Machiavelli's Art
Stories of Is and Should

Art

Consider Holbein’s Ambassadors as a portrait showing the power of instrumental knowledge, and the split between the moral language for the vanitas skull and the web of conflicting but engaging interests brought together by the ambassadors. Consider also images from Renaissance Perspectives. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V changes the traditional motto Ne plus ultra (don’t go beyond limits) to Plus ultra (move always on). Portraits show the individuality of a Pietro Aretino, a Baldassare Castiglione, a Florentine youth or Pope Paul III. Consider the civic images of David and the condotierre Bartolomeao Coleoni, the influences radiating from a Florentine Venus
or Mary, from a Venetian Venus or Mary. Inhabit buildings in particular settings. Now consider how a partial perspective may be more convincing than an idealization, how a particular viewpoint emphasizing present perspectives, perhaps a close-up, may serve an individual better than a universal abstraction. Man, the measure
of all things appears anew in Vesalius’ new take on vanitas: his spirit fades leaving fleshless skeleton, but his freshening insight grows generation by generation.

Good Rulers

Machiavelli distinguishes between two uses of “good”
to distinguish between professions of ideal morality and actual practices of successful princes ruling in particular times and places. The good, functioning as a noun, refers to God’s will, and to all that implements God’s will. Good, functioning as an adjective, however, is relative: a good bomb kills more people than a bad bomb. Machiavelli considers a good Prince to be one who can maintain power by repelling invaders and who can establish sufficient respect to quiet internal rebellion.

Virtue

Virtue appears as a key term in Machiavelli. Among shifting contexts, ingenuity serves as a fruitful synonym. To turn back attacks by invading armies and to earn sufficient respect to quiet rebellions from within, the prince should have the power of lions and the cleverness of foxes. Such conjunction of temperaments is anything but usual. Machiavelli dismisses contemporary accounts of ideal princes as possessing all virtues by stating the obvious fact that no such ideal is observable in the Italy of his day.
A generation earlier Lorenzo Valla had shown the deed of Constantine, establishing temporal powers for the Pope, to be a forgery. The language of the deed included numerous terms and constructions in Latin not in use until centuries later. Valla argued also that a ruler with the ambition and proficiency to conquer and build an empire would not have the temperament to give it all away to be good. Centuries of war marked disputed authority contested by the Popes and the Holy Roman Emperor. Consider the Florentine flags, the Guelf red lily on white ground competing with the Ghibelline white lily on red ground of warring Florentine factions. But in Machiavelli’s time the few surviving leaders of mercenary troops who rose to power appeared as living testimony to a new, renaissance temperament, where inheritance diminishes as a power, where those who can rule rise to rule.

Rulers, Subjects, and Territories

Machiavelli takes self-interest to be evident in principalities, where a ruling class and a subject class live. Rulers will seek privileges for themselves, their families and their associates at the expense of subjects. Subjects will allow such privilege as the price for protection and productive work. Among rulers, princes rule relatively small territories, while kings, emperors and sultans rule relatively large areas. Before Machiavelli five powers had divided Italy: Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome and Naples. Whenever one would gain substantially in power, temporary confederations of others would oppose further expansion. A different power then gaining ascendancy, a new confederation would arise in opposition. How such powers ebbed and flowed is a matter of considerable interests to Machiavelli. His city, Florence, and its rival, Venice, were republics, a form of government very unusual in Italy. Florence and Venice operated in distinctively differing ways, with customs and values frequently opposed. The ingenious and self-sufficient Florentines, adept at book learning and invention, competed with subtle Venetians, merchants equally at home with Christian European and Muslim Ottoman. Othello’s Iago, a Venetian passed over for the Florentine Cassio, demonstrates his contempt for Florentine intellect. Audiences, appreciating Iago as a Venetian standard bearer, see the subtleties of his observations and actions as Venetian to the core. But English audiences alternatively see his actions as the work of the devil. Machiavelli considers the artificial separation of ideal virtue from shrewd stagecraft a disservice to Italian interests. He emphasizes Papal Rome, newly enriched with the selling of offices and indulgences, and newly armed, as intent on seizing temporal control of expanding territory. Alexander VI served not only as the God’s Prince, but also in the field as a military commander. In Milan, rulers newly established through military prowess replaced hereditary custom with individual ability. Naples, a hereditary fiefdom of Spain, seeking royal alliances through marriages, served as a point of entry for foreign invasions.

