DOCSLIB.ORG

Public and Private in the Writings of Leon Battista Alberti

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Public and Private in the Writings of Leon Battista Alberti Public and Private in the Writings of Leon Battista Alberti by Anne-Marie Sorrenti A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto © Copyright by Anne-Marie Sorrenti 2014 Public and Private in the Writings of Leon Battista Alberti Anne-Marie Sorrenti Doctor of Philosophy Department of Italian Studies University of Toronto 2014 Abstract Through an examination of works by Leon Battista Alberti, namely De iure, Della famiglia, selections from Intercenales, and parts of De re aedificatoria, this dissertation studies how Alberti conceptualizes public and private in legal, social, and architectural terms. The key to his thought on the subject is found in De iure, a lesser-known tract of his, not generally considered by literary scholars. Analyzed here in relation to the other writings, it sheds new light on Alberti by demonstrating that the ordering of public law above private law and the notion of the telos of the public good were deeply ingrained in his thought. The re-examination of Della famiglia from the viewpoint of his legal thought demonstrates that for Alberti public concerns are more important than private ones. Certain interlocutors, who argue that private interests are more important than the public good, also focus on the importance of secrecy and dissimulation in various forms of human interactions, including friendship. The dissertation also treats Alberti's approach to public and private in the development of the theme of marriage and infidelity both in Della famiglia and in four of his Intercenales (Maritus, Uxoria, Amores, and Vidua), none of which has been studied at length ii in this way in the existing scholarship. In these stories, the public is that which is openly expressed and performative, while the private is shrouded in secrecy and dissimulation. Finally, the chapter on public and private architecture provides a fresh perspective on Alberti's masterpiece on architecture, De re aedificatoria, by examining how his descriptions of private residences relate to his statements about the public function of architecture. The analysis emphasizes the public, civilizing function of both the architect and architecture for Alberti, regardless of whether he is discussing public works or private residences. iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank first and foremost my supervisor, Professor Olga Zorzi Pugliese, not only for her intellectually rigorous, precise, and timely commentary but also for her mentorship. Her commitment to the highest academic standards is exemplary and her unwavering support, encouragement, and patience at all stages of the preparation of this dissertation are so appreciated. My deepest gratitude also extends to Professor Konrad Eisenbichler for his close reading of my work, for his generosity with his ideas, and for inspiring new directions in my research. His many valuable suggestions have vastly improved the quality of my scholarship. I am also indebted to Professor Eva Kushner, whose keen philosophical engagement has assisted me tremendously in clarifying the scope of this project. I am truly blessed to have had such a committed and focused committee. Acknowledgment is due to Professor Charles Taylor and to Professor James Tully for teaching me how to think and how to read all those years ago at McGill in their courses and advanced seminars in political philosophy. Finally, thank you to my family—to my husband Cam, to my children Thomas and Bella, and to my late mother Moira—for helping me to see this project through. iv Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Alberti's De iure in the Context of Legal Humanism 7 1. De iure: A Brief Introduction 7 2. Alberti and the Context of Legal Humanism 18 2.1 The Scholastics: Glossators/Commentators and the Post-Glossators/Bartolists 21 2.2 The Anti-Scholastic School of Legal Humanism: Petrarch and Valla 23 2.2.1 Petrarch 24 2.2.2 Valla 28 2.3 Alberti’s Critique of the Profession of Law in De commodis Compared to Petrarch’s Letter XX, 4 and Valla’s Letter Against Bartolus 35 2.4 The Position of De iure Between Legal Humanism and Historical Jurisprudence 44 2.4.1 Historical Jurisprudence 45 3. De Iure: Summary and Analysis of the Text 46 3.1 An Overview of De iure in Six Parts 49 3.1.1 Part 1: Introduction (Sections 1–3) 50 3.1.2 Part 2: On Ordering Goods and Evils (Sections 4–13) 50 3.1.3 Part 3: Wrongdoings and Their Consequences (Sections 14–19) 51 3.1.4 Part 4: Citizenship and Law, Ethics and Friendship (Sections 20–23) 53 3.1.5 Part 5: The Public Good, Community, and Public Law’s Superiority to Private Law (Sections 24–26) 56 3.1.6 Part 6: The Conclusion to De iure (Sections 27–28) 59 3.2 Analysis of De iure 60 3.2.1 Ancient Concepts of Justice and the Relationship Between Law and Philosophy 60 v 3.2.2 Natural Law Principles 63 3.2.3 A Comparison between Salutati’s De nobilitate legum et medicinae and Alberti’s De iure 65 3.2.4 History, Context, and Judgment in De iure 69 Chapter 2: Public and Private, Friendship, and Dissimulation in De iure and Della famiglia 76 1. Public and Private in De iure and Della famiglia 76 1.1 Public and Private in De iure 76 1.2 Alberti's Focus on Public Virtù and Good Laws in the Prologue to Book 1 of Della famiglia 