The Marquess Gino Capponi in his History of Florence writes: “The Medici palace was a museum, a school, and a place of meeting for all the learned men who flocked thither, from it proceeded grave counsel and intellectual teaching as well as shows and festivals, and a general corruption of manners. Two popes passed their childhood there, and the Platonic Academy, intended to raise the standard of life and thought, was founded within its walls. Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola, one of the greatest men of his time, were constant visitors. There the first chips flew off the marble under the chisel of Michelangelo, and there Luigi Pulci read the Morgante aloud. Such exuberance of life, such magnificence, such gaiety, has probably never been witnessed in any other age, and the name of Lorenzo towers above it all.”[157] Ricordi of Lorenzo the Magnificent, son of Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici A brief narrative of the course of my life and of some other important things worthy of remembrance for the guidance and information of those who will succeed me, and especially for my sons. Begun this day, the 15th March 1472. I find from the books of Piero our father that I was born on January 1, 1449 [1450]. By our mother Maria Lucrezia di Francesco Tornabuoni our father had seven children, four male and three female, of whom four are still alive. They are Giuliano my brother, aged ... and myself, aged twenty-four, Bianca, wife of Gugliemo de’ Pazzi, and Nannina, wife of Bernardo Rucellai. Giovanni d’ Averardo, surnamed Bicci, de’ Medici, our great-grandfather, died on the 20th February 1428, at the fourth hour of the night. He would not make a will, and left property to the amount of 179,221 scudi _di suggello_, as appears in a record in the handwriting of Cosimo our grandfather in his red leather book on page 7. The said Giovanni lived sixty-eight years, and left two sons, Cosimo our grandfather, then about forty, and Lorenzo, aged thirty. Lorenzo had one son, Pier Francesco, born on ... 1430, who is still alive. Cosimo had two sons, our father Piero, born ... and our uncle Giovanni, born ... On September ... 1433 our grandfather Cosimo was imprisoned in the Palace, and in danger of losing his head. On September 9th he was banished to Padua, together with his brother Lorenzo, a sentence confirmed by the Balìa of 1433 on the 11th, and on the 16th December he was permitted to reside anywhere in the Venetian territory, but not nearer to Florence than Padua. On September 29, 1434, the Council of the Balìa revoked the sentence of exile, to the great joy of the whole city and of almost all Italy, and here [in Florence] he lived until his last day as head of the government of our Republic.