Money, Culture, Beauty. The Botti Family

This book deals with the typical commonalities and stories of the Florentine and European Renaissance. It is a work of economic and social history, which reconstructs the history of the Botti family, Florentine merchants, bankers and patrons in the Renaissance period. The family was active in some of the most important European cities as a part of a mixture of economic, social and cultural stimuli that characterized the Renaissance, and were spread throughout Europe. The general focus is on two prominent historiographic themes: (i) The ‘commercial diaspora’, networks of merchants who, maintaining connections to their home cities, operated in essence as cultural intermediaries. (ii) The intercultural exchange in Europe of the Sixteenth Century. The latter is discussed with an interdisciplinary approach focused on merchant’s activity. This book is of great interest to historians and philosophers of the Renaissance.