An Interview with Niccolo

Photo: Wikimedia

One day, I met Niccolo in exile in Sant'Andrea in Percussina, he looked rugged and drunk. His sweet smile had disappeared into a sad face. A very different image of a person in an ambassador role he had before the Medici threw him in jail, tortured him and sent him into solitary exile at his country retreat.

He was a diplomat for 14 years in Italy's Florentine Republic during the Medici family's exile. When the Medici family returned to power in 1512, Niccolo was dismissed and jailed.

During his exile he wrote books, including The Prince which became his most renowned book.

I asked him straightforwardly:

“People say that nowadays you drink in the company of peasants, fought in villages and rail at your fate.  The solitary exile must have been hard for you, it is like a punishment worse than death for a man who found high-level politics as necessary as breathing.  Do you feel bitter about the treatment of the Medici to you?”

Niccolo:

“When evening comes, I go back home, and go to my study. On the threshold, I take off my work clothes, covered in mud and filth, and I put on the clothes an ambassador would wear. Decently dressed, I enter the ancient courts of rulers who have long since died. There, I am warmly welcomed, and I feed on the only food I find nourishing and was born to savour. I am not ashamed to talk to them and ask them to explain their actions and they, out of kindness, answer me. Four hours go by without my feeling any anxiety. I forget every worry. I am no longer afraid of poverty or frightened of death. I live entirely through them.”

I said:

“The Medici threw you in jail, tortured you with a rope hanged from your bound wrists, from the back, forcing your arms to bear your body's weight and dislocating your shoulders. However they  could find no evidence of your direct involvement in the conspiracy, and, under the general amnesty granted by the Pope you were released a few weeks later and they sent you into solitary exile here.

But despite the cruel treatment by the Medici, you dedicated your most renowned book “The Prince” to the Magnificence Lorenzo de Medici a prince of the Medici who tortured you. Why so?”

Niccolo citing the opening chapter of The Prince said:

“I want to present myself to his Magnificence with some testimony of my devotion towards him, the possession of mine that I love best and value most is my knowledge of the actions of great men—knowledge that I have acquired from long experience in contemporary affairs and from a continual study of antiquity. Having reflected on it long and hard, I now send it, digested into a little volume, to his Magnificence.

And if his Magnificence, from the mountain-top of his greatness will sometimes look down at this plain, he will see how little I deserve the wretched ill-fortune that continually pursues me”

I said:

“The word “Prince” in your book “The Prince” obviously does not refer to hereditary prince in aristocratic system but to a ruler of a country.”

 Niccolo citing Chapter 9 said:

“It is about a citizen who becomes the prince of his country not by wickedness or any intolerable violence, but by the favour of his fellow citizens. We can call this ‘civil principality’. Now, this kind of principality (princely state)—·this way of becoming a prince·—is obtained with the support of the common people or with the support of the nobles.

Someone who becomes prince with the help of the nobles will find it hard to maintain his position because he’ll be surrounded by men who regard themselves as his equals, which will inhibit him in giving orders and managing affairs. It is easier for a prince who got there with the help of popular favour: he’ll be able to exercise his principality single-handed, with few if any people unwilling to obey him.”

I said:

“Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort you described most famously in The Prince. You described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. “

Niccolo citing Chapter 15 said:

“I am not apologetic about this·: my aim is to write things that will be useful the reader who understands them; so I find it more appropriate to pursue the real truth of the matter than to repeat what people have imagined about it. Many writers have dreamed up republics and principalities such as have never been seen or known in the real world. ·And attending to them is dangerous·, because the gap between “how men live”  and “how they ought to live” is so wide that any prince who thinks in terms not of how people do behave but of how they ought to behave will destroy his power rather than maintaining it. A man who tries to act virtuously will soon come to grief at the hands of the unscrupulous people surrounding him. Thus, a prince who wants to keep his power must learn how to act immorally, using or not using this skill according to necessity.

As I said in Chapter 18, a prince is forced to know how to act like a beast, he must learn from the fox and the lion; because the lion is defenceless against traps and a fox is defenceless against wolves. So the prince needs to be a fox to discover the traps and a lion to scare off the wolves.”

