In the bustling streets of Florence, Italy, during the early 1400s, a young boy named Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici was about to change history. Giovanni was not born into a family of great wealth or royal blood. His father, Averardo de’ Medici, was a merchant, and his mother, Jacopa Spini, was a middle-class woman. They lived in a small house, but it was filled with love and laughter.

Giovanni was a curious child, always eager to learn about the world around him. He often wandered the markets of Florence, listening to traders and merchants as they haggled over goods. From silks and spices to artworks and armor, Florence was a city thriving with trade, thanks to its location in the heart of Italy.

When he was just a teenager, Giovanni’s father took him on a business trip to Rome. It was there that Giovanni’s saw his first bank. When people needed to move money to a far away place, they could give their money to the bank who would give them a letter with a number showing the amount. Then they could travel to the faraway place and use the letter to get their money. This was much safer than trying to move large amounts of money  by wagon or on their horse – especially since the roads at that time could be very dangerous. Thieves were known to stop people and take their money. Banks could also be used to keep your money safe and to buy things in faraway places. This not only made trading easier but also safer. Giovanni saw all of this going on and was fascinating.

Returning to Florence, Giovanni decided to start his own bank. With a small amount of money saved up and a loan from a family friend, Giovanni set up a tiny banking in the local market. It was just a simple table in the market where people would come to him to trust him with their money. He was friendly and wise, offering to keep people’s money safe and help them transfer money to different cities without risk.

Banks and banking seem like a simple ideas now, but it was very new at the time and Giovanni wanted to be the one who had the biggest, most trusted, and wealthy bank.

Giovanni’s reputation grew. People trusted him because he was fair and kind. His bank began to grow. He also made money on trade. Trade is when you buy items and then sell them for more. He did this all over Europe along with helping people move and save their money. 

But beyond banking, Giovanni wanted to do more than just make money; he wanted to help Florence, the city he loved. He started lending money to artists so they could buy materials to create beautiful paintings, sculptures, and other crafts. This was the time of the Renaissance when artists were trying new styles and painting more realistically than before. 

The Medici Bank, as it was now known, became the largest bank in Europe!  Giovanni had branches of his bank in many major cities, including Rome, Venice, and even distant London. His success allowed him to support not just his family but also the city’s artists, architects, and thinkers. Florence blossomed into a center of the Renaissance, a golden age of art and science in part thanks to the money spent by Giovanni.

One of Giovanni’s proudest moments was praying for the construction of the famous dome of the Florence Cathedral. He hired Filippo Brunelleschi, a genius architect who proposed a daring design. Many were skeptical that such a grand dome could be built, but Giovanni believed in Brunelleschi’s vision. The completion of the dome was a marvel and remains one of the architectural wonders of the world.

Giovanni also believed in giving back to his community. He supported the construction of hospitals, schools, and libraries. Thanks to him, many young Florentines received education and health care, which were rare in those times for anyone but the rich.

As Giovanni grew older, he trained his sons, Cosimo and Lorenzo, to take over the bank. He taught them everything he knew, not just about banking, but also about being wise leaders and generous supporters of art and culture. Giovanni knew that wealth was not just about gold and silver; it was about making the city better for everyone.

Cosimo, Giovanni’s oldest son, was a quick learner, but he loved art more than banking like his father. He loved to stroll through the workshops of sculptors and painters, watching them turn blank canvases and rough stones into breathtaking art.

As Cosimo grew into a teenager, Florence was blossoming into the center of the Renaissance. It was during these years that Cosimo developed a vision for his city. He saw Florence not just as a center of commerce but as a shining light of culture and learning.

When Cosimo took over the Medici Bank from his father, he was ready to use his wealth to transform Florence. He believed that beauty and knowledge were as valuable as gold and silver. He started investing in art and buildings even more than his father. He became a “patron” of the arts, which means he paid to have them created.

Cosimo’s love for architecture led him to pay for the construction of the San Marco monastery in Florence. He invited architects to design a building that would reflect the elegance and spiritual depth of the city. The finished building was a peaceful place that became a home for scholars and artists. 

He also established the Platonic Academy, a school where philosophers gathered to discuss ideas. With Cosimo as the patron, this academy became a center for learning in Europe, attracting scholars from all over the continent. It was here that the works of Plato and other ancient philosophers were studied and preserved.

But life in Florence wasn’t easy for Cosimo. Even though he gave a lot to the city, he also used his money to control some of the leaders. Many people believed he and his family had too much power over Florence and their use of their wealth to run the city was unfair. One of the competing families, the Albizzi, found enough people to go against them that Cosimo had to leave the city for a time. He was devastated to leave the city he loved. The Albizzi didn’t run Florence as well and eventually the people asked Cosimo to come back. 

