Many of those gems, now in the Museo Nazionale in Naples, bear images described in Picatrix, an eleventh-century Arabic compendium of astral magic and a source for De Vita Coelitus Comparanda-On Receiving Life from the Heavens (1489) by Marsilio Ficino (d. Portents of death and apocalypse were of great interest during the late fifteenth century, (4) and no doubt Masi knew that Lorenzo kept an extraordinary collection of Hellenistic engraved gems at the Palazzo Medici. Whether you are this or a new star Whose splendor adorns the sky, We call upon you to grant, oh spirit, our prayer: Take away some of your splendor That our eyes, which want to cry forever, Can, without harm, see you happy. In the following sonnet Lorenzo meditates on the brightness of a star whose extraordinary appearance derives from the spirit of beautiful Simonetta Cataneo, the recently deceased lover of his murdered brother Guiliano: Oh bright star, whose radiance Takes the light from the stars around you, Why do you shine so out of custom, Why do you contend now with the sun? Perhaps those lovely eyes, taken from us By cruel death, who has presumed too much, You have gathered to yourself, that by their light You can presume to demand Apollo's chariot. But, more likely for Lorenzo, the art he may have employed consisted not of drawing down demons to reside in gems, but of attracting benevolent planetary influences in preparation for his soul's ascent. Perhaps Lorenzo il Magnifico, heir to the arts of Solomon, really had trapped a spirit and released it as his own end drew near. And finally, an unusually bright star loomed over the villa at Careggi, fell, and disappeared at the moment of Lorenzo's death. One of the two lions kept as mascots of Florence killed the other. Flames burned on the fortress at Arezzo, and beneath the walls a she-wolf howled. For three nights torches moved from Medici graves at Fiesole to Careggi. A gilded ball, the Medici palle emblem, was blasted by a bolt of lightning. A woman ran suddenly from Santa Maria Novella, screaming that a bull with flaming horns was destroying the church.

(1) Present at Lorenzo's deathbed, Poliziano, too, noted the storm, as well as other portents. The storm was caused by the release of a demon that Lorenzo had kept imprisoned in a ring for many years. Florentine coppersmith Bartolomeo Masi recorded in his diary in April 1492 that as Lorenzo de' Medici lay dying, a violent storm damaged the Duomo's bell tower and buildings in the Palazzo Medici neighborhood.

Far cry 6 lorenzo children