Free Magnifico by Miles J. Unger Page B

precocious and self-assured from an early age and Cosimo and Piero realized that the boy would be an asset in the general struggle for power and prestige. At the age of five he was dressed up in the latest French fashions and bundled off to the gates of the city to greet the visiting Duke of Anjou “surrounded,” we are told, “by a crowd of children and adults.” Lisping formal greetings more suited to an adult’s mouth, Lorenzo charmed everyone.
    Demands to play the part of the young signore were constant; not even illness could excuse him from the obligation to promote his family’s interests. Recuperating from a bout of eczema at the mineral springs at Macerato in 1455, the six-year-old was elected “Lord of the Baths,” a half-humorous title that seemed mostly to involve presiding over parties and picnics in which, sniffed Piero, there were “some gentlemen and more than enough of the other sort.” Even in such casual moments Lorenzo learned to play his part as a leader of men.
    As Lorenzo matured and began to think for himself he tended to look upon such occasions with an increasingly jaundiced eye. Unlike his father he was naturally sociable, but the hypocrisy and scheming he encountered every day tended to encourage in him a cynical view of men and their motives. He often declared that he wished nothing better than to escape the stench and corruption of the city and lose himself in a simple rustic retreat. “I do not know of riches or honors sweeter than this life of yours—one free of all political intrigue,” declared Lorenzo to the country swain in his philosophical poem “The Supreme Good.” “Among you happy shepherds and you cowherds no hatred reigns or wicked treachery and in these pastures no ambition grows.” Later in life when he was unhappy in love or dispirited by the backstabbing of Florentine politics, Lorenzo would flee to “some solitary and shaded place or the comfort of a green meadow…where I could take my ease close by the clear and flowing water or in the shade of a small green tree.” In the fields, meadows, and forests of his beloved Tuscany he found an inner peace he could never know in the city.
    By the age of eleven Lorenzo was hounded by office-seekers who viewed him as a likely source of patronage. Those who wished to get ahead in Florence knew he had the ear of the most influential men in the city. He was pestered with letters from Medici clients and could hardly leave his house without being mobbed by the petitioners, who crowded around the gates to the palace. Medici power, like that of a Chicago ward boss, rested on an ability to deliver the goods, even for the most humble petitioner. Lorenzo’s first extant letter, written in November of 1460, is a plea for special consideration on behalf of one Chalumato of Arezzo, whom he describes as “my most dear friend.” In his second, written in September of 1461, he attempts to put in a good word with his father on behalf of ser Griso, “who wishes to be named notary of the Signoria .” For someone in Lorenzo’s position, “dear friends” sprouted like mushrooms in the rain.
    Travel was one way to escape the constant harrassment he experienced in his native land. Restless by nature, Lorenzo eagerly sought opportunities to escape and Piero often obliged by employing his son as an itinerant goodwill ambassador. Out on the road, surrounded by congenial companions, Lorenzo enjoyed a rare degree of freedom. In July of 1463, Piero arranged for Lorenzo a trip to Pistoia, an important client of Florence’s in western Tuscany. There, Lorenzo and his companions were received by the local bishop and presented to the people, all of whom, he recorded in a letter to his father, greeted them very warmly. Never one to allow business to get in the way of pleasure, he then begged his father to allow him a side trip to Lucca and Pisa “to look after our affairs there,” but also, he admitted, to try his hand at trout fishing. One