"The Renaissance with Will Durant | Unlocking a Transformative Era"

the renaissance one around leonardo petrarch and boccaccio the middle ages passed into the renaissance when on good friday 1327 in a church at papal avignon francesco petrarca saw laura de sade whose delicate beauty doubled by modesty made him forget all other divinity but hers she received the poet's adoration calmly and gave his passion all the stimulus of denial through the next 26 years he composed 207 poems all about her in the most exquisite music that the most exquisite of languages had yet known listen who shall translate that melody in italian and spanish the vowel has conquered the consonant in english and german the vowel is overcome by the consonants nevertheless joseph outslander's translation is bravely good in what bright realm what sphere of radiant thought did nature find the model when she drew that delicate dazzling image where we view here on this earth what she and heaven wrought what fountain haunting nymph what dryad sought in groves such golden tresses ever threw upon the gust what heart such virtues knew though her chief virtue with my death is fraught he looks in vain for heavenly beauty he who never looked upon her perfect eyes the vivid blue eyes burning brilliantly he does not know how love yields and denies he only knows who knows how sweetly she can talk and laugh the sweetness of her size petrarch's poems his sensitivity to beauty and woman nature literature and art gave voice to a basic italian mood and his passionate pursuit and translation of classic manuscripts endeared him to poets and prelates throughout western europe in rome on april 8 1341 a colorful procession of youths and senators escorted petrarch to the steps of the capitol and there laid a laurel crown upon his head from that day kings and popes gladly received him at their courts as the reigning prince of european letters bokacco ranked him with the illustrious ancients and italy proclaimed that virgil had been born again bokacco himself was then 28 years old he had begun life in paris as the unpremeditated result of an anton cordial between his father a florentine merchant and a french class of libertarian principles perhaps his unscheduled birth and semi-gallic origin influenced his character and style in thirteen thirty one four years after petrarch's ecstasy boccaccio fell in love while worshiping in the neapolitan church the lady was maria d'aquino known for her attractive piety and golden hair he called her fiametta little flame and longed to singe himself in her fire for five years he pursued her with poetry and prose she let him wait till other purses ran dry and then accepted him till his purse ran dry boccaccio left naples and settled in florence there in 1348 the great plague of the black death came and killed half the one hundred thousand population boccaccio's de cameron begins with a frightful description of the mortality almost every family in florence doomed to see member after member dying watching the infected one leaving home to go and die nameless in the street picacho mate is to cameron take its plan from the plague seven young ladies related or neighbors meet in church and agree to leave florence together with their servants and to stay at some country villa till the plague should wear itself out as a pleasant way to mitigate boredom they invite three of their male friends to accompany them they settle in a spacious country chateau and plan to while away the hours by having each tell a story on each day as they remain together ten days they told a hundred tales hence boccaccio entitled his collection to cameron which was greek for ten days deca hemorrhage some of these novelles are crudely sensual like that of the viral mazetto who took care of an entire nunnery some are stories of virtuous love like that of the patient griselda some have a philosophical import like the legend of the three equally precious rings symbolizing the jewish christian and [ __ ] creeds we gather that boccaccio represented a middle class which was losing faith in a literal christianity even in the christian moral code so in its very infancy the renaissance was voting for delights and challenges of this earthly world instead of the hypothetical pleasures of a post-mortem paradise the renaissance restored not only the literature of classical antiquity but equally its pursuit of a hedonistic freedom it was in part a pagan liberation of the senses after a thousand years of moral discipline resting on supernatural beliefs florence under the medici 1378-1492 the economic base but it took more than a revival of antiquity to make the renaissance first of all it took money smelly bourgeois money the profits of skillful managers and lowly labor of hazardous voyages to the east and arduous crossings of the alps to buy goods cheap and sell them dear of careful calculations investments and loans of interest and dividends accumulated until enough surplus could be spared from the pleasures of the flesh from the purchase of senates sceneries and mistresses to pay a michelangelo or attition to transmute wealth into beauty and perfume a fortune with the breath of art money is the root of all civilization the funds of merchants bankers and the church paid for the manuscripts that revived antiquity nor was it chiefly those manuscripts that freed the mind and senses of the renaissance it was the secularism that came from the rise of the middle classes it was the growth of the universities of knowledge and philosophy the realistic sharpening of minds by the study of history and law the broadening of minds by wider acquaintance with the world doubting the dogmas of the transmitted creed and seeing the clergy as being as epicurean as the laity the educated italian shook himself loose from intellectual and ethical restraints his liberated senses took unabashed delight in all embodiments of beauty and nature woman man and art and his new freedom made him creative for an amazing century 1434-1534 before it destroyed him with moral chaos disintegrative individualism and national subjection the interlude between two disciplines was the renaissance why was northern italy the first to experience this spring awakening there the old roman wells had never been quite destroyed the towns had kept their ancient structure and memories and now renewed their roman law classic art survived in rome verona mantua padua agrippa's pantheon still functioned as a place of worship though it was 1400 years old and in the forum one could almost hear cicero and caesar debating the fate of catiline the latin language was still a living tongue of which italian was merely a melodious variant pagan deities myths and rights lingered in popular memory or under christian forms at least to to thwart the mediterranean commanding that basin of classic civilization and trade northern italy was more urban and industrial than any other region of europe except flanders it had never suffered a full feudalism but had subjected its nobles to its cities and its merchant class it was the avenue of trade between the rest of italy and transalpine europe and between western europe and the levant its commerce and industry made it the richest region in christendom its adventurous traders were everywhere from the fairs of france to the farthest ports of the black sea accustomed to dealing with greeks arabs jews egyptians persians hindus and chinese they lost the edge of their dogmas and brought into the literate classes of italy that same indifference to creeds which in 19th century europe came a second time from widening contact with alien faiths so italy advanced in wealth and art and thought a century ahead of the rest of europe and it was only in the 16th century when the renaissance faded in italy that it blossomed in france germany holland england and spain the renaissance was not a period in time but a mode of life and thought moving from italy through europe with the course of commerce war and ideas it made its first home in florence for much the same reasons that gave it birth in italy through the organization of industry the extension of her commerce and the operation of her financiers florence the city of flowers was in the 14th century the richest town in the peninsula accepting venice while the venetians in that age gave their energies almost entirely to the pursuit of pleasure and wealth the florentines possibly through the stimulus of a turbulent semi-democracy developed a keenness of mind and wit and the skill in every art that made their city by common consent the cultural capital of italy the quarrels of the factions raised the temperature of life and thought rival families contended in the patronage of art as well as in the pursuit of power a happy stimulus was added when cosimo de medici offered the resources of his own and other fortunes and palaces to house and entertain the delegates to the council of florence 1439 the greek prelates and scholars who came to that assembly to discuss the union of eastern and western christianity had a far better knowledge of greek literature than any florentine could then possess some of them lectured in florence and the elite of the city crowded to hear them when constantinople fell to the turks 1453 many greeks left it to make their home in the city where they had found such hospitality 14 years before several of them brought additional manuscripts of ancient texts so by the concourse of diverse streams of influence the renaissance took form in florence and made it the athens of italy behind the cultural primacy of florence lay its industry commerce and finance about a fourth of its population was engaged in industry as early as 1300 florence had two textile factories employing some 30 000 men and women it had reached the stage of large investment central provision of materials and machines systematic specialization of labor and control of production by suppliers of capital to finance this industrial revolution florence had 80 banking houses which performed almost all the functions of a modern bank issuing letters of credit lending substantial sums to individuals businesses and governments eg one million three hundred sixty five thousand florence to edward the third of england cashing checks inverting the savings of their depositors stabilizing peace financing war from the 13th through the 15th century florence was the financial capital of europe there the rates of exchange were fixed in 1345 the florentine state issued negotiable bonds paying five percent interest and redeemable in gold at maturity in 1400 the revenues of the government of florence exceeded the total governmental revenue of elizabethan england the bankers merchants manufacturers professional men and skilled workers of florence and its realm and of western europe generally were organized in 21 guilds called in italy arty or trades the word art was applied to every skilled work and had not yet received an aesthetic connotation every voter had to be a member of a recognized guild below the 21 guilds were 72 unions of voteless workers below these thousands of day laborers forbidden to organize below these a few slaves the formal government of florence was headed by the senoria or council of signori or gentleman chosen by lot from the leaders of the guilds and checked occasionally by a consiglio del popolo chosen from the guild members in general but the actual government was usually a banker who could organize florins into influence subtler and stronger than electoral power in florence's golden age this was cosimo de medici the name is a puzzle we find no medicos in his ancestry in 1428 at age 39 he fell heir to the largest fortune in tuscany controlling a bank extensive farms some silk and woolen factories and a varied trade with russia syria scotland and spain he was on cordial terms with cardinals and sultans he contributed so heavily to public works and charities that the populace quietly accepted his indirect dictatorship of florentine affairs history also gives him its vote because he found money enough to finance a score of scholars artists poets and philosophers he spent part of his fortune collecting classic texts when nicolo de nicoli ruined himself in buying ancient manuscripts cosimo opened for him unlisted credit at the medici bank and supported him till nicolo's death he engaged 45 copyists to transcribe such manuscripts as could not be bought he placed his precious minims as walt whitman described them in the monastery of san marco or in an abbey at nearby fiesole or in his own library and open these collections to teachers and students without charge he established in florence 1445 a platonic academy for the study of plato and enabled marcilio ficino to give half a lifetime to the translation and exposition of plato's works now after a reign of 400 years scholasticism lost its sovereignty over philosophy in the west and the exhilarating spirit of plato entered like energizing yeast into the rising body of european thought we are not attempting to hear a history of the renaissance of all its intellectual explorations and artistic splendors but we must note in passing that in this florentine zenith filippo brunelleschi raised over the cathedral of santa maria del fiore a precarious cupola rising 133 feet above its supporting walls and dominating for leagues around the panorama of a red roofed florence nestling like a bell of roses in the lap of tuscan hills in that same age lorenzo giberti designed and carved in bronze those paneled portals that made the baptistery of florence one of the lasting glories of the renaissance donatello a pupil of giberti thought those doors too feminine in the grace of their line his own spirit was masculine and boldly innovative in 1430 he cast for cosimo a bronze david that must have stirred michelangelo to rivalry here the nude figure in the round made its unblushing debut in renaissance sculpture in padua's piazza san antonio the ambitious sculptor after six years of labor raised the first important equestrian statue of modern times representing the wily venetian general nicknamed gadamelata the hanid cat cosimo called donatello back to florence and gave him commission after commission donatello not only produced a succession of masterpieces he persuaded cosimo to buy choice relics of ancient sculpture and to place them in the medici gardens for young artists to study patron and artists grew old together and cosimo took such care of the sculptor that donatello rarely thought of money he kept his funds says visari in a basket suspended from the ceiling of his studio and bad his aides and friends to take from it according to their needs without consulting him he lived in simplicity content to the age of eighty all the artists nearly all the people of florence joined in the funeral that laid him to rest as he had asked in the crypt of san lorenzo beside cosimo's own tomb 1466 lorenzo cosimo had died in 1464. his son pierrot inherited his father's wealth authority and gout and earned the name yilgotozo he ruled unhappily for five years died in 1469 and left his power to his son lorenzo the future ill magnifico cosimo had done his best to prepare the bright youth for the management of money and men lorenzo was tutored in greek and philosophy and absorbed a dozen disciplines by hearing the conversation of poets statesmen artists humanists and generals he wrote passionate sonnets to highbrow ladies pierrot thinking marriage a good cure for romance persuaded him to marry clarice orsini so allowing the medici with one of the two most powerful families in rome from that union would come popes leo the tenth and clement the seventh two days after pierrot's death a deputation of leading citizens came to lorenzo and asked him to assume the guidance of the state circumstances convinced him the finances of the medici firm were so entangled with those of the city that he feared ruin if the enemies or rivals of his house should capture political power to quiet criticism of his consent he appointed a council of experienced citizens to advise him on all matters of major importance he consulted the council throughout his career but he soon showed such good judgment that it rarely questioned his leadership he ruled as cosimo and pierro had done remaining till ninety a private citizen but recommending policies to a balea council in which the supporters of his house had a safe majority the citizens acquiesced because prosperity continued when galeazzo maria schwarzer duke of milan visited florence in 1471 he was amazed at the signs of wealth in the city and still more at the art that cosimo piero and