous sottogoverno than any other in the republic’s history.

31
Bindo d’Antonio Altoviti, another Florentine banker who had made his fortune in Rome, returned to the city in
December 1529: Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Bindo Altoviti, Renaissance Banker and Papal Financier,” in Raphael,
Cellini and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti, ed. Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano, and
Dimitrios Zikos, (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003).
32
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 1, 9. Letter from Pierfrancesco Portinari, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in
Lyon, 6 January 1529: “non ho mancato di fare quanto ho iudicato a benfitio vostro così in ogni altra vostra
occurentia sono per fare sempre lo offitio dello amico come sono obbligato.” Portinari sat on the Signoria, the
Ottanta, the Dodici, the Sedici, and the Dieci between May 1527 and August 1530. He also particpated in the
pratiche and served as an ambassador to Pope Clement VII in September 1529: ASF, Tratte, 719: 77v; 906: 49r and
204v; Herlihy et al., Online Tratte; Nardi, Istorie, 2: 167-70; Varchi, Storia, 1: 158.
33
Jones, Francesco Vettori, 205, note 52.
34
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 105: 121r. Giornale e ricordanze personali di Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi, 1528-36: “con
intentione di salvarle a palla.” Strozzi did note, however, that he expected Rucellai to reimburse him for the expense.
 159

The demands of family and friends infilitrated and influenced the decision-making processes as

much as religious or ideological motivations did.35

The most significant factor driving political conflict and debate in the city after 1527 was

the problem of what liberty meant and, therefore, what policies the reggimento ought to pursue:

whether Florence’s independence mattered more than its civic form of government and whether

the Signoria should prefer one concept of liberty over the other. In this case, as with the question

of allegiance or opposition to the Medici, no simple binary opposition operated. The situation in

no way consisted of a conflict between Capponi and the oligarchs favoring sovereignty and the

popular party supporting civic government. The debates and actions of the period occurred in a

constantly shifting field. The meaning of liberty was never fixed, but always in the process of

construction. Personal choices and external events intervened to shape and alter the debate. The

fluid nature of the issue could make ideological bedfellows of political opponents, such as

Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Francesco Guicciardini.

The experiences of Francesco Guicciardini and of Filippo and Lorenzo Strozzi provide

the best-documented examples of the delicate line walked by oligarchs with close ties to the

Medici, and the conflicting loyalties that drew upon them. Guicciardini’s earliest recorded

response to the coup d’état of mid-May 1527 came in a letter to Niccolò Capponi at the end of

the month. “I love the popular government, “ he wrote, “and the city’s liberty as much as anyone

else.” However, he continued that they should not distract themselves in pleasant thoughts,

which risked losing them both their political influence and personal positions.36 Despite his

perception of the potential dangers of the situation to the oligarchic party, Guicciardini could do
35
Compare with the observations about the endurance of social networks in spite of religious and political turmoil in
sixteenth-century England in Alan Bray, The Friend, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 71.
36
Albertini, Firenze, 226-27.
 160

little to prevent his alienation from the corridors of power now his principal patrons had lost their

place in the city. His years of service to both Medici popes, and especially his prominent roles in

the financial and military affairs of the League of Cognac had left him too tainted for re-

habilitation.

What singled out men such as Guicciardini, as well as Benedetto Buondelmonti, was not

their association with the Medicean reggimento in Florence itself, but rather their service for the

family outside the city. Guicciardini only held three offices in the city for the entire period of

1512-27: he was appointed to the Diciasette in place of his father on 17 March 1514, he sat on

the Signoria for September-October 1515, and he was elected to the Settanta on 19 October

1524.37 Similarly, Buondelmonti only held office twice in the Medicean republic. He sat on the

Signoria for March-April 1523, and was elected to the Settanta the same day as Guicciardini.38

Their prolonged absence from the city had isolated them from the office-holding class in terms

of experience and identity. Their compatriots probably saw them, if not as outsiders, then as

agents of a foreign and suspect power.

Guicciardini, himself, had acknowledged the distance between himself and his peers in

Florence in a letter written during the summer of 1522. Because of his extended absence from

the city, he wrote, “I am by now almost a foreigner.”39 He reinforced this perception in the

Accusatoria, which he wrote in September 1527, a self-examination from the perspective of his

37
ASF, Tratte, 906: 64v and 66r; Herlihy et al., Online Tratte. Guicciardini’s name was drawn for the Cento
regularly from 1518, but he never sat on the council due to his absence on papal service in the Romagna: ASF,
Tratte, 719: 38r, 40r, 46r, 48r, 54r, 68r, and 70r.
38
ASF, Tratte, 906: 66v; Ibid. Buondelmonti was also drawn for the Cento on several occasions without him ever
sitting on the council, usually due to his absence: ASF, Tratte, 719: 55r, 59r, 65r, 69r, 71r, and 73r.
39
Letter from Fracesco Guicciardini, in Parma, to Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, 5 July 1522: Francesco Guicciardini,
Le lettere: Edizione critica (aprile 1522-giugno 1523), ed. Pierre Jodogne, (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per l’Età
Moderna e Contemporanea, 1999), 91.
 161

political opponents. Guicciardini included in the list of crimes that he imagined the popular party

suspected him of: “occupier of your Palace” – that is the Palazzo della Signoria. The slip of

pronoun is all the more telling following as it does only a few words after “destroyer of our

contado.”40 While Guicciardini still felt himself Florentine, this distinction acknowledged his

personal distance from the elite’s tradition of public life, embodied in the Palazzo and its

imposing bell-tower: not “our Palace” but “your Palace.”

By contrast, Niccolò Capponi held office regularly prior to May 1527: he sat on the

Cento on six occasions, served as a Monte Official in 1520, was elected to the Settanta on 21

July 1522, sat on the Otto di Pratica from December 1523 to June 1524, and his name was drawn

twice as gonfaloniere di giustizia – he held the position on the second occasion for July-August

1526.41. All of this, however, did not prevent Capponi from electoral success in the Consiglio

Maggiore – although it arguably contributed to undermining his position once his negotiations

with Jacopo Salviati became public knowledge. Capponi had not separated himself from the

social, cultural, and political identities of the office-holding class as Guicciardini and

Buondelmonti had done.

So only four months after the departure of Cardinal Passerini, Guicciardini found himself

alienated from office and subjected to punitive taxes. As always in period of political inactivity

he turned to writing, first composing the Accusatoria, his imagined prosecution of himself for

40
Guicciardini, Opere, 61. The reference to the Palazzo refers Guicciardini’s role in the suppression of the tumulto
di venerdì. The reference to the contado refers to the damage wrought by the army of the League of Cognac as it
passed through the Florentine dominion in pursuit of the imperial forces commanded by Charles III de Bourbon. The
term contado lacks a convenient and precise English equivalent – it refers to the area of countryside immediately
surrounding the city, which had always been subject to Florentine governance, as distinct from the dominio
(dominion), which refered to the extended territory conquered and controlled by Florence.
41
ASF, Tratte, 906: 66r, 69v, and 82v; ASF, Tratte, 719: 44r, 48r, 52r, 58r, 68r, and 70r (Capponi’s name was drawn
on two other occasions for the Cento when he was inelibigle to sit: 22r and 24r); Herlihy et al., Online Tratte.
 162

service to the Medici popes: “Messer Francesco Guicciardini, thief of public monies, destroyer

of our contado, a man who hated life outside politics, desirous of the return of the Medici, lover

of tyranny, occupier of your Palace, capital enemy of the common liberty.”42 In addition to

revealing his distance from the office-holding class of Florence, the Accusatoria also reveals

something of Guicciardini’s consideration of liberty in the immediate context of 1527. The

juxtaposition of Medici tyranny with common liberty suggests more a sense of independence

rather than civic freedom. All of the crimes that Guicciardini accused himself of related to his

service for Clement VII. In particular all his wrongs connected to the imperilment of Florentine

sovereignty, physically from the proximity of the armies of both the League and Borboun in

April 1527, but also financially, diplomatically, and militarily. The letter of 30 May 1527 to

Capponi, in which Guicciardini separated and distinguished between the civic sense of liberty –

“the popular government” – and Florentine independence – “the city’s liberty” – supports this

conclusion. 43

Guicciardini did not lose hope in his fall from grace, nor did he lose his faith in civic

freedom and government by the magistracies of the city. He did not despair of his own abilities

either. In the Consolatoria, written about the same time (but presumably after) the Accusatoria

Guicciardini assured himself that the same abilities that had made him attractive to his papal

masters would soon return him to public life in Florence: “it is impossible that in such a famine

of men [of virtue and experience] you would not be recognized.”44 The Consolatoria identified

this lack of recognition since May 1527 – his isolation from the public life of the city – as

42
Guicciardini, Opere, 61-62.
43
See note 36 above.
44
Guicciardini, Opere, 84.
 163

Guicciardini’s principal disappointment and source of grief. This pained him more, he

emphasized, than the loss of his papal appointments. The foundation of his displeasure, he wrote,

consisted “in being reduced to an inferior grade at great remove, I will not say from that which

you used to have in years past, but to that which your equals have in your fatherland.”45

Guicciardini felt pained at his distance from his social peers, who held and exercised office in the

city. He desired to return to public life and in September 1527 he saw civic government and

comunal offices as a vehicle to enable this return. So Guicciardini continued to linger in or

around Florence until the middle of 1529. His correspondence to his brothers for this period

originated from the city, from Guicciardini villas or other locations in the contado.

Tensions soon began to emerge, however, as Guicciardini struggled to balance his desire

to serve and aid the reggimento with his frustration and even anger at the direction in which the

city headed. In May 1528, his aristocratic prejudice spilled over in two letters to his elder

brother, Luigi. On the eighth of the month he wrote from Florence: “They have made the

Ottanta: I understand little about it. But I have been told that they are all well trusted by the

government and there are more men of no significance than men of great houses. From our house

there is no one, nor any of the Capponi.”46 The council, elected on 7 May, in fact contained a

majority of men from patrician lineages. Guicciardini was correct about the absence of men from

his own family, although Niccolò di Braccio Guicciardini later replaced Bartolomeo Marsili.47

For Guicciardini, ever the proponent of a restricted aristocratic form of republican government,

45
Ibid., 75.
46
ASF, CS, Serie I, 129: 176r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, at Poppiano, 8
May 1528: “Fecionsi di 80: n’ho inteso pochi: ma mi è stato decto sono tutti ben confiderati allo stato: et sono fra
più spicciolati che di casate: in casa nostro è nessuno: et nè in casa e Capponi.”
47
ASF, Tratte, 719: 80r-81v.
 164

the minimal broadening of participation that occurred between 1527 and 1530 (as discussed

above) was too much. On 11 May, he wrote again to Luigi, in a letter that as much as it gave vent

to Guicciardini’s bigotry also testified to the very limited changes in the social make-up of the

office-holding class: “this morning they voted in the council to give the beneficio to many who

pretend to possess it in their family: not one of sixty-five won it.”48

After the debacle at Pisa, Filippo Strozzi initially returned to Florence. Antonfrancesco

degli Albizzi received a commission, in his place, to acquire the fortresses.49 Like Guicciardini

and Buondelmonti, Strozzi had no history of office holding in the city beyond three terms as a

Monte Official.50 Unlike, Guicciardini he does not appear to have sought political rehabilitation

or reintegration into the office-holding class. Strozzi, in his own way, was politically agnostic

like the majority of Florentine patricians by the end of the 1520s. His relations with the Medici

were personal and commercial. His concerns in the later months of 1527 were financial and not

political.

Strozzi departed Florence in the summer of 1528 and traveled first to Lyon. As always

when outside of Florence, he maintained a regular correspondence with his elder full-brother,

Lorenzo. Lorenzo’s position in Florence and his responses to the events of 1527-30 were more

complex than Filippo’s. Unlike his younger brother, Lorenzo held office regularly under the

48
ASF, CS, Serie I, 129: 177r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, at Santa Margherita, to Luigi Guicciardini, 11
May 1528: “stamani andorono a partito in consiglio per haver’ beneficio molti che nella linea loro pretendono
haverlo non ne vinse nessuno da 65.” Possession of the beneficio was required in order to sit on the Consiglio
Maggiore. To acquire it oneself, one’s father or grandfather had to have been drawn for one of the tre maggiori. See
Chapter 3 above on the creation of the Consiglio in 1494-95.
49
Albizzi eventually succeeded with the application of healthy bribes and promises of immunity to both Giuliano di
Bartolomeo da Pistoia (known as Paccione), the castellan of Pisa, and Galleotto da Barga, the castellan of Livorno:
Nardi, Istorie, 126. See also BNCF, Nazionale, II, III, 433: 21r.
50
ASF, Tratte, 906: 69v. Strozzi too had his name drawn several times for the Cento, but never sat on the council:
ASF, Tratte, 719: 67r, 71r, 73r, and 75r.
 165

Medicean reggimento: he held the position of Monte Official twice, sat on the Signoria once,

was drawn as gonfaloniere di giustizia while too young to hold the office, he was elected to the

balìa on 22 July 1522, and he sat on the Cento regularly.51 He would be called to the pratiche in

1529, becoming a regular participant, and following the return of the Medici he again received a

position in the balìa elected on 8 November 1530.52

Lorenzo Strozzi represented, in short, the perfection of the political agnosticism aspired

to by the majority of the Florentine office-holding class in the troubled and confused years of the

early Cinquecento: a man too important to ignore but too insignificant in his ideological

persuasions to threaten any particular faction; a man who held office without aspiring to public

life. Lorenzo, himself, neatly encapsulated his feelings and his position in a letter to Filippo,

written on 23 May 1529 following his first election to a pratica. “I am not well pleased by this, “

he wrote, “because, however much I have recovered my strength, difficulties offend me nor have

I found anything that delights me more than [fresh] air and for this [office] it is necessary to stay

assiduously in the city because never do three days pass without the pratica meeting on account

of the Signori or of the Dieci.” He continued by describing how he would prepare himself for

office: “I will force myself not to lack in my debt towards the fatherland and I will strip myself,

as I usually do, of every passion.”53

51
ASF, Tratte, 906: 6v and 69v-70r; ASF, Tratte, 719: 49r, 53r, 57r, 63r, 67r, and 75r; Herlihy et al., Online Tratte.
52
ASF, Tratte, 906: 204r-v; ASF, Tratte, 907: 180r.
53
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 1, 54. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Lyon, 23
May 1529: “non ne me sono molto rallegrato perchè quantunche io habbi recuperato le forze mie e disagi mi
offendono nè trovo cosa che più mi giovi che l’aria & qui bisogna stare nella citta & assiduo perchè non passa mai
tre giorni che la pratica per conto della S[igno]ri o/ de’ dieci non si raguni / … / Ingegneromi non manchare del
debito verso la patria & spoglieromi come io son’ solito d’ogni passione.”
 166

On 19 July 1529, the Signoria summoned the pratica to consider what course of action

the government should pursue in the light of the steadily weakening military and political

position of Florence. On 29 June, Clement VII and Charles V had concluded the Treaty of

Barcelona, in which the Emperor promised to aid the return of the Medici to Florence.54 At the

same time negotiations had begun between Charles and Francis I of France that would result in

Peace of Cambrai (5 August 1529), under the terms of which the French King surrendered all his

claims and interests in the Italian peninsula. Betrayed by their most powerful ally and

outmanuevered by the alliance of their two principal enemies the Signoria, confronting the

possibility of a war with both the Pope and Emperor, sought advice from the pratica on whether

“it should take one alternative more than another for the health of the city or seek to save well

liberty with those means that it can.”55

The choice that the executive offered the men summoned for counsel distinguished

between protecting the physical city and defending the neo-Roman republican form of

government; in the barest terms, between either negotiating or fighting. By pursuing diplomacy,

the Signoria could protect “the health of the city.” This meant not only the physical edifice of

stone, wood, and mortar, but also the socio-political status of the office-holding class, whose

identity depended on the survival of Florence as an independent state.56 A negotiated settlement

with the Emperor, who was en-route for Genoa, would probably preserve both the physical city

as well as the social pre-eminence of the elite. The price, implied in the distinction offered by the

54
On the papal-imperial negotiations see most recently Michael J. Levin, Agents of Empire: Spanish Ambassadors
in Sixteenth-Century Italy, (Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 2005), 45-53.
55
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 46v: “se fussi da pigliare più uno partito che uno altro per salute della citta o da
cercare di salvare bene la libertà in quello modi che si potess’o.”
56
See Chapter 2 above.
 167

Signoria, would be the civic form of governance: as result of the Treaty of Barcelona, a

settlement would require the restitution of the Medici to their position of political predominance.

Approving the second option, would not guarantee either physical or the social survival of the

city, but would satisfy pride and honor, as well as meeting the ideological demands of both the

arrabbiati and the piagnoni.

Opinion within the pratica almost uniformly supported military preparations. Lorenzo

Strozzi, speaking toward the end of the session, summed up the prevailing sentiment with his

brief contribution: “that the city arm itself.”57 However, Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, another

member of the consultative body, while noting that such contingencies should be provided for,

argued eloquently in favor of negotiation. Invoking the recent past, he attacked those who spoke

against diplomatic efforts: “the obstinacy in which we find ourselves to me seems most

reprehensible.” He continued that the Signoria should recall the embassy sent to Emperor

Maximilian I in 1502: “we should meet with Caesar [Charles V] in order to insure the city.”58

The pratica ended inconclusively. But it reconvened in the evening of the same day. Albizzi had

taken advantage of the interruption to put his thoughts on paper, and rose to deliver a lengthy

oration. Not only does this speech demonstrate that Albizzi’s character was more complex than

Benedetto Varchi’s summation of the same – “haughty, proud, and restless”59 – more importantly

57
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 49r: “che la città si armi.”
58
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 48r: “la obstinatione in che noi ci troviamo mi pare reprehensibile molto…da farsi
incontro ad Ces[a]re per assicurare la citta.” The Holy Roman Emperor was still routinely referred to as “Caesar” in
Italian sources in the sixteenth century.
59
Varchi, Storia, 3: 98. Varchi rarely had a nice word to say about any of his contemporaries, but this has not
prevented his description becoming Albizzi’s epitaph among scholars: see most recently, Carl Brandon Strehlke,
Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, (Philadelphia:
Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004), 82.
 168

it provides the single most detailed and significant exposition on the meaning of liberty produced

by a prominent figure in the reggimento of 1527-30.

Albizzi addressed the two poles of the question – both sovereignty and civic freedom – in

a lengthy exegesis on the problems of past regimes, and the necessary decisions that the Signoria

ought to make in the present. Two significant points underlay Albizzi’s argument. First, he

linked the twin concepts of liberty together, arguing that a civic form of government represented

the best means of preserving and defending the city’s independence. Second, in a remarkable

admission for a Florentine, Albizzi acknowledged that Florence did not possess a monopoly on

the idea of liberty and that all the other cities in Tuscany (many of which were subject to

Florentine rule) also had concepts of their own sovereignty.

Albizzi began by demanding, why the city’s governors had continually involved Florence

in wars and conflicts “not only without any profit but to its great detriment.” In doing so the city

expended “an infinite treasury” and also incurred the enmity of either one prince or another

through its military adventures, who then threatened Florence.60 Albizzi continued, that he could

find only one reason to explain this behavior: “that the city has almost always been subject either

to a tyrant or to a few powerful citizens.” The decision-making process of Florence, therefore,

advanced only the interests of these men; rather than considering the “universal well-being of

their Fatherland.”61 The obvious conclusion to draw from this, Albizzi argued, was “that

Republics can never be well counseled by great and powerful Citizens” because their ambition

would lead them to friendship with foreign princes, whom they then would seek to cultivate and

60
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 50r: “non solamente sanza profitto alcuno ma con grande detrimento di quella;” “un
thesoro infinito.”
61
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 50v: “la città è stata quasi sempre o in potere d’uno tirano o di pochi cittadini
potenti;” “bene universale della Patria loro.”
 169

satisfy instead of protecting and advancing the real interests of the city. To protect Florence from

the depredations of foreign potentates, to preserve the city’s sovereignty, he concluded, a

“legitimate popular government” was necessary. This meant, he explained, a regime in which

“Magistrates and not particular Citizens” controlled the processes of government.62 That is to

say, that Florence’s liberty (as sovereignty) depended upon the maintenance of its liberty (as

civic freedom).

Albizzi’s diagnosis of the problems of Florence’s past should not be read as a call for

social revolution, but for cultural reformation. He had no intention of stripping the traditional

office-holding class of its role, nor less of depriving himself and other patricians of their

prominence and influence. The speech was historically specific to 1529. The “great and

powerful” in Albizzi’s estimation did extend to include the entire elite, but embraced only the

Medici, their friends, and their relations. His diatribe against Florence’s involvement in wars that

did not concern it appears specifically to criticize the city’s participation in the military

adventures of the two Medici popes from 1513.

More than anything else, Albizzi’s depiction of “legitimate popular government”

resembles Matteo Palmieri’s description of the vita civile in the mid-fifteenth century. The

distinction that Albizzi made between the person of the magistrate, a term that referred to all

public offices not just judicial positions, and the personal interests of the citizen echoed

Palmieri’s injunction from some fifty years earlier. “He who sits among the magistrates,”

Palmieri had enjoined, “before anything else, knows that he is stripped of his own person.” In

this way, “retaining the public persona of the whole civil body,” he continued, the magistrate

62
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 51r: “che le Republicche non possino essere ben consigliate dai Cittadini grandi e
potenti;” “legitimo populare governo;” “e Magistrati et non e Cittadini particulari.”
 170

could serve, sustain, and defend the city in its entirety.63 Albizzi reconnected the reggimento to

the myths of civic humanism, to its Ciceronian inheritance of selfless public service and virtue.

He invoked and sought to revitalize the imagined community of a commonwealth of office-

holders, all equal and virtually indistinguishable one from the other in their red robes of state. In

particular, Albizzi called on the memory of the administration of Piero Soderini between 1502

and 1512. Rather ironically given his own role in the downfall of Soderini, but apparently

without embarrassment, Albizzi declared: “in this city in the entirety of its history never did a

Republic exist except from two to twelve.”64 At this point Albizzi appeared to favor an

understanding of liberty as civic freedom.

However, Albizzi blamed the fall of the reggimento in September 1512 in a large part on

the gonfaloniere’s refusal to negotiate with the Spanish vice-roy. All the more reason, he argued,

why the Signoria should now “break this ice” and engage Charles V diplomatically. He

continued that, “if we are more obstinate, we will find ourselves closer to the fire.”65 Albizzi

argued that Florence should negotiate with the Emperor regardless of the status of the imperial-

French talks (Albizzi’s speech pre-dated the Peace of Cambrai by some three weeks). The city

could not rely on its allies, and historical precedents existed for dealing with the Emperor in spite

of Florence’s ties to the French monarchy. The city should seek to drive a wedge between

Charles and Clement VII, as the Pope and the Emperor were natural enemies as compatible as

63
Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni, (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 98. See the discussion about Palmieri’s
text in Chapter 2 above.
64
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 50v: “in questa città in tutto el tempo della sua vita non fu mai forma di Republica
se non dal dua al xii.”
65
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 52r: “Rompere questo ghiaccio;” “se faremo più obstinati: trovandosi il fuoco più
vicino.”
 171

“water and fire.”66 Florence, and the current reggimento in particular, Albizzi continued should

consider the Emperor a friend not an enemy and seek to persuade Charles to this understanding

also. If divine will was the principal cause for the city regaining its liberty (as both civic freedom

and sovereignty) in 1527, then the “coming of the Imperial army” came a close second.67

The failure to negotiate could have catastrophic consequences. Not least of which,

Albizzi argued, would be the disintegration of the Florentine dominion. The Signoria should not

fool itself: Charles V, arriving in Italy “with such Reputation and force,” would be able raise the

majority of Florence’s state in rebellion against the city “with just one trumpet blast.”68 Not only

were many of Florence’s subject cities naturally inclined to support the imperial cause in Italy –

here Albizzi named Pisa, Arezzo, Cortona, Volterra, and Montepulciano – but they each also

possessed “that most sweet desire for liberty.”69 This remarkable acknowledgment – that the

cities conquered by Florence each had preserved a notion of their own liberty as freedom from

Florentine rule – lies at the heart of Albizzi’s exegesis. He placed sovereignty as the preeminent

form of liberty. Albizzi valued a civic republican form of government because it represented, in

his estimation, the best means of protecting Florence’s independence. The rule of the Medici had

compromised this sovereignty by subsuming the city’s interests in favor of the policies of the

papacy. Albizzi’s commitment to neo-Roman republicanism was not so much ideological as

practical. In the mythologized civic humanist ideal that he invoked the interests of the office-

66
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 53v: “sieno conpatibili questi dua principi insieme non altrimenti che sia l’acqua et
il fuoco.”
67
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 54r: “[la] venuta dello ex[erci]to Imperiale.” See also 55r-v: “ci siamo opressi da
quelli Tyranni da i quali Dio et la occaxione della venuta del suo ex[erci]to ci habb’ liberti.”
68
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 52r: “la arrivata di Ces[a]re con tanta Reputatione et forze in Italia da potere con
uno solo trombetto…farci Rebellare le più parte dello stato nostro.”
69
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 52v: “quello dolcissimo desiderio della libertà.”
 172

holding class as a whole would trump the personal desires of individuals magistrates. In this

way, the decision-making process would be objective and practical – pursuing the surest path to

protecting the city’s independence, which in this case meant achieving a negotiated settlement

with Charles V.

Despite Albizzi’s eloquence almost a full month of wrangling occurred before

instructions for the embassy were determined in the pratica and ambassadors appointed.70 The

embassy, which departed on 16 August and met Charles V in Genoa, failed as the Emperor made

it clear the city had to agree to terms with the Pope, not with himself.71 On the same day that the

ambassadors left Florence an army, led by Philibert de Châlon, prince of Orange and imperial

vice-roy at Naples, departed Rome to enforce the return of the Medici agreed in the Treaty of

Barcelona. The Signoria had previously appointed Maltatesta Baglione as Governor-General of

Florence’s troops.72 Baglione had the double advantage of being signore of Perugia, which

placed an obstacle in path of any imperial advance, and an enemy of Clement VII. However, he

did not halt Orange’s approach for long. On 10 September, Baglione surrendered Perugia to the

vice-roy, who in turn chivalrously permitted him to withdraw unmolested with his forces intact

and gave them one-day’s head start in the march to Florence.73

Leaving Perugia on 12 September 1529, Baglione joined forces with the 2000 men under

the command of Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi at Arezzo. On 17 September, the city of Cortona –

70
See especially the discussion on 13 August 1529: ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 65v ff.
71
See Nardi, Istorie, 2: 167-70; Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 147-51; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 38-43.
72
Baglione did not receive the traditional title of Captain-General because Ercole d’Este, son of Duke Alfonso II of
Ferrara, nominally held this position; but his father had refused to allow him to assume the post fearing to alienate
either the Emperor or the Pope: Varchi, Storia, 1: 498-504 and 537-40; 2: 37-38; and Nardi, Istorie, 2: 159-60.
Baglione belatedly received the title on 26 January 1530.
73
A copy of the accord between Baglione and Orange survives in ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 31v-32v. See also Varchi,
Storia, 2: 141-46.
 173

fulfilling Albizzi’s prognostication of two months earlier – surrendered to Orange. Albizzi then

earned lasting notoriety and enmity by abandoning Arezzo. Together with Baglione he withdrew

his forces and retreated to Florence. Historians, both contemporary and modern, have speculated

over Albizzi’s motivations – the general consensus being that he had secret instructions from the

Signoria to abandon the city.74 This certainly fits the pattern of Florentine policy in 1529 – the

Signoria left most of the dominion thinly defended by choosing to concentrate all its efforts on

Florence itself, as well as Livorno, Pisa, Empoli, Prato and Pistoia. This plan, while it ensured

channels of communication and the supply of grain, let Orange advance to the walls of Florence

without a serious fight.

Albizzi’s decision to leave Arezzo also fits the thinking he outlined on 19 July, and the

speech provides the best explanation for his behavior. Albizzi recognized, even before it had

begun, that Florence could not win a fight against the combined the might of the Emperor and

the Pope. Nor could the city hope to maintain the loyalty of its subject communities in the face of

such a threat. Albizzi perceived no point in seeking to defend Arezzo, and perhaps even hoped

that bringing the threat of Orange’s army even closer to Florence itself would finally spur the

negotiation of a settlement. In any event, the withdrawal cost him whatever political credit he

had in Florence. Soon after his return to the city, Albizzi purchased a license to leave and joined

the growing body of Florentines residing in Lucca, the proximity and relative neutrality of which

made it an attractive location. The Quarantia later tried and acquitted him in absentia.

Around mid-September, as the imperial army advanced into the Florentine dominion,

Francesco Guicciardini decided to leave Florence also. He traveled west, toward Bologna. On 20

74
See Nardi, Istorie, 2: 162-63; Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 167-68; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 146-47. See also
the discussion of Albizzi’s actions in the pratica on 27 September: ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 99v ff.
 174

September 1529, he wrote to his brothers, Luigi and Jacopo, from the Casentino, that he had

actually reconsidered and had prepared to return to Florence, with Alessandro Pazzi. At the last

moment, however, when the two men were mounted and ready to depart word arrived of the

surrender of Cortona and the abandonment of Arezzo, which “multiplying the danger” of their

intended journey caused them to reconsider.75 This letter, and several that Francesco later wrote

to Luigi from Bologna, capture the tensions felt by a man trapped between his own fears and

desires.

If Lorenzo Strozzi was content to remain in Florence and hold office (albeit reluctantly)

in order to protect his own and his family’s interests, Guicciardini felt it in his personal interests

to flee the city but tormented himself over his disobedience to the communal government in

doing so. Filippo Strozzi returned to Rome in August 1529 and recommenced his commercial

dealings with Clement VII. By September 1531, Strozzi in business with Bindo d’Antonio

Altoviti had loaned the Pope over 180,000 ducats – in effect underwriting the papal-imperial

military expedition against Florence.76 Guicciardini, however, did not run immediately into the

embrace of his former master but still sought to reconcile himself with the reggimento in

Florence, while increasingly loathing the policies that it followed.

On 20 September 1529, Francesco wrote to Luigi and Jacopo, that he had news of “the

threats that many have made and make against whoever is suspect.” While maintaining that he

75
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 179r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Casentino, to Luigi and Jacopo Guicciardini,
in Florence, 20 September 1529: “mutliplicare el pericolo.”
76
Bullard, “Bindo Altoviti”; and Melissa Meriam Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in
Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 155-57. It is unclear
whether Strozzi’s return to Rome was actual or virtual. He certainly recommenced his financial activities in the city
in August 1529, however, his correspondence from October that year places him in Lucca with the majority of the
exiles and refugees from Florence: see in the first place, ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 120r: Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in
Lucca, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 25 October 1529.
 175

should be free from any suspicion, Guicciardini observed that others probably did not share his

opinion. He continued then, that he was not really being disobedient to the government in

leaving the city without license because he did not do so “either by design or wish to do harm but

only lead by fear and my judgment.”77 Evidence that Guicciardini’s fears about arbitrary justice

against one-time Mediceans had not extinguished his hopes for rehabilitation or his continued

sympathies for the reggimento lay in his observation that “Arezzo had been abandoned by our

soldiers.”78 At this point, Guicciardini’s loyalties clearly still lay with the regime in Florence. His

fears of persecution in the city, however, were probably well founded. In early October, a period

of “phony war” with Orange’s forces drawn up a day’s march from Florence but not yet

engaged, a special commission of six men identified and detained individuals suspected of

sympathizing with the enemy. The men arrested and imprisoned in the Palazzo della Signoria

included Ottaviano de’ Medici, Filippo de’ Nerli, Prinzivalle della Stufa, and Lapo del

Tovaglia.79

On 3 December 1529, Francesco wrote to Luigi alone. By this stage, the latter had also

left Florence for the relative safety of Pisa. “I have the greatest displeasure in understanding the

damages done to you and to others,” wrote Francesco, referring presumably to both punitive

financial measures as well as the on-going detentions. They were, he continued, “things to break

77
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 179r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Casentino, to Luigi and Jacopo Guicciardini,
in Florence, 20 September 1529: “l’ha notitia delle minaccie che molti hanno facto et fanno contro a chi è sospecto;”
“non per disegno /o/ voluntà di fare male ma solo menare per timore et mio giudicio.”
78
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 179r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Casentino, to Luigi and Jacopo Guicciardini,
in Florence, 20 September 1529: “Arezo era stato abbandonato da’ nostri soldati.”
79
Jones, Francesco Vettori, 219-20; Sanuto, I diarii, 52: 137; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 197-98.A second round of
detentions occurred later, beginning in early December. On this occasion Giovanni Vettori and Girolamo degli
Albizzi were among the victims: Varchi, Storia, 2: 325.
 176

the heart of anyone who was born in that city.”80 On 19 December, he condemned the provisions

made for the property of rebels as “atrocious…breaking fidei commisi and donations.”81 The

actions of the reggimento, in pursuing partisan retribution, were tearing at the social fabric and

unity of the office-holding class. Between September and December an increasing number of

men had their names cited by the Otto di Guardia for leaving the city without license. In mid-

November, the magistracy declared several men, who had ignored orders to return to the city,

rebels and their property was seized and sold by the Ufficiali dei Ribelli.82

In late November, the Otto cited Guicciardini himself to appear before them. While he

refused to return to Florence, he did attempt to negotiate with the magistrates and justify both his

past and present actions. On 14 December, Francesco informed Luigi that he had told the Otto

that he would leave Bologna if his presence in that city, part of the papal state, displeased them

and they suspected that he had taken service with Clement VII: “I would go to whatever place

they designated.”83 Five days later, Francesco wrote that he had considered re-locating to Lucca

so that, “those in Florence who wish to direct my life cannot say that I am ignoring them.”84

Guicciardini continued, even as his displeasure and his despair at the course of events increased,

80
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 180r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3
December 1529: “ho havuto dispiacere grandissimo per intendere e danni vostre et de altri…che sono cose da fare
crepare el cuore a ognuno che è nato in quella cipta.” Varchi reported that Luigi Guicciardini fled Florence soon
after the first dententions occurred in October 1529: Varchi, Storia, 2: 198.
81
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 186r: Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 19
December 1529: “la provisione atroce che hanno facta contro a rebelli rompendo fideicommisi et donatione.”
82
See Stephens, The Fall, 249-51. On the confiscation of property see ASF, Capitani della Parte Guelfa, Numeri
Rossi, 80: 158r-169r; and 84: 149v-165v. See also Lorenzo Strozzi’s purchase of siezed property belonging to his
brother-in-law Palla Rucellai discussed at note 34 above.
83
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 185r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 14
December 1529: “andrei in qualunque luogo loro mi disegnassino”
84
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 186r: Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 19
December 1529: “chi mi avitatta in firenze non potessi dire che io non tenessi conto di loro.”
 177

to do his best to balance a fine line between obedience and rebellion. He remained into

December 1529 conflicted over where his loyalties lay. As in 1527, Guicciardini continued to

have faith in the civic form of government in Florence despite what he saw as the growing threat

to the city’s independence posed by the Signoria’s policies.

In late October 1529, Orange had finally moved his forces to within striking-distance of

the walls of Florence. Daily artillery duels and skirmishes began in earnest.85 Until late

December, the balance of the military conflict favored the Florentines over the imperial army.

Orange’s forces were encamped only on the southern bank of the Arno, so the siege effectively

embraced only half the city. In preparation for the oncoming conflict the walls and gates of the

city had been reinforced with earthworks and the bell-tower at San Miniato al Monte had been

transformed into an artillery post. The Signoria also ordered the destruction of any building as

well as all crops within a one mile radius of the city’s walls – thereby disproving the former

Venetian ambassador Marco Foscari’s judgment that the Florentines would never fight because

they would not be able to bear the destruction of their “sumptuous and magnificent” villas.86

Vincenzo Fidele, secretary to the current ambassador from La Serenissima, noted with

wonderment the unity of the city in these preparations. He observed that the shops were closed

and “the great and small of every condition work continually on the bastions.”87

As a result the besieging army initially endured greater hardship than the besieged.

Money, food, and munitions ran short in the Imperial camp. The almost continuous rain only

85
On the details of attack and counter-attack, and the many tales of valor and treachery about the siege of Florence
see, Nardi, Istorie, 2: 170-218; Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 184-321; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 132-536.
86
Angelo Ventura, ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato, 2 vols., (Rome & Bari: Laterza, 1976), 1: 104-
05. See the description of this process given by Vincenzo Fidele: Sanuto, I diarii, 52: 330.
87
Sanuto, I diarii, 51: 615.
 178

increased the misery of the besiegers. The situation was so dire that when Alessandro Vitelli, one

of Orange’s colonels, received a wound in combat he had to turn to the city in search of medical

attention. Baglione replied that he could not send a doctor to the camp because his own wounded

required assistance but he invited Vitelli to enter the city “which has every comfort.”88

Pontormo most likely painted the portrait of Francesco Guardi (Figure 14) during this

period of the siege, which Fidele described as colored by hope and relative levity within the

walls.89 Against a murky green background, Guardi stands contraposto: his body angled toward

the left of the image with his head turned directly toward the viewer. Guardi’s right elbow juts

assertively out of the image – a fairly common motif for defiance, self-assurance, and masculine

integrity. The phallic sword-hilt and over-sized codpiece magnify the assertive virility of the

gesture. The positioning of the body would appear to quote Donatello’s marble David, from the

previous century (Figure 15).90 The colors of the Florentine republic, red and white, appear in

Guardi’s clothes. Over a white shirt he wears doublet of cream-colored fabric. His crimson hose

match the beret that completes the outfit.91 A gold chain of fairly large links hangs about his

88
Ibid., 52: 175. See also Fidele’s observation on the damaged wrought on the besiegers by the weather at 137 and
216.
89
Ibid., 52: 137-38, 215-16, 345-46. This portrait was, for many years, identified as representing Cosimo I de’
Medici, and dated to 1537. In 1997, Elizabeth Cropper convincingly argued that it in fact depicted Francesco Guardi
during the siege of Florence: Elizabeth Cropper, Pontormo: Portrait of a Halberdier, (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty
Museum, 1997).
90
On the meaning of the male elbow see Joaneath Spicer, “The Renaissance Elbow,” in A Cultural History of
Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg, (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992). On the visual
relationship between Pontormo’s portrait and Donatello’s sculpture, which is especially apparent in the preparatory
drawings, see Cropper, Pontormo, 88-89; and Strehlke, Pontormo, 88-92.
91
Guardi’s costume closely matches the description given by Benedetto Varchi of the clothes worn by Lodovico
Martelli and Dante da Castiglione on 12 March 1530 for the double-duel they fought against Giovanni Bandini and
Ruberto Aldobrandini, two Florentines serving in the imperial army: Varchi, Storia, 2: 331. As one of the grounds
for the combat, Martelli and Da Castiglione alleged Bandini and others had insulted and mocked the fighting ability
of the Florentine civic militia, and they proposed to prove the falsity of these charges in the duel – it seems probable,
therefore, that the clothes worn by Martelli, Da Castiglione, and Guardi were the uniform of the militia. See also the
 179

Figure 14. Jacopo Carucci, called Pontormo, Portrait of a Halberdier (ca. 1529-30). Panel
painting, transferred to canvas, 92 x 72 cm. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Musuem.
 180

Figure 15. Donato de’ Bardi called Donatello, David (1409) Marble, height 191 cm. Florence:
Museo Nazionale del Bargello.
 181

neck, while pinned to his hat is a medal depicting Hercules and Antaeus, behind which hangs a

feather. The Greek hero, like the biblical King David, held a special place in iconography of

Florence representing the triumph of virtue over seemingly insurmountable odds.92 Antaeus

remained invincible while his feet touched the ground, until Hercules (as the medal depicts)

raised his opponent in the air and crushed him to death. In all, through its iconographic and

phsyionogmic elements, the portrait provides a visual analogy to Vincenzo Fidele’s laudation of

“the valorous youth of the militia of this city, who are all noble and ingenious.”93

The Consiglio Maggiore had created the civic militia on 6 November 1528. Divided into

sixteen companies – one for each gonfalon of the city – each with its own captain, the force was

commanded by Stefano Colonna da Palestrina. Four professional soldiers received appointments

as sergeants major, one for each quarter. Male citizens between the ages of eighteen and forty-

five could enrol in the militia, but only those aged thirty-six or younger served on active duty.

The formation of the militia did not represent the arming of the city only of the youth of the

office-holding class. In this respect, as Richard Trexler has pointed out, it constituted a

revolutionary break. For the first time in the comune’s history the despised and feared giovani

received an institutional and symbolic place in the community.94 During the siege, the militia was

charged with guarding the city walls and gates. They also paraded through the city on significant

description of the rural militia created, at the instigation of Niccolò Machiavelli, during the administration of Piero
Soderini in Lucca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iacopo del
Badia, (Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 273. On the Martelli/Da Castiglione – Bandini/Aldobrandini duel see the further
discussion at note 106 below.
92
See Nicolai Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 1298-1532: Government, Architecture, and Imagery in the Civic
Palace of the Florentine Republic, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 54-55.
93
Sanuto, I diarii, 52: 330.
94
Richard C. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, (Ithaca NY & London: Cornell University Press, 1980;
reprint, 1991), 387-99, 522-40. See also Chapter 2 above.
 182

occasions, such as their first assembly in November 1528 or the belated appointment of Baglione

as Captain-General of the republic on 26 January 1530.95 In this way they both physically and

ritually embodied the traditional Florentine conceit of virtuous youth defending liberty.

Previously this significant icon had the form of mytho-religious heroes – most often David

defeating Goliath, but also Hercules, Saint George, Judith, and Perseus.96

Pontormo captured this embodiment effectively in his portrait of Guardi and linked it

explicitly with the earlier iconography through the medal of Hercules. In 1529, however, the

threat to Florentine liberty was no longer abstract: the enemy, quite literally, was at the gates.

The government charged the militia with defending the physical city, the civic republican form

of government, and most importantly the imagined community that linked the two together and

provided the office-holding class and the patriciate especially with their identity and sense of

self. All three remained tightly wrapped in the traditional imagination of the city’s elite that

conceived of themselves as an egalitarian commonwealth of magistrates, whose socio-political

preeminence arose in part from their ability to shape the urban landscape and whose continued

predominance depended on the independence of Florence.

95
See respectively, Nardi, Istorie, 2: 138-39; and Sanuto, I diarii, 52: 565-66. On the dual civic and religious nature
of civilian militia in medieval Italian communes, see Augustine Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the
Italian Communes, 1125-1325, (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 2005), 136. On the symbolic
significance of city walls and especially their defense see Mantini, Lo spazio sacro, 25-66; and Sharon T. Strocchia,
“Theaters of Everyday Life,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti,
(New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 76.
96
See most recently Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in Fifteenth-
Century Florence, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002); and Patricia Simons, “Separating the Men
from the Boys: Masculinities in Early Quattrocento Florence and Donatello’s Saint George,” in Rituals, Images, and
Words: Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F.W. Kent and Charles
Zika, (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). See also Chapter 3 above. On the analogous use of Judith and David in the civic
iconography of Imperial Cities in Germany, see Robert von Friedburg, “Civic Humanism and Republican
Citizenship in Early Modern Germany,” in Republicanism: A Shared European Heritage, ed. Martin van Gelderen
and Quentin Skinner, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 134-35.
 183

In the context of 1529, the members of the office-holding class who remained in Florence

– as opposed to men like Filippo Strozzi, Francesco Guicciardini, and Antonfrancesco degli

Albizzi – delegated to their sons, nephews, younger cousins and brothers the task of defending

the liberty of Florence – which they explicitly defined in terms of the civic freedom of a neo-

Roman republic. In a pratica held on 28 September 1529, in the last weeks before the siege

began in earnest, men spoke one by one on behalf of their gonfalons on the issue of whether to

fight or negotiate. Francesco Lenzi reported that thirty-six men had met in the neighborhood of

the Unicorn, of whom all but two or three “desired more swiftly to take this chance and defend

themselves, having Justice in our corner.”97 Alessandro Malegonnelle stated that all seventy men

from the White Lion agreed that, “one ought to defend liberty because it is living according to

the law.”98 These men couched their responses not in terms of defending Florence’s

independence but rather in terms of fighting to protect the civic freedom of the current form of

government.

This commitment toward defending by force the civic government of Florence expressed

by men such as Lenzi and Malegonnelle received a visual affirmation in another painting

produced by Pontormo in the summer of either 1528 or 1529: an altarpiece featuring the Virgin

with an infant Jesus accompanied by Saint Anne and four other saints (Figure 16).

Commissioned by the Captain of the Palazzo della Signoria for the convent of Sant’Anna in

Verzaia the image appears at first glance to be a conventional sacra conversazione.99 The seated

97
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 104r: “vogliono più presto correr’ questa fortuna et defendersi havendo la Justitia
dal canto nostro.”
98
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 104v: “che la libertà si debbe defendere perchè è uno viver’ secondo le legge.”
99
See Luciano Berti, Pontormo e il suo tempo, (Ponte alle Grazie: Banca Toscana/Casa Editrice Le Lettere, 1993),
160-61; Philippe Costamagna, Pontormo, trans. Alberto Curotto, (Milan: Electra, 1994), 204-06; Giorgio Vasari,
 184

Virgin, dressed in red and blue, holds a restless infant Jesus. From behind the mother and child a

matronly Saint Anne stares out at the viewer over Mary’s left shoulder. Three of the male saints

who surround the Holy Family are readily identifiable: Saint Peter at the front left, clutching his

ubiquitous keys; Saint Sebastian behind him, pierced through the neck by an arrow; and Saint

Benedict at the front right – the nuns of Sant’Anna followed the Benedictine rule. Art historical

consensus holds that the remaining figure, behind Saint Benedict, with the visible stigmata,

depicts the Good Thief.

What makes the image remarkable is the overt political message given it by the small

tondo beneath the feet of the Virgin, which depicts a procession of Florentine office-holders with

banners, trumpets, and other symbols of state (Figure 17). The location of the image, at

Sant’Anna in Verzaia, also had significance. Annually since 1370 the sitting Signoria of

Florence paraded from their Palazzo to this convent located outside the Porta San Frediano on 26

July, Saint Anne’s Day, in comemoration of the revolt that occurred on that date in 1343 against

Walter of Brienne, the nominal duke of Athens and then signore of Florence. In one of only two

brief experiments with signorial rule, prior to the sixteenth century, the Florentine government

had appointed Brienne lord of the city in September 1342. The French nobleman soon lost the

support of the office-holding class, which led an uprising against him on 26 July 1343 that

culminated in the Duke’s expulsion from the city eleven days later. The coincidence between the

Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, trans. Gaston de Vere, 2 vols., (New York & Toronto: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1996), 2: 359-60. The public commissioning of an altarpiece for a conventual church was unusual, but the
nuns of Sant’Anna could not have afforded the commission themselves – their community was too poor to support a
chaplain – and the church itself had been first built by public order in 1359: Giuseppe Richa, Notizie istoriche delle
chiese fiorentine divise ne’ suoi Quartieri, Facsimile ed., 10 vols., Vol. 4: Del Quartiere di S.M.a Novella Parte
Seconda, (Rome: Multigrafica, 1972), 222; and Sharon T. Strocchia, “Taken Into Custody: Girls and Convent
Guardianship in Renaissance Florence,” Renaissance Studies 17, no. 2 (2003): 198, note 76.
 185

Figure 16. Jacopo Carrucci, called Pontormo. Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, and Four Saints
(ca. 1528-29). Panel painting, 228 x 176 cm. Paris: Musée du Louvre.
 186

Figure 17. Detail of Figure 16.

 187

commencement of the successful rebellion with Saint Anne’s Day soon led to the adoption of the

Virgin’s mother as one of Florence’s principal protectors and patrons.100

Pontormo probably completed his altarpiece for the anniversary of the revolt against

Brienne in 1528 or 1529. The Signoria’s request, in March 1529, that another incomplete image

of Saint Anne, begun by Fra Bartolomeo in 1510, be installed in the Palazzo makes the latter

year more likely.101 In the increasing tensions of the spring and summer of that year the figure of

the Virgin’s mother and her role in Florence’s pantheon of protectors gained new significance.

The visual juxtaposition of the figures of the Florentine magistrates with Saint Anne in

Pontormo’s altarpiece, together with the geographic location of the image – at the culmination of

a procession by the highest magistracy of the city, in Saint Anne’s onomastic church –

emphasized her role as a defender of Florence’s liberty. Specifically the image alludes to liberty

as the civic form of government, represented by the figures of the office-holders, that the

expulsion of Brienne restored in 1343. The violence of the fourteenth-century uprising – the

Florentines besieged the Palazzo for several days – and the sword and mace borne in the

procession depicted on the altarpiece reinforce the need for this civic liberty to be defended

militarily.

100
See Roger J. Crum and David G. Wilkins, “In the Defense of Florentine Republicanism: Saint Anne and
Florentine Art, 1343-1575,” in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. Kathleen
Ashley and Pamela Sheingorn, (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1990); Richa, Notizie istoriche,
222; Strocchia, “Theaters,” 66; and Giovanni Villani, Cronica, ed. Ignazio Moutier and Francesco Gherardi
Dragomanni, Facsimile ed. 4 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Unveränderter Nachdruk, 1969), 4: 37. See also the
documents recording offerings made by the Signoria for this occasion in 1417 and 1461 cited in Jack Wasserman,
“»La Vergine e Cristo con Sant’Anna« del Pontormo,” in Kunst des Cinquecento in der Toskana, ed. Monika
Cämmerer, (Munich: Bruckmann, 1992), 150, note 11.
101
See Crum and Wilkins, “In the Defense,” 150; and Rubinstein, The Palazzo Vecchio, 71-72. Pontormo must have
painted the altarpiece prior to September 1529, when the church was demolished in preparation for the siege – see
note 86 above. Jack Wasserman has proposed instead that Pontormo actually finished the panel in the mid-1520s.
His argument, however, is somewhat self-defeating as Wasserman criticizes proponents of a 1528-29 dating for their
reliance on Vasari but then proceeds to use the same source as his principal evidence for an earlier date: Wasserman,
“»La Vergine«.”
 188

The martial spirit expressed by the participants of the pratiche and captured in

Pontormo’s altarpiece entered the population of the office-holding class more generally and had

effect in the significant realm of appearance. The anonymous chronicler who continued Luca

Landucci’s diary observed that during the siege men began to abandon the traditional cappuccio

(hood) in favor of hats and berets. They also cut their hair short and grew beards.102 Scholars who

have noted this striking observation have linked it, obviously, to an assertion of masculinity in

the face of a military crisis.103 While correct their conclusion remains rather unreflective: posing

masculinity as a universal rather than a cultural construct. As Chapter Two demonstrated,

appearance held a crucial and defining place in the social imaginary of the Florentine office-

holding class. The uniform of the mature males, in their red robes and hoods, provided a visual

analogue to the idealized egalitarian community of civilian magistrates united in public service.

Altering this uniform had repercussions for the imagined community that existed with it:

changing how men dressed in Florence changed their role and identity.

The adoption of short hair, beards, and hats rather than hoods influenced the office-

holding class’s self-conception. While on one level, this transformation represented simply the

adoption of the fashions sported by the professional soldiers hired to defend the city, at a deeper

level it had profound effects. The change in appearance made possible a re-conception of elite

identity and public service. The members of the civic militia belonged to a communal institution

and served the common good of the city, in a manner similar but not identical to the role of the

republic’s magistrates and council members. The role of the militia had nothing to do with

102
Landucci, Diario, 371. See also Agostino Lapini, Diario fiorentino di Agostino Lapini dal 252 al 1596, ed.
Giuseppe Odoardo Corazzini, (Florence: Sansoni, 1900), 96.
103
See Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 196; and Trexler, Public Life, 540. On facial hair and gender in early-
modern culture more generally see Will Fisher, “The Renaissance Beard: Masculinity in Early Modern England,”
Renaissance Quarterly 54, no. 1 (2001).
 189

decision-making – with the practice of civic freedom – but focused instead on the defense of

Florentine sovereignty. The militia, literally, patrolled the walls of the city keeping the enemy

out.

The tension between the defense of civic government and the preservation of Florentine

independence only increased as the siege continued. Some five months after Orange made his

initial attack, the discussion in the pratiche no longer made mention of justice or rule by

magistrates, that is of liberty as civic freedom, but only of sacrifice and duty toward the

sovereign existence of the city. On 18 February 1530, Malegonnelle exhorted the Signoria and

the Dieci to assemble the militia because “together they will think of virtue and their debt [to the

city].” Moreover, he continued, “the said giovani will incite themselves in wishing to

demonstrate their virtue.”104 Pierfrancescco Portinari, speaking for the gonfalon of Vaio,

counseled that the members of the militia, “present themselves as a sacrifice, first purged of

every desire omitting every passion, offering their soul to God and their Body to the

fatherland.”105 Two days later, Lodovico Martelli and Dante da Castiglione issued an open

challenge to all Florentines serving in the imperial army accusing them of having mocked the

civic militia as a force that existed on paper alone and denouncing them as “traitors, for coming

[in arms] against their dear fatherland.” The two giovani offered to duel any three Florentines

under Orange’s command in order to prove the military worth of the militia and the treachery of

104
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 73: 24r: “insieme pensaranno alla virtù et debito loro;” “si confortino i gioveni detti a
volere mostrare la virtù loro.”
105
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 73: 25r: “si offeriscono prima purgati ogni affetto omettendo ogni passione rivoltarsi
con uno sacrificio con l’animo a dio del Corpo alla patria.”
 190

its opponents.106 The language of late 1529, which had emphasized the need to defend the

legality and justice of civic government, had given way to to words that exhorted the

preservation of Florence’s independence through physical sacrifice and that valued the courage

of the city’s youth above the practices of their fathers in the councils of state. Not coincidently,

around the same time proposals began to emanate from the Signoria about circumscribing the

extent of civic freedom in the city by limiting the size of the pratiche.107

By this stage, the initial heady days of the siege had become a distant memory. In late

December 1529, a second imperial army under the command of Ferrante Gonzaga, younger

brother of the Marquis of Mantua, and Alfonso d’Avalos, the marquis del Vasto, had arrived on

the northern bank of the Arno. Pontoons extended across the river uniting the two armies, and

Florence became completely encircled. The financial difficulties of the besieging forces

continued, but with Florence now isolated and the dominion rapidly falling under imperial

control Orange eased his problems by reducing the number of troops under his control. In early

March 1530, with his now thinned army, the vice-roy abandoned any further attempts at a

military assault and ordered his men to dig in and blockade the city. The shortage of food and

currency soon became a principal topic of debate in the pratiche in Florence.108

The increasingly desperate situation in Florence became a constant refrain in Francesco

Guicciardini’s correspondence from late June 1530: “thus things go, consuming and reducing

106
Silvestro Aldobrandini et al., “Cartelli di querela e di sfida tra Lodovico Martelli, Dante da Castiglione e
Giovanni Bandini, Rubertino Aldobrandini al tempo dell’assedio di Firenze,” ed. Carlo Milanesi. Archivio storico
italiano Nuova serie 4, no. 2 (1857): 11-12. On 11 March 1530 Martelli and Da Castiglione entered the imperial
camp under safe-conduct. The following day they fought Giovanni Bandini and Ruberto Aldobrandini respectively.
As both Martelli and Aldobrandini lost their respective duels, and each subsequently died from the wounds they
received, Orange declared the combat to have neither been won nor lost.
107
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 73: 47r, 48v.
108
See for example, ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 73: 15r, 20r-25r, 26r, 35v, 36v, 39v, 45v, 51r-52v, 55v.
 191

themselves to the ultimate ruin.”109 The apparently imminent demise of Florence had altered

Guicciardini’s perception and position. While at the siege’s beginning he had clearly identified

himself with Florentine government – speaking of “our soldiers” in reference to the

abandonment of Arezzo110 - by the summer of 1530 he referred to “those inside.”111 Making a

distinction from the first-person plural that came to refer, in his correspondence, only to those

Florentines outside the city – either actively assisting the papal-imperial coalition or staying in

guarded neutrality in Lucca: “May it please God to help us and put an end, at once, to such a

tempest.”112

As his correspondence makes clear, Guicciardini, by the summer of 1530, did not think

the reggimento in Florence capable of saving the city. On the contrary, the governors of the city

threatened the ruin of Florence. On 1 July, he wrote to Luigi Guicciardini: “everything that gives

hope to those inside causes them to perservere in their obstinacy and reduces things to a place

from whence I do not know what could suffice to save us from the sack and complete destruction

of that city.”113 At the end of the month, he observed that, “obstinacy does not allow men to

recognize necessity.”114 Just as men such as Alessandro Malegonnelle and Pierfrancesco

Portinari saw themselves defending Florence by urging sacrifice on the civic militia,

109
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 188r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 28
June 1530: “così le cose si vanno consumando et riducendo al’ultima ruina.” See also 189r, 191r, and 192r.
110
See note 76 above.
111
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 189r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Lucca, 1 July
1530: “quelli di drento.”
112
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 189r: “A dio piaccia aiutarci et porre una volta fine a tanta tempesta.”
113
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 189r: “ogni cosa che da speranza a quelli di drento è causa che perseverino nella
obstinatione et riduchino le cose in luogo che non so che cosa possa bastare a salvarci dal saccho et distrugere per
sempre quella ciptà.”
114
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 192r: “la obstinatione non lascia cognoscere agli huomini la necessità.”
 192

Guicciardini perceived supporting Clement VII and his allies as the only way to protect the city.

His language in these letters bears a striking resemblance to Antonfrancsco degli Albizzi’s

rhetoric of a year earlier. Both men railed against the dangers of “obstinacy,” while placing

preeminence of the defense of Florence’s sovereignty and physicality. Albizzi anticipated by

several months, however, Guicciardini’s eventual recognition that in the face of the combined

papal-imperial campaign Florence could not preserve both its civic government and its

independence: the office-holding class had to decide which meaning of liberty they prized most.

By the summer of 1530 Guicciardini’s thinking had shifted away from his earlier expressions of

support for the reggimento of 1527 in favor of defending Florentine sovereignty alone.

