the intermediate conclusion that neither the Medici nor the artists could escape the conditions of their century.  It is specially argued on the one hand against the Medici that they encouraged a sensual and worldly style of art, employing the painters to decorate their palaces with nude figures, and luring them away from sacred to profane subjects.  Yet Cosimo gave orders to Donatello for his “David” and his “Judith,” employed Michellozzo and Brunelleschi to build him convents and churches, and filled the library of S. Marco, where Fra Angelico was painting, with a priceless collection of MSS.  His own private chapel was decorated by Benozza Gozzoli.  Fra Lippo Lippi and Michael Angelo Buonarroti were the house-friends of Lorenzo de’ Medici.  Leo Battista Alberti was a member of his philosophical society.  The only great Florentine artist who did not stand in cordial relations to the Medicean circle, was Lionardo da Vinci.  This sufficiently shows that the Medicean patronage was commensurate with the best products of Florentine genius; nor would it be easy to demonstrate that encouragement, so largely exhibited and so intelligently used, could have been in the main injurious to the arts.

There is, however, a truth in the old grudge against the Medicean princes.  They enslaved Florence; and even painting was not slow to suffer from the stifling atmosphere of tyranny.  Lorenzo deliberately set himself to enfeeble the people by luxury, partly because he liked voluptuous living, partly because he aimed at popularity, and partly because it was his interest to enervate republican virtues.  The arts used for the purposes of decoration in triumphs and carnival shows became the instruments of careless pleasure; and there is no doubt that even earnest painters lent their powers with no ill-will and no bad conscience to the service of lascivious patrons.  “Per la citta, in diverse case, fece tondi di sua mano e femmine ignude assai,” says Vasari about Sandro Botticelli, who afterwards became a Piagnone and refused to touch a pencil.[196] We may, therefore, reasonably concede that if the Medici had never taken hold on Florence, or if the spirit of the times had made them other than they were in loftiness of aim and nobleness of heart, the arts of Italy in the Renaissance might have shown less of worldliness and materialism.  It was against the demoralisation of society by paganism, as against the enslavement of Florence by her tyrants, that Savonarola strove; and since the Medici were the leaders of the classical revival, as well as the despots of the dying commonwealth, they justly bear the lion’s share of that blame which fell in general upon the vices of their age denounced by the prophet of S. Marco.  We may regard it either as a singular misfortune for Italy or as the strongest sign of deep-seated Italian corruption, that the most brilliant leaders of culture both at Florence and at Rome—­Cosimo, Lorenzo, and Giovanni de’ Medici—­promoted rather than checked the debasing influences of the Renaissance, and added the weight of their authority to the popular craving for sensuous amusement.