Following his return from Brazil to the Iberian Peninsula and then his journey to Rome, Nogueira continued to experience displacement while always looking for an opportunity to settle down. Upon arrival in Rome, he encountered a global city within which knowledge functioned as a currency to access patronage. In this highly competitive environment, populated by many other mercenaries of knowledge, Nogueira sought support across the city while trying his luck in other places such as the English monarchy. Aware of the difficulty of making a living in Rome, Nogueira followed a new patron to Bologna. There, he familiarized himself with the politics of the papal states in northern Italy, learned from the intense intellectual life around the university, and became involved in political negotiations between papal authorities, the Republic of Venice, and the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. In the midst of these negotiations, he put his historical expertise to work by getting involved in an episode of forged Etruscan archaeology connected to rivalries between the Medici and Barberini families. As a ghostwriter for one of the reports concerning this forgery, he made a case for himself as someone who could serve back in Rome in a multitude of capacities, including legal courts and libraries.

This chapter considers Puccini’s relationship with his native region, Tuscany. It begins with a discussion of how Florence is represented in the comic opera Gianni Schicchi, asking how realistic the depiction of the city is. The author provides a political and social history of the region, starting with the glorious reign of the Medicis and moving on through the Habsburg era to the politics of Puccini’s own time. The chapter discusses agricultural policies in the region, industrial expansion, the emergence of the modern labour movement, uprisings and unrest, and fascist suppression, showing that the Tuscany of Puccini’s time was not the rural idyll depicted in Gianni Schicchi. The chapter also considers the region’s rich artistic culture and the importance of Florence as an intellectual and literary centre.

An overview of representations in church decoration, legal texts, romances, chronicles, and political allegories – notwithstanding the differences of these contexts – can help us to recognize additional patterns. On one end of the spectrum, we find the question of religious imagery. In Last Judgement scenes naked female (and male) figures are represented in large numbers. Physical aggression against the human body is explicit and, in this respect, women suffer violence comparable to sodomites. The use of force is endorsed. Although the imagery is intended to denounce lustful acts, the paintings themselves effectively promote sex crimes. This subversive scenario can lead to the sanitization of the violent encounter between women and their tormentors (missing in the case of sodomites). The two political allegories in Padua and Siena mark the other end of the spectrum. I would like to believe that Giotto di Bondone’s Injustice comes closest to a universal denunciation of rape. Here the display of the naked female victim reinforces the explicit rendering of sexual aggression. The scene is carefully contextualized, which discards sanitizing readings. The radicalism of this fresco is striking even compared to Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s War, where, instead of nudity, an equally general denunciation relies on the indicators of bridal status and abduction. Because of its reference to marriage, Lorenzetti’s work is closer to patriarchal structures than Giotto’s. Nevertheless, these two allegories constitute the pinnacle of visualizing civic political thought in the epoch and sketch the utopia of a rape-free society.

This chapter on the invention of the piano provides a technical description of the Arpicembalo che fa il piano e il forte, also termed the Gravecembalo, or Gravecimbalo col piano e forte, invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700 and described in the Medici musical instrument inventory of 1700. The chapter includes a translation of Scipione Maffei’s article entitled “Nuova invenzione d’un Gravecembalo col piano, e forte” that appeared in the 1711 edition of the Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia. Also described in technical detail are Cristofori’s extant pianos dated 1720, 1722, and 1726. The inventive work of other claimants to the invention of the piano, Jean Marius (1716) and Christoph Gottlieb Schröter (1717) are also technically analyzed.

Chapter 1 focuses on the transnational networks of the three English republican exiles. It follows Ludlow, Sidney and Neville on their journeys to the Continent and shows the extent to which the refugees relied on pre-existing networks formed during earlier periods of their lives through their families, their education, their religion and their political activity, and on new connections forged during their travels. Ludlow made his way to Geneva with the help of French Huguenot acquaintances and subsequently benefited from their wider religious networks in Switzerland. Sidney in contrast had to leave a diplomatic assignment in Copenhagen without much preparation and initially moved to Rome on a whim, recovering old and forging new connections among the religious establishment soon after his arrival. Neville was the last of the three to leave for the Continent after being arrested for his suspected involvement in a plot to restore the Commonwealth in England. As a prisoner in the Tower, he made arrangements with the Earl of Clarendon to retreat to Italy, where he was to benefit from the hospitality of the Medici Grand Duke Ferdinando II as well as from the anonymity enjoyed by foreigners in Rome.

Key to the training of the boys was their master, who was responsible for their upkeep as well as their musical training. Men in such positions had typically themselves been through choirboy training and were highly accomplished musicians. The most notable choirmaster in the book’s period of interest, Jean Thorion, a native of Saint-Omer, offers a particularly astonishing example of the international draw of northern maîtrise training. In his youth, Thorion had been employed far away from his homeland in Florence, where he worked as a singer and tutor at the priory of the SS Annunziata. Here he was patronised directly by the Medici family, and Lorenzo Il Magnifico in particular. Apparently the most significant role within the northern maîtrise of this period was that occupied by the tenorist, in which role no one was more glittering than the former tenorist of King Ferrante of Naples, Grigoire Bourgois, a central figure in St Omer for a quarter of a century. The chapter also addresses the copying of polyphonic music, and most importantly the role in this capacity of the celebrated composer Jean Mouton, a native of the region.

Surveys uses made of Virgil's fourth Eclogue in Renaissance Florence under the rule of the Medici dynasty.

Surveys uses made of Virgil's fourth Eclogue in Renaissance Florence under the rule of the Medici dynasty.