Medici Family Flashcards
The system of patronage used by the Medici family to operate Florence and Tuscany, in which people are personally loyal to a family that looks out for them in return, was similar to the system used by the Mafia to control Southern Italy.
T
Lorenzo de Medici married Clarice Orsini because she was beautiful and he was in love with her.
F
All of the artists that the Ninja turtles were named after (Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello) worked for the Medici family.
T
The Pazzi, a rival banking family, tried to have Lorenzo and his sister killed Easter Sunday 1478 in the Florentine cathedral.
F
The Pazzi were killed or run out of Florence, but Pope Sixtus sent an army against Florence to avenge the death of his relatives.
T
The frescoes in the chapel of the Medici Palace advertised the family’s power.
T
The current pope, Pope Sixtus, was in on the plot against the Medici.
T
Lorenzo survived, and his supporters hanged the conspirators, including two relatives of the pope from the government building windows.
T
Lorenzo de Medici ruled Florence through influence rather than by law or elected position.
T
Lorenzo visited his enemies in Naples alone, bribed them, and defeated the Pope’s attempts to destroy Florence.
T
When Lorenzo returned to Florence, he was named “Il Magnifico” and asked to take over the government of Florence; he agreed.
F
For 20 years, the Florentines benefited from Lorenzo’s public generosity, his “spending virtuously” on buildings, art, festivals, and entertainments.
T
Monks hired by the Pazzi killed Guiliano by shooting him to death
F
In the “Bonfires of the Vanities,” Savonarola and his followers burned books, makeup, clothes, wigs, art, and jewelry.
T
Lorenzo established the first art school in Florence.
T
Botticelli’s paintings like The Birth of Venus are religious rather than humanistic.
F
Six years after his fundamentalist backlash against the Renaissance and Lorenzo de Medici, Savonarola was excommunicated, tortured, chained, hanged, and burned. Florence had turned against the prophet after suffering years of plague, war, and starvation.
T
Girolamo Savonarola was a Dominican priest who worked for Lorenzo.
F
Savonarola believed that nude paintings and non-religious art were evil.
T
Michelangelo and Botticelli fought against Savonarola.
F
Eventually Botticelli either changed his mind about what subjects are appropriate for his own paintings or he feared the repercussions his art might bring because he threw some of his own paintings on Savonarola’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.”
T
When Lorenzo died in 1492, Savonarola forgave him on his deathbed.
F
After Lorenzo’s death, Savonarola gained control of the city; his bands of “skinhead” teens roamed the city beating up prostitutes, burning homosexuals, and harassing anyone wearing jewelry, makeup, or elaborate clothes as well as anyone still owning dice or cards.
T
When Lorenzo’s banks began to fail, the ‘amici delle amici’ (friends of friends) system of influence began to break down because there weren’t enough personal favors to go around.
T
Alessandro, Duke of Florence and illegitimate son of a pope, is murdered in his bed by Florentines who are sick of being under the thumb of the Medici. The Florentine Signoria elects Cosimo, a 17 year old cousin, to succeed the murdered duke because they believe they can control him.
Power
Cosimo, abolishes the Signoria, becomes de3 facto king of Florence and Tuscany, and being basically uneducated, begins to train himself to be both a warrior and a politician.
Power
The new pope hires an artist laughingly referred to as Braggatoni (“large underpants man”) to cover up the privates of the nudes in Michelangelo’s painting The Last Judgment.
Truth
