Princes of the Renaissance
The Hidden Power Behind an Artistic Revolution
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- $22.99
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
A vivid history of the lives and times of the aristocratic elite whose patronage created the art and architecture of the Italian Renaissance.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was an era of dramatic political, religious, and cultural change in the Italian peninsula, witnessing major innovations in the visual arts, literature, music, and science.
Princes of the Renaissance charts these developments in a sequence of eleven chapters, each of which is devoted to two or three princely characters with a cast of minor ones—from Federigo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino, to Cosimo I de' Medici, Duke of Florence, and from Isabella d'Este of Mantua to Lucrezia Borgia. Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held Renaissance society together—but whose tensions could spark feuds that threatened to tear it apart.
A vivid depiction of the lives and times of the aristocratic elite whose patronage created the art and architecture of the Renaissance, Princes of the Renaissance is a narrative that is as rigorous and definitively researched as it is accessible and entertaining. Perhaps most importantly, Mary Hollingsworth sets the aesthetic achievements of these aristocratic patrons in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of an age of change and innovation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian Hollingsworth (The Cardinal's Hat) offers a lively and well-organized group portrait of nobles who patronized the artists of the Italian Renaissance. Members of the Sforza, de Medici, d'Este, and Borgia dynasties make frequent appearances as Hollingsworth details the alliances they built and broke in order to maintain power. Often, their status depended on staying in the good graces of the pope and his own extensive network of relatives and allies. For example, Hollingsworth describes how cardinal Ascania Sforza's help in getting Rodrigo Borgia elected as Pope Alexander VI in 1492 helped Sforza to survive a later accusation that he murdered the pontiff's son, Juan Borgia. Hollingsworth also profiles military commander Sigismondo Malatesta and shows how aristocrat Leonello d'Este's reformation of the University of Ferrara, beginning in 1442, foreshadowed the humanistic direction of the Renaissance. Throughout, Hollingsworth shares memorable details about the period's art and architecture, noting, for example, that Leonardo da Vinci's painting Lady with an Ermine immortalizes the mistress of his patron, the Duke of Milan. Extensive color photographs enhance and reinforce Hollingsworth's vivid biographical sketches and astute synthesis of the era's tumultuous politics. The result is an accessible and entertaining introduction to a groundbreaking period in world and art history.
