Maecenas

plural Maecenases · alternative archaic Mæcenas

1. A generous benefactor; specifically, a patron of literature or art.

   […]thou art his deare and louing friend, good and gracious Lord and maſter, Mecenas,[…]

   1621, Democritus Junior [pseudonym; Robert Burton], “Loue of men, which varies as his obiects, profitable, pleaſant, honeſt.”, in The Anatomy of Melancholy, […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: […] John Lichfield and Iames Short, for Henry Cripps, →OCLC, partition 3, section 2, member 2, subsection 1, page 507

   3 more examples

   After having enjoyed a very ſhort private audience in the cloſet, our young gentleman was ſhewn into another room, where half a dozen of his fellow-adherents waited for their Mæcenas, who in a few minutes appeared, with a moſt gracious aſpect, received the compliments of the morning, and ſat down to breakfaſt, in the midſt of them, without any further ceremony.

   1751, [Tobias] Smollett, chapter CIII, in The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle […], volume IV, London: Harrison and Co., […], →OCLC, page 126

   The government[…]maintained one of the largest armies in Europe; it developed what became, by the 1780s, a navy as big as the British; and it played the role of cultural Maecenas.

   2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation: France from Louis XV to Napoleon, Penguin Books, published 2003, page 329

   The contemporary art space created within the Palais de Tokyo (also home to the Paris Museum of Modern Art) is a pretty sad example of government as Maecenas.

   2010 November 5, Katherine Knorr, “For November, Paris Is the City of Lenses”, in The International Herald Tribune, →ISSN