The Italian language flourished in the second half of the 15th century, leaving Latin behind. In Florence, it was Lorenzo the Magnificent who gave birth to a kind of Academy in which art, literature and philosophy rose to new heights and spawned such giants of Renaissance Humanism as Marsilio Ficino, Michelangelo, Poliziano and Pico della Mirandola. “Chi vuol essere lieto sia” by Lorenzo de' Medici is a celebration in verse of this new vision of the world cultivated by the lords of Florence. It is a compendium of sonnets and songs that have their roots in Petrarch’s poetry, but that also derive from ideas promulgated by the Platonists. Lorenzo’s verses celebrate an ideal of eternal beauty that shines like a sun that never sets, in which passionate love is held at bay by the contemplative spirit of the philosopher.