Join Quentin Hardy for a spirited discussion of the great hidden force of the Renaissance: The arrival of the Merchant class after the Black Death and their battle for prestige amid the incumbent powers. With the Church condemning bankers to Hell (unless you’d like to buy this nice chapel) and the courts passing laws about the kind of clothes mere rich people could and couldn’t wear, the upstart powers of commerce and finance fought back with unparalleled cleverness, celebrating themselves with astonishing innovation, thanks to the artists they hired. The result was a new culture of luxury, status objects, and even Christian iconography, influencing everything from the Age of Discovery to today’s billionaires launching themselves into space and sleeping on $400,000 mattresses.

Quentin Hardy, the head of editorial at Google, spent several decades covering technology, finance, and the habits of the very rich for The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and The New York Times. His previous talks have covered the Renaissance technology revolution in print, and the Renaissance rise of the artist as celebrity.