Florence: cradle of the Renaissance and Medici patronage

Around 1300, Florence had some 90,000 to 120,000 inhabitants, making it one of the most populous cities in Europe alongside Paris and Venice. Its economy rested on the wool guild (Arte della Lana) and the money-changers' guild (Arte del Cambio), anchored by the gold florin, minted since 1252 and used as a reference currency across the continent. Politically, the Florentine republic, governed through the Signoria, cultivated a discourse of civic liberty set against despotism — the foundation of what the historian Hans Baron later called "civic humanism." That rhetoric sharpened in direct response to rivalry with Milan: the threat of conquest posed by Giangaleazzo Visconti in 1402 reinforced the republican arguments of Leonardo Bruni, who began his "Historiae Florentini populi" in 1415, the first humanist history to apply systematic periodization and source criticism.