History of the Medici family

The Duchy of Florence became a Granduchy, by order of the Emperor, and Cosimo established his absolute despotic control over the entire region. He was anything but a democrat and showed this most clearly by transferring his court from the Medici palace on via Larga to the Palazzo Vecchio, which had been the centre of civic power since earliest mediaeval times. In 1539 he married Eleonora, the daughter of the viceroy of Naples, Don Pedro of Toledo, who bore him a large family.

Francesco I dei Medici

Francesco, the successor of Cosimo (who died in 1574 at the age of 54), was an introverted man, gloomy and much given to silence, definitely not as good as his father had been. What is more, he was distracted by very different interests, particularly scientific and alchemical studies. He was also distracted by an intense love-affair with a beautiful young Venetian lady, Bianca Cappello, whom he married after his official wife Joanna of Austria passed away.

Both Francesco and Bianca died in 1582, mysteriously one after the other in their Villa at Poggio a Caiano and since Francesco's only son, little Don Filippo, had died too, the only heir of the Medici family was Francesco's brother, Cardinal Ferdinando.

He had been destined to the cardinalship in the tradition of the great Italian families. The cardinal, who had taken neither his vows nor holy orders though he lived much of the time in Rome in his magnificent villa on the Pincio hill, abandoned his cardinal's hat and became the third grand duke of Tuscany. After his father Cosimo, who had created the Duchy of Tuscany as a political entity, Ferdinando was undoubtedly the best of the Medici princes. Intelligent, prudent and well-balanced, he had a strong sense of family dignity and was well versed in the art of good government.

His personal coat-of-arms, a swarm of bees around the queen bee without a sting and the two mottoes, Maiestate tantum and Pacis et finium tutela, signify his intolerance of all forms of violence (the only exception being his dislike of Bianca Cappello). With just the right measures of decorum, wisdom, and intelligence, Ferdinando returned the life of the grand duchy to a state of tranquility after the general shock of the scandal of Francesco's love for the beautiful Bianca.

Ferdinando dei Medici died suddenly on February 7, 1609, and his reign can be considered the high point of the age of the Grand Dukes. He ruled as a wise prince. His reign was peaceful and he showed concern both for the welfare of his people and for the reputation of the state. With the help of his wife, Christine of Lorraine, he developed the life of the court so that it stood as an example of morality, grace and good taste.

Cosimo II and Galileo Galilei

Ferdinando's successor was his son Cosimo II: the first act of the new Grand Duke, Cosimo II, was an error. He closed the Medici bank and would have nothing more to do with any kind of commercial activity, arguing that involvement in business was degrading for a prince, when in fact precisely this had been the principal source of the great family wealth. During the reigns of Cosimo I, Francesco, and Ferdinando, the bank had continued to flourish, providing an inexhaustible source of funds that had been available to emperors and monarchs. Now instead expenditures increased and income suddenly stopped.

There was also a conflict in the family between Cosimo's wife Maria Magdalena (Austrian) and his mother Christine (French), as they were each determined on a different political course: Christine would continue to feel the ties of her native France; Maria Magdalena, a Hapsburg, was completely taken up with the idea of a Spanish-Imperial alliance. The brief life of Cosimo II was not an easy one, with the continual discord between the two grand duchesses. Later on their conflict worsened when both became regents on behalf of the young Ferdinando.

Perhaps owing to his poor health and to the free hand allowed to his wife in politics, as a result of which Tuscany was submitted to Spanish domination, Cosimo II almost completely neglected the government of his state. He also shunned all forms of artistic patronage, contrary to the traditions of his family. His death was not mourned by the people of Florence, who had hardly known, let alone loved him. His sole merit (by no means a trifling one) was to have given shelter to Galileo Galilei, at a time when that eminent scientist was fleeing from persecution by the Inquisition in Padua. Cosimo gave Galileo a teaching position in the University of Florence and allowed him to continue his scientific research undaunted by persecution.

