It is a spring day in 1478 when the conspiracy led by the Pazzi family, long-time rivals of the Medici family, launched its ferocious offensive against Lorenzo the Magnificent in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. Though Lorenzo was only wounded, his brother Giuliano fell lifeless to the floor in a pool of blood. It is two priests who actually strike, when the designated signal was given toward the end of the liturgical celebration, though many participated in the plot. Pope Sixtus IV in Rome was among them because the Medici family posed a threat to the territorial interests of the Pontifical State during those years. The brutal reprisals and summary executions that followed the failed conspiracy brought about the definitive consolidation of the Medici family's power. It is precisely this Florence of the Medici that will be one of the themes of our guided visit. We will expand on the figure of the powerful humanist merchant-prince, and on the interconnection between power, mercantile economy, and humanist revivals and art patronage. In addition to Lorenzo the Magnificent, we'll consider his circle, like other princely courts of the time, frequented by artists and humanists such as Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Alberti, and the grand ideas and revolutions of the Italian Renaissance.

We propose a cultural journey in the historic center of Florence, tracing changes that began in the 13th century and made Florence one of the most active centers in all of Europe by the 15th century, allowing us to situate the palaces, churches, and grand art collections in the proper historical and artistic perspective. Among the significant developments, are the rise of the merchant class, the development and extension of commerce, the creation of banking and financial structures in all of Europe, the constitution of Corporations - or craft guilds - born in order to manage the interests of the different professions, the rapid turnover of republican governments through which these new groups acquired power, and above all the construction of elaborate palaces, both public and private, that affirmed their social and political prestige.

Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore
We begin in the heart of the oldest quarter of the city: the cathedral, or duomo, the place where life and death receive the stamp of God and where the great celebrations involving the entire community took place. We will consider topics such as the various phases of construction of the present duomo and the destruction of the oldest church, Santa Reparata, which lies beneath and whose foundations preserve Early Christian mosaics of the 4th-5th century that we will see, the financial support from the various guilds above all that of the wool workers, and the competition with the enemy city of Siena. And, the great undertaking of the dome, a massive construction, over 140 feet in diameter, which remained unrealized for 125 years, will bring us to one of the daring adventures of the Italian Renaissance. The work that began in August, 1420 was brought to a successful conclusion thanks only to the technical ability, the creation of mechanical devices, and the brilliant architectonic intuition of Brunelleschi. It marks a milestone in the history of architecture since domes of comparable size, such as the Pantheon in Rome (2nd century AD), had not been built since antiquity.

The doors of the Baptistery
Another enterprise that takes us back into the climate of the Renaissance is the competition announced in 1401 by the Merchants' guild, one of the most powerful, for the decoration of new doors for the north entrance of the Baptistery. In competition were the goldsmith Ghiberti, and Brunelleschi (still 20 years away from his successful bid for the dome project). Upon defeat Brunelleschi left Florence for a journey to Rome with his friend Donatello, where they dedicated themselves to the study of ancient Roman architecture and sculpture, as was then the passion among writers and artists of the age. We will discuss in detail the reasons why Ghiberti's designs for the Baptistery doors prevailed, the characteristics that earned them their fame, his interest in accentuating volume, three-dimensionality, and perspective in the biblical episodes he sculpted, particularly in a subsequent commission for another set of doors in 1425, where the gothic style of the late Middle Ages was definitively abandoned. We will see his adoption of a technique called stiacciato—which Donatello will perfect—in which background is suggested by using lower relief for distant figures than for those in the foreground.

Orsanmichele and Palazzo Davanzati
The various merchant and trade characteristics that survive in the Florence of today are only a memory - street names like via Dei Calzaiuoli, refering to the makers of the calze or typical knitted pants in vogue at the time - of the fervor of commercial activity that animated Florence from the 1300s onward. The Florence of the Merchants will be explored with discussions of the seven Major Guilds (the wool guild, the silk guild, the furriers, the doctors, the herbalists, the judges, and the notaries), the interests of the entrepreneurs and of the professionals supporting their activity. These themes will come out in our explanation of the various phases of the beautiful Orsanmichele. The building today is a church but it once also housed the market and granary, and it witnessed the construction -at the expense of the most important guilds - of statues for the facade, realized by great artists such as Donatello who carved the splendid St. George. Such works were intended to promote the image of the guilds and their social role well beyond the borders of Florence. Moving on to Palazzo Davanzati, we are presented with a palace that shows a new typology for the palazzo. Its innovations will be readily visible as it stands directly across the street from the house-tower type of architecture typical of the middle ages. The spaces and architectonic elements are organized according to new interests in rational measures, and new desires for light, spacious volumes, and demonstrations of social and civic importance. The ground floor was dedicated to commercial activity, the upper floors for living space, a grand gallery crowned the palace, and the family crest was displayed at the entrance. This plan was repeated again and again and it will help us understand the private as well as the public life of the great merchant families of Renaissance Florence.