I said :

“You seemed to endorse cruelty, violence and even murder in some situations, which  oppose the universal norms in our society.”

Niccolo citing Chapter 17 said:

“I say that every prince should want to be regarded as merciful and not cruel; but he should be careful not to mismanage his mercy! Cesare Borgia was considered cruel; yet his ‘cruelty’ restored order to Romagna, unified it, and restored it to peace and loyalty. When you come to think about it, you’ll see him as being much more ·truly· merciful than the Florentines who, to avoid a reputation for cruelty, allowed Pistoia to be destroyed.”

I said:

“This philosophy of "the end justifies the means" has often been associated with you, and so named Machiavellianism. The Prince became a handbook for ruler like Stalin, who starved the Ukranian people șo he could sell the grain from Ukraine to  the west so he could make the army stronger and to grow the indunstry.

The Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini saw himself as a modern-day Machiavellian and wrote an introduction to his honorary doctoral thesis for the University of Bologna—"Prelude to Machiavelli.”

In this thesis he quoted your Chapter 17 as evidence of your bitter pessimism in respect to human nature: “For we may say here in general that men are ungrateful, inconstant, deceiving, cowardly in the face of danger, greedy for gain: and as long as you do them favors they are loyal to you and ready to pledge you their blood, their property, their lives, their children — until, as I have said above, they no longer need you; but when that time arrives they are quick to desert you.”

Niccolo citing Chapter 8 said:

“Someone who is seizing a state should think hard about all the injuries he’ll have to inflict, and get them all over with at the outset, rather than having cruelty as a daily occurrence. By stopping cruelty very soon, the usurper will be able to reassure people and win them over to his side by generosity. Someone who doesn’t proceed in this way—whether from fear or on bad advice—will always have to have a knife in his hand; and he won’t be able to rely on his subjects, who will be alienated by his continued and repeated injuries....”

I said:

“Your book The Prince is actually a little book with a clear language, easy to understand. However the books of commentaries, reviews, critics and analysis about it are much longer than this little book. What do you say about it?"

Niccolo citing Chapter 1 said:

“Many writers decorate their work—choke their work—with smoothly sweeping sentences, pompous words, and other ‘attractions’ that are irrelevant to the matter in hand; but I haven’t done any of that, because I have wanted this work of mine to be given only such respect as it can get from the importance of its topic and the truth of what it says about it.”

I said:

“Yet this little book became very famous because of its controversy, Bertrand Russell called it a “handbook for gangsters”.  Leo Strauss called you a “teacher of evil” because of The Prince. Are you surprised about it?”

Nicollo said:

“The Prince is just one of my books, I also wrote “The Art of War”,  “Discourses on Livy”, and plays.

In “The Art of War”, Lord Fabrizio Colonna said that we should learn things similar to the ancients that honor and reward virtue, not to have contempt for poverty, to esteem the modes and orders of military discipline, to constrain citizens to love one another, to live without factions, to esteem less the private than the public good.

However, good institutions without the help of the military are not much differently disordered than the habitation of a superb and regal palace, which, even though adorned with jewels and gold, if it is not roofed over will not have anything to protect it from the rain.

In “Discourses on Livy” I quoted Livy saying that people are strong together, but weak when alone giving the example of the Roman plebs. Livy additionally feels that the multitude is wiser than the one prince. And in Chapter 30 I wrote about that truly powerful Republics and Princes buy friendships not with money, but with virtue and reputation of strength.

The book discusses the rulers of Rome and how a strong or weak Prince can maintain or destroy a kingdom. After a weak prince a kingdom could not remain strong with another weak prince. Luckily, the first three kings each had a certain strength, which aided the city. Romulus was fierce, Numa was religious, and Tullus was dedicated to war.”

I said:

“ So it seems your focus is that a Prince shall rely on his virtue and strength, rather than being a weak Prince, and relying on fortune.”

Nicollo said, with a nod:

“Yes, after all I am not so Machiavellian……”

This is an imaginary interview in memory of Niccolo Machiavelli.

