The Medici become the leading family of Florence and foster and inspire the birth of the Italian Renaissance, along with other families of Italy, such as the Visconti and Sforza of Milan, the Este of Ferrara, and the Gonzaga of Mantua.

Greatest artists like Leonardo da Vinci, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Giotto, Donatello, Titian and Raphael produce inspired works—their paintwork is more realistic-looking than had been created by Medieval artists and their marble statues rival and sometimes surpass those of Classical Antiquity.

Humanist historian Leonardo Bruni also splits the history in the antiquity, Middle Ages and modern period.

The ideas and ideals of the Renaissance soon spread into Northern Europe, France, England and much of Europe.

In the meantime, the discovery of the Americas, the new routes to Asia discovered by the Portuguese and the rise of the Ottoman Empire, all factors that erode the traditional Italian dominance in trade with the East, cause a long economic decline in the peninsula.