The poems of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s eldest son are little known or discussed, unlike his father’s. Only three of the twenty-one or so surviving poems have been published, all as part of wider studies. So it is the intention of this contribution to discuss them for the light they throw on Piero’s own life and, vice-versa, how his life helps us to interpret the poems. My approach is historical rather than literary, as the author of a recent biography of Piero de’ Medici, who has been a neglected f…
Read moreThe poems of Lorenzo il Magnifico’s eldest son are little known or discussed, unlike his father’s. Only three of the twenty-one or so surviving poems have been published, all as part of wider studies. So it is the intention of this contribution to discuss them for the light they throw on Piero’s own life and, vice-versa, how his life helps us to interpret the poems. My approach is historical rather than literary, as the author of a recent biography of Piero de’ Medici, who has been a neglected figure in the history of his family and Florence during the Renaissance. I hope to show that they deserve to be better known, and have included the texts of the five or six poems most relevant to my argument. The earliest poem (written in 1491 and published by Isidoro Del Lungo in Florentia, Uomini e cose del Quattrocento, 1897), is particularly valuable for the comment and précis of Angelo Poliziano (Piero’s tutor). Two of the remaining poems in MS Laur. pl. 41, 38 were published by William Roscoe (with translation) in his 1796 biography of Lorenzo, and by Gaetano Pieraccini in La Stirpe de’ Medici, 1924, vol. 1, but not the others, including the three that are particularly interesting — I shall argue —for their classical sources and relevance to Piero’s life.
