Roberto Weiss

File:Roberto Weiss cerca 1909.JPG

File:Roberto Weiss cerca 1911.JPG

Weiss was born in Milan, Italy. After spending his later childhood in Rome, he came to Britain to study law at Oxford University. He worked for a short time from 1932 to 1933 in the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, and obtained his D.Phil from Oxford in 1934, in the same year winning the Charles Oldham prize. He was naturalised British in 1934.[http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_st=adv&_aq=Weiss%20Roberto&_dss=range&_sd=1934&_ed=1934&_ro=any Naturalisation Certificate]. The author John Buchan became his friend and mentor.Obituary in The Times, August 1969.[http://bonaelitterae.wordpress.com/2010/10/10/the-colourful-life-of-roberto-weiss/ The colourful life of Roberto Weiss]. He also met the novelist Barbara Pym, who later used him as the basis for the character Count Ricardo Bianco in her first novel, Some Tame Gazelle (1950), which she had begun writing while at Oxford.B. Pym, Some Tame Gazelle (London, 1950), first composed soon after Pym finished Finals in 1934: H. Holt, A Lot to Ask: a life of Barbara Pym (London, 1990), pp. 52–54, 61 & 143–45.{{Citation |last=May |first=Radmila |title=Barbara Pym in Henley |journal=Contemporary Review |date=1 February 1996 |url=http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Barbara+Pym+in+Henley.-a018144605 }} During World War II, between 1942 and 1945, he served in the British Royal Artillery in a non-combatant role.

File:Roberto weiss in rome with his sister.jpg

Other than his period of military service, Weiss taught at University College, London from 1938 until his death. He became Professor of Italian in 1946."A Rising Sun", published in the Times Literary Supplement, The Times, 24 January 1948.

He was a pioneer in the study of early humanism. His first book (based on his thesis), Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941, subsequent editions: 1955, 1967, 2009) was the first full-length monograph in English to treat the subject of the pre-Tudor influence of Italian humanism on England.Roberto Weiss, [http://mediumaevum.modhist.ox.ac.uk/monographs_weiss.shtml Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century] (4th edition), ed. David Rundle & A. J. Lappin. A reviewer from its first publication said that "young Weiss's meticulous scholarship had already long been recognised",Gervase Mathew in New Blackfriars, vol. 23 (1942), pp. 370–71. and it was elsewhere described as "the best general guide" to its subject,J. B. Trapp, "From Guarino of Verona to John Colet" in S. Rossi & D. Savoia eds., Italy and the English Renaissance (Milan, 1989), pp. 45–53 at p. 45 [reprinted as ch. XIII in J. B. Trapp, Essays on the Renaissance and the Classical Tradition (Aldershot, 1990)] and as the work in whose shadow other scholars remained seven decades later.D. Rundle, "On the Difference between Virtue and Weiss: humanist texts in England during the fifteenth century" in D. E. S. Dunn ed., Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages (Stroud, 1996), pp. 181–203. The book was also criticised for adhering too much to Jacob Burckhardt. Subsequent lines of research took in Italian pre-humanists and the Renaissance knowledge of Greek. Weiss cited Rosamond Joscelyne Mitchell in this book, and she cited him in her book From Bristol to Rome in the Fifteenth Century.R. J. Mitchell, John Free. From Bristol to Rome in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1955), p. vii.

His last book, the posthumously published The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969) was an examination of the antiquarian studies of the renaissance humanists themselves, beginning with Petrarch and ending with the sack of Rome in 1527. He also made important contributions to the study of individual humanists.

Weiss was known for the conciseness of his writing. He stated that he could have turned each of the last ten chapters of The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity into its own book.Introduction to The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity. His wife Eve, an English teacher, ensured the correctness of his English grammar and flow.

Shortly before his death he was awarded the Serena Medal for Italian Studies by the British Academy.

Weiss died on 10 August 1969 in Reading, Berkshire, having suffered a heart attack in the early hours of 9 August.

According to Weiss's obituary in The Times, the Italian department at UCL "developed into one of the most flourishing centres of Italian scholarship outside Italy" under his leadership. The Times also called him "a vital link in Anglo-Italian cultural relations". His obituary in the medievalist journal Speculum called him "one of the most learned and productive scholars of his generation". He has had a successful posthumous publishing career.{{cite book |url=https://www.academia.edu/7852505 |chapter=Editor's Introduction |first=David |last=Rundle |edition=4th |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Rundle |editor2-first=Anthony John |editor2-last=Lappin |title=Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century |publisher=Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature |place=Oxford |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-907570-28-8 |pages=vi–xliv }}

In 1936 Weiss married Eve Cecil, with whom he settled in Henley-on-Thames and had four children. He died in Reading, Berkshire.

A bibliography of Weiss' works was published by Conor Francis Fahy and John D. Moores as "A list of the publications of Roberto Weiss, 1906–1969", in Italian Studies, vol. 29 (1974), pp. 1–11.

• Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century (1941; 2nd ed. 1957, 3rd ed. 1967)
• The Dawn of Humanism in Italy (1947; Italian edition: Il Primo secolo dell'umanesimo, 1949), {{ISBN|0-8383-0080-4}}
• Un umanista veneziano: Papa Paulo II (1958)
• The Medals of Pope Sixtus IV (1471–1484) (1961)
• Pisanello's medallion of the Emperor John VIII Palaeologus (1966)
• Illustrium imagines: [incorporating an English translation of Nota] (1967), {{ISBN|0-934352-05-4}}
• The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969), {{ISBN|0-631-11690-7}}
• Medieval and Humanist Greek : collected essays (1977)

• John Doget
• Hieronymus Balbus
• Giovanni Mansionario

Notes

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Bibliography

• Astrik Gabriel, Paul Oskar Kristeller and Kenneth Setton, "Roberto Weiss" (obituary), Speculum 1971, p. 574 f ([https://www.jstor.org/stable/2851935 online] with JSTOR subscription).
• Obituary in The Times, Thursday, 14 August 1969; pg. 10; Issue 57638; col F ([http://infotrac.galegroup.com/menu online] {{subscription required}}
• {{ODNB |first=Nicolai |last=Rubinstein |title=Weiss, Roberto (1906–1969) |origyear=2004 |year=2008 |id=40621 }}
• {{cite book |url=https://www.academia.edu/7852505 |chapter=Editor's Introduction |first=David |last=Rundle |edition=4th |editor1-first=David |editor1-last=Rundle |editor2-first=Anthony John |editor2-last=Lappin |title=Humanism in England during the Fifteenth Century |publisher=Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature |place=Oxford |year=2010 |isbn=978-0-907570-28-8 |pages=vi–xliv }}

• [http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/ Fitzwilliam Museum]
• [http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/subjects/arts/historyofart/ Library of the University of Warwick]
• [http://www.numislit.com/Illustrium.html Illustrium imagines]

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Category:1906 births

Category:1969 deaths

Category:Italian emigrants to the United Kingdom

Category:Italian people of Czech descent

Category:Writers from Milan

Category:People from Henley-on-Thames

Category:Alumni of the University of Oxford

Category:Academics of University College London

Category:20th-century British historians

Category:Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America

Category:British Army personnel of World War II

Category:Royal Artillery personnel

Category:Military personnel from Milan