80 1.3 The Family's Role in Exalting the City: Alberti's Pedagogical Project and its Public Aims 90 1.4 Book III: The Debate Between Lionardo and Giannozzo: Civic, Public Life vs. Private Family Life 98 2. The Many Faces of Friendship in De iure and Della famiglia: From Friendship in the Laws to Friendship as Courtiership 104 2.1 The Concept of Friendship and the Intersection of Public and Private Worlds 104 2.2 Aristotle's Typology of Friendship 105 2.3 Public Friendship in the Laws in De iure 109 2.4 The Three Types of Family Friendship in Books I to III of Della famiglia 111 2.4.1 Lionardo: Family Friendships That Support the Public Good 113 2.4.2 Giannozzo: Family Friendship as an End in Itself 115 2.4.3 Giannozzo: Family Friendships of Utility in the Semi-Private Sphere 117 2.5 Piero and Book IV: Friendship as Courtiership 119 2.5.1 The Context of Book IV 120 vi 2.5.2 Piero's Novella on Friendship: The Role of the Prince in Exalting the Family 124 3. Corruption and Dissimulation in Public and Private Affairs from De iure to Della famiglia 137 3.1 Prudence in De iure and Della famiglia 141 3.2 Corruption and Dissimulation in De iure 150 3.3 Dissimulation in Della famiglia 151 3.3.1 Giannozzo and Dissimulation 151 3.3.2 Piero's Novella and Dissimulation 156 3.3.3 Adovardo and Dissimulation 157 Chapter 3: Adulterous Wives and Naughty Widows: Public and Private Aspects of Infidelity from Della famiglia to Intercenales 164 1. Marriage and Infidelity in Della famiglia 165 1.1 Battista 166 1.2 Lionardo 167 1.3 Giannozzo 169 2. Intercenales 177 2.1 Uxoria and Maritus 182 2.1.1 Uxoria 182 2.1.2 Maritus 191 2.2 Amores and Vidua 200 2.2.1 Amores 201 2.2.2 Vidua 209 vii Chapter 4: Alberti as "Author" of Public and Private Architecture in De re aedificatoria 218 1. A Brief Introduction to De re aedificatoria 218 2. The Architect as Author 221 3. Public and Private in De re aedificatoria 224 3.1 The Public Purpose of the Discipline of Architecture 226 3.2 The Division of Public and Private Architecture 229 3.3 The Overlapping of Public and Private Functions in Architecture 232 3.4 Private Dwellings: City Life vs. Country Life 237 Conclusion 249 Bibliography 258 1. Primary Sources 258 2. Secondary Sources 260 viii 1 Introduction Leon Battista Alberti's thinking has been described as "new wine in an old bottle" that is wrapped in a "deceptive package." Renaissance architectural historian Mario Carpo extends this metaphor by claiming that in the often deeply divided field of Alberti studies, some scholars "discuss the package, some the bottle, and some the wine."1 This dissertation on the concepts of public and private in the writings of Alberti will make reference at various times to the bottle (his use of ancient sources and past models), the wine (his new and innovative thinking) and the package (his complex narrative strategies whereby ideas emerge that seem to contradict the author's world-view). Alberti's dominant world-view, as expressed in many of his writings, is that public concerns precede and are more important than private ones, even though private interests place constant pressure on the public good as Alberti understands it. Instead of focusing primarily on Alberti's irony as Timothy Kircher might, or on decorum as Anthony Grafton does, the present study of how public and private are defined and discussed by Alberti as principles that guide his work sheds a new light on both the dominant message and the sometimes contradictory qualities of his more complex writings. The first Chapter, "Alberti's De iure in the Context of Legal Humanism" demonstrates that one of the keys to understanding the priority of public over private in Alberti's thinking is his little-known treatise on law. This short work distils the fundamental ideas that Alberti gleaned from his decade of legal study in Bologna and is a testament to the fact that the terms "public" and "private" carried a primarily juridical meaning for him.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Leon Battista Alberti and the Homogeneity of Space Author(S): Branko Mitrović Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol
    Leon Battista Alberti and the Homogeneity of Space Author(s): Branko Mitrović Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 63, No. 4 (Dec., 2004), pp. 424- 439 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4128013 . Accessed: 10/02/2014 11:35 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of California Press and Society of Architectural Historians are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 64.9.76.165 on Mon, 10 Feb 2014 11:35:15 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Leon Battista Alberti and the Homogeneityof Space BRANKO MITROVIC Unitec Instituteof Technology He thought, with most people, that everything is somewhere the historyof the visualarts, the processwhereby the under- and in place. If this is its nature, the power of place must be a standing of space as homogenous came about. He believed marvelous thing, and be priorto all other things. For that with- that the conception of space as homogenous and systematic out which nothing else can exist, while it can exist without the arose shortly before the discoveryof the geometricalcon- others, must needs be first; for place does not pass out of exis- struction of perspective.4In later years, a position similar tence when the things in it are annihilated.
