Merchant of Prato (Penguin Modern Classics)

Thisextraordinary re-creation of the life of a medieval Italian merchant,Francesco di Marco Datini, is one of the greatest historical portraitswritten in the twentieth century.

Drawing on an astonishing cache ofletters unearthed centuries after Datini's death, it reveals to us ashrewd, enterprising, anxious man, as he makes deals, furnishes hissumptuous house, buys silks for his outspoken young wife and broods onhis legacy. It is an unequalled source of knowledge about the texture ofdaily life in the small, earthy, violent, striving world offourteenth-century Tuscany.

'Datini has now probably become most intimately accessible figure of the later Middle Ages ... brilliant and intricate' The Times

'As a picture of Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron' Sunday Times

Değerlendirmeler

As a picture of the daily round in Tuscany before the dawn of the Renaissance it is a complement to The Decameron