Sir John Rigby Hale was a British Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 historian, translator, editor, and university professor.

John Rigby Hale was born September 17, 1923, in Ashford

Ashford, Kent

Ashford is a town in the borough of Ashford in Kent, England. In 2005 it was voted the fourth best place to live in the United Kingdom. It lies on the Great Stour river, the M20 motorway, and the South Eastern Main Line and High Speed 1 railways. Its agricultural market is one of the most...

, Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, in the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College, Oxford

Jesus College is one of the colleges of the University of Oxford in England. It is in the centre of the city, on a site between Turl Street, Ship Street, Cornmarket Street and Market Street...

 (B.A., 1948, M.A., 1953). He also attended Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (1948-49). He was a Fellow of the British Academy

British Academy

The British Academy is the United Kingdom's national body for the humanities and the social sciences. Its purpose is to inspire, recognise and support excellence in the humanities and social sciences, throughout the UK and internationally, and to champion their role and value.It receives an annual...

 and Emeritus Professor of Italian History at University College, London, where he was head of the Italian Department from 1970 until his retirement in 1988. His first position was as Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Jesus College, Oxford, from 1949-1964, followed by being the first Professor of History at Warwick University. He taught at a number of other universities including Cornell and the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

.

He was a Trustee of the National Gallery, London

National Gallery, London

The National Gallery is an art museum on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the mid-13th century to 1900. The gallery is an exempt charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media...

 from 1973-80, becoming Chairman from 1974. He was made a Knight Bachelor

Knight Bachelor

The rank of Knight Bachelor is a part of the British honours system. It is the most basic rank of a man who has been knighted by the monarch but not as a member of one of the organised Orders of Chivalry...

 on 20 August 1984.

In 1992, he suffered a stroke that caused aphasia. After his death, his wife, the journalist Sheila Hale, wrote a book about these final years, The Man Who Lost His Language.

Author

• Napoleon: the Story of his Life, London, Faber and Faber, 1954.
• England and the Italian Renaissance: the Growth of Interest in its History and Art, London, Faber and Faber, 1954. 4th edition, new introduction and bibliographical update by Edward Chaney, Oxford, Blackwell, 2005.
• Machiavelli and Renaissance Italy, London, English Universities Press, 1961.
• The Art of War and Renaissance England, Washington, Folger Shakespeare Library, 1961.
• Renaissance exploration, New York, W. W. Norton, 1968.
• Italian Renaissance Painting from Masaccio to Titian, New York: Dutton, 1977.
• Florence and the Medici: the Pattern of Control, London, Thames and Hudson, 1977.
• Renaissance Fortification: Art or Engineering?, London, Thames and Hudson, 1977.
• Renaissance War Studies, London, Hambledon Press, 1983.
• Artists and warfare in the Renaissance, Yale University Press, 1990.
• The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (1993)

Translator

• Mandragola: a comedy, by Niccolò Machiavelli, Fantasy Press, 1957.
• Literary Works: Mandragola, Clizia, A dialogue on language, and Belfagor: with selections from the private correspondence, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Edited and translated by J.R. Hale, London, New York, Oxford University Press, 1961.
• The Travel Journal of Antonio de Beatis: Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, France and Italy, 1517-1518, translated from the Italian by J. R. Hale and J. M. A. Lindon. Edited by J. R. Hale. London, Hakluyt Society, c1979.

Editor

"The Italian Journal of Samuel Rogers"edited by J.R Hale,with an account of Rogers' life and travel in Italy in 1814-1821.Faber and Faber 1956.

• History of Italy and History of Florence. Translated by Cecil Grayson. Edited and abridged with an introduction by John Rigby Hale. New York, Washington Square Press, 1964.
• Certain Discourses Military, Ithaca, N.Y., Published for the Folger Shakespeare Library by Cornell University Press, 1964.
• Europe in the Late Middle Ages. Edited by John Rigby Hale, J. R. L. Highfield [and] B. Smalley. Northwestern University Press, 1965.
• The Evolution of British Historiography: from Bacon to Namier. London, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1967.

• A Concise Encyclopaedia of the Italian Renaissance, New York, Oxford University Press, 1981.
• The Thames and Hudson Encyclopedia of the Italian Renaissance, New York, Thames and Hudson, 1981.

External links

• "John Rigby Hale" in Proceedings of the British Academy, volume 111, 2002, ISBN 0197262597 pp. 531-552, full obituary.
• "Obituaries: Professor Sir John Hale", The Independent
  The Independent
  The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...
  
  , Aug 19, 1999 by Michael Mallett