Malatesta Baglione and Stefano Colonna, the two principal generals in the pay of the

Florentine government, shared Guicciardini’s concerns that the path chosen by the reggimento

would lead to the city’s destruction. From around the middle of June 1530, they had begun to

seek a means to extricate themselves honorably from an increasingly desperate situation. All

their attempts faltered, however, on Orange’s demand that the Medici return to the city not as

private citizens but with the authority they had held prior to May 1527. The Signoria continued

to urge their generals to fight, while the two condottieri continued to aver, demanding that the

Consiglio Maggiore vote on the matter. The deadlock broke in early August when news reached

Florence that the city’s final military hope – a relief column advancing from Pisa – had suffered

a decisive defeat at the village of Gavinana.115

When the Signoria insisted that Baglione and Colonna continue to fight despite this

defeat the two generals led a mutiny – siezing control of the bridges over the Arno, turning their
115
On the battle of Gavinana, in which both the Prince of Orange and the Florentine commander, Francesco
Ferrucci, perished see: Nardi, Istorie, 2: 204-08; Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, 310-15; and Varchi, Storia, 2:
478-92. The Florentines’ compromised communications had doomed Ferrucci’s advance from the start – even
Francesco Guicciardini, in Rome, knew of the plan: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 190r.
 193

artillery on the city, and threatening to admit the imperial army. In addition to the majority of the

professional soldiers in the city, Baglione and Colonna’s coup received support from a

detachment of the civic militia. While some among the remaining brigades of the militia urged a

fight against the rebels cooler heads prevailed. The Signoria re-appointed Baglione as captain-

general, effectively handing control of the city to the Perugian condottiere. On 8 August,

Lorenzo Strozzi and Pierfrancesco Portinari together with Bardo di Giovanni Altoviti and Jacopo

di Girolamo Morelli ventured into the imperial camp to negotiate the city’s surrender with

Ferrante Gonzaga, who had assumed command of the besiegers following the death of Orange at

Gavinana. The final capitulation was signed on 12 August, in the billet of Bartolomeo Valori, the

papal commissioner.116

The principal terms of the treaty stated that Charles V would decide the future form of

the city’s government within four months with the stipulation that its liberty be preserved; that

all men imprisoned, exiled or declared rebels for political reasons since 1527 be released from

their bans; that Florence had to pay an indemnity of 80,000 scudi to the imperial army (at least

forty to fifty thousand in cash) before the siege would be lifted; and that Gonzaga would return

all Florentine possessions captured since the summer of 1529.117 The records of the pratiche

cease on 2 August. However, it seems certain – given the outcome – that confronted with the

assured destruction of the city or at least with its conquest by an imperial army, the majority of

the elite who remained in Florence opted to sacrifice civic freedom to preserve their

116
On Baglione’s coup d’état and the final capitulation of the city see Nardi, Istorie, 2: 212-14; Roth, The Last
Florentine Republic, 315-20; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 497-513. A debate has existed, since 1530, on the extent of
Baglione’s treachery. Nardi asserted that the Perugian general had promised Orange not to attack the imperial camp
while the vice-roy led the expedition to Gavinana: 2: 220. Roth offers a nuanced discussion of Baglione’s
conflicting loyalties at 299-309.
117
The text of settlement is reproduced in Varchi, Storia, 2: 514-18.
 194

independence. The expressions of Malegonnelle and Portinari in February 1530 that emphasized

the defense of the city over the preservation of its form of government indicated the changing

tide of opinion within the walls.118

The capitulation saved the city, but only just. The imperial blockade, plague, and the

predictable damages of warfare had reduced the city to desperate necessity. In early August,

before the surrender, Baglione had informed the Signoria, “We are now two months without

meat, one month without wine, and there is little or no oil.”119 On 29 September 1530, following

his return to Florence Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, the papal

treasurer, “[the] miseries of the city and the contado…are much greater than one could imagine.”

He continued that his own personal affairs “were much more ruined than I believed, because [the

estate of] Poppiano I found completely reduced, almost to nothing, and [that of] Santa

Margherita is even worse.”120 Concerning the family estate of Poppiano, Girolamo Guicciardini

wrote in more detail to Luigi Guicciardini, on 18 October: “at Poppiano things are going as in

most of the contado: many peasants are dead, and moreover a bit of plague has commenced in

many places, there little is sown and many farms are without workers.”121 Jacopo Guicciardini,

several days later informed Luigi that some five hundred houses in the city had plague cases. He

continued with a litany of misery: “wine is very expensive, meat similarly and there is a great

118
See notes 104 and 105 above.
119
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 35v. Copy of an undated letter from Malatesta Baglione and Stefano Colonna to the
Signoria: “Sono ormai due mesi che siamo senza carne, un mese senza vino, olio poco /o/ niente.”
120
Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine
dell’assedio di Firenze al secondo covegno di Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea, (Aquila: Vecchioni,
1926), 3-4.
121
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 129. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 18
October 1530: “a pop[pia]no le coxe vanno chome nella maggior parte del contado nostro che vi muore assai
contadini e ve di più chominciato un pocho del pesto in più luochi e vi si semina pocho e ve assai poderi sanza
lavoratori.”
 195

shortage of chicken and eggs. In the contado the peasants are suffering and many of them are

dead. They are almost all ill.”122

Florence had sustained damages that would take years to repair. The need to pay the

indemnity to the imperial army only increased the financial difficultues of the city. In December,

Francesco Guicciardini wrote again to Lanfredini observing that, “The City is most

exhausted…if you passed through San Martino you would see that of the sixty-four shops that

were open there before the war, all but twelve of them are closed…And it is the same [story] in

all other industries.”123 At the same time, Jacopo Guicciardini informed Luigi that the city’s

incomes had fallen markedly: “Customs dues make little, the gates little, the [gabelle on] salt is

short and [that on] contracts provides nothing.”124 On 5 January 1531, Giovanni Vettori, the

commissioner of Volterra, received notification from his brother Francesco of events in Florence.

As well as recording the continuing famine in the city, the letter recorded the government’s

reliance on lines of credit from outside sources: “here we are waiting to put an end to our hunger,

which with money mainly from Filippo Strozzi has eased a little but we have so many debts that

122
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 140. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 27
October 1530: “vini sono charissimi / la carne el simile et di polli et uova carestia grande / Ne contadi e contadini
stentono et ne muore assai / sono quasi tutti ammalati.”
123
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 39. Guicciardini’s initial reference is to shops of the once-dominant wool guild, the
Arte del Lana.
124
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 198. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 16
December 1530: “La doana fa poco / le porte poco / le sale mancho e contratti non nulla.”
 196

we are constrained to fail.”125 Late in 1533, the government of the city still received petitions for

tax relief due to the damages and shortages wrought by the siege.126

In the weeks and months immediately following the surrender of the city those who could

turned to the returning Medici in search of financial support. On 31 August, Cristofano Sernigi

petitioned Francesco Vettori seeking office in the dominion, or as provveditore (bursar) to the

Otto di Pratica, or ambassador to Milan or Venice where he had commercial contacts and

interests: “I pray you to recommend me to Our Lord [Clement VII] and to messer Jacopo

Salviati.”127 Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini seeking re-appointment as

President of the Romagna so that he could meet his financial obligations: “if Our Lord does not

provide me quickly with that which, by his grace, he promised me, I cannot any longer [loan

money to the city].”128 Filippo de’ Nerli petitioned Francesco Vettori in early October: “You

should desire to take up my protection strongly, considering that this destruction has so

disordered my life that where I was once a man of quality with little need, now it is necessary

that I have help.”129 On 22 August, Rafaello Velluti wrote to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati,

“recommend me to the magnificent Jacopo, to whom I have written, that regarding those offices

for which I am eligible and suitable, both in and outside the city, he remembers me as his

125
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 127r. Letter from Francesco Vettori, in Florence, to Giovanni Vettori, in Volterra, 5
January 1531: “noi qui attendiamo ad fondarci dalla fame alla quale col credito maxime di filippo strozzi sia
reparato in qualche parte ma habbiamo tanti debiti che siamo necessitati fallire.”
126
See for example, ASF, Consiglio dei Dugento, 128: 121r.
127
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 87r. Letter from Cristofano Sernigi, in Florence, to Francesco Vettori, in Rome, 31 August
1530: “priegovi mi raccomandiate a N[ostro] S[ignore] e a messer Jacopo Salviati.”
128
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 5.
129
Albertini, Firenze, 182, note 6.
 197

friend.”130 Lucrezia received a similar petition from Piero di Leonardo Salviati two days later: “I

wrote a letter to your magnificent Jacopo recommending myself to His Lordship beseeching him,

and so I pray you beseech him, that in the honors and offices of the City…I am not forgotten.”131

With the exception of Francesco Guicciardini, all these petitioners sought office in

Florence, not directly in the Papal State or in the curia. They sought support and security within

the traditional framework of the Florentine office-holding class: in the service of the commune

that had provided the basis for the identity and survival, for honor and profit, of the elite for over

two hundred years. In the aftermath of the siege, the majority of the city’s office-holding class

sought guarantees for their personal well-being and for their continued position among the ranks

of the civilian magistrates They sought to protect the financial, political, and social bases for

their pre-eminence in Florence They had, in various ways, chosen to sacrifice the city’s civic

form of government in return of its continued existence and independence and so for the

preservation of their elite status. They sought continuity, not change and hoped to benefit from

their choice.

The returning Medici and their supporters also recognized the need to preserve the office-

holding class as the social and political center of Florence. They proceeded against their enemies

from the reggimento of 1527-30 with this as the starting-point. This produced two striking

effects. The first was a concern to prove that the regime of 1527 had acted illegally and with

contempt for the traditions of the city. Second, the majority of the mature office-holding males

130
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 80r. Letter from Raffaello Velluti, in Florence, to Lucrezia Salviati, in Rome, 22 August
1530: “Al mag[nifi]co Jacopo al quale ho scripto mi racomandate che a quelle cose che io sono habile et buona nella
ciptà et fuor’ della ciptà si ricordi di me come degli amici sua.”
131
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 82r. Letter from Piero di Leonardo Salviati, in Florence, to Lucrezia Salviati, in Rome, 24
August 1530: “io ho scripto una al mag[nifi]co Jacopo vostro raccomandandomi a Sua S[igno]ria preghandolo e così
pregho voi lo preghiate che nelli honori e utili della Ciptà…non mi dimentichi.”
 198

who served in the regime escaped punishment entirely. The Mediceans visited their wrath largely

on the revolutionary giovani.

Only fragments from the interrogations of leading members of the 1527 reggimento

survive, and these provide only responses and not the questions. The sense or direction of the

latter, however, can be derived from the former. Among predictable issues – such as the arson

attacks against the Medici villa at Careggi and a country estate belonging to Jacopo Salviati, as

well as the plot to poison Clement VII – both Jacopo Gherardi and Francesco Carducci

responded to questions about the legality of their actions in office. Gherardi also received several

demands about the role of the giovani and their access to the Palazzo della Signoria.

Carducci confessed, under torture, to holding discussions on many occasions with

Salvestro Aldobrandini about provisions for money, urging him to ensure that the bills won

passage through the necessary magistracies. On occasion, Carducci recalled that when

Aldobrandini reported that a provision had not passed “by one or two votes he said to messer

Salvestro make it so that the three were more than enough…messer Salvestro recounted the votes

and said perhaps it had passed.” 132 Gherardi, in a written statement he submitted replying to

interrogatories, asserted that, “all my actions in office, on the Signoria and the Otto and the Dieci

were all done by common consensus.”133 Their interrogators clearly hoped to establish that

certain men in the regime had acted illegaly: fixing votes or defying the wishes of the majority.

They sought to prove that these individuals had not represented the consensus of the office-

holding class.

132
ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana, Busta 8, Inserto 239, unfoliated: “non era vinta a una fava /o/ dua disse a messer
silvestro fate che della iii si erano tante…messer silvestro ando et riconto le fave et disse forse ella vinta.”
133
ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana, Busta 8, Inserto 239, unfoliated: “tutte le mie atione nel magistrato di signori et
li otto et dieci si sono fatee tutte le chose di chomune chonsenso.”
 199

Gherardi also gave a lengthy description of the role and duties of the guard formed by the

giovani for the Palazzo della Signoria. Created by the Signoria in December 1527, under

pressure from the youths, this company represented an innovation in Florentine institutions.

Gherardi’s interrogators seemed to have been particularly concerned about the ability for the

guard to influence, by menace or coercion, the selection of magistrates. Gherardi stated: “you

will never find that, on my account, any giovane ever entered the Palazzo nor did I ever induce

any to do so.”134 The Medici and their supporters would appear, from these responses, to have

placed a premium on discrediting the former regime. In particular they sought to find evidence of

illegal activity – vote rigging and intimidation – making a mockery of the reggimento’s claims to

the rule of law by impartial magistrates.135

The returning Medici paid particular attention to the role of the giovani, whose

revolutionary irruption into the social imagination and political world previously dominated by

mature males, tore at the social and cultural fabric of the office-holding class. The concern that

the palace guard could have influence or intimidated magistrates aided the new Medicean

reggimento in preserving the continuity of the community and of the actual structure of the

office-holding class. It allowed a means of explaining and forgiving the culpability of

magistrates between 1527-30: they had acted under the threat of violence from a revolutionary

and extra-constitutional group – a group of youths who had no place in public life. This did not

constitute the only attempt by the Medicean regime of 1530 to obscure or conceal the activities

of the previous government. An annotation on the first page of the records from the pratiche of

1529 reveals that Agnolo Marzi, the bishop of Assisi who held powerful bureaucratic posts under
134
ASF, Miscellanea Repubblicana, Busta 8, Inserto 239, unfoliated: “Dicho che mai troverete che per mio chonto
venissi mai giovane nessuno in palazo ne mai alchuno ne richerchai.”
135
See notes 62, 97, and 98 above.
 200

both Alessandro and Cosimo I, held the book in secret: “in order not to release material

damaging to those who gave counsel in that time.”136

This concern to dilute the blame, to preserve the office-holding class as intact as possible,

to ensure the continuity of the city’s elite revealed itself most clearly in the punishments

delivered by the Otto di Guardia in the final months of 1530. Of the ninety-eight most prominent

men in the reggimento of 1527-30 – men who sat on the significant decision-making bodies of

the regime at least three times – only twenty-one received sentences from the internal security

magistracy. Six men were beheaded and had their estates confiscated. Raffaello Girolami, the

last gonfaloniere di giustizia of the regime escaped death, but was sentenced to perpetual

imprisonment in the citadel at Volterra – apparently following the intervention of Ferrante

Gonzaga.137 A further twelve men, including Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, received sentences of

exile to various places and two were condemned to five years imprisonment in the Stinche, only

to be released by a unanimous vote on the Otto.138 A further one hundred and seventy-nine men

received sentences of exile, of whom only forty-three had held office either in the traditional

magistracies or in the militia between 1527 and 1530. Some of the remaining majority, sixty-

eight percent of the total number of men punished by the Otto between August and December

136
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 1r: “per non dare materia di offensione ad chi haveva in quel tempo consigliato.”
137
ASF, OGBR, 209: 31v-32v and 52r-53r; and OGBR, 231: 8v and 10v. Concerning Gonzaga’s intevention see
ASF, CS, Serie I, 100: 47v, as well as Nardi, Istorie, 2: 220-21. On 10 December 1530, the Otto commuted
Girolami’s sentence to confinement in the prisons at Pisa. The men executed were: Francesco Carducci, Bernardo da
Castiglione, Giovanbattista di Galeotto Cei, Jacopo Gherardi, Pieradovardo di Girolamo Giachinotti, and Luigi di
Paolo Soderini.
138
ASF, OGBR, 231: 12v, 13r-14r, 15v, and 17v. The other men exiled were: Neri di Tommaso del Bene, Girolamo
di Francesco Bettini, Guido da Castiglione, Cherubino di Tommaso Fortini, Federigo di Giuliano Gondi, Andreuolo
di Otto Niccolini, Piero di Bartolomeo Popoleschi, Giovanni di Simone Rinuccini, Tommaso Soderini, Alfronso
Strozzi, and Bartolomeo di Leonardo Tedaldi. The two men imprisoned were: Giovanni Ambruogi and Cino di
Girolamo di Cino. Piero Popoleschi later received a sentence of death for his role in arson attacks on the Medici villa
at Careggi and the Salviati villa in the valley of the Mugnone: see OGBR, 209: 89r-90v.
 201

1530, may have been punished only by accident of their birth – such as the several members of

both the Soderini and the Da Castiglione exiled – others who are identifiable as the sons of

office-holders may have been exiled in lieu of dead fathers.139 A few were exiled by default, for

having left the city without license.140 Young men – the revolutionary giovani and probably rank

and file members of the militia – constituted the preponderance of the exiles. The new Medici

regime sought, above all else, stability, continuity, and security in Florence. They punished very

few of the men who served in communal offices between May 1527 and August 1530, focusing

instead on the youths who played such a prominent role in the disturbances and revolutions of

the period – the young men who had no place in public life or the imagined community of

mature office-holding males. The pratical consideration that young men with military training

and experience posed the greatest threat to any government also probably contributed to the

desire to remove them from the city.

From September 1530, the chief men in the new reggimento recognized the need to

preserve as much continuity as possible in the public life of the city – the security of the new

government depended upon the stability of the office-holding class. Toward the end of the

month, several weeks before the Otto issued its first sentences on 24 October, Francesco

Guicciardini observed to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, “I believe we shall have more concourse with

the huomini da bene (gentlemen) than perhaps we thought, especially if the form of the

government and its future procedure is honest and moderate in its direction.”141 On 6 November,

after the initial executions, Guicciardini wrote again that the men as yet un-punished, “do not

139
ASF, OGBR, 231: 11r-15v, 17v. See Appendix E.
140
ASF, OGBR, 231: 8r and 14v.
141
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 4.
 202

remain through personal interests, but because [their presence] seems necessary to us for the

security of the State.”142 To punish too many men, he continued, “would diminish too much the

little virtue that remains in the city, which the weaker it is the weaker the Government will be.”

Finally, on 3 December, after nearly all the sentences of exile had been issued, Guicciardini

wrote that, “we believe that, if among other things the state is well governed, that this suffices for

security.” He also observed that to exile all the men who had any association with the previous

regime would leave the city desolate.143

Francesco Guicciardini was one of the most prominent and influential men in Florence in

the months immediately following the city’s surrender to the imperial army. In a letter dated 2

September, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai listed Guicciardini, Francesco Vettori, and Roberto di

Donato Acciaiuoli as the men who knew Clement VII’s mind and intentions.144 Toward the end

of November, Niccolò di Luigi Guicciardini informed his father: “Messer Francesco has much

authority here, as do Roberto [Acciaiuoli] and Francesco [Vettori] and these others, and

especially Bartolomeo Valori.”145 Francesco Guicciardini’s thoughts, as written to Lanfredini,

represented the consensus of opinion among those men who led and consolidated the Medicean

regime in the initial aftermath of the siege.

142
Ibid., 21.
143
Ibid., 28. Compare with the letter from Francesco Vettori to Landredini, on 16 November 1530, printed in Rudolf
von Albertini, Das Florentinische Staatsbewusstein im Übergang von der Republik zum Prinzipat, (Bern: Francke
Verlag, 1955), 428.
144
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 92r.
145
Jones, Francesco Vettori, 235, note 68. The “others” would appear to refer to the other men sitting on the Otto di
Pratica, elected on 26 September by the balìa: Luigi di Agnolo della Stufa, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, Palla di
Bernardo Rucellai, and Corso di Michele delle Colombe, who died in office (Bernardo di Francesco del Tovaglia
replaced him): ASF, Tratte, 907:67r.
 203

Guicciardini and the other leading Mediceans did not seek a general amnesty. Those men

who did receive sentences of death or exile – especially the twenty-one men prominent in the

1527 reggimento – were clearly identified as enemies of both the Medici and their supporters.

Indeed, Guicciardini complained to Lanfredini on 10 October, that Valori, the papal

commissioner in Florence and nominal head of the regime, exercised too much leniency and that

he often favored “manifest enemies of the house [of Medici].”146 The new regime clearly

distinguished between inveterate foes and men, who although they had held office under the

previous reggimento, constituted the core of the office-holding class. In the last months of 1530,

with the future fate of Florence in the hands of the emperor as determined by the 12 August

capitulation, not only the stability of the city but also its continued independence required a

stable and effective office-holding class, capable of governing the city.

By late 1530, the majority of the office-holding class of Florence supported a concept of

liberty understood as political independence rather than as civic freedom. This transition in

political thinking did not occur as abstract theorizing but in relation to the experiences of

Florence’s politico-military situation after May 1527. The changing understanding of liberty that

emerged determined the political behavior of the office-holding class. This change developed

gradually in a process of conflict within the elite of the city. A conflict that did not occur as

binary opposition between two pre-determined outlooks, and also one that did not cleave along

pre-existing factional divisions in the city. Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi, who had actively

supported the radicalization of the government on 18 May 1527 and whom the Medici identified

146
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 7. A month before this letter, for example, Valori had written to Luigi Guicciardini,
commissioner for Pisa, instructing him not to proceed against Paolantonio di Tommaso Soderini because his father
had promptly paid large sums of money to the new regime. Valori stated that he felt obliged, therefore, to provide
for the Soderini: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 4. Letter from Bartolomeo Valori, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa,
10 September 1530.
 204

as an enemy after August 1530, argued eloquently in favor protecting Florence’s independence

above its civic form of government in July 1529. He then abandoned the city and the reggimento

he had helped to create before the siege began when it became clear that his compatriots did not

share his vision. Francesco Guicciardini, by contrast, distrusted and persecuted by the popular

government but central to the returned Medici regime after the siege, struggled with a personal

conflict over his desire to preserve Florence’s civic government and his fears for the city’s future

independence. Guicciardini only reached a definite conclusion around early summer in 1530.

The experiences, actions, and opinions of other men – such as the Strozzi brothers, Lorenzo and

Filippo, Alessandro Malegonnelle, and Pierfrancesco Portinari – and the images produced by

Pontormo during the siege demonstrate the continuum along which liberty was given meaning

and understood by the office-holding class of the city between May 1527 and December 1530.
 205

Chapter Five

Refashioning the Common Good: The Struggle for Florence, 1532-37.

On the eve of his departure to study law at Padua, in 1536 or 1537, Ugolino di Luigi Martelli had

his portrait painted by Bronzino (Figure 18). The young man appears momentarily distracted

from the act of reading – his right index finger holds his place in an open book while he gazes off

to the left side of the painting’s frame. This lesiured and peaceful image, the architectural space

of the image literally cloisters the young man, constrasts with Pontormo’s martial depiction of

Francesco Guardi (Figure 14) painted less than a decade earlier. The portrait of Martelli is even

further removed iconographically and ideologically from the frescos painted by Ghirlandaio in

the 1480s that opened this study (Figures 1-6). The differences that separate Bronzino’s

presentation of a member of the office-holding class in the 1530s from the earlier images testify

to the altered social world of Florence’s elite in the wake of the siege of 1529-30. Just as

significant, however, as the obvious dissimilarities, are the continuities between the images.

Most noticeably, the portraits of Martelli and Guardi both include the Florentine mythico-

religious icon of a virtuous youth defending liberty: in the hat badge of Hercules crushing

Antaeus worn by the latter and in the sculpture of David with the head of Goliath that appears

behind the former. The inclusion of this element in Bronzino’s portrait was not anachronistic, nor

did it indicate the presence of an entirely new interpretation attached to this old icon. Rather it

testified to the shifting understanding of what the icon’s meaning meant. The office-holding class

in the 1530s still thought of themselves as protecting and serving the common good of Florence.

But what they understood the common good to consist of had changed from the understandings

of the fifteenth- and earlier sixteenth-century.

 206

The idea of the common good, of the commonwealth, had been a key component of the

mythology of Florence from at least the early fifteenth century.1 The oligarchic party within the

office-holding class that dominated the city from the 1380s used it as means of justifying their

socio-political ascendancy. It became a key component of the identity of the city’s elite, who

claimed to earn their position and status by virtue of their service to the common good in public

offices.2 The patricians and office-holders of Florence were no more (or less) self-sacrificing,

altruistic, and disinterested than any other European elite in the early-modern period. Whatever

other ideological constructs attached to it, the concept of the common good held by Florence’s

office-holding class had always and necessarily referred first to their own mutual benefit.

However, the idea of service to the common good remained a defining principle of the imagined

community of the elite: it justified and reproduced the social and political dominance of the

office-holding class and the patriciate in particular.

This chapter will demonstrate how the memory and residual effects of the violence and

suffering unleashed on Florence in 1529-30 guided the refashioning of the identity of the city’s

elite. The siege had almost destroyed the city, not only physically and financially but also

politically. A foreign army had all but taken the city by force and the terms of the August 1530

surrender constituted a loss of sovereignty by consigning Florence’s future into the hands of

Emperor Charles V. In the wake of this experience the office-holding class sought to protect, as

always, their own mutual benefit under the guise of defending the common good of the city. In

the barest terms they made the simple equation that the political freedoms of a civic form of

1
See Chapter 2 above.
2
Compare with James R. Farr, A Tale of Two Murders: Passion and Power in Seventeenth-Century France,
(Durham & London: Duke University Press, 2005), 203-04.
 207

government mattered less than the preservation of Florence’s independence and with it their own

social status and prestige.

As Bronzino’s depiction of Ugolino Martelli demonstrates, the office-holding class did

not make this choice by abandoning the concepts, images, and language that had formed the

basis of the fifteenth-century social world and republican political culture. The same concepts

continued to define elite identity but with refashioned meanings. This chapter presents the city’s

elite in a time of transition, of uncertainty and little confidence, as they shifted from the civic

world of the late fifteenth century into something new, that was not yet definably a courtly

culture. After initially examining the process of political change that occurred between 1530 and

1532 in Florence, this chapter then analyzes how this change, in conjuction with a powerful

impulse to avoid any return to the violence and disorder of 1529-30, guided and shaped the re-

imagining of the social world of Florence’s office-holding class that began in the 1530s.

The most immediate concerns of the Medicean regime installed by force in August 1530

were pratical. As papal commissioner in the besieging army, and in the absence of any

representative of the Medici family, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori assumed control of the city

and lodged himself in the Palazzo Medici.3 On 20 August, he ordered the summoning of a

parlamento – the time-honored Florentine means of manufacturing consensus. In the Piazza della

3
On the events of August 1530 see Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli. 2 vols. (Florence:
Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2: 222-23; and Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, ed. Lelio Arbib. 3
vols. (Florence: Società Editrice delle Storie del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843-44), 2: 513-45. On Valori’s residence at
the Palazzo Medici and his position as de-facto head of the regime see also, Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite
di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine dell'assedio di Firenze al secondo covegno di
Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea, (Aquila: Vecchioni, 1926), 6.
 208

Signoria, guarded by soldiers under the command of Malatesta Baglione, this convocation

elected a balìa of twelve men charged with full authority to re-order the government of the city.4

The balìa elected a new Otto di Guardia, replacing the men appointed under the old

regime whose term did not expire until the end of the month. On 26 September, the

plenipotentiary council revived the Medicean foreign-policy magistracy – the Otto di Pratica –

abolishing once again the Dieci di Pace e Libertà. New Monte officials received their posts in

October.5 The process of selecting the Tre Maggiori in the immediate aftermath of the siege

remains unclear – no accoppiatori were appointed until 30 March 1531.6 Most probably, the

balìa elected men to fill these positions also. The fact that only five ineligible men had their

names drawn for one of these executive offices for the months between September 1530 and

4
On the nature of the parlamento as an insitution see Chapter 3 above. The twelve men elected were: Ormannozzo
di Tommaso Deti, Luigi di Agnolo della Stufa, Matteo di Agnolo Niccolini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Raffaello
di Francesco Girolami, Leonardo di Bernardo Ridolfi, Filippo di Alessandro Machiavelli, Antonio di Piero
Gualterotti, Andrea di Tommaso Minerbetti, Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici, Zanobi di Berto Bartolini, and
Niccolò di Bartolomeo del Troscia: ASF, Tratte, 907: 179r.
5
ASF, OGBR, 209: 1r; and ASF, Tratte, 907: 56r and 67r. The first Otto di Guardia of the new reggimento consisted
of Jacopo di Pandolfo Corbinelli, Maso di Bernardo de’ Nerli, Donato d’Antonio Cocchi, Francescantonio di
Francesco Nori, Lorenzo di Donato Acciaiuoli, Raffaello di Matteo Fedini, Domenico di Braccio Martelli, and
Guido di Jacopo del Cittadino. The Otto di Pratica were Luigi d’Agnolo della Stufa, Francesco di Piero
Guicciardini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori, Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, Francesco di
Piero Vettori, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, and Corso di Michele delle Colombe. The Monte Officials, who held
office only until 25 March 1531, were: Francesco di Piero Guicciardini, Giovanfrancesco di Ridolfo Ridolfi,
Lodovico di Gino Capponi, Francesco di Piero Pitti, Averardo d’Alamanno Salviati, Pierfrancesco di Salvo
Borgherini, Gherardo di Francesco Taddei, Migiotto Bardi, Filippo di Carlo Gondi, and Leonardo di Niccolò
Mannelli.
6
ASF, Tratte, 907: 186r. On 30 March 1531, twenty-four men received positions as accoppiatori serving as two
groups of twelve for six months terms: Matteo d’Agnolo Niccolini, Francesco di Piero Guicciardini, Girolamo di
Niccolò Capponi, Roberto d’Antonio Pucci, Agostino di Francesco Dini, Andrea di Tommaso Minerbetti, Roberto
di Donato Acciaiuoli, Francesco d’Averardo Serristori, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori,
Bernardo di Francesco del Tovaglia, Agnolino di Guglielmo Agnolini, Luigi d’Agnolo della Stufa, Ormannozzo di
Tommaso Deti, Antonio di Piero Gualterrotti, Filippo d’Alessandro Machiavelli, Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi,
Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, Francesco di Piero Vettori, Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici,
Luigi di Piero Ridolfi, Michele d’Antonio del Cittadino, and Niccolò di Bartolomeo del Troscia.
 209

March 1531 certainly indicates that the new regime appointed these magistracies carefully and

deliberately.7

The balìa expanded itself with the addition of thirty-one men on 29 August 1530. On 8

November this plenipotentiary council dissolved itself and appointed a new much larger balìa of

one hundred and forty-four men. All of the original twelve, except Raffaello Girolami by then

imprisoned at Volterra, returned in this council, but two-thirds of the men added at the end of

August lost their seats.8 These two transformations indicate a desire to broaden the basis of the

new reggimento analogous to the concern to minimize the number of mature men of office-

holding age prosecuted in the same months. The focus of the Medici and their closest allies

remained on preserving continuity within the office-holding class.

These institutional changes together with the persecution of certain men associated with

the previous regime, discussed at the end of Chapter Four, while addressing necessary

practicalities did nothing to restore the confidence of the city’s office-holding class, damaged by

the partisian divisions and near-death experience of the siege. That the fate of the city rested in

the hands of Emperor Charles V and not their own can only have added to the disquiet felt by

many of the elite about the future of the city and its continued independence. As the

representative of Pope Clement VII in the city Bartolomeo Valori bore much of the brunt of elite

discontent. On 10 October 1530, Francesco Guicciardini wrote to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, the

7
David Herlihy et al., Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282-1532. Machine
readable data file (Florentine Renaissance Resources/STG, Brown University, 2002). Agostino di Piero del Nero,
the younger brother of Francesco, was seen for the Signoria of November-December 1530, but was underage. Two
men already dead were drawn for the Dodici Buonuomini of January-March 1531: Bartolomeo di Bartolomeo Nasi
and Leonardo di Carlo del Benino. Two men under the minimum forty-five years of age were seen for gonfaloniere
di giustizia for January-February 1531: Raffaello d’Alessandro Pucci and Francesco di Niccolò Valori.
8
ASF, Tratte, 907: 179r-180v and 188r. See Appendix C for full membership of the balìa of 8 November 1530 as
well as the arroti of 29 August. On Girolami’s imprisonment see Chapter 4 above.
 210

papal treasurer concerning Valori’s position in the city. While observing that, “there is not any

one of us who, because of personal interest or ambition, would oppose Bartolomeo staying at the

Medici palace as head of the State,” Guicciardini added, “we desire greatly to be reassured, other

than with ambiguous and general replies, what the mind of His Holiness is; in order to

accommodate ourselves to it most freely.”9

The position of the office-holding class in Florence, as Chapter Two demonstrated, rested

in part on a shared memory of their prominence in city’s government. Together with wealth,

social preeminence, and the ability to shape the urban landscape, a history of office holding

provided a key plank to their identity. When the city’s office-holding class imagined themselves

it was in the red robes of state worn by the Signoria.10 Considerable anxiety, therefore, existed in

the ranks of the elite about their continued status in the new order. With none of the cultural

resources of most other European elites – such as feudal titles or legally-defined nobility – the

elite of Florence depended on their relationship with the city itself, both the objective structures

of offices and institutions as well as the imagined community that gave meaning to these

structures, for their status and prestige.

The men who had sided with Clement VII during the war of 1529-30 as well as those

who remained in Florence and decided, in August 1530, to negotiate rather than fight both made

their choices based on the hope of protecting Florence’s independence and so preserving their

own position. Francesco Guicciardini and others, therefore, expressed some concern about the

arbitrary and temporary nature of Valori’s authority in the city. They desired a permanent

9
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 6.
10
See the discussion of Ghirlandaio’s frescos at Santa Maria Novella and Santa Trinita in Chapter Two above.
Compare with the analysis of the position and status of the noblesse de robe in seventeenth-century France offered
in Farr, A Tale of Two Murders, 115-16 and 203-04 especially.
 211

solution to ensure the continued prestige of the office-holding class. On 24 January 1531,

Girolamo Guicciardini opined to his brother, Luigi: “I cannot but lament with you that things are

not understood by those responsible for our security.” Clement VII had dismissed Valori at the

end of December and appointed in his place Nikolaus von Schönberg, the archbishop of Capua;

whose arrival Girolamo eagerly awaited: “I think that with the arrival of the Archbishop of

Capua…will come some good resolution in such a way as to order things better than they are at

present.”11

More than another papal representative, however, the office-holding class put their hope

in the Medici family as a source of stability and security. Through institutionalizing the position

of the Medici in Florence, that is giving the family a permanent office in the city’s government,

the elite hoped to anchor their own place also. A member of the Medici established as the

legitimate head-of-state would bolster the socio-political organization of the city and would deter

further foreign interference.12 The hopes of the office-holding class, and the dynastic ambitions

of Clement VII, in 1530 rested on the person of Alessandro de’ Medici, duke of Penne and the

illegitimate son of the younger Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, duke of Urbino. Girolamo

Guicciardini, in January 1531, expressed a hope that, “with the arrival of His Excellency the

Duke whatever remains to be done will occur directly in such a manner, or even in the hope, that

things will stabilize themselves in a manner in which we will be able to stay, if they have not

11
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 131r. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 24
January 1531: “non posso altro che dolermi con voi che le coxe non sieno intese da chi a fare chome saria il
bixongnio per la sichurta nostra pure penso che alla venuta era dello arciveschovo di chapua…verra con qualche
buon resoluzion in modo che si doverra pigliare migliore ordine alle coxe non si fa di presente.”
12
Compare with the discussion of the position of Andrea Doria in Genoa after 1528 in Thomas Allison Kirk, Genoa
and the Sea: Policy and Power in an Early Modern Maritime Republic, 1559-1684, (Baltimore & London: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 2005), 19-22.
 212

already done so.”13 On 4 August 1531, Francesco Guicciardini, writing to Lanfredini, declared,

“I do not see any other hope remaining for enabling the perpetuation of that state [Florence]

except that the Duke succeeds very well, which we desire.” Alessandro’s success, Guicciardini

made clear, depended on governing the city well, which would revive the body politic. He

observed, “that city and state are as if consumed by an inferno of such magnitude that only the

smallest amount of virtue remains, and if one does not manage it well…it will become a totally

dead body.”14

In the late thirteenth century, rhetoricians had begun to associate and connect republican

liberty with virtue. In the hands of the Florentine civic humanists of the early fifteenth century,

virtue became imbued with a strong gendered meaning, refering to a masculine nobility of spirit

that possessed men who devoted themselves to public service and the common good.15 Virtue

became the identifying characteristic of the men of the office-holding class. With prudence,

strength, temperance, and justice, wrote Matteo Palmieri, “good men first govern themselves and

their business; then, they become governors of republics, increasing, counselling and defending

them.”16 Guicciardini hoped, that with Alessandro as head of the republic, the patricians of

Florence, and the office-holding class more broadly, could regain the virtue of the pratice of

13
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 131r: “alla venuta della ex[cellen]tia del ducha si doverra fare quello restassi in direto in
modo o pure speranza che se non prima allora le coxe si stabiliranno in modo potremo stare.”
14
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 83-84. Guicciardini was in Bologna, hence his reference to Florence as “that” city
and state.
15
Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce, and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into
the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001); J.G.A. Pocock, The
Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1975), 37-39 especially; and Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2
vols., Vol. One: The Renaissance, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 23-48 and 69-112. See also the
discussion about the gendered nature of virtù in Guido Ruggiero, Machiavelli in Love: Sex, Self, and Society in the
Italian Renaissance, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 86 and163-211.
16
Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni, (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 52-53.
 213

government so essential to their identity. Alessandro could, not necessarily through his person

but through his position, provide security and stability for Florence, which would in turn allow

the social fabric of the office-holding class to weave itself back together.

On 17 February 1531, the balìa habilitated Alessandro de’ Medici, then only twenty

years old, to every office and magistracy – making the Duke eligible for all public positions,

despite his youth and other impediments.17 The object of their generosity was not actually in

Florence at the time, but accompanying Charles V in Flanders. Only in the summer of that year,

toward the end of June, did Alessandro return to Florence accompanied by an imperial bull

declaring him hereditary capo (head) of the Florentine republic.18 For fear of plague in the city he

initially lodged at Prato. Then on the evening of 5 July, accompanied by many citizens,

Alessandro entered Florence and returned to the family palazzo on the Via Larga after hearing

mass as Santissima Annunziata.

The next morning, all the magistracies of the city assembled at the Palazzo della Signoria,

in the hall now identified as the Sala dei Dugento. There Giovanantonio Muscettola, representing

the Emperor, declared Alessandro capo of the republic and commanded the restoration of the

Medicean reggimento that had governed until May 1527, on behalf of his master. Muscettola

presented Francesco Campana, the first chancellor, with an imperial bull dated 28 October the

previous year authorizing these changes, according to the terms of the capitulation signed on 12

17
On the return of Alessandro de’ Medici to Florence in 1531 see Varchi, Storia, 2: 620-28. To my knowledge
Alessandro never enrolled in any guild, nor could he or his father have established the requisite thirty-year history of
tax payments in the city. On the requirements for office holding see Chapter 2 above.
18
This appointment of Alessandro did not pass without some controversy in the Medici family itself. According to
Benedetto Varchi, Ippolito de’ Medici, whom Clement VII had favored during the 1520s and to whom the pope had
given a cardinal’s hat during the siege of the city, wanted to govern Florence himself. He apparently arrived in the
city on 20 April 1531 with the intention of supplanting his still-absent cousin. However, Schönberg and the hastily-
dispatched Bartolomeo Valori convinced the young cardinal to return to Rome within a week: Ibid., 2: 609-11.
 214

August 1530.19 Benedetto Buondelmonti, the serving gonfaloniere di giustizia, then spoke on

behalf of the city. After thanking God, Buondelmonti declared the Florentine people devoted to

Charles V, through whose grace the city “was liberated from hunger and sack, saving the lives

and possessions of men and the honor of women, and regained once more its dear and most

sweet liberty and dominion.”20 Behind the twisted logic of partisanship in this speech, lay a clear

identification of liberty with sovereignty alone. Buondelmonti had passed the ten months of the

siege imprisoned in Volterra – in no position to actively support the papal-imperial military

effort. Like the men who did so, however, he identified the cause of Clement VII with the

preservation of Florentine liberty. Rather than permitting the military destruction of the city and

instead of appointing a vice-roy to control the city’s government the emperor had restored the

Medicean regime and returned all conquered territory to Florence. Charles V, Buondelmonti

observed, had given the city “a head, from which all the members, not only will content

themselves, but will remake themselves.”21 Like Guicciardini, Buondelmonti emphasized a

process of renewal, of reviving the body politic: the office-holding class and their imagined

community.

However, the ceremonies and speeches of July 1531 did not satisfy either the Medici or

their key supporters. The initiative behind the reforms of that summer came from outside the

city. To obtain legitimacy and avoid the problems of the 1520s, when the Medici had appeared as

foreign rulers dependent on external support, Alessandro’s position in the city required the

19
See Danilo Marrara, Studi giuridici sulla Toscana medicea: Contributo alla storia degli stati assoluti in Italia,
(Milan: Giuffrè, 1965), 4-6.
20
Varchi, Storia, 2: 625. See also Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze
dall’anno 1215 al 1537. 2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 2: 192-96. De’ Nerli was a member of the Signoria
for July-August 1531.
21
Varchi, Storia, 2: 625.
 215

legislative consent of the office-holding class. In January 1532, concerning the need for

constitutional change, Francesco Guicciardini informed Bartolomeo Lanfredini, “it will satisfy

me whatever [form] it is, so long as it ensures the state and the greatness of the Medici, on which

many of us by now depend.”22 A sentiment shared by his elder brother, Luigi, who observed to

Francesco in April 1533: “the greatness of the Duke and of all his house is our security and our

repose.”23 The settlement proposed by Charles V, meeting his obligations to the 12 August treaty,

did nothing to institutionalize the position of Alessandro beyond offering imperial imprimatur to

the situation that had existed prior to May 1527. To ensure the greatness of the family, as the two

Guicciardini brothers put it, and so to protect and preserve the position of the office-holding class

in the city, the Duke of Penne needed to be domesticated into the political institutions and social

world of Florence. These needs resulted in the constitutional changes of April 1532.

Discussions concerning an alteration of the governing structures of Florence commenced

in Rome during the later months of 1531. On 19 November, Filippo Strozzi reported to his

brother, Lorenzo: “Yesterday evening I went, with some difficulty, to the palace to speak with

the Pope about many things.”24 Whether the future of Florence was discussed on that particular

evening, Filippo does not mention; but the subject probably arose. In the winter of 1531-32,

Clement VII held regular discussions with Strozzi, as well as other men residing in Rome:

Bartolomeo Lanfredini, Roberto Pucci, Jacopo Salviati, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, Cardinal

Niccolò Ridolfi, and Benedetto Buondelmonti, who had become the Florentine ambassador to

22
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 118.
23
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56r. Letter from Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 6
April 1533: “la grandezza del Duca / et di tutta la sua casa è / la sicurtà nostra / et lo nostro riposo.”
24
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 130r. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 19 November
1531: “Andai hiarsera / con sì zoppo a palazzo per parlare al papa di più cose.” Filippo Strozzi suffered from gout.
 216

the papal court in October.25 Clement also solicited written opinions on the matter from

Francesco and Luigi Guicciardini, Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli, Francesco Vettori, and

probably Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi early in 1532.26 Above all, the pope wanted – through this

consultative process – to appear as if the proposed constitutional changes occurred in response to

the wishes of Florence’s leading citizens. Buondelmonti observed, in a letter to the serving

gonfaloniere di giustizia Francescantonio di Francesco Nori, in January 5132, that he needed to

proceed carefully, “without showing that this is either the wish of Our Lord [Clement VII] or his

opinion; because we desire that…it appear that His Beatitude consents to it rather than orders it

and [that] everything is done in order to satisfy the wishes of the Citizens.”27

On 4 April 1532, the balìa passed a provision empowering a select committee to decide

the future institutional structure of the city. The following day the Signoria, in line with this law,

elected twelve men charged with this task: Francesco Guicciardini, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori,

Roberto d’Antonio Pucci, Francesco di Piero Vettori, Palla di Bernardo Rucellai, Roberto di

Donato Acciaiuoli, Matteo d’Agnolo Niccolini, Matteo di Lorenzo Strozzi, Agostino di

Francesco Dini, Giovanfrancesco di Ridolfo Ridolfi, Giovanni di Piero Capponi, and Jacopo di

Bongianni Gianfigliazzi. Giovanfrancesco de’ Nobili, the current gonfaloniere di giustizia, sat on

25
Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfini,
(Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970), 193-94; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 633.
26
These are the well-known pareri (opinions) published in the first volume of the Archivio Storico Italiano in 1842,
and analyzed in Albertini, Firenze; Felix Gilbert, “Alcuni discorsi di uomini politici fiorentini e la politica di
Clemente VII per la retaurazione medicea,” Archivio storico italiano XCIII, no. 2 (1935); and Mark Jurdjevic, “The
Guicciardinian Moment: The Discorsi Palleschi, Humanism, and Aristocratic Republicanism in Sixteenth-Century
Florence,” in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher S.
Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens, (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006).
27
BNCF, Manoscritti Palatini, 454: 19v. Copy of a letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to
Francescantonio Nori, in Florence, 21 January 1532: “senza mostrare che questa sia vogl[i]a di N[ostro] S[ignore]
nè opinione sua perchè vorremo che…paressi che S[ua] B[eatan]ta lo consentissi et non ordinassi et tutto si faciessi
per sattisfare alle vogl[i]e de’ Cittadini.”
 217

the committee ex officio.28 These men represented the epitome of power and influence in the city:

mature males who had held office for decades, nearly all over fifty years of age, all with

patrician surnames. Every one of the thirteen had also held a prominent position in the Medicean

reggimenti either before or after 1530.

On 27 April 1532 the new form of government and constitution for the city emerged. The

relatively short timeframe in which these fundamental changes were formulated suggests either a

high degree of agreement and consensus among the thirteen reformers or that the committee had

met simply to flesh-out the bones of a pre-determined settlement. Indeed, a letter from Francesco

Guicciardini, written on 16 April, suggests that the Riformatori had determined (or accepted) the

basic structures of the new government by that point and discussions now concerned details of

who should actually sit on what council.29 The eventual provision, eleven days later, reveals the

understandings and the expectations of the office-holding class for the future course of the city.

Most significantly, and most clearly, these men did not conceive of the city becoming a

centralized monarchy, but rather visualized a system analogous to the constitution of Venice: a

permanent and aristocratic republic with a nominal prince. On paper, and in its initial context, the

constitution of April 1532 represented not a triumph for the Medici, but for the office-holding

class.

The provision began with the most significant change: the abolition of the two hundred

and fifty year-old institution of the Signoria. This act possessed great symbolism, as much as it

28
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 1v; and ASF, Tratte, 907: 191v. In fairly typical Florentine fashion, by which
the names of various committees and councils rarely reflected with any accuracy the actual make-up of the body,
this committee was referred to as the Dodici Riformatori (the Twelve Reformers).
29
Guicciardini, Lettere inedite, 138-40. In this letter, to Bartolomeo Lanfredini, Guicciardini already refers to the
Quarantotto and the Dugento; and reports disagreements among the thirteen reformers as to which if any families
should have more than one member on the former council and who these representatives should actually be.
 218

fundamentally altered the shape of the political landscape. Francesco Guicciardini, observed, he

could not conceive of “a greater novelty than removing the Signoria.” He continued that, “It

saddens many to deprive themselves of the dignity of Gonfaloniere.”30 To become one of the

eight Priors or the gonfaloniere di giustizia, or even simply to learn that one’s name was

included in the borse (electoral purses) for the executive, constituted the highest honor

achievable under the republican constitution of Florence. Lineages, patrician or not, took pride in

identifying their first ancestor to sit on this executive body: the closer the year of this initial

election to the foundation of the Signoria in 1282, the more prestigious.

One of the foundations of the oligarchic regime that had controlled the city since the late

fourteenth century had consisted in spreading the possibility of serving on the Signoria as widely

as possible, no matter how slim the probability for the majority of the office-holding class of

actually achieving this honor. The Medici perfected this process by including the names of

ineligible men in the borse simply in order to have them “seen” for office.31 As Chapter Two

demonstrated, when the office-holding class of Florence imagined itself in the fifteenth-century,

it did so dressed in the red robes worn by members of the Signoria. To sit on the executive

branch of the government combined all the essential components of the patrician self-conception:

honor, appearance, memory, gender, public service, and personal interest. It represented the very

core and epitome of the imagined community of the Florentine office-holding class: a self-

reproducing elite of red-robed mature males dedicated to the common good of the city through

holding public office.

30
Ibid., 146-47.
31
See John M. Najemy, Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400, (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 1982); and Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government of Florence Under the Medici
(1434-1494), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
 219

If the new constitution of April 1532 removed one of the central components of elite

identity in abolishing the Signoria it sought to refound and redraw the institutional basis of this

identity through the creation of two new councils to replace the older communal bodies: the

Dugento (Two Hundred) and the Quarantotto (Forty-Eight), which became known also as the

Senate. The creation of these two councils constituted a partial closure of the office-holding

class: their membership was for life, and sitting on the Dugento became a pre-requisite for

holding any of the three most prestigious and important offices of the new system – the

Quarantotto itself, the Otto di Pratica, and the Ducal Council (later known as the Magistrato

Supremo).32 In its initial conception, at least, the Dugento represented the permanent institutional

analogy to the imagined community that the office-holding class had sought since the late

fifteenth century. The Dugento evolved from the balìa created on 8 November 1530. To the

members of this pre-existing body the new constitution added all the men currently sitting on the

Signoria who were not already members of the plenipotentiary council as well as an additional

ninety-five men.33 Observing that the size of this body, which numbered two-hundred and forty-

two men in its initial membership, “would make it very difficult to meet as often as necessary for

32
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 1v, 2v, and 4v.
33
The Dugento’s actual membership far exceeded its nominal membership. For the ninety-five additional members
see, ASF, Tratte, 907: 181r-v. This document is dated 28 April 1532, and differs from the original list of 27 April
(recorded at ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 1v-2v) that listed only eighty-two names. The members of the
Signoria for March-April 1532 who did not have a place on the balìa, and who are not listed at either location, were:
Bongianni di Lodovico Antinori and Guasparre di Antonio dal Borgo. See Tratte, 907: 179r-180v; and Herlihy et al.,
Online Tratte. Note, that both Domenico di Soldo Cegia and Giuliano di Bartolomeo Scala sat on the last Signoria
and not on the balìa, but both men appeared as an additional member nominated by the Dodici Reformatori in the
lists recorded in both the Tratte and the Senato dei 48.
 220

the expedition of public affairs” the constitution nominated forty-eight men from the Dugento to

form an executive council: the Quarantotto.34

While the Dugento inherited the membership of the balìa the Senate gained many of the

plenipotentiary council’s powers including control over financial provisions, the election of the

most important internal offices and magistracies as well as of the most prominent posts in the

dominion, and the election of ambassadors and commissioners. The Quarantotto also had the

responsibility of electing, from its own ranks, twelve accoppiatori, who in turn elected four

ducal counsellors (also drawn exclusively from the Senate) – both the accoppiatori and the

counsellors served three-month terms. The four counsellors, who were to meet together with

Alessandro or his lieutenant, replaced the Signoria as the key administrative body of the city and

the final court of appeal. Unlike the older communal institution, however, its members had no

obligation to live in the Palazzo for the duration of their term, nor did their role exclude them

from holding other offices – except those outside the city, which would have necessitated their

absence from Florence. 35

The provision of 27 April placed Alessandro de’ Medici at the summit of the new

constitutional structure, but addressed his role only after the powers and personnel of the new

councils. The articulation of his position in the legislation was precise and it tightly

cirscumscribed his role as head of state: “And in order to give a head to the said counsellors, in

place of the gonfaloniere di giustizia…is and shall be Duke Alessandro de’ Medici.” The use of

“Duke” here referred specifically and only to Alessandro’s Neapolitan title, as the legislation

34
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 2v: “sarebbe molto difficile congregarlo tanto spesso quanto sarebbe
necessario per la expeditione delle cose della ciptà.” For membership of this inaugural Quarantotto see Appendix C.
35
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 3r-v. See also Furio Diaz, Il granducato di Toscana: I Medici, (Turin: Unione
Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1976), 52-53.
 221

made clear: “in future he will be called Duce of the Florentine Republic, as is called the Doge of

Venice.”36 While the constitution continued by noting Alessandro’s absolute power of legislative

initiative and the hereditary nature of his position, the initial exegesis of his role and title

suggests that the men who wrote the 1532 constitution saw him as a prince in name alone: an

institutional necessity that provided a “head” to the governmental structures.

The analogy that the provision made to the Doge invited comparisons beyond the form of

title, to the broader structures and relationships of government in the Venetian republic. Like the

Doge of Venice, Alessandro’s position provided him potential power and influence, but it did so

at the center of a web of structures and, more significantly, of dispositions that circumscribed

and limited his authority.37 The institutions of the Florentine state had changed, but the social

imagination of the office-holding class was still in the midst of transition in 1532. The

constitution of that year did give Alesandro an objective position in the city: a permanent and

institutionalized place and role in the structures of the state, visible and understandable both

within and without of Florence. Unlike his Quattrocento forebears, Alesandro’s powers and

status had a legal and constituional provision. At the moment of the constitution’s promulgation,

on 27 April, however, the Duke of Penne did not yet have a place in the social world or

imagination of the office-holding class. His position and title were unprecedented, and so

unfamiliar. The pace of socio-cultural change lagged behind the political transition of the city.

36
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 3v: “Et per dar capo a decti consiglieri in luogo del gonfaloniere di
iustitia…essere et sia el duca Alessandro de’ Medici, el quale in futuro si habbi a chiamare il Duce della repubblica
fiorentina come si chiama el Duge di Venetia.” On the legal issues of Alessandro’s new title see, Antonio Marongiu,
Storia del diritto pubblico: Principi e istituti di governo in Italia dalla metà del IX alla metà del XIX secolo, (MIlan:
Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino, 1956), 150-62; and Marrara, Studi giuridici, 11-12.
37
On the position of the Doge in Venice see, Robert Finlay, Politics in Renaissance Venice, (New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press, 1980), 109-62; Edward Muir, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981). On the relationship between objective and subjective structures see, Pierre Bourdieu,
Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
 222

The difficulties that arose from the ambiguity of the 1532 settlement and the

unfamiliarity of Alessandro’s position in Florence fell broadly into two categories. The first

category embraced the city’s relationships with the Emperor and the Pope; the second, the

perceptions that members of the office-holding class had of Alessandro’s place within Florence.

