ABSTRACT
Two images, one documentary and English, the other visual and Italian, give us at once some idea of the rich variety and vitality of the lived friendships experienced in European societies between the late thirteenth and early seventeenth centuries; and of the ubiquity of late medieval and Renaissance discourses on friendship that informed, and were in turn shaped by, those everyday experiences and exchanges. Both examples afford us, too, the knowledge that Renaissance people, like their medieval counterparts, continued to be absorbed by classical concepts of friendship while nuancing and adapting (sometimes abandoning) them according to changing circumstances, audiences, experiences and ideas.
