After Cosimo's death in 1464, the Medici bank went downhill, though his descendants became ever more entrenched in power in Florence.
二十二年前，我就是站在現在這個地方，親眼看着我所愛的人死去，他們被那些我曾經稱作朋友的人所出賣。有段時間我滿腦子都是復仇，如果不是幾個陌生人為我出謀劃策的話，我肯定就被複仇毀了，他們教會我如何剋制自己本能，他們從不會告訴我*，但是卻引導我去向自己要*，我們用不着別人來告訴我們要做什麼，不管是Savonarola還是Medici家族的人，我們有追求我們自己的道路的自由，總是有些人想要奪走我們的這種自由，而你們大部分人又都會樂意的放棄。可是其實我們是有選擇的能力的，不管你們認為什麼是對的，什麼是真相，那是我們身為人類所擁有的能力，沒有哪本書或者哪個老師能給你們*，或者給你們指路，選擇你們自己的道路，不要追隨我，或者別的什麼人。
Its collection originated in the collections of the Medici family, and goes back to the 16th, even the 15th century.
Though the advice was meant for the Medici ruling family in Italy, the principles can still hold true, or at least shed a light on how to weave through the murky waters of politics.
How are Botticelli's later pious paintings, bereft of Medici patronage, to be read?
舉個例子，他堅持修正關於美第奇家族的一個觀點，拒絕稱頌科西莫·美第奇(Cosimo)和洛倫佐·美第奇(Lorenzode’ Medici)，儘管他們依照流行的歷史觀點被認為是佛洛倫薩文藝復興時期的英雄。
He does so, partly to record that the decline and eventual collapse of the Medici bank had little impact on the banking system as a whole.
Botticelli's Primavera, for example, was described as a "Painting by Botticelli with Nine Figures" in a 16th-century catalog of the Medici family's holdings.
In the 15th century, when it was built as the town house of the Medici family, this was truly a place to make you pass out.
For example, he has a revisionist view of the Medici, stubbornly refusing to eulogise Cosimo or Lorenzo de’ Medici, the conventional heroes of popular histories of Renaissance Florence.
Leopoldo de Medici started the collection of self-portraits in 1664.
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