Biondo Flavio's Italia Illustrata

Catherine J. Castner has now made this important treatise available in modern text with English translation and commentary. The Latin text is the best-known early printed edition, that of Froben (Basel, 1559). A clear, flowing English translation provides modern Italian equivalents for the majority of Biondo's Latin toponyms. The commentary summarizes scholarship on the location and history of towns and cities of Italy and the building activities of their Renaissance lords. The plates include maps of cities and regions of Italy from medieval and early modern times.

Italia Illustrata is an essential resource for any serious scholar of Renaissance humanism. Historians of medieval Italy, and of art and architecture, classicists, archaeologists, and epigraphers will value this work for its treasure of evidence: for example, Biondo's eye-witness reports on the status of the building projects of the Malatesta; the Renaissance reception of Livy, Pliny, and Virgil (and the transmission of forged or misinterpreted inscriptions); and correlations of ancient sites with fifteenth-century settlements. This book will appeal to interests ranging from the current popular appetite for travel in Italy, to the growing scholarly attention to early modern geographical and travel literature; in short, to any reader with more than superficial interest in the urban centers and landscapes of Italy.