After Lorenzino Medici had murdered the Duke Alessandro (1537), and
then escaped, an apology for the deed appeared,8 which is probably his
own work, and certainly composed in his interest, and in which he
praises tyrannicide as an act of the highest merit; on the supposition
that Alessandro was a legitimate Medici, and, therefore, related to
him, if only distantly, he boldly compares himself with Timoleon, who
slew his brother for his country's sake. Others, on the same occasion,
made use of the comparison with Brutus, and that Michelangelo himself,
even late in life, was not unfriendly to ideas of this kind, may be
inferred from his bust of Brutus in the Bargello. He left it
unfinished, like nearly all his works, but certainly not because the
murder of Caesar was repugnant to his feeling, as the couplet beneath
declares.
A popular radicalism in the form in which it is opposed to the
monarchies of later times, is not to be found in the despotic States of
the Renaissance. Each individual protested inwardly against despotism
but was disposed to make tolerable or profitable terms with it rather
than to combine with others for its destruction. Things must have been
as bad as at Camerino, Fabriano, or Rimini, before the citizens united
to destroy or expel the ruling house. They knew in most cases only too
well that this would but mean a change of masters.
Pages:
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87