Paul Strathern: The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance

Reviewed by JOHN GARDNER

One of the pleasures of history is its ability to correct our tendency to regard present-day political phenomena as uniquely modern. This study of the rise and fall of the Medici family over some 300 years provides just such a lesson.

The critics of globalisation condemn it as a product of heartless late-20th century capitalism. But some 700 years ago the banking houses of Florence had branches throughout Europe, from Cyprus to London and links through the Venetian trade with the Orient, the global reach of the time.

With money, then as now, came political influence and an ability, almost amounting to an obligation, to sponsor art and grandiose building works to improve the corporate image. Here the brand tracked from its small beginnings to full glory and its decline into farce is that of the Medici.

Over generations the money from commercial activities generated immense political power. Medici money provided military muscle in the interminable dynastic struggles of Italy and beyond.

Astute marriages and family connections produced two popes and a queen who married one king of France and gave birth to three more.

The dynasty produced some extraordinary figures. The astute founder Giovanni di Bicci made his money from adopting the sound banking principles developed by others and applying them with caution but efficiency. His descendants included the intellectual Cosimo and the aptly named Lorenzo the Magnificent.

But it was not an unbroken chronicle of success, as Piero the Unfortunate demonstrated. As the generations went on the story becomes one that underlines a couple of other principles of history.

Breeding in the upper classes is less a recipe for improving the species than a guarantee of degeneracy. And the dictum is played out that in a family business the first generation creates, the second becomes wealthy, and the third loses everything - although it took the later Medicis a little longer.

Cosimo III reigned for more than 50 years, religiously obsessed and gluttonous and austere by turn, presiding over a decline that saw the population of Florence shrink by 50 per cent as it sank into ruin.

But the length of the Medici rule placed them at the heart of the Renaissance and the family was intimately involved with some of the greatest artists of their time, or indeed, any time. Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Cellini, Botticelli and many others all make significant appearances in the family chronicles.

It was also a period in which a hard new light was turned on political science by Machiavelli, a light so strong his name is still current in the English language.

Unfortunately Strathern's excursions into the background fail to make the most of his opportunities and frequently read like a pedestrian school text.

He fails in the admittedly difficult task of making the military swings and roundabouts interesting and some of the editing is slipshod. Giulio de Medici is described as saturnine and dark three times in a couple of pages.

For those unfamiliar with Medici history, it provides a useful introduction, but my "new readers start here" recommendation is Christopher Hibbert's The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, to which Strathern pays a graceful tribute.

* Published by Random House: $64.95