Zero tolerance in Florence

It is easy to get misty-eyed about Renaissance Florence. How gorgeous it was, we tell ourselves, this City of the Lily, with its lissom youths and comely maidens, each one a Gozzoli ephebe or a Botticelli Venus, its humanist scholars poring over the latest haul of Greek manuscripts, Donatello and Cellini fashioning flawless marble and bronze, Brunelleschi winching the last blocks of his miraculous cupola into place, Masaccio slapping down the sublime ‘Tribute Money’ on the wet plaster of the Brancacci Chapel, and those dear, wise Medici guiding it all towards a purple-prose apotheosis in the pages of Burckhardt and...