1. Money is Power

The Medici family is a name synonymous with the Renaissance, but why did these bankers act as patrons to artists like Michelangelo and Donatello?

Was it just because they loved their art, or something more sinister?

Historian Bettany Hughes re-evaluates one of the most creative and complicated partnerships in the Western world, that between the millennium's most inspired artists and the family who supported them.

Taking Part:

Tim Parks, Author
Evelyn Welsh, Professor of Religious Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College
Professor Martello Frantoni, University of Tolerno
Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History, Cambridge
Paul Stathern, author of "Godfathers of the Renaissance."

Readings by Jonathan Keeble

Producer Philip Sellars

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2006.