Mention of Renaissance Florence tends to make us think of beautiful frescoes and altarpieces, of snow-white marble statues and Brunelleschi’s dome rising above the city’s cathedral. But Renaissance Florence had other heroes, too: manuscript hunters, teachers, scribes, scholars, librarians, and book collectors. What all of these bookworms had in common was “the king of the world’s booksellers,” Vespasiano da Bisticci. In this illustrated lecture, based on his latest book, The Bookseller of Florence, Ross King will introduce Vespasiano. For fifty years, from the 1430s to the 1480s, he ran a bookstore beside the Bargello, producing hundreds of beautiful illuminated manuscripts for clients such as the Medici and the popes, and penning a gossipy memoir that offers unparalleled insights into Florence’s “golden age.”

Ross King is the award-winning author of numerous books on Italian and French art and history, including Brunelleschi’s Dome and Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling. His biography Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power has been called a “convincing portrait of one of the most misunderstood thinkers of all time.” His most recent book, published in April 2021, is The Bookseller of Florence: The Story of the Manuscripts That Illuminated the Renaissance.