1. Monastery of San Marco - Machiavelli’s Savonarola2. The First Performance of "The Mandrake" at Palazzo Medici Riccardi3. The Basilica of San Lorenzo - Preaching to the Women45. Palazzo Vecchio - Machiavelli and the Florentine Chancery6. The Loggia della Signoria (or “dei Lanzi”) - Machiavelli, the Republic and the Medicean Signoria7. The Bargello - Machiavelli and the War8. The Tabernacle of the Stinche - Machiavelli as Prisoner9. Casa Buonarroti - The Fortifications of Florence10. Santa Croce - the Death of Niccolò Machiavelli11. Palazzo Strozzi - the Fortune of Machiavelli
Piazza della Signoria - A Citizens’ Militia
The happiest years in the life of Niccolò Machiavelli were undoubtedly those in which he served his homeland as Secretary and Chancellor of a republican government. During that period, he also dealt with strictly military problems. Machiavelli sustained the importance of having an army made up of citizens of the State rather than foreign mercenaries (contrary to the custom of the time); for this reason, he personally endeavoured to recruit soldiers from the Florentine countryside. On 15 February 1506 (1505 according to the Florentine calendar) the troops he had recruited (and above all, organized) paraded through Piazza della Signoria.
Piazza della Signoria lies a few hundred meters from Palazzo Medici Riccardi and the Basilica of San Lorenzo. One of the most fascinating sites in Florence, it is also the one that best "represents" the political activity of Machiavelli for the Florentine Republic in the years 1498-1512. Structurally linked to Palazzo Vecchio - where the Gonfalonier for life Pier Soderini (with whom Machiavelli closely collaborated) lived in the early 16th century, and where Machiavelli himself worked - Piazza della Signoria was the material and symbolic seat of political power and Florentine civic life, as opposed to the nearby Piazza del Duomo, symbol of ecclesiastical power. The buildings facing on the Piazza include, in addition to Palazzo Vecchio, the Loggia della Signoria (or Loggia dei Lanzi). Closely associated to the life of the republic in Machiavelli's time are artworks such as the copy of the bronze group portraying Judith and Holofernes (the original by Donatello is in Palazzo Vecchio) and above all, the copy of Michelangelo's great statue of David.
In 1501 Michelangelo Buonarroti, barely twenty-six at the time, was commissioned by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore - the administrative body of the Cathedral - to sculpt a statue of great size representing David and Goliath, utilizing a block of marble that had been badly roughed out forty years before by the sculptor Agostino di Duccio in a failed attempt to depict the same subject. Although the commission was an ecclesiastical one at first, with the statue originally destined to the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, it was later taken over by the Government of the Florentine Republic. When the work was almost finished, a committee of artists including, among others, Leonardo, Botticelli, Perugino and Andrea della Robbia, decided that the David should be placed in Piazza della Signoria next to Palazzo Vecchio. Although a Biblical subject, the David was also entitled to occupy a strictly civic position, as it could symbolize the defence of the homeland and the virtue of good government in a city that had recently driven out the Medici 'tyrants'. The sculpture was finished in 1504, at the height of the republican epoch, when Pier Soderini was Gonfalonier for life and Machiavelli Secretary of the Florentine Chancery. When the 400 infantrymen from the Florentine countryside recruited by Machiavelli paraded through Piazza della Signoria, it was dominated by the David, placed there only a short time before, and we can easily imagine the symbolic value it possessed and the emotion it must have aroused.
In Piazza della Signoria today stands a copy of the David. The original was moved in 1873 to the Galleria dell'Accademia (a few hundred meters away from the Piazza) which also displays the "Captives" and the "St. Matthew" by Michelangelo as well as various Florentine Renaissance works that immerse the visitor in the figurative world of Machiavelli's time.
In his political activity Niccolò Machiavelli was always guided (and clearly, not in any abstract manner) by profound convictions of theoretical nature - always deeply pondered - which he consistently applied. The clearest example of this is the utilization of a a citizens' militias, as Machiavelli constantly promoted in his practical activity and consistently theorized in his writings during the years post res perditas, subsequent to his dismissal from public office.
In the Discourses on Livy (Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio), Niccolò Machiavelli deals fully and profoundly with the problem of utilizing foreign mercenary troops rather than a local army. "Those princes and republics of the present day who lack forces of their own, whether for attack or defence, should take shame to themselves", since this is not due to a lack of men able to bear arms, but because they have not been able " to make their subjects good soldiers" (Discourses I, 21). It is not enough to have "moneys" to pay foreign mercenaries, because without a faithful army it is easy to fall prey to one who has arms instead: not only princes and foreign powers, but even the very mercenary troops paid to defend the principality or republic, who can easily decide to betray it.
A few years before, Machiavelli had personally assembled an army of men from the Florentine countryside and in February 1506 had paraded them through Piazza della Signoria. This episode aroused a vast echo, being reported by both Luca Landucci and Agostino Lapini, each in his Florentine Dairy, describing in detail the equipment given the soldiers by the Gonfalonier Pier Soderini. It consisted - writes Landucci - of "a white waistcoat, a pair of stockings half red and half white, a white cap, shoes, and an iron breastplate, and lances, and to some of the men, muskets". Both Landucci and Lapini take note of Machiavelli's innovation, emphasizing that the militia was composed of "our peasants" so as to have no need of foreigners. The reports written by Landucci and Lapini are very similar, but present some different aspects. While the former emphasizes that the parade was considered "the finest thing that had ever been arranged for Florence", Lapini bitterly notes that the idea of not using foreign soldiers was considered by all "a whimsical caprice, a fine order", but "never again adopted here for us".
