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Renaissance Politics and Culture Renaissance Politics and Culture Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History General Editor Han van Ruler (Erasmus University Rotterdam) Founded by Arjo Vanderjagt Editorial Board C.S. Celenza (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore) M. Colish (Yale University, New Haven) – J.I. Israel (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) – A. Koba (University of Tokyo) – M. Mugnai (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) – W. Otten (University of Chicago) volume 331 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/bsih Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Renaissance Politics and Culture Essays in Honour of Robert Black Edited by Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani LEIDEN | BOSTON Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Cover illustration: Detail of the Pianta della Catena, a view of fifteenth-century Florence, by Francesco Rosselli (1448–c. 1513). The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 0920-8607 ISBN 978-90-04-46482-7 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-46486-5 (e-book) Copyright 2021 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Hotei, Brill Schöningh, Brill Fink, Brill mentis, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Böhlau Verlag and V&R Unipress. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Requests for re-use and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV via brill.com or copyright.com. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Contents Preface vii List of Figures ix Notes on Contributors x Publications of Robert Black, 1973–2020 xii 1 Robert Black: A Life of Scholarship 1 Jonathan Davies part 1 Politics 2 The Problem of Succession for the Visconti and the Sforza 17 Jane Black 3 The Impuissant and Immoral City: George of Trebizond’s Critique of Plato’s Laws 39 John Monfasani 4 The Virtuous Republic of Francesco Patrizi of Siena 59 James Hankins 5 Cleomenes Redivivus: Machiavelli from The Prince to the Discourses 83 Jérémie Barthas 6 Machiavelli and Arezzo 107 John M. Najemy part 2 Culture 7 Leon Battista Alberti as a Student of the Florentine University and the Priory of San Martino a Gangalandi (1429–1430) 141 Lorenz Böninger Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access vi Contents 8 The Gherardi Family of Borgo San Sepolcro and Piero della Francesca’s Williamstown Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels 155 James R. Banker 9 Pier Vettori (1499–1585): Philologist and Professor 165 Davide Baldi Bellini 10 Print and Trust in Renaissance Italy 198 Brian Richardson Index Nominum 219 Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Preface Rare is the scholar who genuinely merits a volume in his honor, but as the first article in this volume on his scholarship amply illustrates, Robert Black is unquestionably such a scholar, so central and massive have been his publica- tions in so many different aspects of Renaissance studies, from Italian human- ism, the history of education, and the history of the classical tradition to issues in historiography, Machiavelli studies, and the history of Arezzo. The editors of the volume have long been indebted to and admirers of Black’s scholarship. It has been very satisfying to see so many excellent fellow scholars seize the opportunity to join us in honoring him on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday. We are grateful for their earnest dedication—and good humor—in working with us on the volume. Our particular thanks go to Jane Black for her invaluable advice and assistance as well as for her essay. Finally, we thank Brill Academic Publishers for agreeing to publish the volume and our Brill editors Ivo Romein and Theo Joppe for so expertly facilitating the whole process from submission to publication. Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Figures 8.1 Piero della Francesca, Virgin and Child Enthroned with Four Angels. Image cour- tesy Clark Art Institute. Clarkart@edu 156 8.2 Altar Chapel of San Leonardo or Monacato, Cloister of the Cathedral, Sansepolcro. Printed with the kind permission of Enzo Mattei 158 8.3 Gherardi Palace, Sansepolcro. Printed with the kind permission of Enzo Mattei 160 Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Notes on Contributors James R. Banker is professor emeritus in the history department at North Carolina State University. He continues his research and writing on Piero della Francesca and Quattrocento Italy. Jérémie Barthas is a tenured researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), Institute for Modern and Contemporary History (IHMC—UMR 8066, Paris), and an associated researcher to the Centre for the Study of the History of Political Thought (London). Davide Baldi Bellini is a contract professor at the University of Florence. He deals mainly with Byzantine culture and humanism; his publications are numerous and various ranging from Greek Lexicography up to Greek teaching in Florence. Jane Black has written articles on Milan and Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and is author of Absolutism in Renaissance Milan: Plenitude of Power under the Visconti and the Sforza 1329–1535 (Oxford, 2009). Lorenz Böninger is an independent scholar who has published widely on Florentine Renaissance history. His latest book is Niccolò di Lorenzo della Magna and the Social World of Florentine Printing, ca. 1470–1493 (Harvard University Press, 2021). Jonathan Davies is Associate Professor in Italian Renaissance History at the University of Warwick. His publications include Florence and its University during the Early Renaissance (Brill, 1993) and Culture and Power: Tuscany and its Universities 1537–1609 (Brill, 2009). James Hankins is Professor of History at Harvard University and General Editor of the I Tatti Renaissance Library. His Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy was published in 2019 by the Belknap Press of Harvard University. Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Notes on Contributors xi John Monfasani is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York. He served as the Executive Director of the Renaissance Society of America, 1995–2010. John M. Najemy professor of history emeritus at Cornell University, has explored the history of Florence and the writings of Machiavelli and other medieval-Renaissance Italian authors in several books and many essays. His Machiavelli’s Broken World is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Brian Richardson is Emeritus Professor of Italian Language at the University of Leeds. His research interests centre on the history of the Italian language and the history of the circulation of texts in late medieval and Renaissance Italy. Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Publications of Robert Black, 1973–2020 1973 1. (With Reinhold Mueller), “Contributo alla ricostituzione di serie archivis- tiche danneggiate nell’alluvione del 1966 nell’Archivio di Stato di Firenze,” Rassegna degli archivi di Stato 33 (1973): 464–67. 2. “La storia della prima crociata di Benedetto Accolti e la diplomazia fior- entina rispetto all’Oriente,” Archivio storico italiano 131 (1973): 4–25. 1981 3. “Benedetto Accolti and the Beginnings of Humanist Historiography,” English Historical Review 96 (1981): 36–58. 1982 4. “Ancients and Moderns in the Renaissance: Rhetoric and History in Accolti’s Dialogus de prestantia virorum sui evi,” Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (1982): 3–32. Reprinted in William. J. Connell, ed., Renaissance Essays II. Library of the History of Ideas, 10 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1993), 150–79. 1985 5. Benedetto Accolti and the Florentine Renaissance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). 6. “Florentine Political Traditions and Machiavelli’s Election to the Chancery,” Italian Studies 40 (1985): 1–16. 7. “The Studio Aretino in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” History of Universities 5 (1985): 55–82. 1986 8. “Arezzo e la sua università sconosciuta del Rinascimento,” Atti e memorie dell’ Accademia Petrarca di Arezzo n.s. 47 (1986, re vera 1988):119–51. Jonathan Davies and John Monfasani - 9789004464865 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 12:55:53PM via free access Publications of Robert Black, 1973–2020 xiii 9. “The Political of the Florentine Chancellors,” The Historical Journal 29 (1986): 991–1003. 10. “The Uses and Abuses Of Iconology: Piero della Francesca and Carlo Ginzburg,” Oxford Art Journal 9 (1986): 67–71. 1987 11. “The New Laws of History,” Renaissance Studies 1 (1987): 126–56. 12. “Humanism and Education in Renaissance Arezzo,” I Tatti Studies: Essays in the Renaissance 2 (1987): 171–238. 1988 13. “Higher Education in Florentine Tuscany: New Documents from the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century,” in Peter Denley and Caroline Elam, eds., Florence and Italy: Renaissance Studies in Honour of Nicolai Rubinstein.Westfield Publications in Medieval Studies, 2 (London: Committee for Medieval Studies, Westfield College), 209–22.
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