Lauro Martines, an outstanding and original historian of Renaissance Florence and Italy, has died aged 98. His friend and fellow historian confirmed the news, remembering him as a scholar who brought a politically committed progressive sense of justice to his work.
Pioneering Historical Studies
Martines' first book, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists, 1390-1460 (1963), went beyond traditional intellectual history to place humanists within the context of Florentine elites and politics. His second, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence (1968), highlighted lawyers' roles in state power, revealing fresh aspects of Florentine politics.
He wrote nine non-fiction books, including the acclaimed April Blood: Florence and the Plot Against the Medici (2003) and Scourge and Fire: Savonarola and Renaissance Italy (2006). April Blood recounts the Pazzi family's failed plot to displace the Medici, revising popular perceptions of Lorenzo il Magnifico as a patron of the arts to also depict him as violent and an embezzler of public money.
Revisionist Views and Later Works
In Scourge and Fire, Martines took a similarly revisionist stance on the puritanical preacher Girolamo Savonarola (1452-98), typically seen as a fanatical demagogue. His Savonarola emerges as a complex figure committed to republican ideals. Martines' last book, Furies: War in Europe, 1450–1700 (2013), highlighted the brutality of early modern warfare.
Beyond history, Martines was a regular reviewer for the Times Literary Supplement and wrote two novels: Loredana: A Venetian Tale (2004) and Chronicle of a Good-Looking Family (2022), the latter set in modern Florence and Chicago.
Life and Legacy
Born in Chicago to Joseph and Amparo Martines, he served in the US army and, thanks to the GI Bill, studied at Drake University, switching from English to history, then earning a PhD at Harvard. From 1966 until 1992, he taught at the University of California, Los Angeles. Moving to London in the early 1990s, he lived in a house in Camden, in an enclave for writers and intellectuals.
In 1957, he married Irish novelist Julia O'Faolain, with whom he edited Not in God's Image: Women in History from the Greeks to the Victorians (1973). Julia died in 2020. Lauro is survived by their son, Lucien. He enjoyed tennis and wrote poetry.
