No wide-ranging consideration of the life and career of Cosimo 'il Vecchio' de' Medici has been published since Gutkind's justly celebrated 1938 monograph.

The sexcentenary of Cosimo de' Medici's birth in 1989 provided the Society for Renaissance Studies with the opportunity and the stimulus to organize a scholarly Symposium, held at the Warburg Institute, University of London, in May 1989, to reconsider aspects of the character, political interests and art patronage of perhaps the greatest statesman of early Renaissance Italy. Published here are the seven papers delivered at the Symposium, with five others written especially for this volume.

The authors discuss various facets of Cosimo's personality, his political and his cultural activities, among them his wit, his relations with the Popes of his time, his literary interests, his patronage of church building, of the fine arts, and finally the imagery of his tomb.