Sources: Wikipedia, CliffsNotes

Florence, at Piazza del Duomo

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower) is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. The cathedral is commonly called the Duomo.

The cathedral complex, located in Piazza del Duomo, includes the Baptistery and the Bell Tower. These three buildings are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site covering the historic centre of Florence and are a major attraction to tourists visiting Tuscany.

The basilica was designed by Arnolfo di Cambio with the dome by Filippo Brunelleschi. The bell tower was designed by Giotto.

 The outside of the Duomo  is decorated with marble panels in green and pink bordered by white. The construction began in 1296 and finished in 1469, except for the decoration. The facade (the main front) was decorated between 1876 and 1903. 

The dome of the Duomo,  designed by  Brunelleschi  is built of bricks in octagonal shape, it is the biggest brick dome in the world.   It is a masterpiece capable of withstanding lightning, earthquakes and the passage of time, it continues to enchant all those who observe it from afar. Brunelleschi's astonishingly innovative approach involved vaulting the dome space without any scaffolding by using a double shell with a space in between. The inner shell (with a thickness of more than two metres) is made of light bricks set in a herringbone pattern and is the self-supporting structural element while the outer dome simply serves as a heavier, wind-resistant covering.

 The dome is crowned by a lantern with a conical roof, designed by Brunelleschi but only built after his death in 1446, while the gilt copper sphere and cross on top of the lantern, containing holy relics, was designed by Andrea del Verrocchio and installed in 1466.

The Last Judgement fresco on the internal wall of the dome is made by Giorgio Vasari  flanked by Vincenzo Borghini, who worked to the iconographic subjects and added other themes taken from Dante‘s Divine Comedy.

Most of the splendid stained glass windows were made between 1434 and 1455 to the designs of famous artists like Donatello, Andrea del Castagno and Paolo Uccello. The wooden inlays on the Sacristy´s cupboards were designed by Brunelleschi and other artists, including Antonio del Pollaiolo.

The Baptistry in the Piazza del Duomo complex,  named Battistero di San Giovanni (Baptistry of St. John)  is renowned for its three sets of artistically important bronze doors with relief sculptures. The south doors were created by Andrea Pisano and the north and east doors by Lorenzo Ghiberti. The east doors were dubbed by Michelangelo the Gates of Paradise.

It took Ghiberti 21 years to complete the Gates of Paradise. These gilded bronze doors consist of twenty-eight panels, with twenty panels depicting the life of Christ from the New Testament. The eight lower panels show the four evangelists and the Church Fathers Saint Ambrose, Saint Jerome, Saint Gregory and Saint Augustine.

 Above the Gates of Paradise stood the Baptism of Christ by Andrea Sansovino.

The Italian poet Dante and many other notable Renaissance figures, including members of the Medici family, were baptized in this baptistery.

The Bell Tower designed by Giotto, is a slender structure is square in plan with 14.45 metre sides. It is 84.7 metres tall and has polygonal buttresses at each corner.  It is the most eloquent example of 14th century Gothic architecture in Florence.

Clad in white, pink and green marble like the Duomo adjacent to it, the majestic square bell tower, considered to be the most beautiful Bell Tower in Italy.

The rich decorative apparatus comprising hexagonal panels and lozenges embodies the concept of Universal Order and tells the story of the Redemption of Mankind.

Based on www.museumflorence.com and Wikipedia.org

Florence, along the Arno River

Dante in his poem about Arno river says:


And I: "Through midst of Tuscany there wanders

A streamlet that is born in Falterona,

And not a hundred miles of course suffice it;

From thereupon do I this body bring."

The Arno is a river in the Tuscany region of Italy.  It is the most important river of central Italy after the Tiber. With a length of 241 kilometres, it flows from the Apennine Mountains to the Ligurian Sea, just 11 kilometres west of Pisa. Lush vineyards and olive groves line the river's scenic course to the west, out to sea.