Ferdinando II and the Medicean Academy of Experimental Science

At the time of Cosimo's II death, his son Ferdinando was only eleven years old. His grandmother Christine and his mother Maria Magdalena took on the regency together, in accordance with the wishes Cosimo II expressed in his last will and testament.

The grand duchesses were full of good intentions, but of limited intelligence. In addition, they held radically opposed political views. Their main interest was to turn the court into an increasingly ostentatious and luxurious place, and to this end they plundered the Medici coffers, which Cosimo II had already depleted considerably and which were no longer replenished by income from the family bank. Both women were very devout, not to say bigoted, and set about increasing the number of religious institutions, monks, nuns and priests until a considerable proportion of the civilian population belonged to religious orders of one kind or another. Ferdinando was a mild man, oppressed by the conflicting influences of his grandmother and mother, which accentuated the weakness and indecisiveness in his character.

Only after the death of Christine of Lorraine, did the Grand Duchy of Ferdinando II see a last burst of activity, during which Ferdinando attempted to weaken the all-pervading power of the clergy and diminish the authority of the Inquisition. At the same time, following the family tradition, he encouraged the arts and sciences. However his policies as a ruler had been weak and uncertain, above all dominated by Spain and Austria and extremely oppressive for his subjects whatever their social standing. Unbelievably crushing levies were exacted on everything and everybody, and a tenth of all the revenue from this taxation went straight into the coffers of the Grand Duke, who was particularly avaricious and oppressed by the costly magnificence of life at court in keeping with the directives of his wife, the grand duchess Vittoria della Rovere.

Ferdinando II had three brothers: Cardinal Giovanni Carlo, a lover of sybaritic life, a patron and art collector who occasionally acted as adviser to his brother; Mattias, a professional soldier; and Leopoldo.

Cosimo III and the decline of the Grand Duchy

When Ferdinando II died, his son Cosimo III (1642-1723) became Grand Duke. His long reign, which lasted for fifty-three years, was a positive disaster for the state of Tuscany and for the Medici dynasty. Already overly devout in his own right, he had been dominated by the bigotry and vanity of his mother, since his father, whose weakness was indolence, had not asserted his authority in the child's upbringing.

Cosimo spent long hours in prayer and visited monasteries and sanctuaries where he proved a generous and devout guest. Priests, friars and monks proliferated in Florence, absorbed in their psalms, prayers and hymns while the Tuscan state was losing its former brilliance to a steady and reactionary decline for which its ruler was entirely to blame. It is small wonder that Tuscany became the victim of terrible economic recession, as no attention was paid to any of the innovations being put into practice in other Italian states.

Even the arts and sciences were neglected in Florence, as artists and scientists left a Tuscany caught in the stranglehold of the clergy. Pisa, Siena and Livorno were reduced to insignificant, depressed cities and Florence's reputation was based exclusively on its illustrious past, which made the present seem even more dreary by comparison.

Cosimo III also made a serious mistake over his choice of a wife: he married Marguerite Louise of Orléans, cousin of Louis XIV, the Sun King. She was of a rare beauty, while Cosimo was corpulent from childhood and he was diametrically opposed to his young bride in character and attitude to life. The marriage immediately turned stormy. Nevertheless, the young couple had three children: Ferdinando, Anna Maria Luisa and Gian Gastone.

Of the three children, Grand Prince Ferdinando was a pleasant-looking boy, intelligent and with a natural feeling for beauty and culture. Nevertheless he grew into a dissolute and intemperate man and died before his father. He married the sixteen years old Violante of Baviera but they had no children.

Gian Gastone and the end of the dynasty of the Medici 

Gian Gastone was a solitary young man who spent most of his time in a refuge he had in the Boboli Gardens, absorbed in his studies of plants and flowers and his collection of precious objects and beautiful things. Perhaps he had some particular tendency; certainly he suffered from a deep and inexplicable melancholy. He had been neglected by his grandmother and mother and father, ignored by his elder brother, Ferdinando, by the court and by the people of Florence. But when his brother died, Gian Gastone became the only hope for the continuation of the Medici name. He was then forced into the terrible marriage his father Cosimo III and his sister Anna Maria Ludovica arranged for him. He married Anna Maria Franziska, an immensely fat, twenty-three year old lady, the daughter of the Duke of Saxony and Lauenburg and widow of Palatine Count Philip of Neuberg. The marriage was a disaster from the start, based as it was on lack of understanding, repulsion and a kind of dejected resignation on part of Gian Gastone.

