The Memoir of Marco Parenti: A Life in Medici Florence

by Mark Phillips (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  1989

  $3.24

  This is a description of the world of a Florentine patrician, a silk merchant called Marco Parenti, who lived in Florence in the mid-15th century, at the peak of the Renaissance. Drawing on Parenti's recently discovered letters, diaries and memoir , Mark Phillips evokes an extraordinary era of political and artistic change following the death of Cosimo de Medici. Parenti is revealed as a moderately prosperous citizen, office holder, family confidant and unofficial marriage broker - a man on the fringes on the patriciate. Parenti's life is unusually well documented and this record contains details of domestic life, marriage gifts, down payments, the expenses of a growing family, the rebuilding of his palazzo , the long struggle to repatriate his exiled in-laws.