COSIMO I

FIRST GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY. -(1519-1574.)

Cosimo was only seven years old at his father's death, and his youth was a very troubled one. Pope Clement VIL, a Medici of the elder branch, looked upon him with suspicion as a competitor for the throne likely to press forward his claims to the detriment of the natural sons of the branch protected by the pontifical court. But his mother, Maria di Jacopo Salviati a woman as full of prudence as she was of energy watched over him with jealous care, sending him first to Venice with his tutor, and concealing him at her villa of Cafaggiolo or Trebbio, whence she brought him back to Tuscany. Now and again she would spend several months with him in some secluded part of Italy, in the hope that the fact of his existence would be forgotten. Young Cosimo in time became as intelligent as his mother, and when Duke Alexander was selected by the Balia to assume the reins of government, he unhesitatingly did him fealty, and took the position of an ordinary subject.

On the 6th of January, 1536, the Duke was murdered by Lorenzino, who, according to the treaty made by the Balia with the Pope and the Emperor, should have succeeded him, as being his nearest relative ; but the magisterial council declared him to be unfit, and elected Cosimo in his stead.

From the very first the position of Cosimo was a most difficult one. Threatened by Bologna on the one side, and Rome on the other ; with the exiles (backed even, secretly, by Pope Paul himself) plotting from without, and a large portion of the citizens dis-affected the outlook in the be inning of the year 1537 was a gloomy one. Hostile factions were as implacable as ever, and the Strozzi were recruiting soldiers and hoping to profit by the disturbances which they were fomenting. Cosimo, however, kept a cool head, and learning in July that the exiles had entered Tuscany at the head of an armed force, he sent Vitelli to meet them. In the battle that ensued Cosimo gained a complete triumph, the enemy was routed, and Vitelli returned to Florence with his victorious troops and a number of illustrious captives. Many of the latter were executed, and Filippo Strozzi having died in prison, either by his own hand or Cosimo's orders, the Duke remained in undisputed power.

Cosimo was not merely Duke of Florence, for he had subjugated the whole of Tuscany ; and in order to consolidate his power and secure it from future attacks, he fortified nearly all the towns and strengthened the existing strongholds. The fortresses of San Martino at Mugello and of Terra del Sole date from his time. He gave many proofs of his courage and ability, and having captured Siena on St. Stephen's (the pope and martyr) day, he instituted an order of chivalry, and while conciliating the Court of Rome by his determined destruction of the Turkish vessels which infested the coast, he gained the favor of the nobles by conferring upon them this illustrious order.

His position thus consolidated, Cosimo I. was at leisure to foster the civilization of his subjects and the development of the arts, which flourished best in time of peace. He was very fond of literature, and studied almost daily the works of Tacitus, two of his first enterprises being the restoration of the Universities of Pisa and Siena. He established and endowed the Academy of Florence, and that of La Crusca which was already in existence he enlarged and enriched. It was during his reign that the art of printing was brought into general use at Florence, and he had in his own palace a printing press, from which were turned out nearly all the works of Torrentino, so celebrated in the history of Florentine typography. He was something of a chemist, too, and is believed to have been among the seekers for the philosopher's stone, but be made several practical discoveries in his laboratory, including certain secrets for cutting precious stones and for dissolving metals by the use of oxides and herbs. In this he was only following the example of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who has been erroneously described as the restorer of the glyptic art in Italy. The Jubinal collection in Paris contains a very beautiful box of tools with the Medici arms, made beyond question in the first half of the sixteenth century, which was evidently used by Cosimo in his various experiments. It appears that he was very fond of experimenting on porphyry so as to make it soft enough for the chisels, and that for this purpose he steeped his tools in the juice of certain herbs. He confided his secret to Francesco Ferucci, alias Cecco del Tadda, who carved the porphyry statue of Justice which crowns the column on the Piazza dells Santa Trinita. Cosimo was an unfailing patron of the artists who devoted their attention to the sculpture of marbles of different colors, in which the contrast of color brought the work into special relief. Francesco Ferucci carved for him four medallion figures, which are still to be seen in the Uffizi Gallery, and Benvenuto Cellini, who did a great deal of work for him, used porphyry for thehandsome bust after the antique in which the features of the Grand Duke are preserved to us. This wasnot, unfortunately, the greatest epoch in Florentine history. Art was already beginning to decay, andbeginning the exception of Giovanni da Bologna and Cellini, it had no better representatives than Baccio Bandinelli, Tribolo, Ammanati, and Vincenzio Danti. Donatello, Benedetto da Maiano, Desiderio, and Mino had been dead for more than a century, and Vasari was the most prominent cf the architects, but the epoch was none the less a remarkable one, being, so to speak, the last flicker of the flame which had cast so vivid a light over the whole of Italy.

