ABSTRACT
The mercantile founders of the Medici family, the Giovanni and Cosimos, were the friends and fellow-citizens of the great artists of their day. Lorenzo the Magnificent was the first of his family who assumed the importance, and affected the protection of a patron. The precious antiquities he had accumulated in the courts and gardens of the Casa Medici, and the permission he allowed to the artists of Florence, to study and work from such perfect models, rendered his domestic residence a sort of public studio. The Tuscan school is naturally very rich and very exquisite: some of the prime works of the Hierophants of the art are preserved there. The Adoration of the Kings, by Friar Filippo Leppi, is historically interesting, as preserving portraits of the Medici family. The French school has all the generic features which the Italians ascribe to the Guidos and Guercinos of the Ultramontanes.
