Category: season five

Although kept on a leash by the Emperor Charles V, Cosimo I completes Florence’s consolidation of the rest of Tuscany…except for one hold-out.

Now secure in his reign, Cosimo sets about building something like a modern state. But was he a reformer, a tyrant, or something in-between?

The Uffizi, built during the reign of Duke Cosimo I. Source: Arek N.

A portrait of Eleanor of Toledo by Agnolo Bronzino, which was based on an earlier, now lost portrait and painted on the occasion of her death in 1562. Source: Palazzo Pitti.

In the wake of Alessandro de’ Medici’s assassination, the Medici family’s country cousin Cosimo becomes the new duke. Right away, he has to fight for his throne and prove that he is no pawn.