Roberto Weiss

Early career

Weiss was born in Milan, Italy. After spending his later childhood in Rome, he came to Britain to study law at Oxford University. The author John Buchan became his friend and mentor. 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. During World War II, between 1942 and 1945, he served in the British Royal Artillery in a non-combatant role.

He was a pioneer in the study of early humanism. A reviewer from its first publication said that "young Weiss's meticulous scholarship had already long been recognised", and it was elsewhere described as "the best general guide" to its subject, and as the work in whose shadow other scholars remained seven decades later. The book was also criticised for adhering too much to Jacob Burckhardt.

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. 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.

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

Published works (selection) 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), 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), The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (1969), Medieval and Humanist Greek : collected essays (1977)