The landscape behind the procession is hardly less interesting than the procession itself; but it is when we come to the meadows of paradise, with the angels and roses, the cypresses and birds, in the two chancel scenes, that this side of Gozzoli’s art is most fascinating.  He has travelled a long way from his master Fra Angelico here:  the heaven is of the visible rather than the invisible eye; sense is present as well as the rapturous spirit.  The little Medici who endured the tedium of the services here are to be felicitated with upon such an adorable presentment of glory.  With plenty of altar candles the sight of these gardens of the blest must have beguiled many a mass.  Thinking here in England upon the Medici chapel, I find that the impression it has left upon me is chiefly cypresses—­cypresses black and comely, disposed by a master hand, with a glint of gold among them.

The picture that was over the altar has gone.  It was a Lippo Lippi and is now in Berlin.

The first of the Medici family to rise to the highest power was Giovanni d’Averardo de’ Medici (known as Giovanni di Bicci), 1360-1429, who, a wealthy banker living in what is now the Piazza del Duomo, was well known for his philanthropy and interest in the welfare of the Florentines, but does not come much into public notice until 1401, when he was appointed one of the judges in the Baptistery door competition.  He was a retiring, watchful man.  Whether he was personally ambitious is not too evident, but he was opposed to tyranny and was the steady foe of the Albizzi faction, who at that time were endeavouring to obtain supreme power in Florentine affairs.  In 1419 Giovanni increased his popularity by founding the Spedale degli Innocenti, and in 1421 he was elected gonfalonier, or, as we might now say, President of the Republic.  In this capacity he made his position secure and reduced the nobles (chief of whom was Niccolo da Uzzano) to political weakness.  Giovanni died in 1429, leaving one son, Cosimo, aged forty, a second, Lorenzo, aged thirtyfour, a fragrant memory 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.