Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici

• 1. Introduction

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  Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici was born in Florence on the 4th of August 1463, into the junior branch of one of Europe's most powerful dynasties. His family nickname was the Popolano, meaning "of the people" - an ironic title for a man of such immense wealth. The question is how a Medici came to be called that, and the answer runs through stolen inheritances, political exile, revolutionary art commissions, and a friendship with the man who gave the Americas their name.

  When Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was still a boy, his father Pierfrancesco de' Medici died in 1476, and the family's senior branch moved swiftly. His older cousin, Lorenzo il Magnifico, became his guardian and, as many guardians of great estates have done throughout history, helped himself to what he found. The two Popolani boys, Lorenzo and his brother Giovanni, would eventually claim that il Magnifico owed them over 100,000 ducats by the time they were grown. The question of that debt, and whether it would ever be repaid, shaped the next decade of their lives.

• 2. The Stolen Inheritance

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  Pierfrancesco de' Medici the Elder had spent years trying to shield his sons from the influence of the senior Medici branch. The tensions between the two branches dated back to the 1440s, a full generation before Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco was born. Pierfrancesco's death in 1476 undid all of that careful positioning in a single blow.

  Lorenzo il Magnifico faced serious financial difficulties after 1478, and the Popolani boys' inheritance became a convenient source of funds. The mechanism was a practice described as "forced loans" - a polite term for money taken without meaningful consent. By the time the two brothers came of age, they put the figure at over 100,000 ducats owed to them by their guardian. Il Magnifico eventually settled a little over half of that debt in 1485, following outside arbitration. The rupture between the two sides came to a head in October 1484, when il Magnifico arranged for Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's name to be struck from the lists of people eligible to hold Florentine political office. As part of the 1485 settlement, the Popolani brothers received the Medici family property of Villa Cafaggiolo, in the Mugello region north of Florence.

• 3. Ficino, Poliziano, and a Fellow Student

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  Whatever his failings as a guardian of financial assets, Lorenzo il Magnifico did invest heavily in his ward's mind. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco studied under some of the most formidable intellects of the Florentine Renaissance: the philosopher Marsilio Ficino, the poet and scholar Angelo Poliziano, and Giorgio Antonio Vespucci.

  Giorgio Antonio Vespucci was the uncle of a young man named Amerigo Vespucci, who studied alongside Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and, from 1483 onward, became his employee and personal friend. That relationship would carry remarkable consequences. In the early 1500s, Amerigo Vespucci sent most of his famous letters describing the "New World" to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco emerged from his education with a reputation as a man of liberal views, a poet, and a serious connoisseur of art. Around 1485, he commissioned an illuminated manuscript of Dante's Divine Comedy, with artwork by Sandro Botticelli.

• 4. Botticelli's Wedding Gifts

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  In 1482, Lorenzo il Magnifico arranged a marriage for his ward that carried both commercial and political weight. The bride was Semiramide d'Appiani, daughter of Jacopo III, the Appiani lord of Piombino. Through the Appiani family, the match also connected the Popolani to the Aragonese of Naples.

  The wedding appears to have prompted one of the most celebrated commissions in Renaissance art. Lorenzo il Magnifico may have given the couple Sandro Botticelli's Pallas Athene Taming a Centaur as a wedding gift. The interpretation that accompanied it was pointed: Pallas, representing Semiramide, was meant to "tame" the centaur, representing Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco. Whether the metaphor landed as diplomatic or insulting, the gift was extraordinary. Scholars also believe that either il Magnifico or Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco himself commissioned Botticelli's Allegory of Spring to mark the occasion, with Mercury in the painting taken to represent Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco and the central Grace, or possibly Flora, representing Semiramide. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco is later believed to have commissioned Botticelli's The Birth of Venus as well. He also held two important country estates: Villa del Trebbio, inherited from his grandfather Lorenzo the Elder, and Villa di Castello, acquired in 1477 on il Magnifico's instructions.

• 5. Exile and the Popolano Name

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  When Lorenzo il Magnifico died in 1492, the Popolani brothers saw their moment. They sided against il Magnifico's son Piero, known as il Fatuo, and two years later they were exiled for it. Their return came quickly, though. When King Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and the Republican government of Florence expelled Piero in 1494, the brothers came back and threw their support behind the Republican faction.

  It was this alignment with the popular party that earned them the name Popolano. In the new republican order, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco became one of the most visible figures. He was regarded by many as the cultural heir of il Magnifico himself. He extended his patronage to Botticelli, Michelangelo, Filippino Lippi, and the humanist Bartolomeo Scala. In 1494 he founded a workshop of ceramics at Cafaggiolo. He served as Florentine ambassador to Paris in 1483, witnessing the coronation of Charles VIII. His public role was large enough that, after the friar Savonarola rose and then fell, rumour circulated that Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco would take personal rule of the Republic. He refused.

• 6. A Dynasty's Long Tail

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  In 1501, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco found himself accused of conspiring with Cesare Borgia to help Borgia take the city of Florence. The accusations were never confirmed, and no consequences appear to have followed. He died in Florence on the 20th of May 1503, at the age of thirty-nine.

  His family did not fade with him. His grandson Lorenzino de' Medici assassinated Alessandro de' Medici, the last ruler of Florence from the senior branch of the family. That act transferred power to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco's own great-grandson, Cosimo I de' Medici, who became the first Duke of Florence and later Grand Duke of Tuscany. The junior branch that il Magnifico had once tried to sideline, that he had stripped of over 100,000 ducats and barred from political life, ended up producing the line of rulers who would govern Tuscany for the next two centuries.