The city-states of Italy favored merce-
naries as an alternative to levies of the citi-
zens. Bankers, industrialists, and merchants
did not want to go to war, and disrupt the
commerce that was essential to their pros-
perity. Instead, they hired condottieri (a
word that means “contractors”) to fight
their battles. The best mercenary captains
were well paid and in very high demand,
and were honored by their patron cities
with noble titles and monuments. Not ev-
eryone in Renaissance Italy appreciated
the service of mercenaries, however. The
diplomat and political philosopher Nic-
colo Machiavelli detested mercenaries as a
symptom of a divided and weak Italian
nation, one that was losing out while rival
societies were organizing themselves into
powerful, centralized kingdoms.
The French king Charles VII organized
a standing army of mercenaries, organized
intocompagnies d’ordonnance. These per-
manent armies of France as well as the
Holy Roman Empire invaded Italy in the
late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries,
and eventually put an end to the indepen-
dence of the Italian city-states. By the end
of the Renaissance, mercenary armies that
were hired for short campaigns were obso-
lete. They were replaced by standing na-
tional armies, which were raised by levies,
and permanently garrisoned in strong-
holds.
SEEALSO: Macchiavelli, Niccolo; Montefel-
tro, Federigo da
Michelangelo Buonarroti .................
(1475–1564)
Italian sculptor, fresco painter, architect,
and poet, whose works have become popu-
lar and world-renowned examples of Re-
naissance art. Born in the town of Caprese,
near Florence, he was the son of Ludovico
de Buonarroti, podesta of the town of Ca-
prese, and Francesca Neri. His father sent
him to study with Francesco Galeota, a
scholar of Urbino. At a young age Mich-
elangelo took an interest in painting, and
at thirteen he joined the studio of Do-
menico Ghirlandaio. His ambition to be
an artist, however, was opposed by his fa-
ther, who saw painters and sculptors as
lowly craftsmen and wanted his son to be-
come a merchant and civic leader.
Michelangelo’s talent earned him an invi-
tation from Lorenzo de’ Medici, a distant
cousin to his father, to join the Medici
court, then a center of Renaissance learn-
ing and art. Medici had organized a school
of sculpture in the Garden of San Marco,
near the San Lorenzo church, where Mich-Michelangelo’s “David.” PHOTOGRAPH BYSU-
SAND. ROCK.REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.Michelangelo Buonarroti