Rivista di letteratura storiografica italiana | 2017 | N. 1

This study highlights how Giotto di Bondone (1267-1337), living when the popolo ruled over all northern and central Italian city-states, was not only an outstanding painter but a savvy businessman too. Also, Giotto practiced usury. Lending money at high interest rates allowed Giotto to increase the already sizeable patrimony that he gained through art. Most commissions that Giotto received followed the ‘rhythm’ of the Franciscans’ peregrinatio. This led the painter to work in many Italian city-states, from Assisi to Rimini and Padua. As is well known, the Franciscan order was linked to the Guelph cause. Yet, Giotto was a professional painter who knew the art market of his time very well. A market that (back then just like today) does not follow any precise political rules but the logic of profit instead.

In these few pages the famous editor of Giovanni Villani’s Nuova cronica debunks the myth of this work’s repetitive nature, which still today finds its way into scholarly literature despite Salviati’s well-known and substantiated appreciation of this historian’s prose. In doing so, Porta emphasizes Villani’s subtle treatment of sensitive issues (something that many modern readers have failed to grasp) and his balanced judgment of some major controversies that were raging in his own time.

In fifteenth-century Italy Giannozzo Manetti was upheld as a role model in several respects: as ambassador, merchant, statesman, and writer. In addition, most contemporaries praised him for his friendliness, piety, wisdom, and zeal. All of these features contribute to shape the image of the ideal man that Manetti presents in his De dignitate et excellentia hominis. In this text (Manetti’s best-known) all such characteristics are epitomized by King Alfonso of Aragon, the treatise’s dedicatee. Significantly enough, the same traits mark the portrait of what Manetti considers the ideal pontiπ, that is, Nicholas V. As this essay shows, Manettti commended both laymen and ecclesiastics for accomplishing great deeds in pursuit of well-deserved, earthly fame.

This article explores a newly discovered documentary source for the study of fifteenth-century Florentine history: the diary of Lorenzo Guiducci, theologian, astronomer, and prior of the local Basilica of San Lorenzo from 1482 to 1496. The authors provide a complete edition of this diary according to MS. Ginori Conti 29/29 of the “Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze”. Also, they analyze the contents of this source within the broader contexts of both Florentine Renaissance historiography and Guiducci’s eclectic cultural background, especially his passion for astrology and prophecies. Blending realistic accuracy and moral restraint, Guiducci reveals new details about crucial, turbulent years of Florentine history (1492-1496) and their protagonists (Charles VIII, Lorenzo and Piero de’ Medici, and Savonarola).

By the Treaty of Barcelona (25 June 1529) Charles V promised to help Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici) reconquer the territories he had lost and regain control of Florence in exchange for the investiture of the kingdom of Naples and the annexation of the duchy of Milan. For eleven months, the Florentine republic resisted the attacks of the joint imperial and papal armies. Eventually, the Medici opponents lost and were exiled, while the old ruling family returned to Florence. The «Fuorusciti» (i.e., the Florentine republicans who had been exiled) always remained in touch with one another. Among them, Giovan Battista Busini corresponded regularly with Benedetto Varchi. Nineteenth-century Italian scholar Gaetano Milanesi collected and published twenty-nine such letters under the title Lettere di Giovambattista Busini a Benedetto Varchi sopra l’assedio di Firenze. This essay analyzes these documents so as to determine their goals, be they either personal or collective. In particular, the author focuses on the sense of humiliation that these letters convey, on the ties between individuals, on the comfort that their correspondence brings and, finally, on their attempt to strike back at Medici power.

Giangirolamo Monferrato († 1570) was an alumnus, secretary and copyist of the Ferrarese humanist Celio Calcagnini († 1541). His family archive and private library, which contained several unpublished works by Calcagnini himself, are largely lost. Only one book recording «conti e raccordi» has come down to us; it is now preserved at the “Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana” (ms. Vat. lat. 12592). This essay investigates the origin, transmission, structure, and the function of this family book, written by Giangirolamo from 1552 to 1570 and then supplemented with additions by his son, the Ferrarese painter Paolo Monferrato, from 1570 to 1574.

For more than two hundred years the ghetto of Florence was the center of Florentine Jewish life. Established by Cosimo I in 1570 (probably to follow the dictates of Pius V, the CounterReformation pope who had granted him the grand ducal title), the ghetto was set in the very central area of ‘Mercato Vecchio’. In 1888, a few decades after the Jews had been socially emancipated and given full political rights, the ghetto was demolished. This essay presents the first results of the Ghetto Mapping Project. On the basis of a comprehensive survey of the Medici archives, this on-going research project aims at reconstructing the architectural, economic, demographic, and historical features of the old Florentine ghetto.

This essay surveys Giovanni Virginio Schiaparelli’s studies in the history of science and, more specifically, astronomy from ancient Babylon to Kepler. It also shows the important role of this Italian scholar in establishing the centrality of astronomy within the discipline of physics. To this purpose, Schiaparelli relied on an impressive wealth of sources, all of which he treated with the utmost scientific rigour. This eventually inspired the title of Pierre Duhem’s famous book Sózein tà phainómena (1908).

In this essay the director of “Biblioteca Riccardiana” describes a series of documents (all dating from 1909-1912) that the Italian writer Renato Fucini exchanged with Laura Milani Comparetti, daughter of famous classical literature scholar Domenico Comparetti and Elena Raπalovich. This archival collection, (which has been recently donated to this prestigious Florentine library by Mrs. Clara Frontali) consists of twenty-two sonnets by Fucini and seventeen by Milani Comparetti. Two letters by Renato Fucini to Laura Milani Comparetti and one by Enrico Fucini to Elisa Milani Frontali (dated 14 April 1955) are also part of this generous archival donation.