ABSTRACT

The numerous editions and translations of William Roscoe’s popular biographies of the early Medici of Florence attest to his standing as the foremost interpreter of the Italian Renaissance for the early nineteenth-century English-speaking world, to the point that he has been called somewhat critically, the ‘inventor’ of the Renaissance. 1 Roscoe’s persuasively constructed portraits led new generations to recognize Florence as the centre of the golden age of Italian culture and the Medici as its prime promoters through their patronage of arts and letters. Roscoe’s reputation for erudition and his extensive private collection of early Renaissance art, books and manuscripts lent him cachet as a connoisseur of taste and the sobriquet ‘the Lorenzo of Liverpool’. Of equal relevance for this chapter is what Roscoe and his circle of friends did to turn Liverpool into a showcase of cultural enterprise. Under his aegis Liverpool experienced its own cultural ‘Renaissance’ and earned a well-deserved reputation as a city proud of its cultural and civic endeavours through a variety of new institutions, among them its Athenaeum, Lyceum, Royal Institution, Botanical Garden and subsequently a Philharmonic Society that grew from the city’s triennial music festivals. Most of these had been founded or promoted under Roscoe’s guiding hand. Specific aspects of Roscoe’s influence as an internationally known scholar, poet, collector, liberal reformer and Liverpool’s cultural impresario have been admirably examined elsewhere and by other contributors to this volume. 2 A less-explored area of his legacy concerns how his writings and personal example as promoter of learned culture in Liverpool made an impact in America.