Transcript constitutional oligarchies despotisms Map Link: Renaissance Italy: Map Link: Europe during the 15th Century: colbeck.jpg>

constitutional oligarchies
despotisms
Map Link: Renaissance Italy:
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Map Link: Europe during the 15th Century:
<http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/europe_15th_
colbeck.jpg>
Signoria (Council of 9 Guildsmen), incl.
“Standard Bearer of Justice”
1283 Merchants of Florence exclude nobles
from public office
1402 Florentines defeat Duke of
Milan
Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464)
Albizzi
Fall 1434 Pro-Medici signoria elected.
Albizzi and supporters exiled
Building power
Patronage:
Marsilio Ficino (1433-99)
Donatello (c. 1386-1466)
Cicero (106-43 BC)
Piero “the Gouty” (1416-69)
Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449-92)
Patronage, e.g.
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510)
Pope Sixtus IV (p. 1471-84)
Volterra
alum
26th April 1478 Pazzi attempt to kill Lorenzo
at Cathedral of Florence
excommunication
Council of Seventy
interdict
Why was Italy (and particularly Florence) the
cradle of the Renaissance?
Humanism:
Attempt to understand world and human
condition through Classical tradition
Imitating example of the Classical past,
to learn art of civilised living
Rejecting medieval scholasticism.
Concern with applied wisdom
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
The Divine Comedy (1321)
Inferno
Purgatorio
Paradiso
1290s Involved in politics
1302 Exiled from Florence
Francesco Petrarch (1304-74)
Poet and promoter of Latin texts
Advocate of study original Classical Latin
Seeker of forgotten Latin texts
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)
Writer and diplomat
Advocate of study of Classical Greek
Decameron (completed 1358)
Isotta Nogarola of Verona (1418-66)
“Why then was I born a woman, to be
scorned by men in words and deeds?”
Guarino da Verona: Set your gender
aside and create “a man within the
woman.”
1450s Isotta corresponds with
Ludovico Foscarini, leading to…
Dialogue on Adam and Eve
Oration on the Life of St Jerome
Lauro Quirini praised her for overcoming her
“own nature. For that true virtue, which is
essentially male, you have sought with
singular zeal.”