Literarische Kulturpolitik bei Lorenzo de’ Medici

Abstract

AbstractThis article interprets Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Comento de’ miei sonetti as a tool serving a subtle strategy of politico-cultural self-fashioning. The Comento displays a great variety of divergent philosophical positions, which has created enormous exegetical problems to interpreters over the centuries. Lorenzo’s strategy aims, on the one hand, at boosting the status of his own lyrical production by means of a philosophical auto-exegesis according to the model of Dante’s Vita nova and Convivio, and, on the other hand, at demonstrating the Magnifico’s competence as far as the skillful handling of philosophical theorems is concerned. In doing so, Lorenzo evokes the platonistic topos of the philosopher-king, which clearly implies a claim to power, and simultaneously avoids raising this claim too riskily. This cautious procedure is analogous to modes of Medicean propagandistic self-affirmation in the fields of the visual arts and of architecture.