Filippo Strozzi and the Two Plinys: Civic Pride, Diplomacy, and Private Taste in Quattrocento Naples and Florence

LIKE DANTE AND THE ALBERTI FAMILY, Filippo Strozzi (fig. 1) (1428–91) spent many years in exile yet remained a patriotic Florentine. After 1447 he lived in Naples as a banker, where he regained the family’s fortune thanks to the monarch’s support. Not only did he become the king’s financial advisor, but as of 1455 he also acted as agent for the Medici Bank, notwithstanding the period of his exile, which did not end until 1466, owing to the intervention of King Ferrante of Naples (reigned 1458–94). A year later, in Florence, on the occasion of the baptism of Strozzi’s first son, named after Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, who was the infant’s godfather, it was the young Lorenzo de’Medici who acted as proxy for the absent duke. Strozzi had been host to the seventeen-year-old Lorenzo on his visit to