Giannozzo Manetti
Subtitle: the life of a Florentine humanist
By: David Marsh
Series: I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history; I Tatti studies in Italian Renaissance history
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Language: eng; ita; lat
Number of pages: 310
ISBN-13: 9780674238350
Copyright date: 2019
Subjects: Humanists; Biography
Description: A celebrated orator, historian, philosopher, and statesman, Giannozzo Manetti (1396-1459) was one of the most remarkable figures of the Italian Renaissance. As contemporaries noted, his intellectual versatility--including an interest in architecture--linked him to Leon Battista Alberti, the renowned "universal man" of the Renaissance. Like Alberti, Manetti wrote in both Latin and Italian, and made new translations of canonical texts such as Aristotle, thus replacing the faulty medieval renderings that were the mainstay of Scholastic thought. A pious Christian, he translated the New Testament from Greek into Latin, thus challenging the centuries-old Vulgate; and he was the first scholar since Jerome to translate the Psalms from the original Hebrew. To forestall possible critics, he penned a treatise expounding his philological methods in translating scripture. Delivered over the course of nearly twenty years, his addresses to magistrates, commanders, princes, and popes furnish a vivid picture of Quattrocento politics and diplomacy. This authoritative biography, the first in any modern language, both describes chronologically the events of his extraordinary career, and analyzes his numerous and wide-ranging writings, which confirm Manetti's status as an exemplar of the spirit of the Italian Renaissance.--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.

Includes some text in Italian and Latin.
Table of contents: title: Manetti's early years, marriage, and first public offices; title: Eloquence at home and abroad, 1437-1448; title: Pistoia; title: Venice and other cities, 1448-1453; title: Life in exile; title: Scholarship in Rome; title: Naples, 1455-1459, late works and last years; title: Contemporary reputation and posthumous fortune.