#59 Niccolo de Niccoli

Nicky the Nickster was one of the most influential people in Florence in the early 1400s. He was the unofficial minister of culture and probably the guy who influenced Cosimo de Medici to support the humanists and artists. Obsessed with antiquity, he spent his entire family fortune on buying ancient manuscripts, sculptures and other artefacts. He was also a master of Latin and quite the dilettante. When he died, he had built the largest private library of ancient books in Italy. Early German printers used his cursive handwriting as the basis for italic typesetting.

Om Podcasten

Starting in Florence in the 14th century, a new era began to emerge in the West. People like Petrarch, who re-discovered Cicero’s lost letters, and the new humanists - who valued the study of classical antiquity - ushered in a rebirth, or as we know it today, a “renaissance" - in the study of the arts, the sciences, philosophy, and the theatre. They rediscovered what it meant to be human.