LATIN AND VERNACULAR IN QUATTROCENTO FLORENCE AND BEYOND Leonardo Bruni and the Shimmering Facets of Languages in Early Quattrocento Florence Andrea Rizzi, University of Melbourne LEONARDO BRUNI WAS one of the greatest humanists of the early quattro- cento. He represents the “new generation’s talent for a more classicizing style and of the new locutionary energy that it provided.” 1 Bruni is recognized as the quin- tessential humanist of his time: “if Bruni is not a typical Quattrocento humanist, nobody is.” 2 Bruni set the standard for humanistic prose writing of the early quattrocento, and his legacy goes beyond the confines of the history and politics of Florence. Some of the most copied and studied works by Bruni in fifteenth- century Italy were his translations from Greek to Latin. His Latin versions of Greek histories paved the way for the reception of ancient Greek literature in the Contact Andrea Rizzi at the School of Languages and Linguistics, Babel Building 504, University of Melbourne, Parkville VIC 3055, Australia (arizzi@unimelb.edu.au). This article originated as a Shoptalk at the Villa I Tatti Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in 2011. A subsequent iteration was presented at the Renaissance Society of America (RSA) conference in 2012. I would like to acknowledge here my gratitude to all staff and 2011 fellows at the Villa I Tatti for supporting my work. I also wish to thank Timothy McCall, Elizabeth Horodowich, Eva Del Soldato, and Elizabeth Mellyn for reading various versions of this article. Thank you also to the two anonymous readers as well as Andrew McCormick and Cynthia Troup for their invaluable suggestions and Christopher Celenza, James Hankins, and Gary Ianziti for their comments on my RSA paper. Last but not least, a special thanks to Jane Tylus for her strong support and assistance with this essay and the current ITS issue. The title of this essay is modeled on Celenza’s inspiring representation of Latin and vernacular as “differently shimmering facets of the same unique jewel” (Christopher Celenza, The Lost Italian Renaissance: Humanists, Historians, and Latin’s Legacy [Bal- timore, 2004], 144). All translations into English are my own unless noted otherwise. 1. Ronald G. Witt, In the Footsteps of the Ancients: The Origins of Humanism from Lovato to Bruni (Leiden, 2000), 404. 2. James Hankins, “Humanism in the Vernacular: The Case of Leonardo Bruni,” in Humanism and Creativity in the Renaissance: Essays in Honor of Ronald G. Witt, ed. Christopher S. Celenza and Kenneth Gouwens (Leiden, 2006), 12. I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance, volume 16, number 1/2. © 2013 by Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. All rights reserved. 0393-5949/2013/1612-0004$10.00 243