From the Pastor - May 2019
If you know anything about the Medici family, you probably know they supported the arts during the Italian Renaissance. Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci enjoyed the patronage of the Medici family. The Medicis also commissioned Piero del Pollaiuolo and Sandro Botticelli to paint The Seven Virtues, seen in the picture. The seven life-size panels decorated the Mercatanzia high courtroom in Florence, a place where trade disputes and financial matters were settled. The beautiful enthroned women personify faith, hope, and love (theological virtues) and courage, prudence, temperance, and justice (cardinal virtues). The size and placement of the panels indicate the importance of virtue in such “worldly” economic matters as commerce and banking. The figures in The Seven Virtues are wearing clothes that were typical for noble women in fifteenth-century Florence. It is the artists’ way of declaring the importance of vi...