    [Show full text]
  • Leon Battista Alberti
    Leon Battista Alberti Beauty and Representation QUATTROCENTO = 1400s CINQUECENTO = 1500s SEICENTO = 1600s ITALIAN RENAISSANCE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE HUMANISM ITALIAN RENAISSANCE + Developed during the 14th-15th centuries as a critical reaction to medieval scholastic HUMANISM education. + Emphasizes the agency of human beings,part- icularly through what is understood today as the “humanities.” If during the middle ages, ART was sub- servient to gods and kings... If during the middle ages, ART was sub- servient to gods and kings... during the Renaissance, it would acquire a measure of autonomy and be increasingly seen as a mirror of (social) reality. Massacio, Trinita, 1428 Leon Battista Alberti Leon Battista Alberti DE PICTURA (1435) Leon Battista Alberti DE RE AEDIFICATORIA (1452) (THE ART OF BUILDING IN TEN BOOKS) It grieved me that so many great and noble Instructions of ancient Authors should be lost by the Injury of Time, so that scarce any but Vitruvius has escaped this general Wreck: A writer indeed of universal Knowledge, but so maimed by Age, that in many Places there are great Chasms, and many ings imperfect in others. Besides this, his Style is absolutely void of all Ornaments, and he wrote in such a Manner, that to the Latins he seems to write Greek, and to the Greeks, Latin: But indeed it is plain from the book itself, that he wrote neither Greek nor Latin, and he might almost as well have never wrote at all, at least with Regard to us, since we cannot understand him. Leon Battista Alberti Hey Vitruvius, what language are you
    [Show full text]
  • Leon Battista Alberti: Excerpts from on Painting
    1 LEON BATTISTA ALBERTI: EXCERPTS FROM ON PAINTING From the Prologue I used to marvel and at the same time to grieve that so many excellent and superior arts and sciences from our most vigorous antique past could now seem lacking and almost wholly lost. We know from [remaining] works and through references to them that they were once widespread. Painters, sculptors, architects, musicians, geometricians, rhetoricians, seers and similar noble and amazing intellects are very rarely found today and there are few to praise them. Thus I believed, as many said, that Nature, the mistress of things, had grown old and tired. She no longer produced either geniuses or giants which in her more youthful and more glorious days she had produced so marvelously and abundantly. Since then, I have been brought back here [to Florence]from the long exile in which we Alberti have grown old into this our city, adorned above all others. I have come to understand that in many men, but especially in you, Filippo, and in our close friend Donato the sculptor and in others like Nencio, Luca and Masaccio, there is a genius for [accomplishing] every praiseworthy thing. For this they should not be slighted in favor of anyone famous in antiquity in these arts. Therefore, I believe the power of acquiring wide fame in any art or science lies in our industry and diligence more than in the times or in the gifts of nature. It must be admitted that it was less difficult for the Ancients--because they had models to imitate and from which they could learn to come to a knowledge of those supreme arts which today are most difficult for us.
