Gian Gastone de 'Medici

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Gian Gastone, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Gian Gastone de 'Medici (born April 24, 1671 , † July 9, 1737 in Florence ) was the last Grand Duke of Tuscany from the Medici family . He ruled from 1723 to 1737 and was the last male member of the junior line of the family who succeeded the throne. With him, the ruling Medici dynasty died out in the male line.

Life

youth

Gian Gastone was the younger son of Cosimo III. de 'Medici and the Marguerite Louise d'Orléans . He was named Gastone in honor of his maternal grandfather Gaston d'Orléans , who was a brother of King Louis XIII. of France was. Since his parents separated when he was only four years old and his mother moved back to France, he and his siblings were raised by his grandmother Vittoria della Rovere . This hired Cardinal Hieronymus Noris as an educator. The intellectual interests and language skills Gian Gastone earned him the scorn of his pious father, him in a tightly dimensioned apanage sat and refused him the dowry for a marriage to the Portuguese princess Isabel Luísa. The father's elevation to cardinal instead failed due to resistance from Spain, which feared a preponderance of French interest representatives in the conclave .

Gian Gastone as a young man (after Niccolò Cassana, 1690)

Gian Gastone, who suffered from depression at an early age, was married in 1697 to Anna Maria Franziska von Sachsen-Lauenburg , the widow of a German prince. The wedding took place at the court of his brother-in-law, Elector Johann Wilhelm , and his sister Anna Maria Luisa de 'Medici in Düsseldorf . He then lived with his wife first in Reichstadt in Bohemia and at the summer residence of Ploskovice Castle . His wife, who would have preferred to remain a widow and who was considered uneducated, peasant and irascible, is said to have driven him into alcoholism. His depression and homosexuality were also topics of conversation. Disgusted by his wife and the bohemian surroundings, he moved to France the next year. At the behest of his father, he returned to her once more, but then finally separated from her. The marriage remained childless. He went to Prague, where an unrestrained life (gambling debts, lovers, etc.) further damaged his reputation. In the autumn of 1703 he left for Hamburg for a few months. When he returned to Florence in 1708 on his father's orders, his wife refused to follow him. There he stayed away from the court and fell more and more into apathy.

Because his older brother Ferdinando had died childless of syphilis before his father had died in 1713, Gian Gastone became heir to the throne . In the absence of male heirs, the father had a succession plan passed in the Senate, according to which Gian Gastone was to be succeeded by his sister Anna Maria Luisa von der Pfalz, who returned to Florence in 1717 after the death of her husband. France and England approved the succession plan, but Austria opposed it. Together with Spain and the States General, the great powers then agreed in 1718 on the future King Charles III. of Spain as successor; Anna Maria's claims were ignored.

Reign

When Gian Gastone took over the government in 1723 at the age of 52, he ruled a grand duchy in decline. The state coffers were empty, the economy of the cities was bad and beggars dominated the picture. He began with the urgently needed reforms, eased the tax burden of the poor, suspended anti-Semitic laws (including baptism bonuses), ordered the end of public executions and released prisoners. He dismissed the corrupt clerics who had ruled the government up to that point and again allowed the teachings of Galileo Galileo to be disputed at the University of Pisa; after all, his grandfather Ferdinando II was one of its sponsors. Court and people welcomed Gian Gastone's entry into government because he ended the gloomy bigotry that had ruled the country under his father and allowed court balls and public festivals again.

State portrait of Gian Gastone from the year he died in 1737

However, he soon lapsed into indolence again, and his widely known homosexual inclination led to political speculation about the heirless end of Medici rule. He also had a bad relationship with his sister, to whom he resented his unhappy marriage, but maintained close contact with his widowed sister-in-law Violante Beatrix von Bayern , who headed the court and took on many duties for him. Gian Gastone lived almost exclusively in his bedchamber in the Pitti Palace, which was described by visitors as unventilated and dirty. His trusted valet Giuliano Dami looked after him there with young men visiting whom the court called Ruspanti ; However, Dami also sold audiences with the monarch on his own account. In 1729 he appeared in public for the last time, heavily marked by alcoholism. Violante Beatrix died to the great mourning of Gian Gastone in 1731 and his sister took her position at the head of the court.

The great powers continued to disagree on the Tuscan question , and the Spanish-Bourbon succession encountered resistance from Austria. Gian Gastone himself went over to having the private assets of the Medici family and the state assets separated so that his sister could at least inherit the former. In March 1732, Charles of Spain, meanwhile duke in neighboring Parma, came to Tuscany with 30,000 soldiers "to visit". Gian Gastone named him heir to the throne. In 1737, the year Gian Gastone died, Austrian troops occupied the country. After his death on July 9th, he was buried in the Basilica di San Lorenzo . The people mourned him for his reforms.

The Polish war of succession to the throne 1733–38, fought mainly between the French and Spanish Bourbons on the one hand and the Habsburgs on the other, did not lead to a new succession plan until after Gian Gastone's death through the Peace of Vienna in 1738. Charles of Spain ceded the duchies of Parma and Tuscany to the emperor's son-in-law, Franz Stephan of Lorraine , the husband of Maria Theresa and later Emperor Francis I, and in return received the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily. As a result, Tuscany became part of the Habsburg rule , just as Franz Stephen's inherited Duchy of Lorraine became part of France in return . Charles de Brosses wrote in 1739: "The Tuscans would give two thirds of their possessions to get the Medici back and the remaining third to get rid of the Lorraine people."

After Gian Gastone's death in 1737, the private property of the Medici family was divided up by a "family pact" of October 31, 1737; his sister Anna Maria Luisa, widowed Electress of the Palatinate, received the Palazzo Pitti , the art collections of the Uffizi and the city palaces (a huge legacy that she bequeathed to the city of Florence in 1743, which still owns it today) and the new Tuscan Grand Duke Franz von Lothringen received u. a. the remaining Medici villas in the country.

Literature (selection)

Web links

Commons : Gian Gastone de 'Medici  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Young, GF (1920), The Medici: Volume II , London, Vg. John Murray
  2. ^ Paul Strathern, (2003), The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance , London: Vintage. ISBN 978-0-09-952297-3 , page 399 ff.
  3. ↑ Aldrich, Robert; Wotherspoon, Garry (2000): Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History , Volume 1: From Antiquity to the Mid-twentieth Century, London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-15982-1 .
  4. ↑ Young, p. 488
  5. ^ Acton, Harold (1980), The Last Medici , Macmillan, London, ISBN 0-333-29315-0 , p. 308.
predecessor Office successor
Cosimo III. Grand Duke of Tuscany
1723–1737 		Franz II. Stephan
personal data
SURNAME Medici, Gian Gastone de '
BRIEF DESCRIPTION last Grand Duke of Tuscany from the House of Medici
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1671
DATE OF DEATH July 9, 1737
Place of death Florence