Holiday accomodation in Tuscany | Podere Santa Pia | Artist and writer's residency

Members of the merchant-class Medici family of Florence are also called "The Godfathers of the Renaissance." The Medici bank was the most profitable bank in Europe during the Renaissance. The maker of the family fortunes was Giovanni di Bicci de Medici, and his son Cosimo de Medici became the first citizen of the city. He spent 600,000 florins on beautifying Florence and was patron of artists such as Donatello and Fra Lippi. The Medici created a partnership with the Catholic Church. When the Church was split due to the Western Schism, the Medici backed Pope John XXIII and subsequently became the Papal Bankers. Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-1492) was a keeper of the peace in Italy, spreading his influence across the Peninsula so that it enjoyed a decade of relative peace. He was also a patron of the arts, with such people as Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci flooding his courts.

Pope Leo X (Giovanni de Medici, 1475-1521, Papacy from 1513-1521) was known for his extravagant lifestyle. He once had a boy painted in gold from head to toe parading down the streets of Florence. It was to imply the "return of the Golden Age under Medici Rule" The boy later died as a result of probably lead poison from the gold paint. Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici, 1478-1534, Papacy from 1522-1234) took a black slave girl as his mistress. Their child Alessandro became Europe's first black Head of State when he was made Duke of Florence in 1530. Alessandro was assassinated by his cousin Lorenzaccio (Bad Lorenzo) de Medici.
It was under the reign of Leo X that Martin Luther nailed his famous 95 Theses that sparked the growing movement later known as the Protestant Reformation.


The Pazzi family of Florence

About 1429 another wealthy and influential Florentine family, the Pazzi, commissioned Brunelleschi to design a chapel adjacent to the monastic Church of Santa Croce that was intended to be a chapter house (a place of assembly for monks to conduct business).

Pazzi conspiracy, (April 26, 1478), was the unsuccessful plot to overthrow the Medici rulers of Florence; the most dramatic of all political opposition to the Medici family. The conspiracy was led by the rival Pazzi family of Florence.° The conspirators include the Pazzi family (rival bankers), the archbishop of Pisa (a city restless under Florentine control) and a nephew of the pope, Sixtus IV. The pope has recently transferred the papal account from the Medici bank to the Pazzi and would prefer a more docile ruler in Florence. In April 1478 the Pazzi assassinated Lorenzo’s brother Giuliano but failed to kill Lorenzo, and the insurgents, denied support by the citizens, were captured.
In league with the Pazzi were Pope Sixtus IV and his nephew Girolamo Riario, who resented Lorenzo de’ Medici’s efforts to thwart the consolidation of papal rule over the Romagna, a region in north-central Italy, and also the archbishop of Pisa, Francesco Salviati, whom Lorenzo had refused to recognize. An assassination attempt on the Medici brothers was made during mass at the Cathedral of Florence on April 26, 1478. Giuliano de’ Medici was killed by Francesco Pazzi, but Lorenzo was able to defend himself and escaped only slightly wounded. Meanwhile, other conspirators tried to gain control of the government. But the people of Florence rallied to the Medici; the conspirators were ruthlessly pursued and many (including the archbishop of Pisa) were killed on the spot.
The failure of the conspiracy led directly to a two-year war with the papacy that was almost disastrous for Florence. But the most important effect was to strengthen the power of Lorenzo, who not only was rid of his most dangerous enemies but also was shown to have the solid support of the people.
But this is not the end of the crisis. The pope excommunicates Lorenzo de' Medici and persuades the king of Naples, Ferdinand I, to mount an expedition against Florence. During 1479 war drags painfully on, with losses of territory and the expense of maintaining a mercenary army in the field.

The city was alternately a Ghibelline and Guelph city. The ancient family has ruled Urbino since 1267, as imperial officials - podestàs - of the city. First the city and its territories were ruled by pro-papal lords, then again independent. 1353 marks the time from which the Montefeltro permanently owed its alleigance to the papacy, as Pope Innocent VI (from Avignon) was consolidating the fragmented and war-torn states of the church.

Urbino once more came under the control of the Holy See. Nolfo's grandson, Antonio (1377-1403), took advantage of the rebellion of the Marche and Umbria against the Holy See (1375) to restore his authority in Urbino.

Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza

Guidantonio (1403-1443) was appointed ruler of the Duchy of Spoleto by Pope Martin V (1419) and carried on war against Braccio da Montone with varying fortune. His son, Oddo Antonio, was assassinated after only a few months in power. The Urbinese then offered the lordship to Federico III (1444-1482), the illegitimate son of Guidantonio, a pupil of Vittorino da Feltre's school and a lover of art. Under him Urbino became a cultural center of the Renaissance. He was a successful condottiero in the wars against the Malatesta for control of Rimini, the pope, René of Anjou, and Florence for neighboring lands. Pope Sixtus IV conferred on him the title of Duke of Urbino (1474).
The benevolent rule of Federico's son Guidobaldo was forever marred by the conquests of Cesare Borgia.

