Amongst the Medici. Radio review

BBC Radio 4 has been running Amongst the Medici, a series of three half-hour programmes about the Medici family and the Italian Renaissance, presented by historian Bettany Hughes. For some obscure reason Radio 4 has a tendency to schedule programmes like this in the middle of weekdays, when a substantial proportion of the population is at work or school. This used to annoy me immensely, until the marvels of technology came up with the Listen Again service and made all manner of interesting programmes accessible. All three programmes are available on the BBC website, and are well worth listening to.

Bettany Hughes is well known in the UK as a TV history presenter, having presented programmes for Channel 4 on the Spartans and on Moorish Spain, both of which were consistently good (I missed her programme on Helen of Troy, unfortunately). Have any of these made it to international TV or satellite channels? If you've encountered them, you'll know Bettany Hughes' style. The radio series is in the same mould, intelligent, informed, informative and interesting.

She draws analogies between the Medici sponsorship of great artists such as Michaelangelo and Donatelli and the art collections that grace the London offices of Deutsche Bank - arguably, the City merchant banks of today are the direct equivalents of the Medici bank. She points out that the 'Renaissance' (the label was apparently not coined until the 17th century, by a historian from Liverpool) rediscovered much of the classical world through Arab texts. The famous Medici library did indeed collect classical texts from monastic libraries all over Europe, but the texts had not been 'lost', they were filed, catalogued and preserved in the monastic libraries waiting for someone to come and take an interest in them. The Medici family were arrivistes and nouveaux riches, looking for a heritage to claim that was independent of the feudal landholders. Classical texts on power in Republican Rome were useful to people holding sway over the republic of Florence, and positioning themselves as inheritors (or reinventors) of the classical Roman world was a convenient image to project. Manuscripts were also highly valuable and could be used as collateral for loans (much as modern corporations occasionally use works of art as investments).

One thing I found especially fascinating was that many of the famous works of art now reverentially displayed in museums originally started life as domestic objects, such as a headboard for a bed. Not so much Great Art as trendy interior design. Most of the artists maintained large studios with armies of apprentices turning out painted furniture and domestic ornaments for sale, to pay the bills in between prestigious commissions. This meant that women, who exercised considerable power in the domestic sphere, were important buyers of art and arbiters of taste. The revival of classical pagan imagery was also highly selective, concentrating on the sexiest goddesses (Venus, Diana) and the hunkiest gods and heroes. (No surprise there, perhaps - pin-ups don't change through the ages). The Florentines apparently liked their interior design saucy as well as trendy.

And that's only a tiny fraction of the content of the three programmes. If you have even the slightest interest in Renaissance Florence or the Medici family, you're sure to find them fascinating. If you listen to them, or if you've already heard them, what did you think?