Foreign Alliances and Invasions

Machiavelli accepted the relative stability of endemic wars in Italy as a practical compromise, less than ideal, but more than wishful thinking. Understanding the circumstances in which Italian princes lived and acted is a necessary precondition for later adapting his approach to other times, places and situations. A famous claim by Machiavelli is that love is less necessary than fear to a prince. Having both would be ideal (and may for a time in unusual circumstances be possible). Respect, Machiavelli argues, is essential for ruling, and respect is not a product of equality. But wars involving foreign invasions superior in numbers and in financing, overwhelmed Italian powers. His attempt to elevate an Italian prince to preeminence through The Prince stems neither from ideal claims nor from cynicism, but from the deterioration of Italian powers under the influence of invading forces from France and Spain. With advances in navigation, with enormous increases in military funds available from credit, with advances in weapons, The King of France, the Spanish Holy Roman Emperor and the Ottoman Sultan periodically tempted Italian rulers to alliances with the offer of soldiers or parts of territories gained. The Papacy and Venice profited from such alliances initially, but were unable to limit the growing influence of such powers. Today’s ally would likely be tomorrow’s enemy.

Alexander VI and Caesare Borgia

The sale of offices and the collection of monies from indulgences raised extraordinary funds, and the new exercise of temporal power over territories near Rome led Alexander to support foreign invasions to remove enemies and to control increasing territory from foreign alliances. The Pope’s ingenuity in fund-raising, his establishment of a massive standing army, and his alliances with foreign powers for particular territorial expansion were unprecedented. But the previous detent involving five Italian spheres of influence was powerless to resist the invasions of King and Emperor. Machiavelli’s account of Alexander continues to raise controversy. But Machiavelli is less approving or disapproving of his character and actions than exploring and developing his story as suited to the times in which he lived and ruled.

The account of Alexander’s natural son Caesare Borgia in the Romagna exemplifies Machiavelli’s approach to history. He begins not with principles, but with a commonly accepted description of land and society. Weak rulers assaulted and robbed subjects. Their weakness was not an absence of power, but the exercise of power without consideration of long-term consequences. At the mercy of such rulers, more and more people in the Romagna themselves took to violence and robbery. Caesare Borgia drives out current rulers, and places in power a good governor, Ramiro de Orca, a cruel and able man. His governor is not ideally good (no human being is), is not seen as good for all situations by Caesare Borgia, and will soon, by his very success in limiting assault and robbery, lose office and life. An able governor in part because he is cruel, a letter of the law practitioner of justice, he is favored by his subjects when assaults and robbery are diminishing. But his cruelty (impartial but strict) in peaceable times increasingly offends the very citizens who had earlier praised him as their liberator. In the town square at Cesena citizens find him cut in half. The governor, to whom Caesare Borgia had accorded the fullest authority (but the fullest authority still subordinates him to Caesare Borgia), appears now to a liberated citizenry, happy to be free of cruelty, but fully aware that the man who has liberated them is capable of any cruelty instrumental in gaining enduring power. The Italian terms describe the citizens as satisfied and stupefied. Satisfaction arises from the perceived freedom from cruel rulership, but stupefaction  (the term in Italian use describes the animal fatally stunned by the slaughter-house butcher) from the suppressed awareness of Caesare Borgia as the author of this show of power.

Stagecraft in Machiavelli and Shakespeare

Machiavelli would agree with Shakespeare’s provocative line, “All the world’s a stage.” He would further recognize that many different plays appear on the world stage, each more or less suited to current, and shifting circumstances, and each potentially in conflict with others. As the standard bearer (the ensign)  of Venice, Iago has exemplifies the subtle Venetian. Othello’s frequent identification of Iago as honest Iago carries an ambiguity. Iago is to be insightful, to be virtuous. But his insight and his virtue depend on a very Machiavllian (and Venetian) practice of weaving a web from divergent particulars. Othello abounds in opportunities to appreciate how well Iago, nothing if not critical, can see the self-deceptions of others, not least of all in the trust he is accorded by those who expect his character to be realistic towards others and idealistic towards themselves. Elizabethan audiences would recognize Iago as a Machiavel, a devlish imposter sinful to the core. But Elizabethan successes, notably in staging events, identify Machiavels, in different circumstances, as subtle builders of new worlds. And the audiences who condemn Iago appreciate his function As essential to their entertainment. Praise then as now at times for the story of should  coexis with material rewards for stories of is.