Fan Casting

Set in Laurentian Florence at the height of the Italian Renaissance under Lorenzo de' Medici — the Magnificent — The Florentine follows Leonora di Bartolomeo, 26, a Black woman raised by the Bartolomeo family, one of the Medici's most trusted banking and scholarly households. Leonora is entirely Florentine in language, culture, and sensibility — she speaks the Tuscan dialect that is crystallizing into literary Italian, reads Latin and Greek, participates in the Platonic Academy that Lorenzo has assembled, and is one of the finest painters of her generation. She paints under the name of her male cousin Giacomo, with his knowing cooperation — the art world of Renaissance Florence has no framework for a woman of her ability, particularly a Black woman, and the arrangement is both painful necessity and practical solution. When Lorenzo commissions what will become one of the most important painting cycles of the era, Leonora's work will be at its center, anonymously. Her marriage to Matteo Ricci, a Medici scholar and diplomat, brings into her orbit a man who suspects the truth about who is really painting the Giacomo works — and who, when he understands completely, makes a choice that is the series' central moral question. S1E1 — Il Nome di Giacomo (The Name of Giacomo) Leonora painting in the workshop. The public fiction of Giacomo's work. Lorenzo's commission arrives. The marriage to Matteo is announced. S1E7 — Il Segreto (The Secret) Matteo confronts Leonora with what he knows. Her response — neither denial nor apology — is the series' pivot. S2E12 — Il Capolavoro (The Masterpiece) Series finale: The commission completed. The question of signature — whose name goes on the work. The decision made and its consequences.