It is easy for an historian to write, “Cosimo de’ Medici greeted the Venetian ambassador.” This is accurate. It is something else to provide the clothing, the room, the furnishings, the ambience, the voices, the lighting, not to mention the words, vocal tones, comportment, emotions and actual bodies of Cosimo and the ambassador. All this must be inaccurate, a portrait not of Cosimo, but of an actor. What were people like then? What was Florence like? We can only imagine, like Walt Disney, Rossellini, or Giotto.
- Tag Gallagher
