in many respects Italy in the fifteenth century was becoming a more coherent political area and it is hard to confine discussion to the northern part of the peninsula, without reference to the pope or to the king of Naples. The inter-relationships between increasingly powerful and organised states are a key part of the history of the period. Even the tensions and fears that seemed to grow in the second half of the century as outside powers, France, the Spanish kingdoms, the emperor, and above all the Ottomans, gathered their strength, were felt by all the Italian states. Thus, while this chapter will focus on the Milanese, Venetian and Florentine states and the smaller satellites around them, the wider Italy, increasingly sharing the same experiences, expectations and fears, cannot be excluded.

A main cause of uncertainty, and even gloom, both amongst contemporaries and amongst recent historians, has been the economic condition of the Italian states. An ‘economic depression of the Renaissance’, following the demographic disasters of the fourteenth century and lasting through much of the fifteenth century has been seen as accompanying, and indeed possibly contributing to, the extraordinary cultural flowering of Italy in this period. An atmosphere of cautious economic pessimism is thought to have resulted from a steep decline in Genoese trading activity, an apparent dramatic collapse in Florentine woollen cloth production and a lowering of levels of investment in banks. These are issues which have been much debated without any very clear consensus emerging. There have undoubtedly been exaggerations in the depressionist arguments; Genoa’s retreat from the eastern Mediterranean was matched by renewed advantage for Venice.