Michael Gove has suggested that the Government needs to recast itself in the mould of the “Medici model” of Renaissance Florence, to achieve its objective of “levelling up”. “The human flourishing at the time of the Renaissance in the cities of Italy was as a result of a number of different factors coming together,” he said. “It was the home of new methods of banking. It was the home of breakthroughs in architecture, in art, in literature and also in city governance.”

It would certainly be wonderful if this century saw the UK give birth to a new Renaissance. Indeed, British authors and publishers already exercise an influence out of all proportion to the size and population of this country.

However, the truth is that the precise factors behind the rise of Florence are something of a mystery. A place of moderate significance in the 12th century, it became a great centre of banking and textile production by Dante’s time, around 1300. It benefited from alliances with popes and kings, who secured interest-free loans from its bankers, which gave Florence entry into valuable markets in England, Flanders and southern Italy.

A masterstroke in 1252 was the minting of the first gold coinage in most of Europe for more than 400 years, the florin. Its banks boomed – and went bust – in the 14th century. Lessons were learned about over-extension, and later on, when the Medici family established its own bank, it was smaller than its predecessors. Perhaps Gove is on to something, if his view is that “levelling up” must depend on strong trade links and sustainable economic growth.

Still, he has made a questionable choice of a model if his concern is governance. The Medici, who rose to prominence in the 15th century, were masters of dissimulation, presenting the Florentine Republic as government by and for the citizens when, in fact, they held on to power ruthlessly. Admittedly the assassination of Giuliano de’ Medici in Florence Cathedral by the rival Pazzi family in 1478 was the sort of event that might induce paranoia. But it reflected the tortured history of what was, in effect, a Medici dictatorship. Cosimo de’ Medici, who died in 1464, was treated by the other great powers in Italy as the sole voice of Florence. “What will Cosimo think?” not “what will the Florentines think?” was the question their leaders asked in their voluminous diplomatic correspondence.

Cosimo’s grandson Lorenzo seems an attractive figure, sitting in his spacious but unostentatious palace that had been constructed without the architectural flourishes that would express Medici power too visibly. It is impossible not to share his delight in his collection of ancient gems, or in the frescoes of the private palace chapel built for Cosimo that immodestly display the Medici processing with the Three Magi bringing gifts to baby Jesus. Yet Lorenzo neglected the Medici bank, and the collapse of its branch in Bruges in 1478 was a calamity comparable to the financial crash of 2008.

Under the glossy surface a grimmer picture hides. Florence was the capital par excellence of inverted snobbery, and eminent Florentines pretended that they were of modest social origins. Since the late 13th century, city edicts had publicly excluded the so-called Magnate families from a role in government. Very well, the Magnates thought, we shall demote ourselves and join the popolo or people. One noble family even renamed itself the Popolani to drive the point home.

If we blow away the Medici myth there is still much to admire in Florentine culture. Yet many of the greatest figures slipped away from the city to great courts that offered patronage on a scale few in Florence could equal – the dukes of Milan hosted Leonardo, the kings of Naples held daily “conversazioni” with the leading literary figures of the day, many of them Florentine. Urbino, not Florence, produced Raphael. Nor was Italian creativity unique. The wonderful Netherlandish painters were admired and imitated in Italy. Northern Europeans were quicker to appreciate the importance of printing.

The ultimate irony is that the image of the Medici as defenders of a “free” republic was fatally dented in the 16th century when they became Dukes of Tuscany. Any pretence that they had merely been the custodians of Florentine liberty was abandoned.

David Abulafia is professor of Mediterranean history at the University of Cambridge