Martin McLaughlin was one of the foremost Italianists of his generation. His critical and scholarly work on a range of authors, particularly the Renaissance humanist and polymath Leon Battista Alberti and the 20th-century novelist Italo Calvino, was known and much admired in the UK, USA and Italy. He was a highly valued member of the Edinburgh and Oxford academic communities, an inspiring teacher, and a much-loved friend.
Martin was born and grew up in Glasgow, where he went to university, graduating with First-Class Honours in Classics in 1973. He then won the Snell Exhibition to Balliol College, where after some initial hesitations he took a second undergraduate degree with First-Class Honours in Classics and Italian. He went on to a DPhil, the eventual outcome of which was his first book, the highly regarded Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance (Clarendon Press, 1995). Before the thesis was finished, he had moved back to Scotland with his wife Cathy, to a lectureship in the Italian department of Edinburgh University, where he spent thirteen enjoyable years. In 1990 he returned to Oxford, first as a University Lecturer and Student of Christ Church, and then, from 2001 until his retirement in 2017, as Agnelli-Serena Professor of Italian Studies.
After his first book, he gradually homed in on the figure of Alberti, many of whose writings had been edited by Martin’s research supervisor and predecessor, Cecil Grayson, and who was best known inside and outside Italy as the architect of the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini and other Renaissance buildings. Martin did much to correct this one-sided view, producing prize-winning translations of his Latin and Italian dialogues, tracts and stories, and building up a comprehensive picture of a complex, highly individual and frequently comic innovator in a range of different fields. A major collection of his Alberti studies appeared in Italian in 2016, Leon Battista Alberti: La vita, l’umanesimo, le opere letterarie (Florence: Olschki). In 2023 came a collection of translations of Alberti's biographical and autobiographical pieces, followed last year by Leon Battista Alberti. Writer and Humanist (Princeton University Press), a comprehensive reworking of previously scattered articles and essays, which offered a detailed and engaging picture of Alberti’s writerly evolution and historical significance.
Then there was Calvino. In 1998 Martin published the first study in English of his complete writings in the Edinburgh Writers of Italy series (soon to be republished in Italian in updated form). There followed translations, articles, conference papers, friendship with Calvino himself and a fundamental role in the establishment and functioning of the Laboratorio Calvino in Italy. As late as last year, when his illness had reached an advanced stage, Martin participated actively in the conference marking the centenary of Calvino’s birth. Beyond Calvino, Martin was constantly expanding his range, with varied contributions on medieval, Renaissance and modern topics, as both editor and author. Academic collaboration was very much in his character. Alongside books, articles and translations, his long list of publications includes a quite remarkable number of collaborative volumes, edited or jointly edited by him, or to which he contributed.
The best classical scholar among British Italianists of his generation, Martin was unusually well placed to investigate the classical sources on which Alberti, for all his originality, drew so heavily. But in all his work, on modern as well as earlier authors, Martin was a true philologist in the European sense, much like his predecessors John Woodhouse and Cecil Grayson. His great strength lay in close attention to textual detail, with a kind of tough-minded Scottish pragmatism in his approach. He had little taste for large generalizations or radical reinterpretations, and concentrated on the concrete and particular, always, however, with a steady attention to matters of literary and human interest.
Martin was a stimulating tutor and supervisor, friendly and approachable in manner, but also always pointing his pupils towards the highest scholarly standards of which they were capable. They responded with deep affection and regard that continued long after they had left university. He did not have much taste for routine university administration, but he enjoyed its human and social side, and always did what he was called upon to do efficiently and without complaint. He played a primary role in the success of the Oxford Legenda series, which he chaired from its transition from a relatively informal organisation to one with a sound commercial basis, himself editing or co-editing six collective volumes. He served on the 2008 U.K. Research Assessment Exercise Panel, and on its 2014 successor for the Research Excellence Framework. He was Chairman of The Oxford Italian Association (TOIA) from 2010 to 2021 and did much to keep it alive and thriving. He was a prominent and successful Chair of the Society for Italian Studies from 2004 to 2010, and was President of the Modern Humanities Research Association in 2015. From the late 1990s to last year he was the UK member of the international panel awarding the Premio Alassio for the best novel published in Italian during the preceding twelve months. As Professor he maintained warm relations with the Fiat company, which had previously played the crucial role in refinancing the Chair. His work for the promotion of Italian culture was recognized by the Italian government with the award, in 2008, of the title of Commendatore. The award of the British Academy's Serena Medal on his retirement recognized both the distinctive merits of his research, and the major role that he played as a promoter of Italian studies in the UK.
Alberti and Calvino both have features which chimed with sides of Martin’s character – a restless, learned spirit of intellectual adventure in Alberti, lightness of touch (leggerezza) and humour in Calvino. In their very different ways they also share a quality that was a fundamental part of Martin's character, engagement with the practical, non-academic world. He had a large, intense hinterland of Glaswegian family relationships that were a constant feature of his life and a major strength. One reflection of this was his passion for Glasgow Celtic, which, as often as he could, he would watch in action with other supporters at O’Neill’s Bar in central Oxford. He had an extraordinary capacity for hard work, but tended to keep it well hidden from friends and colleagues. While he had a due and proper sense of his own academic worth, he was quite without vanity and almost never spoke about his achievements. Always somehow maintaining his own privacy, or reserving his more private life for his large family, he had a great talent for friendship, and was a good and considerate listener and a lively, humorous raconteur. He had a remarkable ability to make friends of colleagues, undoubtedly one reason for his success as an organizer and collaborator.
Martin died, cruelly, at the height of his powers, in the middle of a happy, active and very productive retirement. He leaves behind Cathy, his devoted wife of just over fifty years, their daughter, Mairi and their grand-daughter, Iona—the names say something about Scottish roots never having been forgotten. Cathy, herself a senior teacher of Italian, was his constant support and companion from their undergraduate days onwards, and a talented provider of the hospitality that was such a large part of their lives, and which both of them enjoyed so much. Mairi, herself a distinguished Professor of Romance Linguistics at Berkeley, was an enormous source of pride for both of them. Martin’s memory will live on in all of us who knew him, not only for his extensive academic achievements, but also for his warm, vital and unique personal gifts.