A Wanderer in FlorenceLucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
History
A Wanderer in Florence
Lucas, E. V. (Edward Verrall)
Art -- Italy -- Florence; Florence (Italy) -- Description and travel
1494 at the early age of thirty-one, two years after Lorenzo.
Angelo Poliziano, known as Politian, was also a Renaissance scholar
and also a friend of Lorenzo, and his companion, with Pico, at
his death-bed; but although in precocity, brilliancy of gifts,
and literary charm he may be classed with Pico, the comparison
there ends, for he was a gross sensualist of mean exterior and
capable of much pettiness. He was tutor to Lorenzo's sons until
their mother interfered, holding that his views were far too loose,
but while in that capacity he taught also Michelangelo and put him
upon the designing of his relief of the battle of the Lapithae and
Centaurs. At the time of Lorenzo and Giuliano's famous tournament
in the Piazza of S. Croce, Poliziano wrote, as I have said, the
descriptive allegorical poem which gave Botticelli ideas for his
"Birth of Venus" and "Primavera". He lives chiefly by his Latin poems;
but he did much to make the language of Tuscany a literary tongue. His
elegy on the death of Lorenzo has real feeling in it and proves him to
have esteemed that friend and patron. Like Pico, he survived Lorenzo
only two years, and he also was buried in Dominican robes. Perhaps
the finest feat of Poliziano's life was his action in slamming the
sacristy doors in the face of Lorenzo's pursuers on that fatal day
in the Duomo when Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed.
Ghirlandaio's fresco in S. Trinità of the granting of the charter
to S. Francis gives portraits both of Poliziano and Lorenzo in the
year 1485. Lorenzo stands in a little group of four in the right-hand
corner, holding out his hand towards Poliziano, who, with Lorenzo's
son Giuliano on his right and followed by two other boys, is advancing
up the steps. Poliziano is seen again in a Ghirlandaio fresco at
S. Maria Novella.
From S. Marco we are going to SS. Annunziata, but first let us just
take a few steps down the Via Cavour, in order to pass the Casino
Medici, since it is built on the site of the old Medici garden where
Lorenzo de' Medici established Bertoldo, the sculptor, as head of a
school of instruction, amid those beautiful antiques which we have
seen in the Uffizi, and where the boy Michelangelo was a student.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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