The Medici Women

Gender and Power in Renaissance Florence

Natalie R. Tomas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351885829
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas examines critically the changing contribution of the women in the Medici family to the eventual success of the Medici regime and their exercise of power within it; and contributes to our historical understanding of how women were able to wield power in late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe. Tomas takes a feminist approach that examines the experience of the Medici women within a critical framework of gender analysis, rather than biography. Using the relationship between gender and power as a vantage point, she analyzes the Medici women's uses of power and influence over time. She also analyzes the varied contemporary reactions to and representation of that power, and the manner in which the women's actions in the political sphere changed over the course of the century between republican and ducal rule (1434-1537). The narrative focuses especially on how women were able to exercise power, the constraints placed upon them, and how their gender intersected with the exercise of power and influence. Keeping the historiography to a minimum and explaining all unfamiliar Italian terms, Tomas makes her narrative clear and accessible to non-specialists; thus The Medici Women appeals to scholars of women's studies across disciplines and geographical boundaries.

Chapter One
The Locus of Power

Humanist treatises about wives and their domestic and familial responsibilities were sometimes associated with the women who married into the Medici family. The Venetian humanist Francesco Barbaro wrote De Re Uxoria (On Wifely Duties) in the Winter of 1415/16 to celebrate the occasion of the marriage of his friend, and Cosimo de' Medici's brother Lorenzo di Giovanni de' Medici, to Ginevra Cavalcanti.¹ Barbaro — who was concerned to ensure that a man should choose a spouse with noble breeding and virtue, who was obedient to her husband, modest, an appropriate educator of her children and a good household manager² — praised Lorenzo for choosing Ginevra as his wife. She was 'a young virtuous, beautiful, honourable woman with a noble lineage and very great wealth [...whose] fidelity, continence, intelligence, modesty and prudence...' were universally admired.³ The death of Piccarda Bueri, wife of Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici and mother of Cosimo de' Medici, in 1433, and that of Bice de' Medici, mother of Nicola di Vieri de' Medici, in early 1434, resulted in the writing of consolatory letters to their surviving sons by two of Florence's celebrated civic humanists: Carlo Marsuppini and Leonardo Bruni respectively.⁴ Marsuppini spoke of Piccarda's beauty, skill in domestic management, her devotion to her spouse as well as to her children and their families, and emphasised her serene and tranquil nature;⁵ comparing her activities, in true classical style, to those of her son Cosimo de' Medici.⁶ In his eulogy, Bruni began by describing Bice de' Medici as possessing all the attributes of '[an]...excellent woman and best of mothers...'. He later continued: 'The excellences of a woman's life are reckoned to be (unless I am mistaken), good family, a good appearance, modesty, fertility, children, riches and above all virtue and a good name'. But Bice was even more worthy of praise because of her exceptional character and abilities for a woman.

Yet the gifts most visible in this woman were the gifts of her mind: her marvelous uprightness, her signal humanity, her nobility, her outstanding liberality, and most of all a lofty spirit attuned to the seemly and the good.... The greatness of her prudence can be estimated from the way she governed a very large household, a large crowd of clients and a vast and diversified business enterprise for more than thirty years after the death of her husband.⁷

These women were being cast as role models for future generations of brides who entered the Medici House.

They certainly seemed to embody the qualities generally expected of upper-class Florentine wives namely: lineage and nobility of blood; fertility; wealth; (that is, a large dowry); youth; a pleasing physical appearance; modesty; high moral virtue; an honourable and virtuous reputation; obedience to their husbands; devotion to their children and good skills in domestic management.⁸ Some of the qualities, abilities and skills attributed to this early generation of Medici women by Barbaro and Bruni, however, were more usually attributed to men, namely: prudence; liberality; intelligence; constancy and moral uprightness, or viewed as men's specific area of responsibility, skill and authority: that is, business acumen and the ability to meet the needs and competing demands of a large group of clients.⁹ In light of the fact that civic humanists were experts in the art of using hyperbolic rhetoric and their works were designed to flatter and appeal to influential patrons and friends who could further their careers, excessive lauding of the recently departed to the letter's recipient was to be expected.¹⁰ But even so, this was high praise indeed for Ginevra and for Bice who had effectively been gendered male in order to explain their exceptional abilities as women.¹¹

Such role models suggest that the Medici women, either as wives or widows, sometimes had an opportunity to negotiate significant space for themselves beyond the traditional expectations of upper class women. Their locus of responsibility, influence and power was supposedly the household and familial realm. However it was not as restrictive as might be thought. The boundaries between the public and domestic spheres in traditional pre-industrial societies, such as Renaissance Florence, were fluid and women were able to use their authority in the domestic sphere to gain much influence and sometimes power beyond it.¹² This stretching of their allowable bounds of activity could occur as long as they placed the interests of their marital family and its patrilineage above any interests of their own. Moreover, widows could take on additional responsibilities traditionally seen as men's business if thev did so to support the interests of their late husband's family.

