MAAR 59/60, 2014/2015 A RECONSIDERATION OF RENAISSANCE ANTIQUARIANISM IN LIGHT OF BIONDO FLAVIO’S ARS ANTIQUARIA WITH AN UNPUBLISHED LETTER FROM PAUL OSKAR KRISTELLER (1905–1999) Angelo Mazzocco, Mount Holyoke College A ntiquarianism is one of the most significant, even defining, aspects of Renaissance culture. Al- though it has deep roots in the intellectual culture of the previous century, most notably in the work of Petrarch (1304–1374), the antiquarian movement reached its maturity during the fifteenth century, expanding significantly in both dimension and influence in the following century. 1 A richly diverse and varied discipline with far-reaching implications, antiquarianism exercised a profound impact on the intellectual life of the Renaissance. By the same token, however, its very complexity and widespread influence has subjected it to much polemic and speculation among contemporary scholars. The ars antiquaria of Biondo Flavio (1392–1463), 2 who, as I shall argue here, was the true founder of this pivotal Renaissance discipline, has been equally misunderstood. The goal of this study is to reconsider Renaissance antiquarianism by viewing it through the prism of Biondo’s ars antiquaria, which exercised a profound influence on the antiquarian trends of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This study consists of four parts. Part 1 explores the origin, the themes, and the major agents of antiquarianism, demonstrating how interest in this field of studies was exceptionally widespread, impacting practically every facet of Renaissance society. Part 2 examines the antiquarianism of Biondo, noting how some of the leading students of Roman antiquities from the Renaissance to modern times have responded to Biondo’s ars antiquaria and how their considerations have pro- vided important information on the evolution of antiquarianism in the later fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Part 3 assesses Biondo’s role in the formulation of Renaissance antiquarianism, and thus considers a number of representative antiquarians both pre-and post-Biondo. Although Biondo continued to be an important source for the antiquarians who followed him, advances in the area of antiquarian research during the late quattrocento and cinquecento resulted in the antiquarianism of this era surpassing that of Biondo in both methodological skills and historical accuracy. Part 4 expresses some views about the nature of antiquarian research from the second half of the twentieth century to the present day. This article grew from a paper presented at a conference on historiography and antiquarianism held at the University of Sydney, Australia (2011) and is partially based on research carried out at the Vatican and other Roman libraries while I was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome (2006). The culmination of many years’ work on antiquari- anism, this article allows me to elaborate on and update my previous research on this subject and to reconsider it within the context of all of Biondo’s writings and of a large segment of the antiquarian literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I wish to thank Prof. Frederick McGinness for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper, which has also benefited from the suggestions of two anonymous referees of the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. 1 The origin of Renaissance antiquarianism is traceable, of course, to a variety of precursors from the later Middle Ages to the fourteenth century, which culminated in the seminal contributions of Petrarch. On this point, see the classic survey in Weiss 1973, 1–58. For more on Petrarch and his role, see Mazzocco 2006. 2 In the context of antiquarian scholarship, ars antiquaria implies the study of ancient remains. See, among others, Furet 1984, 77–78; Andrea Fulvio’s Antiquaria Urbis; and Joannes Freigius’s comment in n. 32 below.