Author: Publisher:
ISBN: 9781644651247
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
Book Description
How the Medici Shaped the Renaissance
Author: Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence
Author: Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271048147
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 304
Book Description
To whom should we ascribe the great flowering of the arts in Renaissance Italy? Artists like Botticelli and Michelangelo? Or wealthy, discerning patrons like Cosimo de' Medici? In recent years, scholars have attributed great importance to the role played by patrons, arguing that some should even be regarded as artists in their own right. This approach receives sharp challenge in Jill Burke's Changing Patrons, a book that draws heavily upon the author's discoveries in Florentine archives, tracing the many profound transformations in patrons' relations to the visual world of fifteenth-century Florence. Looking closely at two of the city's upwardly mobile families, Burke demonstrates that they approached the visual arts from within a grid of social, political, and religious concerns. Art for them often served as a mediator of social difference and a potent means of signifying status and identity. Changing Patrons combines visual analysis with history and anthropology to propose new interpretations of the art created by, among others, Botticelli, Filippino Lippi, and Raphael. Genuinely interdisciplinary, the book also casts light on broad issues of identity, power relations, and the visual arts in Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance.
Medici Money
Author: Tim ParksPublisher: Profile Books
ISBN: 1847656870
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288
Book Description
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.
The Medici Women
Author: Natalie R. TomasPublisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351885839
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 246
Book Description
The Medici Women is a study of the women of the famous Medici family of republican Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Natalie Tomas here examines critically the changing contribution of the women in the Medici family to the eventual success of the Medici regime and their exercise of power within it; and contributes to our historical understanding of how women were able to wield power in late medieval and early modern Italy and Europe. Tomas takes a feminist approach that examines the experience of the Medici women within a critical framework of gender analysis, rather than biography. Keeping the historiography to a minimum and explaining all unfamiliar Italian terms, Tomas makes her narrative clear and accessible to non-specialists; thus The Medici Women appeals to scholars of women's studies across disciplines and geographical boundaries.
Imagining the Americas in Medici Florence
Author: Lia MarkeyPublisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271078227
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 602
Book Description
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.
The Florentine Renaissance
Author: Vincent CroninPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 144646654X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371
Book Description
Florence in the fifteenth century was the undisputed centre of the Italian Renaissance. Its legacy is apparent today in every aspect of human endeavour. Our art and science, our learning and literature, our Christianity and our civic liberties, even our conception of what constitutes a gentleman, have all been shaped by Florentine thought and deed. In this brilliant and absorbing book Vincent Cronin brings vividly to life the people and myriad achievements of this astonishingly fruitful epoch in human history.
The Medici
Author: Paul StrathernPublisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448104343
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 460
Book Description
A dazzling piece of Italian history of the infamous family that become one of the most powerful in Europe, weaving its history with Renaissance greats from Leonardo da Vinci to Galileo Against the background of an age which saw the rebirth of ancient and classical learning, The Medici is a remarkably modern story of power, money and ambition. Strathern paints a vivid narrative of the dramatic rise and fall of the Medici family in Florence, as well as the Italian Renaissance which they did so much to sponsor and encourage. Strathern also follows the lives of many of the great Renaissance artists with whom the Medici had dealings, including Leonardo, Michelangelo and Donatello; as well as scientists like Galileo and Pico della Mirandola; and the fortunes of those members of the Medici family who achieved success away from Florence, including the two Medici popes and Catherine de' Médicis, who became Queen of France and played a major role in that country through three turbulent reigns. ‘A great overview of one family's centuries-long role in changing the face of Europe’ Irish Independent
Interpreting the Renaissance
Author: Manfredo TafuriPublisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300111583
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 580
Book Description
"Tafuri studies the theory and practice of Renaissance architecture, offering new and compelling readings of its various social, intellectual, and cultural contexts while providing a broad understanding of uses of representation that shaped the entire era. He synthesizes the history of architectural ideas and projects through discussions of the great centers of architectural innovation in Italy (Florence, Rome, and Venice), key patrons from the middle of the fifteenth century (Pope Nicholas V) to the early sixteenth century (Pope Leo X), and crucial figures such as Leon Battista Alberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Lorenzo de'Medici, Raphael, Baldassare Castiglione, and Giulio Romano. Interpreting the Renaissance is an essential book for anyone interested in the architecture and culture of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy."--BOOK JACKET.
Renaissance People
Author: Robert C. DavisPublisher:
ISBN: 9780500293805
Category : Biography
Languages : en
Pages : 376
Book Description
Renaissance burst forth in all its glory around 1500 and spread throughout Europe. This period of great creativity and productivity in the arts and sciences is illuminated in Renaissance People: Lives That Shaped the Modern Age through the lives of more than ninety of its illustrious intellectuals, artists, literary figures, scientists, and rulers. --from publisher description.
The Beauty and the Terror
Author: Catherine FletcherPublisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190908505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
A new account of the birth of the West through its birthplace--Renaissance Italy The period between 1492--resonant for a number of reasons--and 1571, when the Ottoman navy was defeated in the Battle of Lepanto, embraces what we know as the Renaissance, one of the most dynamic and creatively explosive epochs in world history. Here is the period that gave rise to so many great artists and figures, and which by its connection to its classical heritage enabled a redefinition, even reinvention, of human potential. It was a moment both of violent struggle and great achievement, of Michelangelo and da Vinci as well as the Borgias and Machiavelli. At the hub of this cultural and intellectual ferment was Italy. The Beauty and the Terror offers a vibrant history of Renaissance Italy and its crucial role in the emergence of the Western world. Drawing on a rich range of sources--letters, interrogation records, maps, artworks, and inventories--Catherine Fletcher explores both the explosion of artistic expression and years of bloody conflict between Spain and France, between Catholic and Protestant, between Christian and Muslim; in doing so, she presents a new way of witnessing the birth of the West.