Page 404 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Europe

402  IT AL Y AND GREECE

The Florentine Renaissance

Fifteenth-century Italy saw a flowering of the arts and
scholarship unmatched in Europe since Ancient Greek and
Roman times. It was in wealthy Florence that this artistic and
intellectual activity, later dubbed the Renaissance, was at its
most intense. The patronage of the rich banking dynasty, the
Medici, rulers of Florence from 1434, was lavished on the city,
especially under Lorenzo the Magnificent (1469–92), and the Italy in 1492
city aspired to become the new Rome. Architects turned to Republic of Florence
Classical models for inspiration, while the art world, with a Papal States
new understanding of perspective and anatomy, produced a Aragonese possessions
series of painters and sculptors that included such giants as
Donatello, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo.
Giuliano was the Piero de’ Medici, Lorenzo’s
younger son of father, was given the nickname
Piero de’ Medici. “the Gouty.”
The Procession of the Magi
Benozzo Gozzoli’s fresco (1459) in the Palazzo
Medici-Riccardi, Florence, depicts members of
the Medici family and other contemporary
notables. It contains references to the church
council held in Florence in 1439, which, it was
hoped, would effect a reconciliation between
the Church of Rome and the Eastern Church.

Pope Leo X
There were two Medici popes: Giovanni, who
reigned as Leo X (1513–21), and Giulio, who
took his place as Clement VII (1521–34).
Corruption in the church under Leo inspired
Luther and the growth of Protestantism.

1436 Brunelleschi completes 1452
1434 Cosimo de’ Medici comes dome of Florence cathedral Birth of 1464 Death
to power in Florence Leonardo of Cosimo
da Vinci il Vecchio
1425 1450
1420 Martin V 1453 Fall of
re-establishes Constantinople 1469 Lorenzo
papacy in Rome 1435 Publication of On Painting by the Magnificent
Cosimo de’ Alberti, which contains the first system becomes ruler
Medici for the use of linear perspective of Florence

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