Böcker i The I Tatti Renaissance Library-serien

"The works for which Paolo Giovio is best known today are his two volumes of Elogia: one concerning notable literati (1546), the other surveying prominent military and political figures (1551). The first of these, entitled Portraits of Learned Men (Elogia veris clarorum virorum imaginibus), is here newly edited and translated. Taken as a whole, Portraits of Learned Men provides an insightful synopsis of the contours, mentality, and trajectory of humanistic culture in Italy and Europe from the fourteenth to the mid-sixteenth century. As he watched the foreign invasions of the Italian peninsula and the conquests that ensued, Giovio came to believe that the high culture of the Italian Renaissance-in which he had participated not only in Rome but in Florence, Milan, Naples, and elsewhere-was in rapid decline, a perspective he had voiced nearly two decades before in Notable Men and Women. We may view the Portraits as a mature and more systematic effort than that dialogue to capture and commemorate a bygone period of efflorescence. Unlike others' catalogues, however, Giovio's Portraits of Learned Men was but an offshoot of a far more ambitious project of commemoration. At least since 1521, he had been collecting likenesses of learned men, and the following year he began procuring portraits of outstanding rulers and men of arms. Tireless in supplicating potential patrons, he rapidly expanded his collection, and in 1537 he began construction on the southwest shore of Lake Como of a villa custom-made to display what he called his musaeum (literally, a "home of the Muses," but here carrying something resembling the modern sense of "museum"). Initially, he had planned just to identify the subjects in brief; but in perhaps his most creative move, he decided to enlarge the inscriptions to the point that they became biographical sketches, many of them several hundred words in length. Few of the biographical sketches in Portraits of Learned Men are eulogies; many verge on character assassination. Most lie in between, mixing praise and blame in a way that resembles the oratorical genre of epideictic favored by humanists in their sermons before the popes. Giovio sought to impart an appreciation for each man as a flesh-and-blood human being whose foibles were integral to making him who he was, and who, each in his own distinct way, contributed to making the Republic of Letters what it was. Viewed collectively, these capsule biographies (as the Latin elogia may best be rendered) can be seen to trace the arc of the development of learned culture in the Renaissance"--

Giovanni Gioviano Pontano was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance as well as a leading statesman. Eclogues and Garden of the Hesperides, both broadly inspired by Virgil, might be considered Pontano's love songs to the landscapes of Naples. This volume features the first published translations of both works into English.

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was the leading Platonic philosopher of the Renaissance and is generally recognized as the greatest authority on ancient Platonism before modern times. The I Tatti edition of his commentary on Plotinus, in 6 volumes, contains the first modern edition of the Latin text and the first translation into any modern language.

The Oration by philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), to which later editors added the subtitle On the Dignity of Man, is the most famous text written in Italy at the height of the Renaissance. The Life of Giovanni by Gianfrancesco Pico, his nephew, is the only contemporary account of the philosopher's brief and astonishing career.

The Commentaries of Pius II (1405-1464), the only autobiography ever written by a pope, was composed in elegant humanistic Latin modeled on Caesar and Cicero. This edition contains a fresh Latin text based on the last manuscript written in Pius's lifetime and an updated and corrected version of the 1937 translation.

The goal of Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Pagan Gods is to plunder ancient and medieval literary sources to create a massive synthesis of Greek and Roman mythology. This is volume 1 of a three-volume set of Boccaccio's complete 15-book work. It contains a famous defense of the value of studying ancient pagan poetry in a Christian world.

Folengo (1491-1544) was born in Mantua and joined the Benedictine order, but became a runaway monk and satirist of monasticism. In 1517 he published-as "Merlin Cocaio"-the first version of his macaronic narrative poem Baldo. This edition provides the first English translation of this send-up of ancient epic and Renaissance chivalric romance.

Bembo (1470-1547), a Venetian nobleman, later a cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church, was the most celebrated Latin stylist of his day and was widely admired for his writings in Italian. Named official historian of Venice in 1529, Bembo began to compose in Latin his continuation of the city's history in 12 books, covering the years from 1487-1513.

Bruni (1370-1444) was the best-selling author of the 15th century, and this book is generally considered the first modern work of history. This volume concludes the edition, the first in English translation. It includes Bruni's Memoirs, an autobiographical account of the events of his lifetime, and cumulative indexes to the complete work.

Flavio, humanist and historian, was a pioneering figure in the Renaissance recovery of classical antiquity. His Italia Illustrata, here for the first time in English, is a topographical work describing Italy region by region. A quintessential work of Renaissance antiquarianism, its aim is to explore the Roman roots of the Renaissance world.