The Duke of Penne owed his position in Florence to Charles V. The city had surrendered to

Ferrante Gonzaga, the imperial captain-general, on 12 August 1530. The terms of the

capitulation had empowered the Emperor to name his future son-in-law as head of state in

Florence. Alessandro even owed his ambiguous title, duce of the Florentine republic, to imperial

reticence: only the emperor could bestow a ducal title for the city.38 In the early 1530s, the

majority of the office-holding class saw in the Emperor the means of preserving Florentine

independence. Charles V appeared as a key source of security and stability for Alessandro de’

Medici and the new regime.39 On 1 January 1535, Francesco Guicciardini observed to his eldest

brother, Luigi, that the possible arrival of the emperor on the peninsula “would be an excellent

[thing] and would stabilize the peace of Italy.”40 Girolamo Guicciardini wrote, a few days later,

that, “I believe it will be good news for us.”41

38
Marrara, Studi giuridici, 11. Compare with the position of the Visconti and then the Sforza in Milan: Giancarlo
Andenna et al., Comuni e signorie nell’Italia settentrionale: la Lombardia, (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice
Torinese, 1998), 710-28; and Marongiu, Storia del diritto, 227-52.
39
Compare with the relationships established with Charles V by the republican governments of Genoa and Lucca in
the same period discussed, respectively, in Kirk, Genoa, 14-22; and Stefano Tabacchi, “Lucca e Carlo V: Tra difesa
della ‘libertas’ e adesione al sistema imperiale,” in L’Italia di Carlo V: Guerra, religione e politica nel primo
Cinquecento. Atii del Convegno internazionale di studi, Roma, 5-7 aprile 2001, ed. Francesca Cantù and Maria
Antonietta Visceglia, (Rome: Viella, 2003).
40
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 191r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 1
January 1535: “sarebbe optima et stabilirebbe la pace di Italia.”
41
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 192v. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo:
“credo per noi saria buon nuova.”
 223

However, the imperial presence and support also contained an implied threat. Having

installed Alessandro, Charles V could potentially remove him also. The regime depended on

imperial grace and favor, which compromised the sovereignty of the city. As Antonfrancesco

degli Albizzi had warned in July 1529, friendship with princes brought obligation and danger.42

Supporters of the Medici and men associated with the regime kept a close eye on imperial

doings, conscious that Charles’ support should not be taken for granted. In particular the

advancement of the promised marriage between Alessandro and the emperor’s illegitimate

daughter, Margaret of Austria, became a barometer for imperial favor. On 1 January 1535,

Francesco Guicciardini observed that, “ His Majesty appears most favorable toward Florence

under the Duke, in such a manner that here no one doubts that he will give him his wife.”43 The

same day, in another letter, he wrote: “His Majesty seems very satisified with the Duke, so that

we hope to have, within a few days, the resolution for the arrival of the Duchess, which would be

an excellent thing.”44 When Charles V embarked on his expedition against the Ottoman regent-

governor Khayr ad-Din (Barbarossa) in North Africa later that year, Guicciardini prayed: “God

willing the affair will succeed well, since for us this is no other foundation than his greatness.”45

42
ASF, Consulte e Pratiche, 71: 50r-51r. See Chapter 4 above.
43
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 165r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 1
January 1535: “S[ua] M[aes]ta si mostra molto inclinata al firenze del duca in modo che qui nessuno non si fare
dubio che gli dara la moglie sua.”
44
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 191r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 1
January 1535: “S[ua] M[aes]ta si mostra satisfactionissima del Duca et in modo che speriamo havere fra pochi dì la
resolutione della venuta della Duchessa che sarebbe optima cosa.”
45
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 205v. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 3
June 1535: “Dio voglia che la cosa gli succeda ben che a noi non resta altro fondamento che la grandeza sua.” On
Charles V’s North African expedition see, Roger Bigelow Merriman, The Rise of the Spanish Empire in the Old
World and in the New, Vol. 3: The Emperor, (New York: Macmillan, 1925), 292-319; and James D. Tracy, Emperor
Charles V, Impresario of War: Campaign Strategy, International Finance, and Domestic Politics, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 145-49. On Khayr ad-Din, see most recently, Roland Courtinant, La piraterie
 224

Imperial support remained a key pillar of the Medicean regime in the 1530s, however

much it contained an implied limit of Florentine sovereignty. But the Emperor and his agents did

not intervene in the affairs of the city. Florence’s relationship with Clement VII, until his death

in September 1534, was markedly different. A widespread perception existed that the Pope still

controlled affairs in Florence, personally or indirectly through familiars such as Archbishop

Schömburg. As in the 1520s, an essentially foreign regime based in Rome, not in the Palazzo

della Signoria or even in the Medici palace, ruled the city. Benedetto Buondelmonti’s letter to

Francescantonio Nori in January 1532 revealed not only the Pope’s control over Florentine

constitutional affairs, but also the level of his involvement in such matters. Buondelmonti wrote:

“if Luigi [Guicciardini] will write you can assure him that his letters will not go from Herod to

Pilate but only into the hands of His Holiness, and then into the fire.”46 The Pope’s interest in

managing the details of Florentine government continued even after the arrival and appointment

of Alessandro in July 1531. A week after the Duke of Penne’s installation as capo of the

republic, Bartolomea Pandolfini beseeched Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati: “Recommend

Giovanni, my husband, at the Feet of Our Lord; and beg His Beatitude to be pleased to offer such

grace that this time he will be seen for the gonfaloniere di giustizia.”47 On 27 September, Filippo

Valori informed his cousin, Bartolomeo di Filippo Valori: “Monsignore the Most Reverend

barbaresque en Méditerranée, XVIe-XIXe siècle, (Nice: Jacques Gandini, 2003); and Kris E. Lane, Pillaging the
Empire: Piracy in the Americas, 1500-1750, (Armonk, NY & London: M.E. Sharpe, 1998), 12-17.
46
BNCF, Manoscritti Palatino, 454: 19r. Letter from Benedetto Buondelmonti, in Rome, to Francescantonio Nori, in
Florence, 21 January 1532: “se Luigi scriverra lo potete assiqurare che le lettere non andrano da Herode a Pilato ma
in mano solo di S[ua] S[anti]tà et poi al fuoco.” See also note 27 above.
47
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 226r. Letter from Bartolomea di Giovanni Pandolfini, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici
Salviati, in Rome, 14 July 1531: “Racomandare Giovanni mio marito a Piedi di Nostro Signore pregando sua
Beatitudine sia contenta farli gratia che questa volta lui sia veduto gonfalonieri di justitia.” The extent to which the
impetus for such petitions came from the perception, rather than the reality, of papal power in Florence is discussed
below.
 225

[Archbishop] of Capua has made it understood that Our Lord desires that five new Monte

officials be created.”48 Alessandro was not completely without independence. Concerning the

appointment of Bendetto Buondelmonti as ambassador to Rome, Francesco Guicciardini

observed: “I understand that Buondelmonti’s going to Rome originated with the Duke and that

the Pope did not expect it, having designated Domenico Canigiani.”49

As with the case of Charles V the office-holding class viewed the Pope’s role in

Florentine affairs as generally beneficial. The extent to which Clement VII’s presence preserved

the regime of Alessandro become most apparent as the Pope neared death. News of the pontiff’s

illness during the summer of 1534 provoked a flurry of worried correspondence among

supporters of the family. Echoing the fears that the death of Pope Leo X had aroused in 1521,

this correspondence revealed the extent of Medicean concerns that Alessandro’s place in

Florence might not survive his papal cousin’s death.50 On 29 August 1534, Ottaviano de’ Medici

replied to a letter from Luigi Guicciardini concerning Clement’s health: “I read Your Lordship’s

recommendations to His Excellency [Alessandro], which, as most prudent, he thinks them to be

necessary for the maintenance of His Excellency’s state and of the friends and lords of his

Illustrious house.”51 On the same day, Cardinal Giovanni Salviati observed to Filippo de’ Nerli

that, “I have heard, and feel the greatest pleasure concerning, the good provisions made there

48
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 206r: “M[on]s[igno]re R[everendi]x[i]mo di Capua ne fa intendere che nostro S[igno]re
desiderebbe che si creassi 5 uficiali di monte di nuovo.”
49
ASF, Serie 1, 100: 47v. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, 21
November 1531: “intedo del andate del buondelmonti a Roma nacque del Duca: et che al papa non la spetava: ma
che haveva disegnato domenicho canigiani.”
50
On concerns provoked by the death of Leo X, in December 1521, see ASF, Acquisti e Doni, 139, Insert 1: 36; and
302, Insert 1: unfoliated letter from Filippo Ridolfi, in Rome, to Gismondo Ridolfi, in Florence, 14 December 1521.
51
ASF, CS, Serie I, 61: 123r. Letter from Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 29
August 1534: “li ricordi di V[ostra] S[ignoria] o letto a sua ex[cellentia] quali come prudentissimi li quali pensa
essere necessarii a mantimento dello stao di sua ex[cellentia] & delli amici & signori di sua Ill[ustrissi]ma casa.”
 226

[Florence] for the defense of the state whatever happens. But seeing Our Lord improve as well as

he does, I hope that it will not be necessary to use them.”52 The most revealing correspondence

came from Alessandro de’ Medici himself. On 27 July, he wrote to Francesco Guicciardini,

“Your Lordship will have heard from other sources about the sickness of Our Lord and the

danger everything is in.” The young Duke continued, “send me your judgment as to how I ought

to govern myself concerning my place in this state so that much better and more easily it can be

maintained as you, my other friends, and I desire.”53 Almost a month later, Alessandro wrote

again to Guicciardini observing that, “the death of [His Holiness] is expected with great fear.”54

Clement VII’s influence in Florence had a significant, but not totally determinative,

influence on elite perceptions about Alessandro’s place in the city. In the early years of the

young Duke’s rule, until the Pope’s death in 1534, the office-holding class sought familiarity in

past practices. They conceived of the new reggimento as a renewal of the system that had

operated before May 1527. In this system Alessandro had no place despite the constitutional

changes of 1532. Men seeking favor did not turn to their nominal prince, rather they petitioned

other men and women of influence, often the same patrons that had wielded power during the

1520s.

52
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 37: 14. Letter from Cardinal Giovanni Salviati, in Rome, to Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, 29
August 1534: “De le bone provisioni fatte costi per la defensione del stato in ogni caso che possa succeder; ne ho
sentito et sento grandissimo piacere ma vedendo N[ostro] S[ignore] aiutarsi sì bene come fa, io spero che non sara
bisogna usarle.”
53
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 16: 33r. Letter from Alessandro de’ Medici, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna,
27 July 1534: “per altra via V[ostro] S[igno]ro possa haver’ inteso la indispositione di N[ostro] S[igno]re et in che
pericholo si trova tucta;” “mi risponda el juditio suo come io mi devo governar’ in nel esser’ mio circa questo stato
acciochè tanto meglio et più facilmente si mantengha come io et voi altri mia amici desiderano.”
54
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 16: 41r. Letter from Alessandro de’ Medici, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna,
23 August 1534: “lo exito della quale con gran timor si aspetta.”
 227

The social world of Florence’s elite did not yet include Alessandro. He had a place in the

institutions of the city but he remained outside the commonwealth of mature males and lineages

that bound the office-holding class together: no regular disposition or practice existed in

Florence for a hereditary prince.55 Members of the office-holding class sought to advance their

interests through the same channels and in the same manner that had worked in the 1520s – by

petitioning people close to the Medici and close to the papal court. On 25 September 1531, the

balìa elected the Otto di Pratica to commence its six-month term the same day. One of the men

elected, Zanobi di Nofri Acciaiuoli, thanked Bartolomeo Valori rather than Alessandro for the

honor: “I recognize from your actions, the gentility of Your Magnificence and the love that you

bear me.”56

More than any other person or family, however, the Salviati received recognition for their

close connection with Clement VII, especially Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, and her daughter

Maria –widow of Giovanni delle Bande Nere. They inherited the family’s mantle as a principal

source of patronage from the 1520s. Lucrezia began receiving letters of recommendation within

days of the surrender on 12 August 1530 from men seeking to ingratiate themselves with the

Medici and hoping for preferment in offices. “This [letter] is to celebrate with Your

Magnificence the recent events of the victory enjoyed in this City,” wrote Piero di Leonardo

Salviati. He continued, “I tell [you] that through all the city no one does anything except shout

55
I am using “practice” in here the broad anthropological sense: Bourdieu, Outline.
56
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 14: 214r. Letter from Zanobi di Nofri Acciaiuoli, in Florence, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome,
27 September 1531: “conoscho dall’opera la gientelezza di V[ost]ra Mag[nificen]tia et l’amore mi portate.” For
Acciaiuoli’s election, see ASF, Tratte, 907: 67r.
 228

Palle! Palle and bread!”57 Lucrezia still received letters seeking help even after the arrival of

Alessandro in the city. Bartolomea Pandolfini, requested that Lucretia petition Clement VII on

behalf of her husband: “I pray Your Magnificence be pleased to do this deed, also with your

Messer Jacopo, so that the desired effect occurs.”58 Letters from Bernardo Lanfredini, in his

official capacity as podestà of Prato, testify to the influence wielded by Lucrezia and Maria

Salviati early in 1533. Lanfredini acknowledged receipt of letters of recommendation from

Maria, and promised to all he could for the persons concerned.59 On 26 March 1533, Lanfredini

himself became the petitioner, as he sought office in the Otto di Pratica following his term in

Prato: “I desire that Your Ladyship would write of this to the Magnificant Jacopo Salviati, or

truely to the magnificent Madonna Lucrezia, that they would be pleased for love of Your

Ladyship to do what is necessary so that I might achieve my aim.”60

The continuing influence of Rome over Florentine affairs, as well as the perception that a

difuse patronage network including the extended relatives and friends of the Medici still had

significant political clout, did have certain positive effects. The most significant being that it held

in check the ambitions and defused the disatisfactions of two men in particular, Bartolomeo di

57
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 335: 82r. Letter from Piero Salviati, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, in Rome, 24
August 1530: “Questa per rallegrarvi con vostra Mag[nificen]tia delle cose successe della vectoria hauta di questa
Ciptà;” “diro che per tutta la città non s’atenndo se non a dire Palle / Palle e pane.” Palle (balls) referred to the
Medici arms – five or six red balls on a gold field. While probably exagerrated, Salviati’s report does suggest a basis
of popular support for the overthrow of the reggimento of 1527-30 and the return of the Medici.
58
ASF, Serie 1, 335: 226r. Letter from Bartolomea Pandolfini, in Florence, to Lucrezia de’ Medici Salviati, in
Rome, 14 July 1531: “priego V[ostra] Mag[nificen]tia sia contenta fare tale opera ancora con Messer Jacopo vostro:
che tale effetto seghua.”
59
ASF, MAP, 140: 156 and 160. A podestà served as a magistrate and administrator – the title literally translates as
“power.”
60
ASF, MAP, 140: 172. Letter from Bernardo Lanfredini, in Prato, to Maria Salviati de’ Medici, in Florence, 26
March 1533: “desiderei vostra S[igno]ria ne schrivesi al ma[gnifi]co Jachopo salviati ho si veramente alla
ma[gnifi]ca Madonna luchrezia che fusino chontenti per amore a vostra S[igno]ria adoperare in modo che io avesi
questo mio atento.”
 229

Filippo Valori and Filippo Strozzi. Both men had actively supported Clement VII during the

siege of Florence – Valori as the Pope’s representative with the imperial army and Strozzi as one

of the principal financial backers of the expedition. Following the surrender of the city they had

sought rewards in Rome. Valori became President of the Romagna and Strozzi, in partnership

with Bindo Altoviti, returned to his former role as chief financier of Clement’s papal and

dynastic policies. Both men did hold offices in Florence, each receiving a seat on the Quarantotto

at its creation in April 1532, but their personal ambitions and future prosperity dependend more

on close ties to the Pope than their profile among their peers in the city on the Arno.61 After the

death of Clement VII, as personal difficulties and resentments previously held in check began to

surface for both Strozzi and Valori and their isolation from the social world of Florence only

increased.

Strozzi’s principal problems in Florence after 1530 arose from personal relationships –

the same source of his wealth and status. More precisely, these difficulties emerged from

personal conflicts involving his children. Strozzi’s elder sons were around the same age as

Alessandro de’ Medici and appear to have associated with the group of riotous youths who

formed the Duke’s court: including Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori, Giuliano di Francesco

Salviati, and Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici. In May 1531, two of Strozzi’s sons, Vincenzo

and Roberto, together with three other young men received an administrative slap on the wrist

61
In addition to sitting on the Quarantotto Strozzi sat on the Otto di Pratica, the Ducal Council and served as a
Monte Official – each one time only. He also was elected an accoppiatore on several occassions: ASF, Tratte, 907:
56r, 67r, 186r, 187r, 192r, 193r, and 203r. Valori, as well as his seat on the Senate, served on the Otto di Pratica
twice and the Ducal Council three times. He too was elected an accoppiatore on multiple occasions: ASF, Tratte,
907: 67r, 68r, 186r-v, 187v, 193v, 202v, and 203v. That Valori was elected to as accoppiatore in April 1537, when
he had openly declared himself against the Medici, testifies to the scant importance of this office after 1532.
 230

for abducting and raping a girl from Prato.62 In May 1533, the Otto di Guardia fined another

Strozzi brother, Fra Leone, a knight of Saint John of Jerusalem, and several other young men for

playing a violent pratical joke on doctor from Pavia.63

On these occasions the Otto di Guardia tolerated this behavior. The younger Strozzi,

however, soon discovered the limits of their aristocratic licence. One story, related in several

places, tells of a carnivalesque game of football played on Christmas Eve in 1532, by several

giovani including Roberto and Vincenzo Strozzi that began at the Strozzi palace.64 As well as

damaging merchandise in the Mercato Nuovo, the Mercato Vecchio, and along the Calimala, the

youths apparently mocked Francescantonio di Francesco Nori when he tried to intervene –

kicking and throwing the ball at him. According to the story, the Otto di Guardia arrested and

imprisoned all the youths involved until Clement VII intervened to secure their release. This

story appears to have no factual basis – no record of arrest or release appears in the deliberations

of the police magistracy, nor was Nori (as all the versions of the tale confidently recount) a

member of this office in December 1532.65 This does not mean that the account is a complete

fabrication. More importantly it does not weaken the symbolic significance of the affair, which,

62
ASF, OGBR, 211: 7r-v; and OGBR, 231: 30r. The other men involved were Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori,
Jacopo d’Antonio Pazzi, and Bernardo di Lorenzo Jacopi: they were banned from the vicarate of Certaldo as a result
of the crime.
63
ASF, OGBP, 4: 11v, 15r-16r; and OGBR, 231: 112v. The other men involved were Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’
Medici, Giuliano di Francesco Salviati (the principal instigators of the affair), Paolantonio di Bartolomeo Valori,
Paolantonio di Giovanni Mannelli, Giovantonio di Guglielmo Alessandri, Cosimo d’Alessandro Pazzi, Mutolo di
Filippo da Ricasoli, Luigi di Francesco Machiavelli, Maso di Carlo Strozzi, and Cencio di Raffaello Guasconi.
64
See ASF, Manoscritti, 125: 65r; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 19-24. Varchi relates that this was a tradition for Carnival,
which begins on Saint Stephen’s Day (26 December) in Florence, as a means of ritually enforcing the closure of
shops; but by the sixteenth century protagonists generally warned merchants by sounding a horn before commencing
the game.
65
See OGBR, 231: 191v.
 231

as Varchi succintly stated, punctured the illusions of certain patricians who thought they could be

equals of Alessandro, not his subjects.

More significant than the alleged game of football was the nocturnal assault on Giuliano

Salviati. Salviati had publicly insulted the honor of one Filippo Strozzi’s daughters, Luisa – who

also appears to have associated freely with the court of Alessandro de’ Medici – and so public

opinion held that her eldest brother, Piero, together with Fra Leone and Maso di Carlo Strozzi

were the masked men who waylaid and attacked Salviati on the night of 13/14 March 1534 as he

returned from the Palazzo Medici. This event did actually occur – Luigi Guicciardini recounted

the ambush, together with an intimation of Piero’s guilt, in a letter to Francesco Guicciardini on

15 March.66 The Otto di Guardia held Piero and Maso Strozzi, together with Jacopo d’Antonio

Pazzi and a Strozzi servant or familiar, Michele di Francesco, for investigation but released all

four without charge on 30 March.67

Filippo Strozzi had departed Florence the previous September as papal nuncio for the

wedding of Caterina di Lorenzo de’ Medici and the future King Henri II of France. He had a

vested interest in the union, having loaned Clement VII the entire sum of Caterina’ dowry:

130,000 scudi. This loan overextended Strozzi’s financial empire and left him dangerously

exposed. Despite his best efforts – spreading the risk via a consortium and demanding triple

securities on repayment – Strozzi still bore an 80,000 scudi debt from the dowry at Clement’s

death, almost half of it unsecured and irrecoverable. Strozzi never returned to Florence,

becoming embroiled legal problems regarding his financial dealings in Rome as he attempted to

66
ASF, CS, Serie I, 52r-v.
67
ASF, OGBP, 6: 75r. Varchi provides a lengthy account of the entire affair beginning with a masked party at the
home of Niccolò Nasi attended by Luisa Strozzi, Giuliano Salviati and Duke Alessandro, himself: Varchi, Storia, 3:
65-76. In a macabre epilogue, Luisa died in December 1534, allegedly poisoned by the wife of Giuliano Salviati:
ASF, Manoscritti, 125: 162r-163r.
 232

recover from the dowry loan. By January 1535, his sons too had departed the city and openly

associated with the Florentine exiles in Rome.68 In October 1536, the Otto di Guardia declared

Strozzi as well as his sons Piero and Roberto rebels.69

Bartolomeo Valori had difficulties of a more prosaic nature. While Benedetto Varchi

recounts that Valori secretly hated Clement VII as early as 1531, the clearest evidence for his

disaffection comes from several years later.70 Letters from his son, Paolantonio –companion of

the younger Strozzi – and his cousin, Filippo di Niccolo, in the first half of 1536 are replete with

references to financial troubles. On 14 April, Filippo Valori refered to “the very great financial

disorder and debt,” in which Bartolomeo found himself.71 The same letter made clear part of this

difficulty arose from investigations into the finances of the Romagna during Valori’s tenure as

president, which had ended with the death of Clement VII. Like Filippo Strozzi but not Bindo

Altoviti, Bartolomeo Valori lost his positions in the papal bureaucracy with the accession of the

new pope, Paul III.72 Strozzi and Valori had built themselves positions of power and influence

through their personal relationship with Clement VII, which had brought them political and

68
On the marriage of Caterina de’ Medici and the financial damage it brought to Strozzi see, Melissa Meriam
Bullard, Filippo Strozzi and the Medici: Favor and Finance in Sixteenth-Century Florence and Rome, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1980), 158-59 and 175; and R.J. Knecht, Catherine de’ Medici, (London & New York:
Longman, 1998), 15-17. On the presence of the younger Strozzi in Rome and their association with the exiles there
see, ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 165v.
69
ASF, OGBP, 14: 31r-v.
70
Varchi, Storia, 2: 611.
71
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 336: 34v. Letter from Filippo Valori, in Certaldo, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 14 April
1536: “disordine grandissimo di danari e debito.” See also 9r and 66v: letters from Paolantonio Valori dated 12
February and 27 June 1536.
72
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 336: 35r. On Strozzi’s difficulties see Bullard, Filippo Strozzi, 166-72. On Altoviti’s survival
and success under the Farnese pontiff, see ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 137v; and Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Bindo
Altoviti, Renaissance Banker and Papal Financier,” in Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage
of Bindo Altoviti, ed. Alan Chong, Donatella Pegazzano, and Dimitrios Zikos, (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner
Museum, 2003), 35.
 233

financial gains – but only outside of Florence. Once their benefactor and patron died, however,

they found themselves without the cultural or social resources in Florence necessary to preserve

their position. Indeed, in the transforming social world of the emerging principality no place

existed for men of such independent ambition and profile. While Strozzi had the financial

capability to withdraw immediately from Florence and attempt to create a new life in Rome,

Valori lingered in the city until 1536, when he too joined the Florentine exile community in the

Eternal City.

The alienation of Filippo Strozzi and then Bartolomeo Valori precipitated a renewed

conflict over the future of Florence and its form of government as the Florentine exiles attempted

to depose the Medici and change the political system in the city. Two principal points of conflict

occurred – one discursive, at Naples in 1535-36, and the second, military, in the summer of

1537. The responses of members of the office-holding class within Florence to their compatriots’

actions reveal the extent of changes within the social world and political culture of the city’s

elite.

The majority of the one hundred and ninety-one men exiled in final three months of 1530

had their sentences renewed in late November 1533 for an additional three years. Nearly all

received new locations to serve their sentences in.73 Both Jacopo Nardi, who was one of these

exiles, and Benedetto Varchi reported that assignment of new locations placed great difficulty on

men who had created new lives for themselves since leaving Florence. Many ignored the new

directive, automatically making themselves rebels against Florence: forfeiting their lives and any

73
ASF, OGBR, 231: 140v-147r.
 234

possessions in the Florentine dominion.74 These rebels and exiles began to congregate in Venice,

Pesaro, and other locations in the duchy of Urbino. Except Antonfranceso degli Albizzi who held

himself aloof from the others and stayed at Gaeta, in the kingdom of Naples, apparently pursuing

a personal attempt at reconciliation with Charles V, in line with his argument of July 1529.75

Following the death of Clement VII, however, and the election of the anti-Medicean Pope Paul

III Farnese many Florentine exiles began to gather in Rome.

With the arrival of Filippo Strozzi and his sons two distinct factions formed in this

diaspora. Strozzi, together with the Florentine Cardinals, Giovanni Salviati and Niccolò Ridolfi,

who had initially supported the Medici in 1530, formed a leadership group – called the maggiori

by Nardi. At the urging of these men, the exiles made a common cause with Cardinal Ippolito

de’ Medici, dissatisfied with being supplanted by his younger cousin.76 The exiles hoped to pry

Charles V away from his support of Alessandro and to gain the Emperor’s agreement to provide

a new settlement for Florence’s government. Dissension and distrust between the maggiori and

the other exiles, however, hampered diplomatic efforts. The exiles sent a double embassy to

Charles V in Barcelona – with individual ambassadors for Strozzi, Cardinal Salviati and Cardinal

de’ Medici, as well as representatives of the greater body of exiles. Confusion over the aims of

the embassy – whether they exiles would accept Alessandro’s replacement by Ippolito or only

the restoration of the Signoria and the government of 1527-30 – as well as the Emperor’s desire

to embark on his north African campaign against Khayr ad-Din led to failure. But Charles did

74
See Nardi, Istorie, 2: 223-24; and Varchi, Storia, 2: 579-82 and 3: 62-63.
75
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 254-57; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 98: . See Chapter 4 above for Albizzi’s speech of 19 July 1529
advising friendship with the imperial cause in Italy.
76
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 191r. See also Nardi, Istorie, 2: 239-42; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 88-90. See above at note 18
on Ippolito’s disatisfaction with the imperial settlement of October 1530.
 235

promise to hear the exiles’ case at Naples following his return.77 By the time this audience

occcurred, in January 1536, Ippolito de’ Medici had died leaving the exiles without a nominal

leader. Jacopo Nardi presented their case on three occasions, each time rebutted by Francesco

Guicciardini on behalf of Alessandro. Despite some support in the imperial court for the exiles’

cause, Charles V denied the exiles’ requests and backed his future son-in-law.78

With this imperial blessing Alessandro de’ Medici reached the pinnacle of his power in

Florence. He had defeated – rhetorically – the Florentine exiles, and the Emperor had assured his

position in the city. In February 1536, the Duke finally married Margaret of Austria, Charles’

illegitimate daughter. But he did not live to enjoy his triumph for any great length of time. On the

night of 6/7 January 1537, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose mysterious motivation

continues to baffle scholars, murdered Alessandro and fled Florence.79 As Alessandro lacked any

legitimate offspring, and Lorenzo had removed himself from the succession through his actions,

a hastily convoked meeting of the Quarantotto elected the next eldest Medici male as capo of the

city on 8 January: the man who would become Cosimo I, the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere

and Maria Salviati.80 At the same time, the Florentine exiles, including Antonfrancesco degli

Albizzi and Bartolomeo Valori, met in a council of war in Rome. After much hesitation and

diplomacy, as well as an abortive attempt by Filippo Strozzi’s eldest son Piero to establish a

77
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 244-48; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 105-12. Varchi reports that Nardi accused the ambassadors, on
their return to Rome, of only requesting that Ippolito supplant his cousin.
78
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 258-79; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 133-230. See also the account of Galeotto Giugni printed in Nardi
at 2: 355-91. Ippolito de’ Medici died at Itri on 10 August 1535, traveling to petition the Emperor in person. Both
Benedetto Varchi and Jacopo Nardi in their histories, as well as the exiles at the time, accused Alessandro of having
his cousin poisoned: Nardi, Istorie, 2: 249-54; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 113-25. Contemporary opinion in Florence held
that Cardinal de’ Medici died from fever: ASF, CS, Serie 1, 98: 161r; and 129: 217r.
79
See most recently my article, “Writing the Wrongs of the Past: Vengeance, Humanism, and the Assassination of
Alessandro de’ Medici,” The Sixteenth Century Journal (forthcoming 2007).
80
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 119r.
 236

bridgehead in the Florentine dominion, the exiles eventually committed to a military expedition

against Florence in the summer of 1537. On 1 August, Florentine and imperial troops routed the

out-numbered force led by the exiles at Montemurlo, north-west of Florence.81

The battle at Montemurlo marked the first serious attempt by Florentine exiles of their

own initiative to return to the city by military force since the thirteenth century.82 Florence’s

political landscape from the fourteenth to the early sixteenth centuries included many acts of

violence, both successful and not. However, all these events occurred within the population of

the city. The events of the first half of 1537 represented the culmination of a breakdown of the

consensus politics that had governed Florence since the late fourteenth century.83 This consensus

had shaped the social world of the city’s office-holding class: laying the basis for the imagined

community of the Quattrocento. Beginning with the coup d’état of May 1527, however, this

consensus fractured into two competing visions. This division hardened into a cultural divide

after the surrender of the city in August 1530 as the men exiled in the following months came to

form what Randolph Starn has called a “contrary commonwealth:” a re-conceived and re-located

Florence existing outside the city walls.84 This cultural divide provoked a sense of alienation in

Filippo Strozzi that led him to observe that he no longer knew if his compatriots within Florence

81
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 285-306; and Varchi, Storia, 3: 289-361.
82
This assertion excludes the siege of Florence in 1529-30 as well as the return of the Medici in 1512. Both of these
occurred as the result of papal and imperial policy, which was not instigated by Florentine exiles although it did
benefit the exiled Medici and their supporters.
83
See Najemy, Corporatism.
84
Randolph Starn, Contrary Commonwealth: The Theme of Exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy, (Berkeley &
Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982).
 237

“are flesh or fish to me.”85 While this idiom would more readily translate as “fish or fowl” in

English, this would only capture the material oppostion between the terms. The confrontation

between Carnival (flesh) and Lent (fish), that was so prevalent in early-modern Europe, lent

symbolic weight to Strozzi’s choice of words: capturing not just a difference in substance but

also in culture.

The word that Florentines used in the sixteenth century for exile was fuoruscito: literally,

one who has gone outside. A term inherited from the medieval period of communal government,

when exile had initially meant removal beyond the walls of the city: an exile was one outside the

city.86 Banishment from the city meant alienation from the principal sources of identity for

members of the office-holding class: removal from the public magistracies, from the networks of

friends, relatives, and neighbors, and from the physical city that underwrote their status and

prestige. Dante Alighieri, most eloquently, captured the spiritual and mental anguish of exile:

“How hard it is to tell what it was like, / this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn / (the

thought of it brings back all my old fears), / a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.”87

More prosaically, Filippo Strozzi observed in 1537, “I would like to be restored to my

fatherland…because the name of rebel greatly damages my business dealings… Moreover, I

85
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209, Fasciolo 1B: 40. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Francesco Vettori, in
Florence, 20 January 1537: “se mi sono carne /o/ pesce.”
86
The seminal study of exile in Medieval and Renaissance Italy remains, Starn, Contrary Commonwealth. More
recently, see Alison Brown, “Insiders and Outsiders: The Changing Boundaries of Exile.,” in Society and Individual
in Renaissance Florence, ed. William J. Connell, (Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press,
2002); and Christine Shaw, The Politics of Exile in Renaissance Italy, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000).
87
Inferno, Canto I: 4-7. The translation is from, Dante Alighieri, Dante’s Inferno: The Indiana Critical Edition, ed.
Mark Musa, (Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995), 19. The meanings of Dante’s “selva
oscura” are, of course, multiple: the physical and mental experience of exile is but one of its referents.
 238

would like to be able to finish the palace and reclaim my debts.”88 If Francesco Guicciardini, in

the 1520s, and Filippo Strozzi, throughout his life, voluntarily removed themselves from the elite

social world and political structures of Florence – the exiles of 1530 were forcibly separated

from the social fabric of the city by their sentences. This alienation affected not only their own

experience – such as the feeling voiced by Dante in the fourteenth century – but also the

perception of them by men still within the city.

In Florence during the 1530s the men exiled for political reasons after the siege became

increasingly excluded from the re-imagining of the city undertaken by the office-holding class.

They lost their place in the social world and the imagined community of the elite. Men who

remained in Florence began to recast their one-time fellow citizens, men who had once been

friends, relatives, or neighbors, as an external other: a foreign threat to Florentine peace and

stability. As early as 1533, Luigi Guicciardini, writing to his brother Francesco, refered to the

exiles as, “enemies.” On 10 June, he noted that, “His Excellency of the Duke demonstrates, more

every day, to be beyond his years in patience, understanding, and everything.” Luigi continued,

hoping that this pleased God “because no other good can we have, nor in any other consists the

health of this city. Our enemies being more obstinate and poisonous than ever.”89 The

juxtaposition of “enemies” with the “health of the city” makes apparent the threat that Luigi

perceived in the exiles: they challenged not only the Medici and their supporters but the security

88
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 72. Undated document in the hand of Filippo Strozzi (based on internal
evidence written in 1537): “io desiderei / essere restituito alla patria…perchè il nome di rebelle dannifica
grandemente li traffichi et negotii miei mercantili… / li oltre vorrei potere finire il palazzo / et exigere dalli miei
debitori.” The reference to the palazzo is to the Palazzo Strozzi, designed by Benedetto da Maiano for Filippo’s
father, Filippo di Matteo. Begun in 1489 the palace was not completed until 1538.
89
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 61v. Letter from Luigi Guicciardini, in Florence, to Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, 10
June 1533: “la Ex[cellenti]tà del Duca dimostra più l’un giorno / che l’altro esse sopra la età sua patiente / intendere
/ et tutto;” “perchè altro bene non possiamo havere / nè in altro consiste la salute di questa ciptà: essendo li inimici
nostri più obstinati / et più velenosi che mai.” See also ASF, CS, Serie 1, 100: 56v.
 239

and stability of the city as a whole. In late 1534, Francesco Guicciardini used less confrontational

language but still underlined the growing divide between those within Florence and those

without. Regarding the exiles, he observed: “I have always judged that they have little

foundation and that they proceed from madness and desperation.” He added that, “I know that I

cannot trust these dishonest and malicious men, nor could anything ever persuade me otherwise

because I know that they hold me in the greatest hatred.”90

Francesco Guicciardini’s first reply to the challenges of the exiles, made in Naples at the

beginning of 1536, contained a more rhetorically devestating representation of the exclusion of

the exiles from the social world of Florence. In this oration, he divided the fuorusciti into three

categories and summarily dismissed each one as no longer having a stake in the city and so no

longer possessing the right to intervene in Florentine affairs. Those who voluntarily departed the

city as well as the Florentine Cardinals had, through choice or vocation, abandoned any claim

over the city and any role in its government. For the majority of the exiles, who had subsequently

become rebels for breaking their bans following the extensions of 1533, Guicciardini saved his

harshest language: “If these complaints are proposed by rebels, we do not know how appropriate

it is to hear them, as they can no longer be recognized in that fatherland, of which, for their

demerits, they were justly and legitimately deprived.”91 The exiles, Guicciardini argued, were no

longer Florentines at all and so had no claim to a voice in the city’s affairs. Their act of rebellion,

in not adhering to their new places of exile, had placed them outside the physical city, the

90
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 129: 202r: Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Bologna, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Arezzo, 18
November 1534: “ho sempre giudichato che habbino poco fondamento et che precedino da’ pazzi et disperati;” “so
non mi posso fidar’ di questi ribaldi nè cosa alcuna mai mi potrebbe persuader’ il contrario chè so che m’hanno in
somo odio.”
91
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 351.
 240

political structures, the social world, and even the imagination of the office-holding class to

which they had once belonged.

Prior to the death of Alessandro de’ Medici in 1537, the Florentine exiles remained only

vaguely threatening. Following the assassination of the Duke, however, the possibility of

military action against the city increased together with internal anxieties. On 6 February 1537,

Girolamo Guicciardini wrote that the governors of Florence: “are for doing everything in order

quieten external affairs with the exiles or others, in a manner that it will be easy to avoid war, but

as it is one can judge the future badly.” Girolamo did continue by adding that he did not think

conflict could occur for at least two months, “because to organize such a labor requires time and

money.” 92 Five months later, as the threat of warfare deepened folowing the failure of diplomatic

efforts, Francesco Guicciardini observed, in relation, to the city’s military preparations: “here

one sees nothing but darkness.”93

The most compelling evidence of the manner in which the exiles of 1530 came to appear

a threat to the security and peace of Florence comes not from the correspondence of men

committed to the Medici family, such as Luigi and Francesco Guicciardini, but from the letters

written to Filippo Strozzi from his elder brother Lorenzo in the months leading up to the battle at

Montemurlo. As had occurred throughout their adult lives, Lorenzo maintained the family

presence in Florence while Filippo absented himself for lengthy periods, and eventually removed

himself permanently in 1533. Lorenzo had received a seat on the expanded balìa of 29 August

92
ASF, CS, Serie I, 98: 217r. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini to Bongianni Gianfigliazzi, 6 February 1537: “son
per fare ongni opera per quietare le cose di fuora con e fuorusciti o altri in modo sara facil cosa non avessimo
ghuerra ma chome si sia si può male giudichare il futuro;” “perchè a ordinare una inpresa simile bixogna tenpo e
ducati.”
93
ASF, CS, Serie I, 60: 104r. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pistoia, 19
June 1537: “qua non si vede altro che buio.”
 241

1530; and he was one of the few additional members nominated to the new balìa of 8

November.94 As such he automatically had a seat on the Dugento from its inauguration in April

1532 becoming part of the semi-closed office-holding class of the new reggimento. Lorenzo did

not, however, hold any significant offices until after the death of Alessandro de’ Medici. This

makes his correspondence more compelling. Lorenzo Strozzi was not a committed partisan of the

Medici. Nor did he participate in the institutions of the new principate; but he shared opinions in

common with men like Francesco Guicciardini who did. Lorenzo Strozzi’s letters present the

voice of a man outside the reggimento but within the office-holding class.

The brothers maintained their regular correspondence following Filippo’s departure in

September 1533; and after the assassination of Alessandro in January 1537 Lorenzo became the

most frank conduit for patrician opinion to reach his younger sibling. The opinion that his

brother was wrong emerged with increasingly urgency in Lorenzo’s letters, alongside his

obvious affection and concern for Filippo. Lorenzo felt that Filippo’s military preparations

threatened the stability and security of Florence, and that he had placed personal interest and

ambition above the common good of the city. In this regard, Lorenzo probably articulated the

opinion of most of the office-holding class. Lorenzo appealed to his brother to act as a citizen

rather than an exile, and to protect Florence’s best interests rather than his own.

Following notification of the death of Alessandro, Filippo had left Venice and travelled to

Bologna, where he began to raise troops to complement those mustered by the Cardinals Salviati

and Ridolfi in Rome. On 4 February, Lorenzo wrote to his brother urging him: “return to Venice

and your commercial affairs, with whatever excuses occur to you, thus you will preserve the

94
ASF, Tratte, 907: 180r and 188r.
 242

benevolence of all this City toward you and the credit that you have outside it.”95 Nine days later,

Lorenzo wrote again: “I do not want to fail to recommend your fatherland to you, however much

I have seen and continually wish [to see] by your actions the love that you bear it.”96 The

following day, 14 February, he stated optimistically: “when you act I know, as if I were certain,

that you will do more infinite justice towards yourself and all us others, furnishing that security

and quiet that every loving and good citizen ought to desire.”97 Almost a month later, towards the

middle of March, Lorenzo warned Filippo, “everyone [in Florence] has their eyes on you and

holds that the good and the bad can come from you.” He continued that, “it seems to me that men

who place their own city in peril without any benefit are most imprudent.”98 On 26 May, Lorenzo

expressed a hope that God would induce Filippo “so that you place public things before private

affairs.”99

Lorenzo Strozzi’s correspondence with his brother articulated and emphasized the

distance between the office-holding class within Florence and those members of it that had

95
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 2, 64. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 4
February 1537: “te ne ritorni a venetia alle tua faccende con quelle scuse che ti occorreranno così ti preserverai la
benivolentia di tutta questa Città et il credito che di fuori hai.”
96
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 105. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
13 February 1537: “ne voglio mancare di raccomandarti la tua patria quantunche io habbi visto et voglia al continuo
per l’opere tue l’amore che tu gli porti.” See also Fasciolo 4, 159. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to
Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 12 March 1537: “che l’amore della patria tua / la qual quanto posso ti raccomando.”
97
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 106. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
14 February 1537: “quando tu operi so si come io mi rendo certo che tu facci più infinite ragioni a te et a tutti noi
altri arredierai quella sicurtà et quiete debbe desiderare ogni amorevole et buono cittadino.” See also Fasciolo 4,
121. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, 23 February 1537: “quanto prima puoi
tornartene a vinetia / et levarti dagl’orredii quelle persone che tu giudichi che ti possino dare carico / ne apestiscono
la quiete et ben della patria come tu.”
98
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 159. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
12 March 1537: “ciascuno ti tene gl’occhi addosso et repeta che il bene et il male possi venire da te;” “parmi che
sieno pochi prudenti che gli huomini che mettono a pericolo lo stato loro senza alcuno benefitio.”
99
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 2, 242. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Venice,
26 May 1537: “così voi preporrete le cose publiche alle private.”
 243

become exiles and rebels in the 1530s. Lorenzo continually invoked and reminded Filippo of the

obligations and duties of the citizen toward the commonwealth. While, Lorenzo remained

optimistic about his brother’s patriotism and goodwill toward Florence, he no longer held these

attributes as certain. Filippo had never fully belonged to the social world of the office-holding

class due to his career outside Florence and his preference for commercial over political success.

His participation in the military adventurism of the exiles in 1537, however, placed him so far

from the expected behavior and disposition of the Florentine patriciate that even his own brother

doubted him. The exiles, by 1537, had become – if not quite foreign enemies – then at least an

external threat to the common good of Florence.

The correspondence of Lorenzo Strozzi makes clear that the concept of the common good

retained its potency and significance after 1530. He enjoined his brother to act as a “loving and

good citizen” by placing the good of the city before any personal interests or ambitions.

However, the common good refered to by Lorenzo in 1537 was not identical to that invoked by

Leonardo Bruni at the beginning of the fifteenth cenury and by Matteo Palmieri in the 1440s, or

even that embodied and envisioned by Ghirlandaio in the frescos at Santa Maria Novella and

Satna Trinita in the 1480s. The social imagination of the Florentine office-holding class was not

immobile. Despite the lingering of residual practices and behaviors, as well as the continuing

foreign influence over Florence, the city’s elite had begun to re-imagine and re-frame their social

world in the face of the changes wrought in 1532. The Florentine patricians and others of the

class began to find a new familiarity and a new regularity different from that of their fathers at

the end of the fifteenth century. A new idea of the common good of the city began to emerge in

the 1530s. One that emphasized peace and stability, that found strength in unity, that prefered a

quiet life of civility – in pursuit of learning, literature, music, and the visual arts – over the
 244

demands of republican politics, and above all else, one that found its principal articulation in the

defense of Florentine independence.

Two key influences drove the reshaping and re-imagination of the office-holding class

and the common good after 1530. One was the changes in the objective structures of the city that

occurred in 1532: the abolition of the Signoria, the creation of the two new councils that partially

closed the office-holding class, and the institution of Alessandro as head of state with absolute

and sole legislative authority as well as the perogative to name replacements to both the Dugento

and Quarantotto. The social imagination of the Florentine office-holding class did not simply

reflect the institutions and structures of the city, it also reproduced and shaped them. These

institutions could not alter, therefore, without a correlated shift in how the elite imagined

themselves. But the values, expectations, dispositions, and practices of the office-holding class

could not change with the stroke of a pen as the forms of government had done. Such a transition

took time. If the new constitution appeared in April 1532 as a triumph of oligarchic power in the

city they did so as the result of a lag between the political and the social. The legislation altering

the form of the government represented the last official expression of the old social world. Faced

with a new political reality in which offices were bestowed rather than allotted and in which the

office-holding class no longer reproduced itself but was increased at the whim of a prince the

Florentine elite had to find new ways of conceiving their social place.

The changes in the institutions and structures of the city, mandated in the provisions of 27

April 1532, explain the why of the transformations in the social world that began to occur in the

1530s. The second influence over this process explains the how: the memory and legacy of the

siege of Florence. The events of 1529-30 had brought the city to the brink of ruin: physical,

financial, and political. Chapter Four discussed the physical and financial effects of the siege, but
 245

not the war’s impact on political culture. Florence had been nominally free from imperial control

since the twelfth century, the first record of consular government dates from 1138, and

independent from interference by any emperor since the death of Emperor Henry VII in 1313.

Over the next century and a half the city evolved from a self-governing commune into a

territorial state controlling a large part of modern-day Tuscany. The arrival of French and

Imperial armies on the Italian peninsula at the end of the fifteenth century, however, exposed the

conceits and precarious balance of the Italian city-state system: all five of the self-declared great

powers of the peninsula faced the prospect of oblivion. Two, Naples and Milan, became directly

subject to foreign administration. In 1509, Venice lost (if not permanently) its mainland Italian

empire; and the sack of Rome in 1527 humbled the papacy. Florence too, in 1529-30, lost

virtually all of its dominion to the besieging Imperial army. By August 1530, the governors of

the city faced a choice between either surrendering to the demands of Ferrante Gonzaga or

risking a battle within the city walls, which could only end in either the destruction of Florence

or its annexation into the Habsburg patrimony.

The feudal nobility of the Kingdom of Naples and the Milanese state could transfer their

allegiance to the Emperor without any loss of position. They kept their titles, their rank and

status, and all their privileges.100 The office-holding class of Florence, however, had no other

claim to their status than the city itself. The independence of the city was essential to the identity

of the elite. Avoiding the loss of Florentine sovereignty became the key determinant of the

pratices and dispositions of the office-holding class in the wake of August 1530. The

institutionalization of Medici rule, in the provisions of 1532, served as the objective basis for

100
See in the case of Naples, Tommaso Astarita, The Continuity of Feudal Power: The Caracciolo di Brienza in
Spanish Naples, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
 246

preserving this independence. The emergent re-imagination of the elite and the concept of the

common good produced by and in turn reproducing these new structures acted to provide a new

familiarity and regularity for the office-holding class.

The discussion at the end of Chapter Four, which examined the prosecution of members

of the reggimento of 1527-30, has already emphasized the desire of the office-holding class after

August 1530 to minimize internal divisions. The balìa and Otto di Guardia in the last few

months of the year recognized the need for continuity and stability in the city’s government and

elite. This recognition continued into the 1530s fueling a desire for unity within the office-

holding class. Internal conflicts and factional strife, seen as partly responsible for the destruction

of the siege and the threat to Florentine independence, became an anathema.101 Between 1528

and 1531, most likely during his enforced political inactivity during the siege, Francesco

Guicciardini wrote two politico-historical works that laid a particular emphasis on unity as a

source of security and strength for Florence.

The first text, the Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli, consisted of a

commentary and critique of Niccolò Machiavelli’s exegesis on the first decade of Livy’s

histories. Guicciardini condemned Machiavelli’s controversial claim that class conflict,

preferably institutionalized in the structures of governance, provided the best means of protecting

the civic freedoms and independence of a republic. “It was not…the division between the plebs

and the Senate that made Rome free and powerful,” Guicciardini thundered.102 Moreover, he

101
This view was shared by the Venetian ambassadors to Florence in the period of 1527-30, who saw Florentine
fractiousness as a principal weakness in the city: Angelo Ventura, ed., Relazioni degli ambasciatori veneti al Senato,
2 vols., (Rome & Bari: Laterza, 1976), 1: 91 and 104, 2: 188-89.
102
Francesco Guicciardini, Scritti politici e ricordi, ed. Roberto Palmarocchi, (Bari: Laterza, 1933), 10. The object
of Guicciardini’s ire was Book 1, Chapter 4: Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio, ed.
Francesco Bausi. 2 vols. (Rome: Salerno, 2001), 33-36.
 247

continued, the Roman republic would have been better off had the reasons for this disunity never

existed: “those defects of the government, which were the cause for that city remaining full of

tumults and sedition and the creation of the Tribunes, cannot be praised.”103

In the same period during which Guicciardini penned the Considerazioni he also wrote a

second, brief, history of Florence: the Cose fiorentine. The problem of factional conflict and

internal divisions arose in this work also. Florence, Guicciardini observed, possessed the virtue

and strong foundations necessary for the creation of the greatest empire on the Italian peninsula.

Indeed, he continued, it would have acquired such a dominion, “if it had had the fortune of

having within its walls a well-ordered government, the authority of which held the citizens

united.” Alas, Florence, in Guicciardini’s opinion, possessed “this perpetual misfortune…of

always being in civil sedition.”104

In his oration on behalf of Alessandro de’ Medici in January 1536, in Naples, Francesco

Guicciardini connected the need for unity to the preservation of independence and to the

constitutional changes of 1532. The re-ordering of the government occurred, he maintained, for

“just reasons,” principally “to insure the fatherland” against the factional conflicts that had led to

instability since 1494, which had in turn threatened the sovereignty of Florence. The thirteen

reformers undertook the abolition of the Signoria and the elevation of Alessandro as permanent

head of state for “the fortification and stability of [the government] and for its own security and

benefit.”105 The creation of the Medici principate provided a institutional means for ending

internal divisions in Florence by removing executive authority from the impermanent Signoria.

103
Guicciardini, Scritti politici, 14.
104
Francesco Guicciardini, Le Cose Fiorentine, ed. Roberto Ridolfi, (Florence: Olschki, 1945), 21-22.
105
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 357.
 248

Since the late fourteenth century, the office-holding class had sought to establish a means for

manufacturing consensus in government, initially through electoral controls, then via the

unofficial position of the Albizzi followed by the Medici as charismatic centers for the elite.106 At

the end of the fifteenth century the governors of the city turned to institutional means – forming

the Consiglio Maggiore in 1494 and appointing a gonfaloniere a vita in 1502. In Guicciardini’s

estimation the creation of the Medici principate in 1532 constituted the culmination and

perfection of this process.

By 1536 Francesco Guicciardini had become the leading apologist for the Medici regime

in Florence. Other members of the office-holding class, however, shared the desire for unity and

the recognition that an end to internal conflicts could provide a bulwark agains any reccurence of

the events of 1529-30. Once again, the correspondence of Lorenzo Strozzi provides the principal

example for opinions probably shared by the majority of his peers – men who were neither

ardent supporters of the Medici nor vehemently opposed to them but who desired above all else

the maintenance of their socio-political status.

On 14 February 1537, Lorenzo wrote to Filippo Strozzi urging him to consider “the

security and quiet” of the city.107 Using language analogous to Guicciardini’s defense of the

constitution of 1532, Lorenzo linked the preservation of Florentine independence with the

maintenance of civil unity. The military preparations of Filippo and the other exiles threatened to

reopen the conflicts of 1529-30 within the city, as well as revisiting the damage of war wreaked

106
On the theme of consensus see: Mark Jurdjevic, “Civic Humanism and the Rise of the Medici,” Renaissance
Quarterly 51, no. 4 (1999); John M. Najemy, “Civic Humanism and Florentine Politics,” in Renaissance Civic
Humanism: Reappraisals and Reflections, ed. James Hankins, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); and
Najemy, Corporatism.
107
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 106. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
14 February 1537: “quella sicurtà et quiete.”
 249

in that period. Several days later, Lorenzo wrote once more to his brother. This letter not only

deployed the same imagery and language of the previous epistle as means of appealing to Filippo

not to threaten the internal peace of the city, but it also articulated the political agnosticism that

motivated and underlay the desire for unity. Lorenzo observed that, “I am writing, as always, as

you know is my habit, for the benefit of the city and of who rules it.” Lorenzo identified with the

city of Florence and its governors, which in both cases meant the office-holding class and

especially the imagined fraternity of civilian magistrates, rather than with any faction. Lorenzo

continued by urging Filippo to return to Venice, separating himself from the other exiles who did

not “desire the quiet and well-being of the fatherland as you [do].”108

The desire for unity and stability even found institutional expression in a provision

passed by the Quarantotto at the end of January 1537. In the name of Cosimo I, the Senate

declared an amnesty for any rebel against the city and permitted the return and restoration of

citizenship to all men banned from the city for political reasons since August 1530. The

preamble to the provision asserted that Cosimo and his counsellors undertook this action as

means for securing “the repose and quiet of the city and the union of its Citizens.”109

Concurrent with the expressions for unity and stability in the office-holding class

emerged a growing rhetoric of withdrawal from public life. As early as 1529, Lorenzo Strozzi

had expressed a preference for staying at his villa outside the city rather than submitting to the

demands of public office: “difficulties offend me nor have I found anything that delights me

more than [fresh] air and for this [office] it is necessary to stay assiduously in the city.” He

108
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 121. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
23 February 1537: “scrivendo sempre come sai che è el mio costume a benefitio della città et di chi regge;” “ne
apetiscono la quiete et ben della patria come tu.”
109
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 95: 27r. Bando mandato per il Duca Cosimo per il quale vengono rimessi e libertati tutti
Condemnati, Banditi e Ribelli per conto di stato: “il riposo et la quiete della città et l’unione de sua Cittadini.”
 250

continued: “I have always desired to be in good grace with this government but I do not care to
110
be adopted so quickly into something of such importance.” In the 1530s, such expressions

became more common among members of the office-holding class. In the face of the tensions

prevalent in that decade –the ambiguity of Alessandro’s position in the early years and the threat

of the exiles later – the political agnosticism of the 1510s and 1520s deepened into a disposition

that was rhetorically antithetical to political action. This language aimed at the avoidance of

political conflicts rather than any real abandonment of office holding. The common good of the

city was better served by unity and consensus than by the sort of factional and ideological

disagreements that had fostered instability and led to the suffering of the siege.

The holding of offices still remained prestigious as a source of both honor and profit – the

latter especially important in the ravaged economy after the siege. In his libro segreto, Luigi

Martelli compiled a list of “all the offices of profit and honor that I, Luigi di Luigi d’Ugolino

Martelli, have had.” He also carefully noted the salary that each paid post brought him – a central

concern for a man with a large family.111 The holding of public offices still remained a symbol of

class distinction, becoming even more pronounced in this regard following the partial closure of

access to such distinction that occurred in 1532. But office holding in the 1530s became a

product of rather than a producer of status.112

110
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1209: Fasciolo 1, 54. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Lyon, 23
May 1529: “e disagi mi offendono nè trovo cosa che più mi giovi che l’aria & qui bisogna stare nella città &
assiduo;” “io ho sempre desiderato d’essere in buona gratia con questo stato / ma non mi curavo d’essere adoperato
sì presto in cosa di tanta importantia.”
111
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v. Libro segreto di Luigi di Luigi Martelli: “tutty gl’ufizy d’utile et onore che io luigi
di luigi d’ugholino martelli /o/ avuti.” In August 1541, Martelli petitioned Cosimo I for tax relief as he had twelve
living children: 176r.
112
The nature of office holding in the Medici principate is discussed further in Chapter 6 below. See also R. Burr
Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790, (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1986).
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On 22 December 1530, Girolamo Guicciardini expressed a wish that “we can pass the

remainder of the time allotted us with more pleasure and leisure than we have done in the past.”
113
Guicciardini penned this sentiment as member of the Otto di Guardia appointed to begin their

term in January 1531. His desire for a peaceful and pleasant existence stands in contrast to, and

comments upon, the difficult duties of the previous Otto, responsible for the sentences of exile

and execution passed in October and November 1530. In the summer of 1535, Lorenzo Strozzi

wrote to his brother, Filippo, urging him to abandon his association with the Florentine exiles

and public activities. Lorenzo expressed hope that Filippo would retire with his family “to some

remote and quiet place,” where “you will be able to enjoy yourself and all things dear to you.”114

In April 1536, Filippo Valori reported his stay in Certaldo – as a Florentine official – to cousin,

Bartolomeo, in the following terms: “being in this place of Certaldo most alone and deprived of

doing and even less of hearing anything, I have taken great pleasure in freeing myself from both

body and soul.”115 On 9 June 1537, Lorenzo Strozzi penned one of the clearest articulations of

the disposition toward withdrawal from public affairs, while staying at the Strozzi villa of

Santuccio. “I am inclined to recommend my lifestyle,” he informed Filippo, “of staying at the

villa and enjoying the quiet.” He continued that he could not relate any news of events to his

brother, because he stayed at the villa “not only on account of the air, but in order not to hear so

113
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 59: 215. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 22
December 1530: “possiamo consumare quello resto del tenpo ci avanza con più piacere e ozio non abiamo fatto il
paxato.”
114
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 3, 145. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, 8
July 1535: “in qualche loco remoto et quieto;” “a te stesso et a tutte le cose care tue sarai per giovare.” See also
Filippo’s reply, in which he quotes Lorenzo’s advice back to his brother verbatim but exchanging the pronouns from
“you” to “I:” ASF, CS, Serie 3, 108: 143v. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Rome, to Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, 19
July 1535.
115
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 336: 34r. Letter from Filippo Valori, in Certaldo, to Bartolomeo Valori, in Rome, 14 April
1536: “essere stato in questo luogo di certaldo molto solutario et carestioso di commettere cosa nessuna e meno
d’udirne et io ne ho preso piacere assai per getarmi sì dell’animo come del corpo.”
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often and so quickly infinite things that displease me.”116 Jacopo Guicciardini, found a similar

attraction to life outside the city walls, pursuing not only a rhetorical but also a physical

withdrawal from public life; although he intimated a lingering sense that this was impossible. On

12 August 1537, he wrote to his eldest brother, Luigi, concerning public life in Florence: “if the

means of fleeing it were to depart from the city and the company of men…and to come to the

country and lead a solitary life, which one could easily do here – which without a doubt is a

paradise – I above all others would do it.”117

Even more compelling than the written testimony of this emergent rhetoric toward

retirement from public life in favor of a private life of pleasant pursuits, is the visual evidence

from the same period. In the 1530s, Agnolo Bronzino produced a series of striking portraits of

young patrician men in Florence. Art historical analysis of these images has observed that these

paintings appear to grapple with the problem of redefining identity following the siege of

Florence.118 The most detailed exposition of these images, by Maurice Brock, however, has

analyzed only the internal visual evidence of the portraits without considering the broader social

116
ASF, CS, Serie 3, 95: 203r-v. Copy of a letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, at Santuccio, to Filippo Strozzi, in Venice, 9
June 1537: “Ho caro commendi la vita mia dell starmi all Villa e godermi la quiete;” “sto non solo per conto
dell’aria ma per non intendere sì spesso e sì tosto infinite cose che mi dispiacciano.”
117
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 60: 268r. Letter from Jacopo Guicciardini, at Poppiano, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pistoia, 12
August 1537: “sel modo a fuggirlo fussi / partirsi dalla ciptà et dalla frequentia delli huomini…& venirsene alle ville
/ et tenere vita solitaria / come si potrebbe facilmente far’ qui / dove sanza dubbio /è/ un paradiso / io sopra tucti li
altri lo farei.”
118
See Maurice Brock, Bronzino, trans. David Poole Radzinowicz and Christine Schultz-Touge, (Paris: Flammarion,
2002); Elizabeth Cropper, “Pontormo and Bronzino in Philadelphia: A Double Portrait,” in Pontormo, Bronzino,
and the Medici: The Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, ed. Carl Brandon Strehlke,
(Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004); Elizabeth Cropper, “Prolegomena to a New Interpretation of
Bronzino’s Florentine Portraits,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrogh, et
al., (Florence: Giunti Barbèra, 1985); and Carl Brandon Strehlke, Pontormo, Bronzino, and the Medici: The
Transformation of the Renaissance Portrait in Florence, (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2004).
 253

and cultural context of their production.119 The paintings all share common pictorial elements:

depicting solitary youths, dressed in black or dark clothing, in the act of or surrounded by

artifacts relevant to cultural pursuits – art, literature and music.

The Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (Figure 18), which opened this chapter, provides one of

the best examples. Ugolino sits in an ambiguous architectural space – neither internal nor

external – his body position refers to (rather than directly quoting) Michelangelo’s Il bastoniere

(Figure 19), as do many of these images, in the arrangment of the hands and the contraposto

pose. In the upper-right hand corner the bottom angle of a Michelangelesque “kneeling” window

intrudes. Behing the youth’s right-hand shoulder at the end of the physical space depicted stands

a statue of David with Goliath’s head – identfied as the work of Antonio Rossellino. Ugolino

appears as if momentarily distracted from the act of reading – he gazes off to the left side of the

frame, his right hand resting lightly on an open book on the table before him, his index finger

holding his place in the text. The text of the open book is legible, identifying it as the opening

passages of Book Nine of The Iliad. The text has great significance: the ninth book of Homer’s

poem details the cost of disunity within the besieging Hellenic camp and the attempt by

Agammenon to heal his quarrel with Achilles. Its inclusion in the image invite comparison with

the damage wrought by the political conflicts of 1527-30 and the continued threat posed to

Florentine unity by the exiles. Moreover, the fact that this is alluded to by the act of reading

suggests a distance from the practice of public affairs: they remain consigned now to the realm of

literature. Two other closed volumes also surround Ugolino. That on the table is an unidentified

volume of Virgil, while that held in his left hand is a volume of Pietro Bembo.

