La finzione della vita, la verità del mito. Una lettura della Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici (1795) di William Roscoe

In 1795, publisher John M’Creery printed in Liverpool The Life of Lorenzo de’ Medici called The Magnificent. Marked by a sensational editorial success, the work was the fruit of William Roscoe’s efforts, a multifaceted figure who united the obligations deriving from his legal profession with the pleasures produced by literature, philanthropy and collecting. This essay aims at providing a close reading of his celebrated Medicean biography, highlighting the fundamental role it played in the creation of the Florentine Renaissance myth. Deconstructing the idealization made by Roscoe of Lorenzo’s character will not only allow to illuminate a transitional stage in the European historiographical tradition, between the end of the Ancien Régime and the birth of liberal states, but also to observe the tricks of the biographical writing, an ambiguous genre always suspended between history and fiction.