lorenzo had gathered in the medici palace and gardens here already was a museum of statuary vases gems paintings illuminated manuscripts and architectural remains and models galeato declared that he had seen a greater number of fine paintings in this one collection than in all the rest of italy amid the general prosperity old factions kept their peace crime abated order prospered though liberty declined we have here wrote a contemporary no robberies no nocturnal commotions no assassinations by night or day every person may transact his affairs in perfect safety if florence was to have a desperate said the judicious historian guichardini she could never have found a more delightful one the merchants preferred prosperity to freedom the proletariat was quieted with public works ensuring employment tournaments allured the elite horse races thrilled the bourgeoisie pageants amused the populace it was the custom of the florentines in carnival days to promenade the streets in gay or frightful masks singing satirical or erotic songs lorenzo relished the jollity but distrusted its tendency to disorder and so ultimately resolved to bring it under control by lending it the approval and order of government under his rule the pageants became the most popular feature of florentine life he engaged leading artists to design and paint the chariot spanners and costumes he and his friends composed lyrics to be sung from the kari and these songs reflected the moral relaxation of the carnival the most famous of lorenzo's pageants was the triumph of backers were in a procession of floats carrying lovely maidens and the cavalcade of richly guarded youths on prancing steeds came over the ponte vecchio to the spacious square before the cathedral while voices in polyphonic harmony to the accompaniment of symbols and loots sang a poem composed by lorenzo himself and hardly becoming a cathedral verse one cuanto e bella giovinezza que si fuje tutavia quivole fair is youth and void of sorrow but an hourly flies away youths and maids enjoy today naughty know about tomorrow verse 2 this is bacchus and the bright ariadne lovers true they in flying times despite each with each finds pleasures new verse 3 these their nymphs and all their crew keep perpetual holiday youths and maids enjoy today naughty know about tomorrow verse 14 ladies and gay lovers young long live bacchus live desire dance and play let songs be sung let sweet love your bosoms fire verse 15 in the future come what may youths and maids enjoy today not ye know about tomorrow such poems and pageants lend some pale color to the charge that lorenzo corrupted florentine youth probably it would have been corrupt without him morals in venice ferrara and milan were no better than in florence they were better in florence under the medici bankers than later in rome under the medici popes lorenzo's aesthetic sensibilities were too keen for his morals poetry was one of his prime devotions and his compositions rivaled the best of his time while his only superior politician still hesitated between latin and italian lorenzo's verses restored to the vernacular the literary primacy that dante had established and the humanists had overthrown he preferred petrarch's sonnets to the love poetry of the latin classics though he could read these easily in the original and more than once he himself composed a sonnet that might have graced petrarch's consonante but he did not take poetic love too seriously he wrote with finer sincerity about the rural scenes that gave exercise to his limbs and peace to his mind his best poems celebrate the woods and streams trees and flowers flocks and shepherds of the countryside sometimes he wrote humorous pieces in tertsarima that lifted the simple language of the peasantry into sprightly verse sometimes he composed satirical farces robelasianly free then again a religious play for his children and some hymns that catch here and there a note of honest piety but his most characteristic poems were the kanti kanelski carnival songs written to be sung in festival time and mood and expressing the legitimacy of pleasure and the discourtesy of maidenly prudence nothing could better illustrate the morals and manners the complexity and diversity of the italian renaissance than the picture of its most central character ruling a state managing a fortune jousting in tournament writing excellent poetry supporting artists and authors with discriminating patronage mingling at ease with scholars and philosophers peasants and buffoons marching in pageants singing body songs composing tender hymns playing with mistresses begetting a pope and honored throughout europe as the greatest and noblest italian of his time the age of pollution encouraged by his aiden example florentine men of letters now wrote more and more of their works in italian slowly they formed that literary tuscan which became the model and standard of the whole peninsula the sweetest richest and most cultured not only of all the languages of italy said the patriotic varkey but of all the tongues that are known today but while reviving italian literature lorenzo carried on zealously his grandfather's enterprise of gathering for the use of scholars in florence all the classics of greece and rome he sent politician and john lascaris to various cities in italy and abroad to buy manuscripts from one monastery at mount athos lazarus brought 200 of which 80 were as yet unknown to western europe according to pollution lorenzo wished that he might be allowed to spend his entire fortune even to pledge his furniture in the purchase of books he paid scribes to make copies for him of manuscripts that could not be purchased and in return he allowed other collectors like king matthias corvinus of hungary and duke federigo of urbino to send their copyists to transcribe manuscripts in the medicine library after lorenzo's death this collection was united with that which cosimo had placed in the convent of san marco together in 1495 they included 1039 volumes of which 460 were greek michelangelo later designed a lordly home for these books and posterity gave it lorenzo's name biblioteca laurenciana the laurentian library when bernardo chanini set up a printing press in florence 1471 lorenzo did not like his friend polition or federigo of orbino turn up his nose at the new art he seems to have recognized at once the revolutionary possibilities of movable type and he engaged scholars to collate diverse texts in order that the classics might be printed with the greatest accuracy possible at that time so encouraged bartolomeo de libri printed the edicio princheps of homer 1488 under the careful scholarship of demetrius calcondolees john lazarus issued the adityanese principase of euripides 1494 the greek anthology 1494 and lucian 1496 and christopher londino edited horus 1482 virgil pliny the elder and dante whose language and illusions already required elucidation we catch the spirit of the time when we learn that florence rewarded christoforo for these labors of scholarship with the gift of a splendid home lured by the reputation of the medici and other florentines for generous patronage scholars flocked to florence and made it the capital of literary learning to develop and transmit the intellectual legacy of the race lorenzo restored and enlarged the old university of pisa and the platonic academy at florence the latter was no formal college but an association of men interested in plato meeting at a regular intervals in lorenzo's city palace or in fichino's villa at keregi dining together reading a loud part or all of a platonic dialogue and discussing its philosophy november 7th the supposed anniversary of plato's birth and death was celebrated by the academy with almost religious solemnity a bust believed to be a plato was crowned with flowers and the lamp was burned before it as before the image of a deity among those who attended the discussion of the platonic academy were polish pico della mirandola michelangelo and marcilio ficino marcello had been so faithful to cosimo's commission as to devote almost all his life to translating plato into latin into studying teaching and writing about platonism in youth he was so handsome that the maidens of florence eyed him possessively but he cared less for them than for his books for a time he lost his religious faith platonism seemed superior he addressed his students as beloved in plato rather than beloved in christ he burned candles before a bust of plato and adored him as a saint christianity appeared to him in this mood as but one of the many religions that hid elements of truth behind their allegorical dogmas and symbolic rights saint augustine's writings and gratitude for recovery from a critical illness won him back to the christian faith at forty he became a priest but he remained an enthusiastic platonist socrates and plato he argued had expounded a monotheism as noble as that of the prophets they too in their minor way had received a divine revelation so indeed had all men in whom reason ruled following his lead lorenzo and most of the humanists sought not to replace christianity with another faith but to reinterpret it in terms that a philosopher could accept for a generation or two 1447-1534 the church smiled tolerantly on the enterprise next to lorenzo himself count giovanni pico de la miranda was the most fascinating personality in the platonic academy born in the town near modena made famous by his name he studied at bologna in paris and was received with honor at almost every court in europe finally lorenzo persuaded him to make florence his home his eager mind took up one study after another poetry philosophy architecture music and achieved in each some outstanding excellence politician described him as a paragon in whom nature had united all her gifts tall and finely molded with something of divinity shining in his face a man of penetrating glance indefatigable study miraculous memory and ecumenical erudition eloquent in several languages a favorite with women and philosophers and as lovable in character as he was handsome in person and eminent in all qualities of intellect his mind was open to every philosophy and every faith he could not find it in him to reject any system any man and though in his final years he spurned astrology he welcomed mysticism and magic as readily as he accepted plato and christ he had a good word to say for the scholastic philosophers whom most other humanists repudiated as having barbarously expressed absurdities he found much to admire an arabic and jewish thought and numbered several jews among his teachers and honored friends he studied the hebrew kabbalah innocently accepted its alleged antiquity and announced that he had found in it full proofs for the divinity of christ as one of his feudal titles was count of concordia he assumed the high duty of reconciling all the great religions of the west judaism christianity and islam and these with plato and plato with aristotle though flattered by all he retained to the end of his brief life a charming modesty that was impaired only by his ingenuous trust in the accuracy of his learning and the power of human reason going to rome at the age of 24 1486 he startled priests and pundits by publishing a list of 900 propositions covering logic metaphysics theology ethics mathematics physics magic and the kabbalah and including the generous heresy that even the greatest mortal sin being finite could not merit eternal punishment pico proclaimed his readiness to defend any or all of these propositions in public debate against any person and offered to pay the traveling expenses of any challenger from whatever land he might come as a preface to this proposed tournament of philosophy he prepared a famous oration later entitled the hominis dinitate on the dignity of man which expressed with youthful ardor the high opinion that the humanists contradicting most medieval views held of the human species it is a commonplace of the schools wrote pico that man is a little world in which we may discern a body mingled of earthly elements and a heavenly spirit and the vegetable soul of plants and the senses of the lower animals and reason and the mind of angels and the likeness of god and then pico put into the mouth of god himself as words spoken to adam a divine testimony to the limitless potentialities of man i created thee as being neither heavenly nor earthly that thou mightest be free to shape and to overcome thyself thou mayest sink into a beast or be born anew to the divine likeness to which pico added in the high spirit of the young renaissance this is the culminating gift of god this is the supreme and marvelous felicity of man that he can be that which he wills to be animals from the moment of their birth carry with them from their mother's bodies all that they are destined to have or be the highest spirits angels are from the beginning what they will be forever but god the father endowed man from birth with the seeds of every possibility and every life no one cared to accept pico's multifarious challenge but pope innocent viii condemned three of the propositions as heretical since these formed so tiny a proportion of the whole pico might have expected mercy and indeed innocent did not press the matter but pico issued a cautious retraction and departed for paris where the university offered him protection in 1493 alexander vi with his wanted geniality notified pico that all was forgiven back in florence pico became a devout follower of savanna rolla abandoned his pursuit of omniscience burned his five volumes of love poetry gave his fortune to provide marriage dowries for poor girls and himself adopted a semi-monastic life he thought of joining the dominican order but died before he could make up his mind still a youth of thirty-one his influence survived his brief career and inspired roiklin to continue in germany those hebrew studies which had been among the passions of pico's life lorenzo passes for some time before his death lorenzo perceived that he who had preached the gospel of joy had not much longer to live his wife died in 1488 and though he had been unfaithful to her he sincerely mourned her loss and missed her helping hand she had given him numerous progeny of whom seven survived he incentuously supervised their education and in his later years he labored to guide them into marriages that might redund to the happiness of florence as well as their own lorenzo retired from active participation in the government of florence delegated more and more of his public and private business to his son pierrot and sought comfort in the peace of the countryside and the conversation of his friends he excused himself in a characteristic letter what can be more desirable to a well-regulated mind than the enjoyment of leisure with dignity this is what all good men wish to obtain but which great men alone accomplish in the midst of public affairs we may indeed be allowed to look forward to a day of rest but no rest should totally seclude us from an attention to the concerns of our country i cannot deny that the path which it has been my lot to tread has been arduous and rugged full of dangers and beset with treachery but i console myself in having contributed to the welfare of my country the prosperity of which may now rival that of any other state however flourishing nor have i been inattentive to the interests and advancement of my own family having always proposed to my imitation the example of my grandfather cosimo who watched over his public and private concerns with equal vigilance having now obtained the object of my cares i trust i may be allowed to enjoy the sweets of leisure to share the reputation of my fellow citizens and to exult in the glory of my native place but little time was left him to enjoy his unaccustomed peace he had hardly moved to his villa at kuregi march 21st 1492 when his stomach pains became alarmingly intense specialist physicians were summoned who made him drink a mixture of jewels he became rapidly worse and reconciled himself to death he expressed to pico and pollution his sorrow that he could not live long enough to complete his collection of manuscripts for their accommodation and the use of students as the end approached him he sent for a priest and with his last strength insisted on leaving his bed to receive the sacrament on his knees he thought now of the uncompromising preacher who had denounced him as a destroyer of liberty and the corrupter of youth and he longed to have that man's forgiveness before he died he dispatched a friend to beg savannah roller to come to him to hear his confession and