Daniel Sharman
Lorenzo de' Medici
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A political, family drama set in Florence in the early 15th century. Cosimo de' Medici finds himself at the helm of his supremely wealthy, banking dynasty family, when his father, Giovanni dies suddenly. However Cosimo is concealing a dangerous secret - Giovanni was murdered.
- (22K)
- 2016-12-09
- Biography, Drama, History
The House of Medici (English: / ˈ m ɛ d ɪ tʃ i / MED-itch-ee, UK also / m ə ˈ d iː tʃ i / mə-DEE-chee, Italian: [ˈmɛːditʃi]) was an Italian banking family and political dynasty that first consolidated power in the Republic of Florence under Cosimo de' Medici during the first half of the 15th century.
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- Birth of The Medici Family
- Cosimo de Medici
- Lorenzo de Medici
- Catherine de Medici
- A New Medici Branch Comes to Power
- Medici Family in Decline
- Sources
The Medici story began around the 12th century when family members from the Tuscan village of Cafaggiolo emigrated to Florence. Through banking and commerce, the Medicis rose to become one of the most important families in Florence. Their influence had declined by the late 14th century, however, when Salvestro de Medici (then serving as gonfaliere,...
Another branch of the family, descended from Salvestro’s distant cousin Giovanni di Bicci de Medici, would begin the great Medici dynasty. Giovanni’s elder son, Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464), rose to political power in 1434 and ruled Florence as an uncrowned monarch for the rest of his life. Known to history as Cosimo the Elder, he lived a spartan l...
Lorenzo de Medici (1449-1492), also known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, was a poet himself, and supported the work of such Renaissance masters as Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo(whom the Medicis commissioned to complete their family tombs in Florence). After Lorenzo’s premature death at the age of 43, his eldest son Piero succee...
Piero’s son, also named Lorenzo, regained power in Florence, and his daughter Catherine de Medici (1519-1589) would become queen of France after marrying King Henry II; three of her four sons would rule France as well. By the early 1520s, few descendants of Cosimo the Elder remained. Giulio de Medici, the illegitimate son of Lorenzo the Magnificent...
At this point, the descendants of Cosimo the Elder’s brother (known as Lorenzo the Elder) came forward to launch a new Medici dynasty. Lorenzo’s great-great-grandson Cosimo (1519-1574) became duke of Florence in 1537, then grand duke of Tuscany in 1569. As Cosimo I, he established absolute power in the region, and his descendants would rule as gran...
In general, the later Medici line renounced the older generation’s republican sympathies and established more authoritarian rule, a change that produced stability in Florence and Tuscany, but led to the region’s decline as a cultural hub. After Ferdinand’s son Cosimo II (who supported the work of the mathematician, philosopher and astronomer Galile...
How the Medici Used Portraits as Propaganda. Smithsonian Magazine. The Medici Family. The Galileo Project. Rice University. Medici Family: Origins and History. The Medici Family.
- 9 min
Medici family, Italian bourgeois family that ruled Florence and, later, Tuscany during most of the period from 1434 to 1737, except for two brief intervals. It provided the Roman Catholic Church with four popes (Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV, and Leon XI) and married into the royal families of Europe.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
In 15th-century Renaissance Florence, the visionary Medici dynasty flexes its power in politics and the arts, risking its rivals' lethal opposition. Watch trailers & learn more.
It takes place in 1429, the year Giovanni de' Medici, head of the family, died. His son Cosimo succeeds him as head of the family bank, the richest in Europe at the time, and fights to preserve his power in Florence. The series reached between four and eight million viewers on original airings.
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