Lorenzo de' Medici: Surviving the Pazzi Conspiracy and the Pope's War

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Lorenzo de' Medici was born in 1449 into the banking family that ran the Florentine Republic from the shadows through debt, tax payments for allies and strategic marriages. Short-sighted, harsh-voiced and flat-nosed, he was trained by philosophers and by his mother, the poet Lucrezia Tornabuoni, while his handsome brother Giuliano modeled for Botticelli. In 1469 he won a jousting tournament riding a horse named Morello di Vento under a banner painted by Verrocchio. That same year his father died and the 20-year-old inherited a bank weakened by unsecured loans to European royalty. On April 26, 1478, the Pazzi family and the Archbishop of Pisa, with the tacit backing of Pope Sixtus IV, attacked the brothers at Mass in Florence Cathedral; Giuliano was stabbed nearly 20 times, and Lorenzo escaped with a neck wound.

Florentines hanged the conspirators from the government palace, but Sixtus excommunicated Lorenzo, placed Florence under interdict and joined King Ferdinand I of Naples in a war. Lorenzo sailed to Naples and spent nearly three months persuading Ferdinand that an independent Florence protected Naples from papal power. He also sent mercenaries who sacked Volterra over an alum mine, and in his last years dipped into state funds as the bank failed while the friar Girolamo Savonarola gained ground. He died at Careggi in 1492 at 43. His son Piero was driven out two years later, but his son Giovanni became Pope Leo X and Giuliano's son became Pope Clement VII.

• A bank manager, Francesco Nori, died blocking a blade meant for Lorenzo, and the poet Poliziano helped him reach the sacristy.
• Michelangelo lived in the Medici household as a teenager for three years.
• As a peace offering to the pope, Lorenzo sent Botticelli and Ghirlandaio to paint in the Sistine Chapel.
• In 1471 he totaled family spending on charity, buildings and taxes at about 663,000 florins and called it money well spent.
• Researchers have proposed he had acromegaly; he lies with Giuliano beneath a Michelangelo Madonna.