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in oils, frescos on walls, and paintings on wooden panels. Giotto embodied what later ages
would call the Renaissance Man—master of many skills and talents. As a result, in 1334 the
citizens of Florence appointed him architect of the city. “He showed the versatility expec-
ted of artists of his age when he began building the bell tower beside the cathedral…”
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A FLORENTINE MYSTERY
Other men of genius followed Giotto to the center stage of Florence. The roster of great
names who assembled under the civic flag of Florence is remarkable: in poetry, Dante;
in prose, Boccaccio; in political analysis, Machiavelli; in painting, Giotto, Masaccio, Uc-
cello, Veroccio, Fra Angelico, Fra Lippo Lippi, Botticelli, and Leonardo da Vinci; in sculp-
ture, Donatello, Luca della Robbia, Ghiberti, Michelangelo, and Cellini; and in architec-
ture, Brunelleschi and Alberti.
[87]
In this roster lies one of history's great puzzles. What accounts for this assemblage of
genius in one place and in one brief period of time? Perhaps the answer lies in synergy, a
word that combines the idea of synthesis and energy, literally a working together so that
the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. One possible contributor to the synergy that
was Florence is that genius attracts its own kind. To live and work with gifted persons is
synergy is that persons of accomplishment appreciate being rewarded for what they do.
Florence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries had wealthy families whose
sense of civic duty called them to serve as patrons of the arts. The citizens of Florence were
also imbued with civic pride and with education that led to an appreciation of accomplish-
ment. And perhaps as foundation for everything else, Florence was the seat of powerful
banking families—the Bardi, Peruzzi, and most important, the Medici. The latter were es-
pecially generous patrons of accomplished people.
The great banks of Italy were also Renaissance creators. More than lenders of money
and safe places for wealth, Renaissance banks, especially the Florentines, helped to create
modern capitalism. They invested in technologies that created national wealth. The Medici
invested in mines that produced alum, essential for cleaning the fiber and fixing the dyes
in wool, thereby contributing to the success of the Italian wool trade. They invested in the
cargoes of ships carrying luxury goods. They invented letters of credit, which facilitated
international trade. They coined money, widely accepted for being trustworthy (no falsi-
fying gold content). They kept agents and representatives in foreign capitals to facilitate
lending and spending. They underwrote the costs of expeditions of discovery and explor-
ation. Venezuela, for example, was named “little Venice” in part to acknowledge the role
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