Series: The I Tatti Renaissance Library

A fresh English translation of five Alberti works that illuminate new aspects of the literary aims and development of the first "Renaissance man." Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and even athlete earned him the controversial title of the first...

The Renaissance popes were among the most enlightened and generous patrons of arts and letters in Europe during their day. The diaries of Pius II provide an intimate glimpse into the life and thought of one of the greatest of the Renaissance popes. Pius II (1405-1464), who began life as Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini in a small town near Siena, became...

The most complete translation available of these brief biographies of great European figures, written by one of the leading historians of the sixteenth century. Portraits of Learned Men provides a fascinating synopsis of the contours, mentality, and trajectory of humanistic culture in Italy and Europe by one of the leading historians of the sixteenth century, Paolo Giovio (1483–1552). These brief...

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive the cultural and moral excellence of ancient Greece and Rome. This two-volume set contains an ample, representative sample from his enormous and fascinating correspondence with all the leading figures of his day, from popes, emperors, and kings to younger...

Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), one of the greatest of Italian poets, was also the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive the cultural and moral excellence of ancient Greece and Rome. This two-volume set contains an ample, representative sample from his enormous and fascinating correspondence with all the leading figures of his day, from popes, emperors, and kings to younger...

Giovanni Pontano (1426–1503), whose academic name was Gioviano, was the most important Latin poet of the fifteenth century as well as a leading statesman who served as prime minister to the Aragonese kings of Naples. His Dialogues are our best source for the humanist academy of Naples, which Pontano led for several decades. They provide a vivid picture of literary...

An innovative collection of comedic stories by the original "Renaissance man." Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was among the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and scientist made him the original model for the many-sided "Renaissance man." A collection of stories meant to be read while dining and drinking,...

An innovative collection of comedic stories by the original "Renaissance man." Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) was among the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance. His extraordinary range of abilities as a writer, architect, art theorist, and scientist made him the original model for the many-sided "Renaissance man." A collection of stories meant to be read while dining and drinking,...

A renowned Renaissance poet's homage to Naples makes its debut in modern English translation. Giovanni Pontano (1429–1503), whose academic name was Gioviano, was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance as well as a leading statesman who served as prime minister to the Aragonese kings of southern Italy. The dominant literary figure of quattrocento Naples, Pontano produced literary works...

Angelo Poliziano (1454–1494) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance and a leading figure in Florence during the Age of the Medici. His poetry, composed in a variety of metres, includes epigrams, elegies, and verse epistles, as well as translations of Hellenistic Greek poets. Among the first Latin poets of the Renaissance to be inspired by Homer and...

Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), the leading civic humanist of the Italian Renaissance, served as apostolic secretary to four popes (1405-1414) and chancellor of Florence (1427-1444). He was famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, and was the best-selling author of the fifteenth century. Bruni's History of the Florentine People in twelve books is generally considered the first modern...

Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444), the leading civic humanist of the Italian Renaissance, served as apostolic secretary to four popes (1405-1414) and chancellor of Florence (1427-1444). He was famous in his day as a translator, orator, and historian, and was the best-selling author of the fifteenth century. Bruni's History of the Florentine People in twelve books is generally considered the first modern...

Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), humanist and historian, was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance discovery of antiquity. Famously, he was the author who popularised the term "Middle Age" to describe the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of antiquity in his own time. While serving a number of Renaissance popes, he inaugurated an extraordinary programme of...

Early Renaissance humanists discovered the culture of ancient Greece and Rome mostly through the study of classical manuscripts. Cyriac of Ancona (Ciriaco de' Pizzecolli, 1391-1452), a merchant and diplomat as well as a scholar, was among the first to study the physical remains of the ancient world in person and for that reason is sometimes regarded as the father of...

The first complete English translation of a controversial Renaissance debate centring on moral questions of power and leadership. Poggio Bracciolini was a prominent scholar-official of the early Renaissance and a leading representative of Florentine humanism. He was employed as a secretary to seven popes and ended his career as Chancellor of the Republic of Florence. On Leaders and Tyrants contains...

The Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return...

Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of...

Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), humanist and historian, was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance discovery of antiquity; famously, he was the author who popularised the term "Middle Age" to describe the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the revival of antiquity in his own time. While serving a number of Renaissance popes, he inaugurated an extraordinary programme of...

A groundbreaking edition of controversial theses proposed by the most famous philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), the most famous philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, had ambitions in line with his talents, especially in philosophical theology. His boldest venture urged Christians to save their souls with Jewish mysticism—Kabbalah—while also offering to debate anyone in Italy about...

