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The reviewed book's organization around themes reflects the domination of cultural history in the field of Renaissance Studies today.

The author offers a comprehensive analysis of the thought of Machiavelli situated against the backdrop of political and biographical developments in the early 16th century.

This book reviewed investigates the negotiations of power between a political center, Venice, and its prized terraferma possession on the periphery, Brescia.

Fifteenth-century diplomatic protocol required the city of Florence to send diplomats to congratulate both new and militarily victorious rulers.  Diplomats on such missions poured praise on their triumphant allies and new rulers at friendly locations.  However, political realities also meant that these diplomats would sometimes have to praise rulers whose accession or victory opposed Florentine interests.  Moreover, different allies and enemies required different levels of praise.  Jealous rulers compared the gifts, status, and oratory that they received from Florence to the Florentine entourages sent to their neighbors.  Sending diplomats with too little or too much social status and eloquence could …

Leonardo Bruni published one of his most widely copied translations, Xenophon's pro-monarchical Hiero, shortly before he penned his more famous original works, his Dialogues and Panegyric to the City of Florence. Scholars have traditionally focused on the political ideas present in these original treatises; yet, despite the centrality of political ideas to the Hiero, its temporal proximity to these works, and its enormous popularity (the work exists in 200 fifteenth-century manuscripts), scholars have neglected to offer a full assessment of Bruni's translation in the context of these works. Bruni's translation of Xenophon's Hiero fit into a debate …

Serena Ferente argues that the military and political leader Jacopo Piccinino was at the head of several groups who were on the outside of the Italian League after the mid- 1450s. In this role, Jacopo Piccinino was the last condottiere both to command a base across Italy and to propagate the old filo-French allegiances of several groups in opposition to the hardening of the Italian state system. Ferente bases her claims on an impressive array of contemporary and early modern literary sources combined with a deep knowledge of fifteenth-century diplomatic documents.

In this fifteenth volume to the ever-expanding I Tatti Renaissance Library series, Michael C. J. Putnam, together with James Hankins, has prepared and translated four short poems of one of the quattrocento's greatest Latin poets, Maffeo Vegio.This slim volume con tains Vegio's widely read and translated Book XIII of the Aeneid and three of his lesser known poetical works: the Astyanax, the Golden Fleece, and the Antoniad. Following the traditional format of the series, the volume contains an edition of the Latin text with a facing page English translation. I found Putnam's translation to be accurate and lively andVegio to …