Vasari tells us that Michelozzo Michelozzi built for Giovanni, son of Cosimo de’ Medici, a “magnificent and noble palace at Fiesole; the foundations of the lower part on the steep slope of the hill cost an enormous sum, but it was not thrown away, as there he made vaults, cellars, stables, places for the making of wine and oil, and other good and commodious habitations; and above them, besides the bed-chambers, drawing-rooms and other apartments, he arranged rooms for containing books and for music: in short Michelozzo showed in this edifice how valiant an architect he was, for it was so well built that although high up on that hill, no crack has ever started.” Here, beneath the Etruscan city of Fiesole, with all Florence in the valley far below, Lorenzo the Magnificent passed his happiest hours in the company of Landino, Scala, Ficino, Poliziano, Pico della Mirandola and other literary friends, at one moment discussing Plato, at another writing sonnets and songs in idiomatic Tuscan. A true Florentine in his love of the country, his poetry abounds in descriptions of woods and rivers, of the song of birds and the joys of the chase. The following sonnet on the violet will show how well he merited the praise bestowed on his poetry by his contemporaries. “Not from bright cultured gardens, where sweet airs Steal softly round the rose’s terraced home, Into thy white hand Lady have we come; Deep in dark dingles are our wild-wood lairs. Here once came Venus racked with aching cares, Seeking Adonis through our leafy gloam: Hither and thither vainly doth she roam, Till her bare foot a felon bramble tears. To catch the sacred blood that from above Dripped off the leaves, our small white flowers we spread: Whence came that purple hue which now is ours. Not summer airs, nor rills from far springs led Have nursed our beauty; but by tears of love Our roots were watered; love-sighs fanned our flowers.”[50]