Cosimo's Patronage During The Italian Renaissance

Patrons by definition are a people who give financial or other support to a person, organization, cause, or activity. During the 15th century powerful patrons rose and by that time, Italy was not a unified nation, but some state cities developed more and more power, the leaders of these cities became very powerful themselves. The leaders were dukes, counts, lords, cardinals, or even elected city representatives. Those leaders established their own courts and hired painters or sculptors to be the official court artists. Also Italy was also filling up with wealthy merchants and bankers that developed personal fortunes from a lucrative market of international trade.

During that time, people had power and were very proud of their power and liked
Most famous of all these were Cosimo de Medici head of the Medici banking family and defacto rule of Florence. Cosimo was one of the first to truly embrace artifictics patronage as away to both guarantee his own legacy and to honor the church, since the mostly commissioned art for major churches. Under Cosimo’s patronage, Michelozzi designed the famous Palazzo Medici, Gozzoli painted the magi chapel etc. Below are some of the images:

Medici employed Bottocelli one of the artists of the 15th century and a member of Larenzo’s circle of peots and scholars. Botticelli’s paintings matched the cerebral refinement of Florence’s humanists, especially the Neoplatonic philosophers, who saw beauty as a way to approach an understanding of the divine.

One of the artists employed by the Medici was Botticelli, a member of Lorenzo's circle of poets. Botticelli's figures defined by line rather than modeled with light and shadow. According to Samuel H. Kress Collection, economic and political disasters put Florence in the hands of Savonarola's radical religious reformers. Volunteers patrolled the streets, and citizens consigned luxury goods, including untold numbers of paintings and other works of art, to the consuming flames of