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The 20th century's masterpiece about Renaissance humanism

Hans Baron successfully argues that civic humanists played a crucial role in the shift from the medieval to the modern age. These new humanists were - unlike their "ivory tower" isolated, contemplative, medieval counterparts - active citizens of the Florentine Republic and of their families and society.

The Crisis of the fourteenth century's "fin de siecle" was the culmination of a series of threats to the independence of the Florentine Republic: the Milanese Giangaleazzo Visconti had conquered most of northern and central Italy. Florence was surrounded, but in 1402 the tyrant suddenly died because of the plague.

Florentine citizens - and their intellectual leaders, the humanists - had acquired during these years a stronger civic spirit. They saw themselves as the saviours of republican liberty. This new vigor, sense of civic pride and independence, combined with a weakened papacy and a stronger sense of individualism, led to the artistic, humanistic and scientific (just think of the Tuscans Da Vinci and, much later, Galilei) "cultural blooming" of the Renaissance, which then spread throughout Europe.

Florence became the "Athens on the Arno." David became one of its symbols, for he had won against a much bigger adversary. Its most important early civic humanist was Leonardo Bruni (the modern world's first historian,) but civic humanism lived on even when the Republic ended under the Medicis, in Alberti, Machiavelli and other artists and humanists, even (to a lesser degree) in Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci (see the recently published book "Fortune is a River.")

A fascinating read, I highly recommend Baron's book to anyone seriously interested in Renaissance history or art. However, I wouldn't recommend it to readers who aren't already very familiar with the history of late medieval and early renaissance Florence, as the book focuses mostly on the Visconti threat and on the works of Bruni. This book has deepened my appreciation for Florentine art and history as well as my interest in many other related subjects.