The extent of the women of the Medici family's participation in the political arena reflected the changing character of the regime at the time. As time wore on, and Piero's and Lorenzo de' Medici's influence and power within the Florentine government increased (despite some setbacks), both Lucrezia Tornabuoni and Clarice Orsini, as their respective spouses, were able to extend the boundaries of their permissible sphere of action. The de facto rule of Cosimo, Piero and Lorenzo de' Medici ensured that their wives and widows had an opportunity to extend their horizons and exert influence, and sometimes even power, beyond the conventional sphere of patrician women in fifteenth-century Florence.

The dividing line between the political and domestic sphere for the Medici women became more permeable from the later years of Cosimo's de facto rule onwards as the focus of political power and influence shifted more towards the Medici Palace away from the political heart of Florentine republicanism and the supposedly male-only space that was the government palace (the Palazzo della Signoria).¹³This trend towards a more seigneurial, princely form of government was not however fully completed until Florence ceased officially to be a republic in 1532, after which time the well being of the regime was identified with the actual person of the Medici ruler and the seat of government was based at his court.¹⁴ The Medici women certainly worked within traditional boundaries and were neither autonomous nor, during our period, able to exercise the power attributed to some women in Italian courts. Nevertheless, the Medici women's actions and activities from the beginning of the family's de facto rule in 1434 until the Medici's expulsion in 1494, point to the very beginnings of this process. By the mid-1480s when Lorenzo began the task of arranging the marriages of his own children, the Medici were clearly more powerful than they had been at any point since Cosimo's assumption of de facto power. Lorenzo's choices at this time reveal his longer-term political ambition for himself and his family to exercise political power on the broader Italian stage. The choice of spouses for their children helps to illustrate how the Medici were able to become such a powerful force in Florence and beyond as they strove to acquire nobility, wealth, prestige, relatives, friends and powerful political and military allies in Florence and elsewhere in Italy.

Marriage Alliances

Barbaro's reference to the nobility of Ginevra Cavalcanti's lineage, her youth and large dowry, reflect what many Florentines thought were among the chief qualities one should look for in a bride.¹⁵Despite the fact that their position in a patrilineal family structure was ambiguous, through marriage women provided a crucial link between families.¹⁶Indeed a marriage was viewed as an alliance between two families (a parentado) rather than the choice of two individuals. These marriage alliances could be used to strengthen existing ties between two families, to reward friends and allies for their support or to forge new ones. Marco Parenti congratulated his brother in law Filippo di Matteo Strozzi in April 1469 on the birth of his daughter, reminding him that since he already had a son he should not be disappointed that this one was a girl because 'you will begin to draw advantage sooner than with a boy, that is you will make a fine marriage alliance [sooner] than if it were a boy...'.¹⁷Sons may have ensured the continuity of the patrilineage but men often delayed marriage until at least 30 or more, so it was their daughters, usually marrying in their mid to late teens, from whom their families drew earliest advantage because they strengthened cognatic ties.¹⁸

The Medici followed this general pattern. Cosimo's mother Piccarda Bueri, who was from a noble lineage, married Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici at about the age of 18 in 1386, bringing with her a very substantial dowry for its day of 1500 florins.¹⁹The Medici, who were prominent wealthy bankers and money lenders, drew even greater long-term advantage from Cosimo's marriage to Contessina Bardi which took place in about 1415.²⁰The marriage alliances between the brothers, Cosimo and Lorenzo di Giovanni de' Medici and the Bardi and Cavalcanti families respectively, gave the Medici access to much additional wealth and the prestige of noble blood. The very nobility of these lineages was, possibly, an early indicator of the Medici family's long-term ambition to connect themselves eventually through marriage with an older, non-Florentine, aristocracy.

Indeed, the Bardi were a noble, feudal (magnate) family barred from political office.²¹ Contessina was the daughter of Alessandro di Sozzo Bardi, count of Vernio. Her mother, Cammilla, was the daughter of Raniero di Guido Pannochieschi, count of Elci.²²The Bardi had links with several noble families in Tuscany, and the Medici later relied upon their Bardi relatives for military support.²³As magnates, they lacked political power but were extremely wealthy, acting as key business associates and financial partners in the Medici bank prior to 1434.²⁴The Medici derived additional benefit from the alliance during the years immediately prior to Cosimo's accession to power in 1434, when Contessina's paternal line of the Bardi di Vernio was one of only two of the many lines of the huge Bardi family to support Cosimo in his battle for power with the rival Albizzi faction. The other Bardi were key members of the Medici opposition.²⁵The loyalty of particular Bardi to the Medici was rewarded in 1434, when Cosimo restored the political rights of the Bardi along with twenty other magnate families, except for those members who were particularly pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Abbreviations
• Notes on the Text
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 The Locus of Power
• 2 The Exercise of Power
• 3 Medici Matronage
• 4 In Exile
• 5 At the Papal Court
• 6 The 'Problem' of a Female Ruler
• Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index