If one city is identified with the Renaissance, it is Florence. In the fifteenth century this republic in Tuscany, with perhaps forty to fifty thousand people after the plague, produced an astonishing concentration of artists, architects and scholars. Much of their work was paid for by one family of bankers.

A city of wool and money

Florence grew rich from the wool and cloth trade and from banking. In 1252 it began minting a gold coin, the florin, which became a standard currency of European trade. Florentine banks lent money to kings and popes across Europe. The city was governed as a republic, at least in name, with power shared among the guilds and wealthy families through councils whose members were chosen partly by lot. In practice, the richest families competed for control.

The Medici

The Medici family founded a bank in 1397 that became one of the most powerful in Europe, serving as bankers to the papacy. Cosimo de' Medici (1389 to 1464) was briefly exiled by rival families in 1433 but returned in 1434 and became the city's unofficial ruler. He held few formal offices, preferring to control elections and policy through allies and money. He spent lavishly on churches, libraries and scholars, partly from piety and partly to win prestige and loyalty.

His grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449 to 1492), led Florence from 1469. A poet himself, he gathered artists and scholars around him, including the young Michelangelo, whom he took into his household. Under Lorenzo, Florence was a center of Renaissance culture, though the family bank was declining.

Patronage

Renaissance art was not made for galleries. It was commissioned by patrons, wealthy individuals, families, guilds, churches and governments, who usually specified subject, materials and price in contracts. Patrons paid for art to honor God, to win salvation, to display wealth and taste, and to strengthen their power. The Medici commissioned chapels, palaces and paintings that associated their family with piety and beauty. Artists were often treated as skilled craftsmen rather than lone geniuses, though the most famous gained great prestige.

The Pazzi conspiracy

Medici power provoked enemies. On 26 April 1478, during Easter Mass in Florence's cathedral, conspirators from the rival Pazzi family, with the support of Pope Sixtus IV and the archbishop of Pisa, attacked Lorenzo and his brother Giuliano. Giuliano was stabbed to death. Lorenzo, wounded, escaped into the sacristy. The people of Florence rallied to the Medici, and the conspirators were hunted down and killed, the archbishop hanged from a window of the government palace. The episode showed the violence beneath Renaissance splendor.

Savonarola

After Lorenzo's death in 1492, Florence faced crisis. In 1494, as a French army invaded Italy, the Medici were expelled. A Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, became the city's most powerful figure. He preached fiery sermons against the luxury, corruption and paganism he saw in Renaissance culture and in the church, and predicted divine punishment. In 1497, his followers held a “bonfire of the vanities,” burning mirrors, cosmetics, fine clothes, books and artworks considered sinful. His attacks on the pope led to his excommunication. In 1498 he was arrested, tortured and burned in the main square. The Medici returned in 1512 and later became hereditary dukes.

Libraries and a Platonic circle

Cosimo de' Medici also invested in books. He paid for a library at the Dominican convent of San Marco in Florence, opened in the 1440s and often described as one of the first libraries in Europe open to scholars beyond its owners. The family's own collection later became the Laurentian Library, housed in a building designed by Michelangelo. Around Marsilio Ficino gathered an informal circle of scholars, later called the Platonic Academy, who met at the Medici villa at Careggi to discuss Plato and the harmony between ancient philosophy and Christian faith.

Two Medici popes

The family's reach extended to Rome. Lorenzo's son Giovanni became Pope Leo X in 1513, and his nephew Giulio became Pope Clement VII in 1523. Leo X was a lavish patron of the arts; his sale of indulgences to fund the rebuilding of St. Peter's Basilica provoked Martin Luther's protest in 1517.

Worked example: art and power

Consider a Medici chapel decorated with frescoes in which family members appear among the figures in a holy scene. This really happened: in Benozzo Gozzoli's frescoes of the Journey of the Magi in the Medici Palace chapel, painted around 1459, members of the Medici family appear in the procession. What did such art do?

• Religious. It honored God and the biblical story.
• Political. It placed the family in a sacred, glorious setting, suggesting that their leadership was natural and blessed.
• Social. It displayed wealth and taste to visitors and rivals.
• Artistic. It gave a talented painter work, income and the freedom to experiment within the patron's wishes.

Renaissance art was never only about beauty. It was also about power. Today, too, wealthy donors fund museums, buildings and universities that bear their names. The Renaissance invites us to enjoy the art while asking who paid for it, and why.