Back in Florence, Cosimo paid for the construction of public libraries, making knowledge accessible to more than just the elite. He also paid for public projects like aqueducts, which carried clean water through the city. These projects improved daily life in Florence, making it one of the most advanced cities of its time.

Like his father, Cosimo taught his children the value of art, culture, and community. When Cosimo passed away, Pietro took over the Medici Bank and leadership of Florence. We’re not going to spend as much time learning about Pietro but he did carry on his family’s legacy of running the bank and keeping the finances in order. Cosimo’s rule had been very expensive from all of his spending on art and architecture and Pietro was able to focus on the banking again and increase the family’s wealth.

His son, Lorenzo, grew up surrounded by scholars, artists, and poets. From a very young age, he was taught not only about banking and politics but also the value of art and knowledge. Lorenzo had a powerful personality and was very intelligent like his father and grandfather, with a natural ability to lead and inspire those around him. 

In 1469, he was barely 20 years-old when his father passed away and he was left in charge of the family bank. He paid for great art like his grandfathers, Cosimo and Giovanni, but with even greater enthusiasm. He surrounded himself with poets and scholars, too, who helped him turn Florence into the intellectual and artistic capitol of Europe.

One of the most famous artists and inventors of the Renaissance was Leonardo da Vinci. Lorenzo was a patron to Leonardo and Michelangelo, two of the most famous artists in history. He became known as “Lorenzo the Magnificent” for all of his different qualities.

He was also a very skilled politician. This means he knew how to work with leaders in the government. Often the way he worked with leaders was unfair, because he used his money to pay for who was in power and how they voted. He was like a king of Florence, but he did it in a secret way by using his money to make things go his way.

At the time, many of the different cities in what is now Italy competed for power. Cities such as Rome, Milan, Venice, Naples and Genoa. Because all of these cities were competing for power, Lorenzo’s reign as leader of Florence was not without its challenges. In 1478, someone tried to assassinate him during church in the Duomo of Florence. Lorenzo survived, but the attack left scars that would affect his leadership and the safety of his family.

As Lorenzo grew older, running Florence became harder and harder. The bank wasn’t as powerful as when his father was in charge and his building projects and art became too expensive for their family to pay for. He died in 1492, yet, the world has Lorenzo and his father and grandfather to thank for much of the beautiful artwork and buildings you can still visit in Florence today.

The Medici Family, through its generations, showed both the good and ill that come with great power. They were patrons of the arts and education, and helped keep Florence stable. However, their leadership also included times of extreme control, corruption, and abuses of power. Despite this, the Medicis left a significant mark on history, transforming Florence into a center of the Renaissance that still shines brightly today.

The story of the Medici family, from Giovanni to Cosimo to Lorenzo, teaches us that with great power and wealth comes the responsibility to foster culture, knowledge, and beauty. Their legacy reminds us that we all have the capacity to contribute to a better society. Their story inspires us to think of how we, too, can make our own mark in the world, creating something magnificent that could last generations.

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Think of some of the objects you saw: family, friends, trees, maybe a pet, or the big blue sky and white moon in the dark of night. Maybe you saw a smile and objects moving, a car speeding by, or someone kicking a ball. Most of these objects are things you are used to. But when you were a baby they were very interesting! You were curious about everything because it was all new and fresh! As we get older many of these things to become familiar and perhaps not as interesting. Tonight we’re going to learn about Leonardo da Vinci, also known as one of the most curious and creative geniuses in recorded history. As we learn about him, think about how he saw the world differently and how you might see the world differently, too. 

When was Leonardo da Vinci born?

Leonardo was born on April 15th, 1452 in the country of Italy in a town called Vinci. Leonardo da Vinci means Leonardo of Vinci, the town where he was born.  He was born during a time that later became known as The Renaissance, which means “Rebirth” because the way people saw the world was changing dramatically during this time. The Medieval Times was over and people were beginning to see themselves as beings who had control over their life and the world and could think differently than those who came before them. 

Childhood & Early Education

Leonardo grew up with his father and spent much of his time exploring the land around their home. He loved to observe the birds and animals and get lost in the beautiful countryside. Around the age of 15, his father noticed he had an interest in and a gift for art. For this reason, his father had him become an apprentice to Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, Italy. An apprentice is a student to a master artist. And at this time Florence was known for its gifted artists and sculptors. In Verrocchio’s workshop, Leonardo learned from his master how to paint and sculpt. Sculptors used materials like clay or marble to make grand sculptures.   

Leonardo studied and helped with paintings and sculptures in Verrochio’s workshop until he was 20 years old. The next step in an artist’s life was to join a guide and Leonard did just that when he was accepted into the painters’ guild in Florence. A guild was a group of skilled artists who worked and met together. At this time he created many pen and pencil drawings and technical drawings of weapons and other mechanical devices. He was very interested in how things worked and in creating new devices. He loved inventing things! 

