A Florentine Merchant

A Florentine Merchant
Author: Giovanni Caselli
Publisher: Peter Bedrick Books
Total Pages: 36
Release: 1986
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780872261075

Presents a story of a rich merchant, Francesco Datini, and his household in northern Italy in the late fourteenth century, seen from the viewpoint of a slave, depicting the merchant's life in the town of Prato and his work in nearby Florence.

Merchant Writers

Merchant Writers
Author: Vittore Branca
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 418
Release: 2015-01-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1442637145

The birthplace of Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and the powerful Medici family, Florence was also the first great banking and commercial centre of continental Europe. The city's middle-class merchants, though lacking the literary virtuosity of its most famous sons, were no less prolific as writers of account books, memoirs, and diaries. Written by ordinary men, these first-hand accounts of commercial life recorded the everyday realities of their businesses, families, and personal lives alongside the high drama of shipwrecks, plagues, and political conspiracies. Published in Italian in 1986, Vittore Branca's collection of these accounts established the importance of the genre to the study of Italian society and culture. This new English translation of Merchant Writers includes all the texts from the original Italian edition in their entirety. Moreover, it offers a gripping personal introduction to the mercantile world of medieval and Renaissance Florence.

Once an Outlaw

Once an Outlaw
Author: Debbi Rawlins
Publisher: Harlequin
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2009-03-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1426829582

In the rough-and-tumble town of Deadwood in 1876, cowboy Sam Keegan is about as hard as they get. Considered a real sexy piece of man by the local womenfolk, Sam runs the town livery stable. And he was last seen in the company of a pretty gal in a wedding dress, Reese Winslow…who escaped one of the local brothels! The little lady claims to be a doctor—from the future, no less! Beware of her, as she's causing no end of problems. Mostly for Sam, who is real skittish about the law. But trouble or not, the man can't seem to stop himself from wanting Reese…and learnin' firsthand what women from the future like to do with hot, hard cowboys!

The Economy of Renaissance Florence

The Economy of Renaissance Florence
Author: Richard A. Goldthwaite
Publisher: JHU Press
Total Pages: 668
Release: 2011-01-07
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1421400596

Winner, 2010 Phyllis Goodhart Gordan Book Prize, the Renaissance Society of America2009 Outstanding Academic Title, ChoiceHonorable Mention, Economics, 2009 PROSE Awards, Professional and Scholarly Publishing division of the Association of American Publishers Richard A. Goldthwaite, a leading economic historian of the Italian Renaissance, has spent his career studying the Florentine economy. In this magisterial work, Goldthwaite brings together a lifetime of research and insight on the subject, clarifying and explaining the complex workings of Florence’s commercial, banking, and artisan sectors. Florence was one of the most industrialized cities in medieval Europe, thanks to its thriving textile industries. The importation of raw materials and the exportation of finished cloth necessitated the creation of commercial and banking practices that extended far beyond Florence’s boundaries. Part I situates Florence within this wider international context and describes the commercial and banking networks through which the city's merchant-bankers operated. Part II focuses on the urban economy of Florence itself, including various industries, merchants, artisans, and investors. It also evaluates the role of government in the economy, the relationship of the urban economy to the region, and the distribution of wealth throughout the society. While political, social, and cultural histories of Florence abound, none focuses solely on the economic history of the city. The Economy of Renaissance Florence offers both a systematic description of the city's major economic activities and a comprehensive overview of its economic development from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance to 1600.

Merchants in the City of Art

Merchants in the City of Art
Author: Anne L. Schiller
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 177
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1442634634

This lively and engaging ethnography, written and designed with students in mind, uses the experiences and perspectives of a set of long-time market vendors in San Lorenzo, a neighborhood in the historic center of Florence, Italy, to explore how cultural identities are formed in periods of profound economic and social change.

The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family

The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family
Author:
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 456
Release:
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780271044187

The Spinelli Archive, acquired by the Beinecke Library of Yale University in 1988, constitutes one of the most important collections of original documents about a Renaissance family anywhere outside Italy. Philip Jacks and William Caferro draw upon these papers to tell the story of the Spinelli family's ascent to economic and social prominence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Letters and financial ledgers, many of them brought to light for the first time, provide an intimate portrait of daily life in Florence, from household affairs to the family's dealings in papal finance and cloth manufacture.

Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence

Society and Individual in Renaissance Florence
Author: William J. Connell
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 480
Release: 2002-09-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520232549

Essays illustrate the ways Renaissance Florentines expressed or shaped their identities as they interacted with their society.

Italian Merchants in the Early-Modern Spanish Monarchy

Italian Merchants in the Early-Modern Spanish Monarchy
Author: Catia Brilli
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2019-05-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351766341

Italian businessmen played a key role in both international trade and finance from the Middle Ages until the first decades of the seventeenth century. While the peak of their influence within and beyond Europe has been thoroughly examined by historians, the way in which merchants from the Italian peninsula reacted and adapted themselves to the emergence of greater commercial and financial powers is mostly overlooked. This collection, based on a vast variety of primary sources, seeks to explore the persisting presence of Florentine, Genoese and Milanese intermediaries in some key hubs of the Spanish monarchy (such as Seville, Cadiz, Madrid and Naples) as well as in eighteenth-century Lisbon. The resilience of powerless merchant nations from the Italian Peninsula in the face of increasing competition in long distance trade is deconstructed by analyzing the merchants’ relational dimension and the formal institutional resources they found in the host societies. By offering new insights into the mechanisms of circulation of men, goods and capital throughout the Iberian world, this book will contribute to better assess the polycentric nature of the Spanish monarchy and, more in general, the complex system of commercial exchanges in the age of the first globalization. This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire.

Mona Lisa

Mona Lisa
Author: Dianne Hales
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2014-08-05
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1451658966

The book rests on the premise that the woman in the painting "Mona Lisa" is indeed the person identified in its earliest description: Lisa Gherardini (1479-1542), wife of the Florence merchant Francesco del Giocondo. Dianne Hales has followed facts from the Florence State Archives, to the squalid street where Mona Lisa was born, to the ruins of the convent where she died

Florence, the Golden Age, 1138-1737

Florence, the Golden Age, 1138-1737
Author: Gene A. Brucker
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1998
Genre: Florence (Italy)
ISBN: 0520215222

The text is complemented throughout by a wealth of paintings and drawings, 200 of them in full color. Also included are a chronology of important historical events, a listing of noted Florentine families, and a genealogy of the famed Medici family.