It was Cosimo I., or rather his wife, who purchased from the Pitti family the celebrated palace, now the property of the Crown, in which has been formed the world-renowned gallery of pictures.

In order to connect the palace with the Uffizi Gallery, which he had just had built by Vasari for the tribunals and civil courts, Cosimo asked the author of the " Vite " to erect a corridor, carried over the arcades of the Ponte Vecchio. He also connected the Uffizi Gallery with the old palace in which he resided, and it was at his request that Ammanati erected the singular fountain at the corner of the ducal palace, for which Benvenuto Cellini made a tender. Ammanati was a really great artist, as will be seen when we come to treat of Florentine sculpture, and it was he who built the Ponte alla Trinita, which has such a fine span over the Arno.

Cosimo, sustaining the traditions of his family, went far towards making a new city of Florence. Buontalenti, Giovanni da Bologna, Montorsoli, Religiose Serrita, Vincenzio Danti, Tribolo, Jacopo da Pontormo, Angiolo Bronzino, Zucchero, and Giovanni Strado were in his employ, and decorated the palaces and monuments which he built. To him Florence owes the Boboli Gardens, and many of her piazzas, bridges, fountains, and statues, and his name is engraved on many a commemorative stone in the principal streets.

Science and literature were still held in honor, and although the greatest Italian names had disappeared, the memory of them still remained. Cosimo completed the Libreria Laurentiana, commenced by Michael Angelo in the cloisters of San Lorenzo at the request of Pope Clement VIT., but never completed. He turned his attention also to agriculture, and endeavored to reclaim the tracts of waste and barren land around Pisa. He was a patron of botany, and appointed to the professorship of Pisa one Luke Ghini, whom he instructed to form a botanical garden at Boboli. Then, again, in order to facilitate legal proceedings, which were unduly lengthened by the absence of any careful record of previous cases, he instituted the Archivio Generale," in which deeds, classified by the names of the families to whom they belonged, and of their notaries, were deposited, so as to prevent any disputes as to the rights of succession.

Cosimo was very partial to pomp of every kind, including jousts and tilting matches, and after the capture of Siena the first thing he did was to form a mounted troop of a hundred nobles, selected from among the most proficient in riding, fencing, dancing, and tilting. He did the same at Florence, and his reign witnessed a revival of the splendid Triumphs organized by Lorenzo the Magnificent. There was not, perhaps, so much delicacy of outline and conception, but these Triumphs, representations of which are preserved to us in prints and engravings which would form a library of themselves, were conducted upon an even more lavish scale. Moreover, as to all these qualities he added that of a legislator, it is not too much to say that Florence and Tuscany, if they surrendered their liberties, secured through the strength and authority of Cosimo a peaceful and assured protectorate. He acted with the full consciousness of his power, building churches, combating the heresy which was then beginning to spread in Germany, joining forces with Rome against the, Turk, and receiving from Pope Pius V. the title of Grand Duke, with the purple and the diadem. Charles V. sent him the Golden Fleece, but history says that the honor was bestowed more upon the wealthy Medici who had lent him money than upon the sovereign ruler of Florence. Cosimo was a politician and legislator of no little talent, but it is well known now that most historians have kept back the truth as to the depravity of his private life. History has recorded his public acts, and by glossing over his crimes and vices has made him famous, but it is only too true that in a fit of passion he slew his two sons, Don Garcia and Cardinal Giovanni. Their mother, the Duchess Eleanora, was so horror-stricken that she died, and it was given out at Florence that the putrid fever, then prevalent at Pisa, had carried off all three of them. It is supposed, too, that Cosimo I. is responsible for the murder of Sforza Almini, a gentleman of Venice, who had spoken of him as the author of these crimes.

The first wife of the first Grand Duke was Eleanora of Toledo, the daughter of Don Pedro of Toledo, Viceroy of Naples, by whom he had seven sons and three daughters. After he had been the indirect cause of their mother's death, he married Cammilla Martelli, the daughter of an illustrious Florentine house, whom he had seduced, and by whom he had had an illegitimate daughter, Virginia, afterwards the wife of Don Caesar of Este. It was at the injunction of Pius V., who had received from Cosimo a confession of all these crimes, that he contracted this second marriage; but his wife, though she appeared at Court, never took the title of Grand Duchess. Cosimo died on the 21st of April, 1574, of malignant fever at his country house, Costello, and besides his bust by Cellini, we have an equestrian statue of him by Giovanni da Bologna, erected twenty years after his death, on the Grand Ducal Square. The pedestal is adorned with several bas-reliefs representing episodes in his history. There are also many portraits of him, mostly by Bronzino, among them a panel picture in the gallery of Princess Matilda Bonafaste, in which he is surrounded by his sons.