A sweeping and magisterial four-hundred-year history of both the city
and the people who gave birth to the Renaissance.
Between the birth of Dante in 1265 and the death of Galileo in 1642,
something happened that transformed the entire culture of western
civilization. Painting, sculpture, and architecture would all visibly
change in such a striking fashion that there could be no going back on
what had taken place. Likewise, the thought and self-conception of
humanity would take on a completely new aspect. Sciences would be
born--or emerge in an entirely new guise.
The ideas that broke this mold began, and continued to flourish, in the
city of Florence in northern central Italy. These ideas, which placed an
increasing emphasis on the development of our common humanity--rather
than other-worldly spirituality--coalesced in what came to be known as
humanism. This philosophy and its new ideas would eventually spread
across Italy, yet wherever they took hold they would retain an element
essential to their origin. And as they spread further across Europe,
this element would remain.
Transformations of human culture throughout western history have
remained indelibly stamped by their origins. The Reformation would
always retain something of central and northern Germany. The Industrial
Revolution soon outgrew its British origins, yet also retained something
of its original template. Closer to the present, the IT revolution that
began in Silicon Valley remains indelibly colored by its Californian
origins. Paul Strathern shows how Florence, and the Florentines
themselves, played a similarly unique and transformative role in the
Renaissance.
