Everyday Renaissances

The world of wealth and patronage that we associate with sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy can make the Renaissance seem the exclusive domain of artists and aristocrats. Revealing a Renaissance beyond Michelangelo and the Medici, Sarah Gwyneth Ross recovers the experiences of everyday m [...]
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The world of wealth and patronage that we associate with sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Italy can make the Renaissance seem the exclusive domain of artists and aristocrats. Revealing a Renaissance beyond Michelangelo and the Medici, Sarah Gwyneth Ross recovers the experiences of everyday men and women who were inspired to pursue literature and learning. Ross draws on a trove of unpublished sources to reconstruct the lives of over one hundred artisans, merchants, and others on the middle rung of Venetian society who embraced the virtues of a humanistic education and passed their books and hard-earned wisdom on to their families and heirs. Physicians were often the most avid-and the most anxious-professionals seeking cultural legitimacy. Ross examines the lives of three doctors: Nicolo Massa (1485-1569), Francesco Longo (1506-1576), and Alberto Rini (d. 1599). Though they had received university training, these men were not patricians but members of a social group that still yearned for credibility.Unlike priests or lawyers, physicians had not yet rid themselves of the taint of artisanal labor, and they were thus indicative of a middle-class that sought to earn the respect of their betters, advance their families, and secure honorable remembrance after death.