Meet the Medici and hear how they leveraged portraits in their quest for power in sixteenth-century Florence.

If you think influencer culture is a twenty-first-century invention, listen to this podcast about Cosimo I de’ Medici. Only a teenager when he became duke, he leveraged art and his community to reinvent the Medici name in his rise to power in sixteenth-century Florence. Commentary by Alessandro Lai, costume designer for the Netflix series, "Medici"; Jenny Tiramani, head of the School of Historical Dress; contemporary portraitist Bisa Butler; and Renaissance scholars Linda Wolk-Simon and Victoria Kirkham. Narrated by Edoardo Ballerini.

Produced for the exhibition The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570.