In 1490/92, Marsilio Ficino, the Florentine scholar, philosopher, and magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato, made new translations of, with running commentaries on, two treatises he believed were the work of Dionysius the Areopagite, the disciple of St. Paul mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles. His aim was to show how these two treatises...

A definitive edition of Renaissance pastoral poems by two master poets, including works that inspired Raphael and Shakespeare. Andrea Navagero (1483–1529) was among the principal poets of the Venetian Renaissance. Famous as the editor of classical texts for Aldus Manutius's celebrated press, Navagero also pioneered the Renaissance pastoral epigram genre. Modeled on the pastoral collections of Theocritus and Vergil and...

Aldus Manutius (c. 1451–1515) was the most important and innovative scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. His Aldine Press was responsible for more first editions of classical literature, philosophy, and science than any other publisher before or since. A companion volume to I Tatti's The Greek Classics (2016), Humanism and the Latin Classics presents all of Aldus's prefaces to his editions...

Francesco Filelfo (1398–1481), one of the great scholar-poets of the Italian Renaissance, was the principal humanist working in Lombardy in the middle of the Quattrocento and served as court poet to the Visconti and Sforza dukes of Milan. His long life saw him as busy with politics, diplomacy, and intrigue as with literature and scholarship, leaving him very often on...

Aldus Manutius (c. 1451–1515) was the most important and innovative scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. His Aldine Press was responsible for more first editions of classical literature, philosophy and science than any other publisher before or since. Aldus was particularly concerned to preserve, through the printer's art, the most important remains of Greek literature that had survived the age of...

After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch's humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopaedic works in Latin. Among them is Famous Women, the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted exclusively to women. The 106 women whose life stories make up this volume range from the exemplary...

Ugolino Verino (1438–1516) was among the principal Latin poets in the Florence of Lorenzo de' Medici. A student of Cristoforo Landino, whose youthful love poems Verino imitated, Verino was a leading figure in the Renaissance revival of ancient Latin elegy. He blended Propertius, Ovid's Amores, and elements of Petrarch's lyric style to forge a distinctive poetic voice in a three-book...

Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533), one of Italy's greatest poets, was a leading figure of sixteenth-century Italian humanism. After some years working in the household of Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, to whom he dedicated his dazzling romance epic Orlando Furioso (1516), Ariosto settled in Ferrara under the patronage of Ippolito's brother Alfonso. He continued to write throughout his life, publishing 214 letters, five...

Jacopo Zabarella's two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In...

Giovanni Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is an ambitious work of humanistic scholarship whose goal is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. The work also contains a famous defence of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world. The complete work in fifteen books contains...

Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus who was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, he was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, in the hope that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and return of...

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was the leading Platonic philosopher of the Renaissance and is generally recognised as the greatest authority on ancient Platonism before modern times. Among his greatest accomplishments as a scholar was his 1492 Latin translation of the complete works of Plotinus (204-270 CE), the founder of Neoplatonism. The 1492 edition also contained an immense commentary that remained for...

Jacopo Zabarella's two treatises On Methods and On Regressus (1578) are among the most important Renaissance discussions of how scientific knowledge should be acquired, arranged, and transmitted. They belong to a lively debate about the order in which sciences should be taught and the method to be followed in scientific demonstration that roiled the Late Renaissance world for decades. In...

Antonio Beccadelli (1394–1471), known as Panormita from his native town of Palermo, was appointed court poet to Duke Filippo Maria Visconti (1429), crowned poet laureate by Emperor Sigismund (1432), and ended his days as panegyrist to King Alfonso V of Aragon and Naples, where he founded the first of the Renaissance Academies. The Hermaphrodite, his first work (1425–26), dedicated to...

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano (1429–1503) served five kings of Naples as a courtier, official, and diplomat, and earned even greater fame as a scholar, prose author, and poet. His Dialogues reflect his diverse interests in religion, philosophy, and literature, as well as in everyday life in fifteenth-century Naples. They are especially important for their vivid picture of the contemporary gatherings of...

First brought to Florence by Lorenzo de' Medici as a celebrity preacher, Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498), a Dominican friar, would ultimately play a major role in the events that convulsed the city in the 1490s and led to the overthrow of the Medici themselves. After a period when he held close to absolute power in the great Renaissance republic, Savonarola was...

Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. The publication of his Latin translations of the dialogues in 1484 was an intellectual event of the first magnitude, making the Platonic canon accessible to Western Europe after the passing of a millennium and establishing Plato as an authority for Renaissance thought. This volume contains...

Platonic Theology is a visionary work and the philosophical masterpiece of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. A student of the Neoplatonic schools of Plotinus and Proclus, Ficino was committed to reconciling Platonism with Christianity, hoping that such a reconciliation would initiate a spiritual revival and the return of the golden age....