ABSTRACT
The poetry of the Medici springtime owes much to the relentless versatility of the accomplished Ghiberti Lorenzo, and if, in retrospect, his literary significance seems to lie most in the favourable conditions which he created for poets and authors rather than in his own writing, he made his own mark. Lorenzo’s literary reputation, however, does not depend solely on his skill as an organiser, as an impresario who could persuade bankers, statesmen and princes as well as poets to follow his own inclination. Poliziano’s most significant Latin poems, the cantos which comprise the Sylvae, were written to serve as prefaces to lectures on the principal classical authors. Throughout Poliziano’s Italian poems it is apparent that his inherent poetical ability was at least equal to his learning and scholarship. Poetry nearer to the plastic arts than in the Medici springtime and there is no difficulty in detecting the affinity between Poliziano’s poem and paintings of Botticelli and Gozzoli in particular.
