TUSCAN MERCHANT
THE MERCHANT OF PRATO, by Iris Origo; Jonathan Cape, English price 35/-. ‘PHIs is a sensitive, unpretentious and deeply revealing book, based on a unique collection of private papers.
They have been worked over before for their economic content, and the present volume, though it leaves some vivid impressions of Francesco’s business career, is primarily concerned with the private lives and thought of a Tuscan merchant and his wife in the early Renaissance period. These people and their close associates, were very normal representatives of an enterprising and creative society. Their correspondence arose from the fact that they were frequently separated, though by so short a distance that detailed weekly correspondence seemed not only possible, but necessary. With household supplies and family washing there regularly travelled long letters dealing with minute details of household and farming operations as well as with the intimate family affairs. This mass of corresponcence has been handled by Iris Origo with the kind of mastery that comes from long and loving acquaintance with primary sources. Her figures live, and their problems and passions, as well as their joys, can be savoured by a modern reader, At the head of the Datini ledgers stood the honest formula "In the name of God and of profit." For if Franeesco shared the tensions of a modern businessmanthe author devastatingly names his capacity for endless worry as his decisively modern quality-he was also of the middle ages, and accepted medieval values without question. He was punctilious in the performance of his religious duties, and the efforts of his wife and friends to relax the ageing merchant’s preoccupation with wealth are a moving element in the book. For the rest a richly packed, detailed and occasionaly repetitive narrative tells of the life of papal Avignon, and of the bustling Italian city states, which have brought so much to European culture. The illustrations are excellent, the
stories well tol.
F. L. W.
Wood
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19570719.2.20.4
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 936, 19 July 1957, Page 13
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324TUSCAN MERCHANT New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 936, 19 July 1957, Page 13
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
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