Even in their own time the people of fifteenth-century Florence realised that they were living in a ‘Golden Age.’ In this episode we travel back to the year 1434 to meet some of the magical city’s most fascinating characters – among them, the young bookseller, Vespasiano da Bisticci.
Our guide for this episode is the New York Times bestselling historian Ross King, author of Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling.
Vespasiano da Bisticci is the hero of King’s latest book, The Bookseller of Florence: Vespasiano da Bisticci and the manuscripts that illuminated the Renaissance.
As ever, much, much more about this episode – including a contemporary map of Florence and images of the key characters - is to be found at our website tttpodcast.com.
Show notes
Scene One: February, Vespasiano da Bisticci begins work in the bookshop of Michele Guardini.
Scene Two: June Pope Eugenius IV arrives in the city having fled Rome in terror for his life.
Scene Three: Cosimo de’Medici returns to Florence after a year-long exile in Venice.
Memento: The manuscript copy of Cicero’s Letters to Friends produced in Vespasiano’s workshop for the Hungarian scholar Janus Pannonius.
People/Social
Presenter: Violet Moller
Guest: Ross King
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Colorgraph
Follow us on Twitter: @tttpodcast_
Or on Facebook
See where 1434 fits on our Timeline
Stuart Clark: The Space Age (1957)
Michèle Mendelssohn: Making Oscar Wilde (1882)
Catherine Fletcher: The Beauty and the Terror (1492)
Selma van de Perre: Liberation (1945)
Hugh Aldersey-Williams: Christiaan Huygens (1655)
Jonathan Schneer: The Lockhart Plot (1918)
Alan Mikhail: The Ottomans (1517)
Rebecca Wragg Sykes: Neanderthals (Eemian)
Simon Hall: Fidel Castro in Harlem (1960)
Thomas Levenson: The South Sea Bubble (1720)
Ken Follett: The Evening and the Morning (1002)
Prof. David Abulafia: Wolfson Prize Special (1415)
Justin Marozzi: Seizure of Constantinople (1453)
Prof. Greg Woolf: Rise of the Romans (146 BCE)
Craig Brown: Beatlemania (1963)
Luke Pepera: Mansa Musa (1325)
Prof. James Shapiro: Manifest Destiny (1845)
Season Three Trailer
Owen Matthews: Richard Sorge (1941)
Kelcey Wilson-Lee: Daughters of Chivalry (1297)
Join Podbean Ads Marketplace and connect with engaged listeners.
Advertise Today
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Irish Songs with Ken Murray
History Obscura
Historycal: Words that Shaped the World
Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra
The Rest Is History