    [Show full text]
  • Stepping out of Brunelleschi's Shadow
    STEPPING OUT OF BRUNELLESCHI’S SHADOW. THE CONSECRATION OF SANTA MARIA DEL FIORE AS INTERNATIONAL STATECRAFT IN MEDICEAN FLORENCE Roger J. Crum In his De pictura of 1435 (translated by the author into Italian as Della pittura in 1436) Leon Battista Alberti praised Brunelleschi’s dome of Florence cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore [Fig. 1], as ‘such a large struc- ture’ that it rose ‘above the skies, ample to cover with its shadow all the Tuscan people’.1 Alberti was writing metaphorically, but he might as easily have written literally in prediction of the shadowing effect that Brunelleschi’s dome, dedicated on 30 August 1436, would eventually cast over the Florentine cultural and historical landscape of the next several centuries.2 So ever-present has Brunelleschi’s structure been in the historical perspective of scholars – not to mention in the more popular conception of Florence – that its stately coming into being in the Quattrocento has almost fully overshadowed in memory and sense of importance another significant moment in the history of the cathedral and city of Florence that immediately preceded the dome’s dedication in 1436: the consecration of Santa Maria del Fiore itself on 25 March of that same year.3 The cathedral was consecrated by Pope Eugenius IV (r. 1431–1447), and the ceremony witnessed the unification in purpose of high eccle- siastical, foreign, and Florentine dignitaries. The event brought to a close a history that had begun 140 years earlier when the first stones of the church were laid in 1296; in 1436, the actual date of the con- secration was particularly auspicious, for not only is 25 March the feast of the Annunciation, but in the Renaissance that day was also the start of the Florentine calendar year.
    [Show full text]
  • Fatal Colours—PKY—234X153mm FATALCPR01
    ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 1 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 FATAL COLOURS Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 2 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 3 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 FATAL COLOURS the battle of towton 1461 George Goodwin Weidenfeld & Nicolson london Input Data Services Ltd 01-17-2011 10:38:36 ORION FATALC Unit $$PR Page 4 Fatal Colours—PKY—234x153mm FATALCPR01 First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson 13579108642 Text © George Goodwin 2011 Maps © David Hoxley 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher. The right of George Goodwin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. hb isbn-13 978 0 297 86071 6 Typset by Input Data Services Ltd, Bridgwater Somerset Printed and bound in the UK by CPI Mackays, Chatham, Kent The Orion Publishing Group’s policy is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
    [Show full text]
  • The Birth of Partnership Systems in Renaissance Florence1 John F
    Chapter 6 Transposition and Refunctionality: The Birth of Partnership Systems in 1 Renaissance Florence John F. Padgett Inventions of any sort are hard to understand. They seem to come out of the blue, a rupture with the past, yet close investigation always reveals historical roots. Individual geniuses sometimes create them, but is “genius” just our celebratory label for a process that worked, which we do not understand? To proffer a tentative distinction: innovations improve on existing ways (i.e, activities, conceptions and purposes) of doing things, while inventions change the ways things are done. Under this definition, the key to classifying something as an invention is the degree to which it reverberates out to alter the interacting system of which it is a part. To some extent we understand micrologics of combination and recombination.2 Yet the invention puzzle is that some of these innovative recombinations cascade out to reconfigure entire interlinked ecologies of “ways of doing things,” whereas most innovations do not. The poisedness of a system to reconfiguration by an invention is as much a part of the phenomenon to be explained as is the system’s production of the invention itself. Invention “in the wild” cannot be understood through abstracting away from concrete social context, because inventions are permutations of that context.3 But to make progress in understanding discontinuous change we need to embed our analysis of transformation in the routine dynamics of actively self-reproducing social contexts, where constitutive elements and relations are generated and reinforced. 1 This chapter is an abridged version (40% cut) of John F.
    [Show full text]
  • Rereading I Libri Della Famiglia: Leon Battista Alberti on Marriage, Amicizia and Conjugal Friendship*
    Rereading I libri della famiglia: Leon Battista Alberti on Marriage, Amicizia and Conjugal Friendship* Amyrose McCue Gill Puossi l’amor tra moglie e marito riputar grandissimo… a quella unione la quale si dice essere vera amicizia. Non mi stendo in racontare quanta utilità si tragga da questa congiugale amicizia.1 --Leon Battista Alberti, I libri della famiglia Over the past half-century, sources as diverse as paintings, wills, novelle, tax and dowry records, treatises, trial documents and zibaldoni have been used productively to build a historical model of early modern marriage that emphasizes the politics and economics of marriage alliances as well as the patriarchal line, employing the language and attributes of kinship to look beyond affective bonds and subjective experience in search of broader social implications.2 This model indicates that middle- and upper-class marriages, especially in Renaissance Florence, were carefully controlled by families with little concern for individual desires; that daughters (as potential brides, wives and widows) were successfully subjugated by the patriarchal structures of the family; that the betrothal of young girls to much older men resulted in emotional coolness and a decided lack of intimate contact between spouses.3 * Though all errors herein remain my own, thanks are due Steven Botterill, Maureen C. Miller, and especially Albert R. Ascoli and Deanna Shemek for their comments on the dissertation chapter from which this article emerged. I am also grateful to the attendees and participants in the “Friendship in the Renaissance” panels presented at the March 2009 Renaissance Society of America conference, many of whom – in particular Dale Kent, Reinier Leushuis and Marc Schachter – asked provocative questions about I libri della famiglia and shared shrewd insights regarding fifteenth-century friendship.
