The Medici 's Influence On Art

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In modern market, there are not much commodities could worth more than art masterpieces, millions and millions of dollars flows in the art buying and selling market everyday. If the artist name is right, works can fetch sums that truly blow our mind. To figure out this strange and scandalous affair between art and money, we have to date back at least 600 years. There was a far more shocking collision between market forces and masterpieces in the Renaissance Florence. Almost all of the most splendid and exquisite art were created in the service of the rich and ruthless Medici family. There is no denies that the Medici had turned Florence in to one of the most beautiful cities in the world with their money. The Medici could be regarded as the very first collectors of great modern art, with their complicated emotions involved, such as their guilt, ambition of authority, and sexual lust. In the end, the Medici did not just collect paintings and sculptures; they had changed the very nature of art itself and even unleashed a monster that they could not control. In terms of religion, politics and persona, European art had changed their form and purpose over the influence of the Medici family.
It’s hard to escape from the Medici in Florence. Their coat of arms, which made out of six palles1, or balls could be seen everywhere when you travel in the city. These are more like their eternity trademark of the Florence city. There are arguments raised for what these famous Medici balls symbolized, some said those are medicine pills, for the pun of “Medici”; some claim that the balls are the decoration of the heroic knight’s shield. However, these myths are not true. In fact, what these balls represent right from the start was Bezant...

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...would be more suitable for being a Magi. This painting transformed the Medici’s usurer image, which apparently plays a role of a visual metaphor or alter ego for Cosimo and the rest of his family. The magi sent gifts to Jesus, what is this monastery if not a splendid gift to Jesus Christ from the Medici?
The excitement of making money was seeping into every aspect of the Renaissance life. Artists were inspired by the mathematics of banking and accountancy to create a new language of painting. Mathematics, the tools of early capitalism, the principles that had made the Medici rich, had worked their way into the very texture of art. It was not surprised that artists could manipulate math to create new skills such as the 3D perspective illusions. The Medici sponsored artists like Paolo Uccello, who obsessively attempted to create his illusion of space in his work.

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