19
and general Cesare Borgia, who perhaps best symbolize the status of the
era’s titled class. For many members of the titled class, the Renaissance
was a time of lust, jealousy, backstabbing, corruption, thievery, and mur-
der. It is likely that no family pursued these sins with as much verve as
Florence: Cultural Capital
of the Renaissance
Although many cities prospered during the Italian Renais-
sance, it was the city of Florence in northern Italy that drew
the most wealth and therefore set the pace for the culture and
achievements of the other Renaissance cities. Says historian
Will Durant,
[ e Renaissance] made its first home in Florence. . . .
rough the organization of its industry, the extension
of her commerce, and the operation of her financiers,
Fiorenza—the City of Flowers—was in the fourteenth
century the richest town in the peninsula, excepting
Venice. But while the Venetians in that age gave their
energies almost entirely to the pursuit of pleasure and
wealth, the Florentines, possibly through the stimulus
of a turbulent semidemocracy, developed a keenness of
mind and wit, and a skill in every art, that made their
city by common consent the cultural capital of Italy. e
quarrels of the factions raised the temperature of life and
thought, and rival families contended in the patronage
of art as well as in the pursuit of power.
Will Durant,
e Renaissance: e Story of Civilization, Part V
. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1953, p. 69.
Looking Back
