The Art and Language of Power in Renaissance Florence: Essays for Alison Brown

This volume celebrates the scholarship of Alison Brown, emeritus professor in the department of history at Royal Holloway, University of London. A pre-eminent historian of the Renaissance, Professor Brown has, over a long and ongoing career, produced a stream of books and essays on the intellectual, cultural, and political history of Renaissance Florence and Italy. Her innovative and wide-ranging studies have made her the most authoritative interpreter of Florence’s evolution from fifteenth-century republic to sixteenth-century principate. At the centre of her re-evaluation of this complex and dramatic story are her many studies of the Medici and their own evolution over several generations from citizen bankers to skillful patrons, manipulators of factional networks, “masters of the shop,” and quasi-princes. Her research has brought new perspectives not only to politics and the nature of the Florentine state, but also to the period’s intellectual and religious history — in particular the impact of the rediscovery of Lucretius — and the great ferment of political thought from the humanists to Savonarola, Machiavelli, and Guicciardini. Professor Brown’s vibrant and original inquiries, grounded both in Florence’s archival treasures and in the rich intellectual and artistic traditions of Renaissance Italy, deftly interweave politics, culture, and ideas to yield novel and eye-opening interpretations.
The essays in this book by Professor Brown’s friends and colleagues find inspiration in the themes she has explored and in her dedication to the highest aims and most exacting standards of historical research. The contributions focus on a wide variety of topics, including politics and political thought, family life, art, philosophy, law, and humanism. In providing a portrait of Renaissance studies today as a dynamic field influenced in myriad ways by Professor Brown’s insights and methods, the volume is a tribute to the far-reaching influence of her scholarship.

"This volume makes a significant contribution to Florentine political and cultural history."
- William Caferro, Vanderbilt University

"This volume digs deep into Alison Brown’s terrain, the political culture of Renaissance Florence, with interlocking and original essays on politics, art, and humanism that combine big arguments and extensive archival research … a thematically tight and focused festschrift."
- Mark Jurdjevic, Glendon College, York University

AMY R. BLOCH is Associate Professor of Art History at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

CAROLYN JAMES is Cassamarca Associate Professor of History in the School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University, Australia.

CAMILLA RUSSELL is Publications Editor for Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, at Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), Rome, and Honorary Fellow at the University of Newcastle and the University of Divinity, Australia.