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Jacopo de' Pazzi — Description

Jacopo de’ Pazzi was a bit more… tangential to the 1478 attack on the Medici than his nephew Francesco was. Born in 1423, Jacopo was the youngest son of the Pazzi patriarch, Andrea de’ Pazzi, but he grew to become the powerful banking family's poster child. When Andrea died in October 1445, Jacopo was the one who inherited the family house, and all the incredibly lucrative businesses that came with it. On top of that, Jacopo served as a Lord Prior of Florence first in July 1455 and again in July 1463, then got the big upgrade to Gonfaloniere in January 1469, and he was also knighted because he was just such a good boy. He had a good thing going, and enjoyed his prestigious company in the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, so he was a bit on the fence when his nephew Francesco hobbled all the way from Rome asking Jacopo to be the figurehead in the Pope’s murderous revenge plot against Lorenzo. Oh, sorry, the Pope’s nephew's murderous revenge plot against Lorenzo. Sixtus insisted that oh no his holy office could never condone murder eventhoughitwouldbeveryconvienientifsomeoneaxedtheMediciforme cough-
Now, Jacopo's relationship with Lorenzo wasn't perfect, sure, but it took some convincing to put his own neck on the line the way Francesco was proposing. Jacopo had a reputation to uphold! Or… protect, at least. While he did all the usual empty charity work and kissing babies that rich assholes always do to pretend they like all these filthy poor people, behind closed doors, Jacopo was a bit of a stingy bastard who cheated his workers and loved to gamble the shit out of his Scrooge McDuck wealth. Eventually, though, Jacopo said ehhhhh fuck it why not. So, on April 26, 1478, Francesco and his homies ambushed Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano during High Mass under il Duomo, while Jacopo rode out into the town square with about a hundred mercenaries crying “People and Liberty!”, which was the traditional signal for civilians to grab their pitchforks and revolt against a tyrant. The people, in turn, started shouting back at him “Palle!”, which roughly translates to “uhhhmm… dude. We like the Medici, and you're a fuckin terrorist”. The Pazzi, it turns out, completely misread the room, and failed to secure the military advantages needed to subdue the populace by force. Lorenzo also survived the attack, and he sure as shit wasn't going to let this blatant act of treason go unpunished. Jacopo had no choice but to abandon the plan and get the hell out of dodge.
Jacopo escaped the city by means of the La Croce Gate, and tried to lay low in a little Tuscan hamlet called Castagno di San Godenzo. The man evidently couldn't keep his head down, though, and he got into a violent altercation the next fuckin day with some local peasants who wanted to turn him over to the authorities. They beat the shit out of him, refused his bribe of seven pieces of gold to just let him commit seppuku, and handed him over to the cops. On the 28th, Jacopo was tried and hanged from the roof of the Palazzo Vecchio, right next to the already-executed body of his nephew Francesco. He was eventually given a Christian burial, but that's a hilarious joke because (at least according to Poliziano) Jacopo was a godless man notorious for blasphemy. Rumor circulated that he used his dying breath to give his soul to the Devil, and the four days of crop-destroying rains that followed his entombment was enough to convince the good citizens of Florence to dig that fucker back up and bury him in a ditch outside the walls. Three weeks later, some punk kids dug him up again just to drag his stank ass corpse through the street in a mockery of a knight's procession and then dump it in the Arno to make him Pisa's problem instead. Talk about going from hero to zero.
Design notes, the only historical depiction of Jacopo explicitly I was able to find is Il Cadavere di Jacopo de’ Pazzi, an 1864 oil painting by Odoardo Borrani, but it's not very helpful. I did come across a handful of images of an elder Pazzi conspiring with Raimondo de’ Pazzi. Um okay Ava, but who the fuck is Raimondo? Well he's… no one, apparently. I had my head scratching for a while until I finally discovered he's a sort of conglomerate character in an 18th century stage play adaptation of the Pazzi Conspiracy by Vittorio Alfieri. His father in the play, while also ahistorical, fills the same roll as Jacopo did irl, and he appears in art as more than just an actual rotting corpse. The ones I referenced were an 1837 painting by Giulio Piatti, an 1837 engraving based on a painting by Carlo Arienti, and an 1861 painting by Cesare Mussini. No one of these sources really came to dominate the silhouette, and it came out a little simplistic, but I also think that works to its benefit in this case. He's simple, but unique, and sometimes that's all I'm looking for.