The Swerve, Stephen Greenblatt.

The atmosphere [Poggio Bracciolini] breathed is most brilliantly conveyed by a strange work of the 1430's, written when Poggio was still very much at the center of the curia.  The work, entitled On the Excellence and Dignity of the Roman Court, is by a younger humanist contemporary, the Florentine Lapo da Castiglionchio.