Florence in the Time of the Medici PDF Download

Author: Michel Plaisance
Publisher: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies
ISBN: 9780772720368
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Author: J. Lucas-Dubreton
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000021831
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 391

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Originally published in 1960, paints a picture of what life was like in Renaissance Florence. It examines private and public life of Florentine citizens, governance and defence; the life of women; domestic arrangements; ritual and ceremony, siege and plague.

Author: Tim Parks
Publisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847656870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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The Medici are famous as the rulers of Florence at the high point of the Renaissance. Their power derived from the family bank, and this book tells the fascinating, frequently bloody story of the family and the dramatic development and collapse of their bank (from Cosimo who took it over in 1419 to his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent who presided over its precipitous decline). The Medici faced two apparently insuperable problems: how did a banker deal with the fact that the Church regarded interest as a sin and had made it illegal? How in a small republic like Florence could he avoid having his wealth taken away by taxation? But the bank became indispensable to the Church. And the family completely subverted Florence's claims to being democratic. They ran the city. Medici Money explores a crucial moment in the passage from the Middle Ages to the Modern world, a moment when our own attitudes to money and morals were being formed. To read this book is to understand how much the Renaissance has to tell us about our own world. Medici Money is one of the launch titles in a new series, Atlas Books, edited by James Atlas. Atlas Books pairs fine writers with stories of the economic forces that have shaped the world, in a new genre - the business book as literature.

Author: Lia Markey
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271078227
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 602

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The first full-length study of the impact of the discovery of the Americas on Italian Renaissance art and culture, Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence demonstrates that the Medici grand dukes of Florence were not only great patrons of artists but also early conservators of American culture. In collecting New World objects such as featherwork, codices, turquoise, and live plants and animals, the Medici grand dukes undertook a “vicarious conquest” of the Americas. As a result of their efforts, Renaissance Florence boasted one of the largest collections of objects from the New World as well as representations of the Americas in a variety of media. Through a close examination of archival sources, including inventories and Medici letters, Lia Markey uncovers the provenance, history, and meaning of goods from and images of the Americas in Medici collections, and she shows how these novelties were incorporated into the culture of the Florentine court. More than just a study of the discoveries themselves, this volume is a vivid exploration of the New World as it existed in the minds of the Medici and their contemporaries. Scholars of Italian and American art history will especially welcome and benefit from Markey’s insight.

Author: J. R. Hale
Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
ISBN: 9781842124567
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 206

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Book Description
The enduring fascination of the Medici emanates from their ability as individuals and as a family to control the government of Florence - first, within a quasi-democratic system, and finally through dynastic inheritance.Based on the latest research, Professor Hale's masterly study thus presents an account of the Medici that serves as a history of Florence from the early fifteenth to the early eighteenth century.

Author: Cristina Acidini
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300094954
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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"Publisdhed in conjuntion with the exhibition: Magnificenza! the Medici, Michelangelo, & the Art of Late Renaissance Florence (In Italy, L'Ombra del genio: Michelangelo e l'arte a Firenze, 1538-1631) ..."--Title page verso.

Author: Paul Strathern
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1605988278
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
By the end of the fifteenth century, Florence was well established as the home of the Renaissance. As generous patrons to the likes of Botticelli and Michelangelo, the ruling Medici embodied the progressive humanist spirit of the age, and in Lorenzo de' Medici they possessed a diplomat capable of guarding the militarily weak city in a climate of constantly shifting allegiances. In Savonarola, an unprepossessing provincial monk, Lorenzo found his nemesis. Filled with Old Testament fury, Savonarola's sermons reverberated among a disenfranchised population, who preferred medieval Biblical certainties to the philosophical interrogations and intoxicating surface glitter of the Renaissance. The battle between these two men would be a fight to the death, a series of sensational events—invasions, trials by fire, the 'Bonfire of the Vanities', terrible executions and mysterious deaths—featuring a cast of the most important and charismatic Renaissance figures.In an exhilaratingly rich and deeply researched story, Paul Strathern reveals the paradoxes, self-doubts, and political compromises that made the battle for the soul of the Renaissance city one of the most complex and important moments in Western history.

Author: Edward L. Goldberg
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1442613335
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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In the seventeenth century, Florence was the splendid capital of the Medici Grand Dukedom of Tuscany. Meanwhile, the Jews in its tiny Ghetto struggled to earn a living by any possible means, especially loan-sharking, rag-picking and second-hand dealing. They were viewed as an uncanny people with rare supernatural powers, and Benedetto Blanis—a businessman and aspiring scholar from a distinguished Ghetto dynasty—sought to parlay his alleged mastery of astrology, alchemy and Kabbalah into a grand position at the Medici Court. He won the patronage of Don Giovanni dei Medici, a scion of the ruling family, and for six tumultuous years their lives were inextricably linked. Edward Goldberg reveals the dramas of daily life behind the scenes in the Pitti Palace and in the narrow byways of the Florentine Ghetto, using thousands of new documents from the Medici Granducal Archive. He shows that truth—especially historical truth—can be stranger than fiction, when viewed through the eyes of the people most immediately involved.

Author: Lorenzo L. Da Ponte
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Florence (Italy)
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Author: E. R. Chamberlin
Publisher: Sapere Books
ISBN: 9781800555259
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A brilliant history of one of the most beautiful cities in the world during the height of the Italian Renaissance. Perfect for readers of John Julius Norwich, Jan Morris or Ross King. The Medici are one of the most famous families in history. They built their wealth from banking in the fifteenth century and by the seventeenth century their ranks had produced four Popes, two Queens of France and acquired the hereditary position of Grand Duke of Tuscany. How did this family rise to such heights of religious and political power? And in what ways did they transform the city in which they lived? E. R. Chamberlin provides a dazzling introduction into the lives of Cosimo and Lorenzo the Magnificent, the streets in which they walked and the buildings that they helped pay for, the architects and artists that they patronized, as well as providing insight into how the city functioned on a day to day basis and how the ordinary people of Florence lived. Florence in the Time of the Medici paints a picture of what life was like in this spectacular Renaissance city. It should be essential reading for anyone planning a long weekend to visit Michelangelo's David or Brunelleschi's magnificent dome on Florence Cathedral.