By the mid-15th century,
the Medici family had fought their way to power in Florence.
They had dictated the tastes of a city
presiding over a revolution in Western culture...
the Renaissance.
Under the protection of a new leader,
Lorenzo ll Magnifico, the Magnificent,
would emerge the greatest artists the world had ever seen...
Botticelli,
Leonardo,
Michelangelo.
But behind the glory lay violence,
the seeds of a terrifying religious backlash
that would take the city, the Medici and the Renaissance
to the brink of destruction.
The Medici, godfathers of the Renaissance.
Magnificent Medici
August 1466.
The most powerful family in Florence, the Medici, were in danger.
Stories were spreading of a coup d'état
by rival families determined to take control of the city.
Recalled from their country retreat,
the Medici began their journey back to Florence.
Their safety on the open road depended on the vigilance of two brothers...
Giuliano and Lorenzo, the heirs to the Medici dynasty.
As the elder son, Lorenzo rode on ahead
to ensure safe passage for their father.
But it wasn't Lorenzo the assassins were after.
They knew that in order to bring down the family,
they would have to get rid of the father...
the boss.
Lorenzo's quick thinking had saved the family from disaster
and the Medici retained control over the political and financial empire
built by Lorenzo's grandfather.
But this legacy had come at a price.
The Medici and their followers
have generated a tremendous amount of animosity
in the old citizen class.
So the city is full of hostility and resentment against the Medici.
The family was vulnerable.
They needed new allies,
allies beyond the walls of Florence.
The Medici are so uneasy about theirfuture.
They realise that their position in Florence is somewhat powerless.
They therefore need the backing
of military families outside of Florence.
And for the first time in the history of the Medici family,
they actually go outside the city for a spouse.
Lorenzo's wedding would be an act of political expedience.
The marriage is very important,
because it establishes links
between a Florentine mercantile family
and one of the most powerful families of the Roman aristocracy.
So it's a form of ennoblement of the family.
Clarice Orsini was a wise choice.
The daughter of a Roman baron and the niece of a cardinal,
she brought connections, class and military muscle
to the Medici family.
The wedding was celebrated with five magnificent banquets.
For friends of the Medici, this was the dawn of a vibrant new era.
For three generations, the city had owed its cultural identity to Medici patronage.
Florence had become a cultural factory
in which artists competed for the next great commission.
For the workshops of the city, business had never been better.
The scene in one of these places must have been extraordinary,
absolute chaos.
You'd have patrons running in and out
looking at work that was in progress,
commissioning new works.
People mixing colours in the corner,
chipping away at blocks in another.
Casting... people would be casting bronzes in another corner.
Probably, the master artist would be negotiating some other deal
so he'd be dealing with papers in one corner,
looking at people's work, scrapping it,
saying he likes that, don't like that, try it like this.
It would have just been organised, creative brilliance and confusion,
but very sweaty, very dirty, very messy.
The Medici had built a reputation as the tastemakers of Italy.
They had already discovered a gifted young artist
who was exploring a radical new style of art.
Under Medici patronage,
he would break new ground
and define the Renaissance itself.
His name was Sandro Botticelli.
The young Botticelli played a role in the creation of a powerful Medici myth.
His painting L'Adorazione dei Magi, 'The Adoration of the Magi',
placed Lorenzo's family right at the heart of the Nativity.
The painting glorified Lorenzo's father, his brother
and Lorenzo himself.
But it also featured a self-portrait.
Botticelli placed himself inside the family's circle of friends.
In a city as volatile as Florence,
an alliance with the right family was crucial.
In 1469, the Medici faced uncertainty once again.
Within weeks of the wedding,
Lorenzo and Giuliano's father finally succumbed to his illness.
His death thrust Lorenzo into the spotlight.
"The principal men of the city came to our house to console us
"and encourage me to take on the care of the state,
"as my father and grandfather had done.
"Their proposal was, naturally, against my youthful instincts,
"and considering that the burden and danger were great,
"I consented to it unwillingly".
It's an immense moment where he becomes the first citizen of Florence.
He is the main man.
I don't think he really wants to be, I think he HAS to be
because he's very much on a European, even a global stage.
He has to be seen to take control.
Lorenzo was now the leader of the Medici family
and the most powerful man in Florence.
