Successful merchants and Florence's most prominent patrons of the arts and sciences, the Medici family ruled the city from the fifteenth century until the mid-eighteenth century. This beautiful and authoritative book focuses on the glorious art produced during the height of the reign of the Medici dynasty. Eminent authorities tell us that under the grand dukes Cosimo I, his sons Francesco I and Ferdinando I, and his grandson Cosimo II, Florence experienced a great flowering of the arts.

The Medici dukes gave commissions to artists such as Pontormo, Bronzino, Vasari, Giambologna, and, in particular, Michelangelo, whose work overshadowed much of the city's cultural and artistic life at this time. The Medici used the buildings and works of art that resulted from their patronage as a means to promote and reflect their political and cultural aspirations within their native city and throughout Europe.

This handsome book was the catalogue for the exhibition "Magnificenza!," that opened in Florence at Palazzo Strozzi on June 6, 2002 that then moved to the Art Institute of Chicago (November 9, 2002 to February 2, 2003) and then to the Detroit Institute of Arts (March 16, 2003 to June 8, 2003).