Milan and Duke Sforza

In 1482, when he was about 30 years old Leonardo moved to the city of Milan where he worked for the city’s duke, Ludovico Sforza. There he created paintings and worked on inventions for the Duke. The ability to create and improve technical devices is called engineering — and Leonardo was a very gifted engineer. He worked for Duke Sforza for many years. There he painted two of his best-known works The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper depicting Jesus and his Twelve Apostles. He also helped design buildings and gave the Duke engineering advice for his army. 

One of Leonardo’s other biggest projects was a huge, 24-foot bronze horse for Duke Sforza. He spent 12 years designing it out of clay, which would be a mold to be turned into bronze. Unfortunately, before they could pour the metal into the mold to finish the horse sculpture, the project was stopped, because a war started and the metal had to be used for cannons instead of the horse! In our day, someone decided to get together the money to finally build the horse Leonardo always wanted. If you ever visit Milan, Italy you can see it today!

After the war Duke Sforza was no longer Duke, so Leonardo stopped working for him. Leonardo continued working in his workshop in Milan and soon had his own students and apprentices.

Florence

In the 1500s a French army invaded and took over Milan, so Leonardo left and went to Florence, where he had been an apprentice as a young man. In Florence, he painted his most famous painting, The Mona Lisa. Leonardo was a gifted artist, but he wasn’t afraid to learn new topics and never stopped learning. He was infinitely curious! Leonardo began to study math and science. He studied the human body, which is called anatomy. He also observed the flight of birds and studied the flow of air and water. He looked at everyday objects through different eyes. He wondered how bodies worked, how birds flew, and what gave living things their motion. He didn’t take anything for granted and saw the miracle in everyday life and studied deeply to try and understand it. 

Eventually, Leonardo moved back to Milan and continued his scientific studies, writing and creating many sketchbooks to help others understand the human body and how it worked. He came to believe that all bodies and living things worked according to certain laws of nature, which was very ahead of his time. 

Rome

In 1513, around the age of 60, Leonardo again moved to Rome where he lived in the Vatican and worked for Giuliano de Medici. At this time many of the popular Renaissance artists were living and creating amazing works of art in Rome. The famous St. Peter’s Cathedral was being built at the time and Raphael was painting walls in the Pope’s new apartments. One of the most famous artists of all time, Michaelangelo, was also in Rome working on the Pope’s tomb. 

By the age of 65, Leonardo was asked by the King of France to move there, where he became his main painter, architect, and engineer, which was a great honor. There he continued his sketches and consulted other artists in their works. He also helped plan a palace and garden for the king. He spent a lot of time arranging his writings and sketches about nature in his many notebooks, which fortunately we have today! Leonardo passed away at an old age while living in France.

Leonardo’s Influences

Today we’re lucky to have many of Leonardo’s paintings and notebooks. Many of the ideas he had were for machines that wouldn’t be invented for hundreds of years. For example, in his study of birds and flight, he had the idea for an airplane, a helicopter, and a parachute, which he sketched in his notebooks. He also had the idea for many military machines, such as an armored car, a giant crossbow, and a three-barreled cannon. When you get the chance you can find a book about Leonardo’s inventions at the library or look at them online. They are amazing!

What can you learn from Leonardo?

One of the most interesting things about Leonardo was his ability to take his artistic talents and engineering skills and combine them. He became known as a Renaissance Man because of his curiosity and ability to combine many different skills to invent amazing things. He believed artists were the best qualified to achieve true knowledge, because of the unique way they were able to view the world. Think about that as you observe the miraculous world around you. Never take for granted the little things. Even the smallest living things like a flower or a bee are extraordinary as you look at them closely and learn more about them. Think about what you might do to learn more about the world around you like Leonardo. You could take the time to study a rock or a leaf and sketch it into a notebook as Leonardo did. This is the way he came to better understand the world, one simple object at a time. 

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If you look around your house, and it’s like mine, you’ll probably notice a very common item. Jars are made out of it, some cups and bowls are made out of it, maybe a few decorations on your shelves. This is what windows are made out of and the screens on tablets and phones. Can you guess what it is? …. If you said glass you are correct! Many household items are made from glass. Sometimes materials like glass are just taken for granted. That means we have them but we don’t really understand how they are made or the history behind them, so we don’t really think much about them. But tonight we’re going to talk about the history of glass. Where it comes from, how it’s made and the many steps through history until it became the glass we know today!

To my surprise, I found out glass has been around for a very long time. It’s funny because I thought it was a more recent invention, but the earliest known man made glass is from 3500 B.C., which is about 5500 years ago! Crazy, right? But even before that a form of glass, called obsidian, was used hundreds of thousands of years ago in the Stone Age. You’ve probably heard of the Stone Age, where early humans lived a very simple  life, just barely getting by. It was a hard life. Metals weren’t even invented yet and so basic stones were used as tools. Obsidian was one of those tools. It’s a black, glossy rock that is formed from the lava of volcanoes. Stone age humans used it to cut meat to eat and animal skins for clothes and shelter. It was very sharp, so it was a very popular rock to own! But obsidian was different from later glass, because humans didn’t create it, they just found it lying around volcanoes.

