The Fruit of Liberty: Political Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1550

by Nicholas Scott Baker

Overview

In the sixteenth century, the city-state of Florence failed. In its place the Medicis created a principality, becoming first dukes of Florence and then grand dukes of Tuscany. The Fruit of Liberty analyzes the slow transformations that predated and facilitated the institutional shift from republic to principality, from citizen to subject.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674724525
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	11/04/2013
Series:	I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History , #9
Pages:	382
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Nicholas Scott Baker is Lecturer in Early Modern European History at Macquarie University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

Preface xi

Introduction States and Status in the Florentine Renaissance 1

1 Imagining Florence: The Civic World of the Late Fifteenth Century 15

2 Great Expectations: The Place of the Medici in the Office-Holding Class, 1480-1527 49

3 Defending Liberty: The Climacteric of Republican Florence 98

4 Neither Fish nor Flesh: The Difficulty of Being Florentine, 1530-1537 142

5 Reimagining Florence: The Court Society of the Mid-Sixteenth Century 189

Conclusion: Florence and Renaissance Republicanism 228

Appendix 1 A Partial Reconstruction of the Office-Holding Class of Florence, ca. 1500 235

Appendix 2 Biographical Information 254

Notes 279

Acknowledgments 357

Index 359

Editorial Reviews

In a lucid and lively way, Baker has managed to reveal untold parts of what would seem to be a well-worn story. Rather than seeing a pronounced break between republic and principate in Renaissance Florence, Baker emphasizes continuity of language and images, as well as of office holders themselves, from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century.
— Sharon Strocchia, Emory University

The Fruit of Liberty provocatively reinterprets the significance of Florentine political culture in the late Renaissance. By interrogating the apparently sharp contrast between republican and ducal Florence, Baker reveals hidden continuities in the Florentine experience that help explain the triumph of post-Renaissance absolutism just as much as the persistence of republican language and traditions.
— Mark Jurdjevic, Glendon College, York University

From the Publisher

In a lucid and lively way, Baker has managed to reveal untold parts of what would seem to be a well-worn story. Rather than seeing a pronounced break between republic and principate in Renaissance Florence, Baker emphasizes continuity of language and images, as well as of office holders themselves, from the late fifteenth to the mid-sixteenth century.

Sharon Strocchia

The Fruit of Liberty provocatively reinterprets the significance of Florentine political culture in the late Renaissance. By interrogating the apparently sharp contrast between republican and ducal Florence, Baker reveals hidden continuities in the Florentine experience that help explain the triumph of post-Renaissance absolutism just as much as the persistence of republican language and traditions.

Mark Jurdjevic