Poggio, Bruni, e le storie fiorentine

This essay establishes a comparison between the Florentine Histories of Poggio, and those written previously by Leonardo Bruni. The primary focus falls on those books where the two historians cover the same ground: that pertaining to the years 1350-1402. A textual analysis leads to a series of hypotheses regarding the originality of of Poggio's historiography. The investigation shows that Poggio--despite sharing with his predecessor certain stylistic and methodological features--nevertheless succeeds in forging is own profile within the panorama of fifteenth-century Florentine historical writing. The purpose of his Histories seems in the end to be that of countering Bruni by exposing the tendentious and propagandistic nature of the latter's work