A quick census of the artists working and emerging in Florence in the 1470s and 1480s is a roll call of some of the most brilliant in world history. As well as Verrocchio, Botticelli, and Leonardo, the city was home to Domenico Ghirlandaio and the Pollaiuolo brothers. The poet and Greek scholar Angelo Ambrogini (known as Poliziano) was combining his duties as tutor to Lorenzo de’ Medici’s children with translating Homer’s Iliad into Latin verse. In 1484 the scholar Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (“a man of almost supernatural genius,” said Machiavelli) would arrive to seek Lorenzo’s patronage,
...more