So later, around 3500 B.C. in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia humans learned to make the first glass. Most of the early glass was not clear like the glass you know today and usually they just used it for jewelry, the beads in necklaces, for example. But later they found ways to shape it into bowls and it continued to be very valuable, because very few people knew how to make glass objects. 

Over the years glassmakers became very skilled at their craft and by the time of the Roman Empire, they found ways to make it more clear and transparent. Archeologists have found many glass objects around the world that date back to Roman times, proving they were getting very good at glassmaking. The Romans also became skilled at carving (or etching) in the glass and it was traded all across the Roman empire.

By Medieval Times glassmakers became so good that they were able to create windows of glass and used them to decorate the windows of many churches and cathedrals. A cathedral is a very big church. Often these glass windows were red and blue and green and yellow, many different colors, which is called stained glass. When the light hits these colored windows, it produces a very beautiful effect. 

Next, during Renaissance Times one of the best known places for glass making was Murano, Venice in what is now known as Italy. Venice is a city literally built on the water on stilts. Can you believe that!? Venice even has a huge cathedral, or church, built on top of the water. People use boats to travel around the city and bridges over the water to connect the neighborhoods. It’s an amazing place to visit if you ever get the chance. 

So the glassmakers of Venice were very good at their work, but glassmaking required hot furnaces so it often started fires. So the city leaders had the idea to move all of the glassmaking to the island of Murano, off the coast of Venice, this way if there was a fire it wouldn’t burn down the rest of the city. Good idea, right? The first glassmakers of Murano became famous for their beautiful glass beads and mirrors. Unlike earlier glass their glass was very clear, similar to the glass you see today. And because they were so good at their job, the Murano glassmakers were paid very well and given lots of privileges in Venice. But one thing they weren’t allowed to do was leave! There were very strict rules about the glassmakers not leaving and starting their own businesses or sharing their ideas with people outside of the city. But even with the rules, some of the glassmakers were able to escape and soon the technique of making glass spread across Europe. If you visit Venice today glassmakers still live and work there and there you can see them at work, creating and shaping their glass in beautiful ways.

If you’ve never seen how glassblowing works, it’s worth finding a video and watching it, but basically one person takes a very long tube called a blowpipe. Then molten glass is heated up on the far end in a very hot furnace. They spin the blowpipe in the furnace, shape it on a metal table, and then begin to blow into the end of the pipe. This expands the hot glass on the end, making it larger. Then it’s put in the furnace again and shaped and blown through the pipe, over and over until it’s the shape and size the maker wants it to be. Finally it’s placed in a kiln until it cools and is ready to be used. Like I said, check out a video about glassblowing sometime, it’s really fascinating.

And what is glass made of? There are different materials used to make glass, which include sand, soda ash, and limestone, but it’s melted at such high temperatures it becomes a liquid that can then be shaped or made flat depending on what the creator plans to make.

So back to the history of glassmaking, in 1674 an English glassmaker named George Ravenscroft invented lead glass, which is also known as crystal, and was a major breakthrough in glassmaking. 

And then by the 1900s engineers designed machines to make glass. Do you know what happens when you find ways to build something faster? It takes less time, so it becomes less expensive. During the Industrial Revolution, an inventor named Michael Owen’s created an automatic bottle blowing machine, which could make 2,500 bottles in one hour! Soon even ordinary people were able to own glass and used them for cups, bowls, bottles, windows and in many other ways.

In the 1950s Alastair Pilkington discovered a way to make huge glass sheets by floating molten glass on a metal like tin or lead. This allowed them to create large sheets for windows and is now used widely and known as the Pilkington Process after its creator. 

Today glass is created in many different ways, using different chemicals to make it stronger so it breaks less. If you’ve noticed the glass in many phones has become stronger due to these better techniques. This is part of the engineering process. Taking something that works and using new techniques or materials to make it better. That might mean making it faster or making it work better or stronger. That idea applies to your own life. You can take something you like and work at it until you become better and better at it.

So, what do you think about glass? Is it more interesting now? I’ll bet when you see glass next you won’t think about it the same. If you’re like me, you’ll look at it and think “wow, I didn’t know it took SO long to get to the kind of clear glass we use today, and how many inventors and glassmakers it took until they were able to figure it out.” 

Next time you see something common, like the lights in your house or the refrigerator or the TV, do some investigating yourself. Find a video or an article and read all about the history of that object. It’s fascinating to find out how we got to the inventions we all know and appreciate now. 

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