This volume is the first half of an intellectual biography of Joseph Scaliger (1540-1609), the greatest classical scholar of his time. Anthony Grafton describes Scaliger's early work as an editor of and commentator on classical texts, setting this into the wider context of classical scholarship in the Renaissance. At the same time he interprets the major changes that Scaliger's work underwent, as responses to pressures exerted by his social situation and emotional life.

Eight essays by major authors who attempt to find out who read, published, or advertised what, when, and where from the European Renaissance on.

Product Description: Anthony Grafton is erudite and elegant in the style of the best historical writers who make the past come alive for the reader. In a full-scale presentation of the world of scholarship, from the Renaissance to the modern period, Grafton sets before us in three-dimensional detail such seminal figures as Poliziano, Scaliger, Kepler, and Wolf...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: The Vatican Library contains the richest collection of western manuscripts and early printed books in the world, and its holdings have both reflected and helped to shape the intellectual development of Europe. One of the central institutions of Italian Renaissance culture, it has served since its origin in the mid-15th century as a centre of research for topics as diverse as the early history of the city of Rome and the structure of the universe...read more

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Product Description: The style of reading in Renaissance Europe, as seen in the margins of books and in the texts of Renaissance intellectuals themselves, is deftly charted in this welcome volume from Anthony Grafton. Growing out of the Thomas Spencer Jerome Lectures that Anthony Grafton gave at the University of Michigan in 1992, this book describes the interaction between books and readers in the Renaissance, as seen in four major case studies...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Usadas profusamente por Kant, rechazadas por Hegel, consideradas ya como una forma excelsa del arte literario, ya como enojosas interrupciones de la lectura, las notas al pie han sido objeto de polémica. A través de un metódico y ameno rastreo de puntos de vista predominantes en diversas épocas, Anthony Grafton expone las diversas funciones que las notas al pie desempeñaron a lo largo de los siglos...read more

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Girolamo Cardano was an Italian doctor, natural philosopher, and mathematician who became a best-selling author in Renaissance Europe. He was also a leading astrologer of his day, whose predictions won him access to some of the most powerful people in sixteenth-century Europe. In Cardano's Cosmos, Anthony Grafton invites readers to follow this astrologer's extraordinary career and explore the art and discipline of astrology in the hands of a brilliant practitioner. Renaissance astrologers predicted everything from the course of the future of humankind to the risks of a single investment, or even the weather. They analyzed the bodies and characters of countless clients, from rulers to criminals, and enjoyed widespread respect and patronage. This book traces Cardano's contentious career from his first astrological pamphlet through his rise to high-level consulting and his remarkable autobiographical works. Delving into astrological principles and practices, Grafton shows how Cardano and his contemporaries adapted the ancient art for publication and marketing in a new era of print media and changing science. He maps the context of market and human forces that shaped Cardano's practices--and the maneuvering that kept him at the top of a world rife with patronage, politics, and vengeful rivals. Cardano's astrology, argues Grafton, was a profoundly empirical and highly influential art, one that was integral to the attempts of sixteenth-century scholars to understand their universe and themselves. (view table of contents)

Product Description: This volume examines the transformation in ways of studying naturethat took place in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenthcenturies.This volume examines the transformation in ways of studying nature that took place in Western Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Focusing on one of the great Italian masters of the Renaissance, this fascinating portrait of the great builder shows how Alberti changed the landscape of Florence. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Leon Battista Alberti (1404-72) was one of the most original, creative and exciting figures of the Italian Renaissance. He wrote the first modern treatise on painting, the first modern manual of classical architecture and a powerful set of 'dialogues' about the patrician families that dominated his home city of Florence...read more