Preface / John E. Law -- Introduction / Robert Black -- PART 1. POWER AND LEGITIMACY. Dominant cities : Florence, Genoa, Venice, and their territories in the fifteenth century / Giorgio Chittolini -- Medicean Florence and beyond : legitimacy of power and urban traditions / Gian Maria Varanini -- Communal traditions and personal power in Renaissance Florence : the Medici as signori / Andrea Zorzi -- Diplomacy, language, and the "arts of power" / Melissa Meriam Bullard -- Lorenzo the Magnificent's regime : aims, iimage, and constitutional framework / Riccardo Fubini -- Medici and Sforza : breeds apart? / Jane Black -- Tuscans and Lombards : the political culture of officialdom / Marco Gentile -- Piero in power, 1492-94 : a balance sheet for four generations of Medici control / Alison Brown -- PART II. ECONOMIC POLICY. Medici economic policy / Franco Franceschi -- Lorenzo de' Medici and foreigners : recommendations and reprisals / Lorenz Böninger -- PART III. RELIGION AND THE CHURCH. The Albizzi, the early Medici, and the Florentine church, 1375-1460 / David S. Peterson -- Religion and literature in oligarchic, Medicean, and Savonarolan Florence / Paolo Orvieto -- A cardinal in Rome : a Florentine and Medici ambition / David S. Chambers -- PART IV. THE MEDICI AND THEIR IMAGE. Patriarchal ideals, patronage practices and the authority of Cosimo "il Vecchio" / Dale V. Kent -- The Medici : defenders of liberty in fifteenth-century Florence / Francesco Bausi -- Medicean theater : image and message / Paola Ventrone -- Sound patrons : the Medici and Florentine musical life / Blake Wilson -- The Medici question : a rhetorical "special case"? / Stephen J. Milner -- Marking time : Medici imagery and princely iconography / Alison Wright -- The politics of castellation / Amanda Lillie -- Cosimo de' Medici and Francesco Sforza in Machiavelli's Florentine histories / John M. Najemy -- Florence and Ferrara : dynastic marriage and politics / Carolyn James.