APPENDIX: THE CREATIVE ELITE
The six hundred painters, sculptors, architects, writers, humanists, scientists and musicians whose lives form the basis of chapter 3, in particular, were selected as follows:
1 314 painters and sculptors from the article on Italian Art in the Encyclopaedia of World Art (organized by region, this list seemed to counter the Tuscan bias of Vasari).
2 88 writers from E. H. Wilkins, A History of Italian Literature (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 1954).
3 74 humanists from E. Garin, Italian Humanism (Eng. trans., Oxford: Blackwell, 1965).
4 55 ‘scientists’ from R. Taton (ed.), A General History of the Sciences, vol. 2 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1965), revised with the help of Professor Marshall Clagett.
5 50 musicians selected from G. Reese, Music in the Renaissance (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1959).
6 19 writers and humanists not in Wilkins or Garin, added to round the number up to 600 and chosen because I thought them important: J. Aconcio, G. B. Adriani, Aldo Manuzio, G. Aurispa, F. Barbaro, G. Barzizza, G. Benivieni, F. Beroaldo, B. Bibbiena, A. Bonfini, V. Calmeta, J. Caviceo, B. Corio, L. Domenichi, F. Nerli, B. Rucellai, M. A. Sabellico, B. della Scala and B. Segni.
The complete list can be found in the index to this book, with asterisks against the names.
Such a list is inevitably arbitrary, at least at the edges. Contemporaries, however much in sympathy with the idea of a collection of biographies, might have found the criterion of selection, ‘creativity’, hard to understand, and the learned would have expected to find canon lawyers or theologians rather than artists. The object of the exercise was to conduct something like a social survey of the dead: to look for patterns or tendencies. Hence the need to ask precise questions, as follows:
1 Region of birth: nine possible answers (Lombardy; Veneto; Tuscany; States of the Church; south Italy; Liguria; Piedmont; outside Italy; not known).
2 Size of birthplace: four possible answers (large; medium; small; not known).
3 Father’s occupation: nine possible answers (cleric; noble; humanist; professional or merchant; artist; artisan or shop-keeper connected with the arts; artisan or shop-keeper unconnected with the arts; peasant; not known).
4 Training: six possible answers (University of Padua; other universities; other humanist education; apprenticeship; musical education; not known).
5 Main discipline practised: seven possible answers (painting; sculpture; architecture; literature; humanism; science; music).
6 Specialization: three possible answers (one discipline; two disciplines; three or more).
7 Relatives practising these disciplines: five possible answers (no known relatives; one; two; three; four or more).
8 Geographical mobility: five possible answers (extremely sedentary; fairly sedentary; fairly mobile; extremely mobile; not known).
9 Patronage: two possible answers (Medici patronage; other).
10 Period of birth: ten possible answers (dividing the years 1340–1519 into nine periods of twenty years each, and adding a ‘not known’).