The Renaissance in Florence was the product of a perfect storm of wealthy bankers, talented artists, ingenious financial instruments, and a new attitude toward money. This new attitude took its cues not from age-old religious injunctions against usury but instead from the even more ancient ideas about wealth and expenditure recently discovered in the works of writers such as Aristotle. This lecture will look at how, armed with new philosophies of how to live in the world, bankers and merchants such as the Medici, the Strozzi and the Rucellai used the gift of their vast wealth to adorn the city of Florence with palaces and paintings.