The Bookseller of Florence
Vespasiano da Bisticci and the Manuscripts that Illuminated the Renaissance
The Bookseller of Florence captures the excitement and spirit of the Renaissance amid the technological disruption that forever changed the ways knowledge spread, from the bestselling author of Brunelleschi's Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope's Ceiling.
The Renaissance in Florence conjures images of the dazzling handiwork of the city's skilled artists and architects. But equally important for the centuries to follow were geniuses of a different sort: Florence's manuscript hunters, scribes, scholars, and booksellers, who blew the dust off a thousand years of history and, through the discovery and diffusion of ancient knowledge, imagined a new and enlightened world.
Born in 1422, Vespasiano da Bisticci became what a friend called "the king of the world's booksellers." At a time when all books…