Princes of the Renaissance

Author(s): Mary Hollingsworth

World History

A beautifully illustrated history of the Renaissance told through the lives of its most important and influential patrons - the princely rulers of Italy's dynastic states and their families.
From the late Middle Ages, the independent Italian city-states were taken over by powerful families who installed themselves as dynastic rulers. Inspired by the humanists, the princes of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy immersed themselves in the culture of antiquity, commissioning palaces, villas and churches inspired by the architecture of ancient Rome, and offering patronage to artists and writers.
Many of these princes were related by blood or marriage, creating a web of alliances that held society together but whose tensions sometimes threatened to tear it apart. Thus were their lives defined as much by the waging of war as the nurturing of artistic talent. Mary Hollingsworth charts these developments in a sequence of chronological chapters, each centred on two or three main characters with a cast of minor ones - from Ludovico Sforza of Milan to Isabella d'Este of Mantua, from Pope Paul III to Emperor Charles V, and from the painters Mantegna and Titian to the architect Sansovino and the polymath Leonardo da Vinci.
Princes of the Renaissanceis a vivid depiction of the lives and times of the élite whose power and patronage created the art and architecture of the Renaissance. In a narrative that is as rigorous and closely researched as it is accessible and informative, Mary Hollingsworth sets their aesthetic achievements in the context of the volatile, ever-shifting politics of a tumultuous period of history.
PRAISE FOR MARY HOLLINGSWORTH:
'An excellent study of the Medici ... A careful, understated book that is never short on drama' Helen Castor on The Medici, a TelegraphBook of the Year
'A lucid and beautifully illustrated family history. In Hollingsworth's surefooted telling, this ruthless but enlightened family were at their best when they were true to the Florentine motto of 'profit and honour'' The Timeson The Medici, selected for The TimesBook of the Week

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Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9781788547833
  • : Head of Zeus
  • : Head of Zeus
  • : April 2021
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 512
  • : near fine
  • : 945.050922
  • : English
  • : hardback with dustjacket
  • : Mary Hollingsworth