The Nasal Voice That Held Florence
Lorenzo de’ Medici’s voice was reportedly nasal — a crushed nose and weak sinuses saw to that. He was not a handsome man: dark, heavy-jawed, with a flat face. But contemporaries consistently described him as magnetic, and the magnetism came from his voice and intelligence in combination. When Lorenzo spoke, people listened. Not because of volume or resonance. Because of what the voice contained: poetry, philosophy, political calculation, and an understanding of art that attracted every genius in Europe to Florence.
His cadence was flowing and musical, shifting between philosophical discourse and practical political calculation with the ease of a man who considered them the same activity. He recited his own poetry in conversation. He interrupted intellectual discussions to handle banking crises. He returned to Neoplatonic philosophy before the ink was dry on the ledger.
Dante’s Tuscan, Elevated
Elite Florentine. The prestige dialect of 15th-century Italy — the Tuscan that Dante codified and Lorenzo elevated. His speech was the speech of the Medici court, where Botticelli painted, Ficino translated Plato, and Michelangelo learned his craft.
The Carnival Song and the Cathedral
“How beautiful is youth, that is always slipping away! Whoever wants to be happy, let him be so: about tomorrow there’s no knowing.” From his carnival song Canzona di Bacco. The nasal voice delivering a hedonist’s philosophy.
“The Pazzi thought to end the Medici in a cathedral — they succeeded only in making us saints.” After the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, when assassins murdered his brother Giuliano during Mass. Lorenzo survived with a sword wound. His response was to execute the conspirators and tighten his grip on Florence.
Il Magnifico at the End
It is 1490. Florence is the center of the world. Michelangelo, a fifteen-year-old prodigy, is living in the Medici Palace as Lorenzo’s protege. Botticelli paints for him. Ficino translates Plato in his villa at Careggi. Poliziano writes poetry at his table. Lorenzo presides over all of it with a nasal voice and an intelligence that draws geniuses the way gravity draws light. He survived assassination in a cathedral where his brother died beside him. He bankrupted the Medici bank through artistic patronage and political expenditure — and considered it a worthy investment. He kept a giraffe from the Sultan of Egypt in his garden. He is il Magnifico. And he’s dying. Gout and the family disease are eating him alive. He doesn’t know Savonarola will burn his works, or that his son will become Pope Leo X. He is 41 years old. Three years left. The city he built will outlast him by centuries.
Works Cited
- Hale, J.R. Florence and the Medici. Thames and Hudson, 1977.
- Parks, Tim. Medici Money. W.W. Norton, 2005.
- Martines, Lauro. April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici. Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Poliziano, Angelo. Contemporary accounts of Medici court life.