He inherits the leadership
and he becomes the godfather of the Florentine people,
the 'maestro della bottega',
the boss of the shop.
And it's arguable that all Florence is Lorenzo's shop.
Lorenzo took to his new role with ease,
opening his doors to the people of Florence.
The Medici had been in power a long time by now.
They are politically very astute.
And I think they've realised that, actually, the masses, the poor people,
can develop their own voice, they can change things.
Lorenzo knows that he therefore needs to put something back there.
He's just trying to cover all his angles.
In exchange for whatever they could afford,
Lorenzo offered help to the ordinary people of Tuscany.
The whole system of government by personal loyalty
is a very Mediterranean one.
It's very like the system
by which the Mafia ruled southern Italy for many centuries.
This is a very face-to-face society
in which government is distant,
whereas the man who wields the authority is the reality.
A network of mutual favours soon spread across Tuscany.
These were the friends of friends...
'gli amici degli amici'.
Lorenzo, by offering favours,
by having a very large circle of friends,
is able to get his way in this city,
really, as a kind of semi-dictator.
Nothing in the books,
nothing in the constitution, nothing in law
gives him any kind of a title
to the power that he actually exercises.
Deep within the Medici palace
was an eloquent statement of Lorenzo's extraordinary power...
the frescoed Cappella dei Magi,
the Chapel of the Magi.
Spread across all four walls,
parading through the hills ofTuscany,
were three generations of the Medici family.
Surrounding the family, hundreds of their loyal friends and followers.
Among them, princes and kings from across the seas
and the most exotic creatures that Florence had ever seen.
The Medici palace chapel is like a little casket ofjewels
in the centre of this huge, stony palace.
It's gleaming and glistening with applied gold...
with iridescent colours.
The Medici family, their allies and amici
were shown taking part in the Biblical procession of the Magi.
The message was clear.
They're saying to people "We have the power and the money to do this".
So ifyou become part of the procession of the Magi,
it's a way of saying "This is my money. I can buy into this scene".
It's quite tawdry, in a way.
It's a clever way of saying "Look at me! "
No one who saw the chapel
could ignore the power of the Medici.
Lorenzo had been born into great privilege
but he had also been brought up a scholar.
At regular salons inside the Medici palace,
he presided over a world of art and culture.
Lorenzo did, in fact, maintain this open house, in a way,
at the Medici palace,
where writers and artists and other interesting people
were free to come and partake of his bounty.
So he's a kind of... appealingly modern figure.
In a world dominated by the Church...
Lorenzo injected a spirit of secular freedom.
And, in his own poetry,
he tried to capture the mood of his city.
"How beautiful is youth, youth which is gone so soon!
"Let him who would be happy seize the moment
"for tomorrow may never come".
Lorenzo is the life and soul of the city. As a young man, he's a man about town.
He's very fashionable. Everybody wants to be with him.
He's a good-time boy.
But beneath Lorenzo's charismatic exterior
lay a serious desire to explore the new and the dangerous.
And there was no artist in Florence more radical than Botticelli.
Botticelli made his bread and butter, like many other artists,
working on religious projects.
But I think his heart was in any subject matter other than Jesus.
The sort of thing that would allow free rein for this new spirit
which Lorenzo de' Medici certainly encouraged in Florence as a whole.
Under the protection of the Medici,
Botticelli created an entirely new kind of art.
He called his work La Primavera... 'The Spring'.
But it was neither portrait, icon nor holy celebration.
La Primavera was pure fantasy,
inspired by poetry and fuelled by a vivid imagination.
Lorenzo lets Botticelli off the leash.
He allows him to run wherever he wants around these classical, humanist...
and some might even say, and did say... pagan ideas.
They were very worried that Botticelli was, in a sense,
exceeding the boundaries of what Christian art should all be about.
Botticelli's painting showed Venus, ancient goddess of beauty,
celebrating the arrival of spring.
It was a subject guaranteed to please his patron.
Venus is the first creature of the pagan universe
and therefore is associated to prosperity, eternal youth, fertility.
And it suited perfectly the needs of the Medici at the time,
because it was the quintessential expression of this new golden age,
a sort of rebirth of grandiosity of Florence
under the auspices of the Medici.
But as Lorenzo's world began to flourish,
new threats to his future were emerging.
