FREE ESSAY ON MEDICI PATRONAGE

MEDICI PATRONAGE

Cosimo de' Medici (1389?1464), the fabulously wealthy banker who became the leading
citizen of Florence in the fifteenth century, spent lavishly as the city' s most
important patron of art and literature. This remarkable book is the first comprehensive
examination of the whole body of works of art and architecture commissioned by Cosimo and
his sons. By looking closely at this spectacular group of commissions, we gain an
entirely new picture of their patron and of the patron' s point of view. Recurrent themes
in the commissions--from Fra Angelico' s San Marco altarpiece to the Medici
Palace--indicate the main interests to which Cosimo' s patronage gave visual expression.
Dale Kent offers new insights and perspectives on the individual objects comprising the
Medici oeuvre by setting them within the context of civic and popular culture in early
Renaissance Florence, and of Cosimo' s life as the leader of the Medici lineage and the
dominant force in the governing elite. 
From the wealth of available documentation on Cosimo de' Medici' s life, the author
considers how Cosimo' s own experience influenced his patronage; how the culture of
Renaissance Florence provided a common idiom for the patron, his artists, and his
audience; what he preferred and intended as a patron; and how focusing on his patronage
of art alters the image of him that is based on his roles as banker and politician.
Cosimo was as much a product as a shaper of Florentine society, Kent concludes. She
identifies civic patriotism and devotion as the main themes of his oeuvre and argues that
religious imperatives may well have been more important than political ones in shaping
the art for which he was responsible and its reception