Piazza and Palace of the Signoria
It is the republican heart of the city that during the years of the Republic was erected as the symbol of the city's democracy, the political center of the city as differentiated from the religious one. We will interest ourselves principally in the construction of the imposing Palace of the Signoria (or lords), in the various magistrates, headed by the priors who resided there thus necessitating the adoption of the medieval fortress style of architecture so that these public officials could be protected from the dangers of possible revolts or famines. The Loggia of the Lanzi will take us another step into the sculpture of the Renaissance with the beautiful David by Benvenuto Cellini, great friend of Michelangelo, and the tumultuous Rape of the Sabines by Giambologna. The piazza, among other events, was the site in which the culminating phases of the drama of Savonarola - the Dominican Friar who preached apocalyptic sermons against the worldly excesses of his time, radically expressing the disquiet and conflict between the new morality and the more rigid Christian morality - were played out, including the final episode in which he was burned at the stake in 1498. Toward the middle of the 16th century, with the latest achievement of political dominion over Florence, the Medici family moved into the Palazzo of the Signoria. Many rooms were decorated during their residency.

After a break for a traditional lunch in a good restaurant we will continue our guided visit

The Gallery of the Uffizi
Few museums offer us such an ample range of masterpieces arranged inside a historical palace just steps from the places where the new renaissance ideals took form and where the great artists of the time painted, walked, and dreamed.

The work of Giotto, Filippo Lippi, and Piero della Francesca initiate our discussion of the new centrality of man, the rediscovery of classical culture, the use of linear perspective, the naturalism of the figures and their settings, and the interest in including details of their contemporary world. We will consider the works of Sandro Botticelli that perfectly portray the mythical side of the Florence of Lorenzo di Medici: La Primavera (c. 1481) with its graceful figures suspended in an eternally flowering garden, and La Nascita di Venere (the Birth of Venus, c. 1484) blown toward the shore among swirling rose petals by the breath of Zephre, the god of the winds both represent ancient classical myths with an extraordinary sense of wonder, grace, and beauty.

The Annuciation (1472) and the Adoration of the Magi (1481-82) by Leonardo da Vinci then just over 30 years old, will introduce us to his uncommon genius. With his characteristic chiaroscuro (light and shade) he conveyed psychological interaction and thoughtful moods in his figures. During the course of our visit we will tell you of his other fields of study and his uncommon capacity for extreme formal rigor and expressive detail despite his own sense of being an "unlettered" man, on account of his inability to read the classic texts in their original Latin and Greek as did the intellectuals of the day.

The many works of Raphael Sanzio deserve no less attention. Among them we will see the Madonna del Cardellino (1505) and the Portrait of Pope Leo X (1518) where a sublime play of light exalts the carefully ordered hierarchy of figures, immersed in tonal gradations of intense red. Finally we encounter the Tondo Doni (Doni family's round panel) by Michelangelo (1506) with its whole compositional order subverting the usual schemes and with the plasticity of the figures enveloped in a single marvelous embrace. These last two famous artists in Florence would soon after leave the city, following the changed political conditions, and turn toward Rome. (For their artworks in Rome, please consult our private tours Rome or our group tours Rome).

Some Venetian artists like Giorgione and Titian will deserve our attention, as will a selection of works from the Mannerist phase of Renaissance art represented by Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, and Bronzino.

The last artist that we will fully attend to will be Caravaggio. His new pictorial language, tied in part to his own exuberant vitality and hedonistic pleasure in life, was also a product of his Counterreformation context and the Church's search for compelling, dramatic, and theatrical imagery. The Medusa (1596) with hair transformed into serpents by the ire of the gods and with an icy gaze of death, no less than the Sacrifice of Isaac (1603) whose immanent slaughter is dramatically arrested by the hand of the angel, are both representations of essential dramas painted in the unrestrained style of another great genius.

Ponte Vecchio
With this bridge - reconstructed in 1345 after a terrible flood destroyed the previous one, which had stood there since the end of the 12th century - we come back again to our central theme of the Florence of the merchants. Here, for centuries, there were fish-sellers, butchers, and leather artisans. It is only since the end of the 16th century that these shops were substituted for the more dignified and less malodorous goldsmith shops and jewelers. But at this point it is better to let ourselves be carried by the slow course of the river and its memories so that we can savor the emotion of a journey of the mind and heart into the culture and art of magical Florence.