Böcker av Nicholas Terpstra

Florence¿s iconic foundling home of the Innocenti is often taken as a symbol of Renaissance creativity, innovation, and humanity. The essays in Lost and Found explore new dimensions and contexts for foundling care at the Innocenti and use archival documents and digital tools to locate it architecturally, geographically, and socially.

Based on extensive archival research and individual stories, Abandoned Children of the Italian Renaissance demonstrates how gender and class shaped individual orphanages in each city's network and how politics, charity, and economics intertwined in the development of the early modern state.

Renaissance debates about politics and gender led to pioneering forms of poor relief, devised to help women get a start in life. These included orphanages for illegitimate children and forced labor in workhouses, but also women's shelters and early forms of maternity benefits, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and credit union savings plans.