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Jacopo Nardi

Italian statesman
Jacopo Nardi
Italian statesman

July 21, 1476

Florence, Italy

died after


Venice, Italy

Jacopo Nardi, (born July 21, 1476, Florence [Italy]—died after 1563, Venice) Florentine statesman and historian who wrote a history of Florence that sharply criticized the ruling Medici family.

  • Jacopo Nardi.
    Jacopo Nardi.
    From Istorie della citta’ di Firenze, edition published in 1838

Nardi was born to a family that was long hostile to the Medici. He followed a military career until the expulsion of the Medici in 1494; he then served in several posts as a magistrate and became one of the principal republican partisans of Girolamo Savonarola, the religious reformer who virtually ruled Florence from 1494 until 1498. When the Medici returned in 1512, Nardi continued to occupy several minor posts. With the final fall of the Florentine republic (1530–31), he was exiled and his property confiscated. Nardi spent the rest of his life in Venice, wrote to support his family, and represented the Florentine exiles in 1535 when they made a formal accusation against Alessandro de’ Medici before the Holy Roman emperor Charles V.

Nardi is best known for his Istorie della citta’ di Firenze (1582; “History of the City of Florence”), which covers the period 1494–1538 and is a valuable discussion of Florentine politics during the time of Savonarola and the republic. He also wrote two comedies in verse, L’amicizia (1503–12; “Friendship”) and I due felici rivali (before 1519; “Two Happy Rivals”), and translated several classics.

Learn More in these related articles:

The three branches of the Medici Family.
Italian bourgeois family that ruled Florence and, later, Tuscany, during most of the period from 1434 to 1737, except for two brief intervals (from 1494 to 1512 and from 1527 to 1530). It provided the church with four popes (Leo X, Clement VII, Pius IV, and Leon XI) and married into the royal...
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