This paper will try to demonstrate how the second part of the sentence "Venetia, chi non ti vede non ti pretia, ma chi ti vede ben gli costa" had pregnant significance for Michelangelo Florio, in connection with the indignant and irrefutably documented invective that was hurled against Venice by the most famous Italian preacher of the Protestant Reformation, Bernardino Ochino, during Lent of 1542.

Wide summary of the 2017 Italian study, with a Documentary Appendix, which contains a letter dated January 23rd , 1552, in Latin, addressed by Michelangelo to Lord Cecil, Secretary of the English King Edward VI (with translation into English); it is absolutely striking to note how concepts and words, written in Latin by Michelangelo (who asked Cecil for mercy for an act of uncleanness), are literally reproduced in English by the Dramatist in Portia’s fundamental speech on praise of mercy in “The Merchant of Venice”.

Michelangelo Florio and Venice (490.83 kB)

L’opera è stata testé completata dopo anni di lavoro

da quel raro maestro italiano Giulio Romano,

che se avesse il dono dell’immortalità e potesse infondere

un alito di vita alle sue opere, ruberebbe il mestiere alla natura,

tanto la sa imitare a perfezione; ed ha scolpito Ermione così vera,

che a quel marmo si può quasi parlare

-e attenderne risposta, a sentir dire-

Atto V, scena II

The Winter's Tale (184.4 kB)

The institute's mission is to give information about Michelangelo Florio and his son Giovanni, best known as John Florio.

There are relevant facts that should be known by students and reserchers of English reinassance literature about Florio, Father and son, in other to have a better understanding of what Shakespeare is.

In fact Istituto Studi Floriani (ISF from now on) belives that Michelangelo and John Florio's works are fundamental in tracking those events that lead to draw a better picture of William Shakespeare.

The researches of Oxford University that lately certify Shakespeare as a collaborative playwright, mainly with Marlowe - and Thomas Nashe according to ISF's studies - in Henry the VI, gives right to ISF to introduce its studies about the authorship of Shakespeare's works since ISF has always presented William Shakespeare not as a person but as a collaboration between diverse writers.

Anyway ISF indicates in John Florio the final organized and writer who prepared the works that bear William Shakespeare's names .

To cut a long story short, here we will give a very syntethic path of ISF's studies on John Florio and Shakespeare.

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Istituto Studi Floriani (58.75 kB)

In questa intevista radiofonica ascoltiamo il Professor Leahy, della Brunel University di Londra, che parla della authorship dei testi di Shakespeare.

Dopo di lui, nella stessa intevista, ascoltiamo Saul Gerevini che parla di John Florio e del perché Gerevini pensa che Florio e Shakespeare siano la stessa identità a livello letterario. 

Ascolta l'intervista su www.rsi.ch