ABSTRACT
Poggio Bracciolini had been employed by the papal Curia since late 1403, while Leon Battista Alberti secured a position there in 1432. As a young man, Poggio experienced the precarious status of the papal secretaries during the schism, while Alberti's career would extend into three papacies after the death of his older colleague. Poggio was no newcomer to the Tuscan city, having arrived there as a teenager in the 1390s, whereas Alberti, despite his Florentine ancestry, was raised in exile and only able to visit the city after 1428, when the family's banishment was revoked. As professional curialists, Poggio and Alberti naturally borrowed from Lucian's essay, which describes life at court as a sort of drama. Around 1435, Alberti's treatise on painting famously borrowed Lucian's description of the Calumny of Apelles. While Poggio delights in the sort of historical anecdote that characterizes the Latin tradition from Valerius Maximus to Petrarch, Alberti transmutes history into allegory.
