Historical Truth In Fifteenth Century Italy

While humanists agreed on identifying the main requirement of the historical genre with truthfulness, they disagreed on their notions of historical truth. Some authors equated historical truth with verisimilitude, thus harmonizing the quest for truth with other ingredients of their histories, such as their political utility and rhetorical aptness. Others, instead, rejected the notion of verisimilitude, identifying historical truth with factuality. Accordingly, they sought to produce bare and exhaustive accounts of all the things that pertained to their historical explorations, often resorting to innovative disciplines, such as archeology, philology, and the history of institutions. The humanist historiographical debate is especially significant because the notion of verisimilitude encompassed crucial elements required for the development of methods of critical assessment. By perceiving verisimilitude and factuality as irreconcilable, Quattrocento humanists reached a critical impasseâ€"those who were interested in factual truth mostly lacked the means to ascertain it, while those that developed embryonic notions of historical criticism were not eminently concerned with the factual account of the past. This critical weakness exposed humanists to considerable risks, including that of accepting non-verisimilar historical forgeries passed off as factual. Such forgeries eventually served as a testing ground for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars, who sought to restore factual truth by means of critical criteria grounded in verisimilitude, thus overcoming the humanist impasse. Historical Truth in Fifteenth-Century Italy addresses Renaissance history, philosophy, rhetoric, and jurisprudence to shed light on how humanists conceptualized truth and, more specifically, historical truth.

While humanists agreed on identifying the main requirement of the historical genre with truthfulness, they disagreed on their notions of historical truth. Some authors equated historical truth with verisimilitude, thus harmonizing the quest for truth with other ingredients of their histories, such as their political utility and rhetorical aptness. Others, instead, rejected the notion of verisimilitude, identifying historical truth with factuality. Accordingly, they sought to produce bare and exhaustive accounts of all the things that pertained to their historical explorations, often resorting to innovative disciplines, such as archeology, philology, and the history of institutions. The humanist historiographical debate is especially significant because the notion of verisimilitude encompassed crucial elements required for the development of methods of critical assessment. By perceiving verisimilitude and factuality as irreconcilable, Quattrocento humanists reached a critical impasse—those who were interested in factual truth mostly lacked the means to ascertain it, while those that developed embryonic notions of historical criticism were not eminently concerned with the factual account of the past. This critical weakness exposed humanists to considerable risks, including that of accepting non-verisimilar historical forgeries passed off as factual. Such forgeries eventually served as a testing ground for sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scholars, who sought to restore factual truth by means of critical criteria grounded in verisimilitude, thus overcoming the humanist impasse. Historical Truth in Fifteenth-Century Italy addresses Renaissance history, philosophy, rhetoric, and jurisprudence to shed light on how humanists conceptualized truth and, more specifically, historical truth.

Hans Baron was one of the many great German émigré scholars whose work Princeton brought into the Anglo-American world. His Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance has provoked more discussion and inspired more research than any other twentieth-century study of the Italian Renaissance. Baron's book was the first historical synthesis of politics and humanism at that momentous critical juncture when Italy passed from medievalism to the thought of the Renaissance. Baron, unlike his peers, married culture and politics; he contended that to truly understand the Renaissance one must understand the rise of humanism within the political context of the day. This marked a significant departure for the field and one that changed the direction of Renaissance studies. Moreover, Baron's book was one of the first major attempts of any sort to ground intellectual history in a fully realized historical context and thus stands at the very origins of the interdisciplinary approach that is now the core of Renaissance studies. Baron's analysis of the forces that changed life and thought in fifteenth-century Italy was widely reviewed domestically and internationally, and scholars quickly noted that the book "will henceforth be the starting point for any general discussion of the early Renaissance." The Times Literary Supplement called it "a model of the kind of intensive study on which all understanding of cultural process must rest." First published in 1955 in two volumes, the work was reissued in a one-volume Princeton edition in 1966.

The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) is a work of art history by Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt. Recognized today as the founder of modern art history and as one of the key thinkers of the nineteenth century, Burckhardt changed not only the way we think about the Renaissance in relation to European and world history, but the value placed on art as a tool for understanding historical developments. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy begins with a section on the historical events which sparked the Renaissance, focusing especially on the frequent military conflicts which marred the era as well as on the constant political upheavals undergone by such Italian regions and cities as Rome, Venice, and Florence. Burckhardt then moves to a philosophical discussion of the development of individuality in Italian culture, arguing that the political circumstances of those living in the Republics enabled such thinkers as Dante and Petrarch to create art that corresponded with that newfound sense of individuality. The third section discusses one of the key elements of Renaissance culture: the revival of interest in the cultural products of the ancient world, especially Greece and Rome. Part four focuses on the prominence of discovery in Renaissance culture, for which Burckhardt looks to the colonial expedition of Columbus, the growth of the natural sciences, and the achievements of such poets and writers as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio in discovering new ways to describe humanity and the human spirit. In the fifth section, the importance of societal customs and festivals is discussed, and in the sixth and final part, Burckhardt observes the profound shifts undergone by religion and morality in Italy at the time. The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a thorough, dynamic work of art history that not only changed the study of history at universities around the world, but elevated the status of art in understanding the process of cultural change. With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy is a classic of European art history reimagined for modern readers.

Burckhardt's 1860 magnum opus on the development of the Italian Renaissance, here reissued in the two-volume English translation of 1878.

An introduction to 15th century Italian painting and the social history behind it, arguing that the two are interlinked and that the conditions of the time helped fashion distinctive elements in the painter's style.