Federico's son, Guidobaldo, was married to Elizabetta Gonzaga, the brilliant and educated daughter of Federico I Gonzaga, lord of Mantua. With Guidobaldo's death in 1508, the duchy of Urbino passed through Giovanna to the papal family of Della Rovere — nephews of Guidobaldo.

Federico, nicknamed "the Light of Italy", is a landmark figure in the history of the Italian Renaissance for his contributions to enlightened culture. He imposed justice and stability on his tiny state through the principles of his humanist education; he engaged the best copyists and editors in his private scriptorium to produce the most comprehensive library outside of the Vatican; he supported the development of fine artists, including the early training of the young painter Raphael. Piero della Francesca was the son of a prosperous tanner and wool merchant, he became known for his serene, disciplined exploration of perspective. His fresco cycle for San Francesco at Arezzo, The Legend of the True Cross (1450s), exemplifies his simplicity and clarity of structure, controlled use of perspective, and aura of serenity. His famous diptych portrait of his patrons, Count Federico da Montefeltro and his wife (c. 1470), is known for its unidealized depiction of their features and the use of landscape in the background. Though he had little influence on his contemporaries, Piero's important scientific and poetic contributions to Renaissance painting are now well recognized. Also a writer, he produced theoretical treatises on geometry and perspective.

The Montefeltro family in Urbino was Piero's most generous patron towards 1465. The diptich with the portraits of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro can be dated at the beginning of this period. In these two relatively small panels Piero attempts a very difficult compositional construction, that had never been attempted before. Behind the profile portrait of the two rulers, which is iconographically related to the heraldic tradition of medallion portraits, the artist adds an extraordinary landscape that extends so far that its boundaries are lost in the misty distance. Yet the relationship between the landscape and the portraits in the foreground is very close, also in meaning: for the portraits, with the imposing hieratic profiles, dominate the painting just as the power of the rulers portrayed dominates over the expanse of their territories. The daringness of the composition lies in this sudden switch between such distant perspective planes.

Art in Tuscany | Diptych Portrait of Battista Sforza and Federico da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino
Art in Tuscany | Federico da Montefeltro

Diptych Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza

His hunchback son Giovanni Malatesta is chiefly famous because of the 1285 tragedy, recorded in Dante's Inferno, when he killed his wife Francesca da Polenta and his younger brother Paolo, having discovered them in adultery.
In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Malatesta ruled over a number of papal cities in the Romagna and the Marche, including Pesaro, Fano, Cesena, Fossombrone and Cervia.

Several Malatesta were condottieri at the service of various Italian states. The most famous was Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (above right), who was engaged in conflict with the papacy over territorial claims. His grandson Pandolfo (lower right) took part in the Battle of Fornovo, and later besieged the French garrison at Novara. Pandolfo's violence and murders gained him the hatred of his subjects: in 1497, a failed rape attempt on a young girl spurred a revolt in Rimini, which he could suppress only with Venetian intervention. He escaped another plot in 1498.Two years later,Cesare Borgia invaded Pandolfo's territories and Pope Alexander VI, Cesare's father, excommunicated him. Rimini was finally incorporated in thePapal States in 1528, after the last failed attempt of Pandolfo's son, Sigismondo.

Piero della Francesca moved to Ferrara where he found a stimulating environment at the Court which was a model of humanist culture. He met the humanist Guarino da Verona and was allowed to study the gems and coins collected by Duke Lionello At that time there was a painting by Rogier Van der Weyden in Ferrara. This allowed Piero to observe the great Flemish artist’s eye for detail and his command of oil painting.
In 1451, Piero left Ferrara for Rimini, which was under the rule of the Malatesta and where he was commissioned to paint the votive fresco of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in Tempio Malatestiano. In Rimini, Piero took part in the humanist restoration of the Tempio conceived by Leon Battista Alberti, who, besides leaving important architectural masterpieces in Florence, deeply affected the Courts of Mantua and Urbino.
Shortly after completing the fresco in Rimini, he worked on the cycle The Legend of the True Cross in San Francesco in Arezzo, which was started after 1452.

Art in Tuscany |
Art in Tuscany | Piero della Francesca, Portrait of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta

This page also uses material from the Wikipedia article Italian Renaissance published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

Pazzi conspiracy | Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica, 2011. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.