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The bronze David was intended for the French statesman, Pierre de Rohan, Maréchal de Gié, as a present from the Florentine Republic, but before it was finished the Maréchal fell into disgrace and could be of no further use to the Florentines. The Signory therefore determined to send the bronze to Florimond Robertet, Secretary of Finance to the French King.
The Florentines, who were eager not only to hold all Val di Nievole but to carry the war away from Pistoja towards Lucca, knew nothing of Serravalle having fallen to Castruccio, so on they came in haste, and encamped above it, hoping to pass the straits next day. There Castruccio fell upon them about midnight, putting all to confusion.
Sebastiano del Piombo, like the good friend he was, kept Michael Angelo informed of the progress of the young scamp of a pupil, from whom his master had extracted a promise that he would avoid the company of dissolute Florentines in Rome more than he had previously done.
Since the intellectual unity gained by the Italians in the age of the Renaissance was chiefly due to the Florentines, it is a matter of some moment to reconsider the direct influences brought to bear upon the arts in Florence during the fifteenth century. I have chosen Ghirlandajo as the representative of painting in that period.
This occasioned general dissatisfaction among the Florentines; for they found themselves involved in an expensive war, from which no advantage could be derived.
For as the Duke had a very strong force with him, while the Florentines were so bare of troops that they could not have prevented his passage, it would have been far more for their credit that he should seem to pass with their consent, than that he should pass in spite of them; because, while discredit had to be incurred either way, they would have incurred less by acceding to his demand.
Many foreigners had already assembled and presented themselves to the Consuls of the Guild, by whom seven masters were elected out of the whole number, three being Florentines and the others Tuscans; and it was ordained that they should have an allowance of money, and that within a year each man should finish a scene in bronze by way of test, of the same size as those in the first door.
And though this example suffice by itself to show the disadvantage in war of divided commands, to make the matter still plainer I shall cite two further instances, one ancient and one modern. In the year 1500, Louis XII. of France, after recovering Milan, sent troops to restore Pisa to the Florentines, Giovambattista Ridolfi and Luca d'Antonio Albizzi going with them as commissaries.
Perhaps the eyes of the mystic Ficino, now long past the midway of life, had come to be thus half-closed; but when a young man, not unlike the archangel Raphael, as the Florentines of that age depicted him in his wonderful walk with Tobit, or Mercury, as he might have appeared in a painting by Sandro Botticelli or Piero di Cosimo, entered his chamber, he seems to have thought there was something not wholly earthly about him; at least, he ever afterwards believed that it was not without the co-operation of the stars that the stranger had arrived on that day.
It was to this inherited sentiment, this practical decision that to be pre-occupied with the thought of death was in itself dignifying, and a note of high quality, that the seriousness of the great Florentines of the fifteenth century was partly due; and it was reinforced in them by the actual sorrows of their times.
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