We still have a great deal of evidence today about the ecclesiastical and diplomatic career of Don Paolo di Marco, abbot and tenorista at Florence in the early fifteenth century. But we also owe him a number of allegorical madrigals which are perhaps the most innovative, and certainly the most virtuosic of this period. Apparently innocent bucolic or mythological texts conceal philosophical intrigues, political ideas and moral precepts. Their poetry and music still speak intensely to us in the twenty-first century.