No child was born from this marriage and obviously there was no hope for a Medici heir. Gian Gastone became Grand Duke of Florence at the age of 52, and he appeared increasingly tired and old with each day that passed. His indolence had become proverbial, and he totally lacked the will to reign. He was not interested in power, and he would have been perfectly happy to continue his pointless life without it. As soon as he became Grand Duke, he showed his hostility towards his sister, whose intrigues had been the principal cause of the failure of his marriage. He attempted also to change life at court: his retinue, for example, which was smaller, was to dress in the French manner. He abolished the taxes inflicted on the Jews, Turks, Lutherans and Calvinists who converted to Catholicism, and he abolished the political espionage instituted by his father. The people of Florence grew increasingly fond of the new Grand Duke because he abolished the death penalty and lowered the price of grain.

Gian Gastone now sought above all to hand the Grand Duchy over to a family that could be expected to govern it wisely without oppressing the citizens, who were to be considered and treated humanely. Perhaps he was not misguided in accepting the Lorraine family and thereby showing himself to be an enlightened and open-minded prince. When he died on July 8, 1737, he evoked a deep sense of loss among the people, who had seen little of him but nonetheless felt that he was closer to them than his father, Cosimo III, had been.

Anna Maria Luisa and the 'Convention of the Family'

Anna Maria Luisa the second child of Cosimo III and Marguerite Louise of Orléans, the favourite of her father who found in her that balance of affection he would never have from his wife. It is known that she was a striking child, dark, intelligent and vivacious.

Anna Maria clearly had a cosier and happier childhood and a stronger and more balanced character, for she was sure of herself and of what she wanted. Like her grandmother, she gave a serious direction to her life, from which she never wavered and which she based on solid religious foundations, although in later years her devotion became bigoted and superficial. She was clean and careful by nature, something quite rare in those days. She was well versed in modern languages, studied Latin, painted well and grew flowers, but above all she loved music, like her siblings - perhaps the only positive inheritance from her mother.

Cosimo III arranged for her a marriage with the palatine elector of the Rhein, Johann Wilhelm of Saxony. Thus Anna Maria Luisa found herself in a foreign country amid new customs and new people that only with the time would become dear and familiar to her. Only after the death of her husband did she cross the borders of Tuscany after having been away for twenty-six years. In Florence she was welcomed by new cannon salvoes from the Belvedere fortress fired (perhaps for the only time) from the cannon of San Paolo, now in the Bargello, while all the bells rang. Cosimo III assigned her the Meridiana apartment at the Pitti, where her grandmother had lived and where she herself had passed many days of her childhood. Freed of the impending nightmare of the Medici court during the years of her stay in the Palatinate, she settled back into it, leaving it only to gather herself in prayer.

We can image her as severe, distant and deliberately closed to affection, which she allowed only to her father. With the death of Cosimo III on October 31, 1723, Anna Maria Luisa's life became still sadder, more solitary and more withdrawn. Gian Gastone, upon becoming Grand Duke, also lived in the palace, but the brother and sister never encountered one another. Gian Gastone died on July 9, 1737.

Now Anna Maria Luisa was the last of her family and remained alone in the great Pitti palace. She loved Florence, whose beauty she considered unique and for which she longed terribly during the twenty-six years of her happy (but childless) marriage in a distant northern land. Anna Maria Luisa's greatest achievement was undoubtedly the "Treaty or Convention of the Family", concluded with her successors the Grand Dukes of Lorraine on October 31, 1737, by which all the art treasures belonging to the Medici family became property of the city of Florence museums for the enjoyment of people from all over the world.