The Medici: Artistic Patronage as Political Power
John Paoletti, Professor of Art History, Wesleyan University.

Medici patronage both in and out of Florence during the fifteenth century revealed uncanny strategies for using art and architecture as powerful, and on occasion extremely threatening, tools of propaganda.

Generations of Medici commissioned works of art—first from artists such as Donatello and Brunelleschi and later from the likes of Botticelli and Verrocchio—that not only broke with traditional forms to establish what we have come to call the Renaissance but sent messages into the culture at large that the Medici were rulers, protectors, and devout citizens who were also intent on taking control of the traditionally republican city of Florence.

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