Renaissance Florence in the Late Medieval World

Book Summary: Florence in the Early Modern World offers new perspectives on this important city by exploring the broader global context of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, within which the experience of Florence remains unique. By exploring the city\u27s relationship to its close and distant neighbours, the interdisciplinary chapters reveal the transnational history of Florence. The chapters orient the lenses of the most recent historiographical turns perfected in studies on Venice, Rome, Bologna, Naples, and elsewhere towards Florence. New techniques, such as digital mapping, alongside new comparisons of Architectural Theory and merchants in Eurasia, provide the latest perspectives about Florence’s cultural and political importance before, during and after the Renaissance. From Florentine merchants in Egypt and India, through actual and idealised military ambitions in the sixteenth-century Mediterranean, to Tuscan humanists in late medieval England, the contributors to this interdisciplinary volume reveal the connections Florence held to early modern cities across the globe. Steering away from the historical narrative of an insular Renaissance Europe and instead identifying the significance of other global influences, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars of early modern cities and the Renaissance