119
Brock, Bronzino, 105-61.
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Figure 18. Agnolo Tori called Bronzino, Portrait of Ugolino Martelli (ca. 1536-37). Panel
painting, 102 x 85 cm. Berlin: Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Gemäldegalerie.
 255

Figure 19. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Il bastoniere, detail from Tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici
(1526-33). Marble. Florence: San Lorenzo, Nuova Sagrestia.
 256

The Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute (Figure 20) probably predates the image of

Ugolino Martelli by three or four years. Here again, the unidentified subject, sits in a pose that

comments upon Michelangelo’s funereal sculpture in San Lorenzo: contraposto, his head turned

to the left looking quizically at something out of sight, his right hand grasps the pegbox of a lute,

while his left rests upon his knee. The space in this image appears discernably interior – a large

wooden piece of furniture looms behind the youth’s left shoulder, while a shadowed doorway

opens at the rear right of the image. The musician’s right elbow rests upon a cloth-draped table

upon which stands an elaborate inkwell with a quill. An air of suppressed sexuality colors this

particular image, captured in the phallic placement of the pegbox in the youth’s right hand, and

the statuette that adorns the inkwell, which depicts Susanna at the moment of her discovery that

the elders have watched her bathing.

The Portrait of a Young Man with a Book (Figure 21) dates from the 1530s, but from no

specific year. The subject here appears far more confident and self-possessed than the previous

two youths. He gazes out at the viewer, his left hand resting with arrogant self-assurance on his

hip. The positioning of the young man’s body in this portrait refers not only to Michelangelo – in

the placement of the right hand and the contraposto pose – but also specifically quotes

Pontormo’s Portrait of a Halberdier (Figure 14) in the placement of the left hand and the

peculiar splaying of the fingers. Again, this image presents an interior space – a closed door is

partially visible behind the youth’s jutting left elbow, adjacent to the arm of an elaboratly-

decorated chair. The young man’s right elbow and the book he is reading rest on a carved table,

while a cornice and part of an internal arch a visible at right and to the rear of the image. Like

Ugolino Martelli, this young man appears as if interrupted while reading – he holds his place in

the closed book with the index finger of his right hand. The two grimacing mascherons that
 257

Figure 20. Agnolo Tori called Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Lute (ca. 1534). Panel
painting, 94 x 79 cm. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi.
 258

Figure 21. Agnolo Tori called Bronzino, Portrait of a Young Man with a Book (1530s). Panel
painting, 95 x 75 cm. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
 259

adorn, respectively, the table and the chair’s arm underline the poise and social grace of the

young man through the juxtaposition of his calm features with their contorted visages.

Even a cursory glance at these three images reveals that a social world far removed from

that which motivated the Ghirlandaio frescos discussed in Chapter Two (Figures 1-6) produced

and was in turn reproduced by these portraits. Leaving aside the fashionable impulses that

partially underlie the construction of the images – the sudden popularity of solo portraiture

across Europe in the sixteenth century and the cultural imperative toward somber clothing driven

by courtly literature and the personal appearance of the Emperor Charles V – the vast differences

in representation between the portraits of the 1530s and the frescos of the 1480s bespeak a

transformation of self-conception and identity among Florence’s elite. Even the material of the

images themselves, panel paintings produced for private consumption, as opposed to frescos

painted in public spaces, reveal the inward turn and withdrawal of the office-holding class in the

wake of the siege. The subjects appear not as part of a greater body – such as the imagined

commonwealth of mature males depicted by Ghirlandaio – but as private individuals. The

emphasis of the paintings lies not on public service as the defining characteristic of the socio-

political elite, but rather upon education and the facility of time and leisure to follow cultural

pursuits. The realm of cultural production and sophistication rather than of political activity

appears as the place of elite practice.120

120
Compare this observation with the thesis proposed in Ingrid D. Rowland, The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of
Renaissance Forgery, (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Rowland argues that by the
seventeenth century the realm of cultural and intellectual production was the only vehicle remaining for the Tuscan
elite to assert and justify their status and prestige. See also the analogous shift in material culture in Venice from a
vehicle for expressing of moral values to one highlighting aesthetic values and refined taste detected in Patricia
Fortini Brown, Private Lives in Renaissance Venice: Art, Architecture, and the Family, (New Haven & London:
Yale University Press, 2004), 56-59. Compare with the observations about Dutch portraiture in the seventeenth
century in Ann Jensen Adams, “The Three-Quarter Length Life-Sized portrait in Seventeenth-Century Holland: The
Cultural Functions of tranquillitas,” in Looking at Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Realism Reconsidered, ed.
Wayne Franits, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
 260

As opposed to the purely masculine social world of the fifteenth century, this new

disposition opened to women also. Bronzino produced comparable images of elite females in the

same period, such as the Portrait of the Lady in Red (Figure 22). The subject of this painting is

probably Francesca di Jacopo Salviati, an aunt of Cosimo I, around the time of her marriage to

Ottaviano de’ Medici in 1533.121 An identification that rests upon the Salviati colors of red and

white, which the subject wears, as well as the peculiarly and specifically shaped diamond ring

visible on the ring finger of her right hand. The form of this ring reproduces a Medici heraldic

device used first by Piero di Cosimo and then by Lorenzo il Magnifico – indicating that the lady

depicted is most likely a descendant of Lorenzo. Francesca was his grand-daughter. The young

lady sits on a richly-decorated Savonarola chair, with small dog on her lap – presumably

representing fidelity in her coming marriage. She wears an elegant gown of red with dark sleeves

over a white shirt. A gold chain adorns her neck and rings grace each hand. Her left hand rests on

the arm of the chair, while the right lies on a rosary in her lap. Like the male portraits, the

positioning of her hands and body appear to refer to, without directly copying, Michelangelo’s Il

bastoniere. The lady sits in an ambiguous architectural space predominated by a concave alcove

behind her – neither definably internal nor clearly external. Behind her and to the right of the
121
Gabrielle Langdon has recently and unconvincingly argued that this portrait depicts not Francesca but her sister
Maria, the mother of Cosimo I, and dates it to 1526: Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love,
and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I, (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 2006),
24-32. Apart from the fact that nearly all of the iconographic evidence that Langdon musters to support her
identification could equally identify the sitter as Francesca – both being Salviati women married to Medici men –
her dating presents a crucial problem. In order for Langdon to be correct (as she acknowledges herself) Bronzino
would have to have painted the portrait prior to the death of Maria’s husband, Giovanni de’ Medici, in November
1526 because after this she always appeared dressed as a widow. This is significant because the only evidence that
Langdon presents that could distinguish the sitter as Maria rather than Francesca Salviati consists of the black
ribbons dangling from one of the books in the portrait. Langdon argues that these refer to Giovanni de’ Medici under
his nom de guerre – Giovanni delle Bande Nere (of the Black Bands) – and so identify the sitter as his wife.
However, “delle Bande Nere” was a posthumous appelation, so no references to Black Bands would have had any
resonance prior to Giovanni’s death, at which point Maria would have appeared as a widow rather than a faithful
wife. On the myth of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, “the non-existent hero,” see Maurizio Arfaioli, The Black Bands of
Giovanni: Infantry and Diplomacy During the Italian Wars (1526-1528), (Pisa: Edizioni Plus - Pisa University
Press, 2005), xiii-xvii.
 261

Figure 22. Agnolo Tori called Bronzino, Portrait of a Lady in Red (ca. 1533). Panel painting, 89
x 70 cm. Frankfurt: Städelsches Kunstinstitut.
 262

image, two closed books rest on what appears to be a stone bench, such as those that adorned the

exterior of many Florentine palaces.

Like the Portrait of a Young Man with a Book, the grotesque mascheron adorning the

chair’s arm counters the poise and impassivity of the lady’s own features. Very little

iconographical difference exists between this female portrait and the three male images discussed

above. While the young lady does not appear actively involved in cultural pursuits, as the men

do, the presence of the books in the painting indicate her access to learning and refinement. Her

costume is more lavish than the appearance of her male counterparts, similar to the visual

differences between the male and female figures in Ghirlandaio’s frescos from fifty years earlier.

However, the absence of any public role for the male figures, unlike the images of the 1480s,

softens this distinction and underlines the greater similarity between male and female in the

emerging social world of the office-holding class under the Medici principate.

What these images share with the earlier imaginings of the fifteenth century is as

significant as the differences. The principle commonality is the physical and symbolic presence

of the city of Florence itself. The Ghirlandaio frescos represented the public spaces of the city –

the Palazzo and Piazza della Signoria and the Piazza Santa Trinita – in accordance with the very

public nature of the social world of the office-holding class. The references to the city in the

images of the 1530s are far more restrained, as befitted the growing rhetoric of withdrawal from

public life. Nonetheless, while the spaces of the paintings are not always certain their settings are

unambiguously Florentine. Often this fiorentinità, as Brock terms it, presents itself elusively as a
122
lingering sense in the shape and color of the stonework. The quotation of Michelangelo’s

Bastoniere, common to all four images, refers not only to the actual sculpture but also to it as

122
Brock, Bronzino, 116. Literally fiorentinità translates (very awkwardly) as Florentinity or Florentineness.
 263

representative of the material link between the space of the city and the office-holding class. It

operated as a reminder of the patrician ability to shape the urban landscape: Michelangelo’s

original was created for a Medici funeral monument at San Lorenzo.

In the Portrait of the Lady in Red and the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli, however, the

association is direct and specific. The stone bench behind the subject in the former image, as

noted above, bears a direct resemblance to the public seating that encircled many patrician

palaces in the city. The barred “kneeling” window in the upper right-hand corner of the latter

image copies Michelangelo’s famous design for the closure of the corner loggia in the Medici

palace – a design that became hugely fashionable and copied throughout the city. The identity of

the office-holding class still remained tied very closely to the city itself. The material space of

Florence helped to produce and bolster the social position of the city’s elite citizens through their

ability to influence and shape the urban geography.123 Moreover, as the experience of 1529-30

had brought into sharp relief, the city underwrote their status at an existential level. Should

Florence cease to exist, completely or even simply in terms of political independence, the elite of

the city would also lose their principal claim to social distinction and political power.

In the rear of the Portrait of Ugolino Martelli stands the familiar Florentine image of

David, triumphant with the head of Goliath at his feet: the embodiment of virtue defending

liberty. The presence of this potent representation could refer to lingering republican sentiment in

the early 1530s. However, the images of Old Testament heroes defeating tyranny, not only David

but also Judith, had always possessed a Medicean as well as a civic reading.124 Beyond a possible

123
See Chapter 2 above.
124
See Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors for Medici Rule in Florence,” The
Art Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001); and Adrian W.B. Randolph, Engaging Symbols: Gender, Politics and Public Art in
Fifteenth-Century Florence, (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2002). Generally on the mutability of
 264

endorsement of Medici rule, the depiction of David with Ugolino Martelli indicates how the

office-holding class of Florence re-interpreted and reformed older images and associations to fit

the emergent social world of the principate during the 1530s. The figure of David still

represented the virtue of the city’s elite defending the liberty and common good of the city. But

the meaning of these concepts had changed.

In the wake of the siege, which had brought the city to the brink of destruction or the loss

of independence, a consensus emerged in patrician thought that identified liberty with

sovereignty alone, that identified the common good of Florence with the preservation of its

independence. The office-holding class re-articulated notions of serving and protecting the

common good to justify the installation of Alessandro de’ Medici as an hereditary prince. After

the factional conflicts of 1527-30 had brought Florence into war with the two major powers

remaining on the Italian peninsula, the Emperor and the Pope, an alliance with both the

Habsburgs and the Medici and the fullfiment of Clement VII’s political ambitions provided the

only viable path toward securing the long-term stability and sovereignty of Florence. This

consensus even extended to Filippo Strozzi, one of the leading figures in opposition to

Alessandro and then Cosimo I between 1535 and 1537 – the concept of liberty as civic freedom

lingered only as a lost ideal espoused by few of the Florentine exiles.

Francesco Guicciardini, in the politico-historical works penned during or immediately

after the siege, provided the earliest articulation of the new unitary meaning of Florentine liberty.

In the Cose fiorentine, he depicted Florence’s medieval history as a struggle for independence

against imperial control. Liberty (libertà) in Guicciardini’s narrative acquired a sole sense of

the meanings attached to symbols and places in Renaissance Florence see Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza
della Signoria as Practiced Place,” in Renaissance Florence: A Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T.
Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006).
 265

sovereignty, distinct and separate from the form of government. In the 1220s, he noted that the

Emperor Frederick II “reacquired in Florence, which was governing itself freely [a libertà], the

authority of the Empire.” In similar terms, Guicciardini spoke of the city “returning itself to
125
liberty” after the Emperor’s death in 1250. Refering to Florence’s two experiments with

dictatorial rule in the early fourteenth century, under Charles of Calabria and then Walter of

Brienne, Guicciardini wrote that Florence “found itself so poorly treated that never more in

future did it voluntarily surrender its liberty.”126

In his Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli, Guicciardini wrote even balder

prose, providing the clearest justification for supporting the Medici principate in the name of

Florentine liberty. Concerning Machiavelli’s dictum that the founders of republics deserved

praise and tyrants only vituperation, Guicciardini initially agreed but then offered an alternate

view. He condemned Machiavelli’s argument as purely abstract, and for failing to account for the

variety of human experience and the power of necessity in human actions: “one needs to

consider that in some rare occasions he who forms a tyranny in a free fatherland has such

necessity to do so.” He continued that, “It is true that sometimes the forms of liberty are so

disordered and the city full of so much civil discord that necessity leads some citizens, not being

able to save themselves any other way, to seek or to support tyranny.” Lest anyone accuse

Guicciardini of being overly abstract, he concluded that, “one could give as an example our own

city.”127

125
Guicciardini, Le Cose, 15.
126
Ibid., 17. Many other examples can be found between pages 14 and 17, where Guicciardini uses libertà solely to
refer to independence and often actively distinguishes it from the type of government.
127
Guicciardini, Scritti politici, 19. The passage in question is Book 1, Chapter 10: Machiavelli, Discorsi, 68-76.
 266

In his defense of Alessandro’s regime, given at Naples in January 1536, Guicciardini

made clear the meaning that liberty had acquired for the members of the office-holding class

who had stayed in Florence. Replying to the exiles charge that the constitution of 1532 had

broken the terms of the 1530 surrender, in which the emperor guaranteed the city’s liberty, he

argued that the meaning of liberty in the document did not refer to any specific form of

government: “the true sense of this clause is that His Majesty was given a free hand to ordain

either a popular regime or that of the Medici, or whatever other form pleased him more.” Rather,

liberty in the terms of the capitulation referred only to Florence’s independence. The treaty

obliged Charles V “not [to] place the city, which was always free [libera], under foreign

dominion, depriving it of its ancient privileges, preeminence, and liberty [libertà].”128

Guicciardini concluded that, “one cannot say that [the Emperor] did not preserve liberty; rather,

it is necessary [to say] that he ordered much better than if he had restored a popular

government.”129 The civic freedom of the 1527-30 reggimento had not protected Florence’s

liberty (independence). Rather, it had brought the city to the brink of ruin and of submission to

foreign control. The installation of Alessandro as hereditary prince of the city would by contrast

preserve the sovereignty of Florence. Supporting the Medici regime became, therefore, service to

the common good.

The correspondence between the Strozzi brothers following the death of Alessandro

demonstrates how the concept of sovereignty motivated both the members of the elite within the

city who supported Cosimo I and some of the exiles who opposed his accession. The principal

concern espoused by both Lorenzo and Filippo Strozzi was that Charles V might find an excuse

128
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 352.
129
Ibid., 2: 353.
 267

or a reason to intervene in Florence and subject the city to direct imperial administration. This

had occurred in Milan in 1533 when Francesco II Sforza died without a legitimate heir. As soon

as 20 January 1537, Filippo expressed concerns that, “our city might easily fall into foreign

hands.” At this stage, he expressed qualified support for Cosimo I, noting, “about the election of

the capo I could not be more content as far as my private interests are concerned.”130 Although he

did not clarify the distinction in this letter, Filippo obviously separated the personal benefit that

he might acquire from the election of Cosimo I – anullment of his sentence of rebellion – and

what he perceived to be the larger good of Florence.

As the months passed, Filippo agonized over whether military action against the city

would provoke an imperial coup d’état or would in fact (if successful) prevent the government of

Cosimo becoming a puppet for rule from Spain. In late February, Filippo considered that,

“moving with arms now would be the greatest service to Caesar, making him boss (with great

justification) of all the important places in Tuscany.” He continued, observing that not only

would military action make the exiles infamous but that it would “not liberate [Florence], but

enslave it more than it is at present.”131 Around the same time, however, Strozzi also worried

that, “the city hurries toward its ruin and will become in short time, by necessity, the slave either

of Vitello [Alessandro Vitelli] or of the Spanish or of the French, because Cosimo and the little

130
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 1B, 40. Draft letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to Francesco Vettori, in
Florence, 20 January 1537: “che facilmente / la città nostra cadere in mano di externi;” “circa la election dal capo /
quanto alli miei privati interessi non potrei più contentarmene.”
131
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 1B, 137. Draft letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna, to an unclear
correspondent (possibly the cardinals Salviati and Ridolfi or the French ambassadors in Venice), 27 February 1537:
“il muovere l’armi / hora / sia grandissimo servitio de ces[are] facendolo patrone / con grande justificatione / delli
lochi importanti di toscana;” “non liberala / ma farla molto più schiava che non /è/ al presente.”
 268

bastard [Giulio di Alessandro de’ Medici] would govern in name alone.”132 Filippo shared this

sentiment with other exiles. Under interrogation following his capture at Montemurlo, Filippino

di Bartolomeo Valori reported seeing a letter written by his second cousin, Francesco Valori, to

the effect that the arrival of the Count of Cifuentes, an Imperial representative, in Florence was

the prelude to “removing the state from Lord Cosimo and placing it in the hands of the

Spanish.”133

Opposed to this fear was a sentiment within Florence itself that far from threatening the

city’s independence friendship with the Emperor was the only means of preserving it.

Attempting to persuade his brother against military action, Lorenzo Strozzi implored Filippo

that, “whoever wishes liberty and not servitude, the health and not the ruin of this our fatherland,

needs…to take the side of His Majesty, or at least to hold himself neutral.”134 The protection of

Florentine liberty – that is, independence – could only be assured by the goodwill of the

Emperor, which in turn could only be assured by the rule of Cosimo I.

Despite his concerns, Filippo Strozzi eventually decided that the risks of not acting

outweighed the possibility of imperial intervention. By late July 1537, the Florentine exiles had

amassed three to four thousand troops at Mirandola, under the command of Fra Bernardo
132
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 79. Undated document in the hand of Filippo Strozzi: “la città cammina per
le poste alla ruina sua / et diventera in breve di necessità schiava /o/ del vitello /o/ delli spagnoli /o/ de franzesi /
perchè cosimo et il bastardino / sono per prestare solo il nome / a questa ragione.” Alessandro had no legitimate
offspring but two illegitimate children – Giulio and Giulia, both named in honor of Clement VII. Domenico
Canigiani and Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo initially proposed the succession of Giulio following the assassination of his
father. The condottiere Alessandro Vitelli, a scion of the signorial family of Città di Castello, had served as a
colonel in the imperial army that besieged Florence. Ferrante Gonzaga had left him in command of a detachment of
soldiers in 1530 to control Florence for the Medici and the Emperor. Following the assassination of Alessandro de’
Medici Vitelli siezed control of the Fortezza in the name of Charles V.
133
ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 509, Insert 3: 32r: “levare lo stato al S[ign]or Cosimo et metterlo nelle mani di
spagnuoli.”
134
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 4, 169. Letter from Lorenzo Strozzi, in Florence, to Filippo Strozzi, in Bologna,
17 March 1537: “chi vuole la libertà et non la servitù / la salute et non la ruina di questa nostra patria / gli
bisogna…camminare per la strada di sua M[aest]à / o almanco tirarsi da parte.”
 269

Salviati, the younger brother of Cardinal Giovanni and a knight of Saint John of Jerusalem. A

further one to two thousand infantry, commanded by Piero di Filippo Strozzi, had assembled at

Bologna. The exact number of exiles involved in the military expedition remains unclear, but

Jacopo Nardi’s estimate of fifty or sixty seems more likely than Benedetto Varchi’s of two

hundred.135

Rather than waiting for the arrival of Salviati’s detatchment, Filippo Strozzi and

Bartolomeo Valori led the exiles to Montemurlo, northwest of Prato, followed by Piero Strozzi’s

forces. The exiles fortified the fortress of the town, while Piero ordered his troops at the

crossroads beneath the mountain, where the road ran between Prato and Pistoia. He sent a

detatchment, commanded by Cecchino Tessitore and Sandrino da Filicaia, in the direction of

Prato, hoping to ambush any approaching force. But troops despatched by Alessandro Vitelli

routed the ambuscade, leading Piero to ride to their aid. In the ensuing battle Piero and his troops

became cut off from Montemurlo and had to retreat. The remaining exiles trapped in the fortress

soon surrendered. Bernardo Salviati finally arrived only after the imperial force had withdrawn

with a large number of prisoners – heavy rains had delayed his march. Despite uniting with Piero

Strozzi and his remaining troops, Salviati judged it prudent to withdraw.

The imperial detachment that achieved victory at Montemurlo returned to Florence with

fifty-one Florentine prisoners. Several of these men were subsequently ransomed or freed by the

individual commanders who had captured them. Several others escaped. Filippo Strozzi, whom

Alessandro Vitelli claimed as his own prize, was imprisoned in the Fortezza da Basso at

Florence, which the imperial colonel held in the name of Charles V. Cosimo I had thirteen of the

135
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 299-306; Varchi, Storia, 3: 360-61. The imperial troops captured fifty-one Florentines at
Montemurlo: see ASF, CS, Serie I, 95: 141r-142r and CS, Serie I, 98: 229r-232r.
 270

captured exiles and rebels executed, including Antonfrancesco degli Albizzi and Filippo Valori,

alongside Bartolomeo Valori and his two sons, Filippino and Paolantonio.136 Strozzi remained

imprisoned in the Florentine fortress despite the efforts of his sons and many others to persuade

Emperor Charles V to liberate him. On 29 November, Strozzi wrote to Cardinal Giovanni

Salviati, stating that he had offered Vitelli a fifty-thousand scudi ransom, but that his gaoler

wanted ten thousand more. Above all else, Strozzi feared being delivered into the hands of

Cosimo I: “the fate of the others makes me and my friends fear greatly.”137 A month later, Strozzi

wrote to his son, Roberto, who was petitioning the emperor in person for his father’s release:

“here my affairs are in the worst state…this is the last act of the tragedy.”138

Filippo Strozzi eventually met a suitably tragic end, apparently taking his own life on 18

December 1538 while still imprisoned in the Florentine fortress.139 Strozzi left behind a note

claiming that he feared falling into the hands of Cosimo and being tortured into admitting things

“prejudicial to my honor.” He begged that he be buried in Santa Maria Novella, beside his wife

Clarice de’ Medici, if Cardinal Innocenzo Cibo approved of his interment in sacred ground.

Finally, in his best theatrical style Strozzi consigned his soul to God, “humbly praying that, even

if wishes to bestow no other grace, he will at least set it in that place where Cato of Utica and

136
See Appendix E and note 135 above.
137
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 1B, 118-19. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Cardinal Giovanni
Salviati, in Ferrara, 29 November 1537: “l’esito degl’altri fa temere grandamente me e gl’amici miei.”
138
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1207: Fasciolo 1B, 125. Letter from Filippo Strozzi, in Florence, to Roberto Strozzi, at the
imperial court, 22 December 1537: “le cose mie / sono di qua in pessimo grado…questo /è/ l’ultimo acto / della
tragedia.”
139
An account of the discovery of Filippo Strozzi’s corpse and the circumstances of his death, signed by Cosimo I,
survives in ASF, Miscellanea Medicea, 54, Insert 34: 12r-13r. The death was assumed a suicide, which Cosimo took
as a sign of Strozzi’s “most vile soul:” “ha fatto segno di animo vilissimo.” However, not one but two bloody
swords were found at his side, and a third sword was located in the room, in a box atop a wardrobe.
 271

other similarly virtuous men have made their end.”140 Marcus Portius Cato the Younger had

sided with Pompey against Julius Caesar during the Roman civil war. Following the latter’s

victory at Pharsalus Cato had killed himself at Utica in 46 B.C.E. Later writers, including Lucan

and Dante, presented Cato as a moral force and guide to Marcus Brutus who stayed above the

factional conflict a the end of the Roman republic, who committed suicide to avoid taking sides

in the conflict that ended the republican system.141

Strozzi’s theatrical invocation of Cato was a revealing moment. On the one hand, it was a

personal cry of despair: the conjuring of a metaphorical plague on both the Medici and the

Florentine exiles. By comparing himself with a man who refused to take sides Strozzi expressed

a dying wish to take back the choices that he had made, which had led to his imprisonment and

death. From a different perspective, Strozzi’s invocation of a man who refused to choose

highlighted the fact that most of the office-holding class of Florence did make a choice in the

wake of the siege of 1529-30. The imposition of the Medici principate was not done to the

office-holding class of Florence, but with them. Most members of the office-holding class chose

to support and advance the establishment of a form of government antithetical to Florentine

tradition. They saw in a Medici monarchy the best, and perhaps only, means of preserving the

city’s independence and, so, their own status and prestige. As this chapter has demonstrated, this

choice was not accompanied by a definitive break with the political culture of Florentine

republicanism. Indeed, many of the concepts, language, and images of that had supported the

republican tradition appeared as justifications for and defenses of the new principate. In the

140
Nardi, Istorie, 2: 324-25. The letter by Cosimo I describing the scene in Strozzi’s room when his corpse was
discovered testifies to the presence of “a certain writing in his own hand…all bloody.” ASF, Miscellanea Medicea,
54, Insert 34: 12v: “una certa scritta di sua mano…tutta insanguinata.”
141
See Manfred Piccolomini, The Brutus Revival: Parricide and Tyrannicide During the Renaissance, (Carbondale
and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991), 8-16.
 272

1530s the office-holding class undertook a process of re-fashioning the meanings and

understandings attached to these concepts. This process was not yet complete in the summer of

1537. While the social world of the city’s elite was definably no longer in the civic tradition of

the late fifteenth century, it was not yet a court society.

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Chapter Six

Re-Imagining Florence:

The Office-Holding Class under the Medici Principate during the 1540s.

In the middle of the 1540s the painter best known as Francesco Salviati spent several years in his

home city of Florence – a brief interval in a career otherwise spent predominantly in Rome. In

this period he completed numerous portraits of Florentine men, youths, and boys. These images

of elegantly attired male figures bear obvious debts to the influence of Bronzino in the

positioning and accoutrements of the figures as well as the linear architectural backgrounds

visible in many of them. Among these portraits one, featuring a young man clasping a pair of

gloves (Figure 23), stands out. Sometimes attributed to Michele Tosini and identified

(improbably) as a posthumous portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici or (even more improbably) of

the Duke’s assassin, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, this image is unique for the allegorical

landscape behind the central figure. The drawn back green curtain reveals, to the left of the

panel, a landscape dominated by hyperbolic clouds blushed pink by dawn. Almost immediately

behind the sitter’s right shoulder an incongruous collection of figures gather on a hillside, all of

which refer to the city of Florence. The reclining nude male depicts a personification of the river

Arno. To his left an almost comical lion – the Marzocco, an old emblem of the city – peers out

toward the viewer. To the left and in front of the river god, a female figure emerges in place of

the stamen from a flower, which could possibly be a lily: an embodiment of the epononymous

flourishing of Florence. To the right of the Marzocco, on a slight hillock, stands a broncone – the

Medici emblem of the dry and broken yet flowering branch. This image presents no depiction of

virtuous youth defending the liberty of the city as the images produced by Pontormo (Figure 14)
 274

Figure 23. Francesco de’ Rossi called Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Young Man with Gloves
(ca. 1544). Panel painting, 40 x 32 cm. Saint Louis: City Art Musuem of Saint Louis.
 275

and Bronzino (Figure 18) in the previous two decades had done. The languid youth who is the

painting’s central subject poses with grace but disinterest. Indeed, Florence (in its allegorical

form) appears in no need of defenders. The iconography of the emblematic figures in the

background suggests that the city flourishes, tranquil and peaceful, under the guardianship of the

Medici – the turbulence of the decade between 1527 and 1537 forgotten. The image by Salviati

contributed to and comments upon a reformation of the social world and imagination of

Florence’s office-holding class that occurred in the 1540s as the political structures of the city

stabilized into a monarchical form that would endure until the Risorgimento.1

When Filippo Strozzi met his bloody end in December 1538 the intertwined fates of

Florence and of the city’s office-holding class remained uncertain. Spanish troops still occupied

the fortresses of Florence and Livorno. The nominal capo (head) of the government, Cosimo I

de’ Medici, was an untried youth, only nineteen years old. The threat of renewed warfare

between the Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France still hung over the city; not least

because Filippo Strozzi’s eldest son, Piero, eager for revenge had taken military service with the

French monarch. More profoundly, the exact nature of the political structures of Florence and the

social world of the city’s elite remained unclear. The ambiguities of the 1532 constitution

continued unresolved: was Florence a republic with a prince (like Venice and Genoa) or

something more akin to the monarchies of France and Spain?

A decade later the fortunes of Florence and the city’s elite appeared clearer and more

confident. Cosimo I had proven himself an adept politician – regaining control over the Tuscan

fortresses, freeing the dominion from a foreign military presence, and allying himself by
1
In strict technical terms the Medici principate did not constitute a monarchy until after Cosimo I’s assumption of
the title Grand Duke in 1569. Throughout this chapter, however, I use the term monarchy to refer to a form of
government, in an institutional sense, of rule by an individual as distinct from the previous communal system of
government.
 276

marriage with one of the most powerful Spanish noble houses.2 Cosimo also asserted, more

forcefully than his predecessor had done, his position as prince of the city and its territory. Not

only did this confidence end the political ambiguity of Alessandro’s reign, it also provided a

point of objective political stability around which the office-holding class could coalesce and

create a new familiarity of social practice and social place. The decade following the defeat of

the exiles at Montemurlo witnessed a re-imagining by the office-holding class of their role and

status in Florence. Most significantly, the defining feature of this role – the act of holding office

– ceased to be a political act in the 1540s; becoming instead a symbol of status and princely

favor. The social world and imagination that emerged by 1550 was distinctly courtly and no

longer civic in its conceptualization and figuration.

The work of Norbert Elias still remains fundamental to the delineation of the court

society as a distinct historical and sociological concept.3 While in recent decades scholars have

nuanced, complicated, and criticized Elias’s theories, especially about the “civilizing process,”

his description of the court society has endured in its essence.4 The court, as Elias described it,

possessed three key identifying features. It existed as a social and relational configuration of

2
The most lucid, if triumphalist, account of the first decade of Cosimo I’s reign remains Giorgio Spini, Cosimo I e
la indipendenza del principato mediceo, Second ed., (Florence: Vallechi, 1980). See also Furio Diaz, Il granducato
di Toscana: I Medici, (Turin: Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese, 1976), 66-109.
3
Norbert Elias, The Civilizing Process, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 2 vols., Vol. Two: Power and Civility, (New York:
Pantheon, 1982); and Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott, (New York: Pantheon, 1983).
4
See for example: Ronald G. Asch, Nobilities in Transition, 1550-1700: Courtiers and Rebels in Britain and
Europe, (London: Hodder Arnold, 2003); Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, eds., Princes, Patronage and the
Nobility: The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991);
William Beik, Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France: State Power and Provincial Aristocracy in
Languedoc, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Harry Berger, The Absence of Grace: Sprezzatura and
Suspicion in Two Renaissance Courtesy Books, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 34-60; Aldo Scaglione,
Knights at Court: Courtliness, Chivalry, and Courtesy from Ottonian Germany to the Italian Renaissance,
(Berkeley, Los Angeles & London: University of California Press, 1991); Jay M. Smith, The Culture of Merit:
Nobility, Royal Service, and the Making of Absolute Monarchy in France, 1600-1789, (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 1996); and Hillay Zmora, Monarchy, Aristocracy, and the State in Europe, 1300-1800, (London &
New York: Routledge, 2001).
 277

interdependent persons: a specific type of society and relationship binding the prince and the

socio-political elite in mutually reinforcing bonds. It possessed a dual nature as both the

household of the prince and the administrative center of a territorial state: no clear distinction

existed between the personal and public roles and functions of the people who constituted the

court. It also acted both to control and to preserve the socio-political elite of the prince’s

territory: the practices and rewards of the court locked the elite in competition with one another

preventing a united opposition to the rule of the prince. These same elements also served to

distinguish and so reinforce the status of the elite within the broader community of the state.

Elias’s description of the court society focused specifically on Versailles under Louis XIV and

related, more broadly, to what the sociologist considered to be a pan-European aristocratic milieu

during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. While the experience of Florence and the city’s

office-holding class in the middle of the sixteenth century falls outside these parameters, the

work of Elias remains a significant reference point for understanding the changes that occurred

following the defeat of the Florentine exiles at Montemurlo in 1537.

This chapter will demonstrate how the social world of the Florentine office-holding class

evolved into a court society during the 1540s as the city’s elite re-imagined their identity and

position in order to accord with the political transformations of the previous decade. This

Florentine court society emerged out of the civic world and imagination of the republican era. No

radical break or revolution occurred in the society and culture of the city’s elite. The court

society of the 1540s evolved as a culmination of the processes described in the previous chapter:

central concepts of the earlier civic social imagination underwent a re-conceptualization rather

than being abandoned. The business of governing Florence and its dominion, identified in the

fifteenth century in terms of the common good and public service, by 1550 had become defined
 278

by the individual honor of Cosimo I: the debt of service that their fathers had conceived as owed

to the commune of Florence had become, for the elite of the mid-sixteenth century, a debt of

personal service to Cosimo I. The holding of significant offices no longer reflected only the

personal virtue and honor of the incumbent but now also represented the grace and favor of the

Medici prince.

This chapter considers the course of these changes, but also certain important

continuities, in the social world and imagination of the office-holding class up to the middle of

the century. Two considerations have determined the year 1550 as the end point of both this

chapter and of the entire study. By that year many of the individuals that form the central objects

of this study, the generation born between 1480 and 1500, had died. Moreover, the following

decade witnessed the annexation of Siena and the Sienese dominion into a greater Tuscan state

under Cosimo I. This conquest arguably brought to a close the history of the Florentine office-

holding class as a discrete social figuration. While the old Florentine families may have

continued to dominate the society of the Medici principate the second half of the sixteenth

century saw the beginnings of a regional, Tuscan, elite.5

Cosimo I in January 1537 enjoyed a position even more ambiguous than that of his

murdered predecessor. Alessandro de’ Medici had received support from both Pope Clement VII

and Emperor Charles V. In addition to his imperial title, as Duke of Penne, the constitution of

April 1532 recognized Alessandro as duce of the Florentine Republic. The provision passed by

the Quarantotto on 9 January 1537, electing Cosimo as the Duke’s successor, however,

acknowledged the new signore only as “head and principal of the government of the city of
5
See, for example, Giovanna Benadusi, A Provincial Elite in Early Modern Tuscany: Family and Power in the
Creation of the State, (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); and Elena Fasano Guarini,
“Principe ed oligarchie nella Toscana del ‘500,” in Forme e tecniche del potere nella città (secoli XIV-XVII), ed.
Sergio Bertelli, (Perugia: Università di Perugia, 1979-80).
 279

Florence and its dominion and the magistrates and offices of these.”6 Imperial recognition of the

Quarantotto’s provision did not arrive until 28 October and this only implicitly granted Cosimo

the title of duce of the Florentine Republic. The diploma’s phrasing followed that of the

Florentine provision, recognizing Cosimo as “head and principal” of the government; but it also

conceded to the new prince both the authority and the juridical position possessed by Alessandro

at his death. This presumably included the late Duke’s Florentine title.7

As noted in the previous chapter only the Emperor could legally grant the ducal title for

Florence, and Alessandro never made any attempt to claim such a title for himself. His surviving

correspondence from the 1530s appears routinely with the simple signature “Alex. Med.”8

Following the election of 9 January 1537, Cosimo I initially followed his predecessor’s practice,

concluding his correspondence, “Cosimo Medici.”9 Corresponding to his assertive foreign and

domestic policies, however, the new signore soon laid claim to the title of Duke of Florence for

himself.10 By September 1542 he had abandoned his previous practice and now signed his letters,

“the Duke of Florence.”11 Cosimo, like Alessandro, never received imperial concession to

6
ASF, Senato dei 48, Provvisioni, 1: 119r: “per capo et primario del governo della ciptà di Firenze et suo domino et
de’ magistrati et offici di quelli.”
7
Danilo Marrara, Studi giuridici sulla Toscana medicea: Contributo alla storia degli stati assoluti in Italia, (Milan:
Giuffrè, 1965), 20-21. See also the discussion about Alessandro’s juridical position and Charles V’s refusal to grant
his son-in-law an imperial ducal title in Chapter 5 above.
8
See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 16: 30r-45r and ASF, CS, Serie 1, 61: 87r, 99r, 126r, and 172r.
9
See for example ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 70-74.
10
On Cosimo’s foreign policy between 1537 and the late 1540s see Spini, Cosimo I. On the reorganization and
institutional reform of the Florentine government and administration in the same period, see Antonio Anzilotti, La
costituzione interna dello Stato Fiorentino sotto il duca Cosimo I de’ Medici, (Florence: Francesco Lumachi, 1910);
and Diaz, Il granducato, 85-109.
11
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 63: 2. Letter from Cosimo I de’ Medici, at Poggio a Caiano, to Luigi Guicciardini, in
Castrocaro, 15 September 1542: “el Duca di fiorenza.” This letter represents the earliest extant usage of this
signature that I have located.
 280

assume this title – he simply claimed it of his own volition. In 1576, when the Emperor

Maximilian II recognized Cosimo’s heir, Francesco, as Grand Duke of Tuscany the imperial

diploma still referred to the Medici prince as “the Third duce of the Florentine Republic.”12

The significance of Cosimo’s usurpation of the title of Duke of Florence extended

beyond his own self-conception and political identity to affect the social imagination of the

Florentine office-holding class as well. It provided a stability and clarity to the constitutional

structures of the city, which the previous decade had lacked. In combination with the new

Duke’s program of institutional reform and his relations with the Spanish military presence in

north-central Italy the unilateral assumption of the ducal title helped to end the ambiguity of the

1532 settlement.13 It demonstrated that Cosimo’s position did not equate to that of the Venetian

doge but rather to the dukes of Ferrara or Mantua and the kings of France or Spain. Under

Cosimo the Florentine government, in the space of a decade, became thoroughly transformed

from the aristocratic republic imagined by the thirteen reformers in 1532 into a monarchy.

In May 1543, Charles V agreed to restore the fortresses of Florence and Livorno to

Florentine control ending the Spanish military presence in the territory. Later that same year

Cosimo embarked on a program of administrative reorganization that progressively removed

power from the civilian magistracies – the Quarantotto, the Otto di Pratica, and the Ducal

Counsellors especially – in favor of appointed ministers, secretaries (auditori), and bureaucrats.

Cosimo’s self-declaration as Duke also demonstrated his independence. For the first time in the

12
Marrara, Studi giuridici, 22. Pope Pius V granted Cosimo the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany on 27 August 1569,
over the objections of both Philip II of Spain and Maximilian II. While Philip, who required Tuscan naval support in
the Mediterranean, eventually conceded, Maximilian never conferred imperial imprimatur for the title until his
recognition of Francesco.
13
See note 10 above. On the limits of institutional reform and centralization under the Medici Grand Dukes,
however, see the illuminating depiction of jurisdictional conflicts in Donald Weinstein, The Captain’s Concubine:
Love, Honor, and Violence in Renaissance Tuscany, (Baltimore & London: John Hopkins University Press, 2000).
 281

sixteenth century – excepting the six months between 1 September 1512 and the election of

Giovanni de’ Medici as Pope Leo X in March 1513 – a Medici ruler of Florence had no personal

bonds to an external power that could limit or compromise the sovereignty of the city. The

assumption of the title demonstrated that while Cosimo owed a debt of fealty to Charles V he did

not experience an obligation to submit every action to the Emperor. This combination of clarity

in the objective structures of Florence and vigorous assertion of Florentine independence from

foreign control provided an atmosphere for the city’s office-holding class to re-imagine their

social world and identity.

The constitutional changes of April 1532 resulted, initially, in the formation a more

restricted office-holding class than had existed in the first three decades of the sixteenth century.

In the inaugural Dugento only fifty of the two-hundred and forty-two members did not possess

patrician surnames – a fraction over twenty percent.14 In the Quarantotto only one non-patrician

name appeared – Francescantonio di Francesco Nori – representing two percent of the council’s

membership.15 Compared to the distribution of seats on the comparable councils – the Ottanta

from 1502 to 1512 and 1527 to 1530 – these figures represent a tightening of access to the higher

offices of the city. One-third of the membership of the Ottanta prior to 1512 and over forty

percent of the men drawn under the reggimento of 1527-30 did not bear patrician names.16 The

percentage of patricians on the councils of the principate in 1532 do compare with the

membership of the Settanta between 1514 and 1527. Just below ninety percent of the men who

14
ASF, Tratte, 907: 181r-v. On the identification of the patriciate see Appendix B and also the discussion in Chapter
2 above.
15
ASF, Tratte, 907: 192r.
16
ASF, Tratte, 717: 167v-189r; 719: 3r-18v and 77r-89v. The figures for these two manifestations of the Ottanta are
1,520 individuals drawn and 1,016 individuals with patrician surnames (66.84%) for 1502-12; and, 686 individuals
drawn and 408 individuals with patrician surnames (59.47%) for 1527-30.
 282

sat on this Medicean council had patrician surnames.17 In the later sixteenth century the office-

holding class would become more diversified – as it evolved from an exclusively Florentine

entity into a regional elite including patricians from other Tuscan cities as well as nobles from

other Italian and European states. But in the initial decades of the Medici principate’s existence,

until the 1560s, the office-holding class remained almost entirely Florentine and patrician.18 As a

result the office-holding class in the 1540s was probably more culturally and socially

homogeneous than in any other period since the thirteenth century.

The discussion of the social world of the late Quattrocento in Chapter Two highlighted

the discrepancy between the imagined community of equal citizens and the reality of socio-

economic divisions within the office-holding class as a whole. The frescos painted by

Ghirlandaio (Figures 1-6) represented a limited vision available only to a minority of the men

eligible to sit on the commune’s magistracies. The restriction of the office-holding class after

1532, however, produced the potential for the imagination and actuality of the social world to

accord more readily than they had under the republic. The constitutional changes that formed the

principate also structured a more elitist and aristocratic office-holding class. Francesco

Guicciardini noted that the Riformatori had laid particular emphasis on the social status of the

members of both the Dugento and the Quarantotto. “[T]he principal importance of what one has

to do now,” he wrote in mid-April 1532 as the committee argued over who would receive a seat

on each council, “consists in electing these men carefully, and in placing for the foundation of

17
ASF, Tratte, 906: 66r-v. 225 individuals seated, 200 individuals with patrician surnames (88.88%).
18
R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790, (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1986), 24-51. A glance at the comprehensive tables of patricians under the principality from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries reveals the influx of families with non-Florentine and non-Italian names.
Litchfield does note, however, that very few new citizens held offices prior to the 1560s.
 283

the State people who matter the most.”19 This greater distinction and definition reproduced itself

in the appearance of the city’s elite also. In January 1550, Francesco d’Andrea Buonsignori

recorded that the Quarantotto had passed a provision mandating that the members of the Ducal

Council should, when in public or undertaking official duties, wear “a [black] lucco lined with

colored cloth and velvet slippers and a hat of silk.” When a counselor rode through the city, the

provision continued, he had to have two servants accompanying him and “velvet trappings and

coverings” for the horse.20

Among this more restricted office-holding class, however, the most prestigious offices

achieved a broader distribution than they had under the previous Medici regime of 1512-27. One

hundred and fifty-four men sat on the Otto di Pratica between 1530 and 1550, which remained

the most important magistracy until it is gradual eclipse by the appointed Pratica Segreta after

1545, from a total possible of three hundred and twenty. This ratio greatly exceeded the

distribution for the same office between 1514 and 1527, when only sixty-nine men of a possible

two hundred and eight sat on the Otto. An inner circle of favored men did develop under the

principate, similar to that which had existed in the previous Medici regime, with twenty-one men

appearing on the Otto on five or more occasions. However, the numerical predominance of these

men was less than that of the seventeen men who monopolized the Otto between 1514 and 1527.

The inner circle of the principate represented less than one-sixth of the membership of the

magistracy and accounted for fewer than forty percent of the total seats on the magistracy until

1550. By comparison, the inner circle of the earlier reggimento represented almost one-quarter of

19
Francesco Guicciardini, Lettere inedite di Francesco Guicciardini a Bartolomeo Lanfredini dalla fine dell’assedio
di Firenze al secondo covegno di Clemente VII e di Carlo V, ed. André Otetea, (Aquila: Vecchioni, 1926), 141. See
also 139.
20
Francesco di Andrea Buonsignori, Memorie (1530-1565), ed. Sandro Bertelli and Gustavo Bertoli, (Florence:
Libreria Chiari, 2000), 49.
 284

the Otto’s members for the period and held over half of all the possible seats.21 Paradoxically,

then, the office-holding class of the principate – although narrower – came closer to the

egalitarian access to office imagined in republican Florence.

The previous chapter discussed how, during the 1530s, the office-holding class of

Florence withdrew rhetorically from the active public life that had defined the elite of the

Quattrocento. This process continued after the election of Cosimo I in a more defined manner,

which can best be described as a de-politicization. The withdrawal of the early 1530s had

emerged under the twin impulses of a desire to avoid the factional conflicts and bloodshed of

1527-30 and uncertainty about the shape of Florence’s government under Alessandro. The

office-holding class sought to reduce their liability and exposure to any further changes in the

institutions and organization of the city. In many ways this process represented a continuation of

the political agnosticism that had permeated the elite after 1512. Following the defeat of the

exiles at Montemurlo in 1537 and in light of the increasingly secure and assertive government of

Cosimo I the momentum of this rhetorical withdrawal subsided, but a more definite avoidance of

political conflicts developed. References to a desire to retire from office holding and live outside

the city at a villa disappeared from correspondence; but so did any mention of political activities

at all.

21
ASF, Tratte, 906: 81r-82v, 187r; 907: 43r-44v, 67r-69v. For comparison, on the Dieci di Libertà e Pace between
1502 and 1512 113 men of a possible 200 and between 1527 and 1530 sixty-four of a possible seventy had their
names drawn for the office: ASF, Tratte, 905: 125r-126v; 906: 46r, 47r-48v. On the inner circle of the regime of
1512-27 see Chapter 2 above. The twenty-one men who sat on the Otto di Pratica five or more times between 1532
and 1550 were: Roberto di Donato Acciaiuoli (6), Giovanni di Bardo Corsi (5), Raffaelle di Pandolfo Corbinelli (6),
Agostino di Francesco Dini (6), Andrea di Tommaso Minerbetti (5), Jacopo di Bongianni Gianfigliazzi (7), Luigi di
Piero Guicciardini (6), Raffaelle di Francesco de’ Medici (6), Filippo di Benedetto de’ Nerli (6), Francescantonio di
Francesco Nori (6), Luigi di Piero Ridolfi (5), Ottaviano di Lorenzo de’ Medici (6), Prinzivalle di M. Luigi della
Stufa (7), Giovanni di Filippo dell’Antella (5), Ippolito di Giovanbattista Buondelmonti (5), Alessandro di Gherardo
Corsini (6), Federigo di Roberto de’ Ricci (6), Taddeo di Francesco Guiducci (5), Alessandro di Niccolò Antinori
(6), Giuliano di Piero Capponi (5), and Girolamo di Luca degli Albizzi (5).
 285

In previous decades, the correspondence between the Guicciardini brothers had revolved

around events in Florence and the iteration of people and policies related to the government.

With one brother almost always absent from the city on an administrative appointment in the

Florentine or papal dominions, his fellows had continually sought to provide up-to-date political

news and analysis from home.22 While the trend of serial absences from Florence continued

under the government of Cosimo I the political narrative that had sustained the Guicciardini

correspondence dried up in the years after 1537. On 3 October 1539, Francesco Guicciardini

reported to Luigi, serving as commissioner in Pisa, that, “[h]ere things proceed as usual.”23 In

January the following, Girolamo wrote a letter to Luigi detailing news of affairs from France and

Flanders but no mention of Florentine events, concluding, “there is no other news.”24 Three years

later, Jacopo Guicciardini sent Luigi, now in Castrocaro, a lengthy recitation of political news

from England, Scotland, Flanders, and Sicily, but his mention of Florentine affairs consisted only

of observations on the agricultural outlook.25 This tendency to discuss political events from

elsewhere in Europe – predominantly rumors concerning the Ottomans or the on-going struggle

between Francis I of France and the Emperor Charles V – while observing that nothing new had

happened in Florence recurs throughout the correspondence between the brothers after 1537.

22
See, for example, the many letters between the brothers cited in Chapters 3 and 4 above.
23
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 15. Letter from Francesco Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 3
October 1539: “Qui si prosede all’usato.”
24
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 64. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 4 January
1540: “altro non ci è di nuove.”
25
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 63: 97.
 286

Only with regard to agricultural or occasionally bureaucratic difficulties did local affairs earn a

mention.26

The de-politicization discernable in the Guicciardini correspondence emerged under the

impetus of two impulses – one, practical, and the second, cultural. In the first place, the draining

of political commentary perhaps reflected the increasing centralization of government in the

hands of Cosimo I and appointed ministers or secretaries as opposed to the civilian magistrates

of the office-holding class. As the city’s elite became excluded from the decision-making process

the Guicciardini brothers simply did not enjoy the same access to the corridors of power that had

previously fuelled their political knowledge. But this restriction of the role and competence of

the office-holding class provides only part of the answer.

The complex shift in political culture from the civic world of republican public life – of

active engagement, debate, and competition – to the courtly society of a monarchical state had a

more significant impact in determining the de-politicization of the Florentine office-holding

class. Part of the mélange of impulses that underlay this cultural shift evolved from the still

pervasive memory of the siege of Florence – a lingering fear of any return to the factional

conflicts of republican politics that had resulted in the internecine bloodshed and suffering

inflicted during and after the siege. This desire reached its pessimistic apotheosis in Francesco

Guicciardini’s unfinished Storia d’Italia, written between the end of 1537 and the author’s death

on 22 March 1540.

The narrative coherence of Guicciardini’s last historical work lies in the contrast that he

makes between the peace and tranquility of Italian affairs prior to 1494 and the violence and

26
For examples of letters devoted to foreign news to the exclusion of Florentine events see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 34,
40, and 49. For examples of local news being confined to non-political affairs see ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 35 and 49.
 287

instability of the following decades.27 He presents the unraveling of the Italian city-state system

as a tragedy – a course of events determined by the flaws of political leaders, who then were

unable to alter the path they had chosen: “not remembering the frequent shifts of fortune and

using the power given them for the common good for the harm of others, they made themselves,

either through lack of prudence or through surfeit of ambition, the authors of new

perturbations.”28

Unlike his earlier histories the Storia d’Italia did not focus on Florence specifically, but

on affairs across the Italian peninsula as well as events in ultramontane Europe that influenced

the Italian states. However, Guicciardini’s personal experiences of events in the city on the Arno,

especially between 1527 and 1537, must have had a measurable impact on the Storia’s

overwhelming condemnation of the avarice, ambition, and short-sightedness of political leaders

who pursued conflict as tactic for their own advancement. Moreover the Storia contained a

pessimistic judgment about the futility of all political actions and intentions in the face of the

variability of Fortune. Both these strands of Guicciardini’s narrative combined in the historian’s

ironic description of the imprisonment of Lodovico Sforza, the deposed duke of Milan, by Louis

XII of France: “enclosing in a narrow prison the thoughts and ambitions of one whom the bounds

of Italy had previously struggled to contain…so varied and miserable is the human condition,

and so uncertain to each one is his future wellbeing.”29

Guicciardini presented a narrative of political failure and futility: an expression of the

withdrawal from public life experienced by the office-holding class of Florence in the 1530s

27
See Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence, (New York:
Norton, 1984), 271-301.
28
Francesco Guicciardini, Storia d’Italia, ed. Franco Catalano. 3 vols. (n.p.: Mondadori, 1975), 1: 3.
29
Ibid., 1: 150.
 288

taken to its extreme conclusion. To this pessimistic view the historical writings of Filippo de’

Nerli, Commentari dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze, begun around 1534 but

largely written between 1549 and 1552, provide a counterpoint, illuminating a newer impulse

toward de-politicization. De’ Nerli presents political action not as futile but as no longer

necessary under Cosimo I. The title of De’ Nerli’s history indicates his concern with tracing the

“civic doings” (fatti civili) of Florence from the early thirteenth century until the accession of

Cosimo I and battle of Montemurlo.

As with most of contemporary Florentine historians, De’ Nerli viewed the course of the

city’s history as one of civil dissent and conflict between various political factions: “this city

never lacked reasons for scandal nor did it ever lack factions and civil sedition.”30 He began his

history by observing that, like Guicciardini, he desired to unravel the course of events that

followed the French invasion of the Italian peninsula in 1494 and the expulsion of the Medici

from Florence in the same year. But De’ Nerli found it necessary to commence not in the late

fifteenth century, but in the early thirteenth century – with the emergence of conflict between the

pro-papal Guelf and pro-imperial Ghibelline factions. His narrative develops as a story of

continuing civic discord in Florence until 1537, which De’ Nerli presents not only as the

endpoint of his own narrative but also as the end of history in Florence. He wrote that the victory

of Cosimo and the defeat of the exiles at Montemurlo “seem to have put a stop and given an end

to the many discords, ancient and modern, of our citizens.” He continued that having reached this

point it no longer seemed necessary to continue to recount the fatti civili “because…our citizens

30
Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537. 2 vols.
(Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 1: 37.
 289

should no longer have cause to contend politically over matters of state and government, all the

sum of the government being reduced in the authority of one sole Prince and one sole Lord.”31

The creation of the Medici monarchy, in De’ Nerli’s narrative, provided the only possible

means to circumvent the endemic factionalism of the city. The rule of Cosimo I, by removing

political authority and decision making from the office-holding class, removed the source of all

internal conflict: control over the city and its government. Like Guicciardini, De’ Nerli presented

the power of the divine in the world as an irresistible force determining the human condition. But

whereas the former depicted Fortune as cruel and capricious, the latter gave a more beneficent

representation: “it was determined by the heavens that this city should neither rest nor quiet itself

except under the government of one sole Prince.” He continued that reason dictated that the

Florentines should not surpass their ancestors, the ancient Romans, who also had to choose

between the ruin of their empire or rule by a monarch.32

The civil concord promoted by the Medici monarchy after 1530 emerges as a constant

refrain in the second volume of De’ Nerli’s history. The balìa, he wrote, undertook the

constitutional reforms of April 1532 “for the universal peace and quiet of [the city], and also to

calm and quiet universally the souls of all the citizens.”33 This observation, that the establishment

of the principate ended the political conflicts of the republican era, existed not only in the pro-

31
Ibid., 2: 262. See also 2: 172.
32
Ibid., 1: 37. See also, 1: i where De’ Nerli notes that the Medici principate succeeded because “oltre alla voglia de’
cittadini, la fortuna e tutto il cielo a fare tale effeto seguire.” Leonardo Bruni, in the early fifteenth century, had first
made the claim that the city of Florence had existed under the Roman Republic, rather than being founded by Julius
Caesar as the medieval tradition argued, and so, that Florence’s republican tradition made the Florentines the true
heirs of the Roman Imperium: see Leonardo Bruni, Panegirico della città di Firenze, trans. Frate Lazaro da Padova,
(Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1974). The comparison between Cosimo I and the Emperor Augustus, implicit in De’
Nerli’s argument at this point, was prominent in the second Medici prince’s iconography: see Janet Cox-Rearick,
Dynasty and Destiny in Medici Art: Pontormo, Leo X and the Two Cosimos, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1984).
33
Nerli, Commentarj, 2: 202-03. Compare with the almost identical language at 2: 172, 229, and 246.
 290

Medici rhetoric of De’ Nerli’s narrative but also in the fortunes of men such as Antonio di

Simone Canigiani and Luigi di Luigi Martelli.

