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Medici, Cosimo de' 1389-1464
Florentine financier, statesman and philanthropist

His father, Giovanni de' Bicci Medici, appears to have created the Medici wealth, and Cosimo was to use it to fuel the machine of his own power in Florence. He was exiled by the ascendant Albizzi faction in 1433, having opposed the imposition of taxes for what proved a disastrous war. He returned in 1434 and stifled family faction while maintaining the façade of republican government with a mixture of ruthlessness and urbanity. He employed some of his wealth in patronage of the arts, including Europe's first public library, and made the city the centre of the new learning. He was posthumously commemorated as 'Pater Patriae'.