Bibliography

It has been said that as of about 1960, over 250,000 books and articles had been written about Rome. The numbers for Florence cannot be much smaller. The titles listed here are for your information and may prove to be useful in writing your paper.

Historical Studies of Florence and the Medici: to Cosimo I

• Jacob Burckhardt. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. Originally published 1860; many editions. The single most influential book on Renaissance Florence.
• C. M. Ady. Lorenzo dei Medici and Renaissance Italy London, 1962. A short and well-written, although now inevitably somewhat dated study of his life. Good chapter on his poetry.
• Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, eds. The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society. Philadelphia, 1978. Selections from the writings of Petrarch, Bruni and others. The most easily found source for the reprint of Polizano's discussion of the Pazzi conspiracy.
• Gene Brucker. Renaissance Florence. Berkeley, et al. 1969, 1983. Together with Lauro Martines and Richard Trexler, the dean of U.S. scholars of the history of Renaissance Florence.
• The World of Renaissance Florence. Trans. by W. Darwell. Florence, 1999. An odd little book that seems to have been composed of extracts from larger studies by Renaissance scholars. Sort of an in-depth overview of Florentine life and history; especially good for domestic topics.

Historical Studies of Florence and the Medici: Cosimo I and after

Studies of sixteenth-century and later Florence were rare until Eric Cochrane's book (see below) and the 1980 Council of Europe exhibitions on Florence under Cosimo I. In art history, this has led to new interest in Giorgio Vasari as artist, courtier, and author.

• Harold Acton. The Last Medici. London, reprint 1973.
• Eric Cochrane. Florence in the Forgotten Centuries. Chicago, 1973. Superbly written throughout, especially the chapters on Cosimo I.
• Detroit Institute of Arts. The Twilight of the Medici: Late Baroque Art in Florence, 1670-1743. Detroit, 1974.

Considerations of Medici (and related) Patronage

• Martin Wackernagel. The World of the Florentine Renaissance Artist. Trans. by Alison Luchs. 1981.
• Peter Burke. The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy. Rev. ed. Princeton, 1986.
• Mary Hollingsworth. Patronage in Renaissance Italy.1994. Pages 9-83 discuss Florence.
• Francis Ames-Lewis, ed. Cosimo 'il Vecchio' de'Medici 1389-1464. Oxford, 1992.
• Andreas Beyer and Bruce Boucher, eds. Piero deMMedici 'il Gottoso' (1416-1469): Art in the Service of the Medici. Berlin, 1993. The first serious consideration of the political and cultural importance of the long-forgotten Piero de'Medici, son of Cosimo and father of Lorenzo.
• Francis Ames-Lewis, ed. The Early Medici and Their Artists. London, 1995. This also has the most extensive and the most up-to-date bibliography of any published book (until, probably, the publication of the Florence in the 1470s catalogue) The articles will be most useful to those working in-depth on certain of the paper topics.
• Evelyn Welch. "The year of Lorenzo." Art History, vol. 17 (1994): 658-663. On the sixteen titles published in commemoration of the 500th anniversary of the death of Lorenzo de'Medici.
• Eckart Marchand and Alison Wright, eds. With and Without the Medici: Studies in Tuscan Art and Patronage 1434-1530. Brookfield, VT, 1998.

Men, Women, and the Family in Renaissance Florence

Over the past twenty years or so, this category has grown from a forgotten subject to one of perhaps limitless expansion. In addition to their general interest, these titles could give support to studies of portraiture or genre.

• Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Chicago, 1985. A collection of her essays. The starting point for research in this area.
• Gene Brucker. Giovanni and Lusanna: Love and Marriage in Renaissance Florence. Berkeley, et al, 1986. A court case brought by a lower class Florentine woman against an upper class Florentine man in 1455 provides many insights into economic, political, and gender issues.
• Francis Ames-Lewis and Mary Rogers, eds. Concepts of Beauty in Renaissance Art. Brookfield, VT, 1998.
• Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari, eds. Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance. Ithaca, 1991.

A Brief Selection of Titles on Renaissance Art Relating to Florence

• Robert Klein and Henri Zerner, eds. Italian Art: 1500-1600. (Sources and Documents Series) Englewood Cliffs, NJ. 1966. This contains a portion of the deliberation on the placement of Michelangelo's David, among other MA. The titles in this series go in and out of print. There is also one for Italian Renaissance (15th Century), ed. by H. W. Janson.
• John Pope-Hennessy. The Portrait in the Renaissance. Princeton, 1966, 1989. Basic for portraiture, although some of his remarks on early portraits have been challenged.
• Eve Borsook. The Mural Painters of Tuscany. 2nd ed., 1980. For any fresco project, start here.
• A. Richard Turner. Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art. New York, 1997. Good text and illustrations notable for their number and the architectural views.
• Evelyn Welch. Art and Society in Italy: 1350-1500. Oxford, 1997. Discussions of, among other topics: materials and methods, workshop organization, the audiences for art, the domestic life of art. Also an extensive bibliography.

