Lorenzo the Magnificent, born in 1450, married Clarice Orsini in 1468. There were born from this alliance, besides the children who died in the cradle, three sons and four daughters. In 1492, Pietro succeeded to the offices and dignity of his father, and lost them in 1494; Giovanni mounted the Pontifical throne, and became the illustrious Leo X.; Giuliano died Duke of Nemours and "_prince du gouvernement_" of Florence. Of the four daughters, Maddalena became the wife of Francesco Cybo, Count dell Anguillara, Lucrezia married Giacopo Salviati; and Contessina, Piero Ridolfi. Luigia was the youngest, according to certain authorities; Count Pompeo Litta, however, in his _Illustri Famiglie Italiane_, places her in order of birth immediately after Maddalena. Whichever it may be, Clarice Orsini dying in 1488, Lorenzo contracted no other alliance, and, at the end of four years, followed his wife to the tomb. We have no means of determining the age Luigia had reached at the time of this melancholy event; but, as her marriage was then talked of, we cannot give her less than from fifteen to sixteen years. Michel Angelo, born the 6th March 1475,[52] wanted a month of his seventeenth year when he lost the generous protector of his early youth.
It was in 1490 that Angelo first went to live in the house of the Magnificent Lorenzo. Apprenticed, the 1st April 1488, to the "master of painting," Domenico di Tommasso del Ghirlandajo, he astonished the grave and learned artist by his rapid progress and fire of imagination. Ghirlandajo, finding his disposition more decided for sculpture than for the pencil, hastened to recommend him to Lorenzo, who, in his gardens, situated near the convent of Saint Mark, was exerting himself to create a school capable of restoring to Florence the glorious days of the Ghiberti and the Donatello. It was no easy task for the prince of the Florentine government to buy the child of genius from the timorous avarice of his father, Lodovico Buonarotti.[53] At length, an office in the financial administration of the state, conferred upon the father, and a provision of five ducats monthly settled on the son, but of which it was agreed that Lodovico should derive the profit, conquered the scruples of the old citizen; and Michel Angelo, adopted as it were, among the children of Lorenzo, was enabled, at his own pleasure, to divide his hours between the practice of his favourite art, and the lessons that Pietro, Giovanni, and Giuliano received at "the Platonic Academy," of which the illustrious Politiano was director.