4
The Medici – Violent Politics and Sublime Aspirations
POLITICAL TENSIONS and strife form the background story of La Primavera. By 1450 most of the small independent dominions in what is now Italy had allied themselves with one of the five main powers, Milan, Venice, the Papal States, Naples or Florence. For most of the following fifty years, the period which concerns us, the interests of these five powers determined the politics of the peninsula. The attempt to assassinate the Medici brothers by a rival Florentine family with papal and Neapolitan backing was indicative of the festering ambitions which the conditions of the Peace of Lodi, designed for stability, could not contain.1 It was an age of exploration – intellectual, scientific and geographical – its impetus arising from prospe
