| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Europe: Early Modern and Modern

Thomas Kuehn. Illegitimacy in Renaissance Florence. (Studies in Medieval and Early Modern Civilization.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 2002. Pp. xii, 305. $60.00.

Was the Renaissance a Golden Age for bastards? The fields of literature, art, and politics produced high achievers who were illegitimate: Leon Battista Alberti, Giovanni Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, and Filippo Lippi to name a few. Some princely families positively paraded their misbegotten progeny, and at a slightly lower social level, patrician households in Florence accommodated without embarrassment the patriarch's by-blows. This, at least, is the received picture, handed down from Jakob Burckhardt to the late twentieth century. Thomas Kuehn's achievement in this book is to paint over these simple outlines and bold colors a much more nuanced and negative depiction. . . .

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