There is a very Mafia feel to what starts to happen around Lorenzo's time.
Florence has always been about large, powerful families
vying for control of territory.
And this is very much what happens between the Medici and the Pazzi.
The Pazzi were a rival banking family.
Like the Medici, they ran their local neighbourhood.
The Pazzi are the second-richest family in Florence.
But they also have the advantage over the Medici
of being an older, grander, more noble lineage.
They had LOTS of knights in their background
who went back to the 12th century.
And they go on being knights in the 15th century,
which the Medici never are.
From the moment that Lorenzo takes power,
he sees to it that they are kept out of leading office in Florence.
Marginalised by Lorenzo's command over the city,
the Pazzi decided to take matters into their own hands.
They settled on a simple plan...
the total elimination of the Medici rivals.
Especially Lorenzo and his younger brother.
The Pazzi had powerful allies.
The leaders of the Catholic Church were heavily in debt to the Medici bank.
It was in the interests of the Church to collude with the Pazzi.
But any operation against Lorenzo and his brother had to be carefully planned.
The conspirators knew that they must kill both,
because if they killed the elder brother only,
then there was Giuliano, who was very good-looking,
who was certainly intelligent, who was popular,
around whom the Medicean families would have rallied.
So the two had to be eliminated. This was extremely important.
As rumours of the conspiracy spread, a new plot was hatched.
It could not have been more sacrilegious.
Sunday, April the 26th, 1478.
Easter Day.
The Medici, and all of Florence,
gathered to celebrate the holiest day of the year.
In the course of mass, the signal is given.
Both men were in the cathedral at the same time
so that seemed to be the moment to do it.
Giuliano de' Medici was stabbed 19 times.
He died instantly.
But Lorenzo was unaccounted for.
He's wounded
and he shows himself to the crowd.
It's a way of saying "We're still here, we're still alive".
And as soon as that happens, then the Medici are still in business.
This is where the fact that the Medici had been able to create
a web of supporters...
this is when this revealed itself being a very smart choice.
The plotters realise that the game is up.
The supporters of the Medici were in such rage over what had happened
that they were simply ready to kill at will.
Violence swept through Florence
as supporters of the Medici exacted revenge.
Giuliano's murder sent shock waves through Tuscany
and shook Lorenzo to his core.
Medici power now hung by a thread.
Before long, Lorenzo heard that the Pope himself
had ordered troops to wipe out the Medici once and for all.
Lorenzo had to act.
He decided to travel alone to negotiate with his enemies in the south.
He would gamble with his life for the sake of his city.
"Perhaps God wills that this war,
"which began with the blood of my brother and myself,
"should be ended by my means".
The people of Florence feared for Lorenzo's survival.
Even Lorenzo was worried, as his own servant observed.
"He seemed to be two men, not one.
"During the day, he appeared perfectly easy,
"restful, cheerful and confident.
"But at night, he grieved bitterly about his own ill fortune
"and that of Florence".
Lorenzo travelled for nearly a month,
sailing 300 miles down the Italian coast.
His ship docked at Naples just before Christmas, 1479.
Lorenzo arrives in Naples
with money, with gifts for all the courtiers,
with his charm.
And a deal, a peace, is cut between the two sides
and, although the Pope is very unhappy about this...
very unhappy... he's kind of brought into it kicking and screaming.
The enemy troops were called off.
With personal charm, political skill and hard cash,
Lorenzo de' Medici had saved Florence from destruction.
Lorenzo was hailed by his grateful city.
Il Magnifico... 'The Magnificent'.
But Lorenzo's experiences had changed him.
With new resolve, Lorenzo worked to protect the future of the Medici dynasty.
He adopted the illegitimate son of his murdered brother.
The Medici needed all the heirs they could get.
And he took over the city government,
declaring that all legislation required his approval.
With Florence now under his personal control,
Lorenzo would use his power and wealth to magnificent effect.
The term 'magnificentia'
is a very powerful, affective term of the time,
because someone is "magnificent"
if he is able to spend his money virtuously.
And patronage is the best way to do it.
Lorenzo's word alone could make or break an artistic career.
He often commissioned work from one of the busiest studios in Florence,
owned by the wealthy craftsman Verrocchio.
