The Family Medici by Mary Hollingsworth
Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the fifteenth century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Among their number were no fewer than three popes and a powerful and influential queen of France. Their influence brought about an explosion of Florentine art and architecture. Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Angelico, and Leonardo were among the artists with whom they were socialized and patronized.
Thus runs the accepted view of the Medici. However, Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were enlightened rulers of the Renaissance is a fiction that has now acquired the status of historical fact. In truth, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias--tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own. In this dynamic new history, Hollingsworth argues that past narratives have focused on a sanitized and fictitious view of the Medici--wise rulers, enlightened patrons of the arts, and fathers of the Renaissance--but that in fact their past was reinvented in the sixteenth century, mythologized by later generations of Medici who used this as a central prop for their legacy.
Hollingsworth's revelatory re-telling of the story of the family Medici brings a fresh and exhilarating new perspective to the story behind the most powerful family of the Italian Renaissance.
Miles Pattenden, D.Phil. (2009), University of Oxford, is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry, Australian Catholic University. His publications include Electing the Pope in Early Modern Italy, 1450-1700 (Oxford University Press, 2017).
Arnold Witte, Ph.D. (2004), University of Amsterdam, is Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam and Head of Art History at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome, and specializes on patronage. He published The Artful Hermitage (L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2008).
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781643131504 |
| ISBN 10 | 1643131508 |
| Title | The Family Medici |
| Author | Mary Hollingsworth |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Pegasus Books |
| Year published | 2020-09-08 |
| Number of pages | 528 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |