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A visitor studies Titians portrait, Benedetto Varchi, left, and Bronzinos Allegorical portrait of Dante, at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512-1570, exhibit in New York, June 21, 2021. The sweep of Italian history and art history in dazzling portraits from the dynastys final hurrah, on view in a sumptuous exhibition at the Met. Diana Markosian/The New York Times.
by Roberta Smith
(NYT NEWS SERVICE)
.- Its hard to imagine Florence, cradle of the High Renaissance of early modern Europe, without its avaricious, venal, culture-conscious first family, the Medicis. Crowned and uncrowned, during periods of supposedly republican government and not, they largely ruled the city-state, or connived to, from the mid-14th to the mid-18th centuries, using art to cement their power. They excelled at banking and prospered especially when their Rome branch quietly became banker to the popes. They al