Cosimo's father, the richest banker in Italy, and one of the chief citizens of Florence, had been active in politics, and chief of the party which was opposed to the ruling oligarchy. Cosimo succeeded to his father's position, and when the oligarchy fell became the actual head of the city, though he always affected the role of private citizen. His quick intelligence and his broad cultivation gave him keen sympathy with the fermenting intellectual life about him, and his great wealth enabled him to express that sympathy in most substantial ways. He got his first schooling from a Florentine humanist, and then went abroad, travelled in Germany and France, and visited the Council of Constance then in session. After that his attention was devoted to business and to political affairs. His position in Florence during early manhood was always precarious, for the sharp-witted Florentines were not easily hoodwinked and saw whither Cosimo's masterfulness was tending. For a time he was in exile, but after a tussle he won his place and banished his enemies. Wealth was his great instrument. He lent and gave lavishly. In later life he used to say that his chief error had been that he had not begun to spend money ten years sooner than he did. He was a serious man, given to intellectual matters, and averse to buffoons and strolling players, so popular then; by virtue of wide experience in the conduct of large affairs, of extensive reading, of a retentive memory, and a natural gift for language, he was both an interesting talker and good company. He talked literature with men of letters, but he was equally ready to talk divinity, in which he was well read, or philosophy, or astrology in which he believed although some men did not. He liked gardening, and enjoyed going out of town to his country-place; there he would prune the vines for two hours in the morning, and then go indoors to read. His connection with the arts of the Renaissance, however, is our chief concern. He employed the famous architect Michelozzo to build his palace, now known as Palazzo Riccardi, his villa, and also the Dominican convent of San Marco. He employed the still more famous Brunelleschi to rebuild the abbey of Fiesole. He was fond of sculptors, especially of Donatello, and had statues by the best masters of the day in his palace. He employed Fra Angelico to paint in the convent of San Marco, and Benozzo Gozzoli in his private chapel. Benozzo painted a procession of the Three Wise Men, with Cosimo, his son, and his grandson, young Lorenzo the Magnificent, riding in their train. Cosimo's greatest interest, however, was in the humanities. He built several buildings for libraries in Florence, and one in Venice, and interested himself greatly in the preservation and increase of the libraries themselves. For the library in the abbey at Fiesole he employed a man of letters (Vespasiano da Bisticci, his biographer), who hired