Dialogues, Volume 3 completes the I Tatti edition of Pontano's five surviving dialogues. It includes Aegidius-which covers topics such as creation, free will, and the immortality of the soul-and Asinus, a fantastical comedy about Pontano going mad and falling in love with an ass. This is the first translation of these dialogues into English.

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 demonstrations.

Talks about Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457), one of the most important theorist of the humanist movement. He wrote a major work on Latin style, "On Elegance in the Latin Language", which became a battle-standard in the struggle for the reform of Latin across Europe, and "Dialectical Disputations", a wide-ranging attack on scholastic logic.

After the composition of the Decameron, and under the influence of Petrarch's humanism, Giovanni Boccaccio devoted the last decades of his life to compiling encyclopedic works in Latin. Among them is "Famous Women", the first collection of biographies in Western literature devoted to women.

Marsilio Ficino, the Florentine scholar-philosopher-magus, was largely responsible for the Renaissance revival of Plato. His commentaries remained the standard guide to the philosopher's works for centuries. Vanhaelen's new translation of Parmenides makes this monument of metaphysics accessible to the modern student.

The Dialectical Disputations, translated here for the first time into any modern language, is Valla's principal contribution to the philosophy of language and logic. Valla sought to replace the scholastic tradition of Aristotelian logic with a new logic based on the historical usage of classical Latin and on a commonsense approach.

Francesco Petrarca, one of the greatest of Italian poets, was the leading spirit in the Renaissance movement to revive ancient Roman language and literature. Petrarch's four "Invectives", written in Latin, were inspired by the eloquence of the great Roman orator Cicero. This title includes the English translation of three of the four invectives.

Marsilion Ficino's Platonic evangelising was eminently successful and widely influential, and his Platonic Theology, translated into English in this edition, is one of the keys to understanding the art, thought, culture, and spirituality of the Renaissance.

In the Miscellanies, the great Italian Renaissance scholar-poet Angelo Poliziano penned two sets of mini-essays focused on lexical or textual problems. He solves these with his characteristic deep learning and brash criticism. The two volumes presented here are the first translation of both collection into any modern language.

Lives of the Milanese Tyrants includes biographies of two dukes of Milan-the powerful Filippo Maria Visconti and the mercenary captain Francesco Sforza-written by the most important Milanese humanist of the early fifteenth century, Pier Candido Decembrio. Both works are translated into English here for the first time from new Latin texts.

Giovanni Pontano, best known today as a Latin poet, also composed popular prose dialogues and essays. The De sermone, translated into English here for the first time as The Virtues and Vices of Speech, provides a moral anatomy of aspects of speech such as truthfulness, deception, flattery, gossip, bargaining, irony, wit, and ridicule.

In On Human Worth and Excellence, celebrated diplomat, historian, philosopher, and scholar Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459) asks: what are the moral, intellectual, and spiritual capabilities of the unique amalgam of body and soul that constitutes human nature? This I Tatti edition contains the first complete translation into English.

Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494) was one of the great scholar-poets of the Renaissance and a leading figure in the Florence during the Age of the Medici. This I Tatti edition contains all of his Greek and Latin poetry (with the exception of the Silvae in ITRL 14) translated into English for the first time.

Aldus Manutius (c. 1451-1515) was the most important 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. This volume presents Aldus's prefaces to Latin classics and modern humanist writers, translated into English.

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.

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.

Aldus Manutius was the most innovative scholarly publisher of the Renaissance. This ITRL edition contains all of his prefaces to his editions of the Greek classics, translated for the first time into English. They provide unique insight into the world of scholarly publishing in Renaissance Venice.

Ugolino Verino was a principal Latin poet in the Florence of Lorenzo de'Medici and a leading figure in the revival of ancient Latin elegy. He forged a distinctive voice in a three-book cycle of poems in honor of his lady-love, Fiametta. His Paradise is a vision-poem in which he tours Heaven and the afterlife.

In Latin Poetry, the erudite and playful works of one of Italy's greatest poets, Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1533), are translated into English for the first time. This I Tatti edition provides a newly collated Latin text and offers unique insight into the formation of one of the Renaissance's foremost vernacular writers.

Giannozzo Manetti's apologia for Christianity-Against the Jews and the Gentiles-redefines religion as true piety and relates the historical development of the pagan and Jewish religions to the life of Jesus. This volume includes the first critical edition of Books I-IV and the first translation of those books into any modern language.