Italian statesman and patron of the arts and letters, b. 1 January 1449 (Florence, Italy), d. 9 April 1492 (Careggi near Florence).
Lorenzo was the son of Piero de' Medici, a member of the bourgeois family that ruled Florence for 300 years from 1434 to 1737 (interrupted only during 1494 - 1512 and 1527 - 1530, when the family was deposed through revolt). He was the most able of a long line of Medicis; his sponsorship of the arts gave him the byname "the Magnificent."
Florence under the Medicis was legally a republic, but the Medicis exercised enough power to set their own rules. Nevertheless, they did not have the same right to raise taxes as rulers of feudal states and had to rely on income from their own banking and merchant business. The fact that the Medici were the official bankers to the pope helped them to maintain their wealth.
When Piero de' Medici died in 1468 Lorenzo and his younger brother Guiliano followed him into power. Lorenzo announced his intention to "use constitutional methods as far as possible." In the words of the historian Guicciardini his regime was "that of a benevolent tyrant in a constitutional republic." In 1471 the brothers Medici removed the power to make financial decisions from the popular assemblies.
In the following years the Pazzi family who had a rival banking business tried through subterfuge, treachery and other unscrupulous means to wrest the papal business from the Medici. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV, his nephew Riario and the archbishop of Pisa Francesco Salvati conspired to assassinate Guiliano and Lorenzo in the cathedral during Easter mass. Guiliano was killed in front of the altar, but Lorenzo managed to hide in a sacristy.
The gonfalonier (chief magistrate) had the archbishop hanged from a window of the Palazzo Vecchio (city hall), and the crowd came out in support of the Medici. But Pope Sixtus IV demanded that Lorenzo be handed over to the Vatican. He was supported by the King of Naples Ferdinand I, a man known for his cruelty.
To break the stalemate Lorenzo decided to go to Naples alone and face Ferdinand. His boldness was rewarded; Ferdinand signed peace with Florence, thus isolating the pope.
For the next 14 years until his death Lorenzo de' Medici ruled alone, with his new byname "the Wise." He could have established himself as a duke but refused - with a palace in Florence, villas in Careggi, Fiesole and Poggio a Caiano, and more importantly with branch offices of his bank in London, Bruges and Lyon he could marry his children off to the sons and daughters of the aristocracy without having a title himself.
Florence had been a centre of the arts before Lorenzo's time, and his patronage expanded the city's importance even further. Writers and poets were regularly seen in his household, and sculptors and painters received commissions from the Medici. Names such as Botticelli, Donatello and da Vinci testify for the splendour of Lorenzo's Florence. Michelangelo, an apprentice in Lorenzo's school of sculpture, was brought up in the palace like a son of the family.
The many public commitments to the arts caused a drain on the financial resources of the Medici at a time when several branches of the bank began making losses. As Lorenzo turned 40 his health began to deteriorate visibly. It was also the time when he allowed Savonarola in 1490 to preach at the church of San Marco. Savonarola now had a platform to denounce everything immoral, from the excesses of the church to the rule of a "tyrant" over the republic. But when Lorenzo de' Medici died at 43 nearly the entire population attended his funeral. Rarely had a "tyrant" had so much popular support.
Lorenzo de' Medici. Encyclopaedia Britannica 15th ed. (1995)