Everyday Renaissances: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History)

Revealing an Italian Renaissance beyond Michelangelo and the Medici, Sarah Gwyneth Ross recovers the experiences of everyday people who were inspired to pursue humanistic learning. Physicians were often the most avid professionals seeking to earn the respect of their betters, advance their families, and secure honorable remembrance after death. The world of wealth and patronage that we associate with sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy can make the Renaissance seem the exclusive domain of artists and aristocrats. Revealing a Renaissance beyond Michelangelo and the Medici, Sarah Gwyneth Ross recovers the experiences of everyday men and women who were inspired to pursue literature and learning. Ross draws on a trove of original unpublished sourceswills, diaries, household inventories, account books, and other miscellanyto reconstruct the lives of over one hundred artisans, merchants, and others on the middle rung of Venetian society who embraced the ennobling virtues of a humanistic education. These men and women sought out the latest knowledge, amassed personal libraries, and passed both their books and their hard-earned wisdom on to their families and heirs. Physicians were often the most avidand the most anxiousof professionals seeking cultural legitimacy. Ross examines the lives of three Nicol Massa (14851569), Francesco Longo (15061576), and Alberto Rini (d. 1599). Though they had received university training, these self-made men of letters were not patricians but members of a social group that still yearned for credibility. Unlike priests or lawyers, physicians had not yet rid themselves of the taint of artisanal labor, and they were thus indicative of a middle class that sought to earn the respect of their peers and betters, protect and advance their families, and secure honorable remembrance after death. "The Renaissance mattered to everyday people. Cultural Legitimacy recovers the cultural and intellectual lives of 147 Venetians of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries from household inventories that recorded their book ownership, from the philosophical ruminations they inserted (illegally) into their final wills and testaments, and from the laconic memoranda of mental universes wedged into the narrow margins of account books. Part I presents a broad view of the Venetian Renaissance as it unfolded in the houses and shops of artisans, merchants and professionals. Part II maps the worlds of three eloquent physicians: Nicolò Massa (1485-1569); Francesco Longo (1506-1576), and Alberto Rini (d.1599). These university-trained doctors left longer documentary trails than innkeepers, wives of goldsmiths and perfumers, apothecaries, parish priests, and retail merchants. Yet physicians had more in common with other men and women in the middle ranks than we might assume. While both popular and professional histories can make it seem as if Renaissance culture touched only aristocrats and the geniuses on their payrolls, this study reveals literary values inspiring people who did any number of things to feed their families."--Provided by publisher