When he was nineteen, it was decided that it was time for him to marry. The bride selected for him was Clarice Orsini, the daughter of Jacopo Orsini of Monterotondo, a sixteen-year-old heiress from Rome. Lorenzo’s mother travelled to Rome to inspect the girl on the pretext of visiting her brothers, Giovanni and Francesco Tornabuoni, who looked after the Medici bank in Rome. Lucrezia caught her first glimpse of Clarice as she and her mother were on their way to St Peter’s. The girl was wearing a lenzuolo in the Roman fashion so Lucrezia could not see her properly, but ‘she seemed to be handsome, fair and tall’. The next time Lucrezia saw her she was still unable to inspect her figure as she would have liked, ‘since Roman women [were] always entirely covered up’; but, so far as she could judge it in its tight bodice, her bosom seemed to be well-shaped; and her hands were ‘long and delicate’. Her face was ‘rather round but not unattractive, her throat fairly elegant but rather too thin’. She certainly had a ‘nice complexion’. Her hair, Lucrezia noticed now, was not really fair – no women in Rome were so blessed – but reddish.
‘She does not carry her head well, as our girls do, but pokes it forward,’ Lucrezia concluded her report. ‘I think she is shy… Yet, altogether I think the girl is a good deal above the average.’ Of course, she added, she could not be compared with her own three daughters who were, indeed, not only better-looking but, as Florentines, far better-educated than any Roman girl could expect to be. Nevertheless, Lucrezia hoped that with her evident modesty and good manners Clarice would soon learn Florentine customs.
The Florentines themselves did not entirely approve of the match. It had never before been the custom for even the richest merchant families of the city to look outside Tuscany for brides and bridegrooms for their children; and the Medici had previously been content to ally themselves with families of their own sort. Lorenzo was well aware of the advantages of this himself. All his sisters married rich and influential Florentines; and two of his daughters were subsequently required to follow their example, one by marrying a Ridolfi,1 the other a Salviati.2 A third daughter, Luigia, was to be betrothed as a little girl to Giovanni, the younger son of his uncle, Pierfrancesco, with whose branch of the family Lorenzo and his father had quarrelled over the proper division of Cosimo’s fortune. The dispute had been settled by the time of the betrothal; but Lorenzo was determined to strengthen the renewed ties by a marriage within the family. And, although the marriage never took place, as Luigia died before she was twelve, the friendship between the two branches was not broken again so long as Lorenzo lived.
Yet while Lorenzo understood the importance of marriage alliances between Florentine families, he recognized that there were good reasons for breaking the traditional rule and marrying an Orsini. Not only would he thus avoid arousing any jealousy in Florentine houses where there were marriageable daughters whom he had rejected, but he would be contriving an alliance with a family of far-ranging influence. The Orsini, soldiers and ecclesiastics by profession for countless generations, had huge estates within the Kingdom of Naples as well as north of Rome; they could raise soldiers as well as money; and in Clarice’s maternal uncle, Cardinal Latino, they had a firm foothold in the Curia. Lorenzo would naturally have preferred a better-looking and more intellectual bride from a less feudal and enclosed background. But, having succeeded in catching sight of her one day at Mass, he agreed that she was acceptable; and, once a dowry of 6,000 florins was settled, he married her by proxy in Rome, represented by a distant cousin, Filippo de’ Medici, Archbishop of Pisa.
To reconcile the Florentines to this unwelcome event, a splendid tournament was held on 7 February 1469, a tournament which was to cost 10,000 ducats and was to be one of the finest spectacles which they had ever seen, a worthy subject for that charming fifteenth-century Italian poem, Luigi Pulci’s La Giostra di Lorenzo de Medici.
The scene was the Piazza Santa Croce, where in the February sunshine the spectators, crowded onto roofs and balconies, peered down from windows and parapets to catch a glimpse of the beautiful Lucrezia Donati as she was escorted to the panoplied throne reserved for the ‘Queen of the Tournament’, and to admire the eighteen representatives of the jeunesse dorée of Florentine society who were to play the part of the knights. Preceded by heralds, standard-bearers, fifers, trumpeters, and accompanied by pages and men-at-arms, the knights paraded through the Piazza to the enthusiastic cheers of their thousands of supporters. All of them were magnificently clothed and most had elaborate armour and helmets specially made for the occasion, displays of beauty being more highly regarded on these occasions than demonstrations of reckless courage and strength: although Federigo da Montefeltro lost his eye in one, Italian tournaments were not the savage, bloody spectacle enjoyed in Germany.
None of the knights looked finer than Lorenzo de’ Medici, who wore a cape of white silk, bordered in scarlet, under a velvet surcoat, and a silk scarf embroidered with roses, some withered, others blooming, and emblazoned with the spirited motto, worked in pearls: LE TEMPS REVIENT. There were pearls also in his black velvet cap as well as rubies and a big diamond framed by a plume of gold thread. His white charger, which was draped in red and white pearl-encrusted velvet, was a gift from the King of Naples; another charger, which he rode for the jousting, was presented to him by Duke Borso d’Este of Ferrara; his suit of armour came from the Duke of Milan. There was a large diamond in the middle of his shield; his helmet was surmounted by three tall blue feathers; his standard bore a device of a bay tree, one half withered, the other a brilliant green with the same motto, written in pearls, that appeared on his scarf. By way of compliment to him as heir to their host rather than in true recognition of unparalleled prowess, the judges, who included the famous condottiere, Roberto da Sanseverino, awarded Lorenzo the first prize and presented him with a helmet inlaid with silver and surmounted by a figure of Mars.
Four months later, in June 1469, Clarice Orsini, whom this great tournament had been designed to honour, arrived in Florence for the wedding celebrations. There were to be no less than five huge banquets at the Medici Palace where for weeks past presents of game and poultry, wine and wax, cakes and jellies, sweetmeats, marzipan and sugared almonds had been arriving from all over Tuscany, and where row upon row of tables were set out along the loggia and in the courtyard and gardens of the palace. The celebrations began on the Sunday morning when the bride, who had been escorted from Rome by Giuliano, emerged from the Palazzo Alessandri in the Borgo San Piero riding the white horse that the bridegroom had been given by the King of Naples.3 Followed by a long procession of maids-of-honour and attendants, she rode in her white-and-gold brocade dress to the Medici Palace. Here, as she entered through the archway, an olive branch – traditionally displayed as a sign that there was to be a wedding in the family – was lowered over her head to the strains of festive music from an orchestra in the courtyard. As was customary at Florentine weddings, the guests were separated according to their age and sex. At Clarice’s table in the loggia overlooking the garden were young married women; at Lorenzo’s table in the hall were young men; on the balcony above the loggia, Lucrezia presided over the banquet for the older women; while the men of Piero’s generation and their elders dined in the courtyard in the middle of which were big copper coolers full of Tuscan wine. Each dish was heralded by a flourish of trumpets, and, though the ‘food and drink were as modest and simple as befitted a marriage’, it was estimated that by the time the last banquet was over five thousand pounds of sweetmeats had been consumed and more than three hundred barrels of wine – mosdy trebbiano and vernaccia – had been drunk. After the banquets the guests were entertained by music and dancing on a stage hung with tapestries and enclosed by curtains embroidered with the Medici and Orsini arms.