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Gondi-Medici Business Records in the Lea Library of the University of Pennsylvania

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Rudolf Hirsch*
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

This summary description of 143 recently acquired Italian Renaissance manuscripts is not a detailed list nor an evaluation of the collection. An evaluation would require considerably greater familiarity with the business history of Florence than this reporter possesses.

According to the limited information available, the entire group of these business records originally formed part of the Gondi archives, described by Roberto Ridolfi in Gli archivi delle famiglie fiorentine. More specifically it belonged to that part of the Gondi archives which was left by the sisters Caterina (b. 1694) and Elisabetta (b. 1693), descendants of Giuliano il Vecchio, to the Ritiro della Quiete in Florence. Ridolfi refers rather briefly to the commercial papers then in the Ritiro, but fails to explain how they came to include so few Gondi and so many Medici and Amadori volumes.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1963

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References

1 We acknowledge gratefully the patient help of our friends Messrs. Bernard M. Rosenthal and Laurence Witten in acquiring this collection.

2 Ridolfi, R., Gli archivi delle famiglie fiorentine (Florence, L. S. Olschki, 1943), pp. 5593.Google Scholar

3 E.g., Hcinrich Sieveking, ‘Die Handlungsbücher der Medici’, in Akademie d. Wissenschaften, Wien, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, CL (1906); Richards, Gertrude R. B., Florentine Merchants in the Age of the Medici (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1932)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; de Roover, Raymond, The Medici Bank (New York, New York University Press, 1948).Google Scholar

4 One Amadori volume, covering the year 1587, was lost in transit.

5 One Deti volume, covering the years 1553-61, also was lost in transit.