[60] "E non avendo egli, si può dir nulla, e poco lavorando, del continuo tenne servitori, e cavalli, &c." For all this it is the more difficult to account, as an attempt to possess himself of the philosopher's stone has never been mentioned among Lionardo's eccentricities, though he was familiar with alchymists. [61] Lorenzo de' Medici occurs not in the Life of Lionardo, and his acquaintance with Leo X. and Giuliano de' Medici relates to the latter periods of it. THE SCHOOL OF FLORENCE. We are now arrived at the epoch which forms the distinctive character of the Tuscan school, the epoch of Michael Agnolo. In placing him here, chronology has been less attended to than the spirit of works; for Frà Bartolomeo, Andrea del Sarto, and others, his contemporaries or juniors, belong more properly to the period of Lionardo than his; the elements of which he gave in the Cartoon of Pisa, and the consummation in the Capella Sistina, on which his school and the imitation of his style were founded; and to which the politics of his time, the splendid oligarchy of the Medici, and the fierce republican spirit of their opponents, gave an energy and produced efforts, unknown to society in repose. Notwithstanding the insinuating arts by which the Medici had debauched public affection, and that undermining power which at last changed influence to tyranny, they were in less than a century[62] three times exiled from their country. The first, the banishment of Cosmo, called the Father of his Country, lasted not above one year, and drew no consequences; for the interval between it and the next (1494) was marked with uniform success, and its last twenty years[63] with the splendid administration and the extended patronage of Lorenzo the Magnificent. His Garden near the church of S. Marco, which he opened as a repository and a school of art, has been little less celebrated than the Hesperian ones of old: it contained, if not all that had been discovered, what could be purchased of antique statues, basso-relievoes, and fragments of every kind; and the apartments were hung with pictures, cartoons, and designs of Donatello, Brunellesco, Paolo Uccello. Frà Giovanni da Fiesole, Masaccio, &c.; here the student was not only instructed, but, by the magnificence of the founder, supported; and it may without exaggeration be asserted, that whatever rose to eminence in the art at that period, was the offspring of Lorenzo's garden. His death was followed by the expulsion of his sons, Pietro, Giovanni, afterwards Leo X., and Julian, in the sequel Duke of Nemours. An immediate anarchy succeeded the expulsion; the populace broke into their houses, destroyed or carried off their furniture, and demolished the residence of Giovanni, the garden of Lorenzo, and the palace on the Via Larga,[64] at once. The numerous partisans of the family, however, contrived to save much.[65]