"In this book, William J. Landon presents a fascinating study of the evolution of a patron-client relationship that has escaped historians' attention for decades. A rare examination of a sixteenth-century literary collaboration, it sheds light on Machiavelli's network and helps us understand the extent of his influence over Strozzi's Pistola fatta per la peste. Scholars and students will also appreciate being able to read a modern translation of this text and better understand the subtle relationship between the two men." -- Simone Testa, School of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Royal Holloway College, University of London

By 1520, Niccolò Machiavelli’s life in Florence was steadily improving: he had achieved a degree of literary fame, and, following his removal from the Florentine Chancery by the Medici family, he had managed to gain their respect and patronage. But there is one figure whose substantial contributions to Machiavelli’s restoration has been hitherto neglected – Lorenzo di Filippo Strozzi (1482–1549), a younger and fabulously wealthy Florentine nobleman. As manuscript evidence suggests, Strozzi brought Machiavelli into his patronage network and aided many of his post-1520 achievements.

This book is the first English biography of Strozzi, as well as the first examination of the patron-client relationship that developed between the two men. William J. Landon reveals Strozzi’s influence on Machiavelli through wide-ranging textual investigations, and especially through Strozzi’s Pistola fatta per la peste – a work that survives as a Machiavelli autograph, and for which Landon has provided the first ever complete English translation and critical edition.

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‘Strozzi and Machiavelli has many merits. It provides an original and lucid biography of Lorenzo Strozzi, a detailed discussion of the Strozzi-Machiavelli relationship, and critical editions and translations of several texts that circulated in Strozzi’s circle, thereby shedding light on the particularly dynamic intellectual context of Florence in the first half of the sixteenth century.’

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‘This elegant, short book presents an obscure text by a little-known figure to a new audience. Both the analysis and the text should attract the interest of a variety of scholars, both of history and literature.’