Cennino Cennini. (1370–1440) Cennino d’Andrea Cennini—a student of Gaddi—composed Il libro dell’arte, an early how-to book on the techniques and ambitions of late medieval art. The Craftsman’s Handbook is still in print.
Cosimo de’ Medici. (1389–1464) Cosimo di Giovanni degli Medici, founder of the Medici dynasty, was first of the de facto rulers of Florence during the Italian Renaissance. His vast new wealth derived from his banking business and by the 1430s he came to be seen as a threat to the old wealth of the Strozzi and the degli Albizzi. He is the archetypal patron of painters, sculptors, architects of the early Renaissance.
Donatello. (1386–1466) Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi—goldsmith, artist, sculptor—carved the way from Gothic classicism into early Renaissance modes of realism and human emotion. His nude David, the first freestanding bronze in a thousand years, is sometimes said to have altered the history of Renaissance sculpture.
Ghiberti. (1378–1455) Lorenzo di Bartolo, later called Ghiberti, trained as a goldsmith and at age twenty-three defeated della Quercia and Brunelleschi in a contest to create the monumental bronze doors of the Cathedral Baptistry. Brunelleschi never forgave him.
Michelozzo. (1396–1472) Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi. Intimate friend and sometime partner of Donatello, he was a goldsmith, sculptor, and architect. He followed Cosimo into his Venice exile in 1433 and designed and built the library of San Giorgio as Cosimo’s gift of thanks to his hosts. Michelozzo designed the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi and rebuilt the Convent of San Marco. He married at age forty-five and fathered eight children.
Pagno di Lapo Portigiani (1408–1470) worked as an assistant in the bottega of Donatello and later became a minor decorative sculptor in Bologna. His one undisputed work is the marble relief of the Madonna and Child in the Museo del Duomo in Florence.
Piero di Jacopo, a coppersmith from Bologna, was found guilty of sodomizing and committing violence upon a ten-year-old boy. He was burned at the stake in the district of Santa Croce on October 1, 1429.
Rinaldo degli Albizzi (1370–1442) belonged to the Florentine nobility. With assistance from Palla Strozzi, he waged a lifelong conspiracy against Cosimo de’ Medici, whom he saw as an upstart and potential dictator. He sought Cosimo’s death but managed to get only his exile. Cosimo, upon his return from exile, dealt softly but swiftly with the Albizzi conspirators.
Alberti, della Robbia, della Quercia, Fra Angelico, Filippo Lippi, Masaccio, Uccello, contemporaries and friends of Donatello, were among the principal artists of the Italian Renaissance. They appear only nominally in The Medici Boy.
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