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After you have written the Paper

Some Basic Guides to Florence

• Touring Club Italiano. Firenze e dintorni (7th ed, 1993) and Toscana (1997). Also useful for academic purposes. Hundreds of pages of descriptions, maps, suggested itineraries and more. The TCI guides are what you carry if you are a serious student of Italy.
• Mary McCarthy. The Stones of Florence. New York, 1963. A bit dated in its description of contemporary Florence, but still a classic.
• Eve Borsook. The Companion Guide to Florence. London, 5th ed. 1988. An art historian, most famous perhaps for her Mural Painters of Tuscany, she has lived in Florence for many years. This addition to the highly-regarded British series is a smooth combination of historical and cultural observation with genteel touristic advice.
• R. W. B. Lewis. The City of Florence: Historical Vistas and Personal Sightings. New York, 1995. Some excellent historical interpretation (see Chapters 3 to 5) combined with recitals of favorite lodgings and meals. Do not read when hungry.

Let's Move to the Italian Countryside and Be Artists/Cooks/Intellectuals/Academics at Play

A genre most active among the British. Most of these titles were originally found on the token English-language books table at Seeber Bookstore in Florence. Some examples listed here; fiction and non-fiction titles together:

• Any Four Women Could Rob the Bank of Italy by Ann Cornelisen. NY, 1983. (Fiction) Set in Chiantishire, the English-occupied area of Tuscany. Actually, they're in Cortona, where the author still lives (Frances Mayes indicated her gratitude to her). A roman a clef involving not-too-deeply disguised real-life Brit expats. At the time I read it, I could only identify Germaine Greer (who owns an herb farm (!) above Cortona and once tried to lure a friend of mine to his doom there over Christmas...), who is depicted as a sex-starved idiot in layers of chiffon.
• When in Florence by Richard Cortez Day. NY, 1986. (Fiction) A group of interrelated short stories set in Florence, moving in time from the fourteenth century to the contemporary city.
• The Ant Colony by Francis Henry King. London, 1992. (Fiction) Here the Brit colony is that attached to the British Institute in Florence. Young would-be academic comes to Florence looking for culture; is disappointed by the intrigue and in-fighting. At least some sense of the life of the city.
• Italian Neighbors, or, a Lapsed Anglo-Saxon in Verona by Tim Parks. London, 1992. IMHO, the most realistic--and entertaining--account of what it is like to live in Italy. Brit would-be academic (who claimed in a later interview that his own family didn't object to his moving away from home because he was such a loser that they figured he'd surely never get on in the U.K.) moves to a rather shabby frazione (sort of like a suburb, only smaller) of Verona with his Italian wife. No picturesque vineyards or Brit colony to be found, and not missed. After every sort of difficulty, they manage to end up in a large fixer-upper apartment they can live in forever and he lands one of the jobs expats who have to support themselves dream about: he gets hired to teach English as a sort of glorified adjunct at the University of Milan.
• Within Tuscany by Matthew Spender. London, 1992. From the name and the photos, a close relative of Stephen Spender. He and his (long-suffering, I will bet) wife buy a falling-down farmhouse, fix it up, and live off their garden. Wife stays home, makes ugly clothes for dirty children (again, photo evidence). MS travels around Tuscany, inquires into the secrets of olive oil and wine, almost has an affair with a beautiful Italian woman. Doesn't because she turns him down.
• Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes. NY 1997. A humungus bestseller (now she can put in the heaters). Set in a Cortona inhabited by wily real estate agents (who turn out to be honest), contractors, Polish workmen, and good food and good views. That's about all the author notices. The most recent example of the foreigner who interprets the effects of his/her ignorance as the endearing eccentricities of those many natives who cannot quite adjust to him/her.
• Perhaps to be contrasted with Philancy N. Holder's Cortona in Context: the History and Architecture of an Italian Hill Town to the 17th Century, Clarksville, TN, 1992, a laborious and detailed history published privately and used most often in conjunction with the courses taught there by the University of Georgia's Studies Abroad program. Holder also lives part-time in Cortona, as does Ann Cornelison. Reading these three books together, one would never know that they were about the same small city.

