Ep. 55: Lorenzo the Magnificent

The Court of Lorenzo de' Medici Part 1: Lorenzo the Magnificent 

To engage Lorenzo de' Medici's court in Florence, there is no better topic to introduce the subject than the man himself. This episode takes a glance at the life of Lorenzo as the quintessential "Renaissance Man." In his lifetime, not only was he a devoted head of his family, but a clever statesman, a patron of art, literature, and philosophy, and an exceptional architect and poet. 

More masterfully, Lorenzo had to combine all of these to create decades of cultural production which made concrete the fledgling ideas of his grandfather Cosimo into what we define today as the Renaissance. Through his civic engagement, Lorenzo inspired a generation of patronage that would not only inspire Florentines, but the wider world of European nobility. 

Central to Lorenzo's narrative is the bloody drama of the Pazzi Conspiracy, the graceful beauty of large-scale mythological painting, and the revival of carnal and evocative vernacular poetry. 

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