Florence was the first Italian city consciously to seek out ancient Roman sculpture and architecture as models for its own art. Prompted by the new interest in classical Roman texts, an awareness of its own history as having been founded as Roman military camp and the political needs of the city at the beginning of the fifteenth century, Florentine artists sought a visual language that would complement this expanding understanding of the city’s Roman past. But the very nature of this antique awareness itself changed by the end of the century to meet the needs of an increasingly autocratic culture dominated by the Medici family, ultimately leading to an art that spoke more to an educated citizenry rather than to the much more numerous underclasses.