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Lorenzo de' Medici by Girolamo Macchietti (16th century)
Lorenzo de' Medici (Template:IPA-it, 1 January 1449 – 8 April 1492[1]) was an Italian statesman, magnate, diplomat, politician and patron of scholars, artists and poet and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic and the most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy.[2][3][4]
Lorenzo was also a patron, he is well-known for his sponsorship of artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo. He also held the balance of power within the Italic League, an alliance of states that stabilized political conditions on the Italian peninsula for decades, and his life coincided with the mature phase of the Italian Renaissance and the Golden Age of Florence.[5] The Peace of Lodi of 1454 that he helped maintain among the various Italian states collapsed with his death. He is buried in the Medici Chapel in Florence.
Laurentian Library[]
Lorenzo's grandfather, Cosimo de' Medici, was the first member of the Medici family to lead the Republic of Florence and run the Medici Bank simultaneously. As one of the wealthiest men in Europe, Cosimo spent a very large portion of his fortune on government and philanthropy. Cosimo had started a collection of books that became the Medici Library (also called the Laurentian Library), and Lorenzo expanded it. Lorenzo's agents retrieved from the East large numbers of classical works, and he employed a large workshop to copy his books and disseminate their content across Europe. He supported the development of humanism through his circle of scholarly friends, including the philosophers Marsilio Ficino, Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.[6] They studied Greek philosophers and attempted to merge the ideas of Plato with Christianity.
References[]
- ↑ Medici, Lorenzo de', detto il Magnifico Enciclopedia Italiana
- ↑ Parks, Tim (2008). Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysics, and Art in Fifteenth-Century Florence. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 288.
- ↑ Fact about Lorenzo de' Medici (2008). Retrieved on 2008-11-15.
- ↑ Kent, F.W. (2006). Lorenzo De' Medici and the Art of Magnificence. USA: JHU Press, 248. ISBN 0-8018-8627-9.
- ↑ Gene Brucker, Living on the Edge in Leonardo's Florence, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), pp. 14–15.
- ↑ Schmidt, Eike D. (2013). "Mäzene auf den Spuren der Antike" (in German). Damals 45 (3): 36–43.