Verrocchio left most of the everyday jobs to a group of apprentices.
One of them was producing the early indications of extraordinary work
unlike anything Lorenzo had ever seen before.
Here was an artist who would take the world apart
in order to see how it worked.
He would soar above the others.
His name was Leonardo da Vinci.
Even at this formative stage,
Leonardo's talent was impossible to ignore.
Il Battesimo di Gesù, 'The Baptism of Christ',
was the work of several artists.
But Leonardo painted HIS angel in vibrant oils,
a radical and untried technique.
His work so impressed Verrocchio
that the old man was said to have given up painting for good.
Leonardo was determined to reflect the detail of the natural world.
"Nature is the source of all true knowledge.
"She has her own logic, her own laws.
"She has no effect without cause,
"nor invention without necessity".
But in the battle for Medici patronage,
Leonardo's rival was raising the stakes.
Inspired by the classical sculpture in Lorenzo's private collection,
Botticelli took his unique style to new extremes.
The Birth ofVenus was unlike any other painting of its time.
A private commission for the Medici family,
it was a daring celebration of human desire.
The works that Botticelli is best known for
are these pagan mythologies,
bringing back to life goddesses like Venus
who are being celebrated as, frankly, the goddess of Eros
and fertility and reproduction.
And there's no apology in Botticelli's pictures
for the glorification of the physical world
and the physical passions.
But the freedom that Lorenzo brought to Florence
was about to come under threat.
One man believed Lorenzo was leading the city
on a decadent path to destruction.
A Dominican monk by the name of Savonarola.
Savonarola had a kind of one-note personality.
The only thing you ever hear about him is moralising fanaticism.
He was opposed to almost any kind of visual art that wasn't religious.
If it had nudes in it, it was lascivious and likely to lead to sin.
He took a dim view ofjust about everything that happened
that wasn't entirely dedicated to a very traditional notion of religion.
He wrote furious diatribes to his father.
"I cannot endure the evildoing
"of the heedless people of Italy.
"I must fight with all my strength
"to stop the devil from jumping onto my shoulders".
Savonarola's disgust became an obsession.
The liberties of Lorenzo's Renaissance city
offended Savonarola to his core.
Sickened by what he saw around him,
he turned his zealous hate towards Lorenzo
as the focus of all that was sinful.
On July the 29th, 1487,
tragedy struck the Medici family.
Lorenzo's wife, Clarice, died suddenly from tuberculosis.
She was only 34.
Lorenzo lamented the loss of those closest to him.
"The limit is passed.
"I can find no comfort or rest for my deep sorrow.
"I pray the Lord God to give me peace
"and trust that in His goodness, He will spare me any more trials".
Lorenzo found solace, as always, in art.
In 1488, he established the first art school in history,
providing classical sculptures for study from his own precious collection.
Here, he spotted a precocious young talent
who was working with marble for the first time.
One of this young artist's early projects
was to copy the head of a faun, an ancient satyr-like figure.
Lorenzo came to look at it and said "Oh, that's very good, but... "
kind of in a joking way, he said "But, you know...
"fauns are supposed to be old men
"and you've let this fellow have all of his teeth.
"Very few old people have all of their teeth".
This young man was mortified that he'd been criticised
and he immediately knocked out one of the teeth with a chisel
and had Lorenzo come back and look at it again.
Michelangelo Buonarroti was only 13.
Lorenzo is a connoisseur. He really knows what he's looking for.
He's got a very good eye, and he sees it immediately in Michelangelo.
Lorenzo takes him right under his wing.
I think he knows that this guy's fragile.
He's a troubled young man, and he has to really cajole him.
Lorenzo decided to bring Michelangelo into his family.
The young artist was given his own rooms at the Medici palace
to grow up alongside Lorenzo's seven children.
What I think is interesting is the close relationship that grew up
between Lorenzo and Michelangelo.
They seemed to see each other almost every day.
And particularly interesting
is how invested Michelangelo became in Lorenzo's approval.
What Lorenzo does with Michelangelo is something new.
It's a very intimate relationship between patron and artist.
Lorenzo would invite Michelangelo to his dinner table.
Michelangelo would sit there with people like Botticelli, with Ficino,
and he would listen to the sort of things they were talking about,
about humanist theories, about classical antiquity.
