Giovanni de' Medici

Guido di Pietro is mentioned in June 1423 as Fra Giovanni da Fiesole, the name by which he is known to his contemporaries.

Fra Angelico becomes the artistic spokesman for the Dominicans, as Masaccio is for the Carmelites, and remains a professional artist in touch with contemporary advancements in Florentine painting.

Gentile da Fabriano executes his most famous works, two large altarpieces: “Adoration of the Magi,” commissioned in 1423 by the wealthy Florentine Palla Strozzi for his family chapel in the sacristy of Santa Trinita in Florence; and a large polyptych, “Quaratesi Polyptych,” made in 1425 for the Florentine Quaratesi family (whose panels are now dispersed in museums in London, Florence, Rome, and Washington, D.C.).

“Adoration of the Magi” (generally regarded as the quintessential International Gothic style painting), features sinuous lines and elegant decorative effects, with little concentration on volume or depth.

In the main panel, a throng of attendants dressed in elaborate and richly colored costumes surround the Virgin and Child with the three Magi in a fairy-tale landscape filled with a procession of birds, monkeys, dogs, horses, camels, and leopards.

The first dated work by Italian painter Masolino da Panicale (Tommaso di Cristofano Fino), “Madonna and Child,”painted in 1423, conveys the forty-year-old artist’s leanings toward an established style of grace, gentleness, and elegance.

He soon commences work on the frescoes, mostly illustrating the life of Saint Peter, in the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence; there he comes into direct contact with one of his most artistically radical contemporaries, Masaccio, who also works on the project and with whom, despite Masolino’s conservative temperament, he collaborates.

(As tradition has it, Masolino trains Masaccio.)

Michelozzo designs numerous other buildings for Cosimo, mostly of noteworthy importance.

Among these are a guesthouse at Jerusalem for the use of Florentine pilgrims, Cosimo's summer villa at Careggi, and the fortified castello that he rebuilds from 1452 as the Villa Medicea di Cafaggiolo in Barberina di Mugello.

For Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo's son, he builds a very large villa at Fiesole.

Mino da Fiesole sculpts a bust of Giovanni de'Medici in 1458.

Influenced by his master Desiderio da Settignano and by Antonio Rossellino, Mino’s sculpture, characterized by its sharp, angular treatment of drapery, is remarkable for its finish and delicacy of details, as well as for its spirituality and strong devotional feeling.

Cosimo de’ Medici, the first of the Medici political dynasty, de facto rulers of Florence during most of the Italian Renaissance, is noted for his patronage of culture and the arts, liberally spending the family fortune (which his astute business sense has considerably increased) to enrich Florence.

He had also hired the young architect and sculptor Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi to create what is today perhaps the prototypical Florentine palazzo, the austere and magnificent Palazzo Medici.

He has been a patron and confidante of Fra Filippo Lippi, the late Fra Angelico, and Donatello, whose famed David and Judith Slaying Holofernes are Medici commissions.

His patronage had enabled the late eccentric and bankrupt architect Brunelleschi to complete the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, and the dome is perhaps his crowning achievement as sponsor.

For Giovanni de' Medici, Cosimo's son, Michelozzo has designed the gardens of the Medici Villa at Fiesole in the manner suggested by Pliny the Younger, for relaxed summer living; the light, airy building with open loggias opens onto terraced gardens overlooking Florence.

Michelozzo completes the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in 1459, having capped a traditionally rusticated three-story exterior with a vast cornice, classical in detail but irrational in its huge proportions.

Half classical and half traditional Tuscan in design, the palazzo sets the standard for Florentine town palaces.

Benozzo Gozzoli had remained at Montefalco (with an interval at Viterbo) probably till 1456, employing Pier Antonio Mezzastris as assistant; and from there had gone to Perugia, where he painted in a church a Virgin and Saints that is now in the local academy.

Returning soon afterwards to his native Florence, the epicenter of Quattrocento art, Gozzoli has painted between 1459 and 1461 what may be his most important work: his frescoes of the Magi in the Magi Chapel of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, the Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem, and in the tribune, a composition of Angels in Paradise.

Gozzoli has incorporated portraits of the Medici family into his fresco The Journey of the Magi, and included his self-portrait in the procession, with his name written around the rim of his cap.

His Virgin and Child with Saints of 1461, in the National Gallery, London, belongs also to the period of this stay in Florence.