Leonardo, although he had made his name in the Medici court, where the work the family commissioned was intended to bring glory to their name, carried out his initial artistic experiences in Florence
Leonardo, although he had made his name in the Medici court, where the work the family commissioned was intended to bring glory to their name, carried out his initial artistic experiences in Florence, where he stayed until 1482, when he left Florence to go to Milan as he did not conform with the Court's philosophy and hence was not happy amongst the Medici. On his return in 1500 the city was still Republican, but it would not be so for much longer (1512). The vague neo-platonic and evasive ideology had now been replaced by Machiavelli's harsh empirical conception of the modern state. Michelangelo and Raffaello had already created a different artistic atmosphere in Florence and, whilst Leonardo was artistically involved in Milan, Michelangelo moved the centre of art to Rome in 1504. The great new patrons of this period were Popes Clement VII, Julius II and Leo X. Raffaello came to Florence from Urbino in the same year as Michelangelo's departure for Rome. He stayed there for four years, long enough to leave a trace of his different conception of art as a means of justifying its own ends and as the fulfilment of the ideal form and technical perfection. Together with the complex and dramatic in heritance left by Michelangelo and the refined restless sensitivity of Leonardo, form the basis of Mannerism. Michelangelo returned from Rome in 1516 to design the facade of San Lorenzo Church on request of Pope Leo X, a Medici. This appointment was later cancelled and converted into a project for the Church vestry for the tombs of Lorenzo and Giuliano dei Medici. In the main room and the hall of the Laurenziana Library, with its dominating central staircase giving the impression of a cascading wave of a waterfall, supported on the side by the balustrade and the thick line of high stairs, Michelangelo anticipates the characteristic of the Baroque style, which tends to force space inwards. Following the seige of Florence by the Spanish in 1529 and the fall of the Republic, in the meantime re-established by Duke Alessandro dei Medici, Michelangelo was forced to leave Florence again. In 1534 he was re-called to Rome to undertake the Sistine Chapel frescoes. Meanwhile the aspect of the town of Florence, until then made up of streets and 15th and 16th Century palaces, with internal courtyards and gardens, began to tend towards spacious piazzas, where meetings and theatrical representations were held. Giorgio Vasari, painter, architect, art historian, transformed the Palazzo degli Uffizi into a large urban hall. Bartolomeo Ammannati, sculptor and architect, transforms Palazzo Pitti into a long gable-surfaced structure. Bernardo Buontalenti who succeeded Ammannati as architect to the Medici family, provided the most lively example of the versatility of culture of that period. This extraordinarily versatile character was capable of reverting from urbanistic planning of the town of Livorno to designing jewels for the Grand Duchess and also prepared the plans for the Fortezza di Belvedere.

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