and an immense fortune.

To Lorenzo, who remained a private citizen, we shall return in time;
it is Cosimo (1389-1464) with whom we are now concerned. Cosimo de'
Medici was a man of great mental and practical ability: he had been
educated as well as possible; he had a passion both for art and
letters; he inherited his father's financial ability and generosity,
while he added to these gifts a certain genius for the management
of men. One of the first things that Cosimo did after his father's
death was to begin the palace where we now are, rejecting a plan by
Brunelleschi as too splendid, and choosing instead one by Michelozzo,
the partner of Donatello, two artists who remained his personal
friends through life. Cosimo selected this site, in what was then
the Via Larga but is now the Via Cavour, partly because his father
had once lived there, and partly because it was close to S. Lorenzo,
which his father, with six other families, had begun to rebuild,
a work he intended himself to carry on.

The palace was begun in 1430 abd was still in progress in 1433 when
the Albizzi, who had always viewed the rise of the Medici family
with apprehension and misgiving, and were now strengthened by the
death of Niccolò da Uzzano, who, though powerful, had been a very
cautious and temperate adviser, succeeded in getting a majority
in the Signoria and passing a sentence of banishment on the whole
Medici tribe as being too rich and ambitious to be good citizens of
a simple and frugal Republic. Cosimo therefore, after some days of
imprisonment in the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio, during which he
expected execution at any moment, left Florence for Venice, taking
his architect with him. In 1434, however, the Florentines, realizing
that under the Albizzi they were losing their independence, and what