give him a more precious absolution seven erolla came according to pollution he offered absolution on three conditions that lorenzo should have a lively faith in god's mercy should promise to mend his life if he recovered and should meet death with fortitude lorenzo agreed and was absolved according to seven arola's early biographer gf pico not the humanist the third condition was that lorenzo should promise to restore liberty to florence in pico's account lorenzo made no response to this demand and the friar left him unabsorbed on april 9 1492 lorenzo died aged 43 when the news of this premature death reached florence almost the entire city mourned and even lorenzo's opponents wondered how social order could now be maintained in florence or peace in italy without his guiding hand europe recognized his stature as a statesman and sensed in him the characteristic qualities of the time he was the man of the renaissance in everything but his aversion to violence his slowly acquired prudence in policy his simple but persuasive eloquence in debate his firmness and courage and action had made all but a few florentines forget the liberty that his family had destroyed and many who had not forgotten remembered it as the freedom of rich clans to compete in force and chicanery for an exploit of dominance in a democracy where only a thirtieth of the population could vote lorenzo had used his power with moderation and for the good of the state even to the neglect of his private fortune he had been guilty of sexual looseness and had given a bad example to florentine youth he had given a good example in literature had restored the italian language to literary standing and had rivaled his proteges in poetry he had supported the arts with a discriminating taste that set a standard for europe of all the despots he was the gentlest and the best this man said king ferdinand of naples lived long enough for his glory but too short a time for italy after him florence declined and italy knew no peace leonardo da vinci the most fascinating figure of the renaissance was born on april 15 1452 near the village of vinci some 60 miles from florence his mother was a peasant girl katerina who had not bothered to marry his father her seducer pierrot antonio was a florentine attorney of some means in the year of leonardo's birth pierrot married a woman of his own rank katarina had to be content with a peasant husband she yielded her pretty loved child to pierro and his wife and leonardo was brought up in semi-aristocratic comfort without maternal love perhaps in that early environment he acquired his taste for fine clothing and his aversion to women he went to a neighborhood school took fondly to mathematics music and drawing and delighted his father by his singing and his playing of the loot yet leonardo in his prime was known for his strength bending a horseshoe with his hands he was an expert fencer and skilled in riding and managing horses which he loved as the noblest and fairest of animals apparently he drew painted and wrote with his left hand this rather than a desire to be eligible made him right from right to left in order to draw well he studied all things in nature with curiosity patience and care science and art so remarkably united in his mind had their one origin detailed observation when he was turning 15 his father took him to verochio's studio in florence and persuaded that versatile artist to accept him as an apprentice all the educated world knows visari's story of how leonardo painted the angel at the left in verrocchio's baptism of christ and how the master was so overwhelmed by the beauty of the figure that he gave up painting and devoted himself to sculpture probably this abdication is a post-mortem legend verrocchio made several pictures after the baptism perhaps in these apprentice days leonardo painted the annunciation in the louvre with its awkward angel and its startled maid he could hardly have learned grace from verrocchio in 1472 he was admitted to membership in the company of saint luke this guild composed chiefly of apothecaries physicians and artists at its headquarters in the hospital of santa maria nuova presumably leonardo found there some opportunities to study internal as well as external anatomy a week before his 24th birthday leonardo and three other youths were summoned before a committee of the florentine scenery to answer a charge of having had homosexual relations the result of this summons is unknown on june 7th 1476 the accusation was repeated the committee imprisoned leonardo briefly released him and dismissed the charges unproved unquestionably he was a homosexual as soon as he could afford to have his own studio he gathered handsome young men about him he took some of them with him on his migrations from city to city he referred to one or another of them in his manuscript says amontissimo or carissimo most beloved dearest what his intimate relations with these youths were we do not know some passages in his notes suggest a distaste for sexual congress in any form leonardo might reasonably doubt why he and a few others had been singled out for public accusation when homosexuality was so widespread in the italy of the time he never forgave florence for the indignity of his arrest apparently he took the matter more seriously than the city did a year after the accusation he was invited and agreed to accept a studio in the medici gardens and in 1478 the scenery itself asked him to paint an altarpiece for the chapel of saint bernard in the palazzo vecchio for some reason he did not carry out the assignment gerlandaio took it over filipino lippy completed it nevertheless the senior he soon gave him and botticelli another commission to paint full-length portraits of two men hanged for the conspiracy of the patsy against lorenzo and juliano de medici leonardo with his half-morbid interest in human deformity and suffering may have felt some fascination in the gruesome task but indeed he was interested in everything all postures and actions of the human body all expressions of the face in young and old all the organs and movements of animals and plants from the waving of wheat in the field to the flight of birds in the air all the cyclical erosion and elevation of mountains all the currents and eddies of water and wind the moods of weather the shades of the atmosphere and the inexhaustible kaleidoscope of the sky all these seemed endlessly wonderful to him repetition never dulled for him their marvel and mystery he filled thousands of pages with observations concerning them and drawings of their myriad forms when the monks of sanskopito asked him to paint a picture for their chapel 1481 he made so many sketches for so many features and forms of it that he lost himself in the details and never finished the adoration of the magi nevertheless it is one of his greatest paintings the plan from which he developed it was drawn on a strictly geometrical pattern of perspective with the whole space divided into diminishing squares the mathematician in leonardo always competed often cooperated with the artist but the artist was already developed the virgin had the pose and features that she would keep in leonardo's work to the end the magi were drawn with a remarkable understanding for a youth of character and expression in old men and the philosopher at the left was literally a brown study of half-skeptical meditation as if the painter had so soon come to view the christian story with a spirit unwillingly incredulous and still devout and around these figures half a hundred others gathered as if every kind of man and woman had hurried to this crib seeking hungrily the meaning of life and some light of the world and finding the answer in a stream of births the unfinished masterpiece almost erased by time hangs in the ufc at florence but it was filipino lippy who executed the painting accepted by the scopitini brotherhood to begin to conceive too richly to lose himself in experimenting with details to see beyond his subject a boundless perspective of human animal plant and architectural forms of rocks and mountains streams and clouds and trees in a mystic chiaroscuro light to be absorbed in the philosophy of the picture rather than in its technical accomplishment to leave to others the lesser task of coloring the figures so drawn and placed for revealing significance to turn in despair after long labor of mind and body from the imperfection with which the hand and the materials had embodied the dream this was to be leonardo's character and fate with a few exceptions to the end perhaps he entered upon each work of art with a view to solve a technical problem of composition color or design and lost interest in the work when the solution had been found art he said lies in conceiving and designing not in the actual execution this was labor for lesser minds or he pictured to himself some subtlety significance or perfection that his patient and at last impatient hand could not realize and he abandoned the effort in despair he passed too quickly from one task or subject to another he was interested in too many things he lacked a unifying purpose a dominating idea this universal man was a medley of brilliant fragments he was possessed of and by too many abilities to harness them to one goal he wrote five thousand pages but never completed one book quantitatively he was more an author than an artist he aspired to be a good writer he made several attempts at eloquence as in his repeated descriptions of a flood and wrote vivid accounts of a tempest and a battle he clearly intended to publish some of his writings and often began to put his notes into order for this purpose so far as we know he published nothing during his lifetime but he must have allowed some friends to see selected manuscripts for there are references to his writings in flavio biondo jerome cardin and cellini he wrote equally well on science and art and divided his time almost evenly between them the most substantial of his manuscripts is the tratato de la pitura or treatison painting first published in 1651 despite devoted modern editing it is still a loose aggregation of fragments in poor array and often repetitious leonardo anticipates those who argue that painting can be learned only by painting he thinks a sound knowledge of theory helps and he laughs off his critics as being like those of whom demetrius declared that he took no more account of the wind that came from their mouths than of that which they expelled from their lower parts his basic precept is that the student of art should study nature rather than copy the works of other artists see tuito painter that when you go into the fields you give your attention to the various objects looking carefully in turn first at one object then at another making a bundle of different things selected among those of less value of course the painter must study anatomy perspective modeling by light and shade boundaries sharply defined make a picture seem wooden always make the figure so that the bosom is not turned in the same direction as the head here is one secret of the grace in leonardo's own compositions finally he urges make figures with such action as may suffice to show what the figure has in mind did he forget to do this with mona lisa or did he exaggerate our ability to read the soul in the eyes and the lips he made portraits of ludovico regent of milan and his pretty bride beatrice deste and of their children of ludovico's mistresses chichilia gaflerani and lucrezia crevelli these paintings are lost unless la belle ferroniere of the louvre is lucrezia visari speaks of the family portraits as marvelous and the picture of lucrezia inspired a poet to a fervent eulogy of the ladies beauty and the artist's skill perhaps chichilia was leonardo's model for the virgin of the rocks the painting was contracted for 1483 by the confraternity of the conception as the central part of an altarpiece for the church of san francisco the original was later bought by francis the first and is in the louvre standing before it we note the softly maternal face that leonardo would use a dozen times in later works an angel recalling the one in verrocchio's baptism of christ two infants exquisitely drawn and a background of jutting overhanging rocks that only leonardo could have conceived as mary's habitat the colors have been darkened by time but possibly the artist intended a darkling effect and suffused his pictures with a hazy atmosphere that italy calls sfumato smoked this is one of leonardo's greatest pictures surpassed only by the last supper mona lisa and the virgin child and saint anne the last separate mona lisa are the world's most famous paintings hour after hour day after day year after year pilgrims enter the refectory that holds leonardo's most ambitious work in that simple rectangular building the dominican friars who were attached to ludovico's favorite church santa maria delle grazie took their meals soon after the artist arrived in milan ludovico asked him to represent the last supper on the farthest wall of this refactory for three years 1495 to 98 on and off leonardo labored or dallied at the task while duke and friars fretted over his incalculable delays the prior if we may believe visari complained to lodovico of leonardo's apparent sloth and wondered why he would sometimes sit before the wall for hours without painting a stroke leonardo had no trouble explaining to the duke who had some trouble explaining to the prior that an artist's most important work lies in conception rather than an execution and as vasari put it men of genius do most when they work least there were in this case said leonardo to lodovico two special difficulties to conceive features worthy of the son of god and to picture a man as heartless as judas perhaps he slyly suggested he might use the too frequently seen face of the prior as a model for iscariot leonardo hunted throughout milan for heads and faces that might serve him in representing the apostles from a hundred such quarries he chose the features that were melted in the mintage of his art into those astonishingly individualized heads that make the wonder of the dying masterpiece sometimes he would rush from the streets or his studio to the refectory add a stroke or two to the picture and depart the subject was superb but from a painter's point of view it was pitted with hazards it had to confine itself to male figures and a modest table in a simple room there could be only the dimmest landscape or vista no grace of women might serve as foil to the strength of the men no vivid action could be brought in to set the figures into motion and convey the sense of life leonardo let in a glimpse of landscape through the three windows behind christ as a substitute for action he portrayed the gathering at the tense moment christ has prophesied that one of the apostles will betray him and each is asking in fear or horror or amazement is it i the institution of the eucharist might have been chosen but that would have frozen all 13 faces into an immobile and stereotyped solemnity here on the contrary there is more than violent physical action there is a searching and revelation of spirit never again so profoundly has an artist revealed in one picture so many souls for the apostles leonardo made numberless preliminary sketches some of these for james the greater philip judas are drawings of such finesse and power as only rembrandt and michelangelo have matched when he tried to conceive the features of christ leonardo found that the apostles had exhausted his inspiration according to lamazo writing in 1557 leonardo's old friend zinale advised him to leave the face of christ unfinished saying of a truth it would be impossible to imagine faces lovelier or gentler than those of james the greater or james the less accept your misfortune then and leave your christ incomplete for otherwise when compared with the apostles he would not be their savior or their master leonardo took the advice he or a pupil made a famous sketch now in the prayer gallery for the head of christ but it pictured an effeminate sadness and resignation rather than the heroic resolve that calmly entered gethsemane perhaps leonardo lacked the reverent piety that had it been added to his sensitivity his depth and his skill might have brought the picture nearer to perfection because he was a thinker as well as an artist leonardo shunned fresco painting as an enemy to thought such painting on wet and freshly laid plaster had to be done rapidly before the plaster dried leonardo preferred to paint on a dry wall with tempera colors mixed in a gelatinous substance