Download or read book The Spinelli of Florence: Fortunes of a Renaissance Merchant Family written by and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Spinelli Archive, acquired by the Beinecke Library of Yale University in 1988, constitutes one of the most important collections of original documents about a Renaissance family anywhere outside Italy. Philip Jacks and William Caferro draw upon these papers to tell the story of the Spinelli family's ascent to economic and social prominence during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Letters and financial ledgers, many of them brought to light for the first time, provide an intimate portrait of daily life in Florence, from household affairs to the family's dealings in papal finance and cloth manufacture.