Cosimo de' Medici

In many ways he was the father of the Renaissance or at least its midwife taking the reins of Florence in 1433 and leading it to a cultural apex that has perhaps yet to be rivaled by any municipality since. Cosimo De Medici master of a city-state diplomat and statesman ruled a Florence that was in miniature an empire as this 1899 biography calls it where painters and thinkers created new movements of art philosophy and science that in turn created our world today. This is a fascinating look at the man who shepherded Florence through that dramatic period from his foreign policy that nurtured the citys cosmopolitanism to his fostering of a social and cultural environment in which literature and art flourished.