Medici Rule in Florence

Timeline

1. 1461–1464Florence · FlorenceIn the early 1460s Cosimo still controlled the election of the signori through the Council of Nine and loyalists, maintaining balanced diplomacy with the Sforza of Milan, Venice, and the papacy. The Medici Bank network provided credit to the commune while patronizing the Convent of San Marco and humanist scholars, making Florence a center of the Renaissance.
2. 1464–1466Florence · FlorenceAfter Cosimo's death in 1464, Piero took charge. In 1466 the old nobility, led by Luca Pitti and allied with anti-Medici factions, launched a coup attempting to restore an Albizzi-style oligarchy. With the support of the populace and loyalists, Piero swiftly suppressed it, exiling Pitti's partisans and further concentrating Medici power.
3. 1467–1470Florence · FlorencePiero was long bedridden with gout, and his second son Lorenzo effectively handled diplomacy and affairs of state from the later 1460s. After Piero's death in 1469, the twenty-year-old Lorenzo and Giuliano jointly became Medici heirs, inaugurating the famous era of "Lorenzo the Magnificent" in Renaissance history. Though the Medici Bank began to decline due to problems in branch management, political and cultural patronage still reached its peak.