The latest translation of Marsilio Ficino’s letters sheds new light on the life and intellectual development of one of the Renaissance’s leading figures. As head of the Platonic Academy in Florence, Ficino helped set the intellectual and spiritual foundations of the Italian Renaissance, the reverberations of which were felt throughout Western Europe for centuries to come. Ficino’s letters offer key insights into this philosophical and artistic movement and into the lives of the extraordinary people who led it. Noted correspondents include Angelo Poliziano and King Matthias of Hungary, and certain letters discuss the deaths of his pupils, his troubles with the Curia in Rome, his struggle to reconcile some of the differences between Plato and Aristotle, and Plotinus's influence on his astrology.