The Codex Rustici and the fifteenth-century Florentine artisan

This paper addresses a well-known yet somehow ‘anonymous’ text, the Codex Rustici. While its name may not be known to all, its illustrations are instantly recognisable: ostensibly an account of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, the Codex has been constantly utilized for the sketches of fifteenth-century Florentine churches it contains. Since the eighteenth century at least, these have allowed historians to reconstruct building programmes, plot institutional histories and, importantly, visualize how the city looked before subsequent renovations and demolitions. The Codex Rustici is therefore a common yet peculiar tool for those studying the art and culture of Renaissance Florence: although the distinctive character of its illustrations makes the manuscript immediately identifiable, its substantial text has never been published, and some statements made about its content suggest it has not even been read in its entirety. Our knowledge of its author, Marco di Bartolomeo Rustici, has until now been basic. This paper demonstrates that Rustici’s textual construction of himself stands in direct contrast to the image of him that emerges from statistical and archival information. The suthor argues that a closer analysis of his perception and self-representation, and of his relationship to his city, sheds light on the uses of literacy in fifteenth-century Florence. It broadens our understanding of artistic and poetic self-representation, in particular, and suggests the extent to which a potential to engage in such activities was open not only to the powerful and wealthy.