The fifteenth century was the golden age of civic canterino activity, and Florence was its heart. Though two other centers for which evidence survives, Siena and Perugia, are also treated in this chapter, what these documents make clear is that, although capable canterini could still emerge elsewhere in Italy, Florence was the source from which other cities recruited. The rich Florentine archives make it possible to construct a detailed and nuanced view of canterino activity in the city, which thrived in Medici palaces, artisan workshops, piazzas, and the civic government in the Palazzo Vecchio. This chapter explores the careers and poetry of the most famous canterini of the day, Niccolò cieco d’Arezzo, Antonio di Guido, and Cristoforo Fiorentino (called L’Altissimo), and their relationship to Piazza San Martino during its highpoint as a performance venue. This chapter also explores classical memory technique as it came to be appropriated by the Florentine canterini, evidence of which are four vernacular memory treatises that can be linked directly to these singers. The contents of these treatises are summarized and explained with reference to the surviving poetry of the canterini, and as a means to understanding how poetic and musical improvisation worked.

This little-known work of the great Florentine artist has only recently been re-identified (by me) as the portrait of a professional canterino. It is of great interest both for the status accorded to the sitter, a well-dressed individual in the preoccupied act of tuning his lira da braccio, as if about to perform, and for the Petrarch inscription etched into the back of the instrument which faces the viewer. It dates from the early 1480s, and so dates from a period when both civic and humanist practices of singing to the lyre were in full flood in Florence. The sitter could be a practitioner of either, or perhaps the distinction did not matter at the time. This short essay explores this ambiguity.