Florence's Renaissance: Money, Art, and Ideas

For curious adults: how Florence's bankers, patrons, artists, and humanists shaped the Renaissance and spread it across Europe, read through Burckhardt, Burke, Hibbert, Johnson, and Greenblatt, including where these authors disagree and what the evidence shows.

5 sections · 13 lessons

Course outline

Naming the Renaissance

  1. Burckhardt's Veil That Melted Away
  2. The Discoverers Stayed Medieval

Florence's Money

  1. Gold Florins and a City That Counted
  2. Profit Without Interest: Bills of Exchange
  3. The Pope's Bankers: Rise and Decline

Power and Patronage

  1. Ruling Florence Without a Crown
  2. From Guild Walls to Palace Walls
  3. Brunelleschi's Dome and the Perspective Circle
  4. Who Really Paid for Florence's Masterpieces?

Ideas in Dispute

  1. Humanists Who Ran a Republic
  2. Did a War Create Civic Humanism?
  3. The Swerve and Its Historian Critics
  4. Fact-Checking a Renaissance Documentary

Beyond Florence

  1. How Florence Exported Its Artists
  2. Print, Dürer, and the Peripheries

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