The Medici of Florence: The Art of Politics, Power and Propaganda in the Renaissance

Join us at V&A South Kensington as we explore how in an age of conflict, strife and religious warfare one family more than any other would emerge and come to dominate Florentine culture and ultimately rise to power in Rome – The Medici.  They, above all, would recognise early on the power of art to shape people’s minds and how it could be used to reinvent themselves as the benevolent benefactors of the Florentine Republic.  In their pursuit of dominance, the Medici family would utilize financial power by not only creating the modern banking system as we now recognise it but would also funnel vast quantities of this wealth into art and in the process create the phenomena of the superstar artist.  Their support of Florentine artistic production, from the outset, would be responsible for fostering the careers of Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Raphael to name but a few.