Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici and the Medici Family in the Fifteenth Century (review)

Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici (1427-1482), mother of Lorenzo de' Medici 'the Magnificent', was well known in her own lifetime and posthumously for her political skills and business acumen as well as for her piety, extensive charitable activities and as a writer of religious poetry in the vernacular. Unlike other women in the Medici family in the fifteenth century, she has also attracted continued popular and scholarly interest, no doubt aided by the significant corpus of source material about her life that is extant. The book under review is an attempt to write a biography of Lucrezia in the context of her relationships with other Medici family members of her day. Lucrezia Tornabuoni de' Medici deserves a fulsome scholarly biography, but unfortunately this study, which is largely derivative, adds nothing new to our knowledge of her.

This book adopts a narrative, chronological approach, interspersed with thematic chapters devoted to her intellectual interests (chapter 7); financial and charitable activities (chapter 8) and her poetry (chapter 10). It begins with a brief introduction that outlines the broad contours of Lucrezia's life and the chief facts about the Medici, but provides no discussion of the existing literature about her or an indication of the argument(s) that the authors intend to make. The early chapters then consecutively cover the history of the Tornabuoni-Tornaquinci family and the Medici until Lucrezia's day (chapters 1-2) followed by chapters dealing with her activities and relationships until the death of her husband, Piero de' Medici in December 1469 (chapters 3-6) and then with the period of her widowhood and death (chapters 8-9). The book ends with a discussion of her posthumous representation in the Tornabuoni family frescoes in the Tornabuoni chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella, Florence (chapter 11). A family tree and a transcription of a 1456 Medici inventory listing Lucrezia's clothes and jewellery form the appendices.

Pernis and Adams's approach to their subject falls between two stools: that of a general interested reader and that of a specialist in the field. It is certainly possible to write a book that appeals to both groups but care should then be taken that the language used does not become over-specialized. For example, on the one hand the authors adopt a simple narrative structure that appeals to the general reader, yet their frequent usage of Italian phrases such as casa vecchia, would confuse a non-specialist when simply referring to the first Medici palace would suffice. Similarly, having quotations from Italian and Latin texts preceded by an English paraphrase in the main text, instead of the Italian or Latin being in the endnotes with a complete English translation in the text, interrupts the narrative's flow and would disconcert a general reader. On the other hand, a specialist would become increasingly frustrated with the authors' use of popular undocumented accounts of the Medici women as a source of key assertions. One glaring example of this type is the authors' reference to a supposed comment by Lucrezia's father in law, Cosimo de' Medici referring to her as 'the only man in the family' (p.x), which the authors use as a motif throughout the book. Such a statement, if it were made, cannot be taken at face value as its meaning can be ambiguous, and Cosimo was known for his often acerbic wit. Sixteenth century commentators did indeed later refer to her 'manly spirit' in a complementary way, but I have been unable to trace this purported contemporary comment by Cosimo de' Medici. The source cited is a popular general book, by Piero Bargellini, which is undocumented and discusses several Medici women who lived across a span of two hundred years in a very general and uncritical manner...