Lorenzo de' Medici, il Magnifico, by Girolamo Macchietti
Lorenzo de' Medici painted in the sixteenth century by Girolamo Macchietti, decades after Lorenzo's death in 1492. It is a dynastic image made for later Medici dukes rather than a likeness taken from life — which is itself how the family's reputation as patrons was built and maintained.
Lorenzo commissioned less art than his reputation suggests; what he did, expertly, was place other people's artists. He lent Verrocchio, Botticelli and the young Michelangelo to popes and princes, and turned Florentine talent into a diplomatic currency for a city with no army worth the name. The reputation was then curated after the fact by his descendants, who ruled Tuscany as dukes and had every reason to paint their ancestor as the age's presiding genius. This portrait is one of those later commissions. See the Medici as architects of the Renaissance's cultural revival.
Public domain — source (Wikimedia Commons). Free to reuse under the stated licence.