Canigiani had wed Argentina di Tommaso Soderini and Martelli had married Margarita

di Giovanvettorio Soderini. Under the Medici reggimento of 1512-27 this made both men

politically suspect and they suffered, accordingly, from exclusion from public office during the

1520s: Martelli held one position – as podestà of Borgo San Lorenzo in 1526 – and Canigiani

held none. In the republican system affinal relationships could affect political fortunes: in 1519,

Filippo Valori recorded that he had difficulty finding a bride because the Medici “suspected

Niccolò my father.”34 Following the capitulation of reggimento of 1527-30 to the papal-imperial

army in August 1530 the Soderini again endured political reprisals for their prominent position

among the anti-Medicean alliance: eight members of the lineage were placed under bans of exile

and one member, Luigi di Paolo, was executed in the final months of 1530 – more than any other

single family. The exiles included the father-in-law of Antonio Canigiani.35 But under the Medici

principate the fortunes of both Canigiani and Luigi Martelli flourished. Martelli, who enjoyed

connections with Jacopo Salviati, began holding offices in January 1531, and in 1543 received a

seat on the Dugento.36 In 1546, Canigiani was appointed to the Dugento also, and he then held

offices regularly if less often than Martelli.37

34
BNCF, Panciatichiani, 134, Insert 6: 2r. Ricordanze di Filippo di Niccolò di Bartolomeo Valori: “gravassino
niccolò mio padre.” Niccolò Valori had been implicated in the 1513 conspiracy, led by Pieropaolo Boscoli and
Agostino Capponi, against the Medici family: see Niccolò’s own narrative of the plot and his subsequent
imprisonment in BNCF, Panciatichiani, 134, Insert 1: 17v-18r.
35
ASF, OGBR, 231: 10v, 11r, 13v, and 15r.
36
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v. Note, that in this list of offices held, Martelli reports sitting on the Sedici for
September-December 1522 a claim not supported by the Tratte records: see David Herlihy et al., Florentine
Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office Holders, 1282-1532. Machine readable data file (Florentine
Renaissance Resources/STG, Brown University, 2002). Two of Jacopo Salviati’s sons-in-law and one his sons stood
as godfathers to three of Martelli’s children: ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1471: 104v and 113r.
 291

In a similar fashion, men such as Alessandro d’Antonio Malegonnelle, Alessandro di

Niccolò Antinori, and even Lorenzo Strozzi, brother of the ill-fated Filippo, who had been

politically prominent during the reggimento of 1527-30 continued to hold offices under the

restored Medici regime. Antinori, who had an especially prominent record of office holding

between 1527 and 1530, received seats on the balìe of August and November 1530 and was

appointed to the inaugural Quarantotto in April 1532. He then held prominent positions every

year, serving on the Otto di Pratica, the Ducal Council, and as a Monte Official on multiple

occasions.38 Malegonnelle received a seat on the November 1530 balìa automatically becoming a

member of the Dugento in April 1532. In 1537 he led the interrogations of the men captured at

Montemurlo and subsequently received a place on the Quarantotto the same year. Like Antinori,

he then regularly appeared on the most prestigious magistracies.39 Strozzi, like Malegonnelle,

made the transition from the November 1530 balìa to the Dugento. Although he only held one

prominent office subsequently, this occurred in 1539 following his brother’s unsuccessful armed

rebellion, and the office was the most influential of all, the Otto di Pratica.40 The experiences of

these three individuals, as well as those of Antonio Canigiani and Luigi Martelli, testify to the

extent to which the office-holding class de-politicized itself following the ascension of Cosimo I

in 1537.

37
ASF, Canigiani, 123: 207v, 219r, and 220r; ASF, Tratte, 907: 8v.
38
Antinori served on the Ufficiali del Monte seven times, the Otto di Pratica six times, the Ducal Council nine times,
and as an accoppiatore seventeen times: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r-44r, 56r-58r, 68r-69r, 144v-145v, 146v, 147v, 175r,
179r, 188r, 192r, 193r-195v, 201v, 202v-203r, 204r-205v, 206v-207r, 238r, 239r, and 240r.
39
Malegonnelle served on the Otto di Pratica four times, on the Ducal Council nine times, and as an accoppiatore
thirteen times: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r, 44r, 68r, 69v, 144v-145r, 146r-147v, 180r, 194r-195v, 204r-205v, 206v, 207r,
238r, and 239r-240r. On Malegonnelle’s position during the interrogations after Montemurlo see ASF, Miscellanea
Medicea, 509, Insert 3.
40
ASF, Tratte, 907: 69r and 180v.
 292

The holding of offices itself, under the new monarchical system, ceased to be a political

act in the same way that had it under the republican constitution. Prior to the institution of the

principate the distribution of offices had reflected the relative strength of various competing

factions within the city’s elite. The connections, loyalties, and alliances of the sottogoverno that

operated behind the imagined fraternity of citizens, discussed in Chapter Two, determined an

individual’s electoral success or failure. Political conflicts had occurred over control of the

electoral mechanisms and inclusion in the electoral system. As De’ Nerli observed, with the

removal of the republican system that distributed offices by lot among the office-holding class

and its replacement by a process ultimately determined arbitrarily by a prince, the engine driving

these conflicts disappeared. The economy of political power, which in the republican system

constituted a relatively free market of competing and often over-lapping social configurations,

had become a monopoly in which competition for offices was restricted.41 Previous factional

allegiances, and even possible opposition to the Medici, did not preclude an individual from

holding office under Cosimo.

One significant exception existed to the general atmosphere of amnesty that pervaded the

office-holding class under Cosimo I. The rebels of the 1530s, either those captured at

Montemurlo and imprisoned or those who had escaped, remained beyond the pale – unforgiven

and unreconciled. Throughout the 1540s the Medici prince received numerous petitions from

relatives of such men or from the individuals themselves seeking forgiveness for their offenses.

Braccio di Battista Guicciardini wrote on behalf on his cousin and namesake, Braccio di Niccolò:

“confident in the beneficence and clemency of [Your Excellency] humbly he beseeches you to

deign to render him the grace of liberation from the prison where he has been held and presently

41
Compare with the discussion of monopoly formation in Elias, The Civilizing Process, 112-13.
 293

finds himself.”42 Vieri di Bernardo da Castiglione launched a veritable letter-writing campaign in

order to free himself: “[your] most humble and miserable servant Vieri di Bernardo da

Castiglione throws himself again at your most merciful feet humbly beseeching that you should

wish to deign for the love of Jesus Christ to do him the grace of releasing him from the Stinche.”

This particular petition it received only curt dismissal from Cosimo’s principal secretary, Lelio

Torelli: “It is not yet time.”43 The others that followed received similar responses. The memory

of these men remained so toxic that even individuals who had not played any role in the events

of Montemurlo suffered punishment for associating with them. In 1547, ten years after the battle,

Filippo di Lorenzo Gondi received a sentence of three years in exile for dining at the house of

Piero di Filippo Strozzi in Venice.44 A distinction operated between individuals, such as

Alessandro Antinori, who competed within the previous political framework and those who had

taken up arms to compete militarily with the monarchical system. This latter group remained

very much political enemies of the Medici and the Florentine state, while the former became

fully integrated into the office-holding class of the principality.

The process of de-politicization highlighted here across a variety of sources- the

Guicciardini correspondence, the historical writings of Francesco Guicciardini and Filippo de’

Nerli, the political experiences of various members of the office-holding class – had a visual

42
ASF, OGBP, 2215: 27: “confidato nella benignita et cementia di quella humilmente li supplica voglia degnarsi
farli gratia di liberatione delle carcere dove /è/ stato et di presente si truova.” See also OGB, 2221: 560 and 2222:
755.
43
ASF, OGBP, 2221: 36: “l’umilissimo et misero servo vieri di bernardo da castiglione di ricorrere ali sue
clementissimi piedi humilmente suplicandole si voglie degniare per ll’amor di yhs xpo farli gratia di cavarlo delle
stinche;” “Non è ancora tempo.” Da Castiglione had previously won the concession of having his sentence
transferred from the fortress of Volterra (still a maximum security prison today) to the Florentine communal prison,
the Stinche. See also: OGBP, 2215, unfoliated; 2220: 157; 2222: 806; and 2223: 90, 172, and 343.
44
ASF, OGBP, 2223: 4. Several other similar petitions from various individuals who had dealings with Florentine
exiles – often from young men who had taken military service for the French crown under Piero or Fra Leone
Strozzi – survive in the records of the Otto di Guardia.
 294

analogue in the portraits completed by Francesco Salviati during the 1540s. These images bear

the obvious influence of Bronzino, especially the paintings he completed during the 1530s

discussed in the previous chapter (Figures, 18, 20, and 21). Salviati’s portraits present similar

solitary male figures, elegantly attired in dark clothing. Several of the images also share linear

architectural backgrounds that imply and conjure the Florentine urban landscape.45 But important

differences separate these portraits from the 1540s from those of Bronzino from the preceding

decade. The images produced by Bronzino had suggested a withdrawal from public life in favor

of the cultural pursuits of art, literature, and music. A sense of interiority, seclusion, and

uncertainty pervaded the images, the product of the ambiguous and unsettled political landscape

of Florence in the years between the siege and the assassination of Alessandro de’ Medici.

The images produced by Salviati in the following decade enjoy a lighter, more open and

confident, feel. Moreover the references to withdrawal in favor of artistic or literary practices

have all but vanished. The Portrait of a Man with a Letter (Figure 24) stands out in this regard as

one of the few Salviati portraits that refer to such pursuits. This half-length portrait presents a

young man standing somewhat awkwardly before a wood-paneled backdrop. He appears as if

interrupted in the act of reading the letter, clasped in both hands, which he now folds over –

perhaps attempting to conceal the text. He wears a simple black doublet and hat, but the

elaborately filigreed lace collar to his shirt, the ring on the little finger of his right hand, and the

hint of a metallic belt quietly suggest wealth. On the desk behind his right elbow sit an ink bowl

with quills and some folded letters, and a closed book sits to his left. This image, with the dark

interior feel given by the wood, and the abundant references to a life of letters accords with the

45
See the discussion in Chapter 5 above.
 295

Figure 24. Francesco de’ Rossi called Francesco Salviati Portrait of a Man with a Letter (ca.
1545). Panel painting, 180 x 77 cm. Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi.
 296

earlier images painted by Bronzino – suggestive not only of an avoidance of political conflict but

also of a withdrawal from public life.

Far more common, among the Salviati portraits, are images such as the Portrait of a

Young Man with Gloves (Figure 23), the Portrait of a Man with a Handkerchief (Figure 25), and

the Portrait of a Man with a Sword (Figure 26). The Young Man with Gloves, depicted against

the allegorical backdrop, sits contraposto – his body angled toward the right of the image, his

head turned to the left. The very stylized positioning of the hands, like so many of Bronzino’s

earlier portraits, quotes Michelangelo’s Il bastoniere (Figure 19). The youth wears a richly

figured black overgarment – perhaps a cioppa or a long tunic – with a rose-colored doublet and

white shirt beneath. His raised left hand, with a ring on the little finger, holds pair of gloves with

mannered ease.

The Man with a Handkerchief stands formally in front of simple angular backdrop. His

whole body angles toward the left of the image, but his head has turned slightly toward to viewer

(at whom he looks) to present a three-quarter profile of his sharp features. Again, the subject

wears a dark doublet from beneath which the elaborate lace collar and cuffs of his shirt appear.

The thumb of his left hand hooks under his belt – once again a ring adorns the little finger. His

right arm, raised from the elbow, crosses his body and in his right hand he clasps a handkerchief

below his heart. The triangle formed by his extended elbows and head provides strength to the

entire image.

The Man with a Sword is stylistically very similar. The subject appears standing,

although this time in a half-length portrait, his body angled toward the right with his head turned

back toward the viewer to present a three-quarter profile. The man stands before a more

elaborate linear architectural background, which frames and centers the viewer’s focus. The
 297

Figure 25. Francesco de’ Rossi called Francesco Salviati, Portrait of a Man with a Handkerchief
(ca. 1545). Panel painting, 96 x 75 cm. Florence: Galleria Corsini.
 298

Figure 26. Francesco de’ Rossi called Francesco Salviati Portrait of a Man with a Sword (ca.
1543-48). Panel painting, 75 x 58.5 cm. Naples: Museo e Galleria di Capodimonte.
 299

subject wears the now familiar dark doublet, hat, and lace-collared shirt. His right arm, bent at

the elbow, crosses the bottom of the frame in front of his body. His right hand rests on the hilt of

a sword, which appears to rest point downward. His left elbow juts away from his body and the

viewer, suggesting that his unseen left hand rests on his hip.

Several commonalities unite these images, and while they share some of these with the

portraits by Bronzino and even with the frescos by Ghirlandaio from half a century earlier, the

Salviati portraits clearly reflect and reinforce a different social world and imagination. The

continued uniformity of appearance among the subjects constitutes the most obvious

convergence between the images. All the men depicted appear, with slight variations, in dark,

simple yet elegant, over garments and lace-collared shirts. This uniform appearance although

markedly different in terms of detail provides an analogous message to that of the ranks of red-

robed men depicted by Ghirlandaio in the 1480s: it provides a sense of community and equality.

Like its Quattrocento forebears, the office-holding class of the mid-Cinquecento imagined itself

as homogeneous community of equals – in the social imagination, at least, no distinctions of

hierarchy or rank separated the members. Similar to the images produced by both Ghirlandaio

and Bronzino the Salviati portraits also conjured a sense of place, of belonging to Florence, of

association between the city itself and the identity of the city’s elite. Although, with the

exception of the allegorical figures in the Portrait of the Young Man with Gloves (Figure 23), in

Salviati’s images this sense of fiorentinità appears as much through the mimicking of Bronzino’s

own architectural forms as it does from any real sense of the Florentine urban landscape.46

46
On the influence of Bronzino, and other artists, on Salviati’s style see Philippe Costamagna, “La potraitiste,” in
Francesco Salviati (1510-1563) ou la Bella Maniera, ed. Catherine Monbeig Goguel, (Milan/Paris: Electa/Editions
de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998).
 300

The appearance of the men in Salviati’s portraits resembles those depicted by Bronzino in

the previous decade. But the accoutrements and props of the images indicate a shift in the social

world and imagination of the Florentine elite. The gloves, the handkerchief, the sword – which

are common not only to the images discussed here but to many of the portraits produced by

Salviati in Florence during the 1540s47 – indicate a dramatic reconception of identity by the

office-holding class removed from the anxiety and uncertainty of the 1530s. The trappings of

Salviati’s subjects bespeak not introverted artistic pursuits but public display. The careful

mannered positioning of the figures, the composed self-possession of their faces, the deliberate

yet casually elegant inclusion of the gloves, the handkerchief, and the sword all reflect and help

to constitute a new, re-imagined, community for the office-holding class: a community not of

active citizens but of courtly aristocrats. The objects included with the men quietly suggest status

and prestige.

While Ghirlandaio literally depicted the office-holding class as a collectivity, the portraits

of Salviati build such a community in the relations between the depicted men. A dialogue of

display and response exists between the images, not just in the common appearance of their

subjects, but also in the self-conscious public presentation of each man.48 Like the Ghirlandaio

frescos, but unlike Bronzino’s portraits from the previous decade, these images represent

assertions of identity and status to the viewer. They are far more open and public than the interior

and introverted figures of the 1530s. Salviati’s subjects may be de-politicized but they are men

engaged in public life.

47
See the catalog of Salviati’s portraits in Luisa Mortari, Francesco Salviati, (Rome: Leonardo - De Luca, 1992).
48
Compare with the discussions of court society, presentation, and social relations in Elias, The Court Society; and
Wayne A. Rebhorn, Courtly Performances: Masking and Festivity in Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 1978).
 301

The public life of the office-holding class in the 1540s still revolved, as it had done in the

fifteenth century, around their epononymous role as holders of public magistracies. Although the

depiction and imagination of the city’s elite continued down the path set by Bronzino in avoiding

representations of men as office holders, the act of office holding re-emerged as a defining

feature of patrician identity and honor. In the developing stability of the state and the government

under Cosimo I the holding of office became central once more and the language of interiority

and withdrawal that had colored the period of Alessandro’s rule disappeared.

Participation in the public magistracies had always possessed an association with the

personal honor of the individual. In 1472 Piero Capponi had begged Lorenzo il Magnifico de’

Medici to ensure that he became eligible to hold office “because life without honor is a still

life.”49 Receiving and exercising public positions continued to relate to the honor of the man

chosen in the 1540s. But while Piero Capponi, in the 1470s, implied that the act of sitting on a

prestigious magistracy endowed or increased one’s honor, and indeed that absence from such

positions equated to a loss of honor, members of the Florentine elite in the mid-sixteenth century

understood such an act as reflecting their honor.

In the relatively closed and stable office-holding class that had emerged by the 1540s

office holding was a product of the elite’s social status not a producer of their prestige.

Domenico di Braccio Martelli, while serving as commissioner of Arezzo in 1537, equated his

service with his personal honor. In May, he reported a difference of opinion between himself and

the local military commander over the punishment of a young man who had harassed and

attempted to rape a married woman. The captain counseled that Martelli should not arrest the

49
ASF, MAP, 28: 393. Letter from Piero Capponi, to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 10 August 1492: “perchè la vita
sanz’onore è un viver’ morto.”
 302

culprit, which Martelli himself felt would reflect poorly on his honor.50 Several months later,

Martelli wrote to Cosimo I to complain that the bargello (police official) for the Florentine

contado had entered Arezzo to arrest one Guasparre Tondinelli without informing Martelli. An

angry crowd of Tondinelli’s relatives and friends confronted Martelli demanding to know the

reason for his detention, embarrassing the commissioner who felt his honor had suffered: “if

Jacopo de’ Medici [the Commissioner General] wants Guasparre, or any other man of this city,

he has only to inform me.”51 On both occasions, Martelli implied that his position as

commissioner reflected his standing, and so anything that infringed his ability to exercise this

office harmed his honor and status. In May 1544, Bindo d’Antonio Altoviti wrote to thank

Cosimo for his election as a Monte Official: “it certainly pleases me to receive such an honorable

office.”52 Once again the phrasing suggest not that Altoviti saw the office not as constitutive but

as reflective of his honor – his pleasure at the appointment derived from satisfaction that his

status had been deemed worthy of such a position. As Altoviti went on successfully to decline

the position he obviously did not feel the need actually to hold the post in order to preserve his

honor.

Altoviti provides an illuminating example of how the elite of Florence understood office

holding in the 1540s through the persistent campaign that he waged to have a member of his

family appointed to the Quarantotto. Like Filippo Strozzi, Bindo Altoviti had pursued a

commercial rather than a political career – and his fortune and life centered on Rome and the

50
ASF, MDP, 331: 239r.
51
ASF, MDP, 333: 79r. Letter from Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 16 July 1537: “se
iacopo de’ medici voleva o guasparre o altro qualsivoglia huomo di questa città bastava ne scrivissi un motto.”
52
ASF, MDP, 365A: 842r. Letter from Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 21 May 1544: “piacemi
certamente vegniare in tale ufitio honorevole.”
 303

Papal Court, not on Florence.53 Apart from one term on the Cento in 1527 and although he

received a seat on the Dugento in 1532 Altoviti had only held the office of Monte Official prior

to 1546.54 Despite his apparent personal disinclination to pursue public office as well as the

tensions between the banker and Cosimo I over Altoviti’s relations with the Florentine exile

community in Rome and his close association with the anti-Medicean Pope Paul III, Altoviti

became a vociferous advocate for his family’s representation on the Quarantotto. No member of

the Altoviti had received a seat on the inaugural senate and neither Alessandro nor Cosimo had

appointed a representative from the family to a position on the council in the succeeding years.55

Upon learning, in December 1540, that Cosimo I planned to appoint new members to the

Quarantotto Altoviti commenced to petition the prince to choose his cousin Bardo di Giovanni as

one of these.56 In January 1541, Altoviti equated a position on the Quarantotto with the honor

and status of his entire lineage. He beseeched Cosimo to name Bardo to the senate “so that our

house will no longer remain without such a dignity, not being inferior – neither in quality nor in

service toward Your Excellency and Your Most Illustrious ancestors - to the many other houses

53
On Altoviti’s life and career see Melissa Meriam Bullard, “Bindo Altoviti, Renaissance Banker and Papal
Financier,” in Raphael, Cellini and a Renaissance Banker: The Patronage of Bindo Altoviti, ed. Alan Chong,
Donatella Pegazzano, and Dimitrios Zikos, (Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2003).
54
ASF, Tratte, 719: 73r; 907: 181r. Altoviti was elected as a Monte Official seven times prior to 1546: ASF, Tratte,
906: 70v; 907: 56r-57r. Altoviti was drawn for the Signoria twice under the reggimento of 1527-30 but did not sit on
the magistracy on either occasion: Herlihy et al., Online Tratte.
55
Jacopo Nardi’s allegation that Alessandro never replaced dead members of the Quarantotto, in order to centralize
the appearance of authority in his own hands, is false: Jacopo Nardi, Istorie della città di Firenze, ed. Agenore Gelli.
2 vols. (Florence: Felice le Monnier, 1858), 2: 225. Alessandro appointed three men to the Quarantotto on 25
August 1534: Lorenzo di Bernardo Ridolfi, Domenico di Matteo Canigiani, and Domenico di Braccio Martelli:
ASF, Tratte, 907: 192r.
56
The first extant letter of Altoviti’s campaign is dated 11 December 1540: ASF, MDP, 348: 38r.
 304

that have it.”57 In March 1541, Cosimo elected Bardo to the Otto di Pratica. While this pleased

Bindo Altoviti – “holding his every honor as my own” – the banker did not aver from again

requesting that his cousin receive a seat on the Quarantotto “for [the] honor of my house.”58 In

October, Altoviti again petitioned the Medici prince. Once more he noted that the absence of the

Altoviti from the senate implied that their standing did not equal that of the families represented

on the council: “especially seeing [the dignity of the Quarantotto] conferred on many other

[houses], and on some more than once, which neither in quality nor in service to Your

Excellency and the ancestors of Your Most Illustrious House are superior to our House.”59 No

member of the Altoviti received a seat on the Quarantotto in 1541.

Altoviti recommenced his campaign in March 1546 again noting that his lineage equaled

those already represented on the senate and so deserved a place among them.60 Altoviti clearly

did not perceive a seat on the Quarantotto as constitutive of but as reflective of his family’s

honor. The continual refrain that the Altoviti were not inferior to any of the Florentine houses

currently represented on the senate derived from an understanding of office holding as a product

of an individual or family’s status and prestige. Bindo Altoviti saw his family as deserving of a

position of the Quarantotto not as needing a seat in order to reinforce or improve their standing.

The persistence and rhetorical urgency of Altoviti’s petitions did reflect, however, a perception

57
ASF, MDP, 348: 154r. Letter from Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1 January 1541: “acciochè la
chasa nostra non resti più sanza Tale dignità non sendo quella inferiore a molte altre chase che l’anno nè di qualità
nè di servitù verso vostra Ex[cellen]tia et di sua Ill[ustrissi]ma antecessori.”
58
ASF, MDP, 349: 235r. Letter from Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 26 March 1541: “reputando
ogni honor’ sua come mio;” “per honor’ della casa mia.”
59
ASF, MDP, 355: 226r. Letter from Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 October 1541:
“vedendola maxime conferita in molte altre et in alcune duplicatamente che nè di qualità nè di servitio con la
Ex[cellen]tia vostra et antecessori di sua Ill[ustrissi]ma Casa sono alla Casa nostra superiore.”
60
ASF, MDP, 372: 177r.
 305

that status and honor manifested themselves most obviously and clearly in the holding of public

offices. Altoviti’s letter writing ultimately succeeded; although Cosimo named Bindo himself,

and not his cousin, to the Quarantotto in 1546.61

Further important differences between office holding under the republican tradition and

office holding under the monarchical system became manifest around the notion of honor. The

office holders under Cosimo I understood their position and the fulfillment of their official duties

not only in terms of their own personal and familial honor, but also in terms of the honor of

Cosimo himself. In the complaints discussed above, Domenico Martelli noted that not only his

own honor, but also that of Cosimo would suffer if the commissioner’s ability to perform his

official duties was impinged. Regarding the attempted rape in May 1537, Martelli observed that

if justice did not appear to be served the affair “would not proceed with honor, neither Your

Excellency’s nor my own.”62 In October, he wrote that the bargello’s arrest of Guasparre

Tondinelli without notifying Martelli “seems to me to be honorable neither for Your Excellency

nor for me.”63

Girolamo degli Albizzi also associated the honor of the Medici prince with the rule of

law and the service of justice in April 1541. Albizzi wrote to Cosimo I regarding the actions of

Luigi di Piero Arrighi, who attacked one Francesco di Verdiano, a member of the rural militia,

while he slept. Arrighi, being a Florentine citizen, was subject only to the jurisdiction of the Otto

di Guardia and not of the local administrative official; but no prosecution had occurred. Albizzi

61
ASF, Tratte, 907: 192v.
62
ASF, MDP, 331: 239r. Letter from Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 23 May 1537: “non
passasi con onor’ nè di v[ostra] ex[cellen]tia nè mio.”
63
ASF, MDP, 333: 79r. Letter from Domenico Martelli, in Arezzo, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 79r: “a me pare non sia
nè con honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia nè io.”
 306

beseeched Cosimo to see that Arrighi suffered punishment “for your honor and as an example to

your soldiers.” He continued, explaining that, “one should not permit that they [i.e. members of

the militia] should be so vilely offended by removing, moreover by law, the faculty of being able

to recover their honor in any way.” To drive the point home, Albizzi had Francesco di Verdiano

present the letter to Cosimo himself.64

In 1543, Francesco di Bartolo Zati, serving as commissioner for Pisa, confronted an

analogous situation in which the interests of individual Florentine citizens clashed with the

enforcement of law and, in Zati’s perception, the honor of Cosimo I. Zati wrote that on 14

December a scuffle had occurred at the Porta San Marco of Pisa involving the customs officers

and a servant of Giulio da Ricasoli over goods belonging to his master. Zati wrote that “in order

to preserve the honor of Your Excellency…I sent that servant to the Bargello, where he [still]

is.”65 The commissioner continued, however, that both Niccolò Guicciardini, a noted lawyer and

son of Luigi, and the vice-rector of the University had indicated that he should leave the matter

alone. However, Zati observed that because the issue “touches the honor of Your Excellency” he

desired to have clear instructions from Cosimo about how to proceed.66

All these examples present cases in which individual office holders demonstrated a

concern about interference with their ability to exercise their office freely or a concern that the

administration of justice could be perceived as arbitrary or subject to privilege. Most of the cases

64
ASF, MDP, 350: 130r. Letter from Girolamo degli Albizzi, in Castel Fiorentino, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 23 April
1541: “in honore di quella et in esemplo delli sua militi;” “non si debba comportare che sieno offesi tanto vilmente
con torgli di più con le leggie la facultà di potere recuperare l’honor’ loro in modo alcuno.” Further details about
Arrighi’s attack on Francesco can be found at 131r.
65
ASF, MDP, 364: 232r. Letter from Francesco Zati, in Pisa, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 December 1543: “per
salvar’ l’honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia…mandai tal servitor’ al bargello dove si truova.” Note, that the word
bargello refers both the title of a police official and also the residence such an official, which doubled as a gaol. Zati
uses the term in the second sense here.
66
Ibid.: “si tratta del’honore di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia.”
 307

also address a desire for the rule of law, with the exception of Girolamo degli Albizzi’s letter – in

which case the rule of law appeared to infringe the operation of natural justice. In all the

examples, uniformly, the officials present the rule of law or the operation of justice as relative to

Cosimo’s honor as well as their own. The capability of these men to exercise their offices and

their success (or failure) in doing so reflected not only their own virtue and standing but also that

of the Medici prince.

This constituted a profound shift in the office-holding class’s imagination of their social

world and their understanding of their role in Florence. In the republican imagination, as

described in the preceding chapters, the office-holding class conceived of themselves as a

community of citizens dedicated to public service. They rendered this service to the idea of the

common good – that is, to the mutual benefit of the citizenry. Florence existed, in this

imagination, socially and politically as the collectivity of the office-holding class. Members of

the city’s elite spoke of possessing a share in the state.67 While the fifteenth-century Florentine

conception of “public” does not accord with modern understandings of a clear distinction

between public and private spheres or interests they did conceive of Florence as a

commonwealth. This public space, such as it existed in Renaissance Florence, occurred at the

point of greatest convergence between the various competing personal and corporate interests

that existed in the city: the administration and maintenance of Florence and its dominion, in

short, in the holding of offices.

The observations of the sixteenth-century office holders, therefore, that this

administration touched upon the honor of Cosimo I indicates that a significant re-positioning had

67
See for example Alessandra Macinghi Strozzi’s consideration of the worth of her future son-in-law, Marco
Parenti, in which she reflected that his family “hanno un poco di stato:” Alessandra Strozzi, Lettere di una
gentildonna fiorentina del secolo XV ai figliuoli esuli, ed. Cesare Guasti, (Florence: Sansoni, 1877), 3-4.
 308

occurred in the imagination of Florence by the office-holding class. In place of the collectivity of

the republican tradition a sole prince had arisen. What their Quattrocento forebears had

conceived of as public service to the commonwealth the office holders of the 1540s understood

as personal service to Cosimo. The republic of Florence, literally the res publica (public things),

had evolved into the possession of a prince. In a manner analogous to the recasting of liberty and

of the common good, discussed in the preceding chapters, the understanding of public service

transferred into personal service as the imagination of Florentine office-holding class had shifted

from a republican to a monarchical form. This evolved not from a sharp distinction between the

public and the personal, nor from a sudden shift from one to the other, but rather from the

indistinct boundaries between the two.68

As Cosimo became more assertive and more independent in his role, as the objective

structures of the government became definably monarchical and the ambiguity of Alessandro’s

reign disappeared, the conceptual basis of office holding shifted from a public to a personal role.

The political collectivity that had previously existed and that the office-holding class had shared

became accessible only through Cosimo, whose person and position became the point of greatest

convergence between the interests of the various individual and corporate interests of the city’s

elite. This new reality received a material confirmation in 1540 when Cosimo moved his place of

residence from the Palazzo de’ Medici on the Via Larga to the Palazzo della Signoria. Previously

the seat of the communal government and so the physical manifestation of the collective interests

of the office-holding class, the Palazzo became the house of the Medici prince as well as the

68
Compare with Elias, The Court Society.
 309

center of his new administration.69 The stato as conceived in the republican tradition as the

mutual possession of the office-holding class had become subject to Cosimo alone. At times this

conception received a literal recognition that presented the Florentine territorial state as the

Medici prince’s possession. In May 1541, Francesco di Girolamo Rucellai concluded a letter to

Cosimo with the hope that God would aid “the conservation of your state [stato].”70 Three years

later Bartolomeo Lanfredini spoke of “the places and subjects of Your Excellency.”71

In this re-imagined social world and political order to possess a share in the state one had

to receive it from Cosimo. In the republican tradition the distribution of offices had occurred

equally by recommendation and sortition.72 While the endpoint of the electoral process – the

actual drawing of names from the borse (purses) – was in effect random, social standing and

political connections determined the procedure by which the names found their way into the

borse in the first place. The accoppiatori, the committee of men charged with determining

eligibility for public office and assigning names to the various electoral purses, made their

decisions based on both statutory requirements and socio-cultural impulses. As well as residence,

age, and taxation status, personal and familial connections, prestige, influence, and general social

standing determined an individual’s chance of approval for office holding and also the number of

times his name would appear in particular borse.

69
See Roger J. Crum, “Lessons from the Past: the Palazzo Medici as Political ‘Mentor’ in Sixteenth-Century
Florence,” in The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici, ed. Konrad Eisenbichler, (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2001), 48. Compare with John M. Najemy, “Florentine Politics and Urban Spaces,” in Renaissance Florence: A
Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 51-54.
70
ASF, MDP, 351: 447r. Letter from Francesco Rucellai, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 28 May 1541: “la
conservazione del vostro stato.”
71
ASF, MDP, 365A: 851r. Letter from Bartolomeo Lanfredini, in Pisa, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 21 May 1544: “li
luoghi et suditi di V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia.”
72
The most comprehensive analysis of Florentine electoral procedures remains Nicolai Rubinstein, The Government
of Florence Under the Medici (1434-1494), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966).
 310

Writers, when considering the distribution of seats on public magistracies in the republic,

viewed the process as one that rewarded the virtue, wisdom, and quality of a man. Matteo

Palmieri observed that men who displayed prudence, strength, temperance, and fortitude in their

personal life and business dealings would eventually become the governors of Florence.73

Receiving an office through the republican electoral process, therefore, ultimately reflected the

communal opinion of the office-holding class – filtered through the lens of the accoppiatori. The

Florentine elite shared the government, the stato, among themselves.

By the 1540s, however, in the new monarchical system and the re-imagined courtly

society of the city the office-holding class perceived Cosimo as the source of offices, of the stato.

In August 1544, Lapo di Bartolomeo del Tovaglia, recently appointed podestà of Prato, referred

to his post as “committed to me by Your Excellency.”74 Ottaviano de’ Medici, in January of the

following year, thanked Cosimo “for having me reaffirmed for a second year as an official of the

grascia.”75 Antonio Canigiani, in his private diary, recorded in 1549 that “the Most Illustrious

Lord Duke Cosimo appointed me Captain of Cortona.”76 Luigi Martelli similarly noted in 1542

that, “I was made [one] of the Lords Otto di Guardia by the above said Lord Duke Cosimo.”77

73
Matteo Palmieri, Vita civile, ed. Gino Belloni, (Florence: Sansoni, 1982), 52.
74
ASF, MDP, 368: 259r. Letter from Lapo del Tovaglia, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1544:
“comesomi da V[ost]ra Ex[cellen]tà.”
75
ASF, MDP, 370: 333r. Letter from Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 January 1545:
“del havermi raffermo per il secondo ano in officiale di grascia.” The office of the grascia oversaw prices, weights,
and measures.
76
ASF, Canigiani, 123: 207v. Giornale e Ricordanze di Antonio di Simone Canigiani: “lo Ill[ustrissi]mo S[igno]re
Duca cosimo mi elesse capitano di cortona.” Canigiani used the same phrase for his later appointments to internal
magistracies, on the Otto di Pratica, the Sei di Mercanzia, and the Otto di Guardia: see 219r and 220r.
77
ASF, CS, Serie 5, 1475: 177v. Libro Segreto di Luigi di Luigi Martelli: “Fu fatto de’ S[igno]ri otto di balìa dal
sopra detto S[ignore] D[uca] Cosimo.” The full title of the Otto di Guardia was the Otto di Guardia e Balìa. Martelli
used the same formula for every office that he received from January 1537.
 311

With the shift from an electoral process based on communal recognition and

recommendation to one based on princely dispensation the possession of a public office became

a sign of Cosimo’s grace and favor. The receipt of a magistracy now reflected a man’s standing

in the eyes of the Medici prince rather than his measure by the community of the office-holding

class. The virtues, as outlined by Palmieri, that made an individual worthy of public office did

not necessarily alter. But the opinion that Cosimo had of an individual’s virtue and merit

mattered more after 1537 than the communal perception.78

In March 1539, Domenico Martelli sent Cosimo I an impassioned plea for recognition. “I

told Your Excellency the last time that the Otto di Pratica was selected that I had never been

[chosen],” he wrote, “and that I alone remained [thus] of the members of the Quarantotto, and

that I desired it greatly; especially as it would be noted that I was not entirely out favor with

you.”79 Ottaviano de’ Medici, in 1545, expressed his appreciation for his princely cousin’s

assessment of his merit, noting that he would ensure “with all my abilities [that] my actions

correspond in the meantime with the great faith [that] I recognize you have in me.”80 More

simply, Bindo Altoviti in his many petitions to Cosimo regarding the representation of the

Altoviti on the Quarantotto urged the Medici prince “that you would be pleased to grace our

78
Compare with the discussion of merit and the royal gaze in seventeenth-century France in Smith, The Culture of
Merit.
79
ASF, MDP, 335: 612v. Letter from Domenico Martelli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 2 March 1539: “Io
dissi a V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia quando l’altra volta si feciono li otto di pratica che io non ero mai stato / et che solo io
restavo del numero de quarantotto / et lo desideravo assai max[im]e perchè fussi noto / che io interamente non ero
fuori della gratia sua.” I have not discovered the reason for Martelli’s fall from grace with Cosimo; but his pleading
did succeed. Although he again missed out on a seat on the Otto di Pratica elected in the Quarantotto in March 1539
he received a seat on the magistracy appointed in September that year: ASF, Tratte, 907: 69r.
80
ASF, MDP, 370: 333r. Letter from Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 10 January 1545:
“con ogni mio potere le mia actione correspondino in parte alla gran’ fede cognosco haver’ in me.”
 312

house with one [of the seats on the Quarantotto].”81 Beyond specific requests for office, members

of the office-holding class recognized that their future status and continued access to public

magistracies depended on their standing in Cosimo’s eyes. Lorenzo d’Antonio Cambi, near the

end of 1540, wrote to Lorenzo Pagni, one of Cosimo’ secretaries, expressing his desire that

“Your Magnificence will preserve me in the good grace of His Excellency.”82 Filippo de’ Nerli,

three years later, observed to Cosimo: “I see that fortune always runs against me so that it will be

necessary, as long as I live, that the happy hand of Your Excellency oppose it and through your

grace alone resist my ill fortune.”83

These shifts in the office-holding class’s understanding of office holding – as a personal

service to a prince who controlled access to the stato and bestowed magistracies in recognition of

his own favor and of the holder’s merit – were accompanied by the emergence of a new rhetoric

among the Florentine elite: a language of courtliness that replaced the language of clientage of

the civic world. Obsequious phrasing did not constitute a new phenomenon in Florentine public

discourse. In 1472, Piero Capponi had written to Lorenzo il Magnifico: “I pray that you wish to

work for me as for your servant [so] that I may be among the number of the eligible.”84 More

strikingly Giovanni Tornabuoni once compared Lorenzo’s influence in Florence with that of the

81
ASF, MDP, 348: 38r. Letter from Bindo Altoviti, in Rome, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 11 December 1540: “gli
piaccia farne gratia di uno alla casa nostra.” See also 154r and MDP, 372: 177r.
82
ASF, MDP, 348: 61r. Letter from Lorenzo Cambi, in Pietrasanta, to Lorenzo Pagni, 17 December 1540: “che
V[ostra] Mag[nificen]tia mi preservi nello buona gratia di sua Ex[cellen]tia.”
83
ASF, MDP, 370: 241r. Letter from Filippo de’ Nerli, in Volterra, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1 March 1543: “Veggo
che la fortuna mi va tutta via traversando de sorte che sara necess[ari]o sempre mentre che io vivo che la felice mano
di vostra Ex[cellen]tia sia opponga et per sua sola gratia resista alla mia trista fortuna.”
84
ASF, MAP, 28: 393. Letter from Piero Capponi to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 10 August 1472: “vi pregho da vogliate
operare per me chome per vostro servitore ch’io sia dela numero degl’inborsati.”
 313

divine in the world: “I have God in heaven and Your Magnificence on earth.”85 But as these two

examples demonstrate the discourse of clientage from the republican era followed individual

inclinations and phrasing. Moreover the language could be qualified: Capponi compares himself

to a servant of Lorenzo, but does not declare himself in the service of his patron.

By the 1540s, in contrast, the rhetoric of patrician correspondence to Cosimo I had

become formulaic – reflecting and helping to constitute and reinforce the new political hierarchy.

“Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Duke and Most Respected Patron,” Filippo de’ Nerli

commenced in letter penned in 1539 (notably before Cosimo had commenced referring to

himself as Duke of Florence). He signed the same letter, “Filippo de’ Nerli, Humble servant of

your Most Illustrious Lordship.”86 In 1544, Lorenzo Cambi addressed the Medici prince: “Most

Illustrious and Most Excellent Lord, My Lord.” He too concluded his letter, “Lorenzo Cambi,

Servant of Your Most Illustrious Lordship.”87 The examples are too numerous to present here:

every letter addressed to Cosimo I from 1537 onward follows the same general formula saluting

him as most excellent and most illustrious lord or duke and closing with a affirmation of personal

service. Although the repetition appears limited almost to the point of rhetorical hollowness, the

salutations and signatures possessed meaning and purpose. Every stroke of the pen helped to
85
ASF, MAP, 40: 180. Letter from Giovanni Tornabuoni to Lorenzo de’ Medici, 29 November 1487: “ò iddio in
cielo et Vostra Magnificentia in terra.”
86
ASF, MDP, 337: 150r-v. Letter from Filippo de’ Nerli, in Pistoia, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 31 May 1539:
“Ill[ustrissi]mo et Ex[cellentissi]mo Duca et Patron obser[vissi]mo;” “Di vostra S[ignoria] Ill[ustrissi]ma Humill
servitore Phi: de’ Nerli.”
87
ASF, MDP, 365: 297r-v. Letter from Lorenzo Cambi, in Fivizzano, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 28 April 1544:
“Ill[ustrissi]mo et Ex[cellentissi]mo S[ign]or’ S[ign]or’ mio;” “D[i] V[ostra] Ill[ustrissi]ma S[igno]ria Servitore
Lorenzo Cambi.” This letter and that of De’ Nerli cited directly above present a fascinating contrast and present a
significant indication of the abitrary nature of Cosimo’s usurpation of the title Duke of Florence. De’ Nerli refers to
Cosimo as “Duke” before Cosimo had begun asserted the title himself while Cambi calls the Medici prince “Lord.”
Many other analogous examples exist in the Mediceo del Principato archive testifying to the fact that while the
office-holding class uniformly recognized Cosimo as prince of Florence not all recognized his illegitimate seizure of
the title Duke of Florence. Moreover, Cosimo did not appear (judging from the continued absence of the title from
some correspondence up to 1550) to demand the title’s use although he clearly asserted it for himself.
 314

construct and reinforce the new political order of Florence and the re-imagined place of the

office-holding class. Every repetition strengthened the developing relationship between prince

and courtier – reflecting and reproducing the elite’s new social identity as a courtly aristocracy in

the personal service of a monarch.

The recognition of this new relationship and identity appeared also in another marked

difference between the sixteenth-century language of courtliness and the earlier rhetoric of

clientage. Even at its most obsequious, in Tornabuoni’s comparison of Lorenzo il Magnifico

with God, the patron-client relationship existed as an externalized connection between self

(client) and other (patron). The language and practice of such a relationship existed dialogically

between two individuals with potentially conflicting needs and desires. The strains produced by

this tension between patron and client produced the paranoia that colored social world of the

fifteenth-century elite as well as continually undermining the position of the Medici in Florence

prior to 1532.88

In the 1540s, however, the line between self (courtier) and other (prince) had blurred, in

the rhetoric of personal correspondence at least. As Cosimo subsumed the place previously

occupied by the imagined community of citizen magistrates as the public sphere of Florence –

the point of greatest convergence between the various personal and corporate interests that

constituted the office-holding class – members of the city’s elite began to erase the line between

their own wants and needs and those of the Medici prince. As Cosimo became the gatekeeper to

the stato, to public office with its corresponding financial and social benefits, the Florentine

patricians began to identify their own well-being and interests with his. They spoke in a language

88
On social paranoia and anxiety in fifteenth-century Florence see Chapter 2 above. On the inherent weakness of
Medici control due to their dependence on clients and the ultimate impossibility of satisfying these clients see
Chapter 3 above.
 315

of obligation, devotion, and service merging their mutual benefit with the personal good of

Cosimo.

Girolamo degli Albizzi observed, as early in Cosimo’s reign as July 1537, that, “it

pertains to one who depends on service to his Lord to represent not only in the particular to

which he has been deputized but also in each and every occasion to serve him.”89 Two years

later, Domenico Martelli in his impassioned plea for a seat on the Otto di Pratica displayed an

even greater rhetorical flourish: “I have never hesitated postponing my every need and

comfort…my wish has only ever been to serve, and that intention has always [displayed itself] in

my every action. Certainly if I had desired or should desire to serve God as much as Your

Excellency I would rank above Saint John the Baptist.”90 Alessandro Malegonnelle, writing in

the late summer of 1540, also effaced his own desires and thoughts in favor of Cosimo’s: “the

intention of Your Excellency, which always loves the truth, is always sufficient for me and I

never fail to follow it [in] my every affair.”91 Four years later, Lapo del Tovaglia sought

guidance from the Medici prince about the particulars of his newly-acquired post as podestà of

Prato because, “being your true and faithful servant I have no greater desire than learning what

89
ASF, MDP, 333: 127r. Letter from Girolamo degli Albizzi, in Pisa, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 25 July 1537:
“s’apartiene a chi depende nel servitio di suo S[igno]re non solo nel particular’ dove stato deputato ma et in ogni
gener’ di caso deposeli rapresenta.”
90
ASF, MDP, 335: 612r. Letter from Domenico Martelli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 2 March 1539: “io
non pensai mai postponendo ogni mio utile et comodo…la voluta mia non fu mai se non di servire / et tale intentione
è / suta sempre in tutte le mie attioni / et cierto è / che se io avessi desidero o desiderassi servire a dio quanto a
V[ostra] Ex[cellen]tia arei la sedia sopra san giovanni batista.”
91
ASF, MDP, 346: 290v. Letter from Alessandro Malegonnelle, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 8 September
1540: “mi basta sempre la intentione di V[ostra] E[ccellentia] qual sempr’ ama il vero et io ne mancho seguitar’
quella ogni mio affari.”
 316

you prefer and what are your thoughts.”92 Many other men wrote, less eloquently, of the “debt”

that they owed to Cosimo to fulfill his wishes and to serve in particular offices to the best of their

capabilities.93

This rhetorical effacement of self did not mean that Cosimo commanded the absolute

obedience of the office-holding class, without any reciprocal obligation. The language of

courtliness may have occluded any suggestion of dialogue between courtier and prince, but its

practice did not. The relationship between Cosimo and the Florentine elite remained as

interdependent as that which had tied his fifteenth-century ancestors to their oligarchic

supporters. Scholars of late medieval patronage have observed how the apparently servile

language that clients deployed concealed the duress and sense of obligation that their petitions

placed on the recipient.94 In similar fashion, the courtly language of the 1540s masked the

pressure that such rhetoric exerted on Cosimo.

The repeated litany of service, obligation, and devotion built an expectation that such

self-effacement would have its reward. The notion that the office-holding class had a “debt” to

Cosimo in particular expressed a sense of reciprocity: to be indebted required that a favor, gift, or

loan had first been received or at least promised. Over the past two decades scholars have

stripped bare the older historiographical picture of absolute monarchy and the decline of the

nobility to reveal the extent to which governmental centralization, the emergence of the modern

92
ASF, MDP, 368: 259r. Letter from Lapo del Tovaglia, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1544:
“sendo il vero fidelle suo servidore non ò altro magiore disiderio che sapere quel che più piacca /e/ sia di mente
sua.”
93
See for example, MDP, 362: 545r; 365: 297r; 365A: 851r; and 368: 214r.
94
Melissa Meriam Bullard, Lorenzo il Magnifico: Image and Anxiety, Politics and Finance, (Florence: Olschki,
1994), 109-30; and Ronald F. Weissman, “Taking Patronage Seriously: Mediterranean Values and Renaissance
Society,” in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, ed. F.W. Kent and Patricia Simons, (Canberra/Oxford:
Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University/Oxford University Press, 1987), 35 especially.
 317

state in Europe, and the practice of absolutism depended on collaboration and consensus between

monarch and aristocracy.95 The Medici principate as it developed in Florence during the 1530s

and 1540s also relied on a mutual obligation between Cosimo and the office-holding class of the

city. While victory at Montemurlo had defused the most immediate and potent threat to the

Medici prince’s rule the memory of the civic tradition of Florence did not evaporate.

Sometime around 1540 Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, the assassin of Duke

Alessandro, penned and began to circulate a justification for his deed that invoked the values and

expectations of the civic world of the fifteenth century.96 In 1543 a plot to kill Cosimo, by

shooting him while he hunted, was discovered – leading to the execution and then

dismemberment (at the hands the populace) of Giuliano Buonaccorsi the would-be assassin.97

Although Cosimo enjoyed a stronger and more objective institutional position than both his

immediate predecessor as well as his fifteenth-century forebears, he still relied on the support of

the office-holding class for the preservation of his rule. Filippo de’ Nerli, around the end of

1541, gave a frank and clear assessment of the reciprocity required between the Medici prince

and the Florentine elite. De’ Nerli observed that the distribution of offices needed careful

management to avoid loosing the active support of some members of the office-holding or even
95
See for example Ronald G. Asch, “Introduction: Court and Household from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth
Centuries,” in Princes, Patronage and the Nobility. The Court at the Beginning of the Modern Age, c. 1450-1650,
ed. Ronald G. Asch and Adolf M. Birke, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Beik, Absolutism and Society;
and Zmora, Monarchy. Norbert Elias, to a greater extent than some of his critics give him credit for, does
continually stress the interdependent nature of court society; but his analysis focuses almost exclusively on the
relationship from the perspective of the monarch rather than from the “bottom-up” perspective of the aristocracy:
see Elias, The Court Society.
96
Lorenzino de’ Medici, Apologia e lettere, ed. Francesco Erspamer, (Rome: Salerno, 1991).
97
BNCF, Conventi Soppressi, C7, 2614, unfoliated; and Cronaca fiorentina, 1537-1555, ed. Enrico Coppi,
(Florence: Olschki, 2000), 18-19. The degradation of Buonaccorsi’s corpse by a mob following his hanging
resembles the treatment of the body of Jacopo de’ Pazzi, executed for his role in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478: see
Angelo Poliziano’s description of the latter reprinted in Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, eds., The Earthly
Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978),
321.
 318

rekindling “the desire for the civic life.”98 In return for their service and devotion, and for

sacrificing the political freedoms of the republican system, the elite of Florence expected regular

access to public offices, which provided not only financial rewards but more importantly

provided a recognition and a reassertion of their social position in the city. The office-holding

class expected Cosimo to share the stato with them and so the preserve and protect their prestige.

While the office-holding class represented themselves in both words and images as a

courtly aristocracy in the 1540s, rather than a community of citizens, important continuities

existed between the social worlds of late fifteenth-century and mid sixteenth-century elites. In no

sense did the Florentine patricians become a landed, neo-feudal, nobility. Their ties with the

world of commerce remained strong. 99 These mercantile interests continued not only among men

such as Bindo Altoviti, living outside of Florence in the commercial capitals of Western Europe

such as Rome or Lyon, but also among men who consistently held the most prestigious public

positions in the principate.

Federigo di Roberto de’ Ricci, one of the inaugural members of the Quarantotto and who

regularly sat on important magistracies, owned a successful bank under his own name.100 His

distant cousin Giuliano de’ Ricci observed that “the bank of Federigo di Ruberto de’ Ricci…was

truly the cash-box of everyone, so much so that one could say that no other bank handled any

98
ASF, MDP, 355: 285r. Letter from Filippo de’ Nerli, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, either December 1541
or January 1542: “il desiderio del vivere Popular’.”
99
On continuing commercial and mercantile character of the Florentine elite from the sixteenth through to the
eighteenth century see Samuel Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato,
1530-1609,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History IX (1972); and Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy,
203-32.
100
De’ Ricci was an accoppiatore seventeen times between 1532 and 1550. In the same period he sat on the Otto di
Pratica seven times, the Ducal Council ten times, and twice he served as a Monte Official: ASF, Tratte, 907: 43r-v,
44v, 57r, 58r, 67v, 68v-69r, 145r-v, 146v-147v, 186v-187r, 193r-v, 194v-195v, 202r, 203r-v, 204r-205v, 206v-207v,
238r, and 239r-v.
 319

money except the Ricci.”101 Ottaviano de’ Medici, in a letter to Cosimo I in the autumn of 1540,

discussed the plans of Luigi de’ Pazzi to find a wife for his son. “[H]is desire is to settle his son

with a father-in-law [who is a] merchant,” De’ Medici observed, “so that, leaving him certain

assets, he can – with the advice and direction of his father-in-law - succeed in business

affairs.”102 Ottaviano de’ Medici, himself, continued to maintain active in the commercial world,

in addition to holding multiple positions of authority in the Florentine administration.103

Alessandro Antinori, Francesco di Girolamo da Sommaia, and Bernardo di Nofri Acciaiuoli all

also left correspondence indicating their commercial activities.104 The interest that members of

the office-holding class showed in maintaining the mercantile economy of Florence extended

beyond their own personal investments and pursuits. In 1539, Francesco Rucellai expressed

concern to Cosimo I about the potential damage a proposed tax increase would have on local

businesses. Merchants, Rucellai wrote, “maintain the city alive and in flower.”105

Ottaviano de’ Medici’s description of Luigi Pazzi’s search for a suitable bride for his son

reveals, not only the continuing commercial activities of the Florentine elite, but also the

persistently homosocial nature of the world of the office-holding class in the mid-sixteenth

101
Giuliano de’ Ricci, Cronaca (1532-1606), ed. Giuliana Sapori, (Milan & Naples: Ricciardi, 1972), 225. See also
141.
102
ASF, MDP, 347: 26r. Letter from Ottaviano de’ Medici, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 7 October 1540: “il
desiderio suo essere di accompagnare il figlio con uno suocero mercante acciò che lascandoli qualche mobile possa
collo advito & indirizo di epso inviarsi in sulle faccende.”
103
See for example the letters directed by Ottaviano to Francesco Lioni, in Venice, in ASF, Aquisti e Doni, 69: 776
and others unfoliated.
104
ASF, Aquisti e Doni, 69: 129-31, 780, 785, 805, 874, 886, and others unfoliated.
105
ASF, MDP, 336: 85r. Letter from Francesco Rucellai, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 27 February 1539:
“mantenghando la ciptà viva / et in flore.”
 320
106
century. Marriage remained a bond between two heterosexual men as much as between

husband and wife. Relationships between mature men structured the shape of elite practices. As

in the fifteenth century these interactions occurred simultaneously at several levels – from the

representational (as discussed previously with regard to the portraits painted by Salviati during

the 1540s) to the institutional, from affective relationships between friends to utilitarian ones

between patrons and clients. Despite the increasing centralization of public life around the person

of Cosimo I not all paths to socio-political advancement or benefit ran through the Palazzo della

Signoria. Prominent and important men continued to operate within the familiar sottogoverno of

influence peddling. In October 1539, Girolamo Guicciardini beseeched his brother Luigi to aid

an un-named friend, “for love of me and respect for him.”107 When Prinzivalle della Stufa

petitioned Luigi Guicciardini to assist a client in the recovery of a debt he observed, “[a]ll that

will be done for him I will consider it [as done] for myself.”108 Della Stufa himself, several years

later, intervened on behalf of a certain Francesco – sentenced to serve three years in the galleys

for rape – who desired permission to purchase a slave to take his place.109

The altered political landscape did offer new forms of relationship between elite men.

Most obviously the person of the Medici prince constituted the central and most important

connection for members of the office-holding class. As discussed in the preceding pages, to be in

Cosimo’s grace and favor, to protect his honor and serve his interests became the essential

106
See Chapter 2 above.
107
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 31. Letter from Girolamo Guicciardini, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 27
October 1539: “per mio amore e per suo rispetto.”
108
ASF, CS, Serie 1, 62: 108. Letter from Prinzivalle della Stufa, in Florence, to Luigi Guicciardini, in Pisa, 29 May
1540: “Tutto quello per lui farà lo reputerò a me proprio.”
109
ASF, OGBP, 2221: 305.
 321

conduit to status as well as the more tangible rewards of office holding itself. The relationship

with the person of the prince – at the center of court, government, and society – represented a

novelty: a permanent bond, both affective and institutional. In the 1540s too, the relative youth of

the Medici prince constituted a significant reverse in the gerontocratic nature of the Florentine

elite, even as the public role of the office-holding class continued as the preserve of mature men.

The person of Cosimo’s wife, Eleonora di Toledo, represented an even greater innovation

in the gender-power dynamic of Renaissance Florence. Only Argentina Malaspina Soderini,

spouse of the gonfaloniere a vita Piero Soderini, provided a precedent for a female irruption in

the previously all-male public life of the city.110 Bartolomeo Lanfredini, in August 1539, sought

license from Cosimo to leave Pistoia, “in order to speak with [Your Excellency] and also in order

to kiss the hand of her Most Illustrious Ladyship the Duchess, your consort and my Lady.”111 In

1544, Alessandro Malegonnelle concluded a letter to the Medici prince, “I humbly kiss the hand

of Your Excellency and that of your most illustrious Lady consort.”112 Around the same time

Domenica Centelli petitioned Eleonora to intercede with Cosimo in order to liberate Domenica’s

husband, Giovanni, from prison, where he was imprisoned for failing to pay a ten lire fine.113

Letters such as these testify to a shift in the previously male-dominated political institutions of

the city. However, their relative scarcity – in contrast to the countless discursive kisses bestowed

110
On the place of Eleonora see Ilaria Hoppe, “The Duchess’ Place at Court: The Quartiere di Eleonora in the
Palazzo della Signoria in Florence,” in The Cultural World of Eleonora di Toledo, Duchess of Florence and Siena,
ed. Konrad Eisenbichler, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). On Argentina Soderini see Chapter 2 above.
111
ASF, MDP, 338: 122r. Letter from Bartolomeo Lanfredini, in Pistoia, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 18 August 1539:
“per parlar con secho / & anche per basciar’ la mano al Ill[ustrissi]ma S[ignor]ia D[uchessa] sua consorte & mia
S[igno]ra.”
112
ASF, MDP, 368: 214r. Letter from Alessandro Malegonnelle, in Florence, to Cosimo I de’ Medici, 15 August
1544: “humilmente basio la mano a S[ua] Ex[cellentia] e della sua ill[ustrissi]ma S[ignora] consorte.”
113
ASF, OGBP, 2218: unfoliated.
 322

upon the hands of the Medici prince by the authors of letters and innumerable petitions for

reprieve or mercy directed to him – suggest that the role of the princely consort, at the mid-

century, was not far removed from that played by earlier generations of Medici wives, mothers,

and sisters: existing and operating within the male homosocial sphere rather than cultivating a

parallel female network of relationships.

Despite the continuity of commercial interests and activities, the persistently homosocial

society, and the key place of the act of holding public office in the social imagination of the

Florentine elite, this chapter has demonstrated that a significant change had occurred by the end

of the 1540s in the way the office-holding class perceived and understood their identity and

position in Florence. Following the political instability and ambiguity of the previous decade the

objective structures of the Medici principate cohered in the 1540s in a more secure and clear

form. Under Cosimo I the government of the city and its territory demonstrably became a

monarchy, increasingly organized and controlled by appointed ministers rather than the civilian

magistracies of the republican era. In this new political reality the established social world of the

office-holding class no longer provided sufficient meaning, its values and expectations no longer

accorded with those necessary for social and political success. As a result the Florentine elite re-

imagined itself in a definably courtly manner. In did so, however, not by breaking with the

inherited traditions of the republican era, but by re-conceiving and shaping them to the new

objective reality. As the person and institution of the Medici prince subsumed the previous

notion of the common good – becoming the embodiment and point of access to the stato – what

in the previous generation had been understood as public service became personal service to

Cosimo I. The holding of office came to reflect the honor and status of the individual magistrate

as a member of more defined and restricted socio-political elite. It also represented that man’s
 323

standing in the eyes of Cosimo I: the holding of public office, which remained a defining role in

the elite’s self-conception, no longer represented communal recognition of an individual’s virtue

and capability, but rather his favor with the prince. The act of office holding had ceased to

possess a political function becoming instead a function of social status, prestige, and proximity

to the person of the prince. The community of civilian magistrates, the fraternity of red-robed

mature males, which had existed in the fifteenth century had transformed itself into a society of

courtiers.
 324

Chapter Seven

Conclusion: An Essay on the Politico-Cultural Legacy of Renaissance Florence.

