Florence Through Renaissance Eyes: A Walk with the Author of the Codex Rustici (1450)

This book is the ideal companion to discover the ancient heart of Florence through the eyes of an exceptional witness: Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici (1392/93-1457), goldsmith and humanist, author of an extraordinary Codex that takes his name. In the Codex, Rustici describes and depicts religious and secular elements of the historic center of Florence around 1450. At the time, the city's medieval urban fabric was being enriched with grandiose Renaissance monuments designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and other famous architects and commissioned by the institutions in power. Rustici's unique and personal journey will take you to the great Christian temples, such as the Baptistery and the Duomo, but also to the ancient and smaller churches that disappeared with urban renewal projects in the city of the 19th century. Rustici's accurate watercolor drawings are shown here alongside their contemporary correspondents in today's Florence. It is an astonishing sequence of similarities and differences that encapsulate the most intimate identity of Florence: a city that holds on tenaciously to its own memory, one that keeps changing while remaining true to itself.