SOURCE: "Francesco Guicciardini's Report from Spain: Introduction," Allegorica, Vol. VII, No. 1, Summer, 1982, pp. 60-2.

In the following essay, ffolliott describes the Report from Spain as a genre of writing new to the Renaissance, and observes that this report reveals much about the Florentine Republic's relationship with Spain at a particular point in history.

The Report from Spain was written by the Florentine lawyer and historian Francesco Guicciardini (1482-1540) while he was Ambassador at the Court of King Ferdinand in 1512-1513 on behalf of the Florentine Republic.¹ It is a unique document never before wholly translated into English: a distillation of Guicciardini's Spanish experience about which. he also wrote a travel diary and numerous letters.² It is significant in being, according to Vincent Luciani, author of the most thorough account of Guicciardini in Spain, the most complete judgment of the Spanish character by an Italian author of the sixteenth...