Palazzo
Vecchio, the Senate ordering the gates to be closed against them;
protesting at the same time that they had no thought of recalling
Cosimo. At this time Eugenius IV, hunted out of Rome by the populace,
was living at the convent of S. Maria Novella. Perhaps fearing the
tumult, perhaps bribed or persuaded by Cosimo's friends, he sent
Giovanni Vitelleschi to desire Rinaldo to speak with him. Rinaldo
agreed, and marched with all his company to S. Maria Novella. They
appear to have remained in conference all night, and at dawn Rinaldo
dismissed his men. What passed between them no man knows, but early in
October 1434 the recall of Cosimo was decreed and Rinaldo with his son
went into exile. Cosimo was received, Machiavelli tells us, "with no
less ostentation and triumph than if he had obtained some extraordinary
victory; so great was the concourse of people, and so high the
demonstration of their joy, that by an unanimous and universal
concurrence he was saluted as the Benefactor of the people and the
Father of his country." Thus the Medici established themselves in
Florence. Practically Prince of the Commune, though never so in name,
Cosimo set himself to consolidate his power by a judicious munificence
and every political contrivance known to him. Thus, while he enriched
the city with such buildings as his palace in Via Larga, the Convent of
S. Marco, the Church of S. Lorenzo, he helped Francesco Sforza to
establish himself as tyrant of Milan, and in the affairs of Florence
always preferred war to peace, because he knew that, beggared, the
Florentines must come to him. Yet it was in his day that Florence became
the artistic and intellectual capital of Italy. Under his patronage and
enthusiasm the Renaissance for the first time seems to have become sure
of itself. The humanists, the architects, the sculptors, the painters
are, as it were, seized with a fury of creation; they discover new
forms, and express themselves completely, with beauty and truth. For a
moment realism and beauty have kissed one another: for reality is not
enough, as Alberti will find some day, it is necessary to find and to
express the beauty there also. It was an age that was learning to enjoy
itself. The world and the beauty of the world laid bare, partly by the
study of the ancients, partly by observation, really almost a new
faculty, were enough; that conscious paganism which later, but for the
great disaster, might have emancipated the worl