Cosimo de` Medici and the Florentine Renaissance
The most powerful figure in the political and economic life of early Renaissance Florence, Cosimo de' Medici was also its greatest patron of the arts. In her vigorously argued and exhaustively documented study, Kent (history, Univ. of California, Riverside) has examined virtually every facet of Medicean patronage between 1420 and 1464. In doing so, she uncovers and explicates the complex of civic, religious, personal, and dynastic impulses that undergird Cosimo's almost innumerable sacred and secular commissions. The result is a perspective that forcefully manifests the patron's participation while delineating the social and intellectual ambiance in which he flourished and which engendered the values and ideas articulated in the works he commissioned. The complex interaction among patron, artist, and society as well as consumer, creator, and viewer are propounded with a depth of historical understanding not often found in the literature of art history. Kent's immensely learned, contextually alert, and provocative investigation establishes a standard against which all future studies of patronage will be measured.DRobert Cahn, Fashion Inst. of Technology, New YorkCopyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.