Leonardo Bruni

Leonardo Bruni was born around 1370 in Arezzo and became a humanist, historian, and statesman in early Renaissance Italy. He approached the past with a new architecture, dividing it into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern era — the first person to write history through that tripartite lens. The dates he chose differ from today's conventions, but the framework stuck. By the time he died on 9 March 1444, he had earned recognition as the most important humanist historian of the early Renaissance, and some have called him the first modern historian outright.