Republican Utopia in Antonio Brucioli’s Dialogi (1526–1544)

Antonio Brucioli is among the most enigmatic and important characters in Florentine Renaissance culture. He lived a very particular life. In the first phase, he was a brave republican fighting against the Medici’s political order, and a reli gious dissenter asserting his full freedom of conscience and professing his faith. In the second period of his life, after his exile from Florence, he became a spy for Cosimo de’ Medici. He repudiated his earlier political ideas and even, in the last years of his life, his heretical beliefs, or at least he pretended to. His main work, the Dialogi, written between 1526 and 1544, was deeply influenced by his atti tudes at the time of each edition. It is an interesting and complex work, covering many areas of knowledge, and one of the greatest masterpieces of Florentine Renaissance culture. The main aim of my contribution is to underline the model of the perfect republic as explained by the author, and to point out its evolution through the editions of Brucioli’s work. I aim to show how the author followed both the teachings of Niccolò Machiavelli and readings of Thomas More’s Utopia.