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interested in the girl and … that when we had made up our minds, she will come to us willingly. [He said that] you were a worthy man, and that his family had always made good marriages, but that he had only a small dowry to give her, and so he would prefer to send her out of Florence to someone of worth, rather than to give her to someone here, from among those who were available, with little money. … We have information that she is affable and competent. She is responsible for a large family (there are twelve children, six boys and six girls), and the mother is always pregnant and isn’t very competent. …

[August 31, 1465] … I have recently received some very favorable information [about the Tanagli girl] from two individuals. … They are in agreement that whoever gets her will be content. … Concerning her beauty, they told me what I had already seen, that she is attractive and well-proportioned. Her face is long, but I couldn’t look directly into her face, since she appeared to be aware that I was examining her … and so she turned away from me like the wind. … She reads quite well … and she can dance and sing. …

So yesterday I sent for Marco and told him what I had learned. And we talked about the matter for a while, and decided that he should say something to the father and give him a little hope, but not so much that we couldn’t withdraw, and find out from him the amount of the dowry. … May God help us to choose what will contribute to our tranquility and to the consolation of us all.

[September 13, 1465] … Marco came to me and said that he had met with Francesco Tanagli, who had spoken very coldly, so that I understand that he had changed his mind. …

[Filippo Strozzi eventually married Fiametta di Donato Adimari in 1466.]

What were the most important considerations in marriage negotiations? Why were they so important?

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Desiring to eliminate a worse evil by means of a lesser one, the lord priors … have decreed that the priors … may authorize the establishment of two public brothels in the city of Florence, in addition to the one which already exists. … [They are to be located] in suitable places or in places where the exercise of such scandalous activity can best be concealed, for the honor of the city and of those who live in the neighborhood in which these prostitutes must stay to hire their bodies for lucre.7

A prostitute in Florence was required to wear a traditional garb of “gloves on her hands and a bell on her head.”

The Italian States in the Renaissance

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FOCUS QUESTION: How did Machiavelli’s works reflect the political realities of Renaissance Italy?

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By the fifteenth century, five major powers dominated the Italian peninsula: Milan, Venice, Florence, the Papal States, and Naples (see Map 12.1).

The Five Major States

Northern Italy was divided between the duchy of Milan and the republic of Venice. After the death of the last Visconti ruler of Milan in 1447, Francesco Sforza (frahn-CHESS-koh SFORT-sah), one of the leading condottieri of the time (see Chapter 11), turned on his Milanese employers, conquered the city, and became its new duke. Both the Visconti and the Sforza rulers worked to create a highly centralized territorial state. They were especially successful in devising systems of taxation that generated enormous revenues for the government. The maritime republic of Venice remained an extremely stable political entity governed by a small oligarchy of merchant-aristocrats. Its commercial empire brought in enormous revenues and gave it the status of an international power. At the end of the fourteenth century, Venice embarked on the conquest of a territorial state in northern Italy to protect its food supply and its overland trade routes. Although expansion on the mainland made sense to the Venetians, it frightened Milan and Florence, which worked to curb what they perceived as the expansionary designs of the Venetians.

MAP 12.1 Renaissance Italy. Italy in the late fourteenth century was a land of five major states and numerous independent city-states.