Originally published in 1982, this book tackles the underlying problem of what is meant by 'the Renaissance' and outlines those social, economic and topographical factors which triggered it off. It covers a number of subjects, the family, war, trade, religion and art but recognizing that the Renaissance was essentially an urban growth it focusses on 7 great Italian cities: Florence, Rome, Venice, Milan, Urbino, Mantua and Ferrara. It also includes studies of some extraordinary Renaissance individuals: Federigo Montefeltro, Isabella d'Este, Machiavelli, Baldasssare Castiglione, and the Medici clan, among others.
"The Italian Renaissance has come to occupy an almost mythical place in the imaginations of those who appreciate history, art, or remarkable personalities. This book will reinforce the contention that individuals with access to wealth and power can have a profound influence. They matter. And this explains why the Italian Renaissance is often perceived as elitist. Those who commissioned the works of art, often those who produced them, and many of those who appreciated them were privileged, educated, influential members of the Renaissance "one percent." This is meant in no way to denigrate modern interest in the poor and the marginalized, but merely to say that the enduring ideas and artifacts of the Renaissance arose from a highly-rarefied world of sophisticated talent and thought galvanized by individual curiosity and accomplished with practiced skill. And so it is that this book will be an exploration of the Italian Renaissance guided by particular moments and men - and a few remarkable women. It will be a large canvas with broad strokes intended to be seen at a distance for the dynamic sweep of its narrative of ideas and creative genius."
Students of the Italian Renaissance who wish to go beyond the standard names and subjects will find in this text abundant information on the lives, customs, beliefs, and practices of those who lived during this exciting time period. The World of Renaissance Italy: A Daily Life Encyclopedia engages all of the Italian peninsula from the Black Death (1347–1352) to 1600. Unlike other encyclopedic works about the Renaissance era, this book deals exclusively with Italy, revealing the ways common Italian people lived and experienced the events and technological developments that marked the Renaissance era. The coverage specifically spotlights marginal or traditionally marginalized groups, including women, homosexuals, Jews, the elderly, and foreign communities in Italian cities. The entries in this two-volume set are organized into 10 sections of 25 alphabetically listed entries each. Among the broad sections are art, fashion, family and gender, food and drink, housing and community, politics, recreation and social customs, and war. The "See Also" sources for each article are listed by section for easy reference, a feature that students and researchers will greatly appreciate. The extensive collection of contemporary documents include selections from a diary, letters, a travel journal, a merchant's inventory, Inquisition testimony, a metallurgical handbook, and text by an artist that describes what the author feels constitutes great work. Each of the primary source documents accompanies a specific article and provides an added dimension and degree of insight to the material.
This book offers a rich and exciting new way of thinking about the Italian Renaissance as both a historical period and a historical movement. Guido Ruggiero's work is based on archival research and new insights of social and cultural history and literary criticism, with a special emphasis on everyday culture, gender, violence, and sexuality. The book offers a vibrant and relevant critical study of a period too long burdened by anachronistic and outdated ways of thinking about the past. Familiar, yet alien; pre-modern, but suggestively post-modern; attractive and troubling, this book returns the Italian Renaissance to center stage in our past and in our historical analysis.
This major new collection of essays by leading scholars of Renaissance Italy transforms many of our existing notions about Renaissance politics, economy, social life, religion, medicine, and art. All the essays are founded on original archival research and examine questions within a wide chronological and geographical framework - in fact the pan-Italian scope of the volume is one of the volume's many attractions.Gender and Society in Renaissance Italy provides a broad, comprehensive perspective on the central role that gender concepts played in Italian Renaissance society.
This work offers the first English-language survey of the book industry in Renaissance Italy. Whereas traditional accounts of the book in the Renaissance celebrate authors and literary achievement, this study examines the nuts and bolts of a rapidly expanding trade that built on existing economic practices while developing new mechanisms in response to political and religious realities. Approaching the book trade from the perspective of its publishers and booksellers, this archive-based account ranges across family ambitions and warehouse fires to publishers' petitions and convivial bookshop conversation. In the process it constructs a nuanced picture of trading networks, production, and the distribution and sale of printed books, a profitable but capricious commodity. Originally published in Italian as Il commercio librario nell’Italia del Rinascimento (Milan: Franco Angeli, 1998; second, revised ed., 2003), this present English translation has not only been updated but has also been deeply revised and augmented.