On 22 June 1549 the people of Florence celebrated preliminary festivities for the feast of Saint

John the Baptist, patron protector of the city. The floats borne through the streets included one

made by the confraternity of the Archangel Raphael, which depicted the battle between David

and Goliath. The company halted beneath the doors of the Palazzo della Signoria, now home to

Cosimo I and his family. While the Medici prince listened from a window above, the company

recited in verse and song the story of the shepherd boy’s unexpected victory over the Philistine

giant. The recitation emphasized David’s humility, youth, and piety as well as Goliath’s pride,

fear-inspiring presence, and impiety. The source of the shepherd’s courage and triumph the

singers explained lay with God. In the final lines of their poem the members of the confraternity

explicitly compared Cosimo with David: “Now you, illustrious and honored Prince, / for whose

great valor beautiful Florence, / all forgetting the past woes, / rests now happy and content in

peace / even you follow in the same manner.”1

A quarter century later, in 1575, Giovanmaria Butteri painted an altarpiece depicting the

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne, accompanied by John the Baptist and several other saints

(Figure 27). To the left of the Holy Family stand the Medici family’s patron saints, Cosmas and

Damian, depicted in the likeness of Cosimo I and his son the Cardinal (and future Grand Duke)

Ferdinando. Saint Catherine of Alexandria sits in front of these two male figures, here probably a

portrait of Isabella de’ Medici Orsini, Cosimo’s only surviving daughter by 1575. To the right of

the Holy Family stand Saint George and another unidentified male warrior saint: the portrait

1
Cronaca fiorentina, 1537-1555, ed. Enrico Coppi, (Florence: Olschki, 2000), 106-08.
 325

Figure 27. Giovanmaria Butteri Madonna with Child, Saint Anne, John the Baptist, and Five
Saints (1575). Panel painting, 192 x 140 cm.Florence: Galleria degli Uffizi.
 326

figures of Grand Duke Francesco de’ Medici and Duke Paolo Giordano Orsini of Bracciano

(husband and later murderer of Isabella) respectively.2 The figure of Saint Anne, standing behind

and above all the other figures in the painting, extends her arms in a gesture of protection above

the two assembled families – sacred and profane.

These two vignettes present a profusion, or perhaps a confusion, of overlapping and even

paradoxical images: the republican politico-religious icon David invoked in the name of a

Medici prince, and two republican saints (paragons of the defense of Florentine liberty) depicted

in close association with patron protectors of the Medici and with representations of actual

members of the same family. The tangled interconnections and perhaps surprising juxtapositions

of these moments provide a fitting point of conclusion to this dissertation, which has argued that

Renaissance republicanism and monarchism did not exist as binary opposites but rather as two

points on a continuum of political meaning and experience. The transition from republic to

monarchy in sixteenth-century Florence did not occur via a revolution or a radical break with the

past – the language, images, and especially the personnel of government remained largely

unaltered. But a fundamental shift in political culture did occur, which endowed the concepts of

liberty, the common good, and service with new and very different meanings.

2
Roger J. Crum and David G. Wilkins, “In the Defense of Florentine Republicanism: Saint Anne and Florentine Art,
1343-1575,” in Interpreting Cultural Symbols: Saint Anne in Late Medieval Society, ed. Kathleen Ashley and
Pamela Sheingorn, (Athens & London: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 153-56; and Karla Langedijk, The
Portraits of the Medici, 15th-18th centuries, trans. Patricia Wardle, 3 vols., (Florence: Studio per edizioni scelte,
1981), 1: 118-19, 424. Crum and Wilkins identify the Virgin and Saint Anne as portraits of Eleonora di Toledo and
Maria Salviati de’ Medici – identifications disputed by Langedijk. They also tentatively, and puzzlingly, identify the
male saint represented by Orsini as Saint Flavian (fifth-century Bishop of Constantinople who died defending the
doctrine of the dual nature of Christ). The military appearance of the figure (blending Roman and contemporary
dress) would suggest that an identification with one of the fourth-century Roman soldier saints (such as Marcellus
the Centurion or Julius) or even Saint Longinus might be more appropriate; although this depiction may owe more
to Orsini’s own military career. The banner that the figure carries appears to bear the cross of the Military Order of
Santo Stefano, founded by Cosimo I, so Orsini could possibly represent Saint Stephen – on this identification see
further below.
 327

This is not to say that the course of Florentine history in the first half of the sixteenth

century consisted solely in a game of meaning, in the deconstruction and reconstruction of terms

and ideas. Blood was shed, fortunes ruined, and lives destroyed. People fought and died in the

struggle over the political culture of the city: from hunger or disease during the siege, in battle

before Florence, at Gavinana and Montemurlo, on the executioner’s block, and (possibily in the

case of Filippo Strozzi) by suicide. This dissertation has demonstrated that understanding the

changes in political culture that occurred in the transition from republic to monarchy requires an

examination of the lives of the men and women who experienced this change. Through words

and images it has mined the experiences of these individuals, and of the office-holding class

more broadly, in order to access how they understood the changes in Florentine politics and

society. This has resulted in a fundamentally different story from that told by intellectual

historians focused only on political thought and ideas.

This dissertation has argued for a redirection of scholarly attention away from a myopic

focus on the republican heritage of Florence. It argues that, while never inevitable, the creation

of the Medici principate in the 1530s and 1540s did not constitute an aberration or a radical

break with past practice. The political culture of the later sixteenth-century monarchy developed

from the same principles and concepts that had supported the preceding republic. A definable

change did occur in Florentine political culture during the first half of the sixteenth century but

much of the language and imagery of the court society of the mid-Cinquecento was identical to

that of the civic world of the fifteenth century. In the 1530s, Lorenzo Strozzi and Francesco

Guicciardini could speak of defending Florentine liberty, but what they meant by liberty differed

fundamentally from the notion of civic political freedom that had predominated in the fifteenth

century. Holders of public office in the 1540s were still motivated by a concept of service, but
 328

what they understood this service to constitute was very different to the concepts that had existed

in the previous decades. This suggests the need for a reconsideration of the politico-cultural

legacy of Renaissance Florence.

The fact that the Florentine republican experiment failed has remained an inconvenience

for some two or three generations of Anglophone scholars. To avoid the issue an artificial divide

has developed, at the point of August 1530, separating the city’s Renaissance historiography into

two largely disconnected sub-fields: one examining the fifteenth-century republic and another

studying the Medici Grand Duchy. Two previous works that proposed examining the transition

from republic to monarchy took 1530, for example, as the chronological starting point of their

analysis, effectively limiting their focus to only half of the story.3 Similarly, studies of the

decline and end of the republican system in Florence cease at the point of the city’s surrender to

the imperial army.4 Attempts to survey the first half of the sixteenth century as a whole have

fallen largely to intellectual historians concerned with Florentine political thought and, above all,

the survival and transmission of republican ideas after 1530.5 Mark Jurdjevic, in the most recent

of these studies, notably attempts to defuse the awkward problem of the success and endurance

3
Samuel Berner, “The Florentine Patriciate in the Transition from Republic to principato: 1530-1610” (PhD,
University of California, Berkeley, 1969); and R. Burr Litchfield, Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine
Patricians, 1530-1790, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).
4
Cecil Roth, The Last Florentine Republic, (London: Methuen, 1925); and J.N. Stephens, The Fall of the Florentine
Republic, 1512-1530, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
5
Rudolf von Albertini, Firenze dalla repubblica al principato: Storia e coscienza politica, trans. Cesare Cristolfini,
(Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1970); Mark Jurdjevic, “Citizens, Subjects, and Scholars: The Valori Family in the
Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1608” (PhD, Northwestern University, 2002); Mark Jurdjevic, “Virtue, Commerce,
and the Enduring Florentine Republican Moment: Reintegrating Italy into the Atlantic Republican Debate,” Journal
of the History of Ideas 62, no. 4 (2001); J.G.A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought
and the Atlantic Republican Tradition, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect
Nation: The Savonarolan Movement in Florence, 1494-1545, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); and Quentin
Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 vols., Vol. One: The Renaissance, (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1978), 139-89.
 329

of the Medici monarchy by suggesting that scholars should concern themselves with the process

of political contestation in Florence rather than the ultimate outcome of these struggles.6 In short,

historians have either developed convenient blind spots or tied themselves in knots to avoid

confronting the collapse of the Florentine republic in the 1530s.

Florence and the Florentine Renaissance have held a special place in the historical

imagination of the Anglophone world due to a perceived connection between the city’s

republican tradition and Anglo-American pluralist democracy.7 This association exists not only

in academic histories but also in popular culture, most recently in Franco Zefferelli’s 1999 film

Tea With Mussolini in which a group of Anglo-American ex-patriot women residing in Florence

resist (with “civilized disobedience” according to the movie’s tagline) the Fascist state.8 In the

wake of the Second World War and in the face the emerging politico-cultural conflicts of the

Cold War a generation of scholars found in the experiences of fifteenth-century Florence a

narrative that resounded with their own experiences, past and present.

In the historical imagination of the Anglophone tradition Florence became the cradle not

only of Renaissance art but also of concepts of liberty and civic government – preserving them in

the face of the despotism that dominated most of north-central Italy by the Quattrocento, and

transmitting them to future generations through the writings of Leonardo Bruni, Alamanno

6
Jurdjevic, “Citizens”, 252-53.
7
Anthony Molho, “The Italian Renaissance, Made in the USA,” in Imagined Histories: American Historians
Interpret the Past, ed. Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood, (Princeton: Princeton University Press: 1998). Note
that Philip Nord’s study of the Third Republic in France would appear implicitly to connect the Florentine tradition
with the French experience via the nod that his title gives to Pocock: Philip Nord, The Republican Moment:
Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France, (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press,
1995).
8
See also the fascinating discussion of the place of the Renaissance in American popular culture and imagination in
Paul F. Grendler, The European Renaissance in American Life, (Westport & London: Praeger, 2006).
 330

Rinuccini, Niccolò Machiavelli, Donato Gianotti, and others.9 This dissertation does not dispute

the influence of these men on the development of European political thought. It does, however,

restore balance to the historical picture of Florence’s politico-cultural legacy by suggesting that

this heritage extends beyond the Atlantic republican tradition to the antithesis of plural

democracy: the authoritarian state. It does so by directly confronting the question of how the

Florentine republic failed and how the Medici monarchy found support with the majority of the

city’s office-holding class – the very men who lost the most, in political terms, from the creation

of the principality in the 1530s and 1540s.

The two vignettes with which this essay opened provide not only a conclusion to the

argument that the preceding chapters have laid out but also exemplify the breadth of the politico-

cultural heritage of Renaissance Florence. The image of a virtuous male youth triumphing in the

face of adversity has recurred at several places in the preceding chapters – in Piero di Cosimo’s

representation of Perseus from 1513, in Pontormo’s 1529 portrait of Francesco Guardi, and in

Bronzino’s depiction of Ugolino Martelli painted around 1536. It appeared again in the mid-

summer festivities of 1549 in the celebration of David’s victory over Goliath staged by the

confraternity of the Archangel Raphael before the doors of the Palazzo della Signoria. Just

adjacent to their impromptu stage stood Michelangelo’s iconic sculpture of David (Figure 28), a

reminder of the intense political significance that the Old Testament king had in sixteenth-

century Florence.

9
On the period from the 1930s to the 1950s as one that established a still predominant paradigm for Renaissance
historiography and the influence of refugee German scholars, in particular, on the creation of this paradigm see Carl
Landauer, “Erwin Panofsky and the Renascence of the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 47, no. 2 (1994);
Molho, “The Italian Renaissance,” 270-77 especially; Edward Muir, “The Italian Renaissance in America,” The
American Historical Review 100, no. 4 (1995); and Patricia Simons, “Separating the Men from the Boys:
Masculinities in Early Quattrocento Florence and Donatello’s Saint George,” in Rituals, Images, and Words:
Varieties of Cultural Expression in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. F.W. Kent and Charles Zika,
(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 151-55.
 331

Figure 28. Michelangelo Buonarotti David (1501-04). Marble, height 408.94 cm. Florence:
Galleria dell’Accademia
 332

In December 1495, a year after the expulsion of the sons of Lorenzo il Magnifico de’

Medici, the government had installed Donatello’s bronze David (Figure 29), confiscated from the

Medici Palazzo, in front of the public palace. In doing so the Signoria physically re-appropriated

the image of the Jewish king for the restored civic government. In 1504, when over the course of

two months Michelangelo’s mammoth marble piece was installed outside the Palazzo also the

image of David acquired not only a republican but also an expressly anti-Medicean meaning.10

The politicization of the Old Testament figure did not pass without response: Luca Landucci

recorded that on the night of 14/15 May – the first that the sculpture spent in the open – unknown

individuals stoned the work in an attempt to damage it, provoking the Signoria to set a guard

over it.11 The image of David still possessed political meaning in Pontormo’s 1529 representation

of Francesco Guardi, consciously modeled on Donatello’s earlier marble David. By the middle

of the 1530s, however, the icon appeared less divisive: in Bronzino’s portrait of Ugolino

Martelli, the statue of David visible in background helped to constitute a new understanding of

liberty in the wake of the 1532 constitutional changes and also represented the turn away from

public affairs in favor of cultural pursuits. In the recitations of 1549 David had re-acquired a

political meaning, but the image now served to defend the Medici principate.

The confraternity of the Archangel Raphael in their songs on 22 June 1549 built a careful

analogy between David and Cosimo I de’ Medici. They did not do so, as might be expected, by

10
See Stephen J. Milner, “The Florentine Piazza della Signoria as Practiced Place,” in Renaissance Florence: A
Social History, ed. Roger J. Crum and John T. Paoletti, (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 100.
11
Lucca Landucci, Diario fiorentino dal 1450 al 1516 continuato da un anonimo al 1542, ed. Iacopo del Badia,
(Florence: Sansoni, 1985), 119 and 268. In 1495 the Signoria had confiscated Donatello’s Judith and Holofernes
from the Medici also installing it alongside his David. The sculpture of the female tyrannicide was re-located inside
the courtyard of the Palazzo to accommodate Michelangelo’s David in 1504. Today replicas of Michelangelo’s
David and of Donatello’s Judith, but not his bronze David, stand outside the building.
 333

Figure 29. Donatello David (ca. 1428-40). Bronze, height 157.48 cm. Florence: Museo
Nazionale di Bargello.
 334

celebrating David’s role as King of Israel but rather by focusing their recitation upon the slaying

of Goliath – the very act that had the strongest republican associations: “we sing David has killed

him / we sing David has killed him.” The verses described, in graphic terms, the felling and

beheading of the Philistine giant. They celebrated the Medici prince as a contemporary David

who had defeated the threats to Florentine freedom. The Old Testament king they observed, in

slaying Goliath, had demonstrated his “greater strength and valor” and had given Israel “peace

and comfort.” The singers then used analogous language to describe Cosimo I, noting that

through his “great valor beautiful Florence…rests now happy and content in peace.” The analogy

possibly extended even further. The members of the Confraternity described David as “a humble

shepherd and still just a youth” when God commanded him to aid King Saul.12 The image

conjures a comparison with Cosimo who in 1537, although not a shepherd, lived in rural

obscurity outside of Florence and was several months shy of his eighteenth birthday when the

Quarantotto elected him to succeed the murdered Alessandro. Like Filippo de’ Nerli in the

Commentari dei fatti civili, the singers saw divine providence in the Medici prince’s accession

and his subsequent victories: “he who fears God above all else /…as you have done, glorious and

content, / will lead his every enterprise to a happy conclusion.”13

During the fifteenth century the Medici had appropriated the image of David for their

own benefit, as vehicle to express the family’s service to the republic of Florence – hence the

presence of Donatello’s bronze David in the family palazzo on the Via Larga.14 This assumption

12
Cronaca fiorentina, 107.
13
Ibid., 108; Filippo de’ Nerli, Commentarj dei fatti civili occorsi dentro la città di Firenze dall’anno 1215 al 1537.
2 vols. (Trieste: Colombo Coen, 1859), 1: i and 37.
14
Sarah Blake McHam, “Donatello’s Bronze David and Judith as Metaphors for Medici Rule in Florence,” The Art
Bulletin 83, no. 1 (2001).
 335

of a communal icon for familial use represented an unprecedented act and testifies to the extent

that the Medici consciously associated themselves with the Florentine state in the mid-fifteenth

century. However, the Medici adopted the image of the Old Testament hero within the

established framework of understanding: as the defender of republican virtue and the civic form

of government. The inscription on Donatello’s bronze reads: “The victor is whoever defends the

fatherland. God crushes the wrath of an enormous foe. Behold! A boy overcame a great tyrant.

Conquer, o citizens!”15 The description of Goliath as a tyrant implies a juxtaposition with the

Florentine neo-Roman republican system of government, while the evocation of “citizens”

situates the image squarely in the civic imagination of the Quattrocento. The 1549 celebration of

Cosimo I as David, however, represented a reinterpretation of the imagery. The Confraternity of

the Archangel Raphael depicted David not as exemplar of virtue to inspire the citizenry of

Florence but as a heroic individual presented for praise and honor.

David was no longer a communal symbol but an avatar for the Medici prince. No

mention of tyranny appears in the mid-sixteenth century lyrics. The verses depict Goliath instead

as threatening and invasive force – “the proud tall giant / before whom all Israel fled.” The

singers emphasized David’s glory and victory, presenting him as the bringer of peace rather than

the defender of liberty. In this way, the Confraternity’s float lauded Cosimo I in a manner akin to

Filippo de’ Nerli’s praise of the prince: as a man who brought an end to the factional conflicts

and internal turmoil of the Florentine republic.16 Under the Medici prince, the verses observed,

15
Ibid., 32.
16
Nerli, Commentarj, 2: 172 and 262.
 336

Florence remained at peace having forgotten “all its past woes”17 The image of David, in 1549,

had lost its previous republican associations, becoming instead an embodiment of Cosimo I’s

political success since 1537. This transformation occurred without a shift in the details of the Old

Testament hero’s representation – which, like the sculptures by Donatello and Michelangelo,

focused on the act of slaying Goliath. The shift had occurred in how the imagery was understood

in Florence.

Giovanmaria Butteri’s Saint Anne altarpiece (Figure 27), painted a quarter century after

the Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael had serenaded Cosimo I as David, contains a

profusion of interlaced elements that similarly demonstrate how the change in political culture

shifted the meaning of pre-existing images and concepts. The prominence of Paolo Giordano and

Isabella de’ Medici Orsini, the former pushing the reigning Medici Grand Duke, Francesco, into

the shadows, suggests that they commissioned the work (or more probably, that Isabella

commissioned it alone). The inclusion of several definably Florentine saints – John the Baptist,

Saint Anne herself, and Saints Cosmas and Damian, who by virtue of patronizing the ruling

house had entered the city’s cult of protectors under the principate – situate the image within the

politico-cultural context of the city on the Arno, where the Duchess of Bracciano made her home

while her husband’s military career carried him around Europe.18 The iconography of the entire

panel divides in two halves, each indicated and presided over by Saint Anne’s outstretched

hands, which both suggest the role of the Medici family in protecting Florence.

17
Cronaca fiorentina, 108.
18
On Isabella de’ Medici Orsini see most recently, Gabrielle Langdon, Medici Women: Portraits of Power, Love,
and Betrayal from the Court of Duke Cosimo I, (Toronto, Buffalo & London: University of Toronto Press, 2006),
146-70.
 337

On the left-hand side of the image, Saints Catherine of Alexandria, Cosmas, and Damian

represent the care and nurture of the state. Saint Catherine, identifiable by the fragment of a

wheel to her left, had associations with learning – indicated by the book she holds in her right

hand – and Isabella herself enjoyed a prominent position in the cultural and intellectual life of the

court. Her presence in the altarpiece bespeaks the protection and promotion of Florence’s

cultural patrimony by the Medici princes. The twin Saints Cosmas and Damian were medical

doctors – their original association with the Medici family perhaps owed in part to a wordplay:

Medici: medico (doctor). Their inclusion in Butteri’s altarpiece, in the guise of the late Cosimo I

and Cardinal Ferdinando, revived a fifteenth-century conceit that presented the saints and by

association the Medici family as physicians of the Florentine state.19 Like De’ Nerli and the

Confraternity of the Archangel Raphael Butteri’s image presents the Medici monarchy as the

source of civic peace and stability in Florence. The Medici medici had cured state and society of

all their ills.

The right-hand side of the panel, by contrast, represents the militant defense of the state,

with Grand Duke Francesco appearing as Saint George and Orsini representing an unidentified

warrior saint: both male figures appear in armor carrying banners, symbolic of victory. Saint

George formed part of the politico-religious imagery of Florence – the representations of

virtuous youth defeating tyranny and evil – alongside David, Perseus, and Hercules.20 The

unidentified saint wearing Orsini’s face could possibly be Saint Stephen – the banner he carries

in his left hand appears to bear the cross of the Military Order of Santo Stefano. Cosimo I had

19
See Dale Kent, Cosimo de’ Medici and the Florentine Renaissance: The Patron’s Oeuvre, (New Haven &
London: Yale University Press, 2000), 141-49.
20
See Simons, “Separating.”
 338

created this maritime order in 1561 to combat the Ottoman presence in the Mediterranean,

naming it after the canonized third-century Pope, whose 2 August feast day coincided with the

Medici prince’s conquest of Siena. The presence of Saint Stephen would imply recognition of

the role that his homonymic knights played in the defense of Medicean Tuscany in the later

sixteenth century. Although the depiction of the papal saint as a soldier is unique to Butteri’s

image, the military appearance accords with his role as patron of the Military Order.

Looming above the members of the Medici family and tying together the message of the

dynasty’s role as protectors of Florence is the figure of Saint Anne. The mother of Mary had a

long association with the defense of Florentine liberty, dating back to the middle of the

fourteenth century. Under the reggimento of 1527-30 the civic cult of Saint Anne had undergone

a revival as the embattled government sought divine protection. In this period the Virgin’s

mother had carried clear connections with the concept of liberty as a civic form of government.21

In Butteri’s 1575 altarpiece Saint Anne again appears as a patron protector of Florentine liberty –

unifying the roles of the five other saints represented by the Medici family – but liberty as

independence not civic freedom. She acknowledges and extends her blessing over the Medici for

their role in ensuring the continued sovereignty of Florence, kept free from foreign interference –

cultural (Saint Anne), political (Saints Cosmas and Damian), and military (Saints George and

Stephen). Like the image of David in the 1549 celebrations the representation of Saint Anne in

the panel continues her previous republican appearance and role, but with a significant shift in

meaning.

21
See Figures 16 and 17 and the accompanying discussion in Chapter 4 above.
 339

The transfigured understandings of David and Saint Anne, as defenders of Florence and

Florentine liberty, that appear in this two vignettes represent more than a simple domestication of

these images by the Medici.22 Saint Anne had not become, in Butteri’s altarpiece, a Medici

family saint – anymore than Saints Catherine, George, or Stephen were. Nor had David become a

special protector of the princely dynasty. The images had undergone what could be described as

a political transubstantiation: their appearance, role, and trappings remained identical to their

earlier republican manifestations but the substance and meaning of these elements had changed.

Liberty meant political independence not the freedoms of neo-Roman civic government.

Florence no longer existed as an imagined community of civilian magistrates but in and through

the body of the prince. The deployment of icons such as Saint Anne and David in the later

sixteenth century in defense of the Medici principate not only indicates the extent of the change

in political culture that occurred in the transition from the fifteenth-century republic, it also

demonstrates – in a graphic and literal manner – how this change occurred. Tracing the course of

this change has been the work of this dissertation – demonstrating how the republican tradition

bled into the emergent monarchy, how civic world of 1480 became the court society of 1550.

This process had occurred through reinterpretation and refashioning of the prevailing language

and images of Florentine politics, rather than via a radical break with the past. Florentine

republicanism and Medici monarchy did not exist in opposition to each other but as two points

on a political spectrum. The fundamental change from one system to the other occurred not in

institutions or personnel but in political culture. The cultural changes that accompanied the

22
This is the explanation that Crum and Wilkins offer in order to explain what they see as the “extraordinary
iconography” of Butteri’s Saint Anne altarpiece: Crum and Wilkins, “In the Defense,” 155.
 340

formal and constitutional innovations tell the story of how a community of citizens became a

society of courtiers.
 341

Appendix A

The Generation of 1480

This appendix details the prosopographical information for the seventy-nine individuals that

formed the filter for the archival research of this dissertation. The following table lists the

individuals alphabetically by family name and identifies them by their first name, as well as the

names of their father and grandfather, by their date or year of birth and (if known) date or

approximate year of death, and by the quarter of Florence in which they lived. If known the

individual’s wife or wives appear also. The table then details the amounts paid by the individual

for the decime of 1498 and 1534 (see details below) and lists the most prominent internal offices

that the individual held or was nominated, elected, appointed, or drawn for but did not hold

between 1480 and 1550 – if the individual did not hold the particular office then reason why (if

know) follows the office’s term in parentheses (see details below).

The process of identifying these individuals began with the identification of the most

prominent lineages that formed the office-holding class in the early sixteenth century. I took as

my starting point those families that possessed at least one seat on the Consiglio Maggiore (the

Great Council). The formation of this institution in 1494 had, for the first time in Florentine

political history, partially closed the office-holding class of the city. Records of its membership,

therefore, constitute the most complete source for determining access to political power in the

period. As my interest lies with the socio-political elite of the city I restricted my initial selection

of families to those whose members had matriculated in one the seven Major Guilds of the city –

the arti maggiori. The professions represented by these trade associations were the more

lucrative and literate of the period, including the pan-European banking and cloth industries, the

judges and notaries who formed the legal profession, and dealers in luxury goods imported from
 342

Asia and the Middle East. The members of these guilds enjoyed a statutory majority in all offices

of the Florentine government over men enrolled in one of the less prestigious Minor Guilds (arti

minori), whose industries tended to be local retail and wholesale trades. In 1508, five hundred

and four lineages had seats on the Consiglio Maggiore and also had members enrolled in one of

the Major Guilds. The families identified in this partial reconstruction of the office-holding class

appear in Appendix B.

From this initial group of 504 families I then excluded any family that had obtained a seat

on the Council by virtue of a special dispensation. By law, membership of the Consiglio

Maggiore belonged only to men who could prove that either they, their fathers, or their

grandfathers possessed the beneficato – that is, that they had seated or been eligible to sit on one

of the three highest executive bodies of the government. Several families were admitted to the

Council, however, by an extraordinary dispensation that allowed a few men per year to obtain a

seat without possession of the beneficato. I also excluded lineages whose presence on the

Consiglio Maggiore was not matched by appearance on the rolls of any other of the more select

councils of the period – either the Medicean Settanta (Seventy) or Cento (Hundred) prior to 1494

and after 1512, or the Ottanta (Eighty) between 1498 and 1512. This second sortition resulted in

a list of two hundred and ninety-nine families.

From the second group I parsed out one hundred and seventy-eight lineages that appeared

to be the most politically active and dominant in the early decades of the sixteenth century. The

majority of these lineages also possessed a long history of political prominence and participation.

All but twenty-seven of them held a seat on the Signoria, the supreme executive office of

Florence, twenty or more times between the creation of this body in 1282 and its abolition in

1532. Only twenty-eight of these families had not sat a member on the Signoria prior to 1382.
 343

(Note that for both these determinations I counted extended lineages only once. The Tornaquinci/

Tornabuoni/ Popoleschi/ Giachinotti (all descended from the Tornaquinci family) sat on the

Signoria fifty-five times between them. Similarly, although (for example) the first man bearing

the surname Tornabuoni did not sit on the Signoria until 1445 I have considered them to have

this honor prior to 1382 by virtue of the Tornaquinci, whose first Prior sat in 1284.) In general,

the names of these lineages also appeared at least once among the membership of the Medicean

councils prior to 1494 and at least three times in the councils of 1498 to 1527. These are the

lineages that formed, in the early sixteenth century, the patriciate of Florence. From this final

grouping of patrician lineages, I identified three hundred and thirty-five individuals, born

between 1480 and 1500, who held office or were nominated for office on one of the three highest

executives bodies – the Signoria and its two advisory colleges, the Dodici Buonuomini (Twelve

Goodmen) and the Sedici Gonfalonieri (the Sixteen Standard-Bearers) at least once. The decision

to pursue individuals born from this twenty-year period proceeded from the gerontocratic nature

of the Florentine political system, which restricted access to public office until the age of thirty.

More important offices – significantly that of Gonfaloniere di Giustizia had higher age

restrictions again. This meant that individuals born between 1480 and 1500 would begin to hold

offices in the years after 1510. Also I wanted to survey the period up to the middle of the

sixteenth century, and I estimated that, as a general rule, the majority of the individuals born

between 1480 and 1500 would live until at least the 1540s (an assumption that proved correct).

From this final group of 335 individuals I identified seventy-six, who appeared to be

especially prominent in the offices and magistracies of Florence. Once I began my archival

research, I added three more names of individuals who were not so prominent but who had left

an interesting or abundant paper trail: Antonio di Simone Canigiani, Luigi di Luigi Martelli, and
 344

Filippo di Niccolò Valori. I used this list of seventy-nine individuals as a tool to filter the

otherwise overwhelming volume of material in the various archives and libraries of Florence:

tracing letters by or directed to these men, searching out account books, diaries, and other

records left by them. Inevitably some individuals appear more prominently in the narrative,

while others absent themselves completely having left nothing but electoral and taxation rolls to

document their existence. But overall the process of selecting the individuals was random

enough that the seventy-nine men recorded here presented a range of experiences of the events of

1480 to 1550.

On the Decima

The decima taxed income derived from real property – an individual’s residence was exempt

being income neutral. As such it provides only an imperfect economic portrait, but the records of

the decime levied in 1498 and 1534 represent the only complete source of financial information

for the period. The figures included here represent the amount of tax paid by each individual (or

their representative) for the two decime. The figures appear in florins, soldi and denari: so a

decima of 8.5.5 equals eight florins, five soldi, and five denari. For accounting purposes the

Florentine used the currency system standard across Europe since Carolingian times in which

one lira (pound) equalled twenty soldi (shillings) and one soldo equalled twelve denari (pence).

In 1498 one florin was worth 135 soldi (or just under seven lire) in actual currency. By 1534 the

value of the florin had increased to 150 soldi (seven and one half lire) in actual currency. In 1498

individuals declared their decima in fiorini di sugello (sealed florins) – an outdated money of

account worth less than the current value of an actual gold florin. In 1534 the decima
 345

declarations were not always as specific, but in general they continued to use the fiorino di

sugello. In the database a double asterisk (**) indicates that someone other than the named

individual filed the decima declaration (usually a father, mother, or grandfather in 1498, and a

widow or heir in 1534). The use of a degree symbol (°) indicates that a joint declaration was filed

– usually with brothers, but sometimes also including cousins and other family members (such as

the Strozzi declaration of 1498).

On Offices and Office-Holding

The public offices included in the following database represent the most important positions,

magistracies and councils of Florence for the period 1480 to 1550: the Gonfaloniere di Giustizia

(1480-April 1532), the Signoria (1480-April 1532), the Sedici Gonfalonieri (1480-April 1532),

the Dodici Buonuomini (1480-April 1532), the Otto di Pratica (1480-94, 1514-27, 1532-50), the

Settanta (1480-94, 1514-27), the Cento (1480-94, 1514-27), the Dieci di Libertà e Pace (1494-

1512, 1527-30), the Ottanta (1494-1512, 1527-30), the Ducal Council (1532-50), the

Accoppiatori (1480-1550), the Ufficiali del Monte (1480-1550), the Dugento (1532-50), and the

Quarantotto (1532-50). The database also includes certain special magistracies such as the

Medicean balìe (1512-27, 1530-32), the pratiche of the regime of 1527-30, and the special

commissions appointed in May 1527 (here labeled balìe also). The term of office follows the

name of the office. Where the office had a permanent membership (the Settanta and the

Medicean balìe) only the year of an individual’s appointment appears. In the case of 1530, when

two balìe were appointed with an addition of arroti to the first, the specific month or status of the
 346

individual’s appointment is also noted. Note, as all these individuals would have been eligible for

the Consiglio Maggiore – all having held or been seen for one of the Tre Maggiori – I have not

included it. Where an individual did not actually hold the office the reason why appears in

parentheses following the term dates. Brief explanations for the various reasons appear below:

Absent= Individual was not in Florence.

Already in Office= Individual already holding a different office. Until 1532 individuals could not

hold more than one office concurrently.

Divieto= Individual excluded because a close family member had held the same office within the

previous year or was holding the same office concurrently.

In Speculo= Individual excluded because he owed money to the commune, usually tax payments.

Other= The exact reason for an individual’s exclusion is unclear but the individual did not hold

the office. Under the Medicean republic of 1512-27 several clear examples of individuals being

held back from one office so they could assume another (appointed a month or two later) can be

seen in the database.

Under-Age= Individual did not yet make the minimum age requirement for holding the specific

office. During the fifteenth-century men tended have their sons inscribed on the electoral rolls as

early as they possibly could – because honor accrued to the family and individual simply for

having their name drawn for office, even if they could not hold it. This explains the multiple

occurrences of individuals in the database having their names drawn for office when they under

ten years of age. The institution of the Consiglio Maggiore, with its double process of election
 347

and sortition, greatly reduced the incidence of under-age youths being seen for offices that they

were years away from actually holding.

 348

Bernardo di Nofri di Zanobi ACCIAIUOLI

27 Ocotber 1482 – 7 April 1547
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Selveggia di Lanfredino Lanfredini
Decima 1498: 8.5.5° Decima 1534: 2.14.0

Signoria Sep-Oct 1488 (under-age)

Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jul-Dec 1521
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1525
Balìa Arroto 29 August 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1540-Mar 1541
Quarantotto 1543
Ducal Council May-Jul 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1545
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1545
Ducal Council Nov 1546-Jan 1547
Accoppiatore Nov 1546 – Jan 1547

Andrea di Tommaso di Andrea ALAMANNI

27 July 1482 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 2.0.5** Decima 1534: 11.10.9°

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1488 (under-age)

Signoria Sep-Oct 1489 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1490 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1516
Signoria Mar-Apr 1530
Ottanta May-Aug 1530
Pratica June 1530
Dugento 1546

Antonfrancesco di Luca di Antonio ALBIZZI

11 October 1486 – 20 August 1537 †
San Giovanni
Married: Maddalena di Giovanbattista Ridolfi
Decima 1498: 16.10.5** Decima 1534: 53.1.10

Cento Jan-Jun 1519

Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (absent)
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jan-Feb 1527 (divieto)
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Ottanta May-Nov 1527
Dieci di Libertà e Pace Jul-Dec 1528
 349

Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527

Ottanta May-Nov 1527
Dieci di Libertà e Pace Jul-Dec 1528

Girolamo di Luca di Maso ALBIZZI

8 October 1485 – 24 April 1556
San Giovanni
Married: Costanza di Troilo I de’ Rossi, marchese di San Secondo
Decima 1498: 20.14.0** Decima 1534: 8.10.12

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1530

Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Sep-Oct 1531 (in speculo)
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1533
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1534
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1534
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1535
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1536
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1536
Ducal Council Nov 1536-Jan 1537
Accoppiatore Nov 1537-Jan 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Accoppiatore Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1541
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1541
Accoppiatore Nov 1541-Jan 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1542
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1543
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1543
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1544
Ducal Council Nov 1544-Jan 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1547
Ducal Council May-Jul 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Ducal Council Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1550
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1550
 350

Carlo di Maso di Niccolò ALESSANDRI

21 August 1482 – 10 August 1562
Married: 1. Caterina di Giuliano Salviati
2. Alessandrina di Zanobi Acciaiuoli
3. Maria di Leonardo Ginori
4. Alessandra di Giovanni Lapini
Decima 1498: 29.6.9** Decima 1534: 21.16.0

Signoria Jul-Aug 1488 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1517 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1517 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Signoria May-Jun 1525
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Dodici Jan-Mar 1531

Bindo di Antonio di Bindo ALTOVITI

26 September 1491 – 22 January 1557
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Fiametta di Tommaso di Paolantonio Soderini
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 57.3.8

Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)

Cento Jan-Jun 1527
Monte Official Mar 1527-Mar 1528
Monte Official Mar 1528-term cancelled
Signoria Mar-Apr 1529 (absent)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1529 (in speculo)
Dugento 1532
Monte Official Mar 1532-Mar1533
Monte Official Jun 1535-end of term unclear
Monte Official Feb 1541-Mar 1542
Monte Official Oct 1542-Apr 1543
Monte Official Oct 1543-Apr 1544
Quarantotto 1546
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1546
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1548
Otto di Pratica Sep 1548-Mar 1549
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1549
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1550
 351

Leonardo di Filippo di Giovanni DELL'ANTELLA

10 July 1480 - ?
Santa Croce
Married: Francesca di Bernardo di Piero Borsi
Decima 1498: 5.8.5** Decima 1534: 14.11.2

Signoria Mar-Apr 1487 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1488 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1493 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1494 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1495 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1514
Signoria Jul-Aug 1515
Cento Jul-Dec 1518
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1531

Alessandro di Niccolò di Tommaso ANTINORI

21 October 1481 - ?
Santo Spirito
Married: Giovanna di Lorenzo Tornabuoni
Decima 1498: 26.5.2** Decima 1534: 80.10.6

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1487 (under-age)

Signoria Jan-Feb 1491 (under-age)
Monte Official Mar 1513-Feb 1514
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1515
Monte Official Mar 1516-Feb 1517
Signoria Mar-Apr 1516
Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1520
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Mar-Apr 1521 (under-age)
Monte Official Jul 1521-Feb 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Monte Official Apr 1528-Mar 1529 (other)
Ottanta Nov 1528-May 1529
Signoria Jan-Feb 1529 (already in office)
Signoria Jul-Aug 1529
Balìa Arroto 29 Aug 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Monte Official Jun 1532-Dec 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1534
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1534
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Monte Official Jun 1535-Oct 1536
 352

Quarantotto 1532
Monte Official Jun 1532-Dec 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1534
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1534
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Monte Official Jun 1535-Oct 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1537
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1537
Ducal Council May-Jul 1537
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1538
Monte Official Mar 1538-Feb 1539
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1538
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1539
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1539
Ducal Council – Luogotentente Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1540
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1540
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1541
Monte Official Oct 1541-Mar 1542
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1542
Monte Official Oct 1542-Mar 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1542-Jan 1543
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1543
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1543
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1544
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1544
Ducal Council May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1545
Monte Official Nov 1545-Oct 1546
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1546
Monte Official Mar-Sept 1547
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1547
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1548
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1549
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1549
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1550
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1550
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1550

Cosimo di Cosimo di Matteo BARTOLI

30 December 1484 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 17.1.8° Decima 1534: 9.10.4

Signoria Jan-Feb 1487 (under-age)

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1522
 353

Decima 1498: 17.1.8° Decima 1534: 9.10.4

Signoria Jan-Feb 1487 (under-age)

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (other)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1526
Signoria May-Jun 1531

M. Paolo di Lorenzo di Giovanni BARTOLI

9 September 1484 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 5.17.3** Decima 1534: 1.17.11

Signoria Jan-Feb 1488 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1527 (in speculo)
Ottanta May-Nov 1528
Ottanta Nov 1528-Apr 1529
Signoria Sep-Oct 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-May 1530
Pratica Nov 1529
Ottanta May-Aug 1530
Pratica Jun 1530

Piero di Marco di Leonardo BARTOLINI

4 December 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 4.5.8

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1514

Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1518 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1521 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Signoria May-Jun 1525
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Balìa Nov 1530
 354

Filippo di Carlo di Leonardo DEL BENINO

11 December 1418 – before March 1530
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 6.10.5

Signoria Mar-Apr 1488 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1512
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento May 1527 – special election

Francesco di Agostino di Sandro BILIOTTI

26 October 1482 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 6.15.6° Decima 1534: 3.10.4

Signoria May-Jun 1488

Cento Jan-Jun 1518 (other)
Signoria May-Jun 1518
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1519
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1526

Sandro di Agostino di Sandro BILIOTTI

24 May 1485 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 6.15.6° Decima 1534: 3.14.11

Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1517

Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Ottanta Apr-Nov 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-Apr 1530
Dugento 1550
 355

Benedetto di M. Filippo di Lorenzo BUONDELMONTI

30 May 1481 – 4 September 1533
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Lucrezia di Luca degli Albizzi
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 16.17.1

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1511

Cento Jul-Dec 1522 (in speculo)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (other)
Settanta 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1526 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)
Cento Jan-May 1527 (absent)
Balìa Nov 1530
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1531
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jul-Aug 1531
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore Nov 1532-Jan 1533
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1534 (dead)

Lorenzo di Antonio di Bernardo CAMBI

11 Mar 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 8.19.3** Decima 1534: 14.12.7

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1514

Cento Jan-Jun 1514 (divieto)
Cento Jul-Dec 1514
Signoria Jan-Feb 1515
Cento Jan-Jun 1517 (in speculo)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1518 (in speculo)
Signoria May-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1521
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jul-Aug 1523
Balìa 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (other)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1525
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1527
Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538
 356

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1527

Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538

Antonio di Simone di Antonio CANIGIANI

13 October 1495 - ?
Santo Spirito
Married: Argentina di Tommaso di Paolantonio Soderini
Decima 1498: 8.12.0** Decima 1534: 11.2.10°

Signoria Jan-Feb 1515 (under-age)

Dugento 1546

Domenico di Matteo di M. Giovanni CANIGIANI

13 January 1487 – 31 August 1548
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 49.11.9** Decima 1534: 18.17.10

Signoria Jul-Aug 1517

Signoria Jan-Feb 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Balìa Nov 1530
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Nov-Dec 1531 (in speculo)
Dugento 1532
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1536
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1537
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1537
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1538
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1538
Otto di Pratica Sep 1539-Mar 1540
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1540
Ducal Council Nov 1541-Jan 1542
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1542
Accoppiatore Nov 1542-Jan 1543
Quarantotto 1543
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1544
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Nov 1546-Jan 1547
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1547
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550
 357

Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1547

Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550

Giovanni di Matteo di M. Giovanni CANIGIANI

23 May 1484 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 49.11.9** Decima 1534: 16.17.4

Signoria Sep-Oct 1485 (under-age)

Signoria Jul-Aug 1513
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1514
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jul-Aug 1516 (under-age)
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Signoria Jul-Aug 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Settanta 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quanratotto 1532
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1532

Lorenzo di Matteo di M. Giovanni CANIGIANI

15 February 1493 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 49.11.9** Decima 1534: 15.12.9

Signoria Sep-Oct 1524

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1527
Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1532
Dugento 1543
Quarantotto 1548
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1549

Bongianni di Gino di Lodovico CAPPONI

17 April 1485 - ?
Santo Spirito
Married: Alessandra di Bastiano Albertinelli
Decima 1498: 0.1.7 Decima 1534: 0.6.7

Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (in speculo)

Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1524
 358

Married: Alessandra di Bastiano Albertinelli

Decima 1498: 0.1.7 Decima 1534: 0.6.7

Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (in speculo)

Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Cento May 1527 – special election
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1532
Dugento 1532

Giovanni di Agnolo di Lorenzo CARDUCCI

14 Jul 1489 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 7.14.9

Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1514 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1519
Cento Jan-May 1527
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Ottanta Nov 1528-Apr 1529
Ottanta Apr-Nov 1529
Signoria Jan-Feb 1530

Bernardo di Andrea di Bernardo CARNESECCHI

17 November 1481 – 8 March 1557
San Giovanni
Decima 1498: 21.7.7** Decima 1534: 15.14.6

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1513

Signoria Nov-Dec 1515
Balìa 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1543
Quarantotto 1546
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1547
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550
 359

Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1547

Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550

Scolaio di Iacopo di Scolaio CIACCHI

22 March 1480 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 2.13.2** Decima 1534: 7.3.5

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1510

Signoria Jan-Feb 1511
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1520
Balìa 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia May-Jun 1527 (other)
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1542

Battista di Giovanni di Benedetto CICCIAPORCI

21 Jun 1484 – before 1532
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 4.12.6** Decima 1534: 7.12.0**

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1487 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1492 (under-age)
Signoria Jan-Feb 1516
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1522

Viviano di Stefano di Niccolò CORSELLINI*

(26 Oct 1482 - ?) ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 5.2.5** Decima 1534: 6.15.5

Signoria Jul-Aug 1486 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1512
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1518
Ottanta Nov 1527-Apr 1528
Ottanta Apr-Nov 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-May 1530
Ottanta May-Aug 1530
 360

Ottanta Nov 1527-Apr 1528

Ottanta Apr-Nov 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-May 1530
Ottanta May-Aug 1530

Giovanni di Girolamo di Paolo FEDERIGHI

14 May 1483 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 8.14.6** Decima 1534: 8.14.9

Signoria Sep-Oct 1488 (under-age)

Signoria Sep-Oct 1512
Balìa 1512
Sedici Sep-Dec 1514
Cento Jul-Dec 1519 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (absent)
Cento Jan-Jun 1521 (absent)
Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Signoria Jan-Feb 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jan-May 1527 (in speculo)
Cento May 1527 – special election
Balìa Nov 1530

Bongianni di Gherardo di M. Bongianni GIANFIGLIAZZI

31 October 1487 – 7 September 1551
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 25.7.0** Decima 1534: 11.19.7

Signoria May-Jun 1514 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1518
Signoria Jan-Feb 1519
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (other)
Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Signoria Jan-Feb 1531
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1537
Quarantotto 1546
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1546
Otto di Pratica Sep 1546-Mat 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
 361

Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1537

Quarantotto 1546
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1546
Otto di Pratica Sep 1546-Mat 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1548
Ducal Council May-Jul 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1549
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1549
Ducal Council Nov 1549 – Jan 1550
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1550

Gianbattista di Tommaso di Zanobi GINORI

26 Aug 1488 - ?
San Giovanni
Decima 1498: 12.12.6** Decima 1534: 13.2.3°

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1514 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1517
Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Ottanta May-Nov 1529
Dugento 1540

Carlo di Francesco di Zanobi GIROLAMI

21 Feb 1490 - ?
Santa Croce

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1515 (other)

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1519
Signoria Nov-Dec 1520
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (absent)
Signoria Jul-Aug 1526

Filippo di Francesco di Zanobi GIROLAMI

12 July 1483 - ?
Santa Croce
Married: Lucretia di Antonio di Bindo Altoviti
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 21.15.0

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1518

Signoria Jan-Feb 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
 362

Married: Lucretia di Antonio di Bindo Altoviti

Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 21.15.0

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1518

Signoria Jan-Feb 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento May 1527 – special election
Ottanta May-Nov 1529
Dugento 1546

Piero di Antonio di Sichelmo GIROLAMI

11 July 1488 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 6.14.10** Decima 1534: 8.5.0°

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1515 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1524
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1527
Ottanta Nov 1527-May 1528
Signoria May-Jun 1528
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-May 1530
Dugento 1550

Bernardo di Antonio di Leonardo GONDI

28 May 1482 – 12 October 1539
Santa Croce
Married: Gostanza di Bartolomeo Benci
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 20.8.8

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1512

Monte Official Mar 1518-Mar 1519
Signoria Sep-Oct 1527
Ottanta Nov 1527-May 1528
Ottanta May-Nov 1529
Ottanta May-Aug 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1538

M. Francesco di Piero di Iacopo GUICCIARDINI

6 March 1483 –27 May 1540
Santo Spirito
Married: Maria di Alamanno Salviati
Decima 1498: 33.2.11** Decima 1534: 93.10.0°

Signoria May-Jun 1487 (under-age)

Diciasette Riformatori 1514
Signoria Sep-Oct 1515
Cento Jul-Dec 1518 (absent)
 363

Decima 1498: 33.2.11** Decima 1534: 93.10.0°

Signoria May-Jun 1487 (under-age)

Diciasette Riformatori 1514
Signoria Sep-Oct 1515
Cento Jul-Dec 1518 (absent)
Cento Jan-Jun 1519 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (absent)
Cento Jan-Jun 1521 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1522 (absent)
Settanta 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526 (absent)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)
Otto di Pratica Sep 1530-Mar 1531
Monte Official Oct 1530-Mar 1531
Balìa Nov 1530
Accoppiatore Mar-Sep 1531
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1532
Dodici Riformatori Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore Nov 1533-Jan 1534
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1535
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1535
Ducal Council May-Jul 1536
Monte Official Oct 1536-Mar 1539 (?)
Accoppiatore Nov 1536-Jan 1537
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1539
Ducal Council May-Jul 1539
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1539
Otto di Pratica Sep 1539-Mar 1540
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1540
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1540 (dead)

Girolamo di Piero di Iacopo GUICCIARDINI

10 June 1487 – 15 March 1555
Santo Spirito
Married: Costanza di Angelo de’ Bardi
Decima 1498: 33.2.11** Decima 1534: 93.10.0°

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1525 (under-age)

Signoria May-Jun 1531
Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1541-Mar 1542
Monte Official Nov 1545-Aug 1546
 364

Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1541-Mar 1542
Monte Official Nov 1545-Aug 1546

Iacopo di Piero di Iacopo GUICCIARDINI

9 July 1480 – 1552
Santo Spirito
Married: Camilla di Angelo de’ Bardi
Decima 1498: 33.2.11** Decima 1534: 93.10.0°

Signoria Jan-Feb 1487 (under-age)

Signoria May-Jun 1511
Cento Jul-Dec 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (in speculo)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)
Cento Jan-May 1527 (absent)
Cento May 1527 – special election (absent)
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Monte Official Mar 1531-Mar 1532
Dugento 1540
Monte Official Apr-Oct 1541
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1542
Monte Official Apr-Oct 1542

Bartolomeo di Lanfredino di Iacopo LANFREDINI

30 January 1496 – ca. 1556-59
Santo Spirito
Married: Bartolomea (Baccia) di Jacopo di Pandolfo Corbinelli
Decima 1498: 1.6.4** Decima 1534: 4.7.2

Signoria Nov-Dec 1512 (under-age)

Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524 (absent)
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Mar-Apr 1525 (under-age)
Signoria Jan-Feb 1526
Cento Jan-Jun 1526 (already in office)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (other)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Cento Jul-Dec 1527 – term canceled (in speculo)
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1532
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1534
 365

Balìa Nov 1530

Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1532
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1534
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1535
Otto di Pratica Sep 1535-Mar 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1537
Ducal Council May-Jul 1537
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1538
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1538
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1539
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1540
Ducal Council May-Jul 1540
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1541
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1542
Accoppiatore Nov 1542-Jan 1543
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1544
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1544

Bernardo di Giovanni di Orsino LANFREDINI

16 October 1482 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 21.5.5° Decima 1534: 12.12.5

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1487 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1516
Cento Jan-Jun 1517 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1518 (in speculo)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1518
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1522 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524 (in speculo)
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1527 – term canceled
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1530

Francesco di Piero di Anfrione LENZI

9 November 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 15.10.7** Decima 1534: 4.18.5

Signoria Sep-Oct 1487 (under-age)

Signoria Mar-Apr 1511
 366

9 November 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 15.10.7** Decima 1534: 4.18.5

Signoria Sep-Oct 1487 (under-age)

Signoria Mar-Apr 1511
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1520
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Ottanta May-Nov 1527
Ottanta Nov 1527-May 1528
Ottanta Nov 1528-May 1529
Ottanta May-Nov 1529

Francesco di Ridolfo di Sandro LOTTI

1480/83 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 4.12.1** Decima 1534: 7.3.7

Signoria Jul-Aug 1487 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1512
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1521
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1528
Ottanta May-Nov 1529
Pratica May 1529
Signoria Sep-Oct 1529

Agnolo di M. Antonio di Piero MALEGONNELLE

27 November 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 35.2.10** Decima 1498: 2.18.8

Signoria Mar-Apr 1489 (under-age)

Cento Jan-Jun 1517 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1518 (in speculo)
Signoria May-Jun 1518
Cento Jul-Dec 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (other)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1550-Mar 1551
 367

Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1550-Mar 1551

M. Alessandro di M. Antonio di Piero MALEGONNELLE

25 February 1492 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Contessina di Lorenzo di Bernardo Cavalcanti
Decima 1498: 35.2.10** Decima 1534: 7.1.10

Signoria Jul-Aug 1522

Balìa 1524
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Signoria Jan-Feb 1527
Cento May 1527 – special election
Balìa Nov 1530
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Mar-Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Quarantotto 1537
Ducal Council Nov 1537-Jan 1538
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1538
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1538
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1539
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1540
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1541
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1541
Ducal Council May-Jul 1541
Accoppiatore Nov 1542-Jan 1543
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1544
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1544
Otto di Pratica Sep 1544-Mar 1545
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Nov 1546-Jan 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1548
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1548
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1548
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1547
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1549
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1550
Accoppiatore Nov 1550-Jan 1551
 368

Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1550

Accoppiatore Nov 1550-Jan 1551

Lorenzo di M. Antonio di Piero MALEGONNELLE

1 July 1483 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 35.2.10** Decima 1534: 8.3.0

Signoria Mar-Apr 1489 (under-age)

Signoria Sep-Oct 1515
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1520
Signoria Jan-Feb 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526

Domenico di Braccio di M. Domenico MARTELLI

8 November 1486 – 6 December 1548
San Giovanni
Married: Elisabetta di Jacopo Corsi
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 11.7.9

Signoria Nov-Dec 1524 (in speculo)

Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1534
Ducal Council Nov 1534-Jan 1535
Accoppiatore Nov 1535-Jan 1536
Ducal Council May-Jul 1536
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1536
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1537
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1538
Otto di Pratica Sep 1539-Mar 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1540
Ducal Council May-Jul 1540
Accoppiatore Nov 1540-Jan 1541
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1541
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1543
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1543
Otto di Pratica Sep 1543-Mar 1544
Accoppiatore Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1544
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1545
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1545
Otto di Pratica Sep 1545-Mar 1546
Accoppiatore Nov 1545-Jan 1546
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1547
 369

Accoppiatore May-Jul 1544

Accoppiatore May-Jul 1545
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1545
Otto di Pratica Sep 1545-Mar 1546
Accoppiatore Nov 1545-Jan 1546
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1547
Ducal Council Nov 1548-Jan 1549

Luigi di Luigi di Ugolino MARTELLI

20 April 1494 - ?
San Giovanni
Married: Margerita di Giovanvettorio di Tommaso Soderini
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 13.19.4

Signoria Jan-Feb 1520 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1531
Dugento 1543

Ottaviano di Lorenzo di Bernardo DE' MEDICI

14 July 1482 – 28 May 1546
San Giovanni
Married: Francesca di Jacopo di Giovanni Salviati
Decima 1498: 33.13.6** Decima 1534: 43.7.9°

Signoria May-Jun 1489 (under-age)

Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527
Balìa Aug 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Sep-Oct 1531
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1532-Mar 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1533
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1535
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1535
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1536
Otto di Pratica Sep 1536-Mar 1537
Accoppiatore Nov 1537-Jan 1538
Monte Official Mar 1538-Mar 1539
Ducal Council May-Jul 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Monte Official Mar 1539-Mar 1540
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539
 370

Monte Official Mar 1538-Mar 1539

Ducal Council May-Jul 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Monte Official Mar 1539-Mar 1540
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1539
Accoppiatore Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1541
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Aug-Oct 1541
Accoppiatore Nov 1541-Jan 1542
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1542
Ducal Council May-Jul 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1544-Jan 1545
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1545
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1545
Accoppiatore Nov 1545-Jan 1546

Miniato di Agnolo di Francesco MINIATI*

16 May 1481 - ?
Santa Croce

Signoria Jan-Feb 1490 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1513
Signoria Jan-Feb 1514
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1531

Raffaello di Miniato di Bernardo MINIATI*

5 December 1482 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 8.19.9** Decima 1534: 7.9.6

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1520

Signoria Jan-Feb 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento May 1527 – special election
Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
 371

Cento Jul-Dec 1523

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento May 1527 – special election
Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Balìa Nov 1530

Girolamo di Girolamo di Matteo MORELLI

24 July 1480 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 10.14.0° Decima 1534: 6.8.11

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1487 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1488 (under-age)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1488 (under-age)
Signoria Jul-Aug 1489 (under-age)
Signoria Jul-Aug 1510
Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Ottanta Nov 1528-Apr 1529
Ottanta Apr-Nov 1529
Dugento 1540

Girolamo di Giovanni di Iacopo MORELLI

1486 – 9 April 1567
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 2.16.6** Decima 1534: 6.10.0

Signoria May-Jun 1514 (under-age)

Signoria Nov-Dec 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1541
Quarantotto 1546
Ducal Council Nov 1546-Jan 1547
Accoppiatore Nov 1547-Jan 1548
Accoppiatore Nov 1548-Jan 1549
Ducal Council Nov 1548-Jan 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1550
 372

Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1550

Filippo di Benedetto di Tanai DE' NERLI

9 March 1486 – 17 January 1556
Santo Spirito
Married: Caterina di Jacopo di Giovanni Salviati
Decima 1498: 13.2.0** Decima 1534: 25.5.3

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1515

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (other)
Cento Jan-Jun 1521 (absent)
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jul-Aug 1522 (under-age)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1522
Cento Jan-May 1527 (absent)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Signoria Jul-Aug 1531
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1533
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1533
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1534
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1535
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1535
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1536
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1537-Jan 1538
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1539
Accoppiatore Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1541
Otto di Pratica Sep 1541-Mar 1542
Ducal Council Nov 1541-Jan 1542
Accoppiatore Nov 1541-Jan 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1542
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Aug-Oct 1542
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1543
Ducal Council May-Jul 1543
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543
Otto di Pratica Sep 1544-Mar 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Ducal Council May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1546
 373

Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543

Otto di Pratica Sep 1544-Mar 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Ducal Council May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1546
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Otto di Pratica Sep 1547-Mar 1548
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Ducal Council Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1550
Ducal Council Nov 1550-Jan 1551

Tanai di Piero di Tanai DE' NERLI

30 January 1496 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 73.18.7** Decima 1534: 25.5.3

Signoria Nov-Dec 1518 (under-age)

Monte Official Mar 1524-Mar 1526
Signoria May-Jun 1526
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1527 (in speculo)
Signoria May-Jun 1530
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Dugento 1540

Francesco di Piero di Francesco DEL NERO

13 May 1487 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 4.9.7** Decima 1534: 1.10.8

Signoria Nov-Dec 1516

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1518
Signoria Mar-Apr 1522
Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (other)
Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (other)
Monte Official Mar 1524-Mar 1526
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527 (other)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Monte Official Mar 1527-Mar 1528
 374

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527

Monte Official Mar 1527-Mar 1528

Bernardo di Simone di Bernardo NICCOLINI

9 April 1482 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 3.16.5**

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1488 (in speculo)

Cento Jul-Dec 1518
Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)

Gianfrancesco di Antonio di Leonardo DE' NOBILI

21 June 1480 – late March 1541
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 15.17.10

Signoria Nov-Dec 1485

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1509
Monte Official Mar 1511-Mar 1512
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1512
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1514
Cento Jan-Jun 1516
Signoria Jul-Aug 1516
Cento Jul-Dec 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1519 (other)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1519
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1521
Settanta 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Balìa 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)
Otto di Pratica Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Signoria Sep-Oct 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1531
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Mar-Apr 1532
Dodici Riformatori Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1532
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1533
 375

Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Mar-Apr 1532

Dodici Riformatori Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1532
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1533
Accoppiatore Nov 1533-Jan 1534
Otto di Pratica Sep 1534-Mar 1535
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1535
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1535
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1535
Accoppiatore Nov 1536-Jan 1537
Ducal Council May-Jul 1537
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1537
Ducal Council –Luogotenente Aug-Oct 1538
Otto di Pratica Sep 1538-Mar 1539
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1539
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1539
Ducal Council Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1540
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1541 (other)

Bernardo di Gherardo di Antonio PAGANELLI

7 October 1488 – before 1532
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 17.3.11** Decima 1534: 12.12.9**

Signoria May-Jun 1514 (under age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1523 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Signoria Sep-Oct 1526
Cento May 1527 – special election

Pandolfo di Agnolo di Pandolfo PANDOLFINI

6 September 1484 - ?
San Giovanni
Decima 1498: 4.10.11** Decima 1534: 3.5.10

Signoria Jan-Feb 1486 (under-age)

Cento Jan-Jun 1523 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Cento May 1527 – special election
 376

Cento Jan-Jun 1524

Cento Jul-Dec 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Cento May 1527 – special election

Francesco di Piero di Francesco PITTI

6 June 1487 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 3.7.4** Decima 1534: 29.3.1

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1517

Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Signoria Jan-Feb 1523
Monte Official Mar 1524-Mar 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1526 (absent)
Monte Official Apr 1528-Apr 1529
Monte Official Oct 1530-Mar 1531
Signoria Nov-Dec 1530
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538

Pierfrancesco di Folco di Averardo PORTINARI

4 June 1484/88 – 29 September 1531
San Giovanni
Married: Marietta di Luigi di Paolo Soderini
Decima 1498: 4.6.2** Decima 1534: 8.1.8**

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1518

Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento Jan-May 1527
Ottanta May-Nov 1527 (other)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1527
Dieci di Libertà e Pace Jun-Dec 1529
Signoria Jul-Aug 1529
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1530
Pratica Jun 1530

Raffaello di M. Alessandro di Antonio PUCCI

9 June 1490 - ?
San Giovanni
Decima 1498: 3.11.8** Decima 1534: 36.6.0°

Signoria Jan-Feb 1518 (under-age)

Signoria Jul-Aug 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
 377

Decima 1498: 3.11.8** Decima 1534: 36.6.0°

Signoria Jan-Feb 1518 (under-age)

Signoria Jul-Aug 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa Nov 1530
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jan-Feb 1531 (under-age)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1541
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1543
Otto di Pratica Sep 1543-Mar 1544
Ducal Council Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Accoppiatore Nov 1544-Jan 1545
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1545
Accoppiatore Nov 1545-Jan 1546
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1546
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1547
Accoppiatore Nov 1547-Jan 1548
Accoppiatore Nov 1548-Jan 1549
Ducal Council May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1550

Bettino di Bettino di Antonio DA RICASOLI

1485 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 24.7.7° Decima 1534: 30.1.1°

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1515

Signoria Nov-Dec 1516
Signoria Nov-Dec 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-May 1527
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1530

Federigo di Ruberto di Giovanni DE' RICCI

20 April 1487 – 1572
Santa Croce
Married: 1. Alessandra Gondi
2. Francesca Acciaiuoli
Decima 1498: 7.4.1** Decima 1534: 24.16.8°

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517

Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
 378

2. Francesca Acciaiuoli
Decima 1498: 7.4.1** Decima 1534: 24.16.8°

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517

Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527 (other)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1527
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1533
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1533
Accoppiatore Nov 1533-Jan 1534
Ducal Council Nov 1533-Jan 1534
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1535
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1535
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1536
Accoppiatore Nov 1536-Jan 1537
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1537
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1539
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1539
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1539
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1540
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1540
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1541
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1541
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1542
Ducal Council Nov 1542-Jan 1543
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1543
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1543
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1543
Accoppiatore Nov 1544-Jan 1545
Monte Official Nov 1544-Apr 1545
Accoppiatore Nov 1545-Jan 1546
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1546
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1546
Monte Official Sep 1546-Feb 1547
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1547
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1547
Accoppiatore Nov 1547-Jan 1548
 379

Accoppiatore Nov 1548-Jan 1549

Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1549
Accoppiatore Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1550

Francesco di Girolamo di Filippo RUCELLAI

30 June 1485 – 17 February 1547
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 30.8.1** Decima 1534: 17.3.7

Sedici Gonfalonieri May-Aug 1515

Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (other)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1526
Otto di Pratica Sep 1538-Mar 1539
Quarantotto 1544
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1545
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1545
Otto di Pratica Sep 1545-Mar 1546
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1546
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1546
Ducal Council May-Jul 1546

Averardo di Alamanno di Averardo SALVIATI

22 August 1489 – 1 October 1553/54
Santa Croce
Married: 1. Maria di Angelo de’ Bardi
2. Nannina Alamanni
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 125.1.2°

Signoria Nov-Dec 1512 (under-age)

Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Sep-Oct 1514 (under-age)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1520
Monte Official Jul 1521-Apr 1523
Balìa 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Signoria Mar-Apr 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Monte Official Mar 1526-Feb 1527
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Monte Official Apr 1528-Apr 1529
Monte Official Oct 1530-Mar 1531
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1538
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Monte Official Mar 1539-Feb 1541
 380

Balìa Nov 1530

Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1538
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1538
Accoppiatore Nov 1538-Jan 1539
Monte Official Mar 1539-Feb 1541
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Accoppiatore Nov 1539-Jan 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1541
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1541
Accoppiatore Nov 1541-Nov 1542
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1542
Ducal Council May-Jul 1542
Otto di Pratica Sep 1542-Mar 1543
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Feb-Apr 1544
Ducal Council May-Jul 1544
Monte Official Nov 1544-Apr 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Ducal Council Nov 1545-Jan 1546
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1550
Ducal Council May-Jul 1550

Carlo di Tommaso di Federigo SASSETTI

5 September 1483 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 10.7.3** Decima 1534: 4.7.1

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1514

Signoria Mar-Apr 1517
Cento Jul-Dec 1518
Cento Jul-Dec 1521
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1531
Dugento 1532
 381

Lorenzo di Bernardo di Stefano SEGNI

4 September 1481 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 20.9.8** Decima 1534: 17.15.10

Signoria Jan-Feb 1514

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1516
Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (other)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1520
Balìa of 120 May-Jun 1527
Ottanta May-Nov 1527
Ottanta Nov 1527-May 1528
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1528
Ottanta May-Nov 1528
Ottanta Nov 1528-May 1529
Dieci di Libertà e Pace Dec 1528-Jun 1529
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Dodici Apr-Jun 1532

Cristofano di Chimenti di Cipriano SERNIGI

15 February 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella

Signoria Mar-Apr 1487 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1510
Signoria May-Jun 1514
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1515
Cento Jul-Dec 1515
Cento Jul-Dec 1516
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1521 (absent)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1522
Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523 (in speculo)
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (in speculo)
Balìa Nov 1530
Dodici Jan-Mar 1531 (absent)
Dugento 1532
 382

Girolamo di Francesco di Guglielmo DA SOMMAIA

26 February 1491 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 6.15.1** Decima 1534: 18.0.0°

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1521

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1530
Dugento 1540
Monte Official Oct 1542-Apr 1543
Monte Official Oct 1544-Apr 1545
Monte Official May-Oct 1545
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1546
Monte Official Sep 1546-Mar 1547

Iacopo di Antonio di Giovanni SPINI

5 February 1480 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 5.6.4 Decima 1534: 5.5.5

Signoria May-Jun 1486 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1513
Cento Jan-Jun 1516
Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Cento Jan-Jun 1518
Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1520 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1521
Signoria May-Jun 1522
Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (other)
Cento Jan-May 1527 (other)
Balìa Nov 1530
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1532
Dugento 1532

Filippo (Giovanbattista) di Filippo di Matteo STROZZI

3 January 1489 – 18 December 1538 †
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Clarice di Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici
Decima 1498: 117.3.3° Decima 1534: 81.14.2

Monte Official Mar 1516-Feb 1517

Monte Official Mar 1518-Feb 1519
Monte Official Mar 1519-Feb 1520
Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (absent)
Cento Jan-May 1527 (absent)
Cento May 1527 – special election (absent)
Balìa Nov 1530
Otto di Pratica Sep 1531-Mar 1532
 383

Monte Official Mar 1519-Feb 1520

Cento Jul-Dec 1525 (absent)
Cento Jan-May 1527 (absent)
Cento May 1527 – special election (absent)
Balìa Nov 1530
Otto di Pratica Sep 1531-Mar 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1532
Ducal Council May-Jul 1532
Monte Official Jun 1532-Dec 1533
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1533
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1534 (absent)
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1536 (absent)

Lorenzo di Filippo di Matteo STROZZI

11 August 1482 – 1549
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Lucrezia di Bernardo di Giovanni Rucellai
Decima 1498: 117.3.3° Decima 1534: 59.3.9

Monte Official Mar 1514-Feb 1515

Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Nov-Dec 1520 (under-age)
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Monte Official Jul 1521-Mar 1523
Signoria Sep-Oct 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Cento May 1527 – special election
Pratica May 1529
Pratiac Jun 1530
Balìa Arroto Aug 1530
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539

Lorenzo di Matteo di Lorenzo STROZZI

23 November 1500 – 11 December 1570
Santa Maria Novella
Decima 1498: 117.3.3** Decima 1534: 56.3.10**

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1532
Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1541-Mar 1542
Quarantotto 1542
Ducal Council May-Jul 1542
 384

Signoria Sep-Oct 1517 (under-age)

Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1532
Dugento 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1541-Mar 1542
Quarantotto 1542
Ducal Council May-Jul 1542
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1544
Otto di Pratica Sep 1544-Mar 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1546
Monte Official Sep 1546-Mar 1547
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1547
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Monte Official Sep 1547-Mar 1548
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1549
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1550
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1550

Prinzivalle di M. Luigi di M. Agnolo DELLA STUFA

9 August 1484 - ?
San Giovanni
Married; Daughter of Conte Jacopo da Montedoglio
Decima 1498: 9.12.7** Decima 1534: 11.18.5**

Signoria Nov-Dec 1485 (under-age)

Cento Jan-Jun 1519
Cento Jan-Jun 1520 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jan-Feb 1523 (under-age)
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (in speculo)
Signoria Mar-Apr 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Balìa Nov 1530
Accoppiatore Nov 1531-Jan 1532
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Ducal Council May-Jul 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1532-Mar 1533
Otto di Pratica Sep 1533-Mar 1534
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1534
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1534
Accoppiatore Nov 1534-Jan 1535
Accoppiatore Nov 1535-Jan 1536
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1536
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1537
 385

Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1534

Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1534
Accoppiatore Nov 1534-Jan 1535
Accoppiatore Nov 1535-Jan 1536
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1536
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1537
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1537
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1537
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1538
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1540
Ducal Council May-Jul 1540
Otto di Pratica Sep 1540-Mar 1541
Accoppiatore Nov 1540-Jan 1541
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1541
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1543
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1543
Otto di Pratica Sep 1543-Mar 1544
Ducal Council – Luogotenente Nov 1543-Jan 1544
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1545
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1546
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1546
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1547
Otto di Pratica Sep 1547-Mar 1548
Ducal Council Nov 1547-Jan 1548
Ducal Council – Luogotenente May-Jul 1549
Ducal Council Nov 1549-Jan 1550
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1550
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1550

Giovanni di Baldo di Pierozzo TEDALDI

6 November 1484 - ?
San Giovanni
Decima 1498: 8.8.6** Decima 1534: 8.11.11

Signoria Nov-Dec 1521

Cento Jul-Dec 1522 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (in speculo)
Sedici May-Aug 1527
Balìa Nov 1530
Signoria May-Jun 1531
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1537
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1538
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539
Ducal Council Nov 1539-Mar 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1540
Accoppiatore Nov 1540-Jan 1541
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1541
 386

Accoppiatore May-Jul 1538

Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1539
Ducal Council Nov 1539-Mar 1540
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1540
Accoppiatore Nov 1540-Jan 1541
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1541
Ducal Council Feb-Apr 1542

Giovanni di Lorenzo di Giovanni TORNABUONI

11 October 1487 - ?
Santa Maria Novella
Married: Caterina di Alamanno di Averardo Salviati

Balìa 1516
Monte Official Mar 1517-Mar 1518
Cento Jul-Dec 1519 (other)
Signoria Nov-Dec 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1520
Dodici Buonuomini Jan-Mar 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1522
Monte Official Mar 1524-Mar 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1524
Cento Jul-Dec 1525
Signoria Nov-Dec 1525
Monte Official Mar 1527-Mar 1528
Cento May 1527 – special election
Balìa Nov 1530
Dugento 1532

Lapo di Bartolomeo di Lapo DEL TOVAGLIA*

1 February 1481 – 25 November 1549
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: ? Decima 1534: 8.7.4

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1511

Signoria May-Jun 1515
Cento Jan-Jun 1516 (in speculo)
Cento Jan-Jun 1517
Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1519
Cento Jul-Dec 1519
Signoria Jan-Feb 1520
Cento Jan-Jun 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1522 (absent)
Balìa 1522
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Signoria Jan-Feb 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Cento May 1527 – special election
 387

Cento Jan-Jun 1523

Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Signoria Jan-Feb 1526
Cento Jul-Dec 1526
Cento May 1527 – special election
Balìa Nov 1530
Monte Official Mar 1531-Mar 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1532
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1534-Mar 1535
Otto di Pratica Sep 1537-Mar 1538
Accoppiatore – New Scrutiny 1539
Monte Official Oct 1541-Mar 1542
Monte Official Oct 1542-Mar 1543
Monte Official Oct 1543-Mar 1544
Quarantotto 1546
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1546
Monte Official Mar-Sep 1547
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1547
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1548
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1548
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1548
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1549
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1549

Giovanni di Bartolomeo di Bartolomeo UBERTINI

14 August 1488 - ?
Santo Spirito
Decima 1498: 22.4.2** Decima 1534: 10.0.11

Dodici Buonuomini Apr-Jun 1514 (under-age)

Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1517
Signoria May-Jun 1519
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1521
Cento Jan-Jun 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1524
Signoria Mar-Apr 1526
Cento Jan-May 1527 (other)
Sedici Gonfalonieri Jan-Apr 1527
Cento May 1527 – special election
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1530
Dugento 1532
 388

Filippo di Niccolò di Bartolomeo VALORI

4 May 1496 – 20 August 1537 †
San Giovanni
Married: Bartolomea di Raffaello di Tommaso Antinori
Decima 1498: 13.8.1** Decima 1534: 13.6.2

Balìa Nov 1530

Monte Official Mar 1531-Mar 1532
Dugento 1532
Otto di Pratica Sep 1536-Mar 1537

Francesco di Niccolò di Bartolomeo VALORI

20 October 1492- 1555
San Giovanni
Married: 1. Maria di Ruberto di Antonio Pucci
2. Albiera di Lorenzo di Antonio Alessandri
Decima 1498: 13.8.1** Decima 1534: 17.13.5

Signoria Mar-Apr 1529

Balìa Nov 1530
Gonfaloniere di Giustizia Jan-Feb 1531 (under-age)
Dugento 1532
Quarantotto 1532
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1532
Otto di Pratica Mar-Sep 1533
Accoppiatore Aug-Oct 1533
Ducal Council Aug-Oct 1533
Accoppiatore May-Jul 1534
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1536
Ducal Council May-Jul 1536
Accoppiatore Feb-Apr 1537 (absent)

Giovanni di Piero di Francesco VETTORI

18 September 1482 - ?
Santo Spirito
Married: Caterina di Girolamo Manelli
Decima 1498: 18.16.10** Decima 1534: 21.3.8°

Signoria Sep-Oct 1490 (under-age)

Signoria Nov-Dec 1514
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1515
Cento Jan-Jun 1521 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523 (other)
Cento Jan-Jun 1525
Signoria Nov-Dec 1526
Balìa Nov 1530
Signoria Jan-Feb 1532
Dugento 1532
 389

Cento Jan-Jun 1525

Signoria Nov-Dec
Alessandro 1526 di Alessandro DEL VIGNA
di Bernardo
Balìa
19 MayNov 1530
1480 -?
Signoria
Santa Maria
Jan-Feb
Novella
1532
Dugento 1532
Sedici Gonfalonieri Sep-Dec 1492 (in speculo)
Signoria Jan-Feb 1495 (under-age)
Signoria Jul-Aug 1520
Dodici Buonuomini Jul-Sep 1522
Cento Jul-Dec 1523
Cento Jan-Jun 1525 (other)
Cento Jul-Dec 1526

Francesco di Bartolo di Piero ZATI

21 January 1488 - ?
Santa Croce
Decima 1498: 8.6.2** Decima 1534: 14.18.2°

Dodici Buonuomini Oct-Dec 1517

Signoria Nov-Dec 1525
Ottanta May-Nov 1529
Ottanta Nov 1529-May 1530
Dugento 1532
 390

Appendix B

A Partial Reconstruction of the Office-Holding Class of Florence, ca. 1500.

The following table lists all the 504 lineages with at least one seat on the Consiglio Maggiore, for

the entire period between 1494 and1512, and with at least one member matriculated in one of the

seven Major Guilds (arti maggiori). As such it constitutes a partial reconstruction of the office-

holding class of Florence during the first decade of the sixteenth century – excluding those

families represented on the Consiglio but matriculated only in the Minor Guilds. Those lineages

marked in bold typeface are those identified as belonging to the patriciate by the first half of the

sixteenth century. As emphasized in the text all status groups within the office-holding class

were fluid, and indeed Renaissance Florence enjoyed a greater degree of social mobility than any

other city on the Italian peninsula. As such any attempt to delineate one or another estate within

its society is inherently limited and difficult. No claim is made that this list represents a

definitive guide either to the office-holding class or to the patriciate of Florence – it represents

both as they stood in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Their constitution in the early

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries would have looked markedly different.

The lineages are identified by Gonfalone (the district within the city in which they lived –

see the key below), by the year that that a member of the lineage first sat on the Signoria (First

Prior), by representation on the Consiglio Maggiore (the figure in parentheses indicates how

many members of the family had seats on the council in 1508), and by whether or not lineage

achieved the milestone of having representation on the Signoria on twenty or more occasions

between 1282 and 1530 (20+ Priors – the figure in parentheses indicates how many times the

family had a member sit on the Signoria). An asterisk following the family name indicates
 391

families identified as magnate lineages, according to the 1293 Ordinances of Justice. Lineages

that shared common ancestry are identified in the 20+ Priors column.

Key to the Gonfalons of Florence:

11= Santo Spirito, Scala
12= Santo Spirito, Nicchio
13= Santo Spirito, Ferza
14= Santo Spirito, Drago
21= Santa Croce, Carro
22= Santa Croce, Bue
23= Santa Croce, Lion Nero
24= Santa Croce, Ruote
31= Santa Maria Novella, Vipera
32= Santa Maria Novella, Unicorno
33= Santa Maria Novella, Lion Rosso
34= Santa Maria Novella, Lion Bianco
41= San Giovanni, Lion d’Oro
42= San Giovanni, Drago
43= San Giovanni, Chiavi
44= San Giovanni, Vaio

LINEAGE GONFALONE FIRST CONS. MAG. 20+ PRIORS

PRIOR
Acciaiuoli 31 1282 Yes (17) Yes (91)
Adimari* 44, 42 1286 Yes (13) Yes (26)
Adriani Berti 23 1394 Yes (1) -
Agli 42 1285 Yes (2) -
Alamanneschi 44 1439 Yes (4) Yes (Adimari)
Alamanni 11 1354 Yes (9) Yes (22)
Alberti 23 1289 Yes (10) Yes (57)
Albertinelli 22 - Yes (1) -
(Degli) Albizzi 43 1282 Yes (41) Yes (141)
Ser Albizzo 44 1464 Yes (2) -
Alderotti 13 1364 Yes (1) -
Aldobrandini 41 1320 Yes (15) Yes (34)
Alessandri 43 1376 Yes (4) Yes (Albizzi)
Allegri 34 ? Yes (2) -
Altoviti 31 1282 Yes (43) Yes (118)
Amadori 11 1311 Yes (3) Yes (31)
Da Ambra 43 - Yes (1) -
Ambrogi 32 1440 Yes (1) -
Amidei* 13 - Yes (1) -
Dell’Amorotta 33 1298 Yes (4) -
Dell’Ancisa 43 1475 Yes (6) -
Anselmi 34 1283 Yes (1) Yes (33)
 392

Dell’Antella 21 1282 Yes (11) Yes (57)

Antinori 14 1351 Yes (6) Yes (26)
Ardinghelli 32 1282 Yes (8) Yes (45)
Arnoldi 22 1491 Yes (1) -
Arnolfi 21 1318 Yes (2) Yes (21)
Arrighi 43 1373 Yes (10) -
Arrigucci* 42, 44 1375 Yes (8) Yes (27)
(Degli) Asini 21, 22 1343 Yes (3) -
Della Badessa 31 1287 Yes (3) Yes (28)
Bagnesi 23 1346 Yes (5) -
Baldovinetti 31 1287 Yes (8) Yes (37)
Baldovini 44 1440 Yes (2) -
Balducci 23, 42 1477 Yes (1) -
Balducci Pegalotti 12, 14 1346 Yes (3) -
Banchi 11 1305 Yes (5) Yes (23)
Bancozzi 23 1434 Yes (3) -
Bandini Banducci 33 - Yes (2) Yes
(Baroncelli)
Barbadori 12 1295 Yes (4) -
Da Baberino 22 1490 Yes (1) -
Bardi* 11, 23 1282 Yes (7) Yes (35)
Barducci (Cherichini) 11, 13 1387 Yes (7) -
Barducci Ottavanti 43 1372 Yes (7) -
Baroncelli 21, 24 1287 Yes (7) Yes (63)
Bartolelli 32, 42 1395 Yes (1) -
Bartoli 32 1345 Yes (22) Yes (55)
Bartoli Filippi 24 1361 Yes (7) -
Bartolini 32 1362 Yes (8) Yes (39)
(Salimbeni)
Bartolini Scodellari 42 1299 Yes (6) Yes (32)
Barucci 22 1364 Yes (2) -
Beccanugi 34 1284 Yes (1) Yes (46)
Becchi 42 1437 Yes (1) -
Del Beccuto/ 42 1283 Yes (5) -
Beccuti
Belchari 22 1454 Yes (1) -
Belfredelli 12 1321 Yes (1) -
Bellacci 21, 23 1342 Yes (9) Yes (26)
Bellincioni 13 1442 Yes (2) -
 393

Benci 42 1407 Yes (6) -

Benci 41, 44 1302 Yes (5) Yes (20)
Benci Guernieri 14 1369 Yes (4) -
Bencini 32 1345 Yes (4) -
Del Bene 31 1283 Yes (11) Yes (23)
Del Bene del Spinello 32 1420 Yes (1) -
Benini 14, 21, 33 1321 Yes (5) -
Del Benino (Naldi) 13, 23 1345 Yes Yes (38)
Benintendi 21, 32 1435 Yes (1) -
Benivieni 44 1382 Yes (7) -
Benizzi 12, 13 1301 Yes (4) -
Ser Benozzo 32 1365 Yes (1) -
Benvenuti 22 1365 Yes (3) -
Benvenuti 33 1438 Yes (3) -
Benvenuti 41 1384 Yes (2) -
Berardi 33 1363 Yes (4) Yes (31)
Berlinghieri 22 1365 Yes (3) Yes (33)
Bernardi 22, 24 1385 Yes (1) -
Berti 22 1387 Yes (1) -
Berti (della Sala) 11 1441 Yes (1) -
Betti 32 1441 Yes (5) -
Del Biada 34 1366 Yes (4) -
Del Bianco 44 1412 Yes (2) -
Biffoli 22 1356 Yes (7) -
Biliotti 12, 13 1299 Yes (19) Yes (68)
Biliotti 22 1483 Yes (2) -
Bindi (Giunta) 42, 44 1451 Yes (3) -
Bini 11, 13 1352 Yes (8) Yes (20)
Bischeri 22, 44 1309 Yes (1) -
Biuzzi 13 - Yes (2) -
Bizzeri 22 - Yes (1) -
Boccacci 32 1342 Yes (6) -
Bonafe/ 43 1317 Yes (1) -
Buonafe
Bonciani 31 1286 Yes (8) Yes (47)
Boni 42 1442 Yes (15) -
Boni (Meo) 24 1384 Yes (1) -
Bonsi 14, 41, 43 1364 Yes (11) Yes (37)
Bonvanni/ 41 1435 Yes (6) -
 394

Buonvanni
Bordoni 34 1282 Yes (2) Yes (37)
Borgherini 31 1495/6 Yes (1) -
Borghini (Taddei) 22 1340 Yes (4) -
Borgognoni 24 1393 Yes (7) -
Borromei 33, 44 1471 Yes (2) -
Borsi 43 1345 Yes (1) -
Boscoli 24, 43 1484 Yes (2) -
Boverelli 13 1284 Yes (3) -
Bracciolini 21, 43 1455 Yes (1) -
Brancacci 14 1317 Yes (2) -
Brandolini 22 1393 Yes (3) -
Brunelleschi 42 1468 Yes (1) -
Bruni 41 1375 Yes (7) -
Bruni 22 1443 Yes (1) -
Bucelli 22 1284 Yes (1) Yes (43)
Del Bughaffa/ 13 1387 Yes (1) -
Bugliaffo
Buini 21 - Yes (2) -
Buonaccorsi/ 13, 21, 42 1301/02 Yes (7) -
Bonaccorsi
Buonaguisi 21, 42 1439 Yes (3) -
Buonarotti- 23 1343 Yes (6) -
Simoni
Di Buonaventura 32 - Yes (1) -
Buonavolti 33 1393 Yes (3) -
Buondelmonti/ 31 1442 Yes (17) Yes (22)
Buondelmonte*
Buongirolami 44 1467 Yes (1) -
Buoninsegni 34 1393 Yes (8) -
Del Buono Ricchi 34 1441 Yes (2) -
Busini 23 1345 Yes (13) Yes (30)
Del Caccia 24 1381 Yes (15) Yes (44)
Caccini (Ricoveri) 23 1350 Yes (2) Yes (26)
Cafferelli 23 1324 Yes (1) -
Calandri 43 1386 Yes (2) -
Calvanesi 13 - Yes (2) -
Cambi (di 12 1439 Yes (8) -
Napoleone)
 395

Cambi 42, 44 1312 Yes (1) Yes (20)

(Figliagambucci
Cambi (Importuni) 32 1302 Yes (4) Yes (24)
Cambi (Mercatanti) 32 1437 Yes (2) -
Cambini 13 1380 Yes (1) -
Cambini 41, 42 1399 Yes (7) -
Di Cambio 42 1475 Yes (1) -
Della Camera 24 1383 Yes (4) -
Canacci 31, 32 1363 Yes (3) Yes (31)
Cancellieri 11 - Yes (1) -
Canigiani 11 1282 Yes (16) Yes (77)
Cantucci (delle 42 1396 Yes (1) -
Stelle)
Capitani 44 1308 Yes (1) -
Cappelli 41, 42 1326 Yes (7) -
Capponi 11, 12, 13, 14 1287 Yes (30) Yes (67)
Carcherelli/ 22 1346 Yes (2) -
Carchelli
Carducci 31 1380 Yes (23) Yes (41)
Carletti 33, 43 1351 Yes (1) -
Carnesecchi 42 1297 Yes (25) Yes (60)
Carsidoni 21 - Yes (1) -
Della Casa 23, 41, 42 1393 Yes (9) -
Da Casavecchia 13 1384 Yes (5) -
Cassella 41 1344 Yes (1) -
Castellani (di 21 1326 Yes (5) Yes (38)
Altafronte)
Da Castiglione* 13, 34 1461 Yes (5) -
Da Castiglionchio 23 1289 Yes (1) -
Cattani (Cavalcanti)* 41 1495 Yes (1) -
Cavalcanti* 21, 22, 23, 31, 1450 Yes (17) -
33, 42
Ceffi (Masini) 24 1412 Yes (5) -
Ceffini 22 1388 Yes (7) -
Cei 22 1469 Yes (5) -
Cennini 21 1426 Yes (4) -
(De) Cerchi* 21 1285 Yes (1) -
Cerretani 42 1282 Yes (7) Yes (40)
Di Chiarissimo 44 1300 Yes (1) -
 396

Ciacchi 21, 24 1386 Yes (10) Yes (21)

Ciai 13, 41, 42 1389 Yes (6) -
Ciampelli 21 41 1385 Yes (1) -
Ciari 13 1344 Yes (2) -
Ciacciporci 11, 13 1408 Yes (6) -
Da Cignano 44 1475 Yes (1) -
Cini 32, 34, 41, 43 1346 Yes (5) -
Cioni 32, 34 1348 Yes (2) -
Cischi/Cisti 32 - Yes (4) -
Cocchi Donati 22 1376 Yes (5) Yes (30)
Comi 14, 33 1397 Yes (5) -
Compagni 32 1289 Yes (5) Yes (21)
Compagni 43 - Yes (1) -
Convenevoli 34 - Yes (1) -
Corbinelli 12, 42 1289 Yes (24) Yes (59)
Corsellini 11, 13 1404 Yes (4) Yes (20)
Corsi 22, 23 1354 Yes (12) Yes (37)
Corsini 13 1290 Yes (21) Yes (64)
Cortigiani* 44 1285 Yes (13) -
Coverelli 13 1385 Yes (1) -
Covoni (Betti) 24, 44 1303 Yes (5) Yes (30)
Cresci 44 1380 Yes (6) -
Dati (Squacialupi) 13 1380 Yes (5) -
Davanzati 32 1320 Yes (16) Yes (54)
Dazzi/D’Azzo 33 1437 Yes (11) -
Dei 13 1473 Yes (2) -
Deti 11, 12 1335 Yes (6) Yes (22)
Dietifici 13 1381 Yes (3) -
Dietisalvi Neroni 41 1291 Yes (4) Yes (36)
Dini 13, 21, 23, 42 1370 Yes (4) -
Doffi 22 1393 Yes (8) -
Donati 44 ? Yes (2) -
Doni 44 1469 Yes (1) -
Da Empoli 33 1389 Yes (3) -
Fabbrini 42 1457 Yes (6) -
Fagiuoli/ 32 1313 Yes (7) Yes (23)
Fagioli
Fagni 23 1295 Yes (3) -
 397

Falconi 11 1327 Yes (5) Yes (22)

Falconi 11, 12 1442 Yes (7) -
Falconieri 44 1282 Yes (7) -
Fati/Fatii 23 1376 Yes (5) -
Del Fede 12 1350 (?) Yes (1) -
Federighi 33 1346 Yes (16) Yes (44)
Fedini 32 1397 Yes (8) Yes (22)
Ferrucci 14 1299 Yes (5) Yes (24)
Da Filicaia 23, 24, 43 1284 Yes (23) Yes (77)
Della Fioraia 21 1371 Yes (1) -
Fioravanti 43 1344 Yes (1) -
Forese 24 1389 Yes (11) -
(Del) Forese 32 1296/98 Yes (1) Yes (23)
Formiconi 13 1344 Yes (4) -
Fortini 43 1386 Yes (9) -
Franceschi 31 1380 Yes (1) -
Franceschi della 33, 34 1403 Yes (7) -
Mercanzia
Della Frasca 42 1417 Yes (2) -
Frescobaldi* 12, 13, 14, 33 1285 Yes (14) -
Gaddi 41, 42 1437 Yes (3) -
Gaetani* 32 ? Yes (1) -
Da Gagliano 41 1487 Yes (2) -
Galilei 22 1381 Yes (11) -
Del Garbo 21, 22 1358 Yes (8) -
Gazetti 13 - Yes (3) -
Gerini 24, 43 1410 Yes (4) -
Gherardi 24 1352 Yes (10) Yes (42)
Gherardini* 21 ? Yes (1) -
Gherardini della Rosa 44 1303 Yes (7) Yes (28)
Gherucci 43 1343/45 Yes (1) -
Da Ghiacetto/ 23 1294 Yes (9) Yes (35)
Diacetto
Da Ghiachi/ 12 1372 Yes (5) -
Giachi
Ghinetti 44 1344 Yes (1) -
Giachinotti 34 1443 Yes (3) Yes
(Tornaquinci)
Giacomini 34 1414 Yes (7) -
(Tebalducci)
 398

(Tebalducci)
Giandonati* 31 1477 Yes (3) -
Gianfigliazzi* 32 1381 Yes (9) Yes (36)
Gianni 12 1313 Yes (6) Yes (25)
Ginori 41 1344 Yes (20) Yes (31)
Del Giocondo 41 1375 Yes (7) -
Giovanni 12, 24 1435 Yes (7) -
Giovanni 41 - Yes (1) -
Giraldi 43 1396 Yes (5) Yes (20)
Girolami 34 1282 Yes (2) Yes (32)
Girolami 21 1296 Yes (6) -
(Orlandini)
Giugni 24 1291 Yes (16) Yes (68)
Giuntini 32 1432 Yes (6) -
Gondi 22, 33, 34 1438 Yes (10) -
Gori 21 1450 Yes (1) -
Grassi 43 1482 Yes (6) -
Ser Grifi 23 - Yes (4) -
Guadagni 43 1289 Yes (2) Yes (29)
Gualterotti 11 1437 Yes (14) Yes (Bardi)
Del Guanto 11 1488 Yes (1) -
Guardi 24 1443 Yes (2) -
Guasconi 41 1314 Yes (10) Yes (47)
Gucci 32 1357 Yes (4) -
Guicciardini 12 1302 Yes (15) Yes (57)
Guidacci 21 1470 Yes (3) -
Guidetti 11, 12 1346 Yes (20) Yes (32)
Guidi 42 1382 Yes (3) -
Guidi (da Prato 42 1470/71 Yes (2) -
Vecchio)
Guidotti 42 1400 Yes (7) Yes (23)
Guiducci 23 1461 Yes (2) -
Guiducci 32 1344 Yes (10) Yes (36)
Iacopi/Jacopi 23 1373 Yes (7) -
Infanghati* 43 1518 Yes (1) -
Inghirami 41 1387 Yes (2) -
Lamberteschi 21 - Yes (1) -
Della Lana 33 1453 Yes (2) -
 399

Lanfredini 14 1334 Yes (6) Yes (24)

Lapacini (del Toso) 34 1389 Yes (12) -
Lapi 43 1374 Yes (4) -
Lapi 44 1394 Yes (8) Yes (21)
Lapi Vaiai 41 1376 Yes (2) -
Larioni/ 11, 13 1460 Yes (3) Yes (Bardi)
Ilarioni*
Lenzi 32 1386 Yes (4) Yes (26)
Leoni/Lioni 24 1326 Yes (3) Yes (28)
Libri 22 1531 Yes (5) -
Lippi (Neri) 13 1350 Yes (6) Yes (26)
Lorini 42 1327 Yes (6) Yes (33)
Lotti (Guidi) 12 1301 Yes (16) Yes (28)
Lottieri 44 - Yes (1) -
Lottini 24 1360 Yes (4) -
Lucalberti 34 1345 Yes (4) -
Della Luna 34 1372 Yes (2) -
Machiavelli 12 1283 Yes (11) Yes (66)
Maciagnini/ 41 1395 Yes (1) -
Maciaghini
Macinghi/ 44 1392 Yes (9) -
Macigni
Magaldi 22 1305 Yes (3) -
Magalotti 22 1283 Yes (3) Yes (93)
Da Magnale 22 1302 Yes (6) -
Malefici 12 1371 Yes (3) -
Malegonnelle 34 1304 Yes (9) Yes (42)
Mancini 22, 23 1284 Yes (7) Yes
(Magalotti)
Manelli/Manelli 11, 12 1343 Yes (8) -
Galilei*
Manetti 14 1337 Yes (7) -
Mangioni 34 1289 Yes (1) Yes (27)
Mannini 23 1369 Yes (1) -
Mannucci 21 1379 Yes (2) -
Manovelli 14, 32, 42 1283 Yes (1) Yes (21)
Marchi 44 1389 Yes (2) -
Marignoli/ 41 1287 Yes (3) Yes (28)
Marignolli
Marsili 12 1307 Yes (3) -
 400

Marsuppini 22 - Yes (7) -

Martelli 41, 42 1343 Yes (13) Yes (46)
Martellini 14 1473/74 Yes (4) -
Martellini 14 1520 Yes (2) -
Martini 23 1349 Yes (1) -
Martini 41, 42 1428 Yes (14) -
Martini Gucci/ Di 43 1373 Yes (4) -
Guccio
Masi 41, 44 1416 Yes (16) -
Masini 14 1394 Yes (5) -
Mattei/Mazzei 44 1405 Yes (1) -
Mazzinghi* 31, 34 1377 Yes (10) Yes (25)
Mazzinghi 32 1523 Yes (1) -
De’ Medici 41, 42, 44 1291 Yes (34) Yes (96)
Mei 13 - Yes (3) -
Da Meleto 22 - Yes (1) -
Mellini 23 1380 Yes (3) Yes (20)
Da Mezzola 13 1361 Yes (2) -
Michi 22, 33 1361 Yes (1) -
Migliori/De Migliore 42 1394 Yes (4) -
Milanesi 42 1484 Yes (3) -
Minerbetti 33 1283 Yes (8) Yes (46)
Mini 43, 44 1479 Yes (6) -
Miniati di Dino 24 1357 Yes (4) Yes (35)
Da San Miniato 42 1492 Yes (4) -
Da San Miniato 44 1493 Yes (1) -
Monaci 23 1366 Yes (1) -
Monaldi 32 1283 Yes (1) -
Da Monterinaldi 41 - Yes (1) -
Morelli 23 1387 Yes (21) Yes (45)
Mori (Ubaldini) 32, 34 1300 Yes (4) Yes (28)
Mormorai 23 1518 Yes (3) -
Mozzi 11 1326 Yes (1) -
Naldini 43 1389 Yes (2) -
Nardi 21 1350 Yes (11) Yes (25)
Nasi 11 1375 Yes (10) Yes (39)
Nelli 41 1348 Yes (13) -
 401

De’ Nerli* 11, 12 1437 Yes (7) -

Del Nero 11 1382 Yes (11) Yes (30)
Nesi 22 1372/77 Yes (1) -
Di Nicolai/ 41 1344 Yes (3) -
Nicola
Niccoli 42 1342 Yes (4) -
Niccolini (Sirigatti) 24 1356 Yes (17) Yes (56)
Niccolini della Scala 11 1347 Yes (3) -
(De’) Nobili 31 1355 Yes (16) Yes (43)
Orlandi 24 1345 Yes (1) Yes (26)
Orlandini 23 1286 Yes (4) Yes (25)
Orlandini 42 1420 Yes (11) -
Ottavanti 33, 34 1409 Yes (8) -
Del Pace 12, 21 1397 Yes (4) -
Pacholi 22 1475 Yes (1) -
Paganelli 11 1372 Yes (2) Yes
(Canigiani)
Pagnini 22 1477 Yes (2) -
Del Palagio 44 1328/78 Yes (2) Yes (31)
Palarcioni 13 1473 Yes (3) -
Della Palla 33 1478 Yes (1) -
Del Pancia 11 1354 Yes (1) -
Panciatichi 42 1483 Yes (3) -
Pandolfini 43 1381 Yes (17) Yes (40)
Da Panzano 22 1312 Yes (19) Yes (22)
Da Panzano 41 1440 Yes (2) -
Del Papa 24 1324 Yes (2) -
Parenti 42 1351 Yes (9) -
Partincini 33 1400 Yes (5) -
(De’) Pazzi* 43, 44 1288 Yes (12) -
Pecori/Peccori 42 1284 Yes (9) Yes (39)
Pepi 23 1301 Yes (10) Yes (29)
Peri 23 1359 Yes (5) Yes (20)
Perini 33 1474 Yes (1) -
Peruzzi 23 1283 Yes (14) Yes (63)
Da Pesciola 41 1402 Yes (1) -
Pescioni 34 1368 Yes (7) -
Petrucci 33 1425 Yes (5) -
Maestro Piero 12 - Yes (3) -
 402

Pieri 11 1407 Yes (4) -

Pigli/Pilli* 21 1285 Yes (6) -
Pitti (Gaddi) 12, 13 1283 Yes (41) Yes (68)
Pollini 34 - Yes (2) -
Popoleschi 33, 34 1396 Yes (10) Yes
(Tornaquinci)
Portinari 44 1282 Yes (9) -
Pucci 44 1396 Yes (29) Yes (33)
Pucci del Chiassolino 41 1408 Yes (2) -
Del Pugliese 14 1463 Yes (5) -
Pulci* 21 1282 Yes (1) -
Quaratesi 11 1317 Yes (13) Yes (41)
Da Rabatta 42 1321 Yes (6) -
Da Rabatta 24 1409 Yes (1) -
Raffacani 33 1285 Yes (2) Yes (30)
Raugi 24 1304 Yes (4) -
Redditi 31 1397 Yes (2) -
Redditi 24 1463 Yes (1) -
Della Rena 43 1305 Yes (2) Yes (21)
(Da) Ricasoli* 21, 23, 31, 32 1468 Yes (14) -
Riccardi 33 1451 Yes (3) -
(De’) Ricci 14, 24, 44 1298 Yes (12) Yes (67)
Riccialbani 22 1294 Yes (6) Yes (24)
Ridolfi (di Borgo) 12 1290 Yes (13) Yes (50)
Ridolfi (di Piazza) 13 1321 Yes (32) Yes (73)
Rimabaldesi 11 1311 Yes (1) -
Rinaldi (Generotti) 41, 42 1282 Yes (5) Yes (27)
Rinieri 44 1284 Yes (7) -
Rinucci 13 1367 Yes (1) -
Rinuccini 22, 31 1347 Yes (9) -
Risaliti 22 1302 Yes (13) Yes (34)
Ristori 42 1357 Yes (2) -
Romoli 42 1430 Yes (2) -
Rondinelli 41, 44 1296 Yes (18) Yes (48)
Del Rosselino 24 1448 Yes (1) -
(De’) Rossi* 12 1285 Yes (1) -
Del Rosso Vaiai 43 1384 Yes (5) -
Rucellai 33 1302 Yes (49) Yes (98)
Del Ruota 11 - Yes (2) -
 403

Rustichi 32 1398 Yes (6) -

Rustichi 23 1475 Yes (6) -
Sacchetti 22 1335 Yes (8) Yes (40)
Del Saggina 34 1299 Yes (1) -
Salterelli 21 1291 Yes (1) -
Salutati 31 1439 Yes (2) -
Salvetti 22 1435/36 Yes (6) -
Salviati 22, 24, 43 1297 Yes (13) Yes (84)
Di Sandro 42 - Yes (1) -
Sannini 13 1387 Yes (1) -
Di Santi 22 1344 Yes (3) -
Sapiti 12 1351 Yes (6) -
Sassetti 34 1453 Yes (6) -
Sassolini 11 1302 Yes (4) Yes (25)
Scali* 31 1374 Yes (3) -
Della Scarfa 33 1363 Yes (7) Yes (21)
Scarlatti 14 1428 Yes (11) -
(Rondinelli)
Scarlattini 34 1477 Yes (8) -
Dalla Scarperia 41 1441 Yes (2) -
Dello Scelto/ 14 1353 Yes (2) -
Sceltro
Schiattesi 22 1379 Yes (2) -
Solari* 11, 12 - Yes (2) -
Segni 12 1347 Yes (8) Yes (34)
Serchelli 13 1436 Yes (1) -
Sermini 22 1457 Yes (1) -
Sernigi 32 1390 Yes (6) Yes (28)
Serragli 14, 23 1325 Yes (19) Yes (27)
Serristori 23 1392 Yes (5) Yes (37)
Sertini 34 1376 Yes (3) -
Serzelli 22 1376 Yes (4) -
Signorini 32 1387 Yes (7) -
Sinibaldi Dei 22 1487 Yes (5) -
Soderini 14 1283 Yes (13) Yes (48)
Soldani 23 1343 Yes (7) -
Del Soldato 14 1388 Yes (2) -
Soldi 41 1330 Yes (3) -
Solosmei 41 1364 Yes (1) -
 404

Da Sommaia 32, 33, 34 1350 Yes (2) Yes (22)

Sostegni 42 1333 Yes (7) -
Spina Falcone/ 21 1289 Yes (1) -
Falconi
Spinelli 23 1327 Yes (10) Yes (46)
Spini 21, 32 1284 Yes (9) Yes (46)
Squarcialuppi* 31 1494 Yes (3) -
Dello Steccuto 34 1391 Yes (1) -
Di Stefano 43 - Yes (1) -
Stefani Bettoni 13 1330 Yes (4) -
Strada/Stradi 13 1332 Yes (11) Yes (21)
Strinati/Dello 42 1438 Yes (2) -
Strinato
Strozzi 33 1283 Yes (44) Yes (110)
Della Stufa 41 1328 Yes (16) Yes (51)
Taddei (Mancini) 41 1424 Yes (4) Yes (24)
Talani 23 - Yes (2) -
Tanagli/Tanaglia 43 1451/52 Yes (10) -
Tani/Tanini 41 1478 Yes (1) -
Tedaldi 44 1283 Yes (8) Yes (23)
Temperani 33 1307 Yes (8) Yes (24)
Tempi 42 ? Yes (1) -
Tieri 13 1474 Yes (1) -
Tolosini 22 1318 Yes (1) -
Tornabuoni 34 1445 Yes (6) Yes
(Tornaquinci)
Tornaquinci* 34 1284 Yes (4) Yes (55)
Torrigiani 24 1303 Yes (2) Yes (39)
Della Tosa* 34, 42 1284 Yes (8) Yes (Tosinghi)
Tosinghi* 42 1285 Yes (9) Yes (23)
Del Toso da Fortuna 41 1383 Yes (1) -
Ubaldini 41, 43 ? Yes (2) -
Ubertini 13 1382 Yes (2) Yes (21)
Ughi 42 1331/1485 Yes (4) -
Ugolini 13 1350 Yes (7) Yes (20)
Uguccioni (Lippi) 11, 21 1434 Yes (15) -
Ulivieri 34 1349 Yes (1) -
 405

Valori 43 1322 Yes (2) Yes

(Torrigiani)
Vecchieti* 34 1371 Yes (5) Yes (26)
Velluti/Vellutti 12, 13 1283 Yes (5) Yes (33)
Ventura/ 34 1382/88 Yes (15) Yes (26)
Venturi
Vernacci 34 1290 Yes (9) -
Da Varrazzano 11, 24 1319 Yes (12) Yes (37)
Vespucci 32 1350 Yes (11) Yes (28)
Vettori 12 1320 Yes (11) Yes (47)
Di Vieri 13, 14 1349 Yes (9) -
Del Vigna/ Vignaia 33 1291 Yes (5) Yes (22)
Villani (Stoldi) 42 1300 Yes (9) -
Vinacciesi 21 1470 Yes (1) -
Del Vivaio 14 1388 Yes (2) -
(Franceschi)
Viviani 31 1393 Yes (6) Yes (20)
Viviani (Della 42 1306 Yes (3) -
Robbia)
Del Zaccheria (Di 22 1417 Yes (3) Yes (20)
Jacopo)
Zampalochi 14 1382 Yes (1) -
Zati 24 1438 Yes (9) -

Sources:
Cooper, Roslyn Pesman. “The Florentine Ruling Group Under the “governo popolare”, 1494-
1512.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History VII (New Series) (1985): 69-181.

Litchfield, R. Burr. Emergence of a Bureaucracy: The Florentine Patricians, 1530-1790.

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.

Molho, Anthony. Marriage Alliance in Late Medieval Florence. Cambridge, MA & London:
Harvard University Press, 1994.

Najemy, John M. Corporatism and Consensus in Florentine Electoral Politics, 1280-1400.

Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.
 407

Appendix C

The Medicean reggimento, 1512-27 and the Quarantotto, 1532-50.

The table on the following pages depicts the individuals who sat on the balìa, plenipotentiary

council, during the period of Medici predominance from 1512 to 1527, or on one of the balìe

appointed in 1530, or who sat on the Quarantotto between 1532 and 1550. Men with their names

in bold typeface indicate individuals from the database of Appendix A. An asterisk indicates

men nominated to the balìa from one of the fourteen minor guilds (arti minori).

