The Venetian statistics quoted above which date from about
the same year, certainly give evidence of larger property and profit
and of a more extensive scene of action; Venice had long been mistress
of the seas before Florence sent out its first galleys (1422) to
Alexandria. But no reader can fail to recognize the higher spirit of
the Florentine documents. These and similar lists recur at intervals of
ten years, systematically arranged and tabulated, while elsewhere we
find at best occasional notices. We can form an approximate estimate of
the property and the business of the first Medici; they paid for
charities, public buildings, and taxes from 1434 to 1471 no less than
663,755 gold florins, of which more than 400,000 fell on Cosimo alone,
and Lorenzo Magnifico was delighted that the money had been so well
spent. In 1478 we have again a most important and in its way complete
view of the commerce and trades of this city, some of which may be
wholly or partly reckoned among the fine arts such as those which had
to do with damasks and gold or silver embroidery, with woodcarving and
'intarsia,' with the sculpture of arabesques in marble and sandstone,
with portraits in wax, and with jewelry and work in gold. The inborn
talent of the Florentines for the systematization of outward life is
shown by their books on agriculture, business, and domestic economy,
which are markedly superior to those of other European people in the
fifteenth century.
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