    [Show full text]
  • From Alberti's Virtù to the Virtuoso Michelangelo, Goodness And
    From Alberti’s Virtù to the Virtuoso Michelangelo, goodness and badness in drawing in the early modern period Eduardo Corte-Real, Associated Professor, IADE, Design School, Lisbon [email protected] Summary: This paper discusses the transit of Virtue from the Moral or Ethical domain to the Aesthetical domain. This happened from the 1400’s to the 1600’s. The paper elaborates about one of the origins of qualifying drawings as Bad or Good. It is suggested that clarity, control were characteristics of goodness in a particular period and fastness and luck were characteristics of Goodness in subsequent. The paper argues that Moral qualifications of Drawings are linked with the epochs Ethics. “the true virtus, once gone, do not come back to inferior men” Horatio Introduction: From the Stoa to the Duomo Goodness and Badness have their natural place within Ethics. Being more specific, they can be considered as normally associated with Moral. Moral deals with the goodness or illness of our actions whereas Ethics deals with the justification for human actions. Nonetheless, Ethical is the first synonym for Moral that appears in my MSWord dictionary. Somehow, somewhere and sometime we started to use Moral concepts to qualify drawings. This is a Bad drawing and this is a Good drawing. Nobody goes to Heaven just for doing good drawings; nobody goes to Hell just for doing bad drawings. At least that wasn’t something that I have heard in confession. But there was a time in which the Protestant sphere of the world was very keen in burning people for ‘witchcraft’ and the Catholic sphere also happy to do it to ‘heretics’.
    [Show full text]
  • Renaissance Theories of Vision Edited by John Hendrix, University of Lincoln, UK and Rhode Island School of Design and Roger Williams University, USA, and Charles H
    Renaissance Theories of Vision Edited by John Hendrix, University of Lincoln, UK and Rhode Island School of Design and Roger Williams University, USA, and Charles H. Carman, University at Buffalo, USA Visual Culture in Early Modernity December 2010 244 x 172 mm 258 pages Hardback 978-1-4094-0024-0 £65.00 Includes 18 b&w illustrations How are processes of vision, perception, and sensation conceived in the Renaissance? How are those conceptions made manifest in the arts? The essays in this volume address these and similar questions to establish important theoretical and philosophical bases for artistic production in the Renaissance and beyond. The essays also attend to the views of historically significant writers from the ancient classical period to the eighteenth century, including Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, St Augustine, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen), Ibn Sahl, Marsilio Ficino, Nicholas of Cusa, Leon Battista Alberti, Gian Paolo Lomazzo, Gregorio Comanini, John Davies, Rene Descartes, Samuel van Hoogstraten, and George Berkeley. Contributors carefully scrutinize and illustrate the effect of changing and evolving ideas of intellectual and physical vision on artistic practice in Florence, Rome, Venice, England, Austria, and the Netherlands. The artists whose work and practices are discussed include Fra Angelico, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippino Lippi, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, Parmigianino, Titian, Bronzino, Johannes Gumpp and Rembrandt van Rijn. Taken together, the essays provide the reader with a fresh perspective on the intellectual confluence between art, science, philosophy, and literature across Renaissance Europe. Contents Introduction, John S. Hendrix and Charles H. Carman; Classical optics and the perspectivae traditions leading to the Renaissance, Nader El-Bizri; Meanings of perspective in the Renaissance: tensions and resolution, Charles H.