Italians Look at Themselves and Us

A distinctive sub-genre that requires some ambition and some patience on the part of the U.S. reader, who will probably find, at first, the Italians even more strange than first he realized, with their obsessions with their hometowns, specific kinds of food, and their resigned expectations of suffering from any contact with the government--the only more painful experience being that provided by the foreigners among them. (Bernard Berenson, the Lithuanian/US expat who lived most of his life in Italy once tried to explain to a Florentine store clerk that Mussolini was probably going to hand over Italy to the Germans and that therefore the Italians should support the Allies. She looked at him pityingly and replied, "Oh, signore, for us all foreigners are equally hateful.")

• Those Cursed Tuscans by Curzio Malaparte. Athens, OUP, 1964. They're hardworking and loyal, but stingy, cold, unimaginative, and don't like foreigners (see above). The perfect gift for a sister or daughter going on the RU Year Abroad Program to Florence. (Plus, of course, a set of Henry James.)
• The Italians by Luigi Barzini. London, 1968. Sort of the Alistair Cooke of Italy, Barzini produced this book, which became a bestseller, perhaps as much as to explain the U.S. and Italy to Italians as to Americans.
• Un Italiano nell'America by Beppe Severgnini. Milano, 1995. A young Italian journalist and his wife move to a suburb of Washington, D.C. and marvel at the efficiency of U.S. life, while sensitive to such personal matters as "how close Americans always stand to you" and more universal observations such as "why does the waitress always ask how the food is when your mouth is full?" As almost always the case with Italians who visit here, they speak English fluently and they love the food.

Italy During the War

WWII is fading fast from everyone's memory, but there are several well-written titles that deserve to be remembered.

• Artemisia by Anna Banti. Milan, 1947. A novel within a novel; the narrator has been dragged out of her apartment near the Arno River by the Germans during the last days of the war; unknown to her and to the many others with her the Germans plan to blow up all of the buildings and as much of Florence as the can before they retreat. Set against this is the story of Artemisia Gentileschi, a painter of the Roman Baroque who suffers assaults even more personal.
• Florentine Art Under Fire by Frederick Hartt. Princeton, 1949. In the last days of the war a multi-national group of Allied officers (including Italians and even some Germans) moved into Florence and Tuscany to locate, protect, and save art of all types from damage and looting.
• Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby. London, 1971. Newby escaped from a German prisoner of war camp and had to depend upon the kindness of the Italian farmers around him to help him to survive and evade the Germans. Dramatic without any bloodshed; even romance, as he meets the young woman who will become his wife.
• War in the Val D'Orcia by Iris Origo. London, 1947. An Anglo-American from an aristocratic family, she married an Italian and lived in a refurbished villa outside of Florence. Her book describes how she, her family, and the many refugees they sheltered managed to survive WWII and German occupation.

Pretty Books on Florence and Tuscany

• Tuscan Villas. Harold Acton. London, 1973. (Sir) Harold Acton's family owned a famous villa just outside of Florence's historic center, now a campus of New York University. His book was one of the first of the "coffee table", lavishly-illustrated photo books, and is still impressive.
• Courtesans of the Italian Renaissance by Georgina Masson. London, 1975. An illustrated history (the first on the subject) by expat Rome's favorite monster; she was, among other accomplishments, the only person allowed to have a car at the American Academy in Rome. She is, by the way, also the author of The Companion Guide to Rome.
• An Architect in Italy by Caroline Maudit. London, 1987. A small book of beautiful drawings made by an English graduate student living in Italy for a year.
• Views from a Tuscan Vineyard by Julian and Carey More. London, 1984. A beautiful small book of photographs and observations by a father-daughter team.
• Traditional Houses of Rural Italy by Paul Duncan. London, 1993. A book of photographs of architectural bits and pieces from locations so obscure (when identified) that the author easily wins the I Know Italy Prize.

Fiction

• The Light in the Piazza. by Elizabeth Spencer. NY, 1960. The best of her Italy books and made into a much-praised movie in 1962. An American mother and daughter are taking a long vacation in Florence, where the daughter falls in love with a young Florentine man. Their relationahip has a special complication: unknown to him, she is mentally retarded.
• The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga. NY, 1994. Set in Florence just after the terrible flood of 1966, the youngish heroine, bored with her dead-end job in the U.S., flees here to find a better life. Generally convincing, although filled with the oddest anachronisms (making me feel, of course, just that much smarter).
• Death and Restoration by Iain Pears. London, 1997. One of series of "Art History Mysteries" by a part-time art historian and writer. Character studies seem to be stronger than the art history part, though.

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