ABSTRACT
Culture assumed, much more widely in the sixteenth century than in the fifteenth, the function of permitting its practitioners to climb upward along the social scale. The sixteenth-century Italian academies were not wholly without precedent. If mid-sixteenth-century Italian culture was thus considerably indebted to government support, it was by no means restricted within the limits of what governments saw as its political utility. The efforts of the academies to encourage the productivity and diffusion of culture were greatly facilitated by the rapid expansion of two other institutions of fifteenth-century origin: preparatory schools and the printing press. Quite as important for the support of the arts and letters were the many private patrons who followed - or anticipated - the example of the princes, sometimes for the very similar purpose of glorifying their own families, sometimes for the more altruistic purpose of encouraging culture for its own sake.