for this method allowed him to ponder and experiment but these colors did not adhere firmly to the surface even in leonardo's lifetime what with the usual dampness of the refectory and its occasional flooding in heavy rains the paint began to flake and fall when visari saw the picture 1536 it was already blurred when lomazzo saw it 60 years after its completion it was already ruined beyond repair the friars later helped decay by cutting a door through the legs of the apostles into the kitchen 1656 the engraving by which the painting has been reproduced throughout the world was taken not from the spoiled original but from an imperfect copy made by one of leonardo's pupils marco de jono today we can study only the composition and the general outlines hardly the shades or subtleties but whatever were the defects of the work when leonardo left it some realized at once that it was the greatest painting that renaissance art had yet produced on and off during the years 1503 206 leonardo painted the portrait of mona lisa i.e madonna elisabetta third wife of francesco del giocondo who in 1512 was to be a member of the scenery presumably a child of francesco buried in 1499 was one of elizabeth's children and this loss may have helped to mold the serious features behind la jocanda's smile that leonardo should call her back to his studio so many times during those three years that he should spend upon her portrait all the secrets and nuances of his art modeling her softly with light and shade framing her in a fanciful vista of trees and waters mountains and sky clothing her an arrayament of velvet and satin woven into folds whose every wrinkle is a masterpiece studying with passionate care the subtle muscles that form and move the mouth bringing musicians to play for her and to evoke upon her features the disillusioned tenderness of a mother remembering a departed child these are inklings of the spirit in which he came to this engaging merger of painting and philosophy a thousand interruptions a hundred distracting interests the simultaneous struggle with the angiari design left unbroken the unity of his conception the unwanted per tenacity of his zeal this then is the face that launched a thousand dreams upon a sea of ink not an unusually lovely face a shorter nose would have launched more reams and many alas in oil or marble as in any corregio would by comparison make lisa only moderately fair it is her smile that has made her fortune through the centuries a nascent twinkle in her eyes an amused and checked up curving of her lips what is she smiling at the efforts of the musicians to entertain her the leisurely diligence of an artist who paints her through a thousand days and never makes an end or is it not just mona lisa smiling but all women saying to all men poor impassioned lovers a nature blindly commanding continuance burns your nerves with an absurd hunger for our flesh softens your brains with a quite unreasonable idealization of our charms lifts you two lyrics that subside with consummation and all that you may be precipitated into parentage could anything be more ridiculous but we too are snared we women pay a heavier price than you for your infatuation and yet sweet fools it is pleasant to be desired and life is redeemed when we are loved or was it only the smile of leonardo himself that lease a war of the inverted spirit that could hardly recall the tender touch of a woman's hand and could believe in no other destiny for love or genius than obscene decomposition and a little fame flickering out in man's forgetfulness when at last the sittings ended leonardo kept the picture claiming that this most finished of all portraits was still incomplete perhaps the husband did not like the prospect of having his wife curl up her lips at him and his guests hour after hour from his walls many years later francis the first bought it for four thousand crowns fifty thousand dollars and framed it in his palace at fontainebleau today after time and restorations have blurred its subtleties it hangs in the majestic salon carre of the louvre daily amused by a thousand worshipers and waiting for time to efface and confirm mona lisa's smile the inventor it is hard for us to realize that to ludovico as to caesar borgia leonardo was primarily an engineer even the pageants that he planned for the duke of milan included ingenious automata every day says visari he made models and designs for the removal of mountains with ease and to pierce them to pass from one place to another and by means of levers cranes and winches to raise and draw heavy weights he devised methods for cleaning harbors and for raising water from great depths he developed a machine for cutting threads in screws he worked along correct lines toward a water wheel he devised frictionless roller bearing band brakes he designed the first machine gun and mortars with cog gears to elevate their range a multiple belt drive three-speed transmission gears an adjustable monkey wrench a machine for rolling metal a movable bed for a printing press a self-locking worm gear for raising a ladder he had a plan for underwater navigation but refused to explain it he revived the idea of hero of alexandria for a steam engine and showed how steam pressure in a gun could propel an iron bolt twelve hundred yards he invented the device for winding and evenly distributing yarn on a revolving spindle and scissors that would open and close with one movement of the hand often he let his fancy bemuse him as when he suggested inflated skis for walking on water or a water mill that would simultaneously play several musical instruments he described a parachute if a man have a tent made of linen of which the apertures have all been stopped up and it be twelve cubits across and twelve in depth he will be able to throw himself down from any great height without sustaining any injury through half his life he pondered the problem of human flight like tolstoy he envied the birds as a species in many ways superior to man he studied in detail the operation of their wings and tails the mechanics of their rising gliding turning and descending his sharp eye noted these movements with passionate curiosity and his swift pencil drew and recorded them he observed how birds avail themselves of air currents and pressures he made several drawings of a screw mechanism by which a man through the action of his feet might cause wings to beat fast enough to raise him into the air in a brief essay sulvolo on flight he described a flying machine made by him with strong starched linen leather joints and thongs of raw silk he called this the bird and wrote detailed instructions for flying it did he actually try to fly it a note in the kodi che atlantico says tomorrow morning on the second day of january 1496 i will make the song and the attempt we do not know what this means fazio cardano father of the physicist jerome cardin 1501-76 told his son that leonardo himself had essayed flight some have thought that when antonio one of leonardo's aides broke his leg in 1510 it was in trying to fly one of leonardo's machines we do not know leonardo was on the wrong track human flight came not by imitating the bird except in gliding but by applying the internal combustion engine to a propeller that could beat the air not downward but backward forward speed made possible upward flight but the noblest distinction of man is his passion for knowledge shocked by the wars and crimes of mankind disheartened by the selfishness of ability and the perpetuity of poverty saddened by the superstitions and credulities with which the nations and generations killed the brevity and indignities of life we feel our race in some part redeemed when we see that it can hold a soaring dream in its mind and heart for three thousand years from the legend of devilis and icarus through the baffled groping of leonardo and a thousand others to the glorious and tragic victory of our time the scientist side by side with his drawings sometimes on the same page sometimes scrawled across a sketch of a man or a woman a landscape or a machine are the notes in which this insatiable mind puzzled over the laws and operations of nature perhaps the scientists grew out of the artist leonardo's painting compelled him to study anatomy the laws of proportion and perspective the composition and reflection of light the chemistry of pigments and oils from these researchers he was drawn to a more intimate investigation of structure and function in plants and animals and from these inquiries he rose to a philosophical conception of universal and invariable natural law often the artist peered out again in the scientist the scientific drawing might be itself a thing of beauty or terminate in a graceful arabesque he tried his hand at almost every science he took enthusiastically to mathematics as the purest form of reasoning he felt a certain beauty in geometrical figures and drew some on the same page with a study for the last supper he expressed vigorously one of the fundamental principles of science there is no certainty where one can neither apply any of the mathematical sciences nor any of those that are not based upon them and he proudly echoed plato let no man who is not a mathematician read the elements of my work armed with the great text of theophrastus on plants he turned his alert mind to natural history he examined the system on which leaves are arranged about their stalks and formulated its laws he observed that the rings in a cross section of a tree trunk record the years of its growth by their number and the moisture of the year by their width he seems to have shared several delusions of his time as to the power of certain animals to heal some human diseases by their presence or their touch he atoned for this uncharacteristic lapse into superstition by investigating the anatomy of the horse with a thoroughness to which recorded history has no precedent he prepared a special treatise on the subject but it was lost in the french occupation of milan he almost inaugurated modern comparative anatomy by studying the limbs of men and animals in juxtaposition he set aside the superannuated authority of galen and worked with actual bodies the anatomy of man he described not only in words but in drawings that excelled anything yet done in that field he planned a book on the subject and left for it hundreds of illustrations and notes he claimed to have dissected more than 30 human cadavers and his countless drawings of the fetus the heart lungs skeleton musculature viscera eye skull and brain and the principal organs in women support his claim he was the first to give in remarkable drawings and notes a scientific representation of the uterus and he described accurately the three membranes enclosing the fetus he was the first to delineate the cavity of the bone that supports the cheek now known as the antrum of highmore he poured wax into the valves of the heart of a dead bull to get an exact impression of the chambers he was the first to characterize the moderator band katina of the right ventricle he was fascinated by the network of blood vessels he divined the circulation of the blood but did not quite grasp its mechanism the heart he wrote is much stronger than the other muscles the blood that returns when the heart opens is not the same as that which closes the valves he traced the blood vessels nerves and muscles of the body with fair accuracy he attributed old age to arteriosclerosis and this to lack of exercise he began a volume de figure umana on the proper proportions of the human figure as an aide to artists and some of his ideas were incorporated in his friend pacholi's de divina he analyzed the physical life of man from birth to decay and then planned a survey of mental life oh that it may please god to let me also expound the psychology of the habits of man in such fashion as i am describing his body from his studies in so many fields leonardo rose at times to philosophy o marvelous necessity thou with supreme reason constraints to all effects to be the direct result of their causes and by a supreme and irrevocable law every natural action obeys thee by the shortest possible process this has all the proud ring of 19th century science and suggests that leonardo had shed some theology bizarrie in the first edition of his life of the artist wrote that he was of so heretical a cast of mind that he conformed to no religion whatever accounting it perchance better to be a philosopher than a christian but fazari omitted this passage in later editions like many christians of the time leonardo took a fling now and then at the clergy he called them pharisees accused them of deceiving the simple with bogus miracles and smiled at the false coin of celestial promissory notes which they exchanged for the coinage of this world on one good friday he wrote today all the world is in mourning because one man died in the orient he seems to have thought that dead saints were incapable of hearing the prayers addressed to them i could wish that i had such power of language as should avail me to censure those who would extol the worship of men above that of the sun those who have wished to worship men as gods have made a very grave error he took more liberties with christian iconography than any other renaissance artist he suppressed halos put the virgin across her mother's knee and made the infant jesus try to bestride the symbolic lamb he saw a mind in matter and believed in a spiritual soul but apparently thought that the soul could act only through matter and only in harmony with invariable laws he addressed the deity with humility and fervor in some passages but at other times he identified god with nature natural law and necessity a mystic pantheism was his religion until his final years probably he did little painting after 1517 for in that year he suffered a paralytic stroke that immobilized his right side he painted with his left hand but needed both hands for careful work he was now a wrinkled wreck of the youth whose repute for beauty of body and face came down to visari across half a century his once proud self-confidence faded his serenity of spirit yielded to the pains of decay his love of life gave place to religious hope he made a simple will but he asked for all the services of the church at his funeral once he had written as a day well spent makes it sweet to sleep so a life well used makes it sweet to die bisari tells a touching story of how leonardo died on may 2nd 1519 in the arms of king francis the first leonardo had arrived in france in 1516 under contract to francis as painter engineer and architect of the king and state mechanism but apparently francis was elsewhere at the time the body was buried in the cloister of the collegiate church of san florente in amboise how shall we rank him which of us commands the variety of knowledge and skills required to judge so multiple a man the fascination of his polymorphous mind lures us into exaggerating his actual achievement for he was more fertile in conception than in execution he was not the greatest scientist or engineer or painter or sculptor or thinker of his time he was merely the man who was all of these together and in each field rivaled the best there must have been men in the medical schools who knew more of anatomy than he the most notable works of engineering in the territory of milan had been accomplished before leonardo came both rafael and titian left a more impressive total of fine paintings than has survived from leonardo's brush michelangelo was a greater sculptor machiavelli and cuichardini were profounder minds and yet leonardo's studies of the horse were probably the best work done in the anatomy of that age ludovico and chaser aborgia chose him from all italy as their engineer nothing in the paintings of raphael or titian or michelangelo equals the last supper no painter has matched leonardo in subtlety of nuance or in the delicate portrayal of feeling and thought and pensive tenderness no statue of the time was so highly rated as leonardo's plaster sforza no drawing has ever surpassed the virgin child in saint anne and nothing in renaissance philosophy soared above leonardo's conception of natural law he was not the man of the renaissance for he was too gentle introverted and refined to typify an age so violent and powerful in action and speech he was not quite the universal man since the qualities of statesman or administrator found no place in his variety but with all his limitations and incompletions he was the fullest man of the renaissance perhaps of all time contemplating his achievement we marvel at the distance that