Lorenzo de' Medici, called Il Magnifico, has…

Lorenzo de' Medici, called Il Magnifico, has become the protector of Florentine Jews, supporting Jewish scholarship, Talmudic studies and medicine, and guaranteeing favorable living conditions to the Jewish community.

He oversees the so-called “Golden Age of Florence,” in which there is much interaction between Christians and Jews.

Florentine architect Giuliano da Sangallo, first mentioned in historical records of the 1470s in 1483, builds for the Medici the Villa di Poggio a Caiano near Florence, a model of the luxurious, humanist rural villa.

Under Medici patronage he builds, in 1484-85, the church of Santa Maria delle Carceri in Prato: a simple, monumental structure, displaying clearly, as does all his work, the influence of Brunelleschi and Alberti.

He also builds two notable palaces in Florence, the Palazzo Strozzi, constructed in 1489-90, and the Palazzo Gondi, begun in 1490.