An imagined gathering
1455 · Florence, Italy
Cosimo dines quietly at home with his young grandson Lorenzo and the visiting Rodrigo Borgia, and reflects on the family he is building.
Cosimo is old and keeps a plainer table than his wealth would allow, but the rooms around him are full of the manuscripts and antiquities he has spent a lifetime collecting. His grandson Lorenzo, not yet ten, has been brought to sit with the grown men; Rodrigo Borgia, a Spanish cardinal in Italy on church business, has been received as a matter of courtesy.
Cosimo talks about the bank and the city, about the scholars he supports, and about the difference between ruling and appearing to rule. He is careful with the cardinal and affectionate with the boy, and it is clear which of the two he thinks will inherit what he has built. They eat pease pottage, a roast pullet, manchet bread, and an apple tart, and drink spiced wine.
Host: Cosimo de' Medici
Lorenzo de' Medici — Cosimo's grandson, brought to the table to learn how the family conducts itself.
Pope Alexander VI — Then Rodrigo Borgia, a cardinal visiting Florence on church business.
First course
a period dish
a period dish
First course
a period dish
Drink
a period dish
Cosimo de' Medici
The Medici habit of spending banking fortunes on churches, libraries, and artists — and the political return they expected on the investment.
Cosimo de' Medici
Florence's republican institutions and the Medici art of controlling them from behind the scenes.
Lorenzo de' Medici
The courts of fifteenth-century Italy as centers of learning, display, and political theatre.
This gathering is an editorial recreation grounded in the biographies of those present; it did not necessarily take place as described.