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Glory and Infamy: Making the Memory of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici in Renaissance Florence by Tracy E. Robey A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2012 i © 2012 TRACY E. ROBEY All Rights Reserved ii Abstract Glory and Infamy: Making the Memory of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici in Renaissance Florence by Tracy E. Robey Advisor: Margaret L. King Duke Alessandro de’ Medici (1512-1537, r. 1531-1537) was the victim of a previously unknown and far-reaching conspiracy to condemn him in posthumous histories and erase him from the archives of Florence. This cultural manipulation cast Duke Alessandro for the past 500 years as a tyrant, murderer, and rapist of nuns. The case study of how later dukes, historians, and archivists defamed Alessandro de’ Medici illustrates the ways people made and destroyed memory in sixteenth-century Florence. The first chapter outlines the negative statements made about Duke Alessandro in the major histories that discuss his reign. The second chapter explores the political affiliations of the contemporary authors who wrote the histories used in the first chapter. I show that the historians’ opposition to Alessandro’s rule during his lifetime influenced what they eventually wrote about the Duke in their histories—a fact overlooked by scholars, who tend to almost wholly rely on the histories. The third chapter outlines the neglected concept and practice of damnatio memoriae, or condemnation of memory, in the Renaissance. Using poems, paintings, and rumors, I demonstrate how unknown Florentines secretly marginalized the memory of Duke Alessandro using objects intended to commemorate him. The fourth chapter explores how Alessandro’s successor, Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519-1574, r. 1537-1574), feuded with Alessandro during his life, and constructed the Florentine archives in such a way that Alessandro’s reign is excluded from both the Medici family archives and Medici ducal iv archives. No corpus of archival documents exists that could correct the slander spread by the official historians. Anonymous citizens, politically-active historians, and later Medici Grand Dukes effectively obliterated all good memory of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici within 100 years of his assassination. v Preface Figure 0.1: Maria Salviati de’ Medici with Giulia d’Alessandro de’ Medici, now uncovered. Jacopo Pontormo. The Walters Art Museum. Baltimore, MD. In 2003, I read about a little girl once painted out of a sixteenth-century portrait (Fig. 0.1).1 The child was Giulia de’ Medici (ca. 1535-1588), daughter of Alessandro de’ Medici, the first Duke of Florence. In the original painting by Pontormo, Giulia was depicted with Maria Salviati de’ Medici, her caretaker following Alessandro’s assassination in 1537. Sometime in the second half of the sixteenth century or early seventeenth century, her image was covered by black paint, only to be revealed by x-ray analysis about one hundred years ago. I could not—and still cannot—articulate in scholarly terms what bothered me about 1 Darryl Fears, “An Overlooked Color in a Medici Portrait: Girl's History Raises Questions about Art Studies,” Washington Post, Sunday, November 25, 2001, D10. vi Giulia’s concealment behind a layer of black paint. Yet I needed to understand the process and motivation for painting people like Giulia out of portraits. In order to study this, I found a significant target for memory erasure and manipulation: Duke Alessandro himself. vii Acknowledgements I thank the members of my dissertation committee—Clare Carroll, Helena Rosenblatt, David G. Troyansky, and Sarah Covington—for their incredibly kind and constructive comments on improving the manuscript. In particular, I thank my advisor, Margaret L. King, for not only supervising every bit of the dissertation, but for supporting me and my work over the past seven years. I would have never reached this point without Professor King’s ability to notice even mis- angled accents, incredibly fast e-mail responses, and superhuman patience. For financial support I thank the Graduate Center for the Chancellors Fellowship and Writing Fellowship I received; the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program for funding my research in Italy; the Doctoral Student Research Grant Program for twice awarding me research grants; the History Program for arranging a number of fellowships; and the Office of the Vice President for Student Affairs. I thank my friends and colleagues at the Graduate Center and around the world for their encouragement, love, and humor. I thank Robin Roberts for solving the riddle that allowed all the ideas in this manuscript to flow forth. I thank my parents for rolling soccer balls to me for hours to practice my goalkeeping; playing puzzle games with me; not getting too mad when I tried to do things on my own and made messes; and insisting that I play well, or better, with others. Yes, you can call me Dr. School Mouse now. Finally, I thank Антона Мастерового and Isabella de’ Medici (cat edition): 사랑해! viii Glory and Infamy: Making the Memory of Duke Alessandro de’ Medici in Renaissance Florence Table of Contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1 CONTEXT AND LITERATURE ............................................................................................... 1 The Medici before Duke Alessandro ....................................................................................... 1 The Reign of Savonarola ......................................................................................................... 3 The Forgotten Years in Florence ............................................................................................. 4 The Republican Government in Florence before the Medici Principate ................................. 5 The Italian Wars, Young Alessandro, and the Siege of Florence ............................................ 7 The Installation, Rule, and Assassination of Duke Alessandro ............................................. 11 The Scholarship on Alessandro de’ Medici ........................................................................... 20 METHODOLOGY .................................................................................................................... 24 CHAPTER SUMMARIES ........................................................................................................ 25 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter One: The Illegitimate Tyrant ...................................................................................... 29 THE RENAISSANCE CONCEPT OF TYRANNY ................................................................. 30 DUKE ALESSANDRO’S ILLEGITIMATE POWER ............................................................. 37 DUKE ALESSANDRO’S ILLEGITIMATE BIRTH AND REPREHENSIBLE CONDUCT 51 Illegitimacy ............................................................................................................................ 52 The Status of Alessandro’s Mother ....................................................................................... 63 Race ....................................................................................................................................... 67 Matricide ................................................................................................................................ 72 Duke Alessandro’s Conflict with Cardinal Ippolito .............................................................. 74 Duke Alessandro’s Sexual Transgressions ............................................................................ 79 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................................... 86 Chapter Two: Benedetto Varchi and Jacopo Nardi ................................................................ 88 RENAISSANCE HISTORIOGRAPHY ................................................................................... 89 THE POLITICAL LIFE OF JACOPO NARDI ........................................................................ 93 NARDI’S LETTER TO VARCHI ............................................................................................ 98 BENEDETTO VARCHI, THE FUORUSCITI, AND DUKE COSIMO I DE’ MEDICI ...... 110 ix VARCHI’S SONNETS ABOUT LORENZINO AND ALESSANDRO ............................... 112 CONCLUSION ....................................................................................................................... 123 Chapter Three: The damnatio memoriae of Alessandro de’ Medici..................................... 124 THE THEORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF DAMNTIO MEMORIAE ................................. 126 DAMNATIO MEMORIAE IN RENAISSANCE NORTHERN ITALY ................................. 128 THE DAMNATIO MEMORIAE OF WALTER OF BRIENNE IV, THE DUKE OF ATHENS ................................................................................................................................................. 143 ALESSANDRO DE’ MEDICI’S OFFICIAL ERASURE OF THE FLORENTINE REPUBLIC ................................................................................................................................................. 146 THE DAMNATIO MEMORIAE OF DUKE ALESSANDRO DE’ MEDICI BY FLORENTINE CITIZENS ..............................................................................................................................
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