Tradition and Transformation: The Making of Renaissance Florence

Catalog description

Since the publication of Georg Voigt's and Jacob Burckhardt's studies, the Renaissance has often been portrayed as a unique and comprehensive intellectual movement - emerging from the Italian spirit and marking a radical break from the medieval world. However, more recent scholarship has challenged this traditional narrative, revealing a far more complex picture. This course explores three centuries of profound political, social, and cultural transformation in Florence - and Italy more broadly - coinciding with the rise of the Medici family (c. 1300-1600). Rather than presenting a teleological or unified account, the course emphasizes the tensions and contradictions that shaped this period. We will examine both continuity and change, interrogating the modern historiographical constructs that gave rise to the "Renaissance myth."