1. Money is Power

The Medici family is a name synonymous with the Renaissance but why did these bankers act as patrons to artists like Michelangelo and Donatello?

Was it a love of art or something altogether more sinister?

Historian Bettany Hughes re-evaluates one of the most creative and complicated partnerships in the Western world, that between the millennium's most inspired artists and the family who supported them.

First of a three-part series.

Taking part:

* Tim Parks, Author
* Evelyn Welsh, Professor of Religious Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College
* Professor Martello Frantoni, University of Tolerno
* Quentin Skinner, Regius Professor of History, Cambridge
* Paul Stathern, author of "Godfathers of the Renaissance."

Readings by Jonathan Keeble

Producer Philip Sellars

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in February 2006.