Cosimo de' Medici

Cosimo de' Medici was born in Florence in 1389 into a family of bankers that had already begun to accumulate wealth. He inherited the bank at a moment when Florence was a republic of competing factions, and he learned early that money could buy influence without ever holding office.

For most of his life he governed the city indirectly, through allies, loans, and the careful distribution of patronage. Exiled once by a rival faction, he returned in triumph within a year and thereafter arranged the republic's elections so quietly that Florence remained a commonwealth in name while he was its first citizen in fact.

He spent a fortune on churches, libraries, and scholarship: he funded the convent of San Marco, collected manuscripts, and supported the scholars who revived the study of Plato. The Palazzo Medici and its chapel were built to his commission, and the artists and humanists he employed set the terms for the Renaissance that his grandson would inherit. He died in 1464, honored as Pater Patriae.

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