Word: medicean
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Dates: during 1880-1889
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...that what they cared for most in the ancient masterpieces was the perfection of their form. Henceforth they studied them for their form alone. Not for their matter. There were exceptions, of course, such as Laurentius Valla, Polilian, Pontanus, Marullus, Ficino, and his fellow Platonists, "amiable browsers in the Medicean park," as George Eliot calls them; but, on the whole, the great aim of Italian scholars was to emulate the form of the ancients to write elegant Latin and Greek." Ciceronianism, the clothing of trifles-often filthy trifles in the purest Latinity, was the final phase of Italian scholarship...