Description

This extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century.

Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a shrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes his sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of fourteenth-century Tuscany.

'Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate' The Times

'As a picture of Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron' Sunday Times

The Merchant of Prato: Daily Life in a Medieval Italian City

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Paperback / softback by Iris Origo

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This extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest... Read more

    Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
    Publication Date: 04/05/2017
    ISBN13: 9780241293928, 978-0241293928
    ISBN10: 0241293928

    Number of Pages: 400

    Non Fiction , Biography

    Description

    This extraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant, Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraits written in the twentieth century.

    Drawing on an astonishing cache of letters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us a shrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes his sumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods on his legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture of daily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world of fourteenth-century Tuscany.

    'Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate' The Times

    'As a picture of Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron' Sunday Times

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