And he absorbed all that and you can see it coming out in the sculptures
and in the drawings and in the paintings of that period of Michelangelo's life.
As the young Michelangelo learned his craft,
his talent was pulled in two different directions.
He applied himself to traditional religious subjects with great devotion.
But he was increasingly drawn to the raw drama
of the classical legends he heard at home.
"My tutor read me the myth of the battle of the centaurs,
"the wild forces of life locked in heroic combat.
"My mind was a battlefield,
"my love of pagan beauty, the male nude, at war with my religious faith".
Michelangelo sensed that the influence of Lorenzo de' Medici
was leading him in a dangerous direction.
And he was not alone.
Savonarola had found an audience for his beliefs.
"Go and tell Lorenzo to repent his sins,
"for God will punish him and his family".
He believed that he could foresee the future.
And what he foresaw was that the decadence of Lorenzo's reign
was leading to the downfall of Florence.
Creativity is at its peak
with people like Botticelli, Michelangelo, even Leonardo.
But politically and financially, things are literally at breaking point.
Florence was split down the middle
between the people who wanted
a kind of elegant, intellectual, secular lifestyle
and the people who felt that Savonarola was making a good point,
that the society had gone off the track in this new direction.
Under Lorenzo,
Florence had reached new heights of culture and sophistication.
But swept up in the excitement,
Lorenzo had loosened his grip on the family business.
"We have spent an incredible sum of money
"on public works, charity and tax.
"But, as everybody knows, I have suffered great losses
"in several of my investments".
Across Europe, branches of the Medici bank were forced to close.
Lorenzo had lost a fortune
and now the family's network was falling apart.
They stopped coming through for the friends.
Their whole power depended upon being godfathers,
upon maintaining this circle of loyal followers
to whom they had obligations
and who could reasonably expect their obligations to be fulfilled.
There were more people asking for favours than favours to be distributed.
And inevitably, some people went away empty-handed and unsatisfied.
Lorenzo's friends could see
that Savonarola's predictions were beginning to come true.
In 1492, Lorenzo fell seriously ill.
His physician prescribed an extravagant concoction
of pulverised pearls and precious stones.
But medicine could not ease Lorenzo's fears for the future of the dynasty.
Lorenzo put his faith in a new power base for his heirs.
He turned to the Church.
At just 16, Giovanni de' Medici was already a cardinal.
The position had cost Lorenzo a fortune he could barely afford.
"Be grateful to God.
"You should be the link to bind this city closer to the Church,
"and our family with the city.
"There will be many who will try to corrupt you".
Lorenzo knew he was dying
and now he needed something money couldn't buy.
All ofyour writing about youth,
all ofyour books in your library
and all ofyour authors writing about classical philosophy
are not functional to the very ultimate thing that you need,
which is the redemption from all of the sins you have committed.
Fearing eternal damnation,
Lorenzo called Savonarola to his deathbed, seeking absolution.
But Savonarola's judgment was harsh.
He damned Lorenzo.
And what if God really disapproved of his life's work?
Atthe age of 43, Lorenzo died,
fearing hell to his last breath.
With Lorenzo gone, Savonarola seized his chance.
"Behold! The sword has descended.
"The scourge has fallen.
"The prophecies are being fulfilled.
"Repent, O Florence, while there still is time".
Even Botticelli was swept along.
Shaken by the changing world around him,
he embraced Christianity with a new-found fervour.
Botticelli did a number ofpaintings
on rather apocalyptic religious themes
that were suggested by the sermons of Savonarola.
So, clearly, he was listening.
Under Savonarola's fundamentalist regime,
prostitutes were beaten
and homosexuals burned.
Any display of make-up and jewellery was forbidden.
And Savonarola's commands were enforced by gangs of militant youths.
Savonarola wanted to create the kingdom of God on earth
by any means necessary.
Savonarola organised an enormous public burning.
Onto the flames went books and figurines,
wigs, cosmetics and jewels...
all the accessories of Lorenzo's vibrant Renaissance.
Now, even Botticelli, for fear of damnation,
joined the frenzy of destruction.
He hurled his own paintings into the flames.
The inferno would become known as 'the bonfire of the vanities'.
Florence was in search of salvation
and had become a vision of hell.
Was the Renaissance itself going up in smoke?