The first in a 7-part series, "A Shadow of Divine Perfection: Art of the Italian Renaissance & Baroque," this lecture with Dr. Rocky Ruggiero explores the visual language of the Medici family. From modest beginnings, they rose to become one of the most wealthy and powerful families in Renaissance Italy. Not only bankers to Europe's most important rulers, they were also great patrons of the arts, supporting artists like Donatello, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, and Michelangelo. But the Medici were not art lovers for art's sake: they were communicating a precise and calculated message about status, about power, and about the importance of their family.