    [Show full text]
  • The Rhetoric of Work in Leon Battista Alberti's Writings
    Rhetorics of work / edited by Yannis Yannitsiotis, Dimitra Lampropoulou, Carla Salva- terra. - Pisa : Plus-Pisa university press, c2008. – (Thematic work group. 4, Work, gender and society ; 3) 331.01 (21.) 1. Lavoro – Concetto - Europa I. Lampropoulou, Dimitra II. Salvaterra, Carla III. Yannitsiotis, Yannis CIP a cura del Sistema bibliotecario dell’Università di Pisa This volume is published thanks to the support of the Directorate General for Research of the European Commission, by the Sixth Framework Network of Excellence CLIOHRES.net under the contract CIT3-CT-2005-006164. The volume is solely the responsibility of the Network and the authors; the European Community cannot be held responsible for its contents or for any use which may be made of it. Cover: André Lhote (1885-1962), Study for the School of Arts and Crafts, painting, Musée de l’Annonciade, Saint- Tropez. © 1990 PhotoScala, Florence. © 2008 CLIOHRES.net The materials published as part of the CLIOHRES Project are the property of the CLIOHRES.net Consortium. They are available for study and use, provided that the source is clearly acknowledged. [email protected] - www.cliohres.net Published by Edizioni Plus – Pisa University Press Lungarno Pacinotti, 43 56126 Pisa Tel. 050 2212056 – Fax 050 2212945 [email protected] www.edizioniplus.it - Section “Biblioteca” Member of ISBN: 978-88-8492-555-8 Linguistic Editing Ralph Nisbet Informatic Editing Răzvan Adrian Marinescu The Rhetoric of Work in Leon Battista Alberti’s Writings Claudia Bertazzo University of Padua ABSTRACT One source of interest in doing research on Leon Battista Alberti is to see how a man of multiple talents from the 15th-century elites viewed the world of work, including craftsmanship and manual work in the broadest sense.
    [Show full text]
  • Political Conspiracy in Florence, 1340-1382 A
    POLITICAL CONSPIRACY IN FLORENCE, 1340-1382 A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Robert A. Fredona February 2010 © 2010 Robert A. Fredona POLITICAL CONSPIRACY IN FLORENCE, 1340-82 Robert A. Fredona, Ph. D. Cornell University 2010 This dissertation examines the role of secret practices of opposition in the urban politics of Florence between 1340 and 1382. It is based on a wide variety of printed and archival sources, including chronicles, judicial records, government enactments, the records of consultative assemblies, statutes, chancery letters, tax records, private diaries and account books, and the ad hoc opinions (consilia) of jurists. Over the course of four chapters, it presents three major arguments: (1) Conspiracy, a central mechanism of political change and the predominant expression of political dissent in the city, remained primarily a function of the factionalism that had shattered the medieval commune, although it was now practiced not as open warfare but secret resistance. (2) Conspiracies were especially common when the city was ruled by popular governments, which faced almost constant conspiratorial resistance from elite factions that been expelled from the city or had had their political power restricted, while also inspiring increased worker unrest and secret labor organization. (3) Although historians have often located the origins of the “state” in the late medieval and early Renaissance cities of northern and central Italy, the prevalence of secret political opposition, the strength of conspirators and their allies, and the ability of conspiratorial networks, large worker congregations, and even powerful families to vie with weak regimes for power and legitimacy seriously calls this into question.
    [Show full text]
  • Timeline Principal Events in the Histories of Florence and the House of Rucellai
    Timeline Principal events in the histories of Florence and the house of Rucellai Neolithic period Arno River valley first settled 9th–8th century bce Etruscans establish a settlement (Viesul, now known as Fiesole) on a hill above the valley 59 bce Julius Caesar establishes a Roman colony for retired soldiers on the northern bank of the Arno (Florentia, now known as Florence) 2nd century ce Population: c.10,000 393 City’s first Christian basilica, San Lorenzo, consecrated as its cathedral by Saint Ambrose 405 Siege of Florence, part of a succession of Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire 5th century Church of Santa Reparata constructed within the Roman walls on the site of the present cathedral Late 6th century City falls to the Lombards, becoming part of the Lombardic Duchy of Tuscany 774 City conquered by Charlemagne; Carolingian era ushers in a period of urban revival Late 8th century City walls expanded 978 Badia Fiorentina, a Benedictine Abbey, founded by Willa, widow of Uberto, Margrave of Tuscany 996 First Ponte Vecchio built near the site of the Roman-era bridge 1018 Mercato Nuovo built on the site of the old Roman forum Basilica of San Miniato al Monte built on highest point in Florence Population: c.5,000 1115 Florence achieves de facto self-government with the establishment of a comune (confirmed by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1183) xv Timeline 1128 Construction finished on the Baptistery, built on the site of a sixth- or seventh-century octagonal structure, itself built on a structure dating to the Roman period c.1150 Arte di
    [Show full text]