The Arno river generally flows at its highest during spring and autumn of every year, when rainfall in the Apennines is at its greatest. However in 1557 and 1966  the peaceful river overflowed from its embankments invading large areas of the Casentino, the plains of Pisa and Empoli, and over the entire historical center of Florence, causing dozens of deaths and untold damage to the city’s monumental and artistic heritage.

After the flood in Florence the river’s banks were raised, and in 1984 the Bilancino Dam was built near Florence to protect the area from future flooding.

The Arno River crosses Florence, and passes below the Ponte Vecchio,  the Ponte alle Grazie and the Santa Trinita bridge.

The Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge"),  is a medieval stone arch bridge over the Arno River, still have shops built along it, as was once common. Butchers initially occupied the shops; the present tenants are jewelers, art dealers and souvenir sellers. It has always hosted shops and merchants who displayed their goods on tables before their premises. The back shops (retrobotteghe) that can be seen from the river, were added in the seventeenth century.

In 1900, to honour and mark the fourth century of the birth of the great Florentine sculptor and master goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, the leading goldsmiths of the bridge commissioned the most renowned Florentine sculptor of the time Raffaello Romanelli to create a bronze bust of Cellini to stand atop a fountain in the middle of the Eastern side of the bridge, where it stands to this day.

A few steps from the Ponte Vecchio, stands the church of Santo Stefano, one of the oldest churches of Florence. The lower part of the facade retains Romanesque elements, while the upper part was rebuilt during the Gothic renewal. The interior was renovated during the Baroque period. It is full of stunning works of art and decoration, including the beautiful staircase by Buontalenti, with a marble balustrade, built in 1574. Numerous paintings also remain from the Renaissance period.

Santo Stefano is now deconsecrated church, and is now used as auditorium for music performances. The church’s atmosphere becomes incredibly magic in the night, when the lights turn down and the music fills the religious silence, and the audience immerse itself in the unforgettable experience of the union of Art, Architecture and Music.

Florence, view from Piazzale Michelangelo

Piazzale Michelangelo (Michelangelo Square) is a square with a panoramic view of Florence. This is the best place to watch over Florence anytime of the day, it is an iconic panoramic view of Florence. 

The view embraces the town centre of Florence from Forte Belvedere to Santa Croce, the Ponte Cecchio bridge and other bridges crossing the Arno, the Duomo, Palazzo Vecchio, and other famous spots.

This Florentine piazza was designed by architect Giuseppe Poggi and built in 1869 on a hill just at the South bank of the Arno river. The square, dedicated to the Renaissance sculptor Michelangelo, has bronze replica of his famous David statue.  

David is the most iconic statue in Florence, and one of the most memorable.  Although many statues of David have been created before, this masterpiece by Michelangelo is unique.

 It is unique in particular in the way the stance David is standing in. Other artists show David slaying the giant Goliath, or standing over Goliath’s corpse, Michelangelo’s statue is different.

In this statue, David is just standing there, looking over his shoulder at the moment directly after challenging Goliath, at a moment prior to one of the most defining points in history.

David entered the battle with only five stones and a slingshot. David won this battle, and  punctuated the victory by slicing off Goliath’s head and showing it to his enemies. In time, he became king of Israel, bringing forth the most prosperous time in Israeli history.

After beating Goliath, David sang the Psalm 151:

I went out to attack the Philistine,

    who cursed me by his idols.

But after I uncovered his own sword,

        I cut off his head.

    So I removed the shame

    from the Israelites. 

Driving further 8 kilometres northeast of Florence, we arrive at Fiesole a town on a scenic height above Florence. Since the 14th century the city has always been considered a getaway for the upper class of Florence and up to this day Fiesole remains the richest municipality in the whole of Tuscany.

At centre of Fiesole, there is a square called Piazza Mino. The square is named after a Florentine sculptor Mino da Fiesole. Therefore this piazza has been used for expedition of art sculptures honouring Mino da Fiesole.

Further towards the west of Fiesole there is a monastery called St. Francis monastery, it is a Franciscan monastery. The facade of the church is Gothic in style with a gabled roof. The convent is located to the right of the church. The convent building is surrounded by three cloisters.