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In the presence of the King of France and in the midst of his troops Peter de' Medici grew embarrassed and confused. He had gone to meet the king without the knowledge of the Florentines and was already alarmed at the gravity of his situation; and he offered more concession and submission than was demanded of him.
For some months past he had closely attached to his person a certain kinsman, Lorenzo de' Medici, who was descended in the fourth generation from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo Pater Patriæ.
After the battle of Ravenna, on the 11th of April 1512, Raimondo de Cardona and his Spanish troops brought back the Medici to Florence. On their way, the little town of Prato was sacked with a barbarity which sent a shudder through the whole peninsula.
Stimulated by the daring speculations of Machiavelli, and fired to enthusiasm by their study of antiquity, the younger academicians formed a conspiracy for murdering Giulio de' Medici, and restoring the republic on a Roman model. An intercepted letter betrayed their plans. Two of the conspirators were taken and beheaded. Others escaped.
Early in 1584 the heir to the duchy of Mantua, Vincenzo Gonzaga, to whose intercession Tasso later owed his liberty, entreated Guarini to let him have his already famous pastoral for the occasion of his marriage with Eleonora de' Medici. The poet, however, found it impossible to complete the work in time, and sent the Idropica instead.
The famous Istoria d' Italia was the work of one year of this enforced retirement. The question irresistibly rises to our mind, whether some of the severe criticisms passed upon the Medici in his unpublished compositions were the fruit of these same bitter leisure hours. Guicciardini died in 1540 at the age of fifty-eight, without male heirs. See the 'Apologia de' Cappucci, Arch.
He informed Charles of the quarrelling among his enemies; he showed him that each of them was seeking his own ends Piero dei Medici the gratification of his pride, the pope the aggrandisement of his house.
Piero dei Medici had at any rate formed this plan; but Heaven decreed otherwise. As to the most serene republic of Venice, whose doge was Agostino Barbarigo, she had attained, at the time we have reached, to her highest degree of power and splendour.
This was RAPHAEL. He was the pupil of Perugino; and while such, contented himself with imitating, with the utmost fidelity, the works of that artist; till at length emancipating himself from tutelage, he went for inspiration to the cartoons of Michael Angelo, to the sculptures of the Medici gardens, and to nature herself.
XLI. In the meantime the House of Medici was driven out of Florence by the opposing faction, because they had taken more authority to themselves than could be suffered in a free city that ruled herself by her Republic.
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