The Florentine Renaissance [antikvár]

Preß ace the fifteenth century in Florence has long been recognized as one of the brilliant periods not only in European but in world history. Voltaire, writing in 1751, claimed it to be one of four happy and exemplary epochs; the Florentines themselves believed they were living in a golden age. But its interest for us today is more than historical: it is a watershed from which flow many of the beliefs and values we treasure most. A demonstration of the effectiveness of personal liberty, an articulate defence of repubUcan principles, a generous attitude to other reHgions, art as a form of discovery, patronage of the experimental: these are only a few of the good things we owe in large measure to the Florentines, either directly or as interpreters of the classical past. The paradox of Renaissance studies is that although in recent years many aspects of the period have been analysed by speciaUsts in meticulous detail, there exists no work on Florentine civilization as a whole during the fifteenth century, for even Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is only in part concerned with Florence and its author was never to add those sections on the fme arts called for by his original plan. My book is an attempt to meet this need. It is based on primary sources, both the Greek and Roman texts which played so important a part in the period, and Latin and Tuscan works by Florentines, ranging from family letters to diplomatic manifestoes, from anatomical notes to treatises on painting and tovm-planning. In interpreting such a wide range of material I am indebted to the many specialized books and articles in which the subject abounds and which collectively represent perhaps the most sustained international historical research in this century. Painting as it were a mural, I have had to choose, without discussion in the text, what seems to me 15