The Accademia della Crusca, which publishes dictionaries and articles on the language, was founded in 1583 with the aim to protect and promote the purity of the Italian language. Their norms were accepted by the Italians as authoritative in linguistic matters, and were a compromise between classical purism and the living Tuscan usage.

The most important literary event of the XVI century actually did not take place in Florence, but in Venice. In 1525 the Venetian Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) set out his proposals in Prose della volgar lingua, 1525 calling for a standard language and style. His models were the writers of the Florentine tradition: Petrarch and Boccaccio. The language of Italian literature stems from that spoken in Florence in that period.