A Bookseller and His Tomb: Social and Spiritual Ambitions in Renaissance Florence

Abstract: The story of the bookseller Giovanni Baldini (d. 1425) expands our understanding of class, neighborhood, social status, and the construction of memory in Renaissance Florence. Investigation of his tax records, testament, and gravesite shows this stationer ( cartolaio ) to have achieved a level of wealth in the top two percent of Tuscan households as measured in the 1427 catasto. Indeed, Baldini had aspirations similar to those of the great families of his day, which were encapsulated in the family tomb he installed alongside city elites in the Benedictine abbey of Florence. His inscribed stone slab decorated with a coat of arms, sadly now lost, served not only to ensure prayers for the salvation of himself and his descendants but also to establish a lineage with a common surname, heraldic shield, family history, and legacy.