Key
Y= Individual sat on the council indicated.
1512= Individual appointed to the balìa of 16 September 1512.
Arroti 1512= Individual added (arroto) to the balìa on 19 September 1512.
Arroti 1513-27= Individual added to the balìa between 1513 and 1527.
Aug. 1530= Individual appointed to the balìa of 20 August 1530.
Arroti= Individual added to the balìa on 29 August 1530.
Nov. 1530= Individual appointed to the balìa of 8 November 1530.
48 1532= Individual appointed to the inaugural Quarantotto in April 1532.
Appoint. 1530s= Individual appointed to the Quarantotto between 1532 and 1539.
Appoint. 1540s= Individual appointed to the Quarantotto between 1540 and 1549.
 408

Medicean reggimenti, 1512-30 and the Quarantotto 1532-50

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Bernardo di Nofri di Zanobi Y Y
ACCIAIUOLI
Carlo di Ruberto di Donato Y
ACCIAIUOLI
M. Lodovico di Agnolo di Y
Leonardo ACCIAIUOLI
Lorenzo di Donato Y
ACCIAIUOLI
Roberto di Donato di Neri Y Y Y
ACCIAIUOLI
Zanobi di Nofri ACCIAIUOLI Y Y
Andrea di Giovanni ADIMARI Y
Niccolò di Andrea di Niccolò Y Y
DEGLI AGLI
Ruberto di Francesco Y
ALAMANNESCHI
Domenico di Andrea Y
ALAMANNI
Lodovico di M. Piero di Y
Francesco ALAMANNI
M. Piero di Francesco di Piero Y
ALAMANNI
Giovanni di Albertaccio DEGLI Y Y
ALBERTI
Piero di Daniello di Piero DEGLI Y
ALBERTI
Banco di Andrea DEGLI Y
ALBIZZI
Francesco di Luigi di Landino Y
DEGLI ALBIZZI
Girolamo di Luca DEGLI Y
ALBIZZI
Luca di Maso di Luca DEGLI Y
ALBIZZI
Niccolò di Roberto di Giovanni Y
DEGLI ALBIZZI
 409

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Roberto di Felice di Leonardo Y
DEGLI ALBIZZI
M. Alessandro di Antonio Y
DEGLI ALESSANDRI
Lorenzo di Antonio DEGLI Y
ALESSANDRI
Bindo di Antonio di Bindo Y
ALTOVITI
Francesco di Guglielmo di Bardo Y Y Y
ALTOVITI
Niccolò di Simone di Giovanni Y
ALTOVITI
Angiolino di Guglielmo Y
ANGIOLINI*
Guglielmo di Angolino Y
ANGIOLINI*
Filippo di Giovanni Y
DELL'ANTELLA
Giovanni di Filippo Y Y
DELL'ANTELLA
Alessandro di Niccolò Y Y Y
ANTINORI
Luigi di Giovanni di Francesco Y
ARNOLDI
Filippo di Arrigo di Filippo Y
ARRIGUCCI
Alessandro di Giandonato di Y Y
Antonio BARBADORI
Migiotto di Bardo DE BARDI Y
Giovanni di Stagio BARDUCCI Y
Cosimo di Cosimo BARTOLI Y
Matteo di Cosimo di Maso Y
BARTOLI
Gherardo di Bartolomeo di Y
Leonardo BARTOLINI
Giovanni di Bartolomeo di Y
Leonardo BARTOLINI
 410

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Leonardo di Zanobi di Zanobi Y
BARTOLINI
Piero di Marco BARTOLINI Y
Zanobi di Bartolomeo Y Y Y
BARTOLINI
Niccolò di Giovanni di Francesco Y Y
BECCI*
Ruberto di Felice DEL Y
BECCHUTO
Amerigo di Giovanni BENCI Y
Carlo di Tinoro BELLACCI Y
Antonio di Orsino di Niccolò Y
BENINTENDI*
Lorenzo di Niccolò di Benintendi Y
BENINTENDI*
Giovanni di Currardo BERARDI Y
Lorenzo di Giovanni BERARDI Y
Piero di Jacopo di Piero Y
BERARDI
Jacopo di Berlinghieri Y
BERLINGHIERI
Pierpaolo di Carlo di Alighieri Y
BILIOTTI
Bernardo di Piero di Giovanni Y Y
BINI
Domenico di Piero Domenico Y
BONINSEGNI
Francesco di Benedetto BONSI* Y
Pierfrancesco di Salvo Y
BORGHERINI
Giovanbattista Marco di S. Y Y
Tommaso BRUNI*
Benedetto di M. Filippo Y Y
BUONDELMONTI
Ipolito di Giovambattista di Gino Y Y
BUONDELMONTI
M. Giovanni di M. Bernardo Y Y
BUONGIROLAMI
 411

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
BUONGIROLAMI
Filippo di Lorenzo di M. Andrea Y
BUONDELMONTI
Miniato di Francesco di Y
Tommaso BUSINI
Alessandro di Leonardo di Y
Giovanni DEL CACCIA
Francesco di Luigi Y Y
CALDERINIi*
Lorenzo di Antonio di Y Y
Bernardo CAMBI
Antonio di Dino CANACCI Y
Domenico di Matteo di M. Y Y Y
Giovanni CANIGIANI
Framcesco di Daniello Y
CANIGIANI
Giovanni di Matteo di M. Y Y Y
Giovanni CANIGIANI
Lorenzo di Matteo di M. Y
Giovanni CANIGIANI
Bartolo di Andrea di Niccola Y Y Y
CAPPONI
Girolamo di Niccolò di Giovanni Y Y Y
CAPPONI
Giuliano di Piero CAPPONI Y Y
Lodovico di Gino CAPPONI Y
Lorenzo di Gino di Lorenzo Y
CAPPONI
Neri di Gino di Neri CAPPONI Y
Niccola di Andrea CAPPONI Y
Niccolò di Piero di Gino Y
CAPPONI
Filippo di Andrea di Niccolò Y
CARDUCCI
Andrea di Paolo Y Y Y
CARNESECCHI
Bernardo di Andrea di Y Y Y
Bernardo CARNESECCHI
 412

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Bernardo CARNESECCHI
Zanobi di Francesco Y
CARNESECCHI
Antonio di Lione CASTELLANI Y
Mainardo di Bartolomeo Y
CAVALCANTI
Chimenti di Francesco di Niccolò Y
CERPELLORI*
Paolo di Niccolò di Matteo Y
CERRETANI
Scholaio di Jacopo di Scholaio Y Y
CIACCHI
Bernardo di Jacopo CIAI Y
Giovanni di Benedetto di Y
Giovanni CICCIAPORCI
Matteo di Simone di Matteo Y
CINI*
Giovanbattista di Francesco di Y
Michele CITTADINI*
Michele di Antonio Y
CITTADINI*
Donato di M. Antonio di M. Y
Donato COCCHI
Corso di Michele DELLE Y
COLOMBE*
Giovanni di Corso DELLE Y
COLOMBE*
Jacopo di Pandolfo Y
CORBINELLI
Pandolfo di Bernardo di Y
Tommaso CORBINELLI
Raffaello di Pandolfo Y Y
CORBINELLI
Giovanni di Bardo CORSI Y Y Y Y
Albertaccio di Andrea CORSINI Y Y
Alessandro di Gherardo Y Y
CORSINI
 413

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Gherardo di Bertoldo di Y
Gherardo CORSINI
Giovanni di Benedetto COVONI Y
Piero di Lorenzo di Piero Y
DAVANZATI
M. Ormannozzo di M. Tommaso Y Y Y
di Guido DETI
Francesco di Zanobi di Paolo DA Y
DIACETTO
Lorenzo di M. Dietisalvi di Y
Nerone DIETISALVI
Agostino di Francesco DINI Y Y
Dino di Giovanni di Miniato Y
DINI*
Niccolò di Battista di Battista Y Y
DINIi*
Giovanfrancesco di Giovanni di Y
Antonio FANTONI*
Giovanni di Girolamo di Paolo Y Y
FEDERIGHI
Piero di Francesco FEDINI* Y
Raffaello di Matteo FEDINI Y
Averardo di Alessandro DA Y
FILICAIA
Averardo di Lorenzo di Antonio Y
DA FILICAIA
Giovanni di Piero di Giovanni Y Y
FRANCESCI
Francesco di Antonio di Taddeo Y
Sinibaldo di Taddeo di Agnolo Y
GADDI
Gherardo di Framcesco Y Y
GHERARDI
Luigi di Francesco di Gherardo Y Y Y
GHERARDI
Gherardo di Francesco di Y
Antonio di Taddeo
 414

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Bongianni di Gherardo di M. Y Y Y
Bongianni GIANFIGLIAZZI
Bongianni di Jacopo di M. Y
Bongianni GIANFIGLIAZZI
Jacopo di M. Bongianni di Y Y Y
Bongianni GIANFIGLIAZZI
Giovanni di Zanobi di Giovanni Y
di S. Luca*
Raffaello di Francesco Y
GIROLAMI
Andrea di Niccolò di Andrea Y
GIUGNI
Raffaello di Rinieri GIUGNI Y Y
Zanobi di Andrea GIUGNI Y
Bernardo di Carlo GONDI Y Y
Lorenzo di Mariotto GONDI Y
Antonio di Piero Y Y Y
GUALTEROTTI
M. Francesco di Piero Y Y
GUICCIARDINI
Jacopo di Piero Y
GUICCIARDINI
Luigi di Piero di Jacopo Y Y Y
GUICCIARDINI
Niccolò di Oddo di Niccolò Y
GUICCIARDINI
Piero di Jacopo di Piero Y
GUICCIARDINI
Gismondo di Bernardo di Zanobi Y
GUIDOTTI
Alessandro di Francesco di Y
Simone GUIDUCCI
Taddeo di Francesco di Simone Y Y Y
GUIDUCCI
Bartolomeo di Lanfredino di Y Y Y
Jacopo LANFREDINI
Lanfredino di Jacopo di Orsino Y
LANFREDINI
 415

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
LANFREDINI
Simone di Nofri di Antonio Y
LENZONI*
Carlo di Ruberto LIONI Y
Galeotto di Roberto di Francesco Y
LIONI
Agnolo di Francesco DELLA Y
LUNA
Filippo di Alessandro Y Y Y
MACHIAVELLI
Giovanni di Paolo di Giovanni Y
MACHIAVELLI
Guido di Veso di Guidono Y Y
MAGALOTTI
M. Alessandro di M. Antonio di Y Y Y
Piero MALEGONNELLE
Lorenzo di Jacopo MANNICCI* Y
Piero di Zanobi di Piero Y
MARIGNOLLI
Domenico di Braccio Y Y
MARTELLI
Domenico di Girolamo Y
MARTELLI
Francesco di Roberto di Roberto Y
MARTELLI
Antonio di Bernardo Y
MARTELLINI
Averardo di Bernardo di Antonio Y
DE' MEDICI
Antonio di Lorenzo di Bernadetto Y
DE' MEDICI
Bernardo di Averardo di Y
Bernardo DE' MEDICI
Bivigliano di Alamanno DE' Y
MEDICI
Galeotto di Lorenzo di Bernardo Y
DE' MEDICI
 416

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Giuliano di Lorenzo di Piero DE' Y
MEDICI
Ippolito di M. Giuliano di Y
Lorenzo DE' MEDICI
Jacopo di Chiarissimo di Jacopo Y Y
DE' MEDICI
Lorenzo di Piero di Lorenzo DE' Y
MEDICI
Ottaviano di Lorenzo DE' Y Y Y
MEDICI
Paolo di Piero di M. Orlando DE' Y
MEDICI
Raffaello di Francesco DE' Y Y
MEDICI
Andrea di M. Tommaso Y Y Y Y
MINERBETTI
Tommaso di Andrea Y
MINERBETTI
Bernardo di Antonio di Bernardo Y
MINIATI
Raffaello di Miniato MINIATI* Y
Gismondo di Giovanni di Jacopo Y
MORELLI
Jacopo di Girolamo MORELLI Y
Jacopo di Lorenzo MORELLI Y
Leonardo di Lorenzo MORELLI Y
Lodovico di Jacopo di Giovanni Y Y Y
MORELLI
Lorenzo di Matteo di Morello Y Y
MORELLI
Luotozzo di Battista NASI Y
Benedetto di Tanai di Francesco Y
DE NERLI
Filippo di Benedetto DE Y Y
NERLI
Leonardo di Filippo di Benedetto Y
DE NERLI
 417

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Francesco di Piero di Y
Francesco DEL NERO
M. Agnolo di M. Matteo di M. Y
Agnolo NICCOLINI
M. Matteo di Agnolo Y Y Y Y
NICCOLINI
Giovanfrancesco di Antonio di Y Y Y Y
Leonardo DE NOBILI
Pierantonio di Giovanni di Y
Antonio DE NOBILI
Francescantonio di Francesco di Y Y Y
Antonio NORI
Antonio di Bernardo Y
PAGANELLI
Filippo di Domenico di M. Carlo Y
PANDOLFINI
M. Francesco di Bartolomeo Y
PANDOLFINI
Pierfilippo di Francesco di Y Y
Pierfilippo PANDOLFINI
Antonio di Geri PAZZI Y
Antonio di Guglielmo di Antonio Y
PAZZI
Guglielmo di Antonio PAZZI Y
Francesco di Chirico di Giovanni Y
PEPI
Jacopo di Antonio di Pero PERI* Y
Niccolò di Lorenzo di Pero Y
PERI*
Antonio di Piero PIERI Y
Francesco di Piero PIERI Y
Folco di Pigello di Folco Y
PORTINARI
Buonaccorso di Lorenzo PITTI Y
Lorenzo di Buonaccorso di M. Y Y
Luca PITTI
Francesco di Giovanni di Y
Antonio PUCCI
 418

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Antonio PUCCI
Piermaria di Francesco di Y
Giovanni PUCCI
Raffaello di M. Alessandro di Y
Antonio PUCCI
Ruberto di Antonio PUCCI Y Y
Antonio di Antonio DA Y
RABATTA
Antonio di Tommaso di Antonio Y
REDDITI
Maso di Geri di Maso DELLA Y
RENA
Antonio di Bettino di Antonio Y Y Y
DA RICASOLI
Bindaccio di Andrea DA Y
RICASOLI
Simone di Rinieri di Andrea DA Y
RICASOLI
Federigo di Ruberto DE RICCI Y Y Y
Pierfrancesco di Roberto DE Y
RICCI
Domenico di Francesco Y
RICCIALBANI
Donato di Vincentio di Giuliano Y
RIDOLFI
Giovanbattista di Luigi di M. Y
Lorenzo RIDOLFI
Giovanfrancesco di Ridolfo di Y Y Y
Pagnozzo RIDOLFI
Leonardo di Bernardo RIDOLFI Y Y
Lorenzo di Bernardo di Y
Niccolozzo RIDOLFI
Lorenzo di Tommaso di Luigi Y
RIDOLFI
Luigi di Piero RIDOLFI Y Y
Pierfrancesco di Giorgio Y
RIDOLFI
 419

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Pierfrancesco di Niccolò di Y
Schiatta RIDOLFI
Piero di Niccolò di Luigi Y
RIDOLFI
Roberto di Pagnozzo di Pagnozzo Y
RIDOLFI
Simone di Jacopo RIDOLFI Y
Cristofano di Bernardo di Stoldo Y Y
RINIERI
Alessandro di Giovanni Y
RONDINELLI
Bernardo di Giovanni di Matteo Y Y
ROSSI*
Bernardo di Carlo RUCELLAI Y
Bernardo di Giovanni di Paolo Y
RUCELLAI
Francesco di Girolamo di Y
Filippo RUCELLAI
Giovanni di Ubertino di Filippo Y Y Y
RUCELLAI
Palla di Bernardo di Giovanni Y Y Y
RUCELLAI
Piero di Francesco di Bernardo Y
RUCELLAI
Francesco di Niccolò di Y
Francesco SALVETTI*
Averardo di Alamanno di Y Y Y
Averardo SALVIATI
Jacopo di Giovanni SALVIATI Y Y Y
Piero di Leonardo SALVIATI Y
Tommaso di Jacopo SALVIATI Y
Carlo di Tommaso SASSETTI Y
Cosimo di Francesco di Y Y
Tommaso SASSETTI
Teodoro di Francesco SASSETTI Y
Lorenzo di Bernardo SEGNI Y
Chimenti di Cipriano di Chimenti Y
SERNIGI
 420

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
SERNIGI
Cristofano di Chimenti di Y Y
Cipriano SERNIGI
Agnolo di Piero SERRAGLI Y
Averardo di Antonio di Averardo Y
SERRISTORI
Giovanni di Battista di Giovanni Y Y
SERRISTORI
Francesco di Averardo di Y Y
Antonio SERRISTORI
Antonio di Macino SOSTEGNI Y
Antonio di Giovanni di Antonio Y
SPINI
Francesco di Antonio di Y
Giovanni SPINI
Jacopo di Antonio di Giovanni Y Y
SPINI
Filippo di Filippo STROZZI Y Y
Lorenzo di Filippo di Matteo Y Y Y
STROZZI
Lorenzo di Matteo di Lorenzo Y
STROZZI
Matteo di Lorenzo di Matteo Y Y Y
STROZZI
M. Enea di Giovenco di Lorenzo Y Y
DELLA STUFA
Francesco di M. Luigi di M. Y
Agnolo DELLA STUFA
M. Luigi di M. Agnolo DELLA Y Y Y
STUFA
Prinzivalle di M. Luigi DELLA Y Y
STUFA
Taddeo di Francesco di Antonio Y
di Taddeo
Giovanni di Baldo di Pierozzo Y Y
TEDALDI
Agnolo di Giovansimone di Y
Filippo TORNABUONI
 421

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
Filippo TORNABUONI
Donato di M. Simone di Filppi Y
TORNABUONI
Giovanni di Lorenzo di Y Y
Giovanni TORNABUONI
Piero di Filippo di Filippo Y
TORNABUONI
M. Simone di Filippo Y Y
TORNABUONI
Francesco di Francesco Y
TOSINGHI
Bernardo di Francesco DEL Y
TOVAGLIA*
Lapo di Bartolomeo di Lapo Y Y Y
DEL TOVAGLIA*
Niccolò di Bartolomeo DEL Y Y Y
TROSCIA*
Bartolo di Niccolò di Giorgio Y
UGOLINI
Luca di Giorgio di Niccolò Y Y
UGOLINI
Bartolomeo di Filippo VALORI Y Y Y Y
Filippo di Niccolò VALORI Y
Francesco di Niccolò VALORI Y Y
Jacopo di Francesco di Jacopo Y
VENTURI
Lionardo di Jacopo VENTURI Y
Piero di Bernardo di Piero Y
VESPUCCI
Francesco di Piero di Francesco Y Y Y
VETTORI
Giovanni di Piero VETTORI Y
Zanobi di Bartolomeo di Jacopo Y
DEL ZACCHERIA*
Andreuolo di Niccolò di Simone Y
ZATI
Niccolò di Simone di Amerigo Y
ZATI
 422

NAME

Appoint.

Appoint.
1513-27

48 1532
Arroti

Arroti

Arroti
Aug.
1512

1512

1530

Nov.
ZATI

Source: ASF, Tratte, 906: 6r-v; 907: 179r-180v, 188r, 192r-v.

 423

Appendix D

The reggimento of 1527-30.

The table on the following pages lists men who sat at least once on the more important decision-

making or advisory magistracies during the period between the coup d’état of May 1527 and the

surrender of August 1530. The figure in the three columns titled Ottanta, Dieci Lib, and Pratiche

indicates the number of occasions that the individual sat on the respective magistracy. The

column at the far right-hand side titled 1530 indicates men who punished between August and

December 1530 by the new Medicean reggimento. Individuals considered prominent in the

reggimento – by appearing at least three times on the magistracies included in the table – have

their names marked in bold typeface. An asterisk indicates individuals drawn from one of the

fourteen Minor Guilds (arti minori).

Key
Y= Individual sat on the magistracy indicated.
E= Individual exiled between August and December 1530.
X= Individual executed between August and December 1530.
I= Individual imprisoned between August and December 1530.
Ottanta= Individual sat on the Ottanta 1527-30.
Dieci Lib= Individual sat on the Dieci di Libertà e Pace 1527-30.
Pratiche= Individual appointed to a pratica 1528-30.
Balìe= Individual elected to either the one-hundred and twenty men appointed 18 May 1527 or

the twenty men appointed 27 May 1527.

 424

Reggimento 1527-30

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Giovanni di Piero di Nero Y
ACCIAIUOLI
Andrea di Tommaso di Andrea 1 1
ALAMANNI
Antonio di Jacopo di Francesco 1
ALAMANNI
Banco di Andrea DEGLI ALBIZZI 2
Giovanni di Albertaccio di Daniello 1
DEGLI ALBERTI
Antonfrancesco di Luca di Antonio 1 1 1 E
DEGLI ALBIZZI
Bancho di Andrea di Matteo DEGLI 2
ALBIZZI
Filippo di Paolo di Piero DEGLI 2
ALBIZZI
Manno di Bernardo di Pagno DEGLI 1
ALBIZZI
Alberto di Giovanni di Luigi 1
ALTOVITI
Antonio di Tommaso ALTOVITI
Simone di Tommaso di Giovanni 1
ALTOVITI
Bartolomeo di Lorenzo di 3
Francesco AMADORI
Averardo di Francesco AMBRUOGI* 2
Piero di Giovanni di Santi 3 E
AMBRUOGI
Santi di Francesco di Santi 7 2
AMBRUOGI*
Alessandro di Niccolò ANTINORI 1
Antonio di Struffa di Lorenzo di 1
Struffa*
Piero di Domenico ARDETTI 1
M. Marco di Giovanbatista DEGLI 1
ASINI
Girolamo di Bartolomeo BACINI* 1
Bernardo di Schiatto di Francesco 2
BAGNESI
 425

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Bernardo di Silvestro BAGNESI 1
Carlo di Niccolò BAGNESI 1
Carlo di Rinieri di Francesco 2
BAGNESI
Alesso di Francesco di Alesso 3 1
BALDOVINETTI
Lorenzo di Jacopo di 1
Tommasogiochino BALDUCCI
Migiotto di Bardo di Migiotto 3
BARDI
Zanobi di Antonio BARONCELLI* 1
Filippo di Bartolomeo di Giovanni 5 1 1
BARONCINI*
Giorgio di Benedetto di Leonardo 2
BARTOLI
Giovanbattista di Girolamo di 1
Leonardo BARTOLI
M. Paolo di Lorenzo di Giovanni 4 2
BARTOLI
Zanobi di Bartolomeo di Leonardo 1 1 2
BARTOLINI
Giovanni di Ser Antonio di Ser 1 Y
Battista BARTOLOMEI*
Piero di Ser Antonio di Ser Battista 2
BARTOLOMEI*
Giuliano di Benedetto BATI* 1
Girolamo di Bartolomeo di Giovanni 1
BATINI*
Carlo di Tinoro di Marco BELLACCI 2
Marco di Tinoro BELLACCI 3
Tommaso di Giovanni di Zanobi 1
BENCI
Antonio di Tommaso DEL BENE 1
Leonardo di Tommaso di Antonio 2 E
DEL BENE
Neri di Antonio di M. Riccardo DEL 1
BENE
Neri di Tommaso di Antonio DEL 3 E
BENE
Tommaso di Giovanni BENINI DA 1
CIGNANO*
 426

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

CIGNANO*
Giovanni di Francesco DEL BENINO
Giovanni di Girolamo 1
BENINTENDI*
Michele di Antonio BENIVIENI 1
Antonio di Simone BENOZZI* 1
Bernardo di Leonardo di Bernardo 4
BERNARDI*
Piero di Matteo BERNARDI 1
Girolamo di Francesco BETTINI* 3 E
Sandro di Agostino BILIOTTI 2
Francesco di Bartoloemo di Giovanni 1 1
BONGRATIA*
Giannozzo di Piero BONINSEGNI 1
Bernardo di Piero di Tommaso 1
BORGHINI
Domenico di Piero BORGHINI 2
Luigi di Girolamo di Jacopo DAL 1
BORGO*
Niccolò di Antonio DAL BORGO* 2
Tommaso di Francesco BONGIANNI 1
Giovanfrancesco di Bartolomeo 3
BRAMANTI*
M. Bono di Giuliano BONI 1
Giovanbattista di Antonio BONI 1 E
Guasparre di Leonardo di Leonardo 1
BONI
Raffaelle di Leonardo di Leonardo 1
BONI
Francesco di Benedetto BONSI 1
Matteo di Giovanni BONSI 1
Paolo di Benedetto di Andrea 2
BONSI*
Matteo di Matteo BORGERINI 1
Luigi di Giordano DAL BORGO* 2
Niccolò di Antonio di Guasparre DAL 1
BORGO*
Agnolo di Girolamo di Andrea 1
BORGOGNI
 427

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Francesco di Simone BRUNI 1
Zanobi di Antonio di Zanobi 1 1
BUCHERELLI*
Lorenzo di Giuliano di 4 2
BUONACCORSI*
Francesco di Bartolomeo 1
BUONAGUISI*
Giovanni di Piero BUONDELMONTI 1
Lorenzo di Simone 1
BUONDELMONTI
Rosso di Battista BUODELMONTI 1
Miniato di Francesco di Tommaso 2
BUSINI
Agnolo di Giovanni DEL CACCIA 1
Giovanni di Jacopo DEL CACCIA 1
Filippo di Francesco DEL CACCIA 1
Filippo di Francesco di Filippo 1
CALANDRI*
Francesco di Giovanni di Francesco 3
CALANDRI*
Giovanni di Lorenzo CAMBI 1
Girolamo di Napoleone di Filippo 4
CAMBI
Napoleone di Filippo CAMBI 1
Girolamo di Andrea CAMBINI 1 E
Giovanni di Ruberto di Francesco 3 1
CANACCI*
Bastiano di Antonio di Simone 1 1 1
CANIGIANI
Francesco di Daniello CANIGIANI 3
Niccolò di Bindo di Coppo 1
CANIGIANI
Luigi di Barone CAPPELLI 3
M. Giannozzo di Cappone CAPPONI 1
Giuliano di Piero di Gino 3
CAPPONI
Lodovico di Gino CAPPONI 1
Niccolo di Piero di Gino CAPPONI 1 Y
M. Baldassare di Baldassare di 1 1 Y
Niccolò CARDUCCI
 428

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Francesco di Migliore CARDUCCI 1
Francesco di Niccolò di Jacopo 2 X
CARDUCCI
Giovanni di Agnolo CARDUCCI 1
Giovanni di Antonio CARDUCCI 1
Lorenzo di Zanobi CARNESECCHI 2 E
Zanobi di Francesco di Berto 1 1 Y
CARNESECCHI
Giovanni di Taddeo CARUCCI* 1
Agnolo di Ottaviano DELLA CASA 2 E
Francesco di Pellegrino DA 1
CASAVECCHIA
Raffaelle di Chiaro DA 1
CASAVECCHIA
Niccolò di Lione CASTELLANI 1
Bernardo di Dante di Bernardo DA 3 1 X
CASTIGLIONE
Bernardo di Zanobi di Bernardo DA 1
CASTIGLIONE
Guido di Dante di Bernardo DA 3 E
CASTIGLIONE
Giovanbattista di Galeotto di 2 1 X
Francesco CEI
M. Bartolomeo di Ridolfo CINI 1
Cino di Girolamo di Cino CINI* 3 1 I
Giuliano di Niccolò CINTI* 1
Dionigi di Bernardo COMI* 1
Neri di Dino COMPAGNI 2
Bernardo di Pierandrea di Antonio 1
CORBINELLI
Francesco di Giovanbattista 1
CORBINELLI
Antonio di Filippo di Giovanni 1
CORBIZZI
Niccolò di Stefano di Niccolò 1
CORSELLINI*
Viviano di Stefano di Niccolò 4
CORSELLINI*
Francesco di Giovanni CORSI 1
Jacopo di Simone di Jacopo CORSI 2
 429

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Albertaccio di Andrea di Giovanni 1
CORSINI
Lorenzo di Filippo di Bartolomeo 2
CORSINI
Rinaldo di Filippo di Bertoldo 1 E
CORSINI
Francesco di Piero COVONI 2 1
Giovanni di Benedetto di Giovanni 1
COVONI
Piero di Giovanni DAVANZATI 1
Giovanni di Antonio di Goro DATI 1
Lorenzo di Piero DAZZI 1 E
Alessandro di Bernardo di Carlo DA 1 E
DIACETTO
Guasparre di Lapo di Guasparre DA 1
DIACETTO
Lorenzo di Bernardo di Carlo DA 1
DIACETTO
Agnolo di Francesco di Jacopo 1 2
DINI*
Augusto di Francesco di Piero DINI 1
Giovanbattista di Attaviano DINI* 1
Agnolo di Francesco di Agnolo 1
DONI*
Niccolò di Stefano FABBRINI 1
Stefano di Stefano FABBRINI 1
Agostino di Francesco FALCONI* 1
Bernardo di Francesco di Ridolfo 1
FALCONI
Francesco di Agnolo FALCONIERI 1
Francesco di Piero di Francesco 1
FALCONIERI
Agostino di Francesco di Simone 2
FANTONI*
Cherubino di Tommaso FANTONI 1
Bonifazio di Domenico di Bonfazio 2 2
FATI
Carlo di Niccolò di M. Carlo 1 E
FEDERIGHI
Piero di M. Carlo FEDERIGHI 1
 430

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Tommaso di Tommaso FEDERIGHI 1
Niccolò di Antonio di Leonardo 1
FERRUCCI
Antonio di Berto di Francesco DA 1
FILICAIA
Domenico di Berto di Francesco DA 1
FILICAIA
Domenico di Lotto DA FILICAIA 1
Francesco di Berto di Francesco DA 2
FILICAIA
M. Piero di Berto di Francesco DA 3 1
FILICAIA
Benedetto di Simone FOLCHI 1 1
Agostino di Francesco di Simone 1
FORTINI*
Cherubino di Tommaso FORTINI 3 E
Piergiovanni di Benedetto FORTINI 1
Piero di Andrea di Niccolò 1
FORMICONI*
Francesco di Giovanni 1
Alessandro di Paolo di Niccolò 3
FRESCOBALDI
Francesco di Bernardo di Galileo 2
GALILEI
Galileo di Bernardo di Galielo 1
GALILEI
Francesco di Antonio di Francesco 2 1
GERALDI
Giovanni di Antonio GERINI 1
Girolamo di Ottaviano di Piero 2
GERINI
Jacopo di Gherardo GHERARDI 1
Jacopo di Jacopo di Gherardo 1 1 X
GHERARDI
Bernardo di Girolamo di Averardo 2
GIACHINOTI
Pieradovardo di Girolamo di 2 3
Adovardo GIACHINOTTI
Lorenzo di Jacopo di Piero 3
GIACOMINI
 431

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Lorenzo di Jacopo di Tommaso 1
GIACOMINI
Tommaso di Piero di Tommaso 1
GIACOMINI
Altobianco di Gherardo 1
GIANDONATI
Rinaldo di Bertoldo di Bartolomeo 2
GIANFIGLIAZZI
Ridolfo di Francesco GIANNI 1
Benedetto di Tommaso di Francesco 5
GIOVANNI
Niccolò di Michele di Francesco 1
GIOVANNI
Bernardo di Gino di Francesco 3
GINORI
Giovanbattista di Tommaso di Zanobi 1
GINORI
Paolo di Antonio GINORI 1
Francesco di Antonio di Francesco 1
GIRALDI
Alessandro di Filippo GIROLAMI 1
Filippo di Francesco GIROLAMI 1
Giovanni di Filippo di Zanobi 1
GIROLAMI
Piero di Antonio GIROLAMI 2
Raffaelle di Francesco di Zanobi 2 1 I
GIROLAMI
Girolamo di Struffa di Domencio di 2
Struffa*
Alessandro di Antonio GIUGNI 1
Antonio di Francesco di Antonio 1 1
GIUGNI
Domenico di Niccolò di Domenico 1 1
GIUGNI
Raffaelle di Rinieri GIUGNI 2
Bernardo di Antonio di Leonardo 3
GONDI
Bernardo di Carlo di Silvestro 1 1
GONDI
Federigo di Giuliano di Leonardo 1 2 Y E
GONDI
 432

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

GONDI
Filippo di Carlo di Salvestro GONDI 1
Oliverio di Simone di Vieri 1 1
GUADAGNI
Francesco di Ser Battista di Ser 2 3
Francesco GUARDI*
Girolamo di Guido di Ser Francesco 3
GUARDI*
Albertaccio di Beltrane di Bernardo 3
GUASCONI
Bernardo di Danniele di Bernardo 1
GUASCONI
Giovanni di Filippo di Zanobi 1
GUASCONI
Girolamo di Niccolò GUASCONI 1
Raffaelle di Giachomo di Biagio 2 1 Y
GUASCONI
Tommaso di Piero di Tommaso Y
GUASCONI
Giovanni di Jacopo di Dino GUCCI 1 2
Niccolò di Braccio di Niccolò 5 1
GUICCIARDINI
Giovanni di Francesco GUICCIONI 1
Guido di Rosso*
Antonio di Migliore di Antonio 2 E
GUIDOTTI
Alessandro di Filippo di Zanobi 1
GUIDUCCI
Cambio di Antonio INFANGHATI 1
Giovanni di Piero di Vettorio 2 2 2 Y
LANDI*
Piero di Antonio LANDI* 1
Vettorio di Antonio di Vettorio 5 1
LANDI*
Giovanni di Tommaso di Giovanni 2
LAPI
Niccolò di Girolamo di Salvestro 3
LAPI
Tommaso di Giovanni LAPI 1
Anfrione di Piero LENZI 1
 433

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Antonio di Piero di Anfrione LENZI 1
Francesco di Piero di Anfrione 4
LENZI
Dinozzo di Simone LIPPI 1
Lorenzo di Giovanni di Lorenzo di 1
Cresci
Francesco di Ridolfo di Sandro 1 1
LOTTI
Inghilese di Bernardo di Paolo LOTTI 2
Inghilese di Paolo LOTTI 1
Lorenzo di Spinello LUCALBERTI 2
Pierozzo di Domenico DELLA LUNA 2
Battista di Boninsegna di Guido 1
MACHIAVELLI
Filipo di Alessandro di Filippo 1
MACHIAVELLI
Giovanni di Gherardo di Giovanni 3 1
MACHIAVELLI
Guido di Francesco DA MAGNALE 1
Antonio di Jacopo di Duccio 1
MANCINI
Bartolomeo di Jacopo di Duccio 1 1 1
MANCINI
Domenico di Jacopo di Duccio 1
MANCINI
Duccino di Jacopo di Duccio 2
MANCINI
Duccio di Taddeo di Duccio 1
MANCINI
Giovanni di Simone di Giovanni 1
MANCINI
Francesco di Giuliano di Giovanni 1
MANELLI*
Francesco di Leonardo di Niccolò 1 Y
MANNELLI
Leonardo di Niccolò di Leonardo 5 1
MANNELLI
Lorenzo di Niccolò di Ugolino 1
MANNELLI
Bartolomeo di Jacopo di Duccio 1
MANETTI
 434

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

MANETTI
Jacopo di Lorenzo di Matteo 3
MANOVELLI*
Bartolomeo di Centurione MARSILI 1
Domenico di Girolamo di Antonio 3
MARTELLI
Larione di Bartolo di Niccolò 1 1 Y
MARTELLI
Bartolomeo di Giuliano 1
MARUCELLI*
Matteo di Matteo di Bongianni di 1
Mino*
Raffaelle di Mazzeo MAZZEI* 1
Raffaelle di Giovanni MAZZINGHI 3
Ugolino di Giuliano MAZZINGHI 1
Girolamo di Michelozzo 1
MICHELOZZI*
Tommaso di Antonio di Bartolomeo 2
MICHELOZZI*
Bastione di Antonio di Simone 1
MINGHETTI
Matteo di Matteo di Bongianni MINI* 1
Dino di Giovanni MINIATI* 1
Bartolomeo di Jacopo MINIATI 1
Piero di Giovanni MINERBETTI 1
Bernardo di Monte di Jacopo 4
MONTI*
Niccolò di Biagio MONTI* 1
Girolamo di Girolamo di Matteo 2
MORELLI
Giuliano di Tommaso MORELLI 2
Jacopo di Girolamo di Matteo 1 1 Y
MORELLI
Giovanni di Bartolo di Bartolo MORI 1
Girolamo di Zanobi di Bartolo MORI 2
Mariano di Ser Antonio MUTI* 1
Jacopo di Salvestro di Piero NARDI 2 E
Guglielmo di Bernardo di Lutozzo 1
NASI
 435

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Lutozzo di Battista di Giovanni 1 1 2
NASI
Lutozzo di Piero di Luttozzo NASI 2
M. Francesco di Giovanni di Stefano 2
NELLI
Giovanbattista di Nerozzo di Piero 3
DEL NERO
Marco di Simone di Bernardo DEL 1
NERO
Marco di Simone di Piero DEL NERO 1
Nero di Francesco DEL NERO Y
Giovanni di Nerone di Bartolomeo 4 1
NERONI*
Bernardo di Francesco di Jacopo 2 1
NERETTI*
Piero di Francesco NESI 1
Andrea di Paolo di Lapo NICCOLINI 2
Andrevolo di M. Otto di Lapo 2 1 E
NICCOLINI
Francesco di Uberto DE NOBILI 1 E
Giovanbattista di Francesco di Berto 2 E
DE NOBILI
Lodovico di Giovanni di Uberto DE 1
NOBILI
Niccolò di Carlo di Niccolò DE 2
NOBILI
Uberto di Francesco di Uberto DE 1 2
NOBILI
Nofri di Francesco di Baldo* 1
Vettori di Antonio di Vettorio 1
OLANDI*
Niccolò di Jacopo di Niccolò 1
PAGANELLI
Piero di Francesco di Piero 4
PANCIATICHI
Francesco di Pandolfo PANDOLFINI 1
Giovanni di Pandolfo PANDOLFINI 1
Giovanni di Meglio di M. Carlo 3
PANDOLFINI
Girolamo di Meglio PANDOLFINI 1
 436

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Giovanni di Domencio PARIGI* 2
Giovanni di Girolamo di Giovanni 2
PARIGI*
Domencio di Paolo di Pasqueno Y
PASQUINI*
Matteo di Piero di Pasquino 2
PASQUINI*
Paolo di Francesco di Paolo 2
PASQUINI*
Filippo di Giovanfrancesco DE 1
PAZZI
Giovanni di Renato DE’ PAZZI 1
Luigi di Giovanfrancesco di Luigi 1 2 1
DE’ PAZZI
Pierozzo di Pierozzo di Vieri 1
Lorenzo di Domenico PECORI* 1
Piero di Alessandro PECORI 1
Lorenzo di Domenico di Jacopo 2
PEDONI*
Niccolò di Lorenzo PERI* 2
Filippo di Francesco PERUZZI 2
Francesco di Niccolò PERUZZI 1
Giovanni di Antonio di Giovanni 1 Y
PERUZZI
Simone di Antonio di Niccolò 3
PERUZZI
Simone di Giovanni di Rinieri 1
PERUZZI
Piero di Averardo PETRINI 1 E
Andrea di Giovanni di Piero 2 1
PIERI*
Niccolò di Lorenzo PIERI* 2
Giovanbattista di Bastiano PITTI 2 E
Bernardo di Bartolomeo 1
POPOLESCHI
Giovanni di Girolamo di Giovanni 3 1 Y
POPOLESCHI
Piero di Bartolomeo di Giovanni 1 1 1 E
POPOLESCHI
Benedetto di Pigello di Folco 1
PORTINARI
 437

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

PORTINARI
Pierfrancesco di Folco di Adovardo 1 1 1
PORTINARI
Piero di Alessandro PRIORI 1
Lorenzo di Giovanni di Francesco 2
PUCCINI*
Andrea di Buonaccordo DEL 1
PUGLIESE
Filippo di Piero DEL PUGLIESE 1
Niccolò di Piero di Francesco DEL 2
PUGLIESE
Tommaso di Antonio REDDITI 1
M. Tommaso di Giovanbattista DE’ 1
RICCI
M. Leonardo di Giovanni RIDOLFI 1 1 E
M. Lorenzo di Giovanni di Tommaso 1
RIDOLFI
Cristofano di Bernardo di Stoldo 2 1
RINIERI
Giorgio di Luca RINIERI 1
Alessandro di Neri RINUCCINI 1
Giovanni di Simone di Giovanni 2 1 Y E
RINUCCINI
Antonio di Geri di Ubertino 2
RISALITI
Biagio di Antonio di Biagio DELLA 2
ROCCA*
Domenico di Pierozzo DEL ROSSO 2
Gabriele di Antonio di Antonio DE 2
ROSSI
Filippo di Bernardo di Filippo 1
RUCELLAI
Filippo di Tommaso di Filippo 4
RUCELLAI
Bernardo di Marabottino di 3
Antonio RUSTICHI
Agnolo di Andrevolo di Andrevolo 1 1
SACHETTI
Michele di Giovanni di Salvetto 3
SALVETTI*
 438

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

Niccolò di Salvetto SALVETTI 1
Pierfilippo di Luca SALVUCCI* 3
Bernardo di Domenico di Beranrdo 1
SASSOLINI
Sasso di Antonio di Sasso SASSI* 1 1
Bonifazio di Donato di Bonifazio 1
SATI
Alessandro di Antonio di Niccolò 2 2
SCARLATTINI
Giovanni di Lorenzo di Rinieri 1
SCHOLARI
Alessandro di Piero di Mariotto 2 1 1
SEGNI
Lorenzo di Bernardo di Stefano 2 1
SEGNI
Mariotto di Piero di Mariotto SEGNI 1
Andrea di Cipriano SERNIGI 1
Andrea di Tommaso SERNIGI 1
Andrea di Tommaso SERTINI 3
M. Bernardo di M. Niccolò 1
SODERINI
Giovanbattista di Pagoloantonio di M. 1
Tommaso SODERINI
Gianvettorio di M. Tommaso di 1
Lorenzo SODERINI
Lorenzo di Tommaso di M. Lorenzo 1
SODERINI
Luigi di Paolo di Luigi SODERINI 1 2 1 X
M. Niccolò di Tommaso di Lorenzo 1
SODERINI
Tommaso di Pagolantonio di M. 1 2 Y E
Tommaso SODERINI
Giovanfrancesco di Benedetto 5
SOLDANI
Luigi di Tommaso SORTINI 1
Giovanni di Cristofano di Giovanni 2
SPINI
Guglielmo di Luigiantonio SPINI 1
Scolaio di Agnolo di Scolaio SPINI 1 1
Domenico di Gianozzo di Bertolo 1
STRADI
 439

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

STRADI
Alfonso di Filippo di Matteo 2 2 1 E
STROZZI
Lorenzo di Filippo di Matteo 2
STROZZI
Matteo di Lorenzo di Matteo 1
STROZZI
Ugo di Francesco di Lorenzo 4
DELLA STUFA
Filippo di Giovanni di Filippo 1
TANAGLI
Giovanbattista di Filippo TANAGLI 1
Andrea di Jacopo di Piero TEDALDI 1 1
Bartolomeo di Leonardo di Paolo 2 1 Y E
TEDALDI
Bertoldo di Leonardo TEDALDI 1
Tommaso di Francesco di Bongianni 1
di Mino*
Francesco di Pierfrancesco di 2
Francesco TOSINGHI
Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco di 3
Francesco TOSINGHI
Luigi di Tommaso TOSINGHI 1
Tommaso di Francesco di Ranieri 1
TOSINGHI
Francesco di Tuccio TUCCI* 1
Lorenzo di Francesco TUCCI* 1
Mariano di Giorgio UGHI 1
Giovanni di Francesco UGUCCIONI 1
Giovanni di Bernardo di Bernardo 3
VECCHIETTI
Leonardo di Neri VENTURI 1
Bernardo di Pierandrea DA 2 E
VERAZZANO
Niccolò di Pierandrea DA 1 E
VERAZZANO
Niccolò di Pierantonio di Bernardo 1 1
VERAZZANO
Piero di Banco DA VERAZZANO 2
Bernardo di Francesco di Paolo 3
VETTORI
 440

NAME Ottanta Dieci Lib Pratiche Balie 1530

VETTORI
Raffaelle di Girolamo VILLANI 1
Niccolo di Pierozzo DAL VIVAIO 2
Lodovico di Niccolò VIVIANI 1
Giovanni di Giovanni di Simone 1
DELLA VOLTA*
Agnolo di Giovanni DEL 1
ZACCHERIA
Francesco di Bartolomeo di Jacopo 1 2 1 Y
DEL ZACCHERIA*
Giovanni di Jacopo di Giovanni DEL 1
ZACCHERIA
Giuliano di Francesco di Giovanni 2
DEL ZACCHERIA*
Zanobi di Francesco di Zanib di Ser 1
Francesco*
Andrevolo di Niccolò ZATI 1
Francesco di Bartolo ZATI 2
Francesco di Simone di Amerigo 3 1 1
ZATI
Niccolò di Simone di Amerigo ZATI 1

Sources: ASF, Tratte, 719: 76r-v, 77r-89v; 906: 46r, 48v, 201r, 204r-v
ASF, OGBR, 231: 8v, 10v, 11r-15v, 17v.
 441
Appendix E

The fuorusciti: Rebels and Exiles, 1530-37.

The table on the following pages lists men exiled from Florence between 1530 and 1537 or

captured at the battle of Montemurlo on 1 August 1537. Individuals with their names in bold

typeface appear in the database in Appendix A.

Key:
Reg. 27-30: Individual held significant office between May 1527 and August 1530, sitting either
on the magistracies listed in Appendix E or on one of the Tre Maggiori (the Signoria and its two
advisory colleges) in this period.
Mil. 28-30: Individual held office in the civic militia between 1528 and 1530. Note this does not
include rank-and-file members but only men who held an appointed position as commissioner,
captain, lieutenant, standard-bearer, or sergeant for one of the militia companies.
1530: Individual received sentence of exile between August and December 1530.
1535-36: Individual received sentence of exile between 1535 and 1536.
1537: Individual captured and punished following the battle of Montemurlo.
Y= Individual held office in indicated body.
E= Individual exiled in indicated time period.
X= Individual executed following capture at Montemurlo.
I= Individual imprisoned following capture at Montemurlo.
C= Individual captured at Montemurlo but no punishment recorded. Many of these individuals

ransomed themselves; others were released by their Spanish captors or escaped prior to receiving

any sentence.
 442
The fuorusciti 1530-37

NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537

Acciaiuolo di Zanobi ACCIAIUOLI C
Beccaccino ADMARI C
Francesco di Donato ADIMARI E
Giovanbattista ADIMARI E
Giovanni di Donato ADIMARI E
Luigi di M. Piero ALAMANNI E
Antonfrancesco di Luca di Antonio Y E X
DEGLI ALBIZZI
Luca di Antonfrancesco di Luca E
DEGLI ALBIZZI
Bernardo di Bernardo E
ALDOBRANDINI
Francesco di Filippo I
ALDOBRANDINI
Giovanbattista di Salvestro E
ALDOBRANDINI
Leonardo di Antonio E
ALDOBRANDINI
Lorenzo di Jacopo ALDOBRANDINI E
Salvestro di Aldobrandino Y E
ALDOBRANDINI
M. Salvestro di M. Piero Y E
ALDOBRANDINI
Caccia ALTOVITI E C
Carlo ALTOVITI C
Jacopo di Guglielmo ALTOVITI E
Lorenzo AMBRUOGI E
Piero di Giovanni di Santi Y E
AMBRUOGI
Raffaelle di Giovanni AMBRUOGI E
Pagolo di Niccolò AMIDEI E
Amerigo di Camillo ANTINORI E C
Antonio di Francesco di Giovanni E
Raffaello di Piero BALDOVINI E
Giovanbattista BALDOVINETTI E
Alessandro di Leonardo BALDUCCI E
Cesare di Francesco BARCELLI E
 443
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Giovanni di Baroncello BARONCELLI E
Antonio di Leonardo BARTOLI E
Giorgio di Giorgio BARTOLI C
Leonardo di Domenico BARTOLINI E
Raffaelle di Giovanbattista E
BARTOLINI
Raffaelle di Leonardo BARTOLINI
Francesco di Girolamo BENCINI E
Battista di Tommaso DEL BENE E
Francesco di Niccolò DEL BENE
Francesco di Tommaso DEL BENE E
Leonardo di Tommaso di Antonio DEL Y E
BENE
Neri di Tommaso di Antonio DEL Y E
BENE
Niccolò di Ridolfo DEL BENE E
Giovanbattista di Antonio BENI E
Giovanni di Francesco DEL BENINO C
Niccolò di Lorenzo BENINTENDI Y E
Piero di Lorenzo BENINTENDI E
Antonio di Giovanni BERARDI E
Bartolomeo di Antonio E
BERLINGHIERI
Giovanni di Jacopo BERLINGHIERI E
Michele di Jacopo BERLINGHIERI E
Girolamo di Francesco BETTINI* Y E
Giovanni BRESI E
Jacopo di Piero BRUNETTI E
Giovanbattista di Antonio BONI Y E
Bartolomeo di Francesco E
BUONSIGNORI
Giovanbattista di Bernardo BUSINI E
Giovanni di Tommaso BUSINI E
Girolamo di Francesco BUTTINI E
Lamberto di Nero CAMBI E
Girolamo di Andrea CAMBINI Y E
Guglielmo di Andrea CAMBINI E
Bernardo di Alberto CANIGIANI C
 444
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Gherardo CANIGIANI C
Giovanfrancesco di Lodovico C
CAPPONI
Carlo di Bartolomeo CARDUCCI E
Niccolò di Francesco CARDUCCI E
Berto di Matteo CARNESECCHI E
Lorenzo di Zanobi CARNESECCHI Y E
Agnolo di Ottaviano DELLA CASA Y E
Ghezzo di Agnolo DELLA CASA E
Basio DELLA CASA E
Strozzo di Agnolo DELLA CASA E
Bernardo di Vieri DA CASTIGLIONE E
Dante DA CASTIGLIONE Y E
Dietisalvi di Bernardo di Guido DA E
CASTIGLIONE
Francesco di Bernardo DA E
CASTIGLIONE
Guido di Dante di Bernardo DA Y E
CASTIGLIONE
Lorenzo di Guido DA CASTIGLIONE Y E
Vieri di Bernardo di Guido DA E I
CASTIGLIONE
Bertino di Vespasiano CAVALCANTI E
Cecchino di Bartolomeo E
Galeotto di Giovanbattista CEI I
Cino di Girolamo di Cino CINI* Y E
Giuliano di Filippo CONCIANI E
Pagolo di Niccolò CORSELLINI E
Francesco di M. Luca CORSINI E
Giovanbattista di Piero CORSINI E
Jacopo di Bernardo CORSINI E
Rinaldo di Filippo di Bertoldo Y E
CORSINI
Galeotto di Luigi COVONI E
Migliore di Luigi COVONI E
Giovanni di Goro CRISI E
Antonfrancesco di Giuliano Y E
DAVANZATI
Giorgio di Niccolaio DATI E
 445
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Lorenzo di Piero DAZZI Y E
Alessandro di Bernardo di Carlo DA E
DIACETTO
Francesco di Giovanbattista DA E
DIACETTO
Orlando di Domencio DEI E
Giovanni di Francesco DEL FEDE E
Carlo di Niccolò di M. Carlo Y E
FEDERIGHI
Francesco di Girolamo DA FILICAIA E
Sandrino DA FILICAIA C
Cherubino di Tommaso FORTINI Y E
Baldassare di Leonardo GALILEI E
Piero GALILEI E
Lottieri di Niccolò GHERARDI Y E
Antonio di Piero GHERARDINI E
Francesco GHERARDINI X
Giovanbattista di Pieradovardo E C?
GIACHINOTTI
Girolamo di Pieradovardo E C?
GIACHINOTTI
Giuliano di Piero GIACHINOTTI E
Dionigi di Francesco GIACOMINI E
Giovanbattista di Lorenzo E X
GIACOMINI
Jacopo di Lorenzo di Jacopo E
GIACOMINI
Jacopo di Leonardo di Antonio E
GIACOMINI
Lodovico di Francesco GIACOMINI E
Luca di Francesco di Piero E E
GIACOMINI
Niccolò di Lorenzo di Jacopo E
GIACOMINI
Piero di Tommaso GIACOMINI Y E
Donato di Leonardo GIANOTTI E
Jacopo di Jacopo DEL GIOCONDO Y E
Giovanni di Francesco GIROLAMI E
Jacopo di Francesco GIROLAMI E
 446
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
M. Galeotto GIUGNI
Giovanfrancesco GIUGNI C
Federigo di Giuliano di Leonardo Y E
GONDI
Giovanbattista di Girolamo GONDI E
Giuliano di Bellicozzo GONDI E
Simone di Giovanbattista GONDI Y E
Simone DEL GUANTO C
Giovachino di Raffaelle GUASCONI Y E C
Zaccheria GUASCONI C
Toto di Ruberto GUCCI E
Braccio di Niccolò GUICCIARDINI Y E I
Raffaelle di Francesco GUIDACCI
Antonio di Migliore di Antonio Y E
GUIDOTTI
Migliore di Antonio GUIDOTTI Y E
Jacopo di Piero di Brunetto E
Lapo di Francesco E
Giovanbattista di Pandolfo LIBRI E
Lodovico di Giovanni LIBRI E C
Pagolo di Pandolfo LIBRI E
Ugo LIBRI E
Niccolò di Giovanni MACHIAVELLI Y E I
Leonardo MALEGONNELLE
Leonardo di Piero di Antonio E
MALISCHATI
Guasparre MARISCHOTTI E
Andrea di Cristofano MARSUPPINI E
Antonio MARTELLI C
Bartolomeo di Alessandro MARTELLI E E
Leonardo di Niccolò MARTELLI E
Lorenzo MARTELLI E
Mazzei di Giovanni MAZZEI E
Sandro di Tommaso MONALDI E
Jacopo di Salvestro di Piero NARDI Y E
Bartolomeo di Lorenzo NASI E
Battistsa di Francesco NELLI E
Filippo di Nero DEL NERO Y E
 447
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Tanai di Berto DE NERLI C
Andrevolo di M. Otto di Lapo Y E
NICCOLINI
Bernardo di Donato NICCOLINI E
Otto di Andrevolo di M. Otto Y E
NICCOLINI
Attilio di Bartolomeo DE NOBILI E
Averardo di Piero DE NOBILI E
Francesco di Uberto DE NOBILI Y E
Giovanbattista di Francesco di Berto Y E
DE NOBILI
Leonardo DE NOBILI E
Piero di Giovanbattista DE NOBILI E
Raffaelle di Giovanbattista DE NOBILI E
Giovanbattista di Marcho DELLE E
PALLE
Filippo di Bartolomeo PANDOLFINI E
Filippo di Francesco PANDOLFINI E
Languillo PANDOLFINI C
Pierfilippo di Alessandro E
PANDOLFINI
Alfonso PARENTI E
Filippo di Piero PARENTI E
Francesco di Antonio di Guglielmo E
DE’ PAZZI
Lorenzo di Piero DE’ PAZZI E
Piero di Poldro DE’ PAZZI Y E
Bartolomeo di Antonio PECIONI E
Antonio di Giovanfrancesco PERUZZI Y E
Piero di Averardo PETRINI Y E
Carlo di Raffaelle PIERI E
Giovanbattista di Bastiano PITTI Y E
Filippo di Battista PODESINI E
Bartolomeo di Piero POPOLESCHI E C
Piero di Bartolomeo di Giovanni Y E
POPOLESCHI
Carlo di Raffaelle PUCCI E
Giovanni di Antonio REDDITI E
Vincenzo REDDITI E
 448
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Alberto di Agnolo DA RICASOLI C
M. Giorgio di Pierfrancesco RIDOLFI E
M. Leonardo di Giovanni RIDOLFI Y E
Lorenzo di Piero RIDOLFI E
Niccolò di Giovanni di Tommaso E
RIDOLFI
Giovanni di Leonardo RINGHIADORI E
Leonardo di Leonardo RINGHIADORI E C
Salvatore RINGHIADORI X
Bocale RINIERI C
Bernardo RINIERI C
Betto di Jacopo RINUCCINI E
Giovanni di Simone di Giovanni Y E
RINUCCINI
Neri RINUCCINI C
Alessandro RONDINELLI X
Agnolo di Pierozzo DEL ROSSO E
Bartolomeo di Rosso di Pierozzo DEL E
ROSSO
Jacopo di Domenico DEL ROSSO E
Niccolò di Domenico DEL ROSSO E
Paolo di Domencio DEL ROSSO E
Paolo di Rosso di Pierozzo DEL E
ROSSO
Pierozzo di Rosso DEL ROSSO E
Cardinale di Cardinale RUCELLAI E
Lodovico di Guglielmo RUCELLAI X
Niccolò RUCELLAI C
Piero di Raffaello RUCELLAI E
Bernardo SACHETTINI X
Paolato di Niccolò SALTINELLI E
Giuliano SALVIATI C
Simone di Uberto SATI E
Martino di Francesco DELLA Y E
SCARFA
Stefano di Piero DELLA SCARFA E
Antonio di Alessandro SCARLATTINI E
Antonio di Mariotto SEGNI E
 449
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Giovanni di Goro SERGRISI E
Francesco di Girolamo SERRISTORI Y E
Guglielmo di Francesco SERRISTORI E
Bartolomeo DEL SEVAIUOLIO X
Zanobi di Piero SIGNORINI E
Andrea di Luigi di Pagolo SODERINI E
Francesco di Luigi di Pagolo E
SODERINI
Giovanni di Luigi di Pagolo E
SODERINI
Pagolantonio di Tommaso SODERINI Y E
Pagolo di Luigi di Pagolo SODERINI E
Simone di Luigi di Pagolo SODERINI E
Tommaso di M. Giovanvettorio Y E
SODERINI
Tommaso di Pagolantonio di M. Y E
Tommaso SODERINI
Cherubino di Tommaso SORTINI E
Giovanbattista STEPITI E
Alfonso di Filippo di Matteo STROZZI Y E
Battista di Zacheria STROZZI E C
Bernardo di Giovanni STROZZI E
Carlo di Giovanni STROZZI Y E
Filippo di Filippo di Matteo E I
STROZZI
Giovanbattista di Cosimo STROZZI E
Guido STROZZI E
Lorenzo di Federigo STROZZI E
Marco di Giovanni STROZZI Y E
Piero di Filippo di Filippo STROZZI E
Ruberto di Filippo di Filippo STROZZI E
Giovanbattista di Ugo DELLA STUFA E
Giovanfrancesco di Ugo DELLA E
STUFA
Galeazzo TADDEI C
Vincenzo di Piero TADDEI Y E
Francesco di Michelagnolo TANAGLI E
Bartolomeo di Leonardo di Paolo Y E
TEDALDI
 450
NAME Reg. 27-30 Mil. 28-30 1530 1535-36 1537
Francesco (Cecchino) DEL X
TESSITORE
Francesco di Tommaso TOSINGHI Y E
Bartolomeo di Filippo VALORI X
Filippo di Bartolomeo VALORI X
Filippo di Niccolò VALORI X
Lorenzo di Francesco VALORI C
Pagolantonio di Bartolomeo VALORI X
Bernardo di Pierandrea DA Y E
VERAZZANO
Niccolò di Pierandrea DA Y E E
VERAZZANO
Giovanni di Giovanni VILLANI E
Giovanni di Jacopo VILLANI E
Simone di Ruberto ZATI Y E

Sources: ASF, CS. Serie 1, 14: 42r-43r; 95: 141r-142r.

ASF, OGBR, 231: 8v, 10v, 11r-15v, 17v.
ASF, Tratte, 719: 76r-v, 77r-89v; 906: 46r, 48v, 201r, 204r-v.
David Herlihy et al. Florentine Renaissance Resources, Online Tratte of Office
Holders, 1282-1532. Machine Readable Data File. (Florentine Renaissance
Resources/STG Brown University, 2002)
Benedetto Varchi, Storia fiorentina di Benedetto Varchi, edited by Lelio Arbib. 3 vols.
(Florence: Società Editrice del Nardi e del Varchi, 1843-44), 1: 527-28; 2: 276-78, 447.
 451

Select Genealogy of the Strozzi

Matteo Strozzi
1397-1435
m. Alessandra
MACINGHI

Filippo Lorenzo
1428-91 1433-79
m. Antonia
BARONCELLI

m. (1) m. (2)
Fiammetta Selvagggia Matteo
ADIMARI GIANFIGLIAZZI

Fiammetta Alfonso Lorenzo Filippo

m. Tommaso 1467-1534 1482-1549 1489-1538 Lorenzo
SODERINI m. Lucrezia m. Clarice 1500-70
RUCELLAI DE' MEDICI

Maria Fiametta
m. Pierfrancesco m. Bindo
DE' MEDICI ALTOVITI

Select Genealogy of the Albizzi

Luca di M. Maso
degli Albizzi
1382-1458
m. Aurelia DE' MEDICI

Maso Antonio
1426-91 1431-76
m. Albiera m. Maria
DE' MEDICI PITTI

Luca Luca
1454-1530 1459-1502
m. Caterina m. Costanza
SALVIATI PANDOLFINI

Maso Girolamo Giovanni Antonfrancesco Lorenzo

1478-1524 1483-1556 1486-1537
m. Dianora m. Costanza m. Maddelena
DELLA STUFA DE' ROSSI RIDOLFI
 452

Select Genealogy of the Salviati

Alamanno di Jacopo Salviati

1389-1456
m. Caterina di Averardo
DE' MEDICI

Averardo Giovanni
1424-96 1419-72
m. Maddalena m. Elena
NERONI GONDI

Alamanno Jacopo Caterina

1459-1510 1461-1533 m. Luca
m. Lucrezia m. Lucrezia DEGLI ALBIZZI
CAPPONI DE' MEDICI

Averardo Maria Caterina Caterina Maria Francesca Giovanni Girolamo

1489-1554 d. 1559 m. Giovanni m. Filippo m. Giovanni m. Ottaviano 1490-1553 1485-1556
m. Francesco TORNABUONI DE' NERLI DE' MEDICI DE' MEDICI Cardinal m. Costanza
GUICCIARDINI DE' ROSSI

Select Genealogy of the Medici

(Broken lines indicate illegitimate descent)

Giovanni de' Medici

1360-1429
m. Piccarda BUERI

Cosimo il Vecchio Lorenzo

1389-1464 1394-1440
m. Contessina m. Ginevra
DE' BARDI CAVALCANTI

Piero Pierfrancesco
1416-69 1415-76
m. Lucrezia m. Laudomia
TORNABUONI ACCIAIUOLI

Lorenzo il Magnifico Giuliano Lorenzo Giovanni

1449-92 1453-78 1463-1503 1467-98
m. Clarice m. Semiramide m. Caterina
ORSINI D'APPIANO SFORZA

Piero Lucrezia Giovanni Giuliano Giulio Pierfrancesco Giovanni

1471-1503 m. Jacopo Pope Leo X Duke of Nemours Pope Clement VII 1486-1525 (delle Bande Nere)
m. Alfonsina SALVIATI 1475-1521 1478-1516 1478-1534 m. Maria 1498-1526
ORSINI SODERINI m. Maria SALVIATI*

Lorenzo Clarice Maria Giovanni Ippolito Lorenzo Cosimo I

Duke of Urbino m. Filippo m. Giovanni Cardinal ca. 1509-35 (Lorenzino) Grand Duke
1492-1519 STROZZI DE' MEDICI* Cardinal 1514-48 of Tuscany
1519-74

Caterina Alessandro
1519-89 Duke of Penne
m. Henri II ca. 1510-37
King of France
 453

Bibliography

Archival and Manuscript Sources and their Abbreviations

Archivio di Stato, Firenze ASF

• Acquisti e Doni
• Balìe
• Canigiani
• Capitani della Parte Guelfa
• Carte Strozziane CS
• Consiglio dei Dugento
• Consulte e Pratiche
• Decima Granducale
• Decima Repubblicana
• Manoscritti
• Mediceo avanti il Principato MAP
• Mediceo del Principato MDP
• Miscellanea Medicea
• Miscellanea Repubblicana
• Otto di Guardia e Balìa del Principato OGBP
• Otto di Guardia e Balìa della Repubblica OGBR
• Sentato dei 48, Provvisioni

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze BNCF

• MSS Nazionale
• MSS Palatino
• MSS Panciatichiano
• MSS Conventi Soppressi

A Note on the Carte Strozziane, Serie 5.

Unlike the first four series of Strozzi papers Serie 5 has not undergone full restoration and
preservation. As a result the various fascioli in buste of letters do not have precise and clear
numerations. Nor, I should note, do the titles of the various fascioli necessarily acurately reflect
their contents, especially with regard to chronology. For the purposes of clarity I have used the
following system to identify where particular documents are located:
Carte Strozziane, Serie 5, 1207
Fasciolo 1: A) Bundle entitled “Lettere Fasc. I”
B) Bundle entitled “Lettere trovate fuori di serie nel fasc. I”
Fasciolo 2: Untitled bundle
Fasciolo 3: Bundle entitled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 2”
Fasciolo 4: Bundle entitled “Lettere a Filippo Strozzi No. 3”
 454

Carte Strozziane, Serie 5, 1208

Fasciolo 1: Unbound bundle entitled “Lettere di diversi a Fil. di Fil. Strozzi e figli del 1537 al
1540”
Fasciolo 2: Bundle entitled “Lettere di diversi a F.F.S. e figli del 1530 al 1534
Fasciolo 3: Bundle entitled “Lettere di diversi a F.F.S dal primo ott. al ultimo dic 1535”
Fasciolo 4: Bundle entitled “Lettere diverse per il Sr. F.F.S. 1535”

Carte Strozziane, Serie 5, 1209

Fasciolo 1: Bundle entitled “Lettter di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi dal 1 Gennaio al 1
Giugno 1537”
Fasciolo 2: Bundle entitled “Lettere di Diversi al Mag.co filippo di filippo Strozzi dal primo
Gennaio al primo Giugno 1537. No. 8
Fasciolo 3: Bundle entitled “Lettere di diversi a Filippo di Filippo Strozzi del primo luglio al 31
Xbre 1536”

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