man has come from his origins and renew our faith in the possibilities of mankind the renaissance 2 rome the wandering papacy 1309-1417 in 1309 the papacy had abandoned rome as ungovernable and had established itself in avignon where it became to the anguish of most christians a captive of the french kings after 1377 the papacy divided itself into hostile camps with rival popes at rome and avignon while across the mediterranean in africa and asia a virile and war-like mohammedanism spread and multiplied threatening the life of christianity this papal schism continued until prelates princes and scholars assembled at constance in fourteen fourteen and after three years of debate and negotiation chose as pope cardinal odonicolona who took the name of martin v he restored the supremacy of the papacy over the councils and rapidly replenished the papal treasury much to the discomfort of catholics north of the alps in 1430 a german envoy to rome sounded the toxin of the reformation of 1517 greed reigns supreme in the roman court and day by day finds new devices for extorting money from germany under pretext of ecclesiastical fees hence much outcry and heart burnings also many questions in regard to the papacy will arise or else obedience will at last be entirely renounced to escape from these outrageous exactions of the italians and this latter course as i perceive would be acceptable to many countries there ensued a half-hidden contest between the nascent reformation and the maturing renaissance for control of the income and mind of the roman church martin himself had appointed as a papal secretary one of the outstanding humanists poggio broccolini martin's successor eugenius iv who reigned from 1431 to 1447 was already one to the renaissance and helped it wherever his embattled pontificate led him driven from rome by a kelowna managed uprising of the populace he fled with his curate to ferrara and summoned to it a new council of bishops and cardinals an apical event in military history cooperated with his views as the onrushing turks neared constantinople bringing islam with them the leaders of early christianity fled from their ancient capital to italy and offered to confer with western prelates for the union of greek and latin christianity eugenius welcomed them at ferrara and called a roman catholic council to confer with them there for eight months the theologians debated the beloved minima of their faiths when plague broke out at ferrara cosimo de medici invited the theologians to transfer their consultations to florence they came eugenious with them kozimo and his friends honored them fed them and bought their classic texts eugenius added to his secretariat flavio biondo leonardo bruni and other italian humanists who could negotiate with the greeks in greek the homeless theologians agreed to unite the greek and roman churches and creeds but the priests and populace of the christian east repudiated the agreement the turks took constantinople the great schism of eastern from western christianity continued the pope eugenius fortified by the classical experts carried the renaissance to rome the scholar popes among the fervent students whom eugenius had admired in florence was tommaso perentuccelli a young priest who spent all his money on books borrowed to buy more and aspired to gather into one library all the great books in the world in 1443 eugenius made him an archbishop in 1446 a cardinal in 1447 the conclave made him pope who would have thought he exclaimed that a poor bell ringer of a priest would be made pope to the confusion of the proud it was one of the democratic features of catholicism that any normal youth could rise to the papacy the humanists of italy rejoiced and one of them proclaimed that plato's vision had come true a philosopher had become king nicholas v as he now called himself had three aims to be a good pope to rebuild rome and to restore classical literature learning and dart doward with all the revenues of the papacy he sent agents to athens constantinople germany and england to seek and buy or copy greek or latin manuscripts pagan or christian he installed a large core of copyists and editors in the vatican he called almost every prominent humanist in italy to rome and he paid his scholars with a liberality that alarmed his financiers and grieved the provinces bold critics charged that the contributions of the pious were spent on the vanities of pagan literature and the luxuries of skeptical cardinals when nicholas called for a tenth of all the revenue of western europe to be devoted to a crusade to recover constantinople from the turks 1453 europe hardly listened nicholas bowed to reality and the lust of life cooled in his veins he died in 1455 at 58. he had been extravagant in his generosity but he had restored peace in the church and had brought back order and splendor to rome he had founded the vatican library and had united the catholic and the classical world the church and the renaissance the mating seemed complete in pope pius ii born in siena in 1405 of the prominent piccolomini family he was christened enya silvio but he signed most of his many writings nearly all latin aeneas sylvius after the aeneas of virgil's aeneid and even his papal name echoed virgil's favorite adjective for his hero pios which meant reverent and faithful toward one's parents or native land the word fitted the pope more than the man for in his 53 pre-papal years he had availed himself of all the moral laxity of the age he sampled a dozen women and wrote for a friend a love letter designed to melt the obstinacy of a girl who preferred marriage to fornication amid his wanderings he remained faithful only to literature loving the ancient classics and writing the best latin of his time as latin was the language of diplomacy he readily found diverse employments from lovers to kings in 1445 frederick the third secular head of the holy roman empire sent him his envoy to eugenius iv silvius who had attacked eugenius in numerous tracts apologized so eloquently that the humanist pontiff readily forgave him and from that time the wandering scholar belonged to the pope he became a priest 1446 and at 41 resigned himself to chastity henceforth he lived an exemplary life in 1449 he was made bishop of siena in 1456 he became cardinal piccolomini in 1458 he was chosen pope he was now 53 and his adventurous life had taken such toll of his strength that he seemed already old he made no attempt to hide his youthful errors and demours on the contrary he issued publicly a bowl of retraction asking god and the church to forgive him he had become a humanist in florence and now he included the scholars platina and biondo in his secretariat but he did not pay them intoxicating fees greater issues absorbed him the turks bringing a rival religion with them were advancing toward vienna and into serbia and bosnia soon they might reach the adriatic what could stop them from crossing that sea into divided quarreling italy pius ii proclaimed another crusade he begged the northern powers to send fleets to join his own only venice complied pius led a squadron around italy reached on kona and waited hopefully for the venetians he succumbed to exhaustion just as they arrived he was given a stately funeral in rome but his crusade died with him i pass over pope sixtus the fourth who governed the church from 1471 to 1484 brought it near bankruptcy through nepotism and war built the sistine chapel that bears his name rebuilt the vatican library added 1100 classical manuscripts to the 2527 already there and appointed torquemada to direct the inquisition in spain i should have enjoyed saying a kind word for pope alexander the sixth and even for his unscrupulous son caesar borgia but i hurry on to pope julius ii and the summit of the roman renaissance julius ii julius was an able and undiscourageable general who led or assigned one army after another to recapture the papal states for the papacy as necessary buffers against environment principalities eager to control the church he was a powerful administrator of affairs and men we can still feel the depth and force of his character from raphael's profound portrait in the pt palace at florence under him raphael and michelangelo came to their fulfillment rafael raphael was born in 1483 to giovanni santi the leading painter of urbino he was named after the fairest of the archangels and grew up in the odor of art from that happy youth he passed to perugia where in three years under peregino he learned to paint pious madonnas then pinturicchio lured him to siena and taught him that a woman could be a goddess of beauty without being the mother of god the pagan side of raphael which would later enliven the bathroom of a cardinal with rosy nudes developed in the amiable artist along with the piety that would produce the sistine madonna in 1508 he received at florence a call from julius ii to come and work for him in rome he was glad to go for rome not florence was now the exciting and stimulating center of the renaissance julius had found in the vatican some administrative rooms whose walls seem to call for fresh decoration in consultation with theologians and scholars a plan was devised to illustrate the union of religion and philosophy of classic culture and christianity of church and state in the civilization of the renaissance raphael worked on the project for four and a half years with almost religious care and dedication on one wall he pictured the persons of the christian trinity with mary near them in a cloud around them adam abraham moses david peter and paul and other heroes of the testaments binding them in all illuminating continuity of the two religions cherubim and seraphim weaving through space as if on the wings of song below them theologians and philosophers debating the doctrine of the eucharist and the human characters so individualized as to make each figure a biography or this disputa del sacramento by a youth of 28. but could this happy condotieri of the brush represent with equal force and grandeur the role of science and philosophy among men we have no evidence that raphael had ever done much reading he spoke with his brush and listened with his eyes he lived in a world of form and color in which words were trivial things unless they issued in the significant actions of men and women he must have prepared himself by hurried study by dipping into plato and diogenes laertes and marcilio ficino and by humble conversation with learned men to rise now to his supreme conception the school of athens half a hundred figures summing up rich centuries of greek thought and all gathered in an immortal moment under the coffered arch of a massive pagan portico there on the wall directly facing the apotheosis of theology in the disputa is the glorification of philosophy plato of the jove-like brow deep eyes flowing white hair and beard with a finger pointing upward to his perfect state aristotle walking quietly beside him 30 years younger handsome and cheerful holding out his hand with downward palm as if to bring his master's soaring idealism back to earth and the possible socrates counting off his arguments on his fingers with armed alcibiades listening to him lovingly pythagoras trying to imprison harmonic tables the music of the spheres a fair lady who might be aspasia heraclitus writing ephesian riddles diogenes lying carelessly disrobed on the marble steps archimedes drawing geometries on a slate for four absorbed youths ptolemy and zoroaster banding globes a boy at the left running up eagerly with books surely seeking an autograph and a situous lad seated in a corner taking notes peeking out at the left little federico of mantua julius's pet promante again and hiding modestly almost unseen raphael himself now sprouting a mustache there are many more about whose identity we shall let leisurely pundits dispute all in all such a parliament of wisdom had never been painted perhaps never been conceived before and not a word about heresy no philosophers burned at the stake here under the protection of a pope too great to fuss about the difference between one error and another the young christian has suddenly brought all these pagans together painted them in their own character and with remarkable understanding and sympathy and place them where the theologians could see them and exchange fallibilities and where the pope between one document and another might contemplate the cooperative process and creation of human thought this painting and the disputa are the ideal of the renaissance pagan antiquity and christian faith living together in one room in harmony these rival panels in the sum of their conception composition and harmony were to be surpassed only by michelangelo dintaretto and veronese and equaled by none in representing the marriage of pericles's greece and leo's rome almost at the same time 1508 to 12 as raphael's work for julius ii 1505-12 the culminating figure of the renaissance under the same papal scrutiny painted the ceiling of the sistine chapel michelangelo michelangelo named like raphael after an archangel was born in 1475 second son of lodovico buonoro de simone mayor of the little town of caprese on the road from florence to arezzo michelangelo prided himself on having in him a drop or two of noble blood research has proven him mistaken but perhaps it had misdefined its terms he received some schooling in florence but he learned no latin and never felt the calming hypnosis of the classical mood he was hebraic not classic more protestant than catholic though he designed the church's overpowering citadel he preferred drawing to writing which is a corruption of drawing he preferred sculpture to painting and soon one admission to the gardens in which the medici displayed their collections of ancient statuary and architecture pleased with the youths zeal and products lorenzo took him into his house treated him as a son and regularly seated him at the same table with pollution ficino pico de la miranda and lorenzo himself there michelangelo heard the most enlightened talk about government literature philosophy and art but that aristocratic circle had lost the christian ethic as well as the christian creed and thought the garden of epicurus more pleasant than gethsemane in those years savinarola was preaching his fiery gospel of puritan almost ascetic michelangelo went often to hear him and never forgot him when seven arola died 1498 something of his spirit lingered in the somber artist a scorn of the moral decay in the italian capitals a fierce resentment of despotism a dark presentment of doom when he painted the last judgment he hurled the fires fulminations down the centuries in 1496 he accepted the invitation of a cardinal to visit rome there on a contract with the french ambassador he carved the pieta which still startles us in saint peter's the virgin mother holding her crucified son in her lap michelangelo was only 23 and the group shows defects that his youth might excuse the excessive drapery the mother's hand too small for her body her left hand hanging inexplicably in the air her face that of a woman younger than her son but the figure of christ limp and almost reduced to bone the drapery of flowing stone the little group containing the essence of human history as a race between motherhood and mortality this like raphael's stanze rooms reveals how rapidly an artist had to mature in the heat and race of the renaissance the call of impoverished relatives brought the now famous sculptor back to florence there in 1501 the cathedral's board of works challenged him to chisel into a human figure a block of marble thirteen and a half feet tall and so irregularly shaped that it had lain unused for a century michelangelo toiled on the refractory material for two and a half years using every inch of its height and drew from it the proudly viral david which stood for centuries as the city's defiance of its enemies giorgio vazari famous historian of art thought this proudly naked youth surpassed all other statues ancient or modern latin or greek meanwhile pope julius ii itched for a tomb of such size and beauty as would remind even a distant posterity of his triumphs in politics and war he sent for michelangelo who came despite fear that he would be miserable with julius they were so much alike he proposed a colossal monument 27 feet long and 18 wide with 40 attendant statues surrounding a coffined julius dominant though dead the pope gave the artist 2 000 ducats sent him off to carrara to pick the finest veins of marble and took himself to war for perugia and bologna the war was costly and left no ducats for art michelangelo seeking audience and ducats was refused entry to the pope he left rome after sending this note to julius most beloved father i have been turned out of the palace today by your orders wherefore i give you notice that from this day forward if you want me look for me elsewhere than at rome two years later 1508 his anger cooling and his purse thinned michelangelo heeded julius's summons and returned to rome hoping to finish the tomb he was alarmed to learn that the pope wanted him to paint the ceiling of the sistine chapel he protested that he was a sculptor not a painter and recommended raphael as a better man for the task julius insisted and offered him a fee of 3 000 ducats fifty thousand dollars michelangelo yielded and began in may 1508 his four and a half years of toil on the supreme painting of the renaissance picture the old pope mounting the frail frame aided to the platform by the artist and asking impatiently when will it be finished the reply as reported by visari was a lesson in integrity when i shall have done all that i believe required to satisfy art when for the last time michelangelo descended from the scaffold he was exhausted emaciated and prematurely old he was only 37 and had 51 years yet to live julius died february 21st 1513 four months later michelangelo mourned the passing of the great pope and wondered if the next pontiff would have as sure an instinct as julius for great art he retired to his humble lodgings and binded his time leo the tenth the pope who gave his name to one of the most brilliant and immoral ages in history owed his ecclesiastical career to the political strategy of his father lorenzo de medici had been almost destroyed by sixtus the fourth he hoped that the power of the medici family and the security of his progeny in florence would be helped by having a medici sitting in the college of cardinals he destined his second son for the ecclesiastical state almost from giovanni's infancy at seven the boy was taunted at eight he was appointed proto-notary apostolic at fourteen he was made a cardinal one might become a cardinal without becoming a priest cardinals were then chosen for political ability and family connections rather than for religious zeal all who met cardinal de medici liked him he was affable modest and unostentatiously generous even his ample income hardly sufficed for his aid to poets artists musicians and scholars he enjoyed all the arts and graces of life nevertheless the historian guichardini who lost no love on popes described him as having the reputation of a chaste person and unblameable of manners and all this minutius complimented him on his pious and your approachable life in 1513 he was called to rome to take part in choosing a successor to julius he was still only 37 and could hardly have expected that he would be chosen pope he entered the conclave in a litter suffering from an anal fistula after a week of debate and apparently without simony giovanni de medici was elected march 11 1513 and took the name leo the tenth he was not yet a priest but this defect was remedied on march 15th everybody was surprised and pleased after the dark intrigues of alexander and caesar borgia and the wars and turbulence of julius it was a relief that a young man already distinguished for his good nature was now to lead the church presumably in the ways of peace poets sculptors painters goldsmiths rejoiced humanists promised themselves a revival of the augustine age leo's court became the center of the intellect and wit of rome the place where scholars poets artists and musicians were welcomed paid and in many cases housed it was without question the most refined and money court in the world of its time rome prospered and expanded as the gathered tribute of europe's piety flowed into its economic and cultural arteries prelits and poets panderers and parasites couriers and courtesans hurried to rome to drink the golden rain some cardinals had an income of thirty thousand ducats a year five hundred thousand dollars they lived in stately palaces manned by as many as three hundred servants and adorned with every art and luxury known at the time they did not think of themselves as ecclesiastics they were statesmen diplomats administrators they were the roman senate of the roman church and proposed to live like senators they smiled at those foreigners who expected of them the continents and piety of priests the roman empire was restored luther came and saw it and was shocked erasmus came and sought and was charmed michelangelo agreed with luther he preferred the commoner to the baron the letterless to the intellectual the toil of the worker to the luxuries of the rich he gave most of his earnings to maintain his shiftless relatives he was a bear of a man bent but powerful with grisly hair and beard sharp small eyes crushed nose protruding ears he was naturally uncomfortable at court happy alone with his tools and his visions of manly force in character and frame he cared little for women he painted them but always in their maternal maturity not in the charm of their youth he lived precariously penuriously often lunching on a crust of bread or sleeping with his working clothes on as if says visari he had no mind to undress that he might dress again leo accustomed to every courtesy of speech and dress learned to avoid michelangelo and left him to his work on julius's tomb or some muscular captives or a seated moses of beard and horn and wrinkled brow presenting ominously the tables of the law the happy pope naturally took to raphael who agreed with him in temperament and taste both were amiable epicureans who made christianity a pleasure and took their heaven here but both worked as hard as they played leo applied the happy artist with tasks to complete the stanza to design cartoons outline drawings for prospective paintings or tapestries to share in the building of saint peter's to arrange for the preservation of classical art raphael accepted these commissions with good cheer and appetite and found time besides to produce a score of religious pictures several series of pagan frescoes and half a hundred madonnas or portraits any one of which would have assured him wealth and fame now 1515 he painted the sistine madonna for the convent of san sisto at piacenza in him as often in christian history the virgin fought a losing battle with young women of accessible beauty as in la fornarina at the borghese gallery in the end raphael gave more of his time and vigor to unveiled charms and died at the age of 37 1520 all the artists in rome followed his courtesy to the grave his beloved pope survived him by a year leo was bedded in august 1521 by the first stages of malaria the persistent pain of his fistula and the mounting worries of war like julius ii he had turned more and more from the enjoyment of art to the pursuit of martial power on december 1st he was cheered by learning that piacenza and parma had been taken by papal forces once he had declared that he would gladly give his life if those cities might be added to the states of the church on the night of december 1st to 2nd 1521 he died 10 days short of 45. he was a good man ruined by his love of beauty and his habituation to wealth raised in a palace he had learned luxury as well as art and when the revenues of the papacy were placed in his trust they slipped through his careless fingers while he basked in the happiness of recipients or the triumphs of expensive wars he made the papal states stronger than ever but lost germany by his exactions and extravagances he was a glory and a misfortune to the church debacle the besieged intellect we should exalt renaissance italy beyond its due if we did not note that there is elsewhere civilization was of the few by the few and for the few the simple common man tilled the earth pulled the carts or bore the burdens toiled from dawn to dusk and that evening had no muscle left for thought he let others think for him as others made him work for them he took his opinions his religion his answers to the riddles of life from the air about him or from the ancestral cottage he accepted not only the fascinating comforting inspiring terrifying marvels by which were daily conveyed to him the traditional theology but he added to them the demonology sorcery portents magic divination and astrology that composed a popular metaphysics which the church deprecated as more troublesome than heresy machiavelli though skeptical of religion suggested the possibility that the air is peopled with spirits and declared his belief that great events are heralded by prodigies prophecies revelations and signs in the sky particularly widespread among the people was the notion that satan and any number of minor devils hovered in the air and might use supernatural powers to help their faithful worshipers a class of women professed to have access to such devils and threw them to supernatural knowledge and powers in 1484 a bowl of pope innocent the eighth for bad resort to such witches and bad the inquisition beyond the alert against such practices he specified no particular punishment but the inquisition following the old testament's command thou shalt not suffer a witch to live made witchcraft a capital crime and in 1485 in como alone 41 women were burned to death for witchcraft such executions multiplied 140 in brescia in 1486 and 300 more at como in 1514 in the pontificate of the refined and gentle leo the 10th in such an environment science marked time indeed it fell below the level it had reached under albertus magnus in the 13th century it could not enjoy as art did the united support of laity in the church the only prosperous science was medicine for men will sacrifice for health anything but appetite physicians were condemned for their high fees and envied for their high social standing in their startling scarlet robes they broke down the medieval hostility to the dissection of cadavers sometimes ecclesiastics helped them in 1319 medical students at bologna stole a corpse from a cemetery and brought it to a teacher at the university who dissected it for their instruction they were prosecuted but acquitted and from that time the civil authorities winked an eye at the use of executed and unclaimed criminals in anatomies soon dissection was practiced in all the medical schools of italy including papal schools in rome even so by ad1500 anatomy had only reached the knowledge possessed by hippocrates and galen in greek and roman antiquity surgery rose rapidly in repute as its repertoire of operations and instruments approached the variety and competence of ancient egyptian practice by 1500 many european physicians had realized the hippocratic ideal of adding philosophy to medicine they passed with ease from one subject to the other in their study in teaching and some of them being also gentlemen were part of the elixir of their time renaissance philosophy at first glance the renaissance offers no memorable name in philosophy none comparable with the lusty luminaries whom raphael was picturing as the school of athens or even with the heyday of scholasticism from abelard to aquinas even so it has one two forgotten figure pietro pompanazi so diminutive that his familiars called him peretto the little peter and as he covered his heresies by ascribing them to the generally accepted aristotle he likened himself to an ant exploring an elephant professor of philosophy at the university of padua from 1495 to 1509 and then at the university of bologna from 1512 to his death in 1525 he escaped the inquisition because he had unburnable friends in his major work tractatus mortality 1516 he interpreted aristotle as teaching that the individual's soul is inextricably bound up with his body and dies with it only the soul or mind of the universe is indestructible pompanotzi concluded that as a philosopher he agreed with aristotle but as a christian he accepted the teaching of the church this was a hoary dodge at which all kanyashenti smiled and as aristotle's view had just been condemned by the fifth lateran council 1513 under the presidency of leo the tenth himself many of pampanazzi's friends expected his arrest by the inquisition but the humanists bembo and bibina then hai and leo's councils interceded with the genial pontiff who contented himself with ordering the philosopher to write an assurance of submission to the church in apologia libri trace 1518 pompanotzi assured the world that as a good christian he accepted all the teachings of the church in two minor works wisely post-mortem pompanotzi rejected many superstitions magical incantations and mysterious cures all worldly events he announced have natural causes miracles are manifestations of natural forces only partly known to us he conceded much to astrology the lives of men in the history of states even of religions are affected by the actions of the stars he defended the freedom of the human will not only because we seem conscious of such freedom but because without it there could be no moral responsibility and all social order would rest precariously on fear of the police or of divine punishment hence he concluded great legislators have taught belief in a future state of reward and suffering as an indispensable aid to government these things he said of his own speculations are not to be communicated to common people for they are incapable of receiving these secrets the lower classes kept the beloved faith despite the philosophers the thousands who heard savanna roller must have believed and the example of vittoria colona shows that piety could survive education but the soul of the great creed had been pierced with the arrows of doubt and the gothic splendor of the medieval myth had been tarnished by its accumulated gold one man remains hard to classify or place diplomat historian dramatist philosopher the most cynical thinker of his time and yet a patriot fired with an ideal a man who failed in almost everything that he undertook but left upon history a deeper mark than almost any other figure of the age nicolo machiavelli was the son of a florentine lawyer a man of moderate means who held a minor post in the government and owned a small rural villa at san casano 10 miles out of the city the boy received the ordinary literary education learning to read latin readily but not greek he took a fancy to roman history became enamored of libby and found for almost every political institution and event of his day an illuminating analog in the history of rome he began but seems never to have completed the study of law he cared little for the art of the renaissance and expressed no interest in the discovery of america perhaps he felt that merely the theater of politics was now enlarged while the plot and characters would remain unchanged his one absorbing interest was politics the technique of influence the chess of power in 1498 to 29 he was appointed secretary to the dhi delegara a council of 10 for war and held that post for 14 years in 1500 he accompanied and soon led a mission to louis xii of france he followed the french court from chateau to chateau and transmitted to the florentine senoria such alert intelligence such keen analysis but on his return his friends acclaimed him as a graduate diplomat the turning point in his development was his mission to caesar borgia 1502 at senegalea he noted borgia's happiness at having ensnared and then strangled or caged the adventurers who had conspired against him these were events that stirred all italy to machiavelli they were lessons in philosophy here was a man six years younger than himself who in two years had overthrown a dozen tyrants given order to a dozen cities and made himself the very meteor of his time how weak seemed words before this youth who used them with such lordly economy from that moment caesar border became the hero of machiavelli's thought as bismarck would be nietzsche's here in this embodied will to power was a morality beyond good and evil a model for supermen in 1512 julius ii overthrew the florentine republic and restored the medici to power machiavelli lost his diplomatic post was accused of plotting to restore the government was arrested tortured freed and retired with a wife and four children to the villa at san casano there he spent the rest of his life writing discourses on the first ten books of libya and a summary of his conclusions called il principe it circulated in manuscript but was not published till five years after his death thereafter it was among the most frequently reprinted volumes in the history of philosophy it is the most honest and immoral of books it expounds clearly and frankly the doctrine that a state need not must not practice the moral code which it recommends to its citizens it may justly punish perjury fraud theft cruelty and murder but it may rightly practice any or all of these if it considers them necessary to the protection of the state machiavelli interprets the old roman rule salus populis supreme alex to mean that the safety of the state that is the people organized is the supreme law moreover machiavelli proceeds the christian ideal of peace may innervate a citizenry an occasional war is a national tonic restoring discipline unity and strength virtue in the roman republic was not humility or gentleness but manliness virility courage armed with energy and intelligence a war that strengthens the nation is good when a state ceases to expand it begins to die in his discourses machiavelli extended his argument from the ethics of government to what seemed to him the miserable fragmentation of italy into petty states warring upon one another with purchasable armies allergic to combat under conde thierry open to any liberal offer from any enemy he knew that northern rulers coveted the fruitful lands and brilliant art of italy he dallied a while with the hope that caesar borgia so regularly victorious would master all italy and then lead a patriotic army to the defense of the peninsula but cesar borgia died in 1507 and machiavelli tired of politics tired of his rural retreat tired even of his tavern friends gave up his life in 1527 in that year a predominantly german army conquered and devastated rome and put an end to the roman renaissance adrian the sixth the population of the capital from princes to populous was shocked to learn on january 2nd 1522 that the conclave of cardinals had elected to the papacy a non-italian the first since 1378 and worse yet a teuton the first since 1161 at the very time when martin luther was leading germany into open revolt against the church of rome adrian dettol was a hollander born of lowly folk in utrecht in 1459 educated at louvain made chancellor of that university at the age of 34 tutor at 47 to the doer and resolute youth who was to be charles v emperor of the holy roman empire in 1515 adrian was sent on a mission to spain and so impressed king ferdinand with his administrative ability that he was made bishop of tortoza through all this progress he remained modest in everything but theology and persecuted heresies with a zeal that endeared him to the people of spain perhaps it was through the influence of charles v that he was made pope by a conclave of cardinals overwhelmingly italian adrian vi felt lost in the vatican and pronounced it better fit for an emperor than for a successor to fisherman peter he sent away all but four of the hundred grooms that leo had kept for his stable he reduced his personal servants to two both dutch and bad them bring his household expenses down to one ducat twelve dollars and fifty cents a day he was horrified by the looseness of sex and tongue and pen in rome and agreed with lorenzo and luther that the capital of christianity was a sink of iniquity he cared nothing for the ancient art that the cardinals showed him he denounced the statuary as relics of idolatry and walled up the belvedere palace which contained europe's first collection of classical sculpture he had a mind to wall up the humanists to and the poets who seemed to him to live and write like pagans who had banished christ to lead the church back from leo to christ became the devout passion of adrian's pontificate he set himself with blunt directness to reform such ecclesiastical abuses as he could reach he suppressed superfluous offices with sometimes inconsiderate and indiscriminate figure he canceled the contracts that leo had signed to pay annuities to those who had bought church offices two thousand five hundred fifty persons who had purchased these as an investment lost so to speak both principle and interest rome resounded with their cries that they had been defrauded and one of the victims tried to kill the pope relatives who came to adrian for signing cures were told to go back and earn an honest living he put an end to simony and nepotism scored the vinality of the curia enacted severe penalties for bribery and embezzlement and punished guilty cardinals with the same treatment as the humblest clerk he bad bishops and cardinals go back to their seas and read the lessons on the morality that he expected of them the ill repute of rome he told them was the talk of europe he would not accuse the cardinals themselves of vice but he charged them with allowing vice to go unpunished in their palaces he asked them to put an end to their luxuries and to content themselves with a maximum income of six thousand dockets seventy five thousand dollars a year all ecclesiastical rome wrote the venetian ambassador is beside itself with terror seeing what the pope has done in the space of eight days but the eight days were not enough nor the brief thirteen months of adrian's active pontificate vice hit its face for a while but survived reforms irked a thousand officials and met with a sullen resistance and the hope for adrian's early death the pope mourned to see how little one man could do to better men how much does a man's efficiency he often said depend upon the age in which his work is cast and he remarked wistfully to his old friend hazar dietrich how much better it went with us when we were living quietly in louisville after only 13 months in rome adrian broken in body and spirit fell sick and died september 14 1523 he left all his property to the poor and insisted upon a quiet and inexpensive funeral it was a pity that puritan teutonic adrian could not understand the pagan italian renaissance and could not build a bridge between germany paying and italy spending peter's pence but it was a crime and a folly that rome could not bear a christian pope the sack of rome 1527 adrian's successor who took the name clement vii was giulio de medici the illegitimate son of lorenzo's brother giuliano when juliana was killed lorenzo took julio into his family and brought him up with his own sons these included leo who as pope dispensed julio from the canonical impediments of bastardy made him an archbishop then a cardinal then chief administrator of the pontificate giulio was tall and handsome rich and learned well-mannered and of moral life an admirer and patron of literature music and art rome greeted his elevation to the papacy as heralding the return of leo's golden age he distributed among the cardinals all the benefits that he had enjoyed he won the hearts and dedication of scholars and scribes by drawing them into his service or supporting them with gifts he dealt out justice justly gave audiences freely bestowed charity with less than leonine but with wiser generosity and charmed all by his courtesy to every person and class no pope ever began so well or ended so miserably the task of steering a safe course between francis the first and charles v in a war almost to the death while the turks were over running hungary and one third of europe was in full revolt against the church prove too much for clement's abilities as for leo's two the magnificent portrait of clement in his early pontificate by sebastiano del piombo is deceptive he did not show in his actions the hard resolution that there seems limbed in his face and even in that picture a certain weak weariness shows in the tired eyelids drooping over sullen eyes clement made irresolution a policy he carried thought to excess and mistook it as a substitute for action instead of its guide he could find a hundred reasons for a decision and a hundred against it it was as if buried all's ass sat on the papal throne i should explain that john bourie dawn was a scholastic philosopher who explained the psychology of hesitation by describing a philosophical donkey who desperately hungry but placed equidistant between two piles of hay and unable to find any reason to go to one instead of the other died of hunger clements haystacks were francis king of france and charles the first king of spain 1516-56 who was also 1519-56 charles v emperor of the holy roman empire when these two fought for control of italy clement oscillated between the frenchman and the spaniard until charles sent agents to win clement or depose him meanwhile the turks under suleiman the magnificent captured budapest september 10 1526 belgrade and algiers clement feared that europe would become not merely protestant but [ __ ] charles remaining in spain and moving his dramatis personae by remote control commissioned his agents to assemble a new army they promised a tyrolean condatierre georg von fruensberg freedom to plunder if he would lead his german mercenaries into italy and unseat clement the seventh frenzberg was still nominally catholic but he sympathized with luther and hated clement as a traitor to the head of the holy roman empire he raised thirty eight thousand golden and collected ten thousand mercenaries eager for adventure and pillage and not averse to hanging a pope he led them across the po and allowed them to ravage lombardy meanwhile another charles duke of bourbon having personal reasons for opposing francis the first led his army out of milan to join freunsberg's forces near piacenza the conglomerate horde now numbering some 22 000 men advanced toward rome robbing freely as it passed when clement realized that neither charles v nor francis the first would come to his aid he mustered sixty thousand ducats with which his emissaries persuaded both freunsberg and bourbon to keep their men out of the papal states but their troops refused to honor this agreement for four months they had endured a thousand hardships only in the hope of plundering rome most of them were now in rags many were shoeless all were hungry none was paid they refused to be bought off with a miserable sixty thousand dockets of which they knew only a small part would trickle down to them fearing that bourbon would sign the truce they besieged his tent crying pay pay he hid himself elsewhere and they plundered his tent freunsberg tried to calm them but was stricken with apoplexy in the course of his appeal he played no further part in the campaign and died a year later bourbon took command but only by agreeing to march on rome on march 29th he sent messages to charles de la noire viceroy of naples for charles and clement that he could not hold back his men and that the truce was perforce at an end now at last rome realized that it was the intended and helpless prey on holy thursday april 9th when clement was giving his blessing to a crowd of ten thousand persons before saint peter's a fanatic clad only in a leather apron mounted the statue of saint paul and shouted to the pope thou bastard of sodom for thy sins rome shall be destroyed repent and turn thee if thou wilt not believe me in fourteen days thou shalt see on easter eve this wild eromite bartolomeo carrozzi called rondano went through the streets crying rome do penance they shall deal with thee as god dealt with sodom and gomorrah bourbon perhaps hoping to satisfy his men with the enlarged some sent to clement a demand for two hundred and forty thousand dockets clement replied that he could not possibly raise such a ransom he had now some four thousand soldiers to meet the attack of twenty thousand hungry men on may sixth bourbon's multitude approached the walls under cover of fog they were repelled by a few salad bourbon himself was hit and died almost instantly but the assailants could not be deterred from repeated attack their alternatives were to capture rome or starve they found a weakly defended position they broke through it and poured into the city clement most of the resident cardinals and hundreds of officials fled to the castel sant'angelo as the invaders rushed on through the streets they killed indiscriminately they entered the hospital and orphanage of santos pirito and slaughtered nearly all the patients saint peters and the vatican were rifled from top to bottom and horses were tethered in raphael's stanze every palace paid ransom for protection only to face later attacks from other packs and pay ransom again children were flung from high windows to pry parental savings from secrecy one cardinal was lowered into a grave and was told that he would be buried alive unless ransom was brought the number of deaths cannot be calculated the sack lasted eight days while clement looked on from the towers of the castel santangelo like tortured job charles still in spain was glad to hear that rome had been taken but was shocked when he heard of the savagery of the sack he disclaimed responsibility for the excesses but took full advantage of the pope's helplessness on june 6th his representatives possibly without his knowledge compelled clement to sign a humiliating piece all those in santa angelo were allowed to depart except clement and the thirteen cardinals who had accompanied him the whole edifice of the papacy material and spiritual seemed to be collapsing into a tragic ruin that awoke the pity even of those who felt that some punishment was deserved by the infidelities of clement the sins of the papacy the greed and corruption of the curia and the iniquity of rome erasmus mourned the passing of the city's halcyon days rome was not alone the shrine of the christian faith the nurse of noble souls and the abode of the plusses but the mother of nations to how many was she not dearer and sweeter and more precious than their own land in truth this is not the ruin of one city but of the whole world fearing a league of england and france and softened by a hundred and twelve thousand dockets from the continuing revenues of the church charles released the imprisoned pope december twenty seventh fifteen twenty seven and clement the seventh disguised as a servant made his way from rome to orvieto and thence to viterbo after nine months of humiliation and poverty he was allowed to re-enter rome needing an ally charles made his peace with the pontiff declared himself a humble servant of christ and kissed the papal feet in acknowledgment that his spreading state needed the help of the ailing church on february twenty second to twenty fourth fifteen thirty clement crowned charles with the iron crown of lombardy and the crown of the holy roman empire clement died four years later september twenty fifth fifteen thirty four after the most disastrous pontificate in the history of the roman church at his accession henry viii was still defense or fide against luther and the protestant revolt had as yet proposed no vital doctrinal changes at clement's death england denmark sweden half of germany and part of switzerland had definitely broken away from the church and italy had submitted to a spanish domination fatal to the thought and life that had for good or evil marked the renaissance everyone had rejoiced at clement's succession nearly everyone rejoiced at his death and the rabble of rome repeatedly defiled his tomb but at the other end of italy venice in the sunset of her glory was giving the renaissance another brilliant life the renaissance three venetian sunset venice and her realm in 1378 venice was at its nader her adriatic trade was bottled up by a victorious genoese fleet her communications with her tributaries were blocked by hostile forces her people were starving her government contemplated a humiliating surrender half a century later she ruled padua vicenza verona brescia bergamo both sides of the northern adriatic and beyond it lepanto patrice and corons secure in her many moted citadel she seemed immune to the political vicissitudes of the mainland her wealth and power had mounted until she sat like a throne queen at the head of italy the annual income of her hundred thousand dockets twenty million dollars in fourteen fifty five exceeded that of any other italian state and equaled that of all christian spain the proud palaces and fluid promenade of the grand canal led the traveled philippe de coming to pronounce this the most beautiful street in the world her wealth came from a hundred industries shipbuilding iron glass leather textiles gems and a commercial fleet that carried the products of venice and her dependencies to greece egypt and asia and returned with silks spices rugs drugs and slaves her exports in an average year were valued at 10 million dockets no other city in europe equaled that trade an earthy licentiousness and profanity sat side by side in the venetian and italian character with orthodox belief and weekly piety on sundays and holy days the populists crowded into saint mark's and absorbed doses of terror and hope from the mosaics and statues the icons and sermons even the prostitutes came here after a wearing night to cleanse themselves from men the great basilica hardly symbolized venetian civilization or venetian art built in its present form in 1073 it remained through every renovation thoroughly byzantine in its external ornament and internal gloom its ritual sermons and mosaics conveyed medieval myths and terrors rather than the lusty joy and careless creed of the italian renaissance beside that spreading feign the palace of the doges united classic columns romanesque arches and gothic pinnacles to enclose luxurious chambers for lordly senators or cover underground dungeons for careless enemies facing the piazza san marco or the grand canal palaces rose year by year outwardly modest inwardly adorned with all the wealth and warmth of venetian art and luxury here byron reveled and wagner died here as in the palazzo de doji or in a score of churches modest or magnificent or in the squarely schools of the friars would rise in a dazzling succession the paintings of gentile and giovanni bellini carpaccio giorgione tischen tintoretto and veronese rome would find it difficult to rival that dynasty even the enemies of venice admired her government and sent agents to study its structure and functioning it was controlled by a closed oligarchy of old families listed in a librodoro who chose a major concilio or greater council which chose sixty men to serve as a legislative senate which chose a doge leader as executive who with six privy councillors constituted the senoria to guard against internal or external conspiracies the major concilio yearly chose a council of 10 as a committee of public safety through its spies and swift procedure its secret sessions and trials this concilio de dieci became for a time the most powerful arm of the government many legends arose about this council usually exaggerating its secrecy and severity all in all it was an efficient constitution which maintained the state in a prosperous stability and was capable of far calculated policies that might have been difficult to maintain under a government subject to frequent fluctuations of public sentiment phoenician life was more attractive in its setting than in its spirit the autocracy was competent and showed high courage and adversity but it was sometimes brutal and always selfish like its neighbors it never thought of itself as a part of italy and cared little what political tragedy might befall that divided land it developed powerful personalities self-reliant shrewd acquisitive valiant proud we know a hundred of them through portraits by artists whom they were refined enough to patronize it was a culture that compared with the florentine lacked subtlety and depth that compared with the milanese under lodovico lacked finesse and grace but it was the most colorful sumptuous and sensually bewitching civilization that history has ever known venetian art before titian sensuous color is the essence of venetian art even of its architecture many venetian churches and dwellings as well as some business buildings had mosaics or frescoes on their fronts the facade of saint mark's gleamed with guilt and almost haphazard ornament nearly every decade brought to it new spoils and forms until the face of the great church became a bizarre medley of architecture sculpture and mosaic in which decoration drowned structure and the parts forgot the whole to admire that facade one must stand 576 feet away at the farther end of the piazza san marco then the brilliant conglomeration of romanesque portal gothic ogs classic columns renaissance railing and byzantine domes blends into one exotic phantasm and aladdin's magic dream between saint mark's in the grand canal the palace of the doges stands as the proud face of the civic state largely rebuilt from 1309 to 1443 its southern facade fronting the water and its western facade opposite the classical libreriavecchia or old library which jacopo sansovino built in 1536 as an added splendor for the piazza the graceful gothic arcades and balconies the superbly sculpted capitals of the palace can hold the eye and mind for hours ruskin thought one of those capitals the finest in europe within the court bartolomeo the younger and antonio rizzo raised an ornate arch adorned with two strange statues adam seemed to protest that he had been seduced and eve possibly wondering why knowledge should be accounted as sin from that court the famous scala de giganti or stairway of the giants led by massive steps to the offices and assembly rooms of the greater council the senate and the ten it was a vainglory and yet a glory that the venetians wanted pictures individuals to perpetuate their excellencies hence so many masterpieces partition the government to impress its subjects with its power and dignity hence some of the finest murals in history the church to tell the christian story to the people of whom only a few could read hence so many annunciations nativities visitations massacres of the innocence flights to egypt transfigurations last suppers crucifixions entombments resurrections ascensions martyrdoms even the greeks had no such success in perpetuating their creeds some external stimuli helped to beget a venetian school of painting two artists from other cities helped to replace the dark and solemn faces of the byzantine tradition and the lifeless figures of johto's saints antonello of messina traveling on business in flanders noticed the brighter finish and greater permanence of oil paintings and their finer gradations of color as compared with the tempera mixing the colors with some gelatinous substance still used in italy settling in venice because greatly addicted to women and pleasure he tried his hand at oil painting and so impressed the tempera painters that a revolution in methods brought the first flowering of the venetian pictorial art two half brothers gentile and giovanni bellini led the colorful parade in 1474 the senoria assigned to them the task of repainting 14 decaying panels in the hall of major concilio the results were among the earliest venetian paintings in oil their success may have encouraged mohammed ii conqueror 1453 of christian constantinople to ask the venetian government for an able portrait painter it sent him gentile bellini gentile enlivened the aged sultan with erotic pictures and then 1474 painted him as a powerful character accustomed to victory in 1480 gentile returned to venice muhammad died a year later his successor obeying the muslim ban on picturing the human figure scattered into oblivion all but two of gentiles turkish paintings gentile continued to produce great pictures till his death 1507 his brother giovanni fondly john younger by one year survived him by nine and brought the art of oil painting to its first venetian peak he achieved a splendor of color a grace and accuracy of line a delicacy of feeling a depth of interpretation that even in the lifetime of his brother made him the most acclaimed and sought after painter in venice churches guilds and private patrons seemed never to tire of his madonnas and christ's and the brilliant doge loredano found time to sit for one of the greatest portraits in venetian art between the labors of the bellini and the triumphs of titian one especially fascinating painter intervened who is still known to us only by his family name giorgione de castel franco we do not know his parents but we see his lineage when we learn that in his 13th year he was sent to venice to serve as apprentice to john bellini he developed rapidly won encouraging commissions bought a house frescoed its front and filled it with music and revelry for he played the loot fetchingly well and preferred gay women in the flesh to the fairest of them frozen on canvas or wall and a touch of quiet woodland and you have his first masterpiece the gypsy and the soldier a casual woman naked except for a shawl around her shoulders sits on her discarded dress on the back of a rippling stream and nurses her child while near her a comely youth is so pleased with the prospect that he ignores the lightning that announces a storm in giorgione's sleeping venus the passage from christian to pagan themes and sentiments is complete christianity is forgotten to recapture the mood of ovid's rome in another piece the fit champetra or pastoral scene of the louvre two nude women unconscious of shame and two men clothed and unhurriedly triumphant celebrate the union of feminine beauty with woodland charm only in his finest subtlest picture concert petra pastoral symphony does giorgione transcend desire to achieve aesthetic sensitivity and realization among sits at a clavichord his beautifully rendered hands on the keys his face turned round to a bald cleric on our right the cleric lays one hand on the monk's shoulder and holds in the other a cello resting on the floor has the music ended or not yet begun it does not matter what moves us is the silent depth of feeling in the countenance of the monk whose every fiber has been refined and is every sentiment ennobled by music who hears it long after all the instruments have been mute that face not idealized but profoundly realized is one of the miracles of renaissance painting giorgione lived a short life and apparently a merry one he seems to have had many women and to have healed each broken romance with a new one soon begun visari reports that georgioni caught the plague from his latest love all that we knows that he died in the epidemic of 1511 at the age of 34. he left two pupils who were to make a stir in the world sebastiano del pionbo who went off to rome and titianovicelli the greatest venetian painter of all tishen he was born at pieve in the dolomites 1477 and though he was transferred to venice in his tenth year those mountains like supernatural entities hovering over human absurdities lingered in his memories and landscapes he studied under the bellini worked beside giorgione and deeply felt his influence he developed slowly as if leaving time for all his gifts to mature in 1515 he reached mastery with three thoughtful pictures first the three ages of man infants sleeping in innocent nudity under a tree while cupid inoculates them with desire a young couple in the springtime of love and a bearded octogenarian contemplating a skull second sacred and profane love where the nude is done with a fond perfection that may have started rubens on a long tour of unimpeded beauties here the movement of the renaissance from the virgin to venus seems complete but in the same year 1515 titian painted for the church of the ferrari what is perhaps his greatest work the assumption of the virgin from the earth toward paradise to this day the sight of that masterpiece is an unforgettable event in any sensitive wanderer's life standing wordless before this powerful evocation the unwilling skeptic mourns his doubts and acknowledges the power and beauty of the myth the favorite friend of this greatest venetian painters was the most scurrilous immoral shameless brilliant writer of his time patron of prostitutes and favored friend of the emperor charles v son of an obscure shoemaker and an unknown mother he was content to be named aretino from he did not mind being a bastard since he found distinguished company in that class he passed through various forms of poverty until he amassed ample ducats from his wit and pen prominent people paid him to be spared from his satire and thousands read his books to enjoy seeing millionaires mauled and notables pilloried moving to venice in 1521 the scourge of princes rented comfortable rooms on the grand canal and enjoyed the procession of business and pleasure passing beneath his window with hardly more noise than the signals of the gondoliers and the lapping of the oars now he dressed like a lord dispersed charity to the poor supported a succession of mistresses and entertained a host of friends titian was happy to enjoy argetino's hospitality and to profit from his recommendations to titled or money notables in 1530 aritino introduced him to charles v the holy roman emperor having conquered most of italy was busy reorganizing it and fretted him patiently for a portrait which he thought worthy of one ducat 12.50 federico marquis of manchua quietly gave titian 150 ducats more and assured charles that he had been sitting for the best painter now living by 1532 the emperor was convinced and during the next 16 years he sat petitioned so often that the artist must have longed for freedom it must have been with some relief that he passed on to paint the pope paul iii was also imperial a man of viral character and subtle craft with a face that recorded two generations of history here was a better opportunity for titian than he had found in the uncommunicative emperor at bologna in 1543 paul faced frankly the realism of titian's portraiture 75 years old weary but indomitable he sat in his papal robes the long head and large beard bent over once powerful frame the ring of office conspicuous on his aristocratic hand this and raphael's julius ii contest the distinction of being the finest deepest portrait of the italian renaissance in 1552 titian ended his travels and returned to venice he had been too busy to find time to die but now 75 he may have felt mortality and some summons to return from grecian deities to the faith of his youth he painted another series of christian pictures but some persisting vitality repeatedly drew him back to pagan themes and many a diana or aphrodite still issued from his brush greater and deeper than these mythological nudes were the portraits that titian now produced with such abundance that his art seemed a second nature astonishing is his representation of aritino the evocation of a fascinating scoundrel by a faithful friend almost as revealing as titian's portrait of himself at 89 a face lined and yet cleansed by the flow of many days blue eyes a bit somber seeing death but a hand grasping a brush the artistic passion still unspent he died in 1576 at age 99 there were still giants after him like tintaretto and veronese who glorified with their art the chambers of the government we leave them to longer works phoenician arts and letters sang the greatness of venice even as her economy sang to ruin in a mediterranean dominated at one end by the turks and deserted at the other by a europe seeking american gold no vicissitudes of trade or war could extinguish the proud memory of a marvelous century 1480 to 1580 during which the mochiniji and priyuli and loridani had made and saved imperial venice and lombardi and leopardy had adorned her with statuary and sansovino and palladio had crowned her waters with churches and palaces and the bellini and giorgione and titian and tintoretto and verenese had lifted her to the art leadership of italy and all this meniscus had poured out in excellent print and form to all who cared the literary heritage of greece and rome and the irrepressible mephistophelen scourge of princes had sat enthroned on the grand canal judging and milking mankind lingering in italy we have not done justice to tintaretto veronese and others who embellished the magisterial chambers of the palace of the doges we have neglected corregio cellini and other dedicated souls who for a time made italy the light of the world and we have forgotten the last decade and labors of michelangelo who entombed dead medici with immortal scripture and crowned saint peter's with a cupola that is still in a doubting age the center and peak of western civilization we honor michelangelo because through a long and tortured life he continued to create and produced in each field a masterpiece we see these works torn so to speak out of his flesh and blood out of his mind and heart leaving him for a time weakened with birth we see them taking form through a hundred thousand strokes of hammer and chisel pencil and brush one after another like an immortal population they take their place among the lasting shapes of beauty or significance cannot know what god is nor understand a universe so mingled of apparent evil and good of suffering and loveliness destruction and sublimity but in the presence of a mother tending her child or of an informed will giving order to chaos meaning to matter nobility to form or thought we feel as close as we shall ever be to the life and law that constitute the incomprehensible intelligence of the world

Channel: Durant and Friends

Views: 201,298

Keywords: Will Durant, The Renaissance, Art History, michelangelo

Id: HVlUVUonZCs

Length: 150min 4sec (9004 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 26 2017