“He lived in a haphazard fashion,” wrote Italian Renaissance art historian Giorgio Vasari in his biography of 15th-century Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli. “As was his wont.” Whether or not this ...

We dive into the fallout with Pope Sixtus IV, whose outrage over the hanging of Archbishop Salviati led to excommunications and